Yoshi-P: "If you want more engaging content, go play Ultimate"

[Kandraxx]

Diablo2 Ressurected ladder starting soon, well it was some fun months playing FF14 I guess.

[AnotherPerson]

oop, well another reminder for me to not make dumb assumptions about things I don't know well enough of, sorry.

So tracing my train of thought, I have a few questions:
1. Is it pretty much a requirement for healers to do damage in current high-end content to complete it?
2. Should healers be given a robust dps kit, would it be inevitable that making use of it would contribute more damage than spamming a single dps move like now?
3. If 2 is true, would they have to adjust values to be lower and keep the damage total and ratio between the three roles the same?
4. Could the current healer design be providing an avenue for someone who, well, isn't exactly great at action-hybrid games like this, to still complete all the savage raids and possibly ultimates?
5. If a specific healer job stayed exactly as simple, and another job is given complex dps tools, would it be okay if the total amount of damage they both provide largely stayed the same?

The first and second question you ask is very flawed. That's like saying "Is tank DPS a requirement in current high-end content to complete it outside of making sure they are #1 in aggro management?" The answer is yes, for both tanks and healers. So yes, both tanks and healers are required to be DPSing, especially for week 1 because the party wouldn't be able to beat enrage otherwise as they contribute to around 40% of the party's total damage.

4. The answer to this question was answered by the devs - the avenue for healers who want to have more challenging healing experience is to do higher level content. If high-level content was was designed to be a bigger challenge for healing. However, the high-level content is designed so you actually have to heal less (optimize healing efficiency) because now you are mandated to press your DPS button more due to the presence of an enrage check. In fact, they just made it known that there wouldn't be any content for healers who want to heal for all levels of content.

2- 5. I can literally pose the same question to a tank. Should tank be given a robust dps kit, would it be inevitable that making use of it would contribute to more damage than spamming a single dps move like now? If this is a problem, reduce tanks to 1 DPS spam since they only need 1 button to hold aggro and 30+ mitigations for survival and positional awareness. See how enjoyable it is for a tank for the entire leveling process. Especially for high end, when attacks come slowly and they do nothing but wait until they lose more HP. The point of this thread is not to talk about simply raids, but the entirety of content in general. Tank also gets a large DPS rotation in addition to requiring situational awareness for positioning the boss and healing/mitigating with other party members, as well as handling aggro in the event of tank swapping. So why is it that healers don't get any DPS skills when other roles also have responsibilities with situational awareness? In fact, DPS also have a responsibility for situational awareness now that they have more healing and mitigation skills at higher levels, so it's just healers that get nothing other than Dosis / Glare / Malefic / Broil skill mashing when everyone's safe and comfy.

5. Especially with this question - Tanks already do the same amount of damage as healers and have more things to watch out for and do. This question has already been answered by the forums based on how big the disparity is between the treatment of healers and tanks in DPS rotations and things to do during downtime.

[MidnightEquinox]

More than "outdated bad design" it has to do with the way encounters in FF14 are super scripted, so you have big predictable spikes in damage where you use your different resources and then go back to dps'ing.

Yeah, I suppose. Not really my thing, honestly. But I suppose if you're into FF14 endgame you like that sort of thing so not sure what to expect from healing then.

I overall got the impression that DPS is the rewarding role in FF.

[Misplaced_Marbles]

You will note that whenever people ask for more difficult content it always jumps to extremes like Dark Souls games etc.

Which goes both ways.

If someone is looking for proof, just find a thread about "in from the cold".

Middle ground, does it exist?

[Saraide]

I think it is kind of tonedeaf to sort of wave it off. But I guess he's giving an actual response to the role for once.

Idc if people beg and beg for the dev team to keep reworking healers because it's very clear that they have no idea how healers are played in the combat system they've created. They STILL believe that we GCD heal a lot but give us oGCDs and even require healer dps for week 1 clears, yet all healers have the same dps kit. It's so conflicting. It's like they don't want to say green dps is a thing when it is.

No matter how you cut it, healer dps will always be a good. When you are done with progging and have something on farm, you don't need to GCD heal as much. And look at their attempt to make us heal more. We get garbage mechanics like Death's Toll with healing debuffs that you need to heal through in 3 GCDS or mechanic vomit with 1-2 sec intervals with forced healing.

