Latest Official Developer Statements About Healer DPS?

[Xuke]

Having to use The Keeper's Hymn to switch your INT to MND if want to play SCH from SMN is what I think of with there mindset. I wasn't there for XI but from what I've played of it in the recent years my experience with WHM in XI spends most of it's time focusing more on management of HP, resting, and cleansing with the occasional Dia also if u didn't have a RDM you'd Paralyze. They later came out with SCH which can shift between the two but was primarily a support DD. I know it can be seen as super unpopular opinion to bring up XI but it's not like they had this notion of that just because. Accuracy also comes to mind. I guess they didn't expect us to hit the boss as much either even though there was Materia for it that any class can use. I personally think the statement is kinda...I don't know blind? If their testing consisted of testers whom played XI I can see this angle to some degree. Players will always find a way to surmount the odds and in this case, a very unexpected way. But the tools were always there so that statement always feels blind to me because of that. Ask a MNK about their poison pots, surely they are crazy yeah?

MNK statement is a bit off topic so I lead into another question. Why even give Healers an option to even contribute? Even if they had weird scaling why even offer in the first place? Did they just intentionally want to gimp them because they just didn't expect anyone to press more those buttons? Are they forcing us down this path now because of this? Or maybe.....Now this might be dangerous to say....Maybe we weren't suppose to have some log of sort to see the damage? Maybe it's just accessibility for controller players? It's all hard to say and I guess we'd get the answers after the game has long pass perhaps 9.0 or 10.0 if they ever want to open up about there decision making more so.

There's many questions I think should be towards how they test things and approach design. It's impossible to gauge player input without players and it'd would be dangerous territory to say the devs probably don't even play there own game even though there can be evidence of such in many ways. I don't want to really go down that hole. From what I do know in my early days playing the game that there weren't many of us as of now which is amazing! I was lead to believe that this game wouldn't make it and the doom prophets about at the time. Yet here we are! To go back to my last point from the early days, I guess that wasn't enough to work off of? This game was prided that the dev's listened. That was probably because only a handful actually played and even way less raided. At least in my circles and experience, they will sing songs of the days of 3.0 raiding but they won't talk about 2.0 raiding and oddly enough 4.0 raiding. Well, maybe to why I don't hear much about 4.0 raiding is because most of everyone I knew prior quit the game at that point and most of whom I know now have started in 5.0.

Apologies if it sounds tangent or a bit of a rant.

[IDontPetLalas]

That quote from 2021 should be taken with a humongous grain of salt. I would find it interesting to know how really "unique" Sage feels to an experienced healer ? I would say that while it has some nice animations, it's not really really so distinct from the other healers.

While I wouldn't disagree from his comment that someone who heals a party at high end/difficult content can field a sense of achievement, there are enough remarks in that interview that reinforce that it years past the time that he should be employing a dedicated healer designer - not to mention not getting ridding of their tester/QA when they get "too good" at healing.

[Jeeqbit]

That quote from 2021 should be taken with a humongous grain of salt. I would find it interesting to know how really "unique" Sage feels to an experienced healer ?

Unique hah. It is a copy and paste of Scholar. I literally got my Scholar hotbar, copied it over and replaced it with Sage's version of the same actions.

What is unique about it is the gap closer, buffing heal potency instead of applying the Aetherpact regen because you already have a person as your target and being able to choose who gets your auto-heals instead of it being a priority system. Using your gauge on heals doesn't take away from DPS like it does on Scholar.

[MsMisato]

Having to use The Keeper's Hymn to switch your INT to MND if want to play SCH from SMN is what I think of with there mindset. I wasn't there for XI but from what I've played of it in the recent years my experience with WHM in XI spends most of it's time focusing more on management of HP, resting, and cleansing with the occasional Dia also if u didn't have a RDM you'd Paralyze...

FFXI healers contributed to DPS in the form of magic bursts which is dependent on how the skill chain was closed if you recall. What i liked about XI your whole playstyle can change based of your sub job. I think what seperates FFXI was the armor did not scale super crazy like it does in XIV and tanks really didn't have a solid form self sustain like they do in FFXIV.

