Encounter Design needs to be overhauled at a fundamental level

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Originally Posted by Saefinn

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But my argument is that how the game is designed is supposed to ease people into higher difficulty levels so they can learn and get used to playing the job and the mechanics so by the point they hit level cap to do endgame content they're prepared to deal with more complicated mechanics rather than throw them in the deepens.

But maybe it could be resolvable with 2 or 3 difficulty levels on each bit of content with different rewards? It worked in SW:TOR and it is sort of a thing in FFXI endgame.

We kinda have it with Normal and Savage raids. Normal and Extreme.

If we are cutting down dungeons, maybe it's room for the same dungeon with two different versions, normal and challenging. Challenging adds more mechanics but gives greater rewards, normal is what we have now.

Though personally I think 3 modes are better than two because you can do normal, hard and savage/extreme/challenge. Because there are people who sit in the middle who want a challenge but not to be a progression kind of challenge.

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I would be one of those people. I dislike the strict formula of Extreme and Savage fights "do the dance or DIE."
I would be all for harder dungeons or rather something like "challenge" dungeons. In their own tier outside of roulettes.

Something most folks won't remember is that Alexander was going to have 3 tiers of difficulty, Story, Hard and Savage
The devs cut hard due to time constraints and beefed up extremes in response

Yet for SB and Shb so far the difficulty jump between extreme and savage is a lot more pronounced due to the ease of the current extremes and Ramuh having some of the lowest margin for error before a party wipe out of most fights in the game. Eden prime wasn't much better at certain points in the fight (eg orbs 1) were it not for the dps checks being very lenient (though it was the entry level of the new expansion)

Another thing that is missing is difficult solo and 4 man gameplay. We have story duties that are genuinely well liked and some early ARR dungeons, but nothing whatsoever after that. The closest was the Eureka snore fest which everybody partied up for mass fate spawning so it was a moot point anyway.

Dungeons are desperate for a overhaul as well given how identical they all are to one another. Most of little to no challenge and no branching paths. People point out that the ARR dungeons had branching paths that nobody did- well no shit they didnt do them, the paths didn't lead to any kind of meaningful reward, nor were they alternate ways to progress through the dungeon.
The only exception was thousand maws, but that was made moot too by having one less orb on the alt path so you had to do the main one anyway.


We need a higher skill floor at this point as its been lowered far too much and more variance in combat encounter difficulty and content type.

There's a thread going round about making the older content have lower Ilvl, its something I've been wondering why it hasn't been implemented yet. I would also suggest a secondary restriction so that you must have your best gear on in order to enter alliance roulette and curb the excess of crystal tower and void ark

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Originally Posted by Saefinn

I'm not even saying to retroactively do it in my suggestion, except possibly for ShB content. I could be a "moving forward" thing because I know retroactively doing it would be a lot of work.

But that said roulettes can get dull, running content over and over can get dull and when there's little challenge to it, it can get dull (especially as a healer, where it gets dull pretty quick because on content stuff is often quite easy for a healer) ...and I don't see why old content has to be viewed as dull and irrelevant. Maybe it's because I come from a background where SE in FFXI were like "Dynamis is old, let's revitalise it" and more relevant now "Walk of Echoes is old, let's revitalise it", same for Nyzul and a lot of the BCNM's have high end versions with difficulty tiers to make them useful and relevant. This means going back to old content without it being dull and a cake walk. Yes, FFXI is at the end of its life but to me it just seems odd to have loads of content but only a handful of it be relevant or interesting...because it ends up feeling like you have less content, when in reality we have a butt load.

The limited job system also presents an opportunity to revitalise that old content too, I had a blast on my BLU trying some of Coils again.

It just seems a waste of content otherwise.

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It's not strictly about old content, although that's where the effect is more pronounced. Even current content works the same way. People who are geared via savage have a much easier time to live through failed mechanics on newer content in comparison to someone who wears weaker gears.

Also, the more difficulty level, tho more you have to differentiate. If not done correctly, you can have the lowest difficulty being too easy or the highest difficulty being too hard or the middle difficulty not differentiating enough to again be considered irrelevant as content but still having an effect on gearing.

I see “random” being used in the OP, and I honestly don’t think that’s what people want. Look no further than Urth’s Fount as the epitome of how complete randomness would work in FFXIV. You might get four tank busters in a row to the face, or Odin could randomly decide to lock out melees for 15 seconds. Heck, we even have one example of a somewhat random mechanic that’s current that has been met with a lot of distaste: E8S’s Light Rampant.

