Who said this and can it apply to healers?

[Bastionus]

"Tanks are DPS with defense cooldowns"

Can healers be DPS with healing spells? Not as much DPS as a DPS but enough to make people want to play?

Reason I ask is not enough people wanna play healer. Before you say it I know there are other factors, such as no new healer, healer changers etc. But even before the expansion and the reveals I think Healer still wasn't a popular job to play compared to the others.

Scholar and White mage were ones that people tried more than Astro I heard (could be wrong) if someone wanted to try healer. One thing I noticed they have in common was they had more DPS/damaging skills than Astro (Back then).

Now White Mages are rewarded for healing with a DPS skill (cause you need to use healing lilies to get a blood lily for Misery) and I think that was a very smart concept.

Is this a wrong way to think that healers will seem more interesting and fun? Or is the method of 'we need to heal more' that Shadowbringers brought is the right answer? Cause personally for me as a healer main I don't mind doing heal after heal, but that seems to only occur in trash pulls in dungeons and the every now and then raid aoe damage spam that I seem to be noticing. Instead during boss fights AND ESPECIALLY IN MSQ I am just spamming my Malefic4 and Combust3...(the latter of which is the same potency of what combust 2 was so....new visual update and a 100Mp discount was all we got for that?)

Anyway let me know what you think please.

Tl;dr Was going the route of more healing needing to be done the right move for healers? Or should something else be done like more dps skills to make healer seem more intriguing so that we can get more people to try healer.

[Risvertasashi]

A number of people already think of healers this way

Scholar I heard and White mage were ones that people tried more than Astro I heard (could be wrong). One thing I notice they have in common was they had more DPS/damaging skills than Astro.

It depends on the strength of the healers. SCH has been the strongest for a very long time, and when Astro is stronger than white mage, it's clear rate will exceed it. Strength in raids... DPS does matter, but there are other factors too.

Especially in mid to high level raiding, healers DPS is seen as incredibly important. ie, it's not just dungeons. A healer that refuses to DPS will not have an easy time finding any group but the most inexperienced.

As for enticing more players to play healer, well, if they're really DPS hungry, the best way would not be to alter current designs necessarily, but to simply up potencies. Players that would normally play a DPS aren't going to find healer damage levels satisfying, and aren't going to want to have to interrupt their rotations to actually heal (nevermind the anxiety that comes with having more responsibility).

[Miiu]

Healers were never really popular. I think this is just a general problem. Most people want to do big damage numbers and be top on the dps parses Being the support-class isn't cool.
But I also heard from people that they don't want to deal with the responsibility of keeping players alive.

Overall slapping an interesting DPS rotation on a healer and call it a day is also the wrong approach. People who play healers love the mentality of the job and having them lean more into dps territory so just more people might try it out will most likely alienate some of the people who are currently maining healer.
I am also one of the players who has the opinion that healers right now aren't as fun as they used to be because we do even less now than we did before. I don't mind being stripped of every dps skill we have if the healing is suddenly more engaging and keeps us busy. But besides leveling and big dungeon pulls until we overgear those dungeons there isn't much healing to be done. Once people stop making mistakes in the extreme fights most of the time you spam your 1 nuke and refresh your dot.

[Donnicton]

Healers were never really popular. I think this is just a general problem. Most people want to do big damage numbers and be top on the dps parses Being the support-class isn't cool.
But I also heard from people that they don't want to deal with the responsibility of keeping players alive.

I mean, you can't really blame them. Why would you want all of the responsibility of keeping your group alive - be it through unavoidable damage of your group's own fault - for few of the accolades for succeeding and all of the blame if you fail, when you can just be a big ol' dps hero who puts out the big numbers and only ever has to worry about yourself when mechanics happen? This is an age old problem not specific to just FF14, though FF14 also has a fairly unique problem in that the populace is also screeching at healers over their dps on top of all of that too. You definitely need to have a certain mindset to want to play a healer unironically, especially in this game.

[RyuujinZERO]

I've been saying for a while since they nerfs to Healer, that tanks would never stand for it if they had 1 or 2 attacks, and a dozen defensive/threat skills. Afterall their 'role' is holding threat and not dying; NOT dealing damage right?

But the devs recognise that tank's fantasy is that of the warrior in shining armour with a giant weapon who stands between the enemy and his allies. but for some reason they can't accept the vision of a combat healer or battle tactician who uses magic/wits to both protect their allies and ruin their foes.

The notion that healers should accept having literally 3 attack skills that they spam ad nauseaum as filler 'because their role is healing' is absurd, and I for one won't stand for it. I've been SCH main since 2.0 early access but that ended with ShB, the new DPS rotation bores me beyond tears.

[Risvertasashi]

I've been saying for a while since they nerfs to Healer, that tanks would never stand for it if they had 1 or 2 attacks, and a dozen defensive/threat skills. Afterall their 'role' is holding threat and not dying; NOT dealing damage right?

Well it's a bit more complex than that. Enmity is generated via attacks to having DPS combos is dual purpose. DPS for healers is an interruption of the healing flow, they're separate things.

That aside even if you give healers 3 hotbars worth of DPS abilities, no DPS-minded player is going to want to play a role that hits like a wet noodle (and that includes current WHM), has to detarget the boss sometimes, and gets blamed when things go wrong (even when the blame is correctly placed!).

[Hatstand]

Well it's a bit more complex than that. Enmity is generated via attacks to having DPS combos is dual purpose. DPS for healers is an interruption of the healing flow, they're separate things.

