Healing Focus or DPS Focus

[Sylvain]

Wouldn't Cleric Stance be redundant now that most of the healing is done through ogcd tho? not to mention the several healing buffs that could potentially offset the penalty anyway, so more often than not a healer could just sit on it comfortably without ever turning it off.

Depends, it would affect WHM quite substancially making it very annoying to play. You'd have to remove it every time you'd want to use a lilly spell.
On the other hand, the other 3 healers would probably not care... SCH would simply remove it before a deploy, AST before a neutral sect shield if that ever happen (and macro?... would the buff be affected?) and SGE before Pneuma...

That would effectively make WHM the worst healer to play.

[rawker]

Cleric Stance used to swap INT and MND stats. MND only affected healing and INT affected dps actions. No amount of healing buffs will offset when your MND stat switched with INT, imo. Even if you Fey Illumination (used to be 20% increase to healing spells), under CS, your base Physick healing is the same as SMN's so yeah... pathetic.

Before SCH's Lustrate was changed in HW to be what it is right now, it used to heal 25% of the target's max HP. This ignored Cleric Stance as it is not using the healing magic stat. So any healing, be it GCD or oGCD that makes use of healing magic substat (MND), it gets rekt by Cleric Stance.

Also another thing is that the Fairy is not affected by Cleric Stance. So SCH can sit for extended periods of time in Cleric Stance where WHM and AST need to pay close attention.

[ParadoxHealer]

It is bad enough that healers lost all job identity, were dumbed down for ease, and are barely essential. Let's not move even further towards just being a weak DPS who is there for when someone stumbles. i love healing. i have been healing MMOs since they were text based. FFXIV had three healing jobs that were distinct and had their own strengths and weakness. Astrologian was one of the most unique healers I had ever played with a random element that brought in a new level of healing strategy. I loved alternating between the jobs to enjoy the benefits and weaknesses of each one. Instead of building on this healing jobs all blurred into extremely similar rotations where there is a minutia of difference. Sure it would be nice to have more DPS tools, but I already am bored playing four jobs that feel almost exactly the same. You do not even really get a challenge or variety by alternating jobs. Now you are going to move the role to feeling even less like a role? The homogenization of all the jobs hurt, but this role is all but destroyed at this point...

[Supersnow845]

It is bad enough that healers lost all job identity, were dumbed down for ease, and are barely essential. Let's not move even further towards just being a weak DPS who is there for when someone stumbles. i love healing. i have been healing MMOs since they were text based. FFXIV had three healing jobs that were distinct and had their own strengths and weakness. Astrologian was one of the most unique healers I had ever played with a random element that brought in a new level of healing strategy. I loved alternating between the jobs to enjoy the benefits and weaknesses of each one. Instead of building on this healing jobs all blurred into extremely similar rotations where there is a minutia of difference. Sure it would be nice to have more DPS tools, but I already am bored playing four jobs that feel almost exactly the same. You do not even really get a challenge or variety by alternating jobs. Now you are going to move the role to feeling even less like a role? The homogenization of all the jobs hurt, but this role is all but destroyed at this point...

We want more DPS tools because it’s impossible to design 14 in such a way that you can do enough healing you aren’t spending 70+% of your time in downtime (especially since they never seem to know what to add each expansion besides another heal)

We need downtime options because the game has a lot of downtime, it’s just how it’s designed

[Allegor]

Give RDM a Vermedica and watch healers become extinct.

[ty_taurus]

Give RDM a Vermedica and watch healers become extinct.

You know, at this point I'm all for it. Make a subgroup of caster DPS that are DPS with enough healing tools to replace the healer and can queue in place of a healer. They're still caster DPS, deal caster DPS level damage, but also have all the resources needed to sustain the party from roulettes to savage and ultimate.

Red Mage gets Vercure III, Versuna, Magick Barrier's cooldown is reduced to 30 seconds with 2 charges and gets a Regen added to it. A couple of OGCD heals for the party, an a buff that enhances Vercure and Vercure III. Sage is reworked into a caster DPS/healer hybrid like Red Mage, and the two can flex between either role. You simply select which role you're looking to queue as.

So what if it completely invalids the existing healers? That's not my problem, which is the stance many players seem to take when I voice my concerns with healers currently.

[Osmond]

This is more of a curiousity thread of what people would prefer.
When I see people talking about reworking healers overall I tend to see people group into either bring back DPS mechanics or Healers should Heal, So i just wanna see what people prefer and the reason why.

1. Bring back some DPS mechanics, whether you think Healers need some sort of DPS rotation or a basic DPS focused archetype to keep track of while in a fight. (Such as SCH returned as a dotmage for example)

2. Making Healing way harder and DPS far more of a bonus. i.e. Instead of 80% of your button pressing being Glaroileficosis the damage to your tank and party will have you do GCD heals.

I lean more into DPS just so healers in MSQ or solo content wouldn't be boring but I think either can work.

Now that I played SCH for 2 expansions now. I favor more healing than dps. I did had that mindset that SCH needs more DPS tools. As I do more savage, extremes, ultimate. I tend to favor more mitigation and party utility. I ended up enjoying buffing up the party and keeping them alive.

[Zeastria]

I lean more towards [Heal focus] --> Higher Healing Requirements;
By that i mean dmg should happen more frequent + inc dmg output on some fights.

Also it wouldn't hurt to rework our 3 dps buttons
to be more fun.

Like..
imagine DNC(RNG)/SMN(Alternation) kinda style on healer,
but with 3-4 buttons..

With the use of [alternation] you can merge more abilities
with no expense of buttons..

[Supersnow845]

I physically cannot see a single downside to making damage kits more interesting, upping healing in savage and leaving healing mostly the same in normal except maybe organise it a bit differently so it better benefits regen healers

Square already doesn’t account for healer DPS in casual content (go into your average dungeon and do zero DPS as a healer, it’ll make all the DPS 2 minutes align correctly at the bosses) and the community basically “enforces” if you don’t want to do damage you shouldn’t be pressured into it so literally what is the downside of diversifying the damage options for people who want it

Healing requirements should go up in savage (I don’t care how talented they were TOP cleared on patch with no healers shouldn’t have been remotely mathematically possible) to make us have to heal more often but that may be harder in casual considering they are terrified of upping the skill floor in casual

[Aravell]

I physically cannot see a single downside to making damage kits more interesting, upping healing in savage and leaving healing mostly the same in normal except maybe organise it a bit differently so it better benefits regen healers

I don't know why people hate a more interesting damage kit either. If they hate it, they're not required to engage with it in any content below extremes anyway.

Also, I hate how people bring up "Those are very good players and you don't see no healer runs of TOP in PF!" when you bring up the no healer clear. That's missing the point. Clearing the hardest content in the game while it's on release patch while tossing out one entire part of the trinity should not be at all possible, by anyone.