Who said this and can it apply to healers?

[Jaelommiss]

I personally think the biggest logical mistake people are making is this ADHD obsession with ABC. ABC would have gotten you laughed out of older MMOs. Classic WoW had the mp/5 rule for every 5 seconds you weren't casting you would regenerate a certain amount of mp in combat.

ABC is such a false premise. People doesn't understand that inertia is something. Vanilla WoW utilized the value of the inertia where you stand still and monitor the fight by providing bonus MP regen if you could be smart enough with your triage to go 5 seconds without casting. I'm not saying the solution is a 5 second window, but ABC is just inane folly that really annoys me when people bring it up like it's somehow just natural truth.

ABC was considered suboptimal in older MMOs because the resource systems in those games forced healers to be inactive if they wanted to have sufficient resources to survive a fight. In FFXIV and many other modern MMOs, this bad element of game design has been fixed. From a logistics point of view it can be an interesting puzzle to balance idle time with active time, but it makes for incredibly dull gameplay. This is especially true when only one portion of the population (healers) are forced into this inactivity.

Allowing all party members to continually contribute to party success is not a bad thing. Neither is allowing players to play the game without their participation being severely restricted by punitive resource systems.

As the game is currently designed, (1) healers have many idle GCDs that do not need to be spent on healing. Depending on the healer and the group, this can be in excess of 90% of all GCDs. (2) Healers also do not have significant resource management concerns that mandate idleness outside of a few fringe scenarios. (3) The current toolkit that SE has given healers includes nothing apart from damage spells to use in these idle GCDs. The conclusion, then, is that healers should spend these GCDs on dps because there is a negligible resource cost to doing so and it provides a very significant bonus to party output. So long as this is the case, ABC will remain the logical conclusion for healers in FFXIV.

If any of those three premises changed, then healer dps may no longer be desirable.
If (1) changed by requiring more GCD healing (say, by moving some oGCD heals to the GCD) then there would be less idle time to be spent on damage.
If (2) changed by severely restricting MP as a resource then healer would be forced to conserve their MP and be unable to dps.
If (3) changed by expanding healer GCD options to include buffs or utilities that benefit the party more than that same GCD's damage, then healers would have other options to spend their non-healing time on.

I'd personally prefer a combination of (1) and (3). I can elaborate on what specific changes I would like to see if you're interested.

[NanaWiloh]

Heal is DPS with some healing skill already
the only reason i am back on AST is only i heard the dev want to make heal more heal focus
however, it doesnt really look like we are healing more, may be we will have to see when ShB raid introduce
I can certain tell I will be very unhappy if the move healer to more DPS orientated. I believe the the issue is not on the number

As a tank, often force to pull everything and stance dance, managing CD, keeping aggro...it is the most stressful role back in those day
for heal, it have become more about just keeping everyone alive while doing mechanics and keeping tank with their all or nothing pull, when thing went wrong healer easily get the blame. When I play DPS it is more relaxing, doing the right rotation, pop the buff and do mechanic. I believe the stress factor are more the issue of lack of heal compare to DPS.

Wait until you reach 80 on Ast and run The twining or the other 80 dungeon. Your Heals will seem more like basic first aid rather then actual heals..

[Naryoril]

Why not just have everyone heal themselves, and then not have any tanks or healers?

Guild Wars 2 did this, it doesn't really work, because it really limits the possibilities in boss design and encounter design in general. Afaik they even rolled it back a bit and added something akin to a more dedicated healer.

[RopeDrink]

I don’t get why everyone wants healers to have DPS rotations.

It's really quite simple. Swap to a healer and go kill a mob. What are you doing? Spamming a button or three. If lucky, like me on my WHM, you might also press 2-4 GCD's as well, but for the most part, you are mashing Holy or Glare, or whatever your AST/SCH equivalent is.

Why are you doing this? Because you don't need to heal - which translates to content of a singular and group variety. You could say "I'd rather higher healing requirements", but then you are basically just asking for more damage intake, compared to, say, actually making the kit more engaging, which would make them feel better not just in group content, but solo as well. As said before, I felt quite sorry for people who tuned into my stream during early access. As a WHM main who levelled that first and foremost, the vast majority of non-dungeon content involved me just face-tanking mobs and either Glaring or Holy'ing them to death over and over for 10 levels.

Bear in mind that in asking for a more engaging DPS kit, this doesn't necessarily have to be "big DPS rotations". There are numerous ways one could go about it. Even after the removal of AeroII, I felt far more active as a WHM in ShB than I did before because Holy wasn't an MP sink, my lilies (which you would weave between damage) can now go towards a big AoE, and when healing is required we have plenty of other buttons to consider. Problem is, our Healing is hardcore covered by all these lovely buttons yet there is very little Healing actually required, thus you turn to DPS to fill the downtime and help out... And we're back to mashing 1-2 buttons. Even if you increased the healing req or made mechanics more sporadic, there will still be downtime where people like me will still just be mashing buttons -- because being good at DPS'ing as a Healer is absolutely no detriment to our ability to heal content, so we'll still be in the same place even if we need to press healing slightly more often. As a WHM, I have everything I need to heal effectively. Increased damage or adding more buttons to that process won't change much.

