Healer dps is unfairly boring

[Ardox]

Pulling up a TEA clear of mine...

Scholar: 275 DPS casts; 74 Healing casts
White Mage: 204 DPS casts; 123 Healing casts

That totals for 41% of their combined casts on healing in the hardest fight in the game. This is with nearly healing at an optimal level. And I purposely pulled a run where they had to Raise and heal more than usual. I included oGCDs in those calculation, by the way.

So what direction did the devs switch to because it certainly hasn't resulted in more healing, which was their intent.

That's a pretty compelling argument. I wonder if it's generalizable (my gut feeling is yes); if we could get the numbers and create a stronger case..

What is certain with the kind of battle system we have is : as long as there is a offensive move, healers will use it and try to maximize it's usage. They would scrap the toolkit to StoneI/MaleficI/RuinI and it would still be the case.

[SieyaM]

I wonder why people always think that to make healing more interesting means having to add more complexity to the DPS part of the job and not more to the healing part of the job, or adding more of a support component to the job. Sometimes I wonder if people would rather not have healing or tank roles at all and just give everyone potions or something to use when their health runs low, then everyone can be a DPS job.

[Corbeau]

I wonder why people always think that to make healing more interesting means having to add more complexity to the DPS part of the job and not more to the healing part of the job, or adding more of a support component to the job. Sometimes I wonder if people would rather not have healing or tank roles at all and just give everyone potions or something to use when their health runs low, then everyone can be a DPS job.

Pretty sure that the developers would prefer that, yes.

[SieyaM]

Pretty sure that the developers would prefer that, yes.

They do seem kind of half hearted on the healer roles at least. I am still fully expected to hear that balance is a problem among healers so no new one for 6.0

[ForteNightshade]

That's a pretty compelling argument. I wonder if it's generalizable (my gut feeling is yes); if we could get the numbers and create a stronger case..

What is certain with the kind of battle system we have is : as long as there is a offensive move, healers will use it and try to maximize it's usage. They would scrap the toolkit to StoneI/MaleficI/RuinI and it would still be the case.

You would be correct.

Both of them were mid blue range on that particularly log (68% and 65%). Looking at a friend's log where he played extremely safe, 48% of his casts were still on DPS abilities.

I wonder why people always think that to make healing more interesting means having to add more complexity to the DPS part of the job and not more to the healing part of the job, or adding more of a support component to the job. Sometimes I wonder if people would rather not have healing or tank roles at all and just give everyone potions or something to use when their health runs low, then everyone can be a DPS job.

It isn't that people don't want more interesting healing mechanics; many of us, in fact, do. We just have little belief the dev team will listen. They place accessibility above all else, which typically means making everything less complex. This, unfortunately, makes content easier.

I'd love for actual focus on healing, which was supposed to happen in Shadowbringers. You can see the results.

[Saefinn]

The reason is that there's a huge disconnect between how healers are played in the game and how the devs want healers to be played.

There really isn't a logical explanation. Nobody asked for the healers' dps kit to be dumbed down, because it was already very manageable. Some (inexperienced) healers complained that they were expected to dps, but healers are now expected to dps more than ever. If anything, ShB made things worse for those that wanted healers to focus more on healing. Healers dps is more frequent (because, again, they have more oGCD than ever) and less varied (because they have less offensive tools, so they mostly spam 1 button).

Pretty much this.

On paper it looks like “oh it’s more of a healer focus they are moving towards” and some of the defences I see people make is exactly that.

In practice is the exact opposite.

It seems odd, but it makes sense when you think about it, a stronger healing kit means less healing. Or is the case if the content doesn’t scale with it.

In effect they’ve made the “I wanna heal more” camp heal less.
And they’ve made the “I like green DPS” camp bored.

[MattDank3eyes]

Healers are healers lol wdym lolol

[Kleeya]

I wonder why people always think that to make healing more interesting means having to add more complexity to the DPS part of the job and not more to the healing part of the job, or adding more of a support component to the job. Sometimes I wonder if people would rather not have healing or tank roles at all and just give everyone potions or something to use when their health runs low, then everyone can be a DPS job.

Or we can have healers being changed in the same way that tanks did, with aggro becoming trivial to hold while they can focus on their dps.

Soon in 6.0 :

- all heal/support/rez active skills and ogcds have been removed from healers ;
- healers have been given a true dps rotation on par with dps jobs ;
- healers have been given a level 1 passive skill : "you now heal, support and rez party members for a part of the damages you do on the ennemies".

Imo the best way to get rid of a lot of problems, like people complaining of zero dps healers. Or healers being so focused on their dps that they forget their primary role and let everyone die, like we did have before 5.0 with tanks losing aggro due to the fact that they were not wanting to use tank stance and aggro combo doing less dps.

[CrimsonGunner]

Or we can have healers being changed in the same way that tanks did, with aggro becoming trivial to hold while they can focus on their dps.

Soon in 6.0 :

- all heal/support/rez active skills and ogcds have been removed from healers ;
- healers have been given a true dps rotation on par with dps jobs ;
- healers have been given a level 1 passive skill : "you now heal, support and rez party members for a part of the damages you do on the ennemies".

Imo the best way to get rid of a lot of problems, like people complaining of zero dps healers. Or healers being so focused on their dps that they forget their primary role and let everyone die, like we did have before 5.0 with tanks losing aggro due to the fact that they were not wanting to use tank stance and aggro combo doing less dps.

They dont need a full dps rotation just 1-2 skills that will break 1 dd single target spam or 11 aoe skill spam.

White mage need just 1-2 skills maybe like assize that will break his glare spam.

Scholar newd 1 extra dot and maybe bane to feel good

Ast need to have his card mechanic be redesign to make it more interesting and make players choices more thought out and impactful then just care for seal and not caring what card was drawn cause they are the same.

Once they do that, healers will be more interesting to play with solid and easy healing kit and maybe then could SE handle each job technical issues.

[icy_]

To add to the kit, I wouldnt mind having a second DoT. Just one extra button to press while not compromising philosophy that healers should heal first and foremost. So in this sense, I agree with OP, as long as it's something simple.

To change gameplay, a few things:
1. I would like an official in-game bind of "target lowest HP player in party". I feel this would help out newbies and experts alike -- you can continue doing what you're doing, and optimally, minimally, press just the one key each time to save that one guy who ate that nasty thing. Of course one can still be like, "oh, 3rd person down the list... need to press F3", but for many cases the "lowest hp" button should be faster and still correctly target the person you'd want. Aside: as I understand it, SCH faerie already auto-heals the lowest HP person, so a SCH might purposely want to heal the "second-lowest" HP, leaving the other for the faerie.

2. AST's Gravity should spread from the caster's body like Holy does, untargeted. You'd then be able to cast it OOC in city centers, parties, weddings, and be just as annoying as the other healers. In combat, you'd benefit by not having to specifically target an enemy, similar to what other healers do. I'd rather have untargeted close than targeted 25y -- we all know how garbage the target cycling is anyway. It's great that healers try to do their own thing, but some measure of standardization is nice, too.

3. Remove AST "Undraw". There's no point to this. At worst, eat the card drawn for no cooldown, with no chance of a downside.

4. Other players should have an option toggle "Allow rescue" on or off. There's too much trolling from certain healers for players' rights to be violated in an unconsented manner. If someone doesn't want to be rescued, it should just give the healer an error like "unrescuable target" and not cost a cooldown.