A summary of healer issues

[ty_taurus]

Frankly, one of the reasons AST appealed to me when I first started playing, was that it seemed to focus on being a benefit to the party, more than being focused on its own DPS. A "pure healer" role would appeal to me if there was such a thing, but Squeenix has rarely created content which requires any heal job to spend 100% of its time on healing.

I wouldn't be upset at all, if changes were made such that AST lost most of its personal DPS, if its contribution to the party's DPS was visible without a parser and dps/tanks could appreciate the enhancements to their own damage and survivability by having an astro in the party.

Yeah, I realize that's an unpopular opinion... it seems everybody, even healers, want to see their names next to big DPS numbers on the ACT screen.. but I don't need that, if I know that what I'm doing is making the group as successful as it can be using my whole toolkit.

I don't think healers want to see their numbers be as big as DPS players. There is a divide between the players that want healing to be a 100% healing uptime responsibility and those that like that there's both the capability and the expectation that they are to perform some amount of DPS. I think most of us agree that regardless of our stance on that issue, we currently have too much DPS uptime and that uptime is reduced to mind-numbing simplicity because of our brain-dead DPS tools.

I think players like you should have a healer that works with your play style--a healer that contributes to rDPS through healing spells that either also do damage (like Earthly Star), or that add potency to the attacks of other players as you heal them and apply shields to them. I also believe that, if done correctly, you could absolutely have that be balanced with a "green DPS" healer who is all about maximizing their personal DPS. These concepts can exist harmoniously.

I see a lot of people expressing complete lack of faith in Square's ability to achieve this, and in their defense, the evidence that we've seen of their design philosophies regarding healers doesn't seem to paint a bright future for us. That said, I don't want to completely denounce the possibility of this happening because the devs will never do it based on their former changes. For all we know, their elongated silence on the topic is them trying to collect data on the healer community and try to actually do it right come 6.0, which would be fitting if we're seeing a 4th healer in a year's time. I don't want to promote false hope, but I also don't want to promote utter skepticism either.

Let's just say that I want to look at the future of healing with a cautiously optimistic perspective. I think a lot of good things can happen, and I want to believe the devs hear our pleas and want to do this role justice.

[Side-Eye]

I don't think healers want to see their numbers be as big as DPS players. There is a divide between the players that want healing to be a 100% healing uptime responsibility and those that like that there's both the capability and the expectation that they are to perform some amount of DPS. I think most of us agree that regardless of our stance on that issue, we currently have too much DPS uptime and that uptime is reduced to mind-numbing simplicity because of our brain-dead DPS tools.

I've played DPS jobs for the majority of my time since SHB release, and I've *seen* many healers let people die while trying to eek out as much personal DPS as possible. When playing RDM, 99% of the time if our healer is SCH or WHM, I'm the one who rezzes a fallen tank/dps. (Yes, I do know that people expect red mages to rez, but IMHO, that duty should be fulfilled first and foremost by the party's healer, not someone whose primary responsibility is damage.)

Let's just say that I want to look at the future of healing with a cautiously optimistic perspective. I think a lot of good things can happen, and I want to believe the devs hear our pleas and want to do this role justice.

If devs were listening to players, there wouldn't be 50+ pages of posts from people discussing their leaving the healer role behind because of what was done to their favorite jobs in 5.0+... just sayin.