Latest Official Developer Statements About Healer DPS?

[ForsakenRoe]

THe problem with the proposed solution is that it ultimately is no different than pressing 1 button. Consider it mechanically: What is the difference between 1,1,1,1,1,1, and 1,2,3,1,2,3? You arent really adding complexity, partially because the problem with the proposed solution is there is no 'punishment' for breaking rotation. Youre just delaying it technically so you can do role specific actions that you are there for. There has to be something that gives a reason why spamming 1,2,3 (as an example) is more interesting an option other than you have more buttons to push that accomplish the exact same thing as pressing 1 button. And that complexity has to be meaningful, meaning it should come with 'punishments' for not doing it optimally.

And the easiest way to show how bad a path that logic follows, is to just ask the opposite. Let's say you're right, what IS the difference between 111111 and 123123? Then the question is: Why do healers get the former, but tanks and DPS are given the latter? Given there's 'no difference in complexity really' between the two, why do DPS not all have 11111 as their rotation, like healers? Why do Tanks get to have new buttons like Confiteor, Primal Rend or Double Down each expansion? Surely for a DPS, just pressing True Thrust or Hakaze over and over is all they need, with the correct balance applied? Or for Tanks, all they really need is Heavy Swing, Overpower for AOE, and Tomahawk for picking up adds from range, right?

But we have been through that particular point a million times already, to the point where there really ought to be an FAQ of the most debunked points somewhere. We don't actually think Tanks and DPS should have their gameplay rendered so bland. We just want to know why Healers are subject to the decision, when they are equally 'not DPS' as another role who DOES have such gameplay (Tanks). If we had something akin to WAR for healers, but a little more simplified, then these complaints wouldn't be happening in such numbers. Consider WAR, you have Eye combo to maintain a buff, Path combo for filler, a 0-100 gauge that you can spend on a big hit (Fell Cleave), a move to generate 50 gauge (Infuriate), a 60s burst move for '3 gauge spenders for free, plus a big hit too (Primal Rend)', an OGCD (Upheaval), and a 3 charge OGCD (Onslaught). If you remove the 1-2 part of the combos, Eye is like Dia, and Path is like Glare on WHM. From there, what else do we have as WHM that compares? Orogeny, the AOE version of Upheaval, could be likened to Assize, but it's 30s to Assize's 40. POM, our burst window move, is 2min compared to WAR's 1min. Beyond that, there's not really anything else.

That's why I suggested what I did before. The addition of a 0-100 gauge on WHM would add all this extra design space for new moves, like an Infuriate analogue, or the healing move and it's linked 'damage refunds' of Quake, Tornado, Flood, being 'sorta kinda' similar to IR, 3 Fell Cleaves (given that the gauge build rate I had worked out to about 60 gauge per minute, allowing one use per minute roughly in single target).

Btw, I've yet to see a single person who's suggested a healer rework in the healer section of the forums, suggest a hard 1-2-3 combo as part of their idea (hard being 'you must use 1 2 3 in that order, without anything in between that would break the combo'). Usually it's 'soft combos', incentivized by some buff or another that makes a certain order more desirable to use. EG, if you have Glare increase the potency of your next Holy by 30% per stack, then at 4 stacks, Holy becomes a gain over another Glare, making a 'soft combo' of 4 Glares, then a Holy. You could safely interrupt the 4 Glare building phase with a heal, and retain the stacks. Alternatively, the most common thing I've seen (partially because it's what I go with) is to not have combos at all, instead making the 'rotation' based on priority system, more akin to something like BRD or RDM. Where BRD is (at it's absolute simplest) 'Is your DOT up? If no, use it/refresh it, if yes... Is Refulgent procced? If yes, use it, if not use Burst Shot', I would have healers be something like (WHM for example here) 'Is Dia up? If no, use it. If yes, is Banish on CD? If no (it's ready to use), use it. If it's on CD, use Glare'. If you need to heal, you heal, and then go back to the priority system. For example, lets say you need to use Banish, but you need to heal in that GCD. So you would heal, and keep the team alive (as is your role requirement as a healer). Then, you go 'OK damage time' again, but oops, because you had to heal, Dia fell off. So now, you use Dia (because it's higher priority), then Banish, then Glare again. No messing about with combos is needed, we can keep the damage rotation pretty simple to understand without it being 'boring to execute' by just having a few (in this case, two) short CD GCDs. I used Dia at 12s and Banish at 15s as examples. The fact that the two do not have a neatly aligning timer means that you can't just go BDGGGGBDGGGG for the whole fight. If both were 15s, it wouldn't solve much of anything. The fact that the two would drift about within your rotation (in relation to one another, not to your GCD) is what would give it executional depth (or at least, more than it currently has).

This is a video of the idea, of a 12s Dia and 15s Banish, in action. Well, kind of, I had to take creative liberties with the tools available. So it means 'manually refresh Dia at 18s left' and 'use this one Lost Action in Bozja, using the instance timer to track it's 15s CD since the Lost Action itself doesn't have a CD'. And it has a cast time, whereas my version of Banish would be instant (allowing WHM more mobility, and therefore more casual friendly). Regardless, I would hope that, just off of this video demonstration, it's apparent the difference between our current rotation, and what a small change like what I have suggested, could do for our gameplay.