The problem with wanting to add pure randomness is that it’s just fluff with the possibility of breaking a lot of things. That’s why the current encounter design has randomness set to specific mechanics — it allows more predictability without potentially breaking things. Random raidwides has the potential to break things significantly. What if it happens during a strong proximity aoe? What about during a heavy hitting stack marker? The current battle system just does not allow for these snap judgements. There’s also just not enough MP sustain to accommodate for it either. It would require a massive overhaul of the entire battle system for it to even remotely work.

XIV's encounters being static and the mechanics largely predictable or controllable is good in that it keeps the difficulty consistent.

Several encounters in WoW's earlier days had mechanics that could be easy or completely awful depending on how they decided to play out, as they originally did not have restrictions/rules in play to prevent scenarios like, say, all of your healers being temporarily forced to stop healing because of a mechanic targeting them while the tanks are getting pulverized.

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Originally Posted by Flay_wind

I would be one of those people. I dislike the strict formula of Extreme and Savage fights "do the dance or DIE."
I would be all for harder dungeons or rather something like "challenge" dungeons. In their own tier outside of roulettes.

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We lost that fight already, if you want something hard, you can dance in extremes and savages, dungeons are dead on arrival, people dont want to waste their time on content, 24-man dungeons (raids) being nerfed and even new ones will not have harder difficulty. Just think of this game as life simulator or something, with a story, where you can hang out with friends. We're losing more and more PVE content for other stuff like RP/crafting and people want this, after all, its just final fantasy theme park with a decent story.

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Originally Posted by Kalise

Overhaul the game!

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No.

Square-Enix literally just ---removed---- a lot of the mechanics core to tanking, and have been doing so steadily over the years, because people fail to perform their tasks as a tank, and constantly encourage your meme nonsense "blue dps."

Look at some famous youtube/twitch users who claim "man mode" to be wise, while the community at large fails.

Meanwhile in Japan, clear rates are higher, as they do not encourage "speed/damage", but encourage party play, and success.

Healers are now failing to perform their healing roles letting tanks and dps die to mechanics they are not failing to perform. When literally they have only 2 single target damage spells..... healing is so simple and they still let tanks and dps die to mechanics they perform correctly. Or in other words, tanks dying to auto attacks or dps dying to raid wide attacks, because healer refuse to cast healing spells.


The more responsibility Square-Enix places on tanks and healers, the more the English community fails.

What they need to do is remove all dps spells from healers entirely and make the damage come from casting heals or off globals. Or conversely make damage spells also heal the party.....



Stop asking for changes when people are failing to perform and have success at large.

People need to realize their failures, accept wipes as learning experiences and ----stop---- failing to perform their role functions and trying to ignore mechanics.

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Originally Posted by Daniolaut

nonsense

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Healers will ALWAYS need DPS abilities. Even outside of savage,there are solo story instances where DPSing is required. My class has been ruined enough this expansion, I don't need it thrown any further.down the hole, thanks.

Also, what's with this idea that "people are bad at the class so we need to dumb the class down to where a caveman could play it" I never see this suggestion for DPS, only tanks and healers. So what, if people can't pass a DPS check that's all fine and dandy, but if a tank forgets to CD once or a healer forgets to use a heal, God forbid that can't be a mistake or just a bad player, ruin the entire role.

Anyhow I have no issue with encounter design, I think it's fine enough. What I don't think is fine is that you have 2 roles that aren't designed for it, especially the green role. I would prefer them to design healers that both work and are fun in current content them to try and redesign the entire game.

There seems to be a misconception about what unpredictable damage entails. Damage can be unpredictable even in scripted fights. Take living liquid in TEA for example, the damage the party takes during jagd dolls can vary depending on how fast players feed their doll and how much hp the doll had. This can be, of course, optimized, but the fact that the damage taken is unpredictable remains.

Back when boss autos could crit, the damage a tank took was unpredictable. Think about the fausts in alex savage or the autos from a9s at min ilv... The fight was easy but the healer had to actually pay attention about tanks hp, rather ignoring autoattacks like we always do now.

if more fights had mechanics where damage varied in frequency and/or intensity, that would make healing more interesting even if the fights are still scripted.

