Thread: Patch 6.1 Notes

Originally Posted by Ransu

Healers in every MMO are limited in their dps kits. FFXIV isn't unique in that nature and its intentional because you can't have a class that's focus is healing while also having a strong offensive kit. FFXIV may be a bit more extreme than most, but in general its normal for healer classes in MMO's to only have 3 or 4 attacks and maybe a dot.

So ya, I don't really have any sympathy for people playing healers and complaining about not having more damaging skills. You're a healer, your job is to heal.

Let's just go with the MMO's I've played.
Divine Souls, MMO I played ages ago where the main healer in such was a scythe-wielder who focused on CC and stunlocking large groups with flowing combos, your dps output was less than other classes but you had just as engaging and complex of a DPS kit as a healer as you did with any other class there.
Lords of the Seal. Koreashit mmo I played years ago whose healer class was part of their sorcerer class, as you would swap between three different casting implements for different functions, though would usually only spec into one or two. But even if you solely used the healing one you still had plenty of DPS skills to cycle through. Far more than FFXIV's
Onigiri, the only MMO that I played which has healers close to FFXIV's in complexity. Except here's the catch... you had to fight in melee range to put out damage and were heavily encouraged to be in said range if you didn't want to be dead weight, and still had a full set of basic melee attacks on par with any other build's weapon, save for bow users who had even less than you.
T.E.R.A., pretty good korean wow-clone that's more famous for its loli race and botched localization than anything else, but healing in that game was incredibly fun, had more demands than FFXIV, AND gave you a full rotation on par with ffxiv's melee DPS.
Warframe. not really an MMO in a traditional sense but putting it here because I did play it. Healer frame toolkits usually had several DPS options. And even for the ONE FRAME that's full support your arsenal is not limited compared to any other frame, as you still can act as a weapons platform capable of shitting out a metric assload of DPS with the right weapon builds.

Hell, let's go beyond that and talk about games in general, eh?
Tales of. This RPG series in general shits all over FF games when it comes to having fun healers. As every character was designed to be fun to play due to the multiplayer feature (that was excluded from the most recent title for bs reasons). Healers in those games tended to have varied kits and similar offensive potential to their non-healer counterparts, if not greater in some cases. Really fun games overall, except for arise, don't play that one (still has better healers and tighter healing requirements than most FFXIV content though).
Etrian Odyssey. Series of dungeon-crawling RPGs where the medic characters typically got access to very powerful melee skills, even way back in the first game with medic's Caduceus skill being one of the strongest melee attacks in the game. And later games introduced hybrid classes that end up with far more complexity that any FFXIV healer would kill for. All while still having to heavily rely on their healing skills.
Bravely Defauly (series). These games were spin-offs of FF3 and older ff games like so. Where as you progressed and killed bosses you'd unlock more and more jobs. And the healing classes in these games (with the exception of white mage in BDII) still had decent offensive options within their own class, or at least shenanigans they could pull. Not to mention the entire subclassing system and abilities encouraging you to expiriement and come up with very interesting class combinations and synergies. Especially so in Bravely Second with some of the more strange support classes like Excorcist and Patissier.
For fucks sake I'd say even playing a healer in the Dark Souls series & Elden Ring is several times more fun than playing a healer in FFXIV. Due to having to take radius of your abilities into the equation as well as cast times and boss movements, so you don't get decked while trying to save someone. not to mention all the different build options one could roll with.
Divinity Original Sin II. Even playing this for only a tiny bit. Being a healer character in this is amazing. Leaning into water element and having the ability to easily maniplulate the state of the battlefield, while ALSO getting just as many offensive spells as any other element specialization. And even then I only was at the start, I can't even begin to imagine how fun it'd be later on down the line.
And I can probably list off several other examples if I sat down and did some research on other MMOs and such in the market right now.

What's FFXIV's excuse? Especially considering the devs are practically swimming in profits RN.