[Aravell]

The role of healer is a bit more unique in that, unlike other jobs where their rotation is pretty much their own business, healers business is that of other players. So if you had a rotation as a healer, how well that rotation goes will become some what more dependant on your party members doing their stuff to a T and not getting killed or taking excessive damage. So imagine player feelings when people cant do their healer dps rotation cause DPS eat pancakes or make mistakes.

I'm not sure why player feelings should factor into job design?

I would hope that people who queue up for content on a healer would actually want to play a healer. If they're going to whine about losing damage because a DPS eats the orange ground candy, maybe they shouldn't be playing the very role that's meant to be fixing those mistakes?

[ty_taurus]

I'm not sure why player feelings should factor into job design?

I would hope that people who queue up for content on a healer would actually want to play a healer. If they're going to whine about losing damage because a DPS eats the orange ground candy, maybe they shouldn't be playing the very role that's meant to be fixing those mistakes?

To bounce off that, I think it's important to establish a few things:

1. There are a fair amount of players unhappy with the state of healers in FFXIV, and of those, many find the lack of DPS abilities to be a major flaw. FFXIV's combat design is and has always featured large windows of healing downtime, and the belief is that a good healer should be rewarded with fun, active DPS during that downtime, not mindlessly spamming a single attack for nearly off of it.

2. These same players are not asking for more DPS for the purpose of wanting to do more and more damage or effectively play a DPS in the guise of a healer. Good healing results in a higher amount of time one can spend on DPS. They simply want that to feel fun and rewarding rather than a boring punishment.

3. At the same time, these players are fully content engaging with the healing side of healers. In fact, the lack of DPS is not the only element criticized about modern healer design, but also the diminishing need to heal due to less frequent damage taken in combat, less spontaneous damage encountered in combat (such as boss auto attack crits), increased tank and DPS sustain tools, and the ever-expanding powercreep of each expansions new, free, DPS neutral healing resources that encounter design fails to scale with.

4. For the players who agree with the above points, good healer design is about striking a balance between the need to heal and the opportunity to attack, and neither side of that equation should feel lacking, yet currently, both sides are lacking. With almost no DPS tools at our disposal, the reward of skillful healing is boring, slow, and ruins the experience of playing healer. With a severely overtuned and bloated healing kit and a lack of actual healing to engage with, we cannot appreciate the healing abilities we have because many of them are excessive and unnecessary.

[Somnolence]

I'm not sure why player feelings should factor into job design?

I would hope that people who queue up for content on a healer would actually want to play a healer. If they're going to whine about losing damage because a DPS eats the orange ground candy, maybe they shouldn't be playing the very role that's meant to be fixing those mistakes?

Yeah, right. From what I have seen many healers in ultimate PFs are barse-brains and do the least amount of healing needed. If party is "griefing" them they kick offenders or leave, and since they are the most demanded role they are kings.

The only way to give healers DPS rotation is by moving ALL healing to oGCDs so it won't affect damage, otherwise the toxicity in PFs will skyrocket. In other words, mirroring tank design.

[Aravell]

Devs are caught between a rock and hardplace. Essentially they got two options right now with Healers:

Focus Healers on just healing - This would mean that raid damage must increase substantially so that Healers are spending MORE time doing heals and sustainting/protecting the group, so they would have less of a need for DPS skills

Reduce focus on Healers healing - This would mean raid damage would either have to decrease, or increase self sustain by everyone else, so that healers woul essentially have time to commit to a dps rotation

Or they could go with option 3: Put equal importance on the healing kit and the damage kit while raising healing requirements

Just boost healer damage up to tank levels so their damage output will settle to about the same as the percentages now even when they're forced to GCD heal.

[Melichoir]

Or they could go with option 3: Put equal importance on the healing kit and the damage kit while raising healing requirements

Just boost healer damage up to tank levels so their damage output will settle to about the same as the percentages now even when they're forced to GCD heal.

I dont think that solves the fundamental gripe - Healers are just to boring to play from a dps perspective. I mean yeah, if it was purely a numbers game, then just adjusting potency would solve hte issue, but thats not the problem really. People dont like spamming Glare, for example.

So to make it more interesting on the DPS end, youd have to add complexity in the form of a rotation and DPS based GCDs/oGCDs (like tanks). This ends up requiring either heals be less important in raids, or turning heals more into oGCD based healing, which then makes healers operate more closely to how tanks behave with their mits. Not saying that is necessarily a bad thing, but it is fundamentally a different style of play.

Then you got the players who just want to heal on a healing class. Yeah you could increase their damage output to be more in line with tanks by adjusting potency, but why bother doing that if those players arent concerned with damage to begin with? Especially if you increase that damage output you end up having to adjust content because you are increasing hte overall expected group dps which alters difficulty in a fight.