Forcing healers to constantly watch HP bars is rather boring which brings us to the point of the desire for GCD healing. I get it, healers should heal but GCD healing constantly is equally as boring as Glare spamming. People keep asking the wrong question, "how do you plan on making healers heal more," knowing full well besides raising raidwides to the point of nearly wiping instantly or making autos rip half the tank's HP constantly, it's the predictive nature of the combat design that stops them from making healers "heal".

Instead of asking about more healing, we should be pushing for healers to have more support in their kits.

The way they have job syngery is simple and limiting, no job can have a support ability that overshadows each other. Which is why all phys. ranged has reskinned Shield Samba. Or Melee/Caster having Feint/Addle. They don't want certain jobs to have advantages over the other and thus not have unique things in their kits besides flavor. There are some exceptions and it's constantly fighting between who has stronger rDPS and personal DPS to justify their place in the meta.

This obsession with wanting healers to be healbots is what's making the role unappealing to outsiders. All we do is just heal and dps, having real support skills would make healers miles better to play.

Fight design and job design feel a bit disconnected aswell. The best example is death's toll/life's agonies with AST just getting to instantly heal it off where the other healers would need to LB3 to get the same effect.

[Clover_Blake]

I've been playing healer since beta days, and for the life of me I can't figure out what all the healer drama is about o_o
I for one have a lot of fun as a healer. I heal when I must and DPS when I can. Dungeons tend to be easy, raids are difficult on release week and later on with certain parties. It's always been like that to me (?)

[Thoosa]

They seem to be oblivious to the fact that there isn’t a load of “challenging content” in the game for healers (or any role really) except the last fight of a savage tier or ultimate - savage you do once a week and then there’s nothing to do until the following week and ultimate - gl finding 7 other people prepared and skilled enough to clear it - it’s not exactly accessible fast content or varied.

The game is missing accessible puggable tougher content and normally they would take the form of dungeons or they’d make more ex trials. It lacks and entire mid level set of content.

[StriderShinryu]

.....just. give. us. more. damage. spells.

No need to balance anything. Cut the damage from spell 1 and shift some over to spell 2 if you need, I literally do not care. Cut some of the useless buttons like undraw and give us something actually useful. Even 1 or 2 would be enough!

Yeah, this was my thinking as well, especially with the extremely long combo timers we have now. As an extremely simple example, and to fudge the numbers since I don't know them off hand:
Instead of DPS Spell = 400 potency, make a combo where DPS Spell 1 does 350 potency, DPS Spell 2 does 30 potency and DPS Spell 3 does 30 potency.
High end, experienced healers will be able to eke out that little bit more DPS but it's front loaded enough that it shouldn't make any real difference in standard content if a less experienced player lets it drop or drift a little.

Another thought I had was on the DOT skill. Use a similar system to ASTs Star so that once you cast the DOT it ticks down as normal but you have a second skill that you can activate within, say, 4 seconds of the DOT ending to get a small DPS boost. That way if you just let the DOT run as normal and refresh as normal you get the same DPS as now but if you are able to monitor the timer and activate your "DOT Surge" skill at the right time you can squeeze out a little more damage. A little take off of how they have front loaded tank cooldowns so that in the first few seconds of some of them you get an additional effect.

[Nanne]

I am fairly sure The Feast 4v4 was the most engaging healer content in the game. It required tons of attention to what enemies are doing, knowing when to deal damage, fast reactions, hard healing and good use of defensive buffs and positioning but it was never that popular and is being removed soon

[Teno]

I've been playing healer since beta days, and for the life of me I can't figure out what all the healer drama is about o_o
I for one have a lot of fun as a healer. I heal when I must and DPS when I can. Dungeons tend to be easy, raids are difficult on release week and later on with certain parties. It's always been like that to me (?)

Do you enjoy spamming your one DPS button ? Are you talking about savage ? If you spam GCD heals you've been hindering your party with poor DPS. Good if your party is ok with that, but that's similar to being ok with any job spamming their 1-2-3 with an occasional oGCD.

It's fine if the content is anything below extreme, although you won't be seen in the best of light.