The Healer DPS Problem, The Toxicity it incites

[ASkellington]

I doubt a lot of healer mains here would want a gameplay that requires you to spam heals though...

No because its just as boring as pressing 1. Besides. Even if over healing = buff (which is the entire opposite of how healing is played in MMOs - you're not supposed to be overhealing at all) its still a one button press. Or has everyone forgotten WHM and AST have a HoT that can tick OH and lasts for ~15 and the only time SGE/SCH has to reapply a shield on anything other than a tank is about the same because there's barely any inc damage for the party?

[SieyaM]

Honestly healers just need a more interesting kit. They have a lot of abilities but most of them are disconnected single use heals. Horoscope, Plenary, and Recitation are the only abilities I can think of that actually interact with other abilities in the healer kit, and I really enjoy that idea and using these abilities. AST used to have a lot going on when it had royal road and minor arcana, and that excused the otherwise bland design of the actual healing part, but now none of these jobs have anything that fills down time other than single spell spam.

[Absimiliard]

I don't think vuln stacks should even have been added to the game in the first place. Failing a mechanic should either just nail you with a ridiculous amount of damage (read as: if you DO survive, it's by the skin of your teeth) or outright kill you, depending on the tier of content you're doing. None of this slap on the wrist crap.

Damage down is fine. That does its job. Nobody likes getting their numbers nerfed into the ground.

[Jojoya]

I don't think vuln stacks should even have been added to the game in the first place. Failing a mechanic should either just nail you with a ridiculous amount of damage (read as: if you DO survive, it's by the skin of your teeth) or outright kill you, depending on the tier of content you're doing. None of this slap on the wrist crap.

Damage down is fine. That does its job. Nobody likes getting their numbers nerfed into the ground.

I half agree. Anything that causes a player to take more damage because they screwed up a mechanic is more of a penalty to the healers than to the player that failed (unless it's the healer).

On the other hand, if the vuln stacks are intended to be unavoidable it can make things more interesting as a healer. Some party members may need more healing than others. It's a way to add variety to soft enrages at the end of a fight. Fight drags on too long, healers have to be healing instead of doing green DPS spam to keep everyone alive as long as possible.

[Absurdity]

I don't think vuln stacks should even have been added to the game in the first place.

I vastly prefer getting vuln stacks over damage down tbh, because it allows you to take the stack on purpose if your healers are up to the task and potentially solve mechanics differently than intended. Right now you're completely railroaded into doing exactly what CBU3 wants you to do or your damage goes down the drain.

Failing a mechanic should either just nail you with a ridiculous amount of damage (read as: if you DO survive, it's by the skin of your teeth) or outright kill you, depending on the tier of content you're doing. None of this slap on the wrist crap.

Mechanics killing you outright would be fine if it didn't end in the situation we currently have, where almost every other mechanic is a body check and recovery is close to impossible.

[vetch]

I vastly prefer getting vuln stacks over damage down tbh, because it allows you to take the stack on purpose if your healers are up to the task and potentially solve mechanics differently than intended. Right now you're completely railroaded into doing exactly what CBU3 wants you to do or your damage goes down the drain.

Yup. Big agree. Once I get good at the fight, I want the option to tell the Black Mage "you can pop Manaward and keep casting, I'll throw you a shield".

CBU3's hatred for player agency is a big problem for the game's fun factor and longevity.

Mechanics killing you outright would be fine if it didn't end in the situation we currently have, where almost every other mechanic is a body check and recovery is close to impossible.

Don't agree. Instadeath feels horrible whether there's a bodycheck or not. The more opaque the mechanic is, the worse it feels, because you die over and over and just lie on the floor feeling frustrated until it finally downloads or, more likely, someone explains it to you.

Would much prefer more frequent mechanics with smaller individual hits but more damage overall and, and this is important, fewer free heals on the healers. Mechanic 'failure' should look like your party eating 16 extra hits in a 40-second window and the healer is out of MP and just can't keep people alive anymore so if they fail again they start dropping.

Staying alive through a couple failures, not dying instantly because you didn't telepathically intuit what the battle dev wanted you to do, allows building more muscle memory and also just feels better because you're actually playing the game.

[Supersnow845]

I think the game should give damage down stacks but it should still allow you to do the old tech where if you mitigate and take zero damage damage then the damage down doesn’t apply

Like in E10 if you used neutral sect, spreadlo and kitchen sinked AOE mitigation you could take zero damage from stacking wall orbs on the boss and it was considered an uptime strat because it allowed you to ignore a dodgy snapshot mechanic and give you an extra free 20 seconds of uptime if you can absorb the reduced mitigation at different points in the fight