I like healing in FFXIV...but something bothers me.

[DinahDemiurge]

I always view vulnerability stacks as a punishment to the person who incurs them. It isn’t my fault or my responsibility to heal you from a now-one-shot that you could have prevented had you just avoided the bad on the ground. (Obviously, I make exceptions and do my best to save people who are new to fights and don’t know any better—but for those who just blatantly collect them like they’re candy? Nah. But I can also be a very aggressive healer depending on the scenario/situation.)

That said, there have been fights in the past where eating vulns is hardly detrimental to the person who eats it or the healer themselves. O10S had a strat where melee would eat Midgardsormr’s attacks and collect a vuln stack to maintain uptime—and it didn’t really stress out the healers in any way. I feel like vulns are currently more punishing than they have been in the past. Perhaps that’s a product of the stat squish? Or because we’re still in, basically, near-base item level gear for the expansion. I’ll be interested to see if their impact holds up as we progress through the 6.x patches and content.

Don't get me wrong. Part of what is fun about being a healer is more opportunities to be the hero of the party, which I greatly enjoy. Vuln should have a dps loss penalty associated, but it should be a dps loss incurred onto the one who has the vuln stacks, not a dps loss to the healers who did nothing wrong. That's all I am really getting at. Also I think if vuln stacks actually affected dps of the one with the stacks then people would be more motivated to not get hit by stuff or to pay attention more.

[AnotherPerson]

Don't get me wrong. Part of what is fun about being a healer is more opportunities to be the hero of the party, which I greatly enjoy. Vuln should have a dps loss penalty associated, but it should be a dps loss incurred onto the one who has the vuln stacks, not a dps loss to the healers who did nothing wrong. That's all I am really getting at. Also I think if vuln stacks actually affected dps of the one with the stacks then people would be more motivated to not get hit by stuff or to pay attention more.

I mean, it is a DPS penalty, just not to you if you don't adjust to them for getting more stacks. If they end up dying to the next raidwide because they accumulated too many stacks that they disappear in one hit, they get a stat debuff after being ressed. Plus, I'd say vulnerability stacks also give rise to some moments of healer LB3. Not entirely bad imo. Just tell them to stop taking more stacks and let the stacks disappear.

[HyoMinPark]

Don't get me wrong. Part of what is fun about being a healer is more opportunities to be the hero of the party, which I greatly enjoy. Vuln should have a dps loss penalty associated, but it should be a dps loss incurred onto the one who has the vuln stacks, not a dps loss to the healers who did nothing wrong. That's all I am really getting at. Also I think if vuln stacks actually affected dps of the one with the stacks then people would be more motivated to not get hit by stuff or to pay attention more.

I think that’s why the developers switched to using damage downs for eating certain mechanics. Because during Omegascape, if you could live with the vulns, then players would eat them for uptime. So the developers decided in Eden to attach damage downs instead—likely to “discourage” the behavior. I’ll be interested to see if Pandaemonium Savage has just regular vulns or if they keep the damage down aspect instead.