I'm bored when I heal because I need more complex DPS rotations

[Akemi_Akoi]

well I would agree its a balancing act to be sure, as when I'm playing healer and people aren't taking a lot of damage it can be a bit old having 1 main and possibly one aoe attack, and I totally understand the idea that even the healers wanting to contribute more dps. but there's the other side of the coin, when the group is taking more damage and the healer is still expected to keep up the same amount of dps even though they are now much more busy actually healing. And this can happen on the same map with different groups so how do you properly balance when the healer does what?

[ty_taurus]

well I would agree its a balancing act to be sure, as when I'm playing healer and people aren't taking a lot of damage it can be a bit old having 1 main and possibly one aoe attack, and I totally understand the idea that even the healers wanting to contribute more dps. but there's the other side of the coin, when the group is taking more damage and the healer is still expected to keep up the same amount of dps even though they are now much more busy actually healing. And this can happen on the same map with different groups so how do you properly balance when the healer does what?

Before I answer that, I want to point something about about DPS checks, healers, and healing responsibilities. The only fights that have DPS checks are EX content and beyond. Everything else doesn't have a DPS check, so it doesn't matter if you were to theoretically get overwhelmed healing because the boss isn't going to do anything with this extra time it's taking to clear a fight.

As for EX content and beyond, the experience of running these forms of content has 3 distinct phases: prog, first clear, and reclears. While in prog, your DPS doesn't matter unless you have some type of mini DPS check like the flames or add phase of P3S, but that's not super common in this game, and I'll return to this in a moment. Beyond that, whether or not anyone in the party is DPSing is irrelevant, because your goal is to see and learn mechanics. Only after you get through those mechanics does DPS begin to matter. Once you reach that point, your party isn't making mistakes often enough for that to be an issue, and if they are, you're not hitting the DPS check anyway. Also, a party mess up is something that doesn't take long to recover from. In savage and ultimate, healers are still in the 80%+ range of time spent DPSing. Once you get to reclears, this process only refines itself more and more.

Additionally, the bulk of healing resources are designed innately to not interfere with your DPS. The vast majority of healing healers will use is OGCD. What DPS spells is that interrupting? Or you have the lily system on WHM, which not only refunds your lost damage, but can also be optimized to increase WHM's damage output.

As for mini DPS checks, the system we have already handles this quite well. Doing P3S as SGE, I never had to drop attacking birds because I had OGCDs, and I could cast an E. Prognosis between phases when there were no targets. Every healer can manage this quite fairly. Whether it's having OGCDs, or having GCD heals that refund your DPS, healers have the tools necessary to get through these phases, and even if you are struggling, isn't the point of savage to be difficult and to ask players to improve and polish their performance?

Ultimately though, this comment has been brought up many times before, and I want to ask, where does it honestly apply? Because as someone who does content that has DPS checks, I do not see where this is a problem. I don't see it now in tier 2 savage either where I'm playing as a DNC, and the healing is left up to my teammates instead of me. So I'd really like to know why people think this is a problem that's going to prevent players from clearing content. The biggest group of people it affects are week 1 raiders who are at the cream of the crop for their roles generally. Those healers are not playing as poorly as the casual healer who would struggle in that environment, but casual healers don't go to that environment to begin with. What's the issue?

[AnotherPerson]

well I would agree its a balancing act to be sure, as when I'm playing healer and people aren't taking a lot of damage it can be a bit old having 1 main and possibly one aoe attack, and I totally understand the idea that even the healers wanting to contribute more dps. but there's the other side of the coin, when the group is taking more damage and the healer is still expected to keep up the same amount of dps even though they are now much more busy actually healing. And this can happen on the same map with different groups so how do you properly balance when the healer does what?

I think your question answers itself. DPS comes second to healing primarily. The problem is that Healer DPS is a downtime thing that happens so far and frequently that people tend to forget healer DPS comes second and healer prioritizes on healing and survival first. If you're placed in a position where you need to heal, then you spend time to heal and even dip onto your GCD heals to stabilize the situation. If you're talking about lossless DPS, we already have skills that handle this - oGCD healing tools. Tools that refund DPS. We have so much of them that it's basically impossible to not DPS and heal at the same time. Players simply weave their healing between DPSing. However, there's still nothing to do when you don't need to heal, which is what everyone complains about when playing healer.

If you're worried that healers need to keep up the same amount of DPS even if they are now busy actually healing, it means that healers... finally need to use GCD heals? So the button isn't obsolete? Isn't that a good thing? Overall DPS skills can simply increase in potency to offset the need to GCD heal more frequently.

[ForsakenRoe]

And this can happen on the same map with different groups so how do you properly balance when the healer does what?

that's part of the fun of prog, trying to work out where you can afford to lose a healing GCD in favor of a damaging one. the issue is that, once prog is over, you get more and more gear, and that additional HP from the gear means you can drop even more healing GCDs. what was 'can i get away with not using a shield here' in prog becomes 'i dont need a shield here, we are geared enough to ignore it now' when you're in higher gear. the fights are already tuned around the assumption that healers will be using at least 'some healing GCDs', what needs to be tuned is how engaging reclears are once everyone has BIS.

I'm uncertain if you can call it modern, but Guild Wars 1 often required the solo healer to only heal and support. You were too busy doing that to do anything else! Even when there were two healers/supporters you were too busy throwing out heals and buffs and debuffs to worry about damage. And all of it without scripted AOE dodging and other things. The admittedly simple AI kept you alert, in part because healers were the AI's primary targets for debuffs and sudden damage spikes. Honestly, I miss solo healing for parties of 8.

