Latest Official Developer Statements About Healer DPS?

[Oizen]

Yoshida is the Todd Howard of Square Enix

[Absurdity]

Yoshida is the Todd Howard of Square Enix

Healers just work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFcLyDb6niA

[Nobuyuki_Sanada]

Regardless of what anyone says does it really make any sense for a healer to not DPS? There is no fight not even ultimate (hardest content in game) where a healer doesn't have a ton of spare time between healing. Imagine your group trying hard to complete content and one player only has to hit 1-2 abilities every 15 seconds. It's insulting to the other two roles to just expect to essentially afk through the fight. You have tools that can help the team so you should be doing everything in your power to help complete that goal. Tanks don't just get to sit there and do only enough damage to hold aggro. The question isn't really about being expected to, that answer is obvious, it should be about how much. I think healing/support abilities should become more prevalent to make the job less boring, not add more dps options.

[IDontPetLalas]

Regardless of what anyone says does it really make any sense for a healer to not DPS? There is no fight not even ultimate (hardest content in game) where a healer doesn't have a ton of spare time between healing. Imagine your group trying hard to complete content and one player only has to hit 1-2 abilities every 15 seconds. It's insulting to the other two roles to just expect to essentially afk through the fight. You have tools that can help the team so you should be doing everything in your power to help complete that goal. Tanks don't just get to sit there and do only enough damage to hold aggro. The question isn't really about being expected to, that answer is obvious, it should be about how much. I think healing/support abilities should become more prevalent to make the job less boring, not add more dps options.

You keep repeating "I think healing/support abilities should become more prevalent to make the job less boring" without adding any examples of what you would expect to see or how you'd expect to use them.

Personally, I have a large selection of (depending upon the healing job) heals and utility in the form of shields, buffs, mitigation and HOTs. How will it be more interesting to add more? OK, SCH got expedient, maybe add one more unique skill to a specific job like WHM, OK.

Other than that, once someone in a party is healed - or in the process of being healed- whoopie. I shouldn't just be hitting one DPS skill. Damage is at least as valuable, not to mention there are multiple types of content and it shouldn't be miserable to solo content.

[Nobuyuki_Sanada]

You keep repeating "I think healing/support abilities should become more prevalent to make the job less boring" without adding any examples of what you would expect to see or how you'd expect to use them.

Personally, I have a large selection of (depending upon the healing job) heals and utility in the form of shields, buffs, mitigation and HOTs. How will it be more interesting to add more? OK, SCH got expedient, maybe add one more unique skill to a specific job like WHM, OK.

Other than that, once someone in a party is healed - or in the process of being healed- whoopie. I shouldn't just be hitting one DPS skill. Damage is at least as valuable, not to mention there are multiple types of content and it shouldn't be miserable to solo content.

fights need to be designed in a way to keep healers busy. If you can heal most fights without ever using a GCD that is a mistake, if you spend over half of your time hitting a damage skill on a class meant to support that is a mistake, if content is boring cause your role is meant to support and content is centered around you doing damage... yup you guessed it A MISTAKE. Almost all solo content is boring simply because it is meant for casual players. Lets not pretend that the glorified training dummies in the story/solo content are super entertaining for dps or tank roles to play against. I do think that companions should be more of a thing but that would take significant time/resources for a single role, could still be worth it. I want to see bosses hit more than just the tank outside of dodgeable AoE's. Boss's need to hit much more often and more targets. I want combo spells for heals so deciding who to use small heals and who to use big heals on is more skill based. oGCD heals need to be gutted and more meaningful interaction from the player needs to be incorporated into GCD heals. More support abilities can be added that help the team avoid damage such as movement speed buffs and damage nullifying bubbles.

The biggest problem with making more dps abilities is then your just becoming the dps role. If that's the route they want to go they should just save themselves time give the tanks healing abilities and just delete healers altogether. We play this role to support and heal if you don't get enjoyment from that then I'm sorry to tell you, but you don't like being a healer.

