Why don't we have more DPS abilities ?

[Valmaxian]

I mean, WHM *used* to have Fluid Aura, Aero 1-3, Stone spells (now Glare), and Holy. Plus, cross-class abilities (remember when we could take Thunder? And Cleric Stance??). Imagine adding these options to Assize and Afflatus Misery.

SCH had Bio 1-2, Miasma 1-2, Shadow Flare, Ruin/Broil, and cross-class DoTs with Aero and Thunder (plus Cleric stance!)

AST used to have LOTS of Card variety+Royal Road, Malefic, Combust, Gravity, and Stella. Time dilation/Celestial Opposition gave us flexibility to extend buffs, adding a fabulous dimension to the job.

Sooooo.....yeah. Could we get back the buttons that were taken?

[Carighan]

I'd be happy if they give me a reason to have this ton of healing abilities first. Kinda goes with the role that that's what I primarily want to do and all..

[Connor]

If not DPS they could at least give healers actual buff/debuff/etc spells to play around with in the vast space of time nobody needs healing lol

There’s an entire playstyle they just threw to the wayside lol.

Note that this does not preclude one or more healers from also being heavily dps focused

[Carighan]

If not DPS they could at least give healers actual buff/debuff/etc spells to play around with in the vast space of time nobody needs healing lol

There’s an entire playstyle they just threw to the wayside lol.

It's funny how much the overfocus on balance in numbers in raids has reduced healer design space in particular. Back in older MMORPGs you had a single game that had these four healers:

* A pure healer, with a cleric stance like thing they had to go into or out of to even be able to deal any damage at all really.
* A buffer, who could actually heal a fair bit but... indirectly. Like you could give someone very short buffs to their absorption or so, like external 40% DRs. In return, weaker heals and damage was also indirect via buffing people. Since all your buffs were casted + short, you were quite busy.
* One healer that gave their own health away via a mix of heals and HoTs, and then constantly had DoTs on enemies to drain health back to fuel this. High overall output, but fragile if there's ever a gap.
* Lastly a healer that designated a target and then went melee, causing healing around them and on that target.

Were these balanced? Not in the slightest. Were they fun? Hell yeah!

[Kabooa]

It's funny how much the overfocus on balance in numbers in raids has reduced healer design space in particular. Back in older MMORPGs you had a single game that had these four healers:

* A pure healer, with a cleric stance like thing they had to go into or out of to even be able to deal any damage at all really.
* A buffer, who could actually heal a fair bit but... indirectly. Like you could give someone very short buffs to their absorption or so, like external 40% DRs. In return, weaker heals and damage was also indirect via buffing people. Since all your buffs were casted + short, you were quite busy.
* One healer that gave their own health away via a mix of heals and HoTs, and then constantly had DoTs on enemies to drain health back to fuel this. High overall output, but fragile if there's ever a gap.
* Lastly a healer that designated a target and then went melee, causing healing around them and on that target.

Were these balanced? Not in the slightest. Were they fun? Hell yeah!

...Warhammer?

Because I can tell you that in almost every scenario, Chalice off hand healers were superior. The others could get the job done, but you almost always, without exception, wanted the Chalice healers.

[Carighan]

...Warhammer?

Nah, super-simplified description of the Cleric, Shaman, Blood Mage and Disciple in Vanguard Saga of Heroes. The game flopped hard, but it had some really intelligent design choices that would not work well with where modern MMOs as a genre went but are still extremely smart in a vacuum.

To make some of these designs work, the game did some wild things. For example, you had a defensive and an offensive target at the same time. So a Blood Mage would use graft skills to heal their defensive target while performing various drains on their offensive target without having to swap targets. Funky stuff. Disciplies needed their defensive target to designate where their healing from their attacks goes. Though to be fair, the Monk in WoW recycled a lot of that concept but sadly also massively watered it down a bit later.