That quote from 2021 should be taken with a humongous grain of salt. I would find it interesting to know how really "unique" Sage feels to an experienced healer ? I would say that while it has some nice animations, it's not really really so distinct from the other healers.

While I wouldn't disagree from his comment that someone who heals a party at high end/difficult content can field a sense of achievement, there are enough remarks in that interview that reinforce that it years past the time that he should be employing a dedicated healer designer - not to mention not getting ridding of their tester/QA when they get "too good" at healing.

didn't Yoshi say before sage was released that WHM was a dedicated healer sadly its somewhat true. But sage itself took a lot from the other two classes. Scholar was a buff/shield healer and astro was the same and that's why I think they kind of almost corner themselves on what to do with healers over all it feels like.

[Renathras]

They completely changed stance. P8S before nerf wouldve been 100% impossible to clear without healer DPS imo.

You can't use P8S before the nerf since they explicitly said it was tuned too high and shouldn't have been.

We know this isn't true because of raids like E8S being mathematically impossible to clear on patch without healers doing DPS, even in top 1% optimized speedrun environments.

This is more the issue. It may not be INTENDED, but it seems to be true. But:

I'm aware of remarks from 2021.

...this is the stated position.

Given all of this...

I'm just curious to know what the devs have officially said about this sort of thing. Thanks for the help on that!

...I think the reality is that Yoshi P and the Devs don't want Healers to have to deal damage. Any fights that actually REQUIRE it in order to clear on patch are probably accidents/overtuned/unintended given all the statements, including the 2021 ones, to the contrary. The most charitable (to the DPS argument) way to look at it is that they want Healers to have an easy DPS "rotation" so they can easily achieve whatever DPS needs (if any) the encounters assume Healers will contribute. At worst to that argument, it means that they don't intend encounters to require Healer DPS and don't tune for it, so any Healer DPS at all is a bonus for the party.

.

EDIT:

That quote from 2021 should be taken with a humongous grain of salt. I would find it interesting to know how really "unique" Sage feels to an experienced healer ? I would say that while it has some nice animations, it's not really really so distinct from the other healers.

You can somewhat question my skill, but I've been healing in MMOs since the early 2000s. SGE feels pretty different to SCH. Nizzi made a good breakdown of this on the healer forum here: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post6309157

SGE is far more mobile, but its healing is also much more responsive while SCH's kit is more powerful but requires more forethought. Even their DPS optimizations are different and in kind of opposite directions; SGE has damage neutral (or even positive) movement options while SCH's movement tool is a damage loss, SCH has a weaving DPS option at the cost of healing and mitigation resources while SGE has an independent GCD damage gain but requires near-melee range and its healing/mitigation resource is exslusively for healing/mitigation, and SGE has a strong bomb party heal (that's again damage neutral) while SCH has a direct damage loss but extremely powerful party barrier combo. SGE is more light and responsive but a bit weaker for that agility, while SCH has more weight and clunk but also more power.

They're alike on paper from a 10,000 foot overview (that also handwaves away some differences that are kind of important), but on the ground level, they play completely differently, imo.

[ASkellington]

...I think the reality is that Yoshi P and the Devs don't want Healers to have to deal damage. Any fights that actually REQUIRE it in order to clear on patch are probably accidents/overtuned/unintended given all the statements, including the 2021 ones, to the contrary.

I disagree with this statement.

I think its actually MORE likely that healer DPS is included for the good reason that, if it wasn't necessary you'd have more PF kicking healers who don't contribute to damage and making the instance faster. Because damage is king.

They may not want Healers to have to deal damage, but we do. Because we have nothing else to do by their garbage design. Ya'll (devs) seriously need to take any of the healers in high end content. You're that out of touch. Come talk to healer mains when you do Savage content on release as healer with a purple parse and then you can talk.

[Allegor]

I think its actually MORE likely that healer DPS is included for the good reason that, if it wasn't necessary you'd have more PF kicking healers who don't contribute to damage and making the instance faster. Because damage is king.