[Supersnow845]

I dont think that solves the fundamental gripe - Healers are just to boring to play from a dps perspective. I mean yeah, if it was purely a numbers game, then just adjusting potency would solve hte issue, but thats not the problem really. People dont like spamming Glare, for example.

So to make it more interesting on the DPS end, youd have to add complexity in the form of a rotation and DPS based GCDs/oGCDs (like tanks). This ends up requiring either heals be less important in raids, or turning heals more into oGCD based healing, which then makes healers operate more closely to how tanks behave with their mits. Not saying that is necessarily a bad thing, but it is fundamentally a different style of play.

Then you got the players who just want to heal on a healing class. Yeah you could increase their damage output to be more in line with tanks by adjusting potency, but why bother doing that if those players arent concerned with damage to begin with? Especially if you increase that damage output you end up having to adjust content because you are increasing hte overall expected group dps which alters difficulty in a fight.

That’s already exactly what the healers are, tanks and healers play exactly the same; GCD’s are for damage, oGCD’s are for your core role mechanic it’s just tanks get DPS level rotations and healers get one button

Nobody wants tank style rigid rotations on the healers but if you gave a healer say……..the level 50 DNC rotation with designs in place that stopping the rotation to cast succor doesn’t break the combo then you wouldn’t be changing anything about how the game is currently played; you’d just be making healer DPS more interesting

[Asako]

Healers don't have to dps if they don't want to. They'll just find that when it comes to endgame no one will want them in any content because for that content, they indeed do need to DPS.

Imagine you are playing a healer and you only heal and your Tank turns around and stops DPSing after he has aggro and doesn't use any cooldowns. Would you still blame the Tank? His Job is to Tank the boss/mobs not to do damage or Mitigate. Think how long a Tank like that would last in your party. Would be the quickest flick you ever give someone, so don't be suprised when as a Healer you receive the same treatment.

The people that come up with these muck statements that a healer shouldn't have to DPS are saying so because they've only done toddler content. They were also the first to cry when bosses hit too hard and so we had to nerf boss damage so now everything hits like a wet noodle.

A lot of these players aren't actually very good at playing the game and are just here for the story, but because they make up the majority of the player base and thus a lot of the income we have to adapt to them or they will leave taking their money with them. So increasing boss damage again isn't really gonna help the situation even though it would make the role more engaging. If they increase the damage and Bill and Ben the Flowerpot Men rock up as your healers then you aint clearing anything.

What makes it even more annoying is in addition to reducing the damage players take, they also reduced the rotation of Healers to 2 GCDS so no wonder the better players are getting bored. I think it's time for Healers to get a proper DPS rotation and factor it into the fights, even something as basic as a Tank rotation would do and have them healer themed. If healers don't contribute DPS then it just takes longer, but those that do contribute have something meaningful to do. This way both parties get to play the game they way they want.

They are currently in an akward spot because they don't want to upset either side but as we are all aware, something needs to be done. Healers are currently in the worst position in the game role wise.

[ty_taurus]

Imagine you are playing a healer and you only heal and your Tank turns around and stops DPSing after he has aggro and doesn't use any cooldowns. Would you still blame the Tank? His Job is to Tank the boss/mobs not to do damage or Mitigate. Think how long a Tank like that would last in your party. Would be the quickest flick you ever give someone, so don't be suprised when as a Healer you receive the same treatment.

You can absolutely, without question, maintain aggro with no difficulty by simply keeping your tank stance up and spamming Fast Blade, Total Eclipse, or even Shield Lob. If the mentality around healers is that "healers are meant to HEAL, not be DPS. If you want to play DPS, then play a DPS job, not a healer." Then I 100% am in support of treating the tanks the same way. Reduce every tank to those 3 buttons. You don't need a DPS rotation to tank. You just need 1 basic attack and tank stance to hold aggro. Everything else can be about mitigation and personal sustain/barrier application.

Tanks are meant to TANK, not to be DPS. If you want to play DPS, then play a DPS job, not a tank.

[Melichoir]

I think Im not being all that clear. Its not that I dont think healers should or shouldnt have a rotation, Im just saying that if you create one for healers, it changes the dynamic of the class and how it operates. That's not necessarily a good or bad thing, but it is a thing that is inevitable and comes with pros and cons. For example, if you added a rotation with dmg skills, like a tank has and dont change anything in their kit, it creates an issue of skill bloat and optimization issues, where your rotation performance is entirely reliant on your group not requiring healing/resses cause they do THIER things 100% correctly. No job really has that requirement for their rotation. Imagine how frustrating it would be to be in a group where you have to interrupt your dps rotation and skills to do resses and GCD healing? Or what it might be like to have healers who WONT do the healing cause theyd prefer to do their rotation and not bother ressing you cause it was your fault you died (which to be fair, probably is in many cases but that doesnt help out the group).

These are kind of issues that have to be considered when making adjustments to the playstyle of a role. It works the other way to if they focus the role more on healing aspects and how players of all different skill levels take to it. This is the rock and hard place problem Devs got with healing. Its a matter of which direction they take it, with pros and cons, and why that its not quite easy to just say "Give us a rotation" or "Just let us only heal".