Healer dps is unfairly boring

[Mortex]

We can’t deny that the healers are boring as hell. The healer are as close as ever with dmg and effectiveness, we saw that in this world race that all healer combos can do kill the fight. No massive need for sch. Whm/astro did the world first with red mage as caster.

[Rasikko]

We can’t deny that the healers are boring as hell.

I didn't know all of you were part of some hive mind. I guess I'm 7 of 9. Still connected, still need my regeneration pod, but I've learned to think for myself and have my own likes, dislikes and opinions.

I am always gonna clash with you healers here. I just do not think the way of you do.

[Shalan]

Since it's something of an uncommon perspective on these forums and if you don't mind me asking...
Those of you who enjoy about the current iteration and direction of healing in FFXIV, what do enjoy about it? Do you simply enjoy it as is, or was there something you didn't enjoy in the past that changed with this expansion?

We've had plenty of space to lay out the thoughts of those that aren't satisfied, so I'd like to see more specific answers from those who do enjoy it.

[Saefinn]

I didn't know all of you were part of some hive mind. I guess I'm 7 of 9. Still connected, still need my regeneration pod, but I've learned to think for myself and have my own likes, dislikes and opinions.

I am always gonna clash with you healers here. I just do not think the way of you do.

For most of us here, I think we've not had an issue with people who like the current iteration of healers. I don't think there has to be a clash, clash only exists when people take the "my way or highway" attitude and not believe in compromise.

But arguably a middle ground should be found, because we have people who get something different from the healing experience and what you may like about it is perfectly valid...and this is where I'd have thought multiple healing jobs would tailor to that. EG. what you might like about WHM & current healer design could have been made into a 4th healer like Devout (a Sharlayan themed healer like Krile) whilst WHM remains closer to its original design.

And the thing that people are asking for most is a middle ground to the current healer design. Fill our downtime, preferably with DPS rotations. It's not drastic, it's what we've had before and will not mean a heavier DPS focus (as focus is based on how much you're having to heal and not how many DPS skills you have). Healing and encounter design would remain exactly the same.

[Side-Eye]

And the thing that people are asking for most is a middle ground to the current healer design. Fill our downtime, preferably with DPS rotations. It's not drastic, it's what we've had before and will not mean a heavier DPS focus (as focus is based on how much you're having to heal and not how many DPS skills you have). Healing and encounter design would remain exactly the same.

This is where devs were really kinda off-base in their thinking. If they wanted healers to heal more, the CONTENT needed its core design changed. Instead, they took DPS tools from healers and didn't fundamentally change the need for healing.

If they had created or revamped content to require more healing, the number of DPS tools could've stayed exactly the same --- players simply would have been using them less. (And after players had geared up and learned boss fights, they'd have healed a little less and still had something interesting to fill the time.)

[Saefinn]

This is where devs were really kinda off-base in their thinking. If they wanted healers to heal more, the CONTENT needed its core design changed. Instead, they took DPS tools from healers and didn't fundamentally change the need for healing.

If they had created or revamped content to require more healing, the number of DPS tools could've stayed exactly the same --- players simply would have been using them less. (And after players had geared up and learned boss fights, they'd have healed a little less and still had something interesting to fill the time.)

Yep. I feel like I have more of a DPS focus than I've ever had in this game. Partly down to gradual improvements as a healer and getting more and more experienced and also in that healing is easier than it has ever been because we have more tools at our disposal to handle it. The latter I don't mind so much as it can make them more accessible to newer, less confident and less experienced healers and just have content that pushes us on the higher end to push our full use of kit. Then give us something else for the rest of us, reward good healing with having more to do.

[Kalise]

Healers have always been in this awkward spot.

Primarily due to how encounters work alongside the throughput on oGCD healing skills. I.e. Since outside of leveling dungeons where people can pull 5-10 packs of trash at a time, damage output from enemies comes in the form of periodic, telegraphed bursts. To which, a simple oGCD will fully counter.

This leads to the Healer gameplay being 99% DPS and 1% press an oGCD button.