The FF14 healing kits are powerful enough that you often don't need a cohealer. I've switched from healer to dancer and that class has enough healing for a team that plays well in casual content (just a small boost and another healing skill would make the class a pretty solid healer in its own way).

as taurus said, a bit old, and it doesn't use the trinity system, right? so there's no 'healer role', several classes have access to some form of healing, and there just happens to be classes people 'play as the dedicated healer' which have more healing kit than others. But you could theoretically build a DPS monk instead of a healing monk because you can choose which skill loadout you bring, right? I'm not sure that counts, but sure, lets say it does. so that's one (shaky) point for 'healers should heal' vs the three points I already outlined in my post (well four cos I mentioned Apex at the end)

[Anxin]

as taurus said, a bit old, and it doesn't use the trinity system, right? so there's no 'healer role', several classes have access to some form of healing, and there just happens to be classes people 'play as the dedicated healer' which have more healing kit than others. But you could theoretically build a DPS monk instead of a healing monk because you can choose which skill loadout you bring, right? I'm not sure that counts, but sure, lets say it does. so that's one (shaky) point for 'healers should heal' vs the three points I already outlined in my post (well four cos I mentioned Apex at the end)

I agree that we need a better dps kit. I pointed at Guild Wars 1 to support the idea that "for healers to mainly heal" we need a ground-up rework of the game's systems--mainly make all damage unpredictable. Actually, this could be achieved by removing tank aggro mechanics. Now, I'm not saying we should. Just that some of the most fun I've had healing had been tankless FC runs. Otherwise, there's no need for a full healing load out.

But really reducing the healing kit to just a few healing spells and leaving the rest for dps or debuffs/buffs would align the game to its Final Fantasy ancestors. You rarely needed anything more than, say, a high-level Cure and Esuna and Reflect to get through most of the older games. The rest of the time I had my healer using damage spells or items.

[AnotherPerson]

but there's the other side of the coin, when the group is taking more damage and the healer is still expected to keep up the same amount of dps even though they are now much more busy actually healing.

Oh, I also want to add - having more DPS skills that isn't just simply a 1-2-3 rotation actually benefits healers more if we're talking about maintaining a similar level of dps.

The less total damage coming from their single target attack is, the bigger the percentage will come from stronger attacks (which would be their DPS skills). That means even if DPS skills are tied to a cooldown or a mechanic, the fact that a bigger portion of the total DPS originates from these skills as opposed to their main attack skill means a bigger portion of their damage is preserved even when they need to GCD heal because their DPS is condensed into stronger bursts of damage as opposed to sustained damage. So yes, actually, having a bigger DPS rotation makes healers easier to keep up their DPS even if they had to GCD heal more.

You can see this effect happening with Sage to a limited degree.
Because Dosis is lower in potency and Phlegma + Eukrasian Dosis is higher, these two skills has a bigger impact on DPS than Dosis per GCD. If there are more DPS skills and with slightly lower cooldowns, then the number of Dosis casts can be replaced with these skills and the overall DPS of a healer increases.

The effect of having more DPS skills that have a higher potency than their main attack skill reduces the maximum variance on the output that the main attack skill can do. So for example, missing more casts of Dosis or replacing them for GCD heals will impact your DPS less because a larger bulk of the damage comes from other skills. You can see this effect happen to tanks (GNB with their cartridge gauge, DRK with their bloodspiller gauge + MP based attacks, WAR with Fell Cleaves and Inner Release, etc.) The amount of damage coming from their heavy hitting skills contribute to a larger portion of their total DPS than their 1-2-3 combo. Unlike tanks, healers has even less to lose if they need to GCD heal, purely because Dosis / Malefic / Broil / Glare is not tied to a DPS gauge at all. All tanks want to keep their 1-2-3 rotation and DPS uptime because the combos either generate resources for their job gauge or unlock heavier hitting skills. Healers can sidestep this issue entirely based on the implementation.

Therefore, it isn't too difficult to expect healers to keep the same amount of DPS even if they need to GCD heal more frequently. Plus, there's still plenty of oGCD healing skills remaining (a lot of them can be merged, so it's not as if consolidating the number of skills will result in a huge loss in healing output either).

[Mithron]

Sorry to necro, but I still feel it's relevant now. I want to have more complexity when DPSing as a healer, especially in older content.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

No. You will spam 1 button 85% of time and you will like it.

/s

[Kikio_The_Blu]

I remember another healer main attacked me when I said we really do need more dps spells to make them feel less boring.

>"So you want what is basically an extra spell that does what glare does already? Cool waste of time"

No, I want to have a 1-2 dps combo chain like most classes but for healers so I am not quite literally PRESSING THE SAME BUTTON on repeat for 30 seconds and occasionally stopping to heal and/or reapply my dot. I don't even care if it comes at the cost of decreasing the potency of the main single-target, just give us a fucking basic combo chain!

[Semirhage]

I want more downtime complexity, but if I had developer input, I wouldn't want it to come as melee DPS-style combo chains. 1-2-3 merely changes which buttons I'm pressing, but it doesn't make me think at all. RDM or DNC style rotations are much more my style. They don't make you think much, but their light semi-random nature forces me to pay attention to which thing I'm hitting. I want to have a split second decision, and that decision can be wrong, and I want my punishment for being wrong to be a small potency loss. That's good enough for government work.