Healer dps is unfairly boring

[Gemina]

But SCH also had Shadow Flare and Miasma 2 (for AoE spam and weaving). In 4.x in dungeons you'd do something like this: cast your dots on mobs -> bane -> miasma 2 -> shadow flare -> miasma 2 spam -> dots + bane again if your party dps was low. Currently you do the folloiwing -> AoW spam. ST rotation also used all your dots (including miasma 2).


WHM used to have 3 dots, one of which AoE to be alternated between holy and healing spells. Plus Fluid Aura.

AST was the only one with 1 nuke and 1 dot, but it had to deal with cards every 30 seconds and it had buff time extensions.

Do you really not see how less braindead healer dps was in 4.0 and 3.0? It certainly wasn't complex, but it was much more engaging that it is now.

I'm well aware of what the healers used to have. I am by no means the best healer out there, but I have been doing it and participating in these discussions for a long time. If you feel this needs to be explained to me, then you don't know where I am coming from at all.

Their DPS, even 3.0 SCH, was never engaging for me. It was ALWAYS what I did when heals weren't needed, which was most of the time. This should quickly add up to my boredom in general with the role due to having such a high DPS uptime. However, this boredom was really only present and exacerbated during encounters with a low threat level such as dungeons, unsynced runs, MSQ instances, FATES, etc.

I've always had the most fun healing when I am pushed, and the DPS uptime drops significantly. This is why I encourage tanks to pull the whole effin dungeon, and spend most of my time in random groups. However, I can admit that some skills such as Aero 3 and Shadow Flare were very satisfying to use. I definitely see nothing wrong with giving healers their AoE DoTs back, and I am confident they will return.

Let me see if I can put a different spin on it, and this is very likely how the devs view the issue with healing, which is no doubt different from what most of you believe is the problem. The healing role in FFXIV is the only role in this game that does not use GCDs (for the most part) to perform their primary duty during encounters. However, it is also the role that has the most GCDs that do no damage. The question then becomes which resources do you allocate to these type of skills, and how much potency should be given to them? In my opinion, they have it backwards.

I totally get wanting more complex/engaging gameplay as a healer. Where we arrive at an impasse is that I am adamant about this more complex and engaging gameplay to come from more GCDs spent towards healing, NOT DPSing. I understand completely that with encounter design the way it is now, the only feasible answer is to add more complex DPS for healers. You need to understand that I push for a different alternative because again, healer DPS even for 3.0 SCH was always painfully boring to me.

It is ludicrous to me to sit here and talk about making healing more interesting by adding more complex and engaging DPS. Do YOU not see the conundrum in that? I will never push for that. I also tend to focus in on the role in general with topics such as these since it is the healing role that is being addressed. Each healer has respective issues of their own, and for the record, the DPS gutting of SCH I feel is one of them. I strongly dislike how much they have alienated the job from its roots, but despite its shortcomings, it remains my favorite job to take into more difficult content, and a big reason for this is because its strong identity as a damage mitigator has remained intact.

[Lastelli]

I totally get wanting more complex/engaging gameplay as a healer. Where we arrive at an impasse is that I am adamant about this more complex and engaging gameplay to come from more GCDs spent towards healing, NOT DPSing. I understand completely that with encounter design the way it is now, the only feasible answer is to add more complex DPS for healers. You need to understand that I push for a different alternative because again, healer DPS even for 3.0 SCH was always painfully boring to me.

Then you're pushing for something that is not realistic. Give up. Devs will NEVER rework the whole healing kit of the three jobs (which is required to shift the focus more on GCD healing), and change their encounter design.

Many people asking for more engaging dps rotations do not necessarily think that the only way to make healers more interesting is by giving them more diversity in their offensive kit. They just realize, given the devs track record, that they will not deviate from the current design, so they're asking for the only thing they know they can get...because they had it in previous expansions.

I thought it was common knowledge healer DPS is pretty garbage because they're meant to heal, and solo fights involve just outlasting whatever is trying to kill you by healing and slowly picking at their health.