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Originally Posted by Daniolaut

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None of this has anything to do with the OP except in that it's asking for a higher difficulty that makes responsibilities a clearer and more frontal issue, rather than something (that appears able) to be glossed over and you're saying that the NA/EU playerbases are, what, forever incapable of doing mechanics, even if they didn't seem so negligible or outweighed by the need for output that people ignore them?

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Originally Posted by Daniolaut

What they need to do is remove all dps spells from healers entirely and make the damage come from casting heals or off globals.

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That's a very bad idea, back when the game first came out Healers had basically no DPS and were very hard to level up or play at all without being in group content, they had to change things to give healers DPS and even then had to further incentive people to play a Healer class with mounts and achievements. Same for Tanks though less so, they still had to implement draws so more people would play Tanks including those nifty mounts again.

Personally I don't want to go back to those days.

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Originally Posted by QooEr

Take living liquid in TEA for example, the damage the party takes during jagd dolls can vary depending on how fast players feed their doll and how much hp the doll had.

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Eh, not really. It’s actually extremely scripted. Dolls are always fed at around the same time. They do fixed damage once under 24.9% and do not do less damage the further down you go. Higher HP thresholds just instantly wipes the group. The only variable is if a DPS randomly crits or direct hits which can potentially kill the doll accidentally.

Edit: Should clarify that I’m all for making fights more interesting, but needlessly spiking the skill floor for the sake of difficulty is a horrible idea.

While the current design of the encounters can be boring at time (especially as a healer main), I do find it a bit refreshing that FFXIV's fight design is consistent.

Changing it would be too jarring to most players and would need a massive overhaul to all the jobs' kits to adjust for it. Something that SE doesn't have the time or willingness to do. It's worked for them up to this point, why change it now? It might run people away from the game and that's not something they're gonna risk. They will always play it safe and they would also have to adjust every encounter to fit a more random damage pattern.

Also, adding more spikes for the sake of difficulty is not the way to go. Like someone said earlier, spamming GCD heals is simply not fun. GCD healer skills tend to be the most boring because they're either a regen, direct heal, or shield. oGCDs one's the unique ones that make it interesting to use (Earthly Star for example). WHM's new lily system is a step in the right direction as it rewards their healing with damage.

I'd say that healer design is a problem due to what SE wants them to be rather than how they actual are being used. Their kits do not interact with any of their dps kit which is the problem, you either spend your downtime dps (spam one spell) or do nothing.

SE should either embrace the green dps and give healers interesting things to do during healing downtime (I. E. Support stuff like Debuffing, buffing or outright nuking the enemy with an engaging rotation.) or making healing mechanics interesting.

Spamming Dps spell or spamming heal spell is equally boring.

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Originally Posted by elioaiko

While the current design of the encounters can be boring at time (especially as a healer main), I do find it a bit refreshing that FFXIV's fight design is consistent.

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SE's designs have seriously changed starting towards the end of HW. Compare the damage patterns of the original 3 ARR Extreme fights (Garuda EX, Titan EX and Ifrit EX) with that of Ruby Weapon EX. You will see that all three original fights were nearly constantly putting out consistent amounts of high damage on the MT that potentially could empty a healer's mp if they relied too heavily on Cure 2/Adloquium spam while Ruby Weapon is mostly a dance that forces a tank swap with a debuff inflicting tankbuster that comes up only twice in the fight.

Random damage patterns is not what is being asked for. What is being asked for is damage patterns that actually test Tank and Healer ability more than once per minute.

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Changing it would be too jarring to most players and would need a massive overhaul to all the jobs' kits to adjust for it. Something that SE doesn't have the time or willingness to do. It's worked for them up to this point, why change it now? It might run people away from the game and that's not something they're gonna risk. They will always play it safe and they would also have to adjust every encounter to fit a more random damage pattern.

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I'm pretty certain most Healers currently do not know that White Mage started out with a proc based healing rotation (Cure proced free Cure 2 which proced half price Cure 3) that the original Lillies system would have worked fine with if StB content had needed the constant single target gcd healing it could output. Pretty much the only reason ogcd heals are mostly sufficient and healers can spam their dps abilities is because the damage pattern allows the ogcds to be mostly sufficient.

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Originally Posted by Boa-Noah

That's a very bad idea, back when the game first came out Healers had basically no DPS and were very hard to level up or play at all without being in group content, they had to change things to give healers DPS and even then had to further incentive people to play a Healer class with mounts and achievements. Same for Tanks though less so, they still had to implement draws so more people would play Tanks including those nifty mounts again.

