Healing Focus or DPS Focus

[Ramiee]

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.

[AmiableApkallu]

I lean towards:

3. Bring back some DPS mechanics, and bring some increase to healing requirements.

The math for "healers should only heal" simply doesn't work if you want to make content clearable by imperfect players, but as many others have pointed out, there's still room for increased healing requirements before we overwhelm so-called "casuals."

[SerMicha]

Personally, I'd like stricter healing requirements across the board. I don't really care about the 1 button filler spam, just make it so I don't have to do it for 95% of the fight. If they also added in 1-2 extra dps buttons to shake up the damage rotation, that would be the cherry on top.

Whether those stricter healing requirements come from removing extraneous healing buttons, or by changing how fights are designed, or just altering healing actions themselves, I want a break from mashing 1 sometimes.

[HappyHubris]

I lean towards:

3. Bring back some DPS mechanics, and bring some increase to healing requirements.

The math for "healers should only heal" simply doesn't work if you want to make content clearable by imperfect players, but as many others have pointed out, there's still room for increased healing requirements before we overwhelm so-called "casuals."

Yet other games seem to be able to design content that mostly requires healing and yet is still clearable.

Given how few players even make it into Savage content, I don't think it needs to be balanced around say the lower 50% of the population.

[rawker]

a good balance of both.

[OliviaLugria]

1 all the way. Keep incoming damage the same and drastically condense healing kits into stronger/more accesible skills. There's little chance that they go change previous fights, so trying to do 2 just seems impossible where as 1 is making a job that actually works in the current game state and fight philosophy.

[Sazuzaki]

#1 for sure. You can push to make healing harder in only certain content, but content where there is pretty much no healing required becomes a huge bore. They're turning all jobs into DPS, not sure why they decided specifically healer should be left out.

[mallleable]

Option 1. Healers should have their DPS rotations fleshed out a little more. Even better if they are built with caster mechanics that afford interactions between damage, and healing spells.

[Raikai]

Option 1. Healers should have their DPS rotations fleshed out a little more. Even better if they are built with caster mechanics that afford interactions between damage, and healing spells.

I agree. Not really asking for dpser-levels of complexity, but something more similar to tanks. Which ironically is how they were before SB.

[Kyeria]

Personally, I couldn't care less about the direction they choose to take, but for crying out loud, I just want them to make a decision already.

A while back, I recall an interview (and I'm paraphrasing here) where Yoshi-P basically expressed reluctance to shift healers to DPS roles because players preferred having dedicated healers, and their damage output wasn't even factored into raid considerations.

The issue lies in the fact that FFXIV's combat encounters aren't tailored for healers to focus solely on healing, leading to extensive periods of downtime where you're essentially twiddling your thumbs. Frankly, with the current raid dynamics, some boss mechanics barely dent your health, occurring sporadically every few minutes. The traditional approach of full-time healing just doesn't sync with FFXIV's current gameplay or encounter design.

The solution? Either overhaul healer design and combat encounters to emphasize healing, buff management, and debuff cleansing, or adapt healers to the existing combat model by incorporating engaging DPS rotations and abilities.

This lukewarm middle ground, in my opinion, is the absolute worst of the three options.