But in order to stop the meta being 2 tanks and 6 healers, green DPS get crap damage numbers on their offensive skills. Leaving healers with a boring af rotation, which kills really slowly in any kind of solo content (Such as MSQ... Though at least MSQ required enemies are often like 40% squishier than overworld enemies of equal level)

The answer to this particular conundrum is not very straightforward either, since each potential avenue has its own drawbacks. For example:

Increasing sustained damage output to require more healing on tanks outside of Tank/Raidbusters simply causes healers to spam 2222222 instead of 1111111 where 2 is your weak heal GCD instead of your filler damage skill.

Increasing the complexity of healer damage rotations can have adverse effects in difficult content, where they have to deal with mechanics AND watch out for allies who might mess up and need healing.

Shifting healer damage towards party damage buffs that use GCD's to maintain, continues to make solo content as a healer feel like absolute trash.

Honestly, at best, I can maybe think something like increasing the sustained damage from enemies, in combination with mechanics similar to WHM's Blood Lily, whereby comboing together healing skills can allow healers to perform some nice damage skill(s), perhaps also with the reverse too having offensive skills combo together to access some nice utility/healing skills (Such as getting a thicc shield to apply, or an extra long Regen). Allowing for some small manner of complexity and DPS increase without going overrboard.

[GrimGale]

Healers have always been in this awkward spot.

Primarily due to how encounters work alongside the throughput on oGCD healing skills. I.e. Since outside of leveling dungeons where people can pull 5-10 packs of trash at a time, damage output from enemies comes in the form of periodic, telegraphed bursts. To which, a simple oGCD will fully counter.


Increasing the complexity of healer damage rotations can have adverse effects in difficult content, where they have to deal with mechanics AND watch out for allies who might mess up and need healing.

Also, messing up in this game more often than not leads up to being 1 shoted. So essentially you don't get to fix mistakes by healing. The only thing you can "fix", if you can call it that, is unavoidable damage which happens very rarely.

Heavy healing in this game will not allow players to stand in the red and maximize their dps. You must follow mechanics or die.
There is no benefit to "healing more" . You must heal just enough and then be idle if you intent to "only heal".

[Sloprano]

Also, messing up in this game more often than not leads up to being 1 shoted. So essentially you don't get to fix mistakes by healing. The only thing you can "fix", if you can call it that, is unavoidable damage which happens very rarely.

Heavy healing in this game will not allow players to stand in the red and maximize their dps. You must follow mechanics or die.
There is no benefit to "healing more" . You must heal just enough and then be idle if you intent to "only heal".

Too right, it was first when SE went overboard with divorcing Arcanist from SCH the veil was lifted and I saw that every fight was simply move our of red markers, this is unavoidable damage and sometimes stand here or you all wipe. It's what's put me off doing Extreme or above with anyone but friends because I just don't find them fun otherwise: Like in Hades Extreme: One DPS stands slightly off and gives the tank the debuff during meteors and you all wipe. There are several others where you don't immediately wipe, like if a dps dies, then we are blessed from wearing out our Broil III key and can throw a ress. Hooray. But then we don't meet the dps requirement, hit enrage and just wipe two minutes later.

I haven't counted but when I knew I everyone else knew the fight I found I didn't even have to heal after the second shadowspread: Everyone dodges the second, the double spikes and the tank just Hallows the double tankbuster. That was close to minute with nothing for me to do until Nabriales shows up. A full minute just pressing Broil III and refreshing Biolysis. Nothing that needed healing, no debuffs to apply, buffs to help out, no tea party with Lily while we waited. If it wasn't prevelant before, these fights now just seems to have healer for rudimentary traditional reasons. Even if we manage to save a dps who got overconfident they either die again because of vuln or the debuffs makes their damage so low not even all the Broils in the world will make us clear.

This is the kind of fights that would better served with a no-job roles system: Where everyone is their own dps, tank, healer, debuffer, buffer and so on. But they insist on having two spots for jobs with green icons, yet refuse to give them anything meaningful beyond straight healing cooldowns. Just imagine what could've been if AST and WHM had had the same attention to their groundwork and had a dps class' shoulders to stand on like Scholar had.

And then imagined if SE had put the same kind of effort to have a maserfully crafted learning curve and quests that gradually introcuded you to the class and job's new skills with trainers talking about it's lore, demonstrated it and then you had to put it to use in a quest that with the same amount of enthusiasm they show about tweaking numbers in <skill_potency.xml>