All DPS clears highlight a problem with encounter design in ShB

[Seraphor]

When I saw Dancers get an aoe heal, SMN get an AOE heal I was pretty pissed.

What is the point of healers if everyone else in the game has decent healing / shielding on their own?

When it comes to AoE sustain, they should really halve their potencies and give it a 'healing received' bonus like Chakra.
But in the case of things like Everlasting Flight's regen effect, they could just make them unstackable.

[Grimoire-M]

"It's probably summoners, like the 1 healer Shiva."

"Oh look, it's 5 summoners."

The Dancer does do a fair amount of topping up. They get covered and given Nascent Flash a lot.

Most of the power though comes from Titan shields, well planned mitigation, and the one time a healer was even close to mandatory in the fight they used Tank LB3 to ignore it.

[Kabooa]

The Dancer does do a fair amount of topping up. They get covered and given Nascent Flash a lot.

Most of the power though comes from Titan shields, well planned mitigation, and the one time a healer was even close to mandatory in the fight they used Tank LB3 to ignore it.

The paladin also spends almost every Requiscat using Clemency.

This really isn't so much a condemnation of encounter design as it is certain jobs having the ability to sustain and recover that others in the role can't match.

Replace 5 Summoners with any other DPS and the run fails.

Replace the Warrior and Paladin with Gunbreaker and Dark Knight and the run fails.

Oh, and this was post the Summoner adjustment where they gained around 20% damage, so this is Titan not tuned for that.

[ItMe]

The paladin also spends almost every Requiscat using Clemency.

This really isn't so much a condemnation of encounter design as it is certain jobs having the ability to sustain and recover that others in the role can't match.

Replace 5 Summoners with any other DPS and the run fails.

Replace the Warrior and Paladin with Gunbreaker and Dark Knight and the run fails.

Oh, and this was post the Summoner adjustment where they gained around 20% damage, so this is Titan not tuned for that.

Yeah... The game tries to force the roles when really things can be more fluid than 2 tank, 2 healer, 2 DPS and that's ok.

[LariaKirin]

Actually, what they are demonstrating is that E4S was doable without a healer before 5.2. That is a Chinese clear. Look at their HP. They're around i470.

Frankly, we need to get rid of healers. Just have support build options, like summoner has a meaningful playstyle option. The healer-targeting mechanics can be adjusted to a transparently assessed support index, just like we have enmity.

All they are demonstrating that E4S is doable with a party of Summoners and a Paladin who can sustain the rest of the party.
Do you think they didn't add a melee for that extra 1% stats because they just don't need the dps, or because the Paladin couldn't sustain the extra non-SMN?

When you understand that the SMNs have the equivalent of a Tetra every 30 seconds, that the party as a whole has a full heal every 2 minutes because of Phoenix and that the Paladin can correct missing HP by completely gimping their dps in favor of Clemency, you will understand how this is possible.

When you look at stuff like this (and solo heal runs) without understanding how they're doing it, of course it looks silly.

You are very mistaken if you think this is anywhere in the realm of possibility outside of a coordinated group of very good players that use all the tools they have available in a well orchestrated manner.

Squeenix wants DPS to contribute to the group with mitigation, yet they're afraid of scaling the damage to a point where it is actually necessary that they use it.
When Reprisal + Troubadour is a Cure III you don't have to cast, you can see how good players can make it look trivial. Also, let's not forget that these fights are not tuned to bis gear.

[Rai_Takara]

Healing has always been an easy affair once the mainheal/offheal meta died off. Wanting more damage to heal is fine, but if we go into the territory of spamming cures and medicas, then that's no different than spamming glares and doesn't change anything but make healing more frustrating.

At this point, I think this just boils down to the general situation FFXIV sits in where everyone is a DPS and dps is the only stat that significantly matters. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it might help if we come to understand that, this is how SE wants it and it will most likely stay that way throughout the game's lifecycle. Healer oGCDs are strong and for most people I've played with and myself, the fun in healing is solving the question of which oGCD goes where to maximize DPS output. With that in mind, The best thing that can be done is to encourage DPSing and make healer DPSing more interesting. For example, the complaints of simplified healer DPS kit is valid and should be looked into. It doesn't mean we need healer combos but, something to engage healers more than spamming their DPS nukes.

[MirronTulaxia]

Honestly that’s such a depressing way for XIV to be. The state of healing really makes me want to give up playing, especially when the only popular solutions thrown about are just methods to expand their DPS. Hopefully next MMO they try they focus the roles a bit more.

[Connor]

Honestly that’s such a depressing way for XIV to be. The state of healing really makes me want to give up playing, especially when the only popular solutions thrown about are just methods to expand their DPS. Hopefully next MMO they try they focus the roles a bit more.

I feel the same. It’s not a good sign for any game when the only answer to ‘I want to play as a healer’ is ‘you should play a different game’. And I’m not sure ‘you can play as the role entitled healer but you still primarily deal damage to the enemy’ is much better. If developers were so insistent on healers being primarily dps then why does it still exist as a separate role? Isn’t that basically lying to new players? The whole thing just confuses me. The developer’s words about healers never seem to match their actions. Do they somehow actually think general players are struggling with healing and are spending all their gcds on Cure etc? If they don’t want us to use those spells and want us to spam dps, why do those spells even still exist instead of just being replaced with dps spells?

In terms of the thread topic, though I don’t think it says much for the way healing is designed I also don’t think you can really blame Summoner / Paladin for having their own healing abilities to use. Summoners can’t exactly spam Everlasting Flight so I can’t imagine general parties going through the trouble of getting 5 Summoners and timing Phoenix summons for healing requirements so they can drop a healer lol. And Paladin needs it’s MP for dps too, so it’s probably not a great idea to spam Clemency in general parties. I just mean that, even though full-dps clears do show some of the problems healing has right now, I’d still be sad if they removed some of the few things in the game dps / tanks have that aren’t just direct damage abilities (like Everlasting Flight or Clemency)

[Synaesthesia]

Even in stormblood a lot of people thought healing requirements were too low, thus making the DPS meta even stronger. But with ShB, SE has only made it worse - and made healing requirements even lighter.

After clearing Shiva.. It felt the entire time like I was just trying to focus on damage. There wasn't really any point in the fight that made me feel like I had to "focus on healing" like we were told the gameplay would be oriented towards, only that there were a few spots like the add phase and the stacks at the end where you needed to drop an extra heal or two as fast as possible in order to get back to dealing damage.. Because of the very high DPS check requirement I was literally just focused on attacking as much as possible, and like 95% of the fight is oriented towards doing that. The design is actually just creeping farther and father in the direction of healer DPS. Shiva is.. Just straight up not an exciting fight, it's just chalked full of punishing mechanics but it lacks a lot of feel of enjoyment when "DEAL DPS" and "Don't mess up Light Rampant" are all the fight really has going for it..

Most of Shadowbringers has been like that.. I think E2S had a few exciting moments, so did E4S.. It's not really anything to justify the class design now though.

[Kazukiyashuo]

I might be playing a different game then , cause i puging savages and there are many times my partner healer cant heal ending up to ppls death. Im main healer since realm reborn and yeah some fights are easier than some other in healing department. But the idea of im using 3 heals and nothing else to do is false. Cause either your fellow healer is carrying u so u can focus on pressing 1 button or ur lying