Common knowledge? More like common misconception.

[Saefinn]

snip.

I think how you want things is a fair request. You'd rather be more pushed to the healing side.

But I'm in the frame of mind of, there's no reason why we can't have both. Reduce our healing downtime to make that more engaging and make DPS more engaging (and I miss the status effects from DPS skills too). The standard people are asking for DPS is the one SE already set in ARR and HW, rather than anything unreasonable. And I don't think it'd require a rework of encounter design, just encounter rework would be needed if they stick to the current healer design philosophy. Potencies can be nerfs, skills can be gutted. See Blue Mage healing: bare minimal healing kit, engaging healing experience (by comparison), engaging DPS experience. In reference to the poster above me "they will never rework the whole healing kit of the three jobs", then I look to Dark Knight and Machinist who had their entirely healing kit reworked. Then I look at how Paladin went from a dull 1,2,3 rotation tank to one that's pretty varied and interesting. Then I look at ARR/HW BRD, which I hated and SB/ShB BRD which feel a lot different, play a lot different and I enjoy. Or the fact that SMN is close to being a complete redesign, because it used to be a DoT mage, but maintaining DoT's is now only a small part of it. I mean, seeing how they've dealt with healers, sure, is enough to make me pessimistic they'd not bother with it, but at the same time, I don't think them doing it is unrealistic given they /have/ completely reworked stuff before, so 'NEVER' is a bit too definite.

However, having a balance of healing focus and DPS focus I felt it kinda was there for ARR SCH. By struggling to keep health up versus WHM, I found I was healing more on SCH versus WHM and using more of my toolkit competently to compensate that weakness. At the same time, I had a varied DPS for when inevitably I had downtime. I don't think they'll fully clear healer downtime and of course, healers will need to do a certain amount of content solo, so that side should also be engaging. And to me, I view the reason SCH got nice DoT's was because they'd have less downtime and probably why SCH was OP when they have SCH more of an ability to get people's HP up because their downtime was increased which meant they could do more damage.

The downside is that this raises the skill floor for playing healers and less approachable for people on the lower end of the scale of skill or experience. However, I think that could be mitigated is different healers embraced different play styles. Because, again, I think this was something they had right in ARR, SCH gave me more work to do versus WHM and WHM was what I tended to recommend to newbies who had never healed but was prepared to help out with learning SCH. Maybe WHM was still too intimidating for some? If so, it might have been good justification for a 4th healer respecting those who praise ShB's healer design.

[AncientCrystal]

Garbage argument, your job is to heal primarily, not dps. DPS doesn't HAVE to be complex.

[Mavrias]

Garbage argument, your job is to heal primarily, not dps. DPS doesn't HAVE to be complex.

My "primary job" can be handled almost entirely via oGCD healing a majority of the time. So the very least they could do is make my "secondary" job (which fills up the majority of my GCD usage) a bit more engaging.

[Shalan]

Garbage argument, your job is to heal primarily, not dps. DPS doesn't HAVE to be complex.

What a garbage statement.
The role still needs to be engaging, and presently neither DPS or actual healing is particularly so. Our healing kits are so overloaded that we often don't need much beyond our OGCDs, and what little we do need to heal can largely be mitigated or outright negated by tank CDs or dodging AoEs. So we've got a lot of downtime to dps with. Therefore, dps needs to be more engaging or the whole role suffers (as it has been).

Since you flair yourself as a WAR main, how would you like if we change all your DPS + enmity rotations into one button similar to PvP? You might not mind at first, but it gets old *really* fast.

[Corbeau]

Let me tell you a story of how a healer was once (re-)designed in a certain MMO. It was a melee class with it's damaging abilities intimately tied to it's healing output despite only having 3 DPS buttons and a couple of basic healing spells.

First, it had a long-lasting but weak regen spell that would automatically hop to a wounded party member if it's current target was at full health. The spell had a cooldown, so you could only ever have a limited number of players regenning at a time, but it was nice. Weak, but a nice side bonus - kind of like fairy passive healing. The real key was the regen buff's interplay with other abilities.

