Pretty much this.
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I agree---those moments are the whole reason I play this game. I mean, besides glamours and housing.
But by the same token, I don't think just tuning damage higher would do any good. It would end up like WoW, where your healing toolkit is tuned to be "just enough"---so it's a little less mind-numbing in some ways, but ultimately you still have no opportunity to pull off anything impressive.
What I want is for damage to be slightly higher, but much more unpredictable. I want the boss to randomly do stuff that just screws everything up.
We badly need some sort of randomized content. I'd love a randomized daily roulette where we run a dungeon with silly modifiers, or fight a boss with random patterns or timing.
I want to say "oh shit" to an unexpected mechanic, but sadly this never happens after the first time. Everything is scripted, and once you know the script it always goes the same. You know when to attack, when to heal, when to move. And while you can always optimise your rotation as a dps or tank, there's only so much you can optimise as a healer.
Randomization is good... to a point. The one big issue with going hard on RNG is that you can end up in situations where one group gets super fortunate and has the easiest patterns, while another gets reamed up the backside with the worst. That is really bad design, especially when you think about World Firsts.
I'm somewhat reminded of the random floor buffs/debuffs of PotD, so perhaps something like that? Having to go through a scripted boss battle with a random crippling buff that you cannot remove might add a bit of pressure.
Of course, I'm not talking about "Shinryu EX suddenly appears in the dungeon" kind of stuff.
But we could get weekly global modifiers, changed AIs, bosses with swapped moves, different timings, anything to shake off the monotony.
Right now the only random factor is how much damage your party takes, and as long as they're not suicidal it's always manageable.
One of the reasons I don't heal anymore is that every dungeon and every boss feels the same, there's no surprise.
if u want unpredictable ... get in your team a crappy player and try to keep him alive.
you'll get some unpredictable healings !
and random also means, as said, that some may be luckier than others. and people will start complaining.
or u can add health % mechanics on top of time based. wich may be more random due to them sometimes overlapping. also the down side is sometimes u then don't want to dps too much so mechanics don't overlap ..
rarely perfect fights. having to stop dps too often is boring. while doing it sometimes can be interesting strat wise.
last, random also means u can clear easily one week while feelign u need to relearn the fight the next week and spending a night clearing again. just coz of being not lucky. or the randomness could be too small to matter really.
to me it starts already with tank healing, outside of bursters, there's not much doing, and even then tanks mitigate most of damage. I too rarely need to heal the tank
I'm a fairly new player (playing since late July) and I'm loving my WHM and I'm very happy playing a healer
And that’s fine. But there may come a time when you’ve hit the level cap and want to start eking the most out of WHM. You’ll look at guides and learn fights inside and out. Then you’ll realise:
Am I really doing this to just Glare more?
You’ll be confused and look at older videos. ‘Whoa! 3 DoTs to upkeep? AND a damage stance to optimise too?’ Then compare it to the snore fest of Glare spam you have at 80 and be just as jaded as many of us here.
I was thinking wandering chimeras, but I like your idea too.
If you haven't already I can recommend checking out trying to reach the highest floor of PotD and HoH for some random dungeon exploring. Monsters can hit like trucks with lethal aoes and mechanics, random patrols, buffs, debuffs and you get a relaxing moment opening hoards inbetween floors. Things can go south real fast so tensions are high as tank's hp melt, you hug walls hoping mobs won't spot you, no longer know where that patrol is and curse as that Gold chest really was a mimic.
Takes a while to get there, but I still find it gratifying just getting to the end in both on both tank and healer.