Healer dps is unfairly boring

[Mesarthim]

I prefer to keep it simpler. Healer job in this game is demanding as it is, managing mp and planing when to use which heals, especially as sch, so I consider dps phase as relax phase and I don't want it to get complicated.

Demanding when? I've been a SCH main (reluctantly since AST changes) since Shadowbringers began and I don't find it demanding in the slightest. With a large array of oGCD heals at our disposal I still spend a great deal of time spamming Art of War on top of keeping the tank above or around 50%-75% (for excog or their peace of mind) in dungeons.

The only time I even come close to low MP is when I zone out enough that I forget to hit Lucid Dreaming. Even then I never run out. It gets especially depressing if I find out I'm outdpsing some of the poor performing DPS party members.

[Corbeau]

managing mp

Tell me more.

[Crushnight]

I prefer to keep it simpler. Healer job in this game is demanding as it is, managing mp and planing when to use which heals, especially as sch, so I consider dps phase as relax phase and I don't want it to get complicated.

Look i know some people like it to be as straightforward as possible, but the healers need stuff especially for experienced healers in higher level of play and solo activities which is actually the majority of FFXIV.

Solo activities are ungodly boring since things cannot hit hard enough to warrant you needing to heal as your not a tank nor can they have a lot of hp since not dps so having just 1 button to mash with a 2nd every 30s is ungodly boring.

When you get more comfortable with a fight you should be rewarded with how far you can push things this has severely been diminished in ShB since your push is 1 button regardless of situation you only be pressing 1 button with 2nd every 30s that is boring.

1 job being simple to ease people into the healer role is fine, every job in the healer role being simple is not.

[SamRF]

Demanding when? I've been a SCH main (reluctantly since AST changes) since Shadowbringers began and I don't find it demanding in the slightest. With a large array of oGCD heals at our disposal I still spend a great deal of time spamming Art of War on top of keeping the tank above or around 50%-75% (for excog or their peace of mind) in dungeons.

The only time I even come close to low MP is when I zone out enough that I forget to hit Lucid Dreaming. Even then I never run out. It gets especially depressing if I find out I'm outdpsing some of the poor performing DPS party members.

To be fair, while it's perhaps hard for you to imagine as experienced healer, when you're inexperienced and are still learning it does take considerable amount of brandwidth to be constantly checking party's health and reacting appropiately/optimally. Especially if you aren't used to doing that all the time because you mainly play dps. Adjusting your mind to doing that keeps you constantly on edge which would probably take a lot of brandwidth, thus it's understandable in that case you'd want dps to be simple

Arguably though every job gets easy once you've mastered it. The problem (like another recent thread suggests) I think is the fact that when you as healer come to that point of mastery, you're stuck spamming 1 abillity all the time instead of having an engaging dps rotation.

[Sloprano]

Arguably though every job gets easy once you've mastered it. The problem (like another recent thread suggests) I think is the fact that when you as healer come to that point of mastery, you're stuck spamming 1 abillity all the time instead of having an engaging dps rotation.

Indeed, which is why I don't mind people saying they enjoy current iterations of these jobs. I was new once too and deathly afraid of new dungeons even I knew where all my skills where and what they did. Some might start getting the hang of it and look for oppertunities to do more or are perfectly content make sure healthbars never drop too low. Some might not want more combat choices. Difference being: Way back when, if I wanted to do more, I either had the choice or had other jobs within the role I could play as.


Which is why I'm still furious that SE saw that "one nuke, one dot and several healing oGCDs" gameplay and molded my favorite job into the very thing I didn't care much to play as. Wanted to see the Arcanist+Scholar combo blossom into something even more wonderful, not the middle-management corpse flower that sprung up and promptly withered at the release of 5.0. And even angerierer that SE spend more effort avoiding to talk about it than they put into SCH for Shadowbringers.

[Lastelli]

To be fair, while it's perhaps hard for you to imagine as experienced healer, when you're inexperienced and are still learning it does take considerable amount of brandwidth to be constantly checking party's health and reacting appropiately/optimally. Especially if you aren't used to doing that all the time because you mainly play dps. Adjusting your mind to doing that keeps you constantly on edge which would probably take a lot of brandwidth, thus it's understandable in that case you'd want dps to be simple

Arguably though every job gets easy once you've mastered it. The problem (like another recent thread suggests) I think is the fact that when you as healer come to that point of mastery, you're stuck spamming 1 abillity all the time instead of having an engaging dps rotation.

I agree, but that's the same for dps, really. Many players can't keep their rotation or stop pressing buttons during mechanics because their brain can't keep up. The difference is that nothing bad happens if a dps is bad at doing damage (unless there's a dps check, but that's relevant for savage and ultimate content only), whereas a bad healer can cause a wipe. But the thing is...a whm that only uses cure 2 and medica 2 is not so different from a brd that only uses burst shot. That's what people should understand. They're both fulfilling their role after all: one is healing, the other is dpsing, right?

[Mesarthim]

To be fair, while it's perhaps hard for you to imagine as experienced healer, when you're inexperienced and are still learning it does take considerable amount of brandwidth to be constantly checking party's health and reacting appropiately/optimally. Especially if you aren't used to doing that all the time because you mainly play dps. Adjusting your mind to doing that keeps you constantly on edge which would probably take a lot of brandwidth, thus it's understandable in that case you'd want dps to be simple

Arguably though every job gets easy once you've mastered it. The problem (like another recent thread suggests) I think is the fact that when you as healer come to that point of mastery, you're stuck spamming 1 abillity all the time instead of having an engaging dps rotation.