The DPS kit was based around three melee "spells": a punch, a roundhouse kick, and... let's call it a drop-kick. The punch did light damage and added a stacking buff, with a cap of 3 copies, that did nothing inherently. The roundhouse kick did decent damage and consumed the aforementioned punch buff to copy itself while restoring mana for each hit landed. The drop-kick was mana-expensive and had a cooldown, but also burst-healed every single player with your regen buff on them.

There was one other, crucial, sublime element: taking a drink. The class had an ability - oGCD, in XIV terms - to take a drink that would buff the next major ability you used. It's important to note that the cooldown (~30 seconds IIRC) was less than the length of the class' regen buff (~45 seconds IIRC). Now, if used before your regen, you could place more copies on more players. If used before your drop-kick, it copied the drop-kick (including the heal).

The play pattern should now be obvious. There were other spells and abilities, including other possible drink buffs, but the core pattern of this build was to deal as much damage as possible while passively maintaining mana and putting out sustained healing. If a damage spike was approaching, you would drink up and buff your regen ~30 seconds in advance and then drink to buff your drop-kick as the damage spike landed. If you didn't drink to the right abilities, or messed up your DPS rotation too poorly, you would use too many inefficient strikes and wind up ineffective - either by putting out too little healing or burning your mana too quickly. It required more forethought than any healer in XIV.

Sadly, it turned out that there was only one bossfight where this build was mathematically strong, at least for my guild. The right and proper way to build and play the class was much less engaging. If this dps-focused healing build had been tuned to be stronger, and therefore something I got to play regularly... well, I probably wouldn't be here. I'd still be fistweaving. Unfortunately, I have learned that XIV healers are even shallower than the boring mistweaver builds that I fled. I'll probably continue playing for a bit, using Bard and/or Black Mage, but I expect to be gone before the next expansion. I am, after all, in no way interested in slamming a single button for the vast majority of my game time.

[SamRF]

Let me tell you a story of how a healer was once (re-)designed in a certain MMO. It was a melee class with it's damaging abilities intimately tied to it's healing output despite only having 3 DPS buttons and a couple of basic healing spells.

Now you bring up WoW. Putting the instanced content aside, WoW had a pretty great solution for healer mains to have more fun and be more engaged in solo content, namely the spec system. Every class with healer also has a dps spec, so while you are doing solo content you can switch to a dps spec while leveling the same class, and if I remember correctly, gear also adjusts itself to be compatible with either spec (at least when you are leveling) so only thing you'd have to change when switching between specs is weapon.

FFXIV sort of has the same with SCH & SMN and it's a pretty awesome 2 for 1 deal imo, since you could perhaps do solo content (going through expansion for example) with SMN and switch to SCH whenever you need to do an instance. Only potential downside would be that unlike in WoW you need different gear for the jobs, but this shouldn't be too much of an issue.

I was wondering if perhaps the other healers could also benefit from a 2 for 1 deal? Maybe have PLD merge with WHM, AST with... idk dancer? Or have completely new dps/tank jobs (next expansion perhaps) that level together with corresponding healer job. Necromancer with White Mage would be cool, and Time Mage with Astrologian. OR they could perhaps release them as limited jobs just like blue mage (without level cap) which can't be used in instanced content. So you could use the corresponding limited job in solo content and then switch to the main job for instances (of course I'd prefer them not being limited jobs). Now this doesn't fix boring healer dps in instances, but arguably solo content is actually most of the game for majority of community.

[Sloprano]

To make this short: As a healer main, I want to have fun healing; not DPSing. I will always be in favor of the devs focusing on the former, which is what I know they are trying to do and trying to get right.