Even if you gave 'more support', then this is still the same as topping up during downtime or healing/pressing something in the few moments healing is needed. It won't help as much as you think, plus the fact that a certain Healer has been pidgeon-holed into this constant notion of "Pure Healer", with its only 'support' being +Healing Asylum and +Healing/Slight AoE mitigation on long CD's. They clearly have no desire of taking a support-approach with us, and giving the others more lends less reason to take one without, so we enter even more balance issues that don't address a whole lot.

I don't expect my WHM to turn into a Ninja'esque frantic button rotation craziness machine, but I'd like to think there will be more to it than spewing glare until a target dies. Again, just head to the overworld and kill a mob, then ask yourself how more support skills or content doing more damage is going to be seen as a positive by adept Healers who have a massive, massive, massive game full of content that requires about 20% healing (and will stay this way unless old content is revamped).

Then, consider something like a Disc Priest in WoW, or a Priest in Riders of Icarus... Healers that can heal normally, but gain the most benefit from healing via damage-dealing. That is but one method. Another would be to have Lilies and/or other buttons intertwined with those DPS buttons, so even if you do end up mashing B1 or B2, it somehow builds you up for those moments when you might need to press something else. At least then, the button mashing might have more of a purpose other than "well, it's the only thing left to do".

As it stands, just like the Twinning I did 30mins ago for a few tomes, my main Healing buttons right now are: Benison>Regen - Holy, Holy, Holy, Holy, Holy, Holy, Holy, Holy, Holy, Holy, Holy, Holy - Benison>Regen - possibly some lily use or a CureII - Holy, Holy, Holy, Holy, Holy, Holy, Holy, Holy - Mobs are thinned, so - Glare, Glare, Glare, Glare, Glare, Glare, Glare, Glare, Glare. The overworld is that, minus all healing, except possibly a regen just so I don't have to cast heals until it's dead. Old content is that as well, with even less buttons to press. So again, nobody is asking for Healers to become DPS-complex, but they most certainly have a good reason to entertain the idea of having a more engaging DPS kit.

You say you don't understand why people would want it? I say I don't understand why you wouldn't, given it would have absolutely no bearing on your/our ability to fulfil our actual function - healing. It would simply help to improve/engage players with the other portion of our kit as well as the healing portion, which is already fine for the most part.

[Seoulstar]

snip

Let's just say it comes down to personal opinion. If you want to dps as a healer, then dps. If you don't want to, then don't. A healer dpsing doesn't really affect their role. But with that being said, it still truly is just a personal thing.

[Toystore]

If any of those three premises changed, then healer dps may no longer be desirable.
If (1) changed by requiring more GCD healing (say, by moving some oGCD heals to the GCD) then there would be less idle time to be spent on damage.
If (2) changed by severely restricting MP as a resource then healer would be forced to conserve their MP and be unable to dps.
If (3) changed by expanding healer GCD options to include buffs or utilities that benefit the party more than that same GCD's damage, then healers would have other options to spend their non-healing time on.

I'd personally prefer a combination of (1) and (3). I can elaborate on what specific changes I would like to see if you're interested.

Yeah I'm interesting. It's a really neat post. I'd personally disagree with mp/5 being bad design given WoW classic was the peak popularity of any MMO ever.

I'd be interested in hearing your solutions for 3 most because I think that's were the majority of the community here has reached at least the largest consensus on.

I think 2 is the best of those solutions. Not so much severely restricting mp but making mana regen a little more complex than it currently is. Right now piety is worthless, and most of the time we're sitting at 10,000/10,000. I'd rather see healers rewarded with higher mana regen or more potent heals for smart healing than just having an effectively useless mp regen stat like piety while everyone offloads the excess time + mana on nukes.

Even extending afflatus misery as a mechanic where smarter and more efficient healing gives an oGCD burst of damage based on how well you've healed is better than a system with downtime in it. Like some kind of poker pot that keeps getting added to and is offloaded at a few intervals per fight for damage (probably staggered in dot form so it's not a cheesy burst). Something like mana regenerated beyond the cap feeding into that oGCD's damage pot to reward smart healing.

Where healing is the only way to build the potency of that offloaded oGCD and nuking during the downtime will actually be a net loss of dps provided you're excelling at the role metric (healing). I guess the most similar ability I can think of is medante/magic burst in Dragon Quest but even that's not the same. Medante is based on max mp and this is more stored, unused potential accrued through smart and efficient healing.

[RopeDrink]

A healer dpsing doesn't really affect their role.

Is that so?

A WHM right now can pump out up to 20% of a 4-man team's total damage in a lot of circumstances if they're making the effort. Are you telling me this has no effect on a role that can become pressured under certain conditions the longer things go on? Have you never been in a fight where DPS (for one reason or another) is so low that your role becomes more difficult the longer it goes? Guess what helps that... Damage! And hey, you can do damage too! Isn't it great? But wait, it gets better... You can fulfil that without much detriment to your ability to keep people alive.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not the kind to tell people how to play, but when I swap to my Tank and inevitably get Healer McAFK who spams MedII and watches fights with a stupid look on their face waiting for something to happen, I'd sooner commend my dirty laundry than that person.