That aside even if you give healers 3 hotbars worth of DPS abilities, no DPS-minded player is going to want to play a role that hits like a wet noodle (and that includes current WHM), has to detarget the boss sometimes, and gets blamed when things go wrong (even when the blame is correctly placed!).

Dps on tanks having a dual purpose is a design choice. If they simply removed all damage from tanking abilities but just made them generate as much enmity as if they had done damage tanks would still be able to tank. If they lowered tank dps some to the point that they couldn't gain enough enmity through dpsing then tanks dpsing would be taking a break from their tanking rotation. Similarly, you could design a system where dpsing was part of a healer's healing by, say, making a mechanic similar to the lily gauge which fills up a healing resource based on how much damage you've done. You can't blame bad design choices on other game design choices. They're all ultimately up to the devs to decide.

Edit: To be clear, I don't think they should do that to tanks, but it would be a similar approach to what they did to healers, in saying "tanks should spend more time tanking" (as oppposed to dpsing.)

[Gemina]

I've been saying for a while since they nerfs to Healer, that tanks would never stand for it if they had 1 or 2 attacks, and a dozen defensive/threat skills. Afterall their 'role' is holding threat and not dying; NOT dealing damage right?

Tanks are also complaining about the simplicity of their kits, but one thing we need to get straight is that a tank might be a tank that must focus on keeping mob aggression on themselves, but they are also melee fighters. Causing damage is not only a natural part of their role, it is also a form of building enmity, so it is extremely important that they cause damage and a lot of it.

Healing is different, and not comparable to tanking. Tanks don't have to turn their attention away from causing damage in order to perform their primary function. This is even more true with 5.0 changes, but has always been true with the existing meta. Healers OTOH, have to stop causing damage in order to perform their primary role.

But the devs recognise that tank's fantasy is that of the warrior in shining armour with a giant weapon who stands between the enemy and his allies. but for some reason they can't accept the vision of a combat healer or battle tactician who uses magic/wits to both protect their allies and ruin their foes.

The healing community just might be the most diverse of the three roles. I also think it's the role that can be designed all sorts of ways and still work because the only thing that matters with them is that they can meet the healing requirements of any particular encounter. Whether or not the devs have designed tanks to conform to a 'tank's fantasy' I cannot say, but with healing they are dealing not only with a lot of varied expectations, they are also trying to blend all of that in with their own idea of how they want healers to play. All of it is a pool of clash, and no harmony to be found anywhere.

The notion that healers should accept having literally 3 attack skills that they spam ad nauseaum as filler 'because their role is healing' is absurd, and I for one won't stand for it. I've been SCH main since 2.0 early access but that ended with ShB, the new DPS rotation bores me beyond tears.

The majority of DPS jobs have very limited self heals. Is this notion absurd because their role is DPS? No one is pushing for more self heals on DPS jobs though. Why do you suppose that is? Despite that DPS jobs have less survivability than healers or tanks? Is it simply GCDs not spent on damage = less damage?

Glare is readily available with 300 potency at the cost of one GCD or one button press. I play melee DPS jobs, and I don't have anything like that. That doesn't mean Glare makes WHM better at DPSing. What it does mean is that DPS skills are consolidated for healers. Instead of 1-2-3. That hits with 100pot, then 200pot, then finally 300pot; they just get the final string in a combo and call it a day. The same is true for their AoE and DoT.

In short, healer DPS kits are still functional despite their simplicity, and I think the devs are pushing for the three roles in the trinity to behave more traditionally. This basically means that if you want a more complex DPS rotation and see big numbers, then play a DPS job. I know that's dismissive, but I also get their reasoning behind it.

[LegoTechnic]

Tanks are also complaining about the simplicity of their kits, but one thing we need to get straight is that a tank might be a tank that must focus on keeping mob aggression on themselves, but they are also melee fighters. Causing damage is not only a natural part of their role, it is also a form of building enmity, so it is extremely important that they cause damage and a lot of it.

Except we know that isn't really true, because for years we had the various "tank stances" that nerfed tank DPS for increased enmity and mitigation. And what was the player response? To not use it and just tank without tank stance the moment it because feasible, because additional DPS made the fight go quicker and who cares if the healer has to work harder, right? If a tank can keep the aggro with DPS rotation then why use tank stance if you could push the big numbers? It's very similar to the healers mindset, where once they hit the point that additional heals aren't needed, they squeeze in more DPS because it speeds things up. It is further contributing with your spare resources despite your primary goal being already accomplished.

Your point about DPS consolidation is spot on, though. Healer DPS is not meant to be complicated, and it never was. Anyone who tells you it was difficult is either lying to themselves, or still suffering from PTSD from mistimed use of Cleric Stance (and I do miss CS). It's meant to be simple because it's something you not only have to squeeze in between heals, but for leveling on the field and with the various DPS checks within story encounters. It has to be serviceable, but not proc-watch-city like actual DPS classes since the role's focus is different.

[Gemina]

Except we know that isn't really true, because for years we had the various "tank stances" that nerfed tank DPS for increased enmity and mitigation. And what was the player response? To not use it and just tank without tank stance the moment it because feasible, because additional DPS made the fight go quicker and who cares if the healer has to work harder, right?

Haha! I know, I know. When I would bring up this exact point on DPS and Tank forums, it's like a room full of Jonah Jameson's from Spiderman would start laughing at me. We've all seen the popular GIF:



I couldn't really disagree with them though, or make a valid argument that justifies allowing healer DPS over tank DPS. Even if there are some occasional situations where it happens, the consensus is that DPS and tanks should always be doing more damage than healers, which is another way of saying healers should always focus heals before damage.