healers need a serious overhaul

[Cirque-it]

The current game design (whether its intentional or not) has people judging healers based on their DPS output.

This came to my attention very early on in my PF "carreer" in E5s~E8s.
I was basically solo healing because the other healers are always trying to put out as much damage as possible.
(Little did I know.. those healers where actually trying to get a good parse in damage so they could apply to static raid groups)

No surprise, when I applied to static groups a few months later... everyone said i was a crap healer and needed to work on my damage rotation!?!? (Those other players had uploaded their parses which had me at 90%+ on healing, and only in the 30%~50% window on damage)
This was my first introduction to what parsing was. I had never heard of this before untill people started shoving logs from other players in face.

Over the last few months I have become increasingly anxious to throw out a single heal because I need the GCD and the weaves between to dish out Damaging spells like Glare, assize(which "the balance"clearly states never save assize for healing) and Blood lily cuz if I dont, I know people will see me as a bad player.
In PF's, its becoming an environment where healers are playing chicking with one another to see who will break and throw out the first heal.
Whoever does throw out the first heal... usually ends up solo healing the entire fight

This is rediculous... A healer should be judged on his abillity to heal both pro-actively and reactively (depending on class and encounter). They should not be confronted by recruiters about their damage output (unless their applying for the very very top/profesional FC's or MLG companies(maybe a little!)... And the fact that you now have an environment where every single savage raider is prioritizing DIRECT HIT over Mana regen is a clear indicator that the healer design in this game needs to change...

[Quintessa]

Adhere to the primary function of that job, everything else is secondary. Obviously don't be a curebot but don't dps so much that people start dropping to the floor. Your own damage is to help towards preventing enrage.

Piety is a silly stat, I personally wouldn't waste slots on that. Crit, Det, or DH. The only three stats that seem to do anything meaningful..

Edit: I guess skill/spell speed does *something* aside from the obvious GCD reduction, which you still need a ton of (basically every slot >_>) to get any benefit out of THAT.

[NanaWiloh]

In savage content yes, you should be dps'ing when healing is not needed. As a white mage you have arsenal of Instant heals at your disposal for healing. you should also not be concerned with mana regen either, azzie, lucid dreaming and Thin air will give you back mana if you manage their usage correctly.

[tdb]

In savage content yes, you should be dps'ing when healing is not needed.

Yeah, but someone has to heal the raidwides. If the environment has become such that performing even required healing reflects negatively on you, that's kinda bad. Or can savages be healed with oGCD heals alone? I don't know since I haven't been in a savage during ShB.

[ReiMakoto]

Yeah, but someone has to heal the raidwides. If the environment has become such that performing even required healing reflects negatively on you, that's kinda bad. Or can savages be healed with oGCD heals alone? I don't know since I haven't been in a savage during ShB.

Some savage fights can be cleared without a healer. Chinese group killed e4s without one. A lot of content can also be solo healed with the healer maintaining high damage uptime.

[Absurdity]

Yeah, but someone has to heal the raidwides. If the environment has become such that performing even required healing reflects negatively on you, that's kinda bad. Or can savages be healed with oGCD heals alone? I don't know since I haven't been in a savage during ShB.

They can easily be healed with just oGCDs by the time people are decently geared, provided your party members use their utility effectively (Reprisal, Tactician, Addle, Feint, Fey Illumination, etc). Unfortunately that rarely happens in pugs so there will most likely be some GCD healing.
The more important part is, if what the OP said is true and they had to solo heal most fights which results in statics declining their application due to bad dps then you wouldn't want to be in that static anyway because frankly, they're most likely not very good.


If all you're doing with a log is to look at the dps then you're doing it wrong. If you see a healer doing barely any damage then you should first check the timeline of both healers healing output and the timeline of incoming party damage. This easily tells you which healer used their healing effectively and more importantly should tell you if one of the healers had to deal with most of the damage because the other one was slacking, therefore resulting in bad dps.

And the fact that you now have an environment where every single savage raider is prioritizing DIRECT HIT over Mana regen is a clear indicator that the healer design in this game needs to change...

The question was never between Direct Hit and Piety, at best it's a question between Direct Hit (more dps) and Determination (more healing output) because the necessary piety almost always comes from your gear alone and not your melds, besides MP management being a joke anyway.

[tdb]

It just occurred to me that the situation here is a perfect example of prisoner's dilemma. Applied to healers in FFXIV:

• If one defects (keeps on doing damage) and the other co-operates (heals the raidwide), the defector will get a great parse and the other will get a bad one
• If both co-operate (share the healing), both will get a mediocre parse
• If both defect (ignore the raidwide), the raid will wipe

This illustrates the competition which emerges from the current healing design and the community's fixation on using DPS parses as the only performance metric. In my opinion healers in the same party should not have to compete against each other.

Some savage fights can be cleared without a healer. Chinese group killed e4s without one.

That's an interesting use of Titan-Egi and stacking the phoenix DoT. Unfortunately all of the spell names are in Chinese so I can't tell how much Physick and Clemency they're using. The clear time appears to be about 10:45, which is up there with the best runs from 5.0 - but the run was actually done four months after the release of 5.2, so it's possible (even likely) they had i500 gear instead of i470.

A lot of content can also be solo healed with the healer maintaining high damage uptime.

By "a lot of content" do you mean savage or everything? I know I can solo heal any normal content while keeping idiots raised and still do some damage. Would it be reasonable for solo healing to become the norm for savage PFs and statics so the competition between two healers could be eliminated?

[tdb]

Piety being so useless is kinda silly. Back in 5.0/5.1 AST has some difficulty with MP management, but then SE added MP recovery to cards and now I can again pick my gear with the rule of "avoid anything with piety on it" and still have enough MP to even raise people (in normal content).

[Absurdity]

It just occurred to me that the situation here is a perfect example of prisoner's dilemma. Applied to healers in FFXIV:

• If one defects (keeps on doing damage) and the other co-operates (heals the raidwide), the defector will get a great parse and the other will get a bad one
• If both co-operate (share the healing), both will get a mediocre parse
• If both defect (ignore the raidwide), the raid will wipe

Not really, healing is supposed to be a shared responsibility. If you communicate with your partner you can easily cover gaps where they do not have the required oGCDs for incoming damage and they can cover the gaps for you, resulting in a good parse for both of them.

This only becomes an issue when you don't have any tools available to cover the damage and your partner has but they simply refuse to use them. In those cases however the logs can easily tell you if one of the healers just didn't do their job.


The logs basically tell you every minute detail of the fight, from dps to the exact second at which the party took damage, which healer covered said damage and what abilities they used to do so.
If for example you check the logs and see that the SCH only used Recitation twice in the entire 8-10 minute fight then you know there's something seriously wrong. But if all you do is look at dps and call it a day then you might as well not look at logs at all.

[tdb]

Not really, healing is supposed to be a shared responsibility. If you communicate with your partner you can easily cover gaps where they do not have the required oGCDs for incoming damage and they can cover the gaps for you, resulting in a good parse for both of them.

This only becomes an issue when you don't have any tools available to cover the damage and your partner has but they simply refuse to use them. In those cases however the logs can easily tell you if one of the healers just didn't do their job.

Yeah, I guess I overgeneralized the OP's situation. As I said I haven't set foot into savage in ShB. I'd kinda like to try it but I feel I can't commit the time to raiding multiple times every week.