Personally I don't want to go back to those days.

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The healer level 30 mount was because the game was new and Conjurer is the only healing class. People can spec into Scholar at level 30, but that's no good when nearly everyone is a fresh level 1 and the first duty is level 15.

Also, I'm pretty sure healers had more damage skills back in 2.0 compared to today. What they did have significantly less of though, is instant heals and huge amounts of healing oGCDs.
There was also cleric stance to complicate things, if you wanted to DPS you had to be fairly confident no healing would be required for the next 10+ seconds (can't remember exact cleric stance CD, long enough to make you sweat if you buggered up the timing though.)

My 2c on this, is that the fundamental issue is that tanking/healing have no skill depth for a given encounter.

There is no such thing as healing a fight better. You either heal it right and noone dies, or you fail the check and someone (raidwides: everyone) dies.
There is very rarely such thing as tanking a fight better. You either tank it right and live, or you fail and die to tankbuster/missed swap. [1]

Now this per se wouldn't be a problem if, as healer or tank, you never had any incentive to run old content or if you could dynamically adjust the difficulty (think ARR no-walls dungeons). But this is not the case.

So, as healer or tank you're faced with a very clear cap on how useful tanking/healing is in the party, and this cap also happens to be the skill floor for tanking/healing that fight. No room to optimize, except of course going the DPS route.

My favorite solution to this is the one I've seen employed in TERA.
On top of all DPS having positionals on everything (tank/boss positioning becomes very important), bosses have move sets that require constant dodging/blocking. Getting hit is not a one shot (or gives vuln stacks for that matter), but dodging/blocking everything is a solid DPS loss. So having a skilled healer (pure healer mind you) will absolutely boost party DPS by just healing off avoidable damage you can't always dodge.

Nice thing about this? If the healer is less skilled, as a tank or DPS you can just dodge/block more carefully.
It effectively creates skill levels in healing/tanking alone.

[1] Boss positioning for optimal melee uptime is a thing on some fights.

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Originally Posted by Jandor

The healer level 30 mount was because the game was new and Conjurer is the only healing class. People can spec into Scholar at level 30, but that's no good when nearly everyone is a fresh level 1 and the first duty is level 15.

Also, I'm pretty sure healers had more damage skills back in 2.0 compared to today.

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Well then my memory is wrong, I remember more than a few times that I'd come on the forums or see in-game chat from friends about how terrible being a healer was, I recall it being an absolute slog to get leveled up and a lot of people just straight up didn't want to level a healer because of it. Now I'm just wondering why the hell I remember that if Healers actually had DPS, it's probably because my friends were idiots now that I think about it, they did all jump servers and leave my ass behind so it's not that unlikely they weren't the brightest bulbs in the bunch.

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Originally Posted by Boa-Noah

Well then my memory is wrong, I remember more than a few times that I'd come on the forums or see in-game chat from friends about how terrible being a healer was, I recall it being an absolute slog to get leveled up and a lot of people just straight up didn't want to level a healer because of it. Now I'm just wondering why the hell I remember that if Healers actually had DPS, it's probably because my friends were idiots now that I think about it, they did all jump servers and leave my ass behind so it's not that unlikely they weren't the brightest bulbs in the bunch.

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Even in ARR, CNJ->WHM had Stone*, Stone II, Aero I, Aero II, Fluid Aura, Cleric Stance, and later Holy as damage-related buttons. ACN/SCH had Ruin, Ruin II, Bio, Bio II, Miasma, Miasma II, Bane, Energy Drain, and Cleric Stance.

WHM now has Glare, Dia, Holy, Assize, and Afflatus Misery. SCH has Broil III, Biolysis, Art of War, and Energy Drain. In both cases, the level 50 kit was at least slightly larger. The level 60 kits were considerably larger.

Healers' relative damage, i.e. the percentage of a DPS's dps in a dummy fight, is relatively unchanged from back then.

They could make it like other mmos where bosses do so much damage to the tanks and raid that healers do not have enough time to do anything but heal.

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Originally Posted by Zumi

They could make it like other mmos where bosses do so much damage to the tanks and raid that healers do not have enough time to do anything but heal.