[IDontPetLalas]

fights need to be designed in a way to keep healers busy. If you can heal most fights without ever using a GCD that is a mistake, if you spend over half of your time hitting a damage skill on a class meant to support that is a mistake, if content is boring cause your role is meant to support and content is centered around you doing damage... yup you guessed it A MISTAKE. Almost all solo content is boring simply because it is meant for casual players. Lets not pretend that the glorified training dummies in the story/solo content are super entertaining for dps or tank roles to play against. I do think that companions should be more of a thing but that would take significant time/resources for a single role, could still be worth it. I want to see bosses hit more than just the tank outside of dodgeable AoE's. Boss's need to hit much more often and more targets. I want combo spells for heals so deciding who to use small heals and who to use big heals on is more skill based. oGCD heals need to be gutted and more meaningful interaction from the player needs to be incorporated into GCD heals. More support abilities can be added that help the team avoid damage such as movement speed buffs and damage nullifying bubbles.

The biggest problem with making more dps abilities is then your just becoming the dps role. If that's the route they want to go they should just save themselves time give the tanks healing abilities and just delete healers altogether. We play this role to support and heal if you don't get enjoyment from that then I'm sorry to tell you, but you don't like being a healer.

Not disagreeing about the "keep healers" busy. The question being "keep healers being busy doing what". For myself, the interesting part about playing a healer specifically in group content as opposed to- let's say - a DPS- is making a judgment call on when I can DPS and when I may need to heal. I would be quite disinterested in a game when my sole function would be to only watch health bars. In this game, in a good part of the content is considered to be part of the game design, it is not a "mistake" for a healer to spend a majority of their time DPSing rather than healing - given a party that is not experiencing issues with mechanics, it's to be as efficient as possible with their heals. You may not like that, it is your prerogative.

Also, solo content is more than the story (MSQ). It may be deep dungeon, it may be someone who wants to solo FATEs, or Bozja. You may not find that entertaining, I would say that it should not be a slog on, for example, an AST. It should not be the same experience as a DPS but it shouldn't be painful and I would posit that it currently is.

And finally, the piece de resistance? Quite understandable that you have your opinion, however telling people whether they like being a healer? I'm quite sorry, my eyes haven't rolled quite that hard in quite a while.

[Maltothoris]

Regardless of what anyone says does it really make any sense for a healer to not DPS? There is no fight not even ultimate (hardest content in game) where a healer doesn't have a ton of spare time between healing. Imagine your group trying hard to complete content and one player only has to hit 1-2 abilities every 15 seconds.

From the looks of it you haven't done TEA. There is so much time in that fight to dps especially once it Alex Prime and Perfect Alex. Perfect Alex has 3 parts where he is just casting. Fate cal alpha, fate cal beta and temporal prison. The first two last about 30 seconds which adds to a whole minute and then temporal is a minute long enrage sequence where you get trapped. Not to mention his autos don't really hurt and you can heal everything with ogcds when he's present on the field.

[Nizzi]

i'm glad the TRUE HEALERS™ are here to set us dirty green dps straight and remind us we don't actually like being healers!! so fkin badass...!!!!!!!

[Solakor]

Uh oh the mind blenders are loose again. If you think its ok that healers have 1 dps button you gotta have something wrong up there. It doesn't matter how much you up the healing if an aspect of the job is clearly ass. Oh and btw, SE will never up the healing ever again because they are so afraid of the raid community getting angry that they can't clear a fight. So every new action, mitigation is just skill bloat as were the new skills in EW and ShB.

[Nobuyuki_Sanada]

Uh oh the mind blenders are loose again. If you think its ok that healers have 1 dps button you gotta have something wrong up there. It doesn't matter how much you up the healing if an aspect of the job is clearly ass. Oh and btw, SE will never up the healing ever again because they are so afraid of the raid community getting angry that they can't clear a fight. So every new action, mitigation is just skill bloat as were the new skills in EW and ShB.

Again I will then ask, why have healers at all? Adding even 3 new damage options isn't going to be enough to make it suddenly fun. Adding more than that and your just making more DPS classes with heals for oGCD's rather than more damage. Hitting 2 buttons instead of 1 is not more fun. DPS are fun because their entire kit works together, its not because they get to hit more buttons. Damage would have to some way aid me or my allies in order for it to synergize with the rest of the kit therefore making it fun for the role.

I'm not saying its current state isn't boring, I'm saying adding another damage button won't make it fun and we will just continue asking for more damage buttons until healers are just DPS classes.