Latest Official Developer Statements About Healer DPS?

[Aravell]

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.

Have you considered that catering the role more towards the preferred playstyle of these "barse-brained" people would only serve to increase the amount of those types of people? I remember back in the earlier expansions where people rightfully called out healers who blamed the people that died from damage.

If we want healers that can prioritise the duties of their role over their funny log numbers, it needs to be harder to do damage, not easier. And if it ends up chasing away the people who care more about numbers than a smooth clear? Well, can't say I would miss them.

Of course, if someone wants to barse, they should shut up and join a barsing PF, instead.

I of course hate when someone joins a non-logging PF to boost their logs because they usually will wipe the party for a single GCD. But I also can't really blame them for doing that, because most log parties nowadays require people to have 80+ or something, have to get that somewhere. It's still a rude thing to do, but I can also understand why they do it.

[Somnolence]

Have you considered that catering the role more towards the preferred playstyle of these "barse-brained" people would only serve to increase the amount of those types of people? I remember back in the earlier expansions where people rightfully called out healers who blamed the people that died from damage.

If we want healers that can prioritise the duties of their role over their funny log numbers, it needs to be harder to do damage, not easier. And if it ends up chasing away the people who care more about numbers than a smooth clear? Well, can't say I would miss them.

And how does this help with healer shortage? Remember, we need 1/4 of PF population to use that role.

Only two ways:

* Encourage casual healer players to do harder content
* Encourage DPS players to switch to healing

For the latter its unavoidable that most of the players that were DPS mains but switched to healing "due to necessity/help friend static" are not interested in healing challenge, therefore they will inherently want to maximize DPS. To cater to such players improving healer DPS options is necessary to keep them engaged.

For the first option the problem is that casual healing is very different from endgame raid healing.

[Aravell]

And how does this help with healer shortage? Remember, we need 1/4 of PF population to use that role.

The healer shortage would be fixed by restoring the healer role to a state that is enjoyed by the old healing veterans once again. You do not fix the healer shortage by endlessly catering to DPS players and hoping that they'll make the switch permanently. By gutting the healer playstyle into a form enjoyable by people that don't even want to heal in the first place, you are not increasing the healer population, you are simply replacing the existing healer population with a bunch of DPS players that don't have the proper mindset to play a healer, which will lead to more wipes and frustration due to their lack of recovery skills.

You can already clearly see this happening if you PF a lot, you see people dying because SGEs and SCHs refuse to mitigate, you see people dying to damage because WHM players say they don't have lilies, you see people dying to damage because AST players use Earthly Star purely for damage and they decide to only use an unprocced Horoscope to heal. I'd rather see the healer role have a lower population of competent players than watch parties wipe because my cohealer is incompetent and only wants to spam Glare.

[Somnolence]

The healer shortage would be fixed by restoring the healer role to a state that is enjoyed by the old healing veterans once again.

Given many healer threads I do not see any consensus on that, since clearly there are people that play healers for different reasons and prefer different playstyles.
Even splitting current 4 healers into 2 playstyles would not be possible as it would result in balance whine.

And encounter design will never be changed.

[Aravell]

Given many healer threads I do not see any consensus on that, since clearly there are people that play healers for different reasons and prefer different playstyles.
Even splitting current 4 healers into 2 playstyles would not be possible as it would result in balance whine.

And encounter design will never be changed.

You say differing playstyles would not work and give no reason aside from "but balance".
You say nothing but the current playstyle taken to the extreme would work and give no reason other than "the healer role needs DPS players to pad it out".

First of all, balance is not my concern. I'm on the forums to give feedback on the type of healer playstyle I would like and that I hate the current healer playstyle, that's it, balance is not my job to figure out, the dev team can figure that out themselves.

Second of all, the current playstyle isn't the only one that can work because the healer role has had a very different playstyle before ShB that puts a lot more emphasis on GCD healing. The current playstyle only benefits people who don't want to actually play a healer.

You also have not addressed the fact that the current playstyle pushing more "barse-brained" players into the role, which is resulting in more frustration and wipes in PF than before when the people playing healers were more interested in recovery and clearing. Plus, you think it's a good idea to cater even more to these people by pushing the current playstyle to the extreme and flood the role with people who only care about numbers and not focus on recovery (recovery being the only reason the role exists in the first place), this is a good idea.....why? You think more frustration and toxicity in the PF is a good thing as long as the green slots get filled?

Heal with unprocced horoscope? Lol. Makes me feel better about my grey tea Clear because l decided to heal and do mechanic So We don't wipe

Yes, I was trying to get a week 4 clear for my alt in Abyssos and ran into an AST that told me I wasn't healing enough for NA1 in P8S P2, my friend told me that they only used an unprocced Horoscope and Macrocosmos for the entire mechanic.