It's funny because that'd also imply they're aware there's not much healing to be done either. If a healer isn't healing much, but doesn't dps much either, what are they doing?

[Absurdity]

You can't use P8S before the nerf since they explicitly said it was tuned too high and shouldn't have been.

Then we can just use every other savage fight that doesn't have a joke of an enrage timer. E8S wasn't possible in crafted gear without healers dpsing either.

Could you beat some fights with the healers doing no damage? Maybe, but it would put an unnecessary burden on your DPS and potentially also your tanks to perform well above the average, healer dps is absolutely factored into the expected party damage.

That quote from 2021 should be taken with a humongous grain of salt. I would find it interesting to know how really "unique" Sage feels to an experienced healer ? I would say that while it has some nice animations, it's not really really so distinct from the other healers.

It's quite evident, every time they make public statements about jobs, that they're just really out of touch with a lot of aspects of their own game, Yoshi's comments about healers are just the most obvious ones.

Or they've become so isolated in their own mmo bubble that they actually think their design is the most creative and unique thing ever. That would make me a lot more worried because we've seen it before.

[Renathras]

A lot of people don't seem to read posts before replying to them. Let me help out with some bolding:

...I think the reality is that Yoshi P and the Devs don't want Healers to have to deal damage. Any fights that actually REQUIRE it in order to clear on patch are probably accidents/overtuned/unintended given all the statements, including the 2021 ones, to the contrary. The most charitable (to the DPS argument) way to look at it is that they want Healers to have an easy DPS "rotation" so they can easily achieve whatever DPS needs (if any) the encounters assume Healers will contribute. At worst to that argument, it means that they don't intend encounters to require Healer DPS and don't tune for it, so any Healer DPS at all is a bonus for the party.

I think they genuinely DON'T want healer gameplay to be based on doing damage or encounters tuned to it.

I DO think they're really bad at tuning, with P8S, specifically, being such an egregious case that they had to nerf it and make a public apology statement.

How you want to parse this is up to you, but I think the correct way to look at it isn't "they want Healers to do damage", I think it's more "they're really bad at tuning for Healers NOT to do damage", which is why they have the fallback point of the above "...at least the DPS 'rotation' is easy so that Healers can pretty easily meet the required amount of damage they need to contribute" when the Devs get it wrong. Which is almost all the time.

If they genuinely wanted encounters to be tuned around Healers doing a lot of damage, they could very easily say so. And considering we're talking Savage and Ultimates here, it's not like them saying so would be detrimental, so there's no reason for them to lie. The more likely take is they just suck at tuning the encounters well, and because it works, they just kinda roll with it.

EDIT:

See my response

I mean...SGE doesn't unlock at level 1. WHM doesn't have "cool lasers" aesthetic. The only thing WHM and SGE really have in common is that they're easy.

This is also true of SMN, DNC, and WAR.

The common thread to all these most played Jobs is that they are the easiest to play. I know it's hard to believe, but it seems that the general playerbase DOES like things that are easier. This doesn't mean everyone does. This doesn't mean that hard things should be removed. But it does mean that the general playerbase...does seem to like these Jobs, at least in part, because they are easier to play. Because that is the thing that's in common across all of them.

"But WAR is OP!"; but WHM isn't.
"But SMN does more damage than RDM!"; but less than BLM.
"But DNC has a dynamic rotation!"; but WHM and SGE do not.
"But WHM, WAR, and SMN start at level 1!"; but SGE and DNC do not.
"But DNC and SGE start near the level cap so less to level!"; but WHM, WAR, and SMN do not.

What do they all have in common, though?

They're all relatively easy to play, and widely considered the easiest in their roles.

For additional support, BRD was more played when it was considered "the easy one", and RDM was more played than SMN and BLM in ShB, when RDM was "the easy one". SAM and RPR are considered the easiest Melees by most, and are also the two most played (SAM more than RPR in JP, RPR more than SAM everywhere else; but in each region, the OTHER of them is 2nd place). And considering the Human tendency to want to just chill or take the paths of least resistance, it boggles my mind why people are so adamant at insisting this isn't or can't be true.

