Please Make Healing + DPSing More Engaging

Changing encounters to add some extra raid damage (whether AoE or single target) does not mean eliminating all downtime. The point is to get rid of some downtime in order to bring GCD heals back into play. Eliminating all downtime would honestly be more frustrating than the status quo given the state of mouseover macros, but having to make more decisions about whether to slam out a benefic instead of a malefic to reduce risk of a player dropping to random ambient damage before an oGCD is available would be a nice choice to have. Right now it's awfully, awfully rare.

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Originally Posted by BloodRubyXII

I think largely Healers just want more to do - they don't really care what manner that comes in, whether it's a deeper DPS rotation, or more mechanical healing or some kind of proactive support/utility gameplay.

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your 100% correct we do........well the majority want more but thier are plenty who just want to heal and have down time to space off. i been in plenty of dungeons where i barley take damage from several mobs that they stand there as an AST no cards thrown and a heal here and there, or worse they over heal so much i wished we had a way to reserved HP. its makes me angry but i just say Ok to myself, you wanna heal time for the Wall to Wall pull with minimum CDs to make them sweat alittle. once i see that they are using their kit i back off, the proof is in the pudding Fast clears and dungeon runs makes people happy. i should know i have over 9k commendations as a tank and healer main

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Originally Posted by Gemina

If the game is truly experiencing a shortage of healers in endgame, it only makes my own predictions true. I said with this expansion we would learn who our true healers are, and who are the DPS minded dressed in healer gowns. This doesn't mean that healers still queueing up don't have issues with healing. They do, but they also acknowledge the lack of healing requirements and SEs reluctance to increase them. Take away your ogcds, and healing immediately becomes more interesting - assuming you actually like to heal and not just toss them out like free candy between gcds used on DPSing.

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"People who enjoy the complexity of juggling healing and other tasks are not True Healers." makes me roll my eyes so hard. I have played a healer in just about every single game, online or off, I have ever played. Over the years, I've found that the healers with multiple things to offer the party have been way more of a blast to play in every setting than the Pure Sylphie Fantasy Squeenix is in love with. But I guess I'm not a Real Healer after all, since spamming Medica sounds like a snooze to me.

I am totally baffled by the "nerf oGCDs to make us more fun!" crowd. I've played that awful free Korean MMO, complete with the entire "fun" Heal One Person, Heal All People, Regen One Person, Regen All People button kit along with one DoT and one direct damage spam. I spent most of my time spamming damage spell and pausing to heal as needed. It was only slightly more boring than current FF14 healing is. Weaving oGCDs is one of the few things that adds a bare modicum of complexity because at least you want to create weave windows. How in the world is "Dia. Glare. Glare. Regen. Glare. Glare. Cure 2. Cure 2. Glare. Glare. Glare." any more