Actually it's not hard for me to imagine at all because I'm an experienced healer. Makes it easy to understand all sorts of scenarios. But honestly I do understand your view but I'd attribute it more to how the game handles healing, especially in dungeon content. Let's take copperbell for an example. What in all seven hecks is copperbell preparing a healer for? You can easily beat this dungeon without a healer. What is the second boss teaching a healer? Absolutely nothing because you can outheal it on a gunbreaker with brutal shell since the damage is so insanely low. Then we get to them nerfing the hp of enemies in dungeons from previous expansion content, making things die faster and require even less healing. Then we have later leveling dungeons vs level cap dungeons. Leveling dungeons typically have a strict item level sync so outgearing it is limited. Level cap dungeons are only obnoxious for a select set of healers for the first few weeks until tome gear is acquired, then it becomes business as usual with ilvl powercreep. All they've been doing is basically gradually increasing the damage of autoattacks and "maybe" inserting an extra enemy per pack in dungeons (like 9-10 enemies in a double pull in the lv 73 dungeon as an example). The formula however doesn't change: Wall pull in most dungeons, aoe it down, kill boss, repeat.

ASTs used to have a tool to help deal with this crowd control and it was called Celestial Opposition, or Thal forbid, the old bole. However square decided it was a brilliant idea to remove this stun for yet another oGCD heal. So AST loses their stun, but white mages keep theirs? AST's wasn't even spammable and was previously on a 2 minute cooldown (though it was not the sole function of the skill).

Next we come to how scripted the game is. Trust me when I say that if you play a job with few if any responsibilities you will become painfully aware sooner or later the exact order of attacks dealt by a boss. E4N? You know the first thing he's going to do is a tankbuster and a groupwide aoe, no exceptions. When you acquire enough experience/skill it is less watching the hp of party members and more just preempting what the bosses will do. The game (or more accurately the community) only throws you the occasional curveball by falling for a one shot mechanic (E4N landslides, to use titan as an example yet again). This is just a matter of raising and topping them up afterwards.

If anything you'll eventually notice that the game does not deviate from one pattern: Bosses will auto 2-4 times and then do a cast bar skill. I dabble with all 3 roles and it's getting to the point where I don't need to think at all. It's horrible when I do Sigmascape 4.0 normal. As a tank I play as if I'm a machine.

This is just the tip of the iceberg though. I'll end here by also just saying that when you do get some experience under your belt you'll realize how many ways this game gives you the ability to refill an hp bar, and nothing else. This is why people are getting fed up with what we have now in the downtime because trust me, there's a lot of it when you know how the game plays.

6.0 is going to present a new problem too. Assuming Square finally takes pity on healers and give us something new we have... 1 healer that starts at level 1, 1 healer that starts at lv 30 from a dps class that they may or may not finish separating them from, and a lv 30 healer where you need to hit ishgard first. Going by the track record the next new jobs would be level 70. Combine all of their new abilities with new people and it's going to be uh, interesting?

[Aurturia]

When was it ever interesting? And when did we ever have anything resembling a DPS rotation? If you want healers to have A DPS rotation in this game it just isn't going to happen, ever. That's not to say that they can't add a little more such as an additional DoT, or AoE/ST variants on a CD that provide an additional benefit like an MP restore, haste, healing magic up, or some other benefit. But to sit here and say that healer DPS was ever interesting is something you won't ever see me type on here. It was always boring, especially when it came to leveling and MSQ progression, and it's a big reason why I started playing DPS jobs, which actually focus on that part of combat.

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? You can say I'm wrong all you like, but it is simply your opinion.

Well to be fair that's kinda subjective. I used to main sch and I loved stacking my dots and then exploding them with bane, it felt powerful, impactful. I'm sure AoW spam has the numbers but it just feels bad.
Ast on the other hand always had very similar dps tools to whm but then they juggled an interesting but not overwhelming card system, highs and lows made it a fun system to play with. Now the cards feel unimportant something to be tossed about with total disregard for who gets what, the system just feels like busy work, something I'm obligated to do but I dont see a real impact.
And then whm was the only of the three I just didn't like in stormblood it but now everything feels like whm and I'm a red mage now

[Gemina]

Well to be fair that's kinda subjective. I used to main sch and I loved stacking my dots and then exploding them with bane, it felt powerful, impactful. I'm sure AoW spam has the numbers but it just feels bad.
Ast on the other hand always had very similar dps tools to whm but then they juggled an interesting but not overwhelming card system, highs and lows made it a fun system to play with. Now the cards feel unimportant something to be tossed about with total disregard for who gets what, the system just feels like busy work, something I'm obligated to do but I dont see a real impact.
And then whm was the only of the three I just didn't like in stormblood it but now everything feels like whm and I'm a red mage now

I've been playing SCH since I received my soulstone 4 years ago. Miasma+Bio+Bane on trash was the closest any healer has had to having a true DPS rotation. Unfortunately, bane became underutilized against bosses, and SCH never got any kind of a Fester. Then there was also the issue of ilv bloat and varied pulls from tanks which resulted in trash mobs melting so fast that the wombo combo of DoTs SCH can dish out wasn't needed, and SCH didn't have a spammable AoE. While your example is a good one, it still exemplifies the ongoing issues with healers and their skills becoming underutilized. In this case it is on the offensive, and the homogenization of DPS skills actually resolved this problem. Yes, I know AoW isn't very satisfying to use.

I won't go into AST cards. That doesn't have much bearing on the topic I am addressing.

[Lastelli]

I've been playing SCH since I received my soulstone 4 years ago. Miasma+Bio+Bane on trash was the closest any healer has had to having a true DPS rotation. Unfortunately, bane became underutilized against bosses, and SCH never got any kind of a Fester.

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.