(Also: Not all, but most, of the stuff in the Healer forum is also opinion, not fact that would render her opinion invalid. It's more a "either could be true, or possibly some combination of them both")

I’d love to have more healing, buffing or anything other than DPS but let’s be honest here. Those who do not want to DPS as a healer lost this argument expansions ago.

That isn't really true. It's only required in some content (specifically Ultimates and early tier Savages), and the debate seems both alive and well AND the Devs' official statement siding with the non-damage focus.

I mean, I say this as a person that Glarespams like everyone else, but the argument isn't over, and people aren't going to move on until Yoshi P actually makes a definitive statement to the contrary.

Adding more DPS buttons does not affect the rest of the player base at large.

Yes, it does.

The only people that say this are people who want more DPS buttons added, implying a bias. Everyone opposed to adding more DPS buttons seems to feel it will, in fact, affect them. And we all know that it will and that they aren't talking about only doing casual content. At best, it's a red herring, possibly a straw red herring, and at worst, an absolute lie.

I do agree that SGE isn't really "damage focused" anymore than the other Healers, though. It COULD be, due to how Kardia works, but it...isn't.

Every single word that leaves your disingenuous tongue makes me want to go bite a rock.

She's right, though. You must bite a lot of rocks when confronted with the truth...

This is where the DPSing healer became the norm at all levels of endgame content rather than the exception.

"at all levels"?

It was really ShB when that happened. SB still had a lot of healers not DPSing in Expert, and it wasn't the norm. ShB is also when wall-to-wall pulls became the norm and healer DPS was simplified. THAT'S when healer DPS became the norm, when they were all unified to a DoT + spamnuke.

[Sebazy]

"at all levels"?

It was really ShB when that happened. SB still had a lot of healers not DPSing in Expert, and it wasn't the norm. ShB is also when wall-to-wall pulls became the norm and healer DPS was simplified. THAT'S when healer DPS became the norm, when they were all unified to a DoT + spamnuke.

Got any data to back any of that up? Or is this just your heresay again?

You didn't see every healer DPSing in dungeons in SB, but it was the turning point where it became more common to see healers doing *some* dps rather than none at all. Why? Cleric Stances removal.

Also trying to suggest that wall to wall pulls became the norm in Shadowbringers is comical, are you forgetting how players would routinely struggle in dungeons like Bardams and Doma? Do you honestly think they were single pulling? Wall to wall pulls were absolutely the norm in level cap dungeons. Perhaps I should use the word 'Majority' if you can't comprehend 'the norm'? Does that work for you?

Oh and since I'm not you and don't base my views on random misguided opinions, here's some sources to back up my claims:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...do_you_prefer/
https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme..._to_wall_mean/
https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...ing_big_pulls/

I'm not going to pretend they are all unified in that wall to walls are the only way to do these dungeons, but you can see the sentiment especially if you look at who's talking about leveling dungeons and who's referring to Experto.

I'm sorry if I offend anybody with this comment but I'm going to be brutally honest. It's a little frowned upon to pull small in any heavensward/stormblood content. The ONLY times I think it's acceptable to pull small is when you're doing super low level dungeons with green leafs or you tried a big pull but your party was too bad. Pulling small shouldn't be your default.

This quote pretty much sums up the sentiment back then perfectly. You might not share it, but you were not the majority if you didn't.

https://youtu.be/VGHkOSvNMx8?si=X-S2cmetk-A9kaKI&t=347 - Oh and a random recording from Stormblood, excuse it starting from after the first boss, Hell's Lid was one of the few dungeons that wouldn't actually let you double pull the first trash packs.

In leveling dungeons it was common sense to gauge your party before going wall to wall, but in the endgame at the level cap? Unless your healer was incompetent or the tank had confidence issues, you were more likely than not pulling wall to wall. The 2 packs > 2 packs > boss > 2 packs > 2 packs > boss etc recipe was long set in stone at this point.