How to easily have healers dps engaged ( yet another thread)

[ty_taurus]

Healer DPSing being a thing is pretty much the most unique and stand out thing in this game, because it was already an established norm and common courtesy when I started the game, arround the end of heavensward. It is kind of the games special shtick for healers and the only thing that makes them stand out, especially since both the job stories and their quest heavily lean into the combat abilities of healers.

I mentioned this in the other thread, but back during ARR and HW, healing was praised for being such a breath of fresh air in contrast to old WoW healers. I distinctly remember an article stating that SCH took the idea of what a healer is meant to be and revolutionized it, and being so proud that that was my main job. People regularly praised the healers back then for being everything that healing currently isn't. It wasn't perfect, of course. Nothing is nor will ever be perfect, but it had a truly unique feel to it and felt great to play in most ways. Stormblood had its ups and downs, but SCH and AST at least were in great places, and the issues with WHM would've been easy to rectify if the game continued in that direction rather than trying to sterilize the role.

[T-Owl]

I mentioned this in the other thread, but back during ARR and HW, healing was praised for being such a breath of fresh air in contrast to old WoW healers. I distinctly remember an article stating that SCH took the idea of what a healer is meant to be and revolutionized it, and being so proud that that was my main job. People regularly praised the healers back then for being everything that healing currently isn't. It wasn't perfect, of course. Nothing is nor will ever be perfect, but it had a truly unique feel to it and felt great to play in most ways. Stormblood had its ups and downs, but SCH and AST at least were in great places, and the issues with WHM would've been easy to rectify if the game continued in that direction rather than trying to sterilize the role.

I mean, WoW had Fistweaver and Discipline priest as dps oriented healers from MoP onwards but generally yeah, dpsing as a healer was really that thing that was really big in FF14 compared to WoW, that was at this point still very traditional in terms of healer gameplay. It was the first thing I learned about FF14 healers and I think it was fairly exciting, especially since when jumping over from WoW, even White Mages Stone felt quite chunky and was visually fairly impressive, not to forget Holy back in the day being quite a powerful nuke. And it was if you ask me the only organic evolution for classical WoW Style MMO Healers to go. When it comes to tanking, we lived in the post DK era of tanks after all, they moved from pure sword and board punching bags who are all about gaining threat to becoming more offensive, pulling dps rotations. So Healer DPSing just felt like the way to go. And I can't imagine who in their right mind wouldn't enjoy it, it was a blast feeling more involved with what the rest of the party does by throwing in stones and actively assisting the party in combat and you mentioned it, SCH was a beast with its dot gameplay and offensive capabilities.

I genuinly feel like since these days, FF14 really lost its touch in terms of what made it so different and exciting compared to WoW. And its not only the healers, I think Bard was fairly cool originally as well with how the devs managed to creat a support role in the physical ranged, just for the entire system nowadays predominantly holding these classes back due to their dps tax which hits Machinist the hardest.