The Problem with Healer Feedback, and requested changes

[Renathras]

Foresakenroe - I'm not sure it's a false equivalence (you're talking about giving healers more GCD damage abilities, not oGCD ones, right?), but I take it you get the point even if you disliked the example? That players TEND to want abilities that further what they see as their role and play into that. So while a player might not be against "new buttons" entirely, they want their new buttons to be buttons that do the thing they consider their role. While many who play healers consider their role to be a DPS, many do not. Hence again why I think the answer is to split up the healers to where both sides are getting something that they want.

I didn't say I liked it or not. So what I like is irrelevant. For the sake of argument/so we're on the same page, you DO realize that there are many healers that don't want more damage buttons, right? I'm not using this as a dig. Just trying to reinforce my point that the healer community in FFXIV is diverse and don't all want the same things. I guess I think before any discussion makes sense, we all must agree on the basic axioms of the problem/basic facts. I think one of those basic facts is that we all must understand there are many healer players that want what we want, but there are many that might want something else. I'm sure you'd agree and acknowledge that, yes?

When "do damage" doesn't interrupt from healing, yes. One of the greatest changes WoW made to healers was in Cata or Mists (I forget which) when they made the spam nuke MP neutral. Like Druid Wrath cost 0 mana and I think Shaman's Lightning Bolt refunded mana (though I don't remember the specific mechanism). This meant that (in a game where mana management was important for healers), you could dps freely when your casts (GCD equivalent) weren't needed for heals. But the focus wasn't pushing damage. The focus was healing, and damage was just "that thing you do when no one needs healing".

HW was really where healers started pushing damage. Some high end groups did it in ARR, but 0 damage healers were actually a thing in ARR and, at the time, seen as normal since a lot of people had come over from 11 or 1.X. HW it was because - let's be honest - the raids were tuned too high. Though most of the community didn't raid and so didn't care about healer damage. It's one of the reasons Cleric was changed to Presence of Mindish in SB and then removed later, because of how much conflict there was in the community over where healers should (or should NOT) do damage, people berating people (on both sides) for "playing wrong", and so on. But it was something driven by the raider community, not the wider playerbase or the Devs. The Devs eventually embraced it in encounter tuning for very high end content because people were just...doing it.

...and they made it as simple as possible to do as a result of that, which is why we have the stripped down healer kits we have today.



Also note there's a difference between "forcing healers to do damage" and "forcing healers to have a damage rotation". Healers are forced to do damage right now, but because damage is mostly 1 button, healers that "don't want to do damage" find it acceptable, much like Wrath spaming Resto Druids in WoW did. But they won't find it acceptable if it becomes much more involved than that.

Note the exception here is if doesn't become more involved FOR ALL HEALERS, there's an out. As I said before, SCH's damage kit can be complex SB again and WHM's 2 button EW and both do around the same damage and it works because people can play the one they want. Some WHM's will complain they're bored and be pointed over to SCH, and some SCH's will complain they have to do "more work", but the answer will be "You can play WHM if you don't want to...unless you want the EW rotation again...?", because that's the alternative.

I think my one BIG problem with these discussions is people seeing their solution of "more DPS buttons" as the compromise.

No, the compromise is what we have NOW. The "healers should only heal" side's position is to either do no damage or have 1 button spam. What we have now is the compromise position between the two camps.

But my idea is something that gives both sides what they want. /shrug