[Misutoraru]

ABC was considered suboptimal in older MMOs because the resource systems in those games forced healers to be inactive if they wanted to have sufficient resources to survive a fight. In FFXIV and many other modern MMOs, this bad element of game design has been fixed. From a logistics point of view it can be an interesting puzzle to balance idle time with active time, but it makes for incredibly dull gameplay. This is especially true when only one portion of the population (healers) are forced into this inactivity.

Allowing all party members to continually contribute to party success is not a bad thing. Neither is allowing players to play the game without their participation being severely restricted by punitive resource systems.

As the game is currently designed, (1) healers have many idle GCDs that do not need to be spent on healing. Depending on the healer and the group, this can be in excess of 90% of all GCDs. (2) Healers also do not have significant resource management concerns that mandate idleness outside of a few fringe scenarios. (3) The current toolkit that SE has given healers includes nothing apart from damage spells to use in these idle GCDs. The conclusion, then, is that healers should spend these GCDs on dps because there is a negligible resource cost to doing so and it provides a very significant bonus to party output. So long as this is the case, ABC will remain the logical conclusion for healers in FFXIV.

If any of those three premises changed, then healer dps may no longer be desirable.
If (1) changed by requiring more GCD healing (say, by moving some oGCD heals to the GCD) then there would be less idle time to be spent on damage.
If (2) changed by severely restricting MP as a resource then healer would be forced to conserve their MP and be unable to dps.
If (3) changed by expanding healer GCD options to include buffs or utilities that benefit the party more than that same GCD's damage, then healers would have other options to spend their non-healing time on.

I'd personally prefer a combination of (1) and (3). I can elaborate on what specific changes I would like to see if you're interested.

I always want to see more use of GCD heal in all content and turn , oGCD act as emergency heal
When 5.0 heal revamp announced I have high hope AST could be the buff healer I stand they just turn it into more dps obsession field.

I remember there is a final boss which cast normal heal skill but when it switch stance those healing skill turn into dps. If dps rotation are something ppl want in heal, I believe we could incorporate that system, with a SB dark art type of spamming skill turn the heal skill into dps

However, overall I prefer turning healer into more heal focus, there are many way to reduce downtime not involving gravity or stone, just like your suggestion

[Tommara]

I've always thought that the reason healers are getting extremely simplified offensive loadouts is because a significant part of a healer's job is reacting to stupid. DPS wandering off in the wrong direction, standing in the wrong place, dying etc. Tanks don't have that. There's no "stupid" to react to as a tank. As such, it's just less frustrating for the healer to never have to worry about a dps rotation. Without a rotation, the logical thing to do is to spam the single highest dps skill, and hence the simplified kit. DOTs throw in a twist on it but essentially they are the same principle.

But then if healers have an actual dps rotation, it would make balancing difficult and potentially make content harder because now the healer dps is severely impacted when there's stupid in the party, forcing the healer to break the rotation and gimping healer dps.

Personally, though, I wouldn't mind trying out a design where healing is completely turned on its head and we heal by doing dps, like how tanks hold aggro by doing dps now. Things like damage to the target causes spill healing and we can "ignite" DOTs for a raid heal etc. Making the game have only DPS, but three different types: one dedicated to dps, one with a tanking kit, and one with a healing kit. But it would require a complete overhaul of every single encounter that involves a healer in this game, making it impossible at this stage.

City of Heroes tried alternatives for healers to avoid playing whack a mole with health bars, and for that fact alone, I loved it.

But it taught me that you can't heal stupid. FF14 is the worst MMO I've ever played for requiring healers to heal stupid.

So I play dps in groups mostly, and even then, I can't avoid playing stupid unless I research spoilers extensively.

And so all healers are forced into the "healing stupid" mode.

[Mandeville]

If they want healers to strictly focus on healing, that's fine. But...

A) Differentiate the toolkits between the three healers a little more, so there is a reason to try all three. Right now from a newbie perspective, they look basically the same. (talking about your basic healing kit) Have a healer who primarily uses regen abilities, a healer who uses ground targeted heals, a healer who uses big nuke heals, etc. Stuff that actually feels different to use, not just big heals, big heals with a fairie CD, and big heals with a convoluted damage buff CD.

B) At least in leveling dungeons, I am still spending at least 50% of my time dpsing, and it's extremely boring.

C) Healers still have to level, they still have to do the MSQ. They should have more than a nuke, a dot, and an aoe. Let white mage be the simple dps setup for those who don't want to be distracted by a dps rotation, and give SCH and AST more to play with. If the dps was more engaging, then it would be okay that the healing setups are all so similar.

This is all from a new player, take with grain of salt. I love the game, but comparing the healers in this game to WoW is depressing. =/ Everything else I love. The look of the game, the story, the characters, the creative mobs/zones, the roleplay, the complex dps and tank classes. But man, the healers. I usually love healing.