These are the types of healers that are getting more numerous by the day because a lot of old healer veterans have finally started leaving the role after Asphodelos.

[Eastwall]

The healer shortage would be fixed by restoring the healer role to a state that is enjoyed by the old healing veterans once again. You do not fix the healer shortage by endlessly catering to DPS players and hoping that they'll make the switch permanently. By gutting the healer playstyle into a form enjoyable by people that don't even want to heal in the first place, you are not increasing the healer population, you are simply replacing the existing healer population with a bunch of DPS players that don't have the proper mindset to play a healer, which will lead to more wipes and frustration due to their lack of recovery skills.

You can already clearly see this happening if you PF a lot, you see people dying because SGEs and SCHs refuse to mitigate, you see people dying to damage because WHM players say they don't have lilies, you see people dying to damage because AST players use Earthly Star purely for damage and they decide to only use an unprocced Horoscope to heal. I'd rather see the healer role have a lower population of competent players than watch parties wipe because my cohealer is incompetent and only wants to spam Glare.

Heal with unprocced horoscope? Lol. Makes me feel better about my grey tea Clear because l decided to heal and do mechanic So We don't wipe

[ForsakenRoe]

The healer shortage would be fixed by restoring the healer role to a state that is enjoyed by the old healing veterans once again. You do not fix the healer shortage by endlessly catering to DPS players and hoping that they'll make the switch permanently. By gutting the healer playstyle into a form enjoyable by people that don't even want to heal in the first place, you are not increasing the healer population, you are simply replacing the existing healer population with a bunch of DPS players that don't have the proper mindset to play a healer, which will lead to more wipes and frustration due to their lack of recovery skills.

Trying to appeal to a new audience with something is fine. Doing so by alienating the original audience is absolutely insane in almost any walk of life, especially business decisions. I have no idea why SE decided to chase non-healer mains and try to effectively 'bribe' them onto the role with promises of easy rides through content, low-effort rotations and effectively instant queues for content, all at the cost of driving away players who enjoyed the role for what it was in the past. And especially especially, when we already know that a lot of mains of a role (in numbers large enough to demonstrate that it's a general pattern across the game) will stay with their role, often 'trying out the new thing' in another role (eg a DPS main hopping over to try SGE), but will go back to their original role after a while.

There was never any chance that people would drop DPS role in favour of these new-design healers in numbers big enough to justify SE's actions in the design of the role. And even if they did, the reason people derive enjoyment from DPS jobs even in casual content is that they have the option to optimize a nuanced rotation, independent of the fight design. If someone enjoys pushing their class to the limit as, say, a NIN or MNK, doing their burst window right and getting that massive dopamine when their whole opener crits, why in Nophica's Nips would they want to swap to a class who's optimization journey leads to 'instead of pressing your 'do damage' button 120 times in the fight, you can press your one 'do damage' button, 140 times!' There's no 'If I do X with my opener, I can get Y GCD as my final move before the phase ends', because the Y GCD is Glare/Broil, just like the 5 GCDs before it. There's no 'if I hold 2mins, I can use just the 60s, and we can do a re-opener 2min on the next phase instead' for something like TOP, because we don't HAVE a 60s. Hell, the WHM 'burst window', laughable thing that it is, is 'do your usual 2min thing, but faster'. You don't get new moves that are able to be used in the burst like WAR getting Primal Rend, or PLD getting Confiteor. You get 'Glare, but a bit faster'. We as players had to come up with putting Misery into the raidbuff window, it's probably not intended by SE. And if it IS intended by SE, then to me it proves that they have no idea what the heck they're doing with healer design, because it, as a system, is actively encouraging degenerate gameplay. 'Waste your healing resource in downtime! Blow your limited healing resource just before the 1min mark, even if it's overheal! All to keep your Misery aligned to the 2min mark, for more damage!' And the best part is, that 'more damage' isn't even attributed to the WHM, because it's attributed to the players who put the raidbuffs up.

[Aravell]

Trying to appeal to a new audience with something is fine. Doing so by alienating the original audience is absolutely insane in almost any walk of life, especially business decisions.

Thing is, they did the same thing with MCH and SMN, both ended up being massively successful despite uprooting the entirety of the playerbase that originally enjoyed them. We know from the interviews about the relic that Yoshida thinks engagement numbers going up is a good thing and healer population has certainly increased because overall population has increased. But numbers probably aren't going any higher, we know that old healer mains are quitting, but we don't know how many are quitting as opposed to how many people are newly dabbling in healers.

Point is, if the healer population remains stable enough or even only has very minimal growth, Yoshida will probably see post-ShB healer design as a success. Heck, they probably think that the pure/barrier split is a success because people are taking one of each to most content, despite that being the regular comp that most people would run even without the distinction of pure and barrier.