I'm with you on the last part, my everliving and dying wish is for SE to communicate, talk to us, set up testrealms, have a community manager or developer on here sharing their thoughts and ideas, show they take feedback and let us know why these jobs had to go through the wringer instead of just taking an atom bomb to them every expansion, taking off the googles, write down "mixed results" and wait two sodding years in complete silence before dropping another bomb just to see how that turns out. Because this act of asking for more, or the return of, non-boring way to deal damage is not to take precedence over healing, but live side by side, heck, even work together like turning Cards into damage or being able to dump Fey Gauge in an attack or aoe that heals or hurts depending on who it hits.

Talk of DPS options and capabilities was just the topic in this thread, that's not to say I don't miss having the extra dimension of healing that the seperate hotbar and manual Embrace brought and why that is just as important as to bring back the whole Arcanist to Scholar. Being able to direct a slightly weaker Physick at targets even when casting or waiting on gcds was so much fun because I could do it even when healing, mitigating, applying buffs/debuffs, reapplying dots or just dealing damage.

I enjoy trying to perform supportive roles in stressful situations so if for 5.2 they remade every dungeon and overworld mob to be akin to floor 191+, high level Eureka enemies, heal-er checks like having to use more Ressurections as part of a fight than there are swiftcasts and randomling patroling red chocobos in La Noscea spamming meteor then things would be different. But history has shown since ARR they have come up with one philosophy and have shown no interest in doing anything radical and stick with spread out world mobs, auto-attacks tickle, sidestep aoes, aoes hurt but are rarely lethal, drag packs to gate engage boss in circular room. All the opposite of this exists in Eureka and Deep Dungeons, but in very closed-off areas that serve only one purpose. Where are the mining spots, or fishing hangouts, in Eureka where you need to form bodyguard groups to reach them. But I'm diverging.

It's like a cookie cutter they apply over whatever exciting new ideas the designers come up with. They could've expanded on the pet hotbars, making Seraph an actual choice between Eos and Selene and not a copy paste Bahamut-egi with no buildup you press every two minutes, let us utilize the resources of Aetherflows and fancy job gauge they spent more time designing the look of than it's applications for both offense and healing. I'm with you just the act of performing the role could need some energy drinks, but the process of dealing damage is in dire need to resuscitation with jump pads and adrenaline shots to the thigh.

Do you honestly think getting another skill or two to spam is going satiate your need for offense? Do you think another skill or two is going to resolve what is actually going on with healers right now?

Not one or two, and definitly not some to just spam like Ruin, Ruin 2 or AoW. Damage-over-times, damage fields and resource dumps, and several of them!

I don't know of the Mr. Happy video, but I have a hard time accepting that this is the best they can come up with or think is best for the jobs. Reason for that being Scholar existed before 5.0, and 4.0. At that one point in time it had more offensive and support capabilities than they had restorative ones and it worked very well. Take a look at SCH in HW. Restorative or those that help restore skills count eight. For supportive there were seventeen. Then the offensive ones or helped you deal damage elleven. We had more ways to prevent damage and more ways to deal damage than we had ways to restore health. Not only in concept but in execution did this lead a such a fun playstyle where I could help damage with dots which meant put 'em up and then focus on support, there were the manual embrace when it healed closer to Physicks number and was more busy looking for ways to let the party take less damage because I had an easier time doing that than restoring it.

Something to apply, put down or use quickly, definitly not something to spam. Because in that vein, spamming Ruin for one target, Ruin 2 one target while moving or AoW in groups is more detrimental to our healing because in order to feel like Im helping I need to put every GCD to it when I could've just put up the dots and don't worry about them until they started dropping of.

So way back we had BOTH more interesting ways to play the healer and an simple but engaging way to deal damage that worked both in and outside of parties. Seeing as the game and the fights haven't changed one bit but they've only taken stuff away from all these jobs makes it hard to accept they are doing this for out best.

[EpicOverlord85]

Garbage argument, your job is to heal primarily, not dps. DPS doesn't HAVE to be complex.

Considering I don’t have to heal all that much to keep everyone alive (when everyone isn’t dropping like flies from eating mechanics) the only other option is too DPS so you’re point is incorrect. When I spend 75% DPSing I’d loved to do more than just 211111111111111121111111111111111111211111111121111-etc.