[Connor]

It's funny how much the overfocus on balance in numbers in raids has reduced healer design space in particular. Back in older MMORPGs you had a single game that had these four healers:

* A pure healer, with a cleric stance like thing they had to go into or out of to even be able to deal any damage at all really.
* A buffer, who could actually heal a fair bit but... indirectly. Like you could give someone very short buffs to their absorption or so, like external 40% DRs. In return, weaker heals and damage was also indirect via buffing people. Since all your buffs were casted + short, you were quite busy.
* One healer that gave their own health away via a mix of heals and HoTs, and then constantly had DoTs on enemies to drain health back to fuel this. High overall output, but fragile if there's ever a gap.
* Lastly a healer that designated a target and then went melee, causing healing around them and on that target.

Were these balanced? Not in the slightest. Were they fun? Hell yeah!

I mean we arguably already have the foundations of these ‘healer styles’ with the jobs too, they’ve just been so undeveloped or homogenised that it’s purely superficial.

WHM could easy have been the first one, a ‘pure’ healer with direct healing and high potency attacks, cleric stance type deal, whatever.

Second one could easily be either Astrologian or Scholar. Though, while Astrologian is more damage buff-oriented job with extremely high healing power, Scholar (conceptually) is more of a balance between tactical use of both buffs debuffs and mitigations in place of healing (and it also has extremely high healing power lol). Interestingly though at their respective releases both Astrologian and Scholar were fairly weak in healing output compared to White Mage because they were supposed to use buffs/debuffs and the like to compensate. But Astrologian was too weak so they were like ‘hey let’s just make this busted strong at healing and just make the buff system super boring!’ lol.

Third one we don’t really have on healers but ironically this very much describes tanks, particularly Warrior (which tbh is probably the best healer in the game rn lol…).

Last one, of course, would be Sage. I mean, they even have the vestiges of ‘melee style’ with Phlegma being mid-ranged and Icarus allowing rapid repositioning for easily moving between melee/range.

Ironically despite each job only having like 1 healing spell I’d say these ideas come through so much more clearly from their PvP design than PvE. White Mage being an offensive leaning ‘pure healer’ with some crowd control, Astrologian is the straightforward party buffer (and super op lol, laughs in Macrocosmos), Scholar is the more convoluted buffer/debuffer spreading effects across party/enemies, placing fairy for shields, etc. Sage idk I haven’t played as much but the Kardia effects are actually dependant on the spell rather than the exact same thing every time, which is already an improvement lol

[Supersnow845]

SCH and WHM also had the balance axis of single target (SCH) vs AOE (WHM) in ARR that no longer exists based on how differently they played around cleric stance

I’m not a massive fan of the shield/regen split because like every “split” in the healer dynamic in 14 it basically just becomes “okay who is going to be SCH’s partner” but if tanks would play along returning the single target vs AOE balance axis may be an option as well, when all healers don’t have do to everything they have more room for damage

[Rithy255]

The main complexity of a healer should be choosing to Dps or heal, but in ff14 you can do both at the same time. Which some people enjoy but I'd prefer actually having trade offs to healing rather then having like 10 OGCD healing skills knowing I'll be fine, managing them isn't really that difficult i find myself not using all those skills, so I'll never really "fall back" on GCD heals.

Personally I don't think healers need rotations, but they should certainly have possibly different dot timers (even more then one dot on some like scholar), gcd cast times, some might have proc skills, high costing mp attacks (which could bring back "mana management") plenty of ways to make the kits way more interesting. Ways to feel "different" dps wise from one another.

I'm mostly in favour of doing something, it's clear that healer design is very flawed for most content.

[mallleable]

I maintain the sentiment that healers need better spam. Like they should have some kind of damage mechanic that interacts with their spam spell. Like WHM could have a spell that becomes available after X number of Glares, SCH could get a second DOT spell that has a different duration from Biolysis, AST could get a spell that has its recast time reduced whenever Malefic is cast, and change Toxikon to actually be a part of SGE's damage rotation.