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Dear god please no. The healing mechanics are not interesting enough for this design. Spamming succor doesn't sound anymore interesting than spamming broil.

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Originally Posted by Zumi

They could make it like other mmos where bosses do so much damage to the tanks and raid that healers do not have enough time to do anything but heal.

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As mentioned earlier, this fundamentally cannot work without a major overhaul to the battle system. Healing spells currently eat up way too much MP to be able to sustain constant healing. You will go OOM within a couple of minutes. Lowering MP costs won’t solve this either because all it’ll accomplish is breaking balance for older content (like the Ultimates) by giving healers massive MP sustain. Plus, spamming your healing buttons sounds boring imo.

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Originally Posted by AdamFyi

As mentioned earlier, this fundamentally cannot work without a major overhaul to the battle system. Healing spells currently eat up way too much MP to be able to sustain constant healing. You will go OOM within a couple of minutes. Lowering MP costs won’t solve this either because all it’ll accomplish is breaking balance for older content (like the Ultimates) by giving healers massive MP sustain. Plus, spamming your healing buttons sounds boring imo.

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Only if you are constantly spamming your expensive "big" heals and have next to no Piety (which increases how much MP you regen every tick). Think about how often a WHM casts Cure 2 (1000 MP for 700 potency) and then continues blasting rather than just casting 2 Cures (400 MP for 450 potency each). Each casting of Cure actually has a 15% chance of making the next Cure 2 free so that could be 1150 potency for 400 MP over 2 gcds.

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Originally Posted by Billythepancake

Dear god please no. The healing mechanics are not interesting enough for this design. Spamming succor doesn't sound anymore interesting than spamming broil.

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This. Gameplay remains dull so long as there is a marginal output to be used per a certain condition/opportunity and all else (the majority of gameplay) feels like it's just there to fill downtime. It doesn't matter which is that downtime.

At the very least, tanks should get way more damage imo to the point that you will consider using Cure I. Alternating between Cure II and Cure I for MP management sounds way more interesting than spamming Glare (same goes for equivalent abilities of the other healers).

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Originally Posted by SamRF

At the very least, tanks should get way more damage imo to the point that you will consider using Cure I. Alternating between Cure II and Cure I for MP management sounds way more interesting than spamming Glare (same goes for equivalent abilities of the other healers).

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Unless the damage rates are minor and target-specific enough to really allow for Cure I, this will just as likely force occasional complete downtime (e.g. no Glare-spam) to conserve mana for Cure II when such is actually necessary, especially for the less confident players.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Unless the damage rates are minor and target-specific enough to really allow for Cure I, this will just as likely force occasional complete downtime (e.g. no Glare-spam) to conserve mana for Cure II when such is actually necessary, especially for the less confident players.

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That's alright imo. It would make the role feel more rewarding when you get competent at it and know fights, cause right now the role seems to get more boring as you get better.

Unless I'm mistaken on the METa, in this particular case of increased single target incoming damage, having to go into complete downtime to conserve mana would mean that you didn't use Cure I appropiately.

This adds another mechanic to healers which they imo need with how much time you spend doing basically nothing requiring bandwidth (spamming 1 dps ability).

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Originally Posted by Ultimatecalibur

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If you were forced to constantly spam your Base healing spell to keep people alive, then there is legit not enough damage going out to even warrant spamming healing gcds. Just let your ogcds take care of it.

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Originally Posted by SamRF

Unless I'm mistaken on the META, in this particular case of increased single target incoming damage, having to go into complete downtime to conserve mana would mean that you didn't use Cure I appropriately.

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As I said, it'd just require that the damage is dealt to particular targets; else AoE heals would simply become more MP-efficient than it and anything demanding enough to require AoEs to be spammed would simply make offensive spells too costly to use past a certain margin in case of emergencies, especially, again, for less confident players.

So long as the damage rate is low enough and its targets focused enough, then I think that'd be a good thing. We just can't merely raise damage intake and expect Cure I to suddenly see use. The increase needs to be applied in a way that Cure I would be particularly allowed for.

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Originally Posted by SamRF

At the very least, tanks should get way more damage imo to the point that you will consider using Cure I. Alternating between Cure II and Cure I for MP management sounds way more interesting than spamming Glare (same goes for equivalent abilities of the other healers).

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If they take way more damage, we won't consider Cure because Cure II is much higher potency per GcD. Spamming little heals on a tank taking huge chunks of damage means a dead tank. You see this in dungeons when inexperienced healers try to Cure spam a tank on big pulls.
Cure isn't even a terrible ability, it gives you a weave window, good potency per MP and a decent proc. We just don't need GcD ST heals.

Another thing I haven't seen mentioned much, more than oGcD's, is how op AoE healing is. A Medica II in terms of potency is like casting Cure II on the entire party for a fraction more mana than a single cast, never mind buffing it up with Temp or Plenary on top. Raidwides, several people making mistakes, even aoe markers should be some threat, but 2 healers can have the entire party from 20% to full in 1-2 GcD's and are back to spamming their one dps button. If I had to target something in the toolkit, I'd look there first.

I'm much more in favor of the game just embracing green DPS instead of trying to fight it and fail miserable. Both the classes and the game itself are not built to have healers heal even 50% of the time. You'd be stretching it at 20%. I'd rather then find ways to make the times where you aren't healing more interesting than to go and redesign the entire game and the classes.

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

If they take way more damage, we won't consider Cure because Cure II is much higher potency per GcD. Spamming little heals on a tank taking huge chunks of damage means a dead tank. You see this in dungeons when inexperienced healers try to Cure spam a tank on big pulls.
Cure isn't even a terrible ability, it gives you a weave window, good potency per MP and a decent proc. We just don't need GcD ST heals.

Another thing I haven't seen mentioned much, more than oGcD's, is how op AoE healing is. A Medica II in terms of potency is like casting Cure II on the entire party for a fraction more mana than a single cast, never mind buffing it up with Temp or Plenary on top. Raidwides, several people making mistakes, even aoe markers should be some threat, but 2 healers can have the entire party from 20% to full in 1-2 GcD's and are back to spamming their one dps button. If I had to target something in the toolkit, I'd look there first.

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But you also can't heal effectively if you are out of MP, right? You wouldn't spam Cure I but you'll throw some in there just for conserving MP. Could be wrong tho but that seems to make most sense to me.

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Originally Posted by Billythepancake

I'm much more in favor of the game just embracing green DPS instead of trying to fight it and fail miserable. Both the classes and the game itself are not built to have healers heal even 50% of the time. You'd be stretching it at 20%. I'd rather then find ways to make the times where you aren't healing more interesting than to go and redesign the entire game and the classes.

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I'd prefer this as well. Give healers a proper and more engaging dps rotation. Doesn't have to be anything complex, just something more than spamming 1 button and keeping up 1 DoT.

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Originally Posted by SamRF

I'd prefer this as well. Give healers a proper and more engaging dps rotation. Doesn't have to be anything complex, just something more than spamming 1 button and keeping up 1 DoT.

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Why bother? Most healers don't even use the DPS skills they have right now.

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Originally Posted by SturmChurro

Why bother? Most healers don't even use the DPS skills they have right now.

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I wouldn't say "most". At least in my data center, I definitely see more than half the healers dps. It's only fair imo for players who get most competent at the role that they have something more engaging to do when there are no healing needs. Adding more complex dps rotation is an easy way to do this since it increases potential engagement in all combat content in this game (solo content as well) no matter the situation.

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Originally Posted by SturmChurro

Why bother? Most healers don't even use the DPS skills they have right now.

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Why bother giving tanks defensive cooldowns? Most tanks don't use them anyway. /s

Why bother giving DPS self-buffs/combos/party buffs? Most DPS don't use them anyway. /s

Lowering the skill ceiling "because most healers are bad anyway" will just make good healers quit to more interesting jobs, or to other games with better healing gameplay.

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Originally Posted by Billythepancake

I'm much more in favor of the game just embracing green DPS instead of trying to fight it and fail miserable. Both the classes and the game itself are not built to have healers heal even 50% of the time. You'd be stretching it at 20%. I'd rather then find ways to make the times where you aren't healing more interesting than to go and redesign the entire game and the classes.

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Same.
In my recent Ruby ex runs on SCH I had spent a whooping 3 GCDs on non-dps spells. Two being raise, one being Succor that wasn't even intended or neccessary. Just fat-fingered.
The other GCDs were spent on Broil, Ruin II and Biolysis.
And it's not any different in dungeons or savage. The amount of hardcasted heals is somewhere in the single-digit area with lots of them being deployed Adlos during transitions in savage.
Once you get comfortable with a healer you usually only spent 5-10% or less of your time actively healing while the rest is done as a sideline activity while dpsing.

I think it's too late to fundamentally change the encounter design to force healers to spent more time healing. If they were able to change encounter and class design in a way that makes more time spent actively healing interesting and engaging I'd love it. But as it is, it's probably best to simply raise the skill ceiling for healer dps and give us more interesting dps rotations.

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Originally Posted by Volkaj

Lowering the skill ceiling "because most healers are bad anyway" will just make good healers quit to more interesting jobs, or to other games with better healing gameplay.

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Which is precisely what happened during ShB.
If you spent 90%+ of your time pushing dps buttons, might aswell switch to a job that makes it fun and engaging to push them.

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Originally Posted by Kalise

- Shift healing power away from oGCD's towards GCDs.

Essentially, make oGCD's more for panic buttons that you use when you really need to heal someone up right now, with more throughput from GCD's (You can have more instant cast GCD's that's fine, as it still causes you to stop what filler action you're partaking of)

- Make ALL stats for Tanks hybrid Damage/Defence ones.

So as to make gearing more interesting, provide defensive bonuses from Crit/DH/SkS while improving the gains from Det/Ten. So that gearing can be more interesting than "Stack the highest DPS gain stats" or if mitigation was more important "Stack Ten/Det"

Examples could be stuff like, PLD getting chances for Critical Blocks from Crit that absorb more damage. GNB getting reduced defensive CD's from SkS allowing more freedom to use them to mitigate passive damage. Etc.

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Someone apparently wasn't around in 2014 ARR when that was all that healers had for all content, all GCDs except for Lustrate and Bene at level 50.

Parry was a horrible tank stat, and you can't have CDs go down in-time because that automatically adds another advantage. DRK TBN is already stupid good for this reason.

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Originally Posted by technole

Someone apparently wasn't around in 2014 ARR when that was all that healers had for all content, all GCDs except for Lustrate and Bene at level 50.

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Again, shifting the power from oGCD to GCD doesn't mean deleting oGCD's. It just means toning down the potency of oGCD's so they're not as strong as your strongest GCD's (Or stronger)

Causing you to want to target large amounts of missing health with a GCD heal, possibly supplemented by weaving oGCD's. Rather than leloGCDfullheal.

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Originally Posted by technole

Parry was a horrible tank stat, and you can't have CDs go down in-time because that automatically adds another advantage. DRK TBN is already stupid good for this reason.

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Parry was a horrible tank stat because all it did was provide RNG mitigation. Meanwhile, the meta for Blue DPS was still stacking damage because what even is a Tank anyway?

CD's can be shorter, if encounters aren't all about "Who can immune the most actual threatening attacks". Especially if more consistent mitigation is relevant so giving up passive mitigation (From, i.e. Tenacity) for shorter CD's for to be able to more freely use said CD's to mitigate passive damage is possible.

Also, TBN is stupid good because it has insane throughput, up to double the strength of other Blue DPS's similar CD's.

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Originally Posted by Billythepancake

I'm much more in favor of the game just embracing green DPS instead of trying to fight it and fail miserable. Both the classes and the game itself are not built to have healers heal even 50% of the time. You'd be stretching it at 20%.

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Though, going down this route can beg the question "Why even have the Healer role?".

If healing requirements are kept minimal, why not just actually make them into Green DPS? Just give everyone the Echo bonus from solo duties that auto-heals them.

Why not go further and delete Tanks too, heck, bosses already auto-position themselves or are stuck at the side of an arena for the most part. Just delete their auto attacks and Tankbusters and make them simply sit there and spam DDR mechanics at everyone.

Why would SE continue to try and make Healers and Tanks relevant and fail, when they could easily just embrace the Blue/Green DPS memes and just actually make everyone a DPS?

It'd instantly fix any issues with DF queues too, which is one of their primary concerns, making sure that DF is full of people so newbies can finish their MSQ's.

It might seem like I'm just being facetious, but this is actually something they could consider.

Given how ShB changes have affected the Healer population in DF content and how much difficulty they've had in balancing (The reason why no 4th healer in StB or ShB has been "We need to focus on healer balance") AND given how so many people are asking for more complex healer DPS rotations, why not just go the easy route and make everyone a DPS outright.

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Originally Posted by Kalise

why not just go the easy route and make everyone a DPS outright.

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Probably because the easier route is to keep the status quo.