It is not possible to play without doing dps as healer? every day i find someone...

[Rilifane]

I feel like its even more problematic due to the fact that the Devs don't seem to have anyone dedicated to the healer role or even somebody understanding how the actual playerbase interacts with it, combined with a dismissive attitude of viewing actual healing as more of a burden, so they need to keep it as easy and non-threatening as possible so that everyone can succeed at it, which ironically just ended up with such low healing requirements and an abundance of powerful ogcd healing tools that dpsing as a Healer becomes even more expected, while the devs at the same time actively removed dps abilities so healers don't feel pressured to dps, which they already are by the very encounter design. I mean, I'm more in favor of healer dpsing because I think its the only way of making healers an engaged and busy job that isn't just passively standing around, just due to the fact that optimization and moving closer to the skill ceiling will automatically reduce healing uptime due to the reactive nature of that role, but most people agree that healers should have more healing to do and that their healing toolkits should be more engaging.

I think this is the biggest problem. They don't understand how the playerbase interacts with healers because they don't listen and stick to their own healer fantasy while designing the game itself for something entirely different and then do a surprised pikachu face when the players don't play how they wanted them to play.
Even if they don't have a dedicated healer designer (which they desperately need), it wouldn't be as bad if they would just listen and accept the feedback of knowledgable healer mains instead of brushing it off and twisting their words. But they don't and so everything they did achieved the exact opposite of what they set out to do.

Increase healer population by making it accessible - and they dumbed it down so much that they drove off more healers than they got. Queue times for healers have never been this consistently low as they are since early ShB.

Reduce pressure on new healers to multitask by reducing dps kit complexity - and they dumbed down healing requirements and dps kit complexity so much that now everyone expects healers to dps and with good reason because it's literally one button.

There was far less pressure to dps on healer when we still had multiple dots and Cleric Stance because people knew and understood that it's not as risk-free as it is now.

[vetch]

There was far less pressure to dps on healer when we still had multiple dots and Cleric Stance because people knew and understood that it's not as risk-free as it is now.

Correct me if I'm wrong but based on what I've read (and replayed in MINE raids) there was also less DPS pressure because Coils had looser enrages than later raids and more outgoing damage, proportional to HP maximums.

[Rilifane]

Correct me if I'm wrong but based on what I've read (and replayed in MINE raids) there was also less DPS pressure because Coils had looser enrages than later raids and more outgoing damage, proportional to HP maximums.

I can't confirm that from personal experience but from what I've heard from my friends the dps checks in ARR were indeed very lenient and with the higher focus on GCD heals, heal (and overheal) generating a lot of aggro, Cleric Stance and MP being tighter, dpsing was riskier in general. At least from the casual content that I did I can say that sometimes just healing the unavoidable got me a bit of unwanted attention and I often had to time heals to hit right after damage like during story Nabriales' triple spark. So not starting another GCD to not miss the timing was perfectly viable and without Cleric Stance it only did very little damage anyway.
Not saying that not dpsing was an option but there was less focus on seamless GCD uptime and trimming heals down to the bare minimum while spending every GCD on damage.

[Punslinger]

What essentially keeps happening in these forums is someone comes along and says some combination of the same old "but healers don't need to heal to clear," "but SE says healers should just heal," "but the primary goal of healers is to keep the party alive" and for reasons XYZ, that's why healers shouldn't be expected to DPS. Then the rest of us come in and say no, actually that's not how this game is functionally designed. DPS is a responsibility of healers, and any player who refuses to contribute is griefing, and then you get pages of arguments about how that's an attack on low skill players or players with disability.

This. I've thought about starting a compendium of Common Sylphie Fallacies that we can keep linking back to, because I've linked my refutation of the "HURR DURR HEELERZ SHULD ONLY HEAL" talking point a bunch of times already, just to save myself the time of retyping the exact same response to the exact same argument. It's as if Sylphies were in-game NPCs with the same three lines of canned dialogue they repeat over and over:

"Healers should only heal, it's in the name!" (Healers in FF14 are healers in much the same way that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is a democracy.)

"Pressing the 1 button is literally a Savage-level uber-l337 hax0r metagaming speedrun strat and you're a meanie for asking me to do it!" (Fallacy of the excluded middle: there's a wide middle ground between "carry me plz uwu" and "world-record speedrun" levels of effort)

"But what about One-Armed Grandma?!" (Ignoring the question of why all four healers must be lobotomized for the sake of One-Armed Grandma, who might want to play a DPS or Tank job instead. And of course ignoring all the gamers with disabilities who play much harder games than FF14 by finding ways to compensate for their disabilities. Or that One-Armed Grandma could explain her situation at the start of the dungeon with a chat macro.)

...but I hard disagree that DPS cannot make enrage if the healer is not DPSing when played perfectly.

Mathematically disproven: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5973381

The short version is that without healer DPS, even the world-record E8S speedkill would have failed to beat the enrage timer. Nizzi's post goes into the details, but the math is quite simple. Take the party DPS recorded in the log, subtract out the healer DPS, compare to the DPS required to beat the enrage timer. And this, again, is the #1 speedkill run, so presumably, the DPSers and Tanks are playing as close to perfectly as possible.

[T-Owl]

I think this is the biggest problem. They don't understand how the playerbase interacts with healers because they don't listen and stick to their own healer fantasy while designing the game itself for something entirely different and then do a surprised pikachu face when the players don't play how they wanted them to play.
Even if they don't have a dedicated healer designer (which they desperately need), it wouldn't be as bad if they would just listen and accept the feedback of knowledgable healer mains instead of brushing it off and twisting their words. But they don't and so everything they did achieved the exact opposite of what they set out to do.

Increase healer population by making it accessible - and they dumbed it down so much that they drove off more healers than they got. Queue times for healers have never been this consistently low as they are since early ShB.

Reduce pressure on new healers to multitask by reducing dps kit complexity - and they dumbed down healing requirements and dps kit complexity so much that now everyone expects healers to dps and with good reason because it's literally one button.

There was far less pressure to dps on healer when we still had multiple dots and Cleric Stance because people knew and understood that it's not as risk-free as it is now.

To be honest, even without a dedicated healer designer, which they should have, Yoshi-P maybe should go back to what made the game good compared to 1.0., taking inspiration from WoW instead of being all sentimental about oldschool MMOs like the guy before him. People love to shit on WoW, but if anything the game has proven to offer the formular for a MMO with staying power and it has actually great healer core design. Every class has unique and diverse styles of how they heal and with many of them, there is some synergy between dps and healing abilities, which would be appreciated. I think the damage profile also allows casuals in low level content also much more to focus on healing and be excused instead of a push to dps, just because constant chip damage is more present.

I feel like they really missed an opportunity to take a lesson from WoW back when they decided not to make Dancer a Healer. It could have opened up more possibilities to have a healer whose damage profile is more like that of a physical ranged. In WoW, healers are not bound to be pure casters in their damage profile. You have pure casting healers like Shaman and Priest but at the same time more melee focussed healers in Paladins and Monks and Druids, who can decide if they want to owl- or catweave.

[T-Owl]

This. I've thought about starting a compendium of Common Sylphie Fallacies that we can keep linking back to, because I've linked my refutation of the "HURR DURR HEELERZ SHULD ONLY HEAL" talking point a bunch of times already, just to save myself the time of retyping the exact same response to the exact same argument. It's as if Sylphies were in-game NPCs with the same three lines of canned dialogue they repeat over and over:

"Healers should only heal, it's in the name!" (Healers in FF14 are healers in much the same way that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is a democracy.)

"Pressing the 1 button is literally a Savage-level uber-l337 hax0r metagaming speedrun strat and you're a meanie for asking me to do it!" (Fallacy of the excluded middle: there's a wide middle ground between "carry me plz uwu" and "world-record speedrun" levels of effort)

"But what about One-Armed Grandma?!" (Ignoring the question of why all four healers must be lobotomized for the sake of One-Armed Grandma, who might want to play a DPS or Tank job instead. And of course ignoring all the gamers with disabilities who play much harder games than FF14 by finding ways to compensate for their disabilities. Or that One-Armed Grandma could explain her situation at the start of the dungeon with a chat macro.)

When it comes to whether or not quadraplegic grandmas with alzheimers could play healers in FF14, if people would be honest with that discussion, then they should point at other issues that should be adressed to make the game more accessible. Like for example a proper mouse over function without having to deal with the janky macro system of this game.

[Mortex]

The GCBTW "we should be kind to each other uwu" prayer circle is amazing.

It's always the same:
someone says they don't want to dps. Others say that it's disrespectful to intentionally not do something that's literally ONE button. Somoene says "but they might be 80 years old or disabled or maybe just new, have you considered that???". Others say that mashing one button is still not difficult and they should still try. And then comes the best part: someone assumes they are being mean, rude and insulting to someone "not playing perfectly".

So we jumped straight from "someone refuses to dps because hEaLeRs sHoUlD hEaL and that's disrespectful to the rest of the party" to "you shouldn't insult, be mean and rude to people who may be 80 years old :c" and instantly got a sermon about how we should and nice to each other to make the world a better place<3.
Bonus points for the classic "I'd rather have a healer that doesn't dps than someone that LET'S ME DIE". How about neither? Why is one type of bad play used to excuse another type of bad play?

Let me make one thing very clear:
Nobody EVER condoned being rude, mean or insulting to someone not showing basic competency.
Nor was it EVER about "playing perfectly".
Is that so difficult to understand?

Dpsing on healer is not difficult. It's literally one button for basic damage. ONE.
The only way to not dps at least a bit on healer is either picking your nose the majority of the time or intentionally using your weakest, crappy GCD heals in order to seem busy and even then you'll have plenty of time. Contributing as much as you are able to is everyone's responsibility. You can clear any non-highend content with a healer only healing, a tank only grabbing aggro and then doing the /beesknees and the dps only auto attacking.
Doesn't mean that it's okay.

It’s called toxic casuals. FF 14 has a decent number of these people. We’re trying to give helps for other people to get better or asking a simple question like “can you pls dps a little as healer” get you answers like “you don’t pay my sub” ( classic one ) or that people say that you are a rude person that is a toxic elitist.

Like I’m pretty sure some ff 14 player get out of the bed in the night having nightmares about people giving them tips on how too get better at the game.

[Rolder50]

Being a healer in this game without doing DPS is just a fancy way of saying "This person is AFK of 90% of the fight" since there isn't nearly enough outgoing damage to justify it. Especially in roulette content.

[Sani2341]

Druids, who can decide if they want to owl- or catweave.

GDI, that's like the one thing I miss from WoW.
being able to just go 'no heals needed? no aoe in coming? lemme go be a budget dps for the next 30-60s'

Imagine if WHM could activate a buff to get acces to a BLM-lite rotation that get's auto canceled when they press their next heal, so you'd not be locked out of healing like with old cleric stance.

[MintnHoney]

Imagine if WHM could activate a buff to get acces to a BLM-lite rotation that get's auto canceled when they press their next heal, so you'd not be locked out of healing like with old cleric stance.

I'm imagining it, but in my imagination, it's an entirely different development team that's developing the game.
This team is too scared to do anything too interesting for the healer role.