Healing Focus or DPS Focus

[Sylvain]

In a previous life, I worked at a company that had the following guidelines for how users would perceive the responsiveness of our software:

• ≤ 1 second: The user feels like they are in control.
• 2–3 seconds: The user feels like they are having a "conversation" with a computer.
• ≥ 10 seconds: The user mentally checks out and goes to make a pot of coffee.

The problem with a 30 second DoT is that it's too easy to forget about it. A shorter duration would actually make it easier to remember.

I forget my DoT all the time... like basically I don't pay attention to it. I just mentally know where it's durations ends and when I need to recast it. (Or when I can't slide cast)
But when doing Ex trial or expert roulette, I just forget to refresh it as I get drowzee from spamming malefic x_x.

[HappyHubris]

Yes, healer damage is still optional (save for 3 specs) and is still lower than an actual dps, but my point is they can deal damage at all now. Before Legion or so, you would barely even be able to quest as a healer, you were worthless outside the kitchen dungeons/raids.

In other words, XIV is molding their healers into a playstyle that even WoW is expanding out from.

You're omitting that WoW has had dual specs since Wrath, so no one is questing in healing spec.

And healing spec absolutely could do damage at all and quest successfully, just more slowly. I leveled my first character resto 1-60, before further improvements to healer damage output. Indeed, WoW healers have always had a stronger DPS toolkit than FFXIV ones. It's just that FFXIV isn't tuned to require healing, so the community fixates on damage output from healers instead of passing healing checks. Which makes the "one dot and single nuke spam" even more egregious.

FFXIV healers wish they had WoW's healer damage toolkits. Like my druid can literally turn into a cat and start a full DPS rotation, where my FFXIV healers just spam the 1 key.

[Rozeee]

You're omitting that WoW has had dual specs since Wrath, so no one is questing in healing spec.

And healing spec absolutely could do damage at all and quest successfully, just more slowly. I leveled my first character resto 1-60, before further improvements to healer damage output. Indeed, WoW healers have always had a stronger DPS toolkit than FFXIV ones. It's just that FFXIV isn't tuned to require healing, so the community fixates on damage output from healers instead of passing healing checks. Which makes the "one dot and single nuke spam" even more egregious.

FFXIV healers wish they had WoW's healer damage toolkits. Like my druid can literally turn into a cat and start a full DPS rotation, where my FFXIV healers just spam the 1 key.

The greatest advertisement for WoW is the healer experience in FFXIV. It's quite impressive honestly. If someone told me that the healer experience is intentionally designed for unfun, I would call it a masterpiece.

[Allegor]

You're omitting that WoW has had dual specs since Wrath, so no one is questing in healing spec.

And healing spec absolutely could do damage at all and quest successfully, just more slowly. I leveled my first character resto 1-60, before further improvements to healer damage output. Indeed, WoW healers have always had a stronger DPS toolkit than FFXIV ones. It's just that FFXIV isn't tuned to require healing, so the community fixates on damage output from healers instead of passing healing checks. Which makes the "one dot and single nuke spam" even more egregious.

FFXIV healers wish they had WoW's healer damage toolkits. Like my druid can literally turn into a cat and start a full DPS rotation, where my FFXIV healers just spam the 1 key.

I ommited it because I didn't think it relevant at the time. It was because of the Legion artifacts, I'm assuming, when they balanced it so you wouldn't "need" to switch to dps to actually do stuff anymore. I remember loving leveling as holy then, whereas in previous expansions I'd feel forced to play as shadow.

The closest thing XIV has is SCH and SMN - why would you ever want to be a SCH outside a dungeon if you level it for free by leveling SMN, right? except....there are lots of people who don't like SMN, or even have it unlocked, and would rather play SCH at all times. Are their preferences not as valid? and that's not even mentioning that WHM, AST and SGE don't have a dps counterpart to fall onto for 'free leveling.'

That said, I do agree XIV healers dps kit is embarrassing next to WoW's. I think the most simple healer is resto shaman, and even they have a "Fire III" proc to break monotony (not to mention talents to lean deeper into an offensive playstyle) but since both games have fundamentally different encounter designs, it's not like they even have much downtime to say their gameplay is monotonous in the first place
/shrug

[HappyHubris]

I ommited it because I didn't think it relevant at the time. It was because of the Legion artifacts, I'm assuming, when they balanced it so you wouldn't "need" to switch to dps to actually do stuff anymore. I remember loving leveling as holy then, whereas in previous expansions I'd feel forced to play as shadow.

The closest thing XIV has is SCH and SMN - why would you ever want to be a SCH outside a dungeon if you level it for free by leveling SMN, right? except....there are lots of people who don't like SMN, or even have it unlocked, and would rather play SCH at all times. Are their preferences not as valid? and that's not even mentioning that WHM, AST and SGE don't have a dps counterpart to fall onto for 'free leveling.'

That said, I do agree XIV healers dps kit is embarrassing next to WoW's. I think the most simple healer is resto shaman, and even they have a "Fire III" proc to break monotony (not to mention talents to lean deeper into an offensive playstyle) but since both games have fundamentally different encounter designs, it's not like they even have much downtime to say their gameplay is monotonous in the first place
/shrug

"I'd feel forced to play as shadow." But not because WoW's healer toolkit is inferior to FFXIV's. It's because you had easy access to an alternate spec while leveling healing. FFXIV just takes away the alternatives so people level with 1 nuke and 1 DoT.

[Allegor]

"I'd feel forced to play as shadow." But not because WoW's healer toolkit is inferior to FFXIV's. It's because you had easy access to an alternate spec while leveling healing. FFXIV just takes away the alternatives so people level with 1 nuke and 1 DoT.

I'm...not sure what your point is tbh. I felt 'forced' to play shadow because I don't like shadow, I wanted to play as holy, which is a choice I was granted eventually and was happy about. That's like...my whole point? that I find it funny how WoW acknowledged people like healers to be more than healbots in dungeons and were given more freedom of choice, whereas XIV takes away that choice for the sake of simplicity.

[IDontPetLalas]

I just wanted to mention that there's a lot of discussion concerning WOW. Not to slight WOW at all, and I'm not surprised given WOW's popularity, however there are other MMOs with healers.

It isn't unusual in at least several other MMOs that I've played for healers to have specs/trees/etc so that they have options varying from complete healing, to full DPS, or a hybrid of healing and DPS. This game has really been the most constrained for me, in terms of skill selection (i.e.- NONE). It's saving grace is that all jobs can be played on one character.

[Ramiee]

I just wanted to mention that there's a lot of discussion concerning WOW. Not to slight WOW at all, and I'm not surprised given WOW's popularity, however there are other MMOs with healers.

As much as I'd love to soy over scrapper from GW2 as one of my favourite healers in an MMO ever, the ARR relaunch was directly inspired by WOW CATA so its a good comparison since the game has had WOW influence before.

[Truen]

You're omitting that WoW has had dual specs since Wrath, so no one is questing in healing spec.

I play WoW to this day, and it's balance b/t healing and dps is actually fantastic. FF14 isn't even close to this.

[IDontPetLalas]

As much as I'd love to soy over scrapper from GW2 as one of my favourite healers in an MMO ever, the ARR relaunch was directly inspired by WOW CATA so its a good comparison since the game has had WOW influence before.

Yes, I'm aware of that, however my point was that there are other MMOs out there, and since you brought WOW's impact on this game, this is another reason why having a design team that keeps getting jobs added is likely stripping out complexity- how do they even make time to research other games, even worse when they don't have anyone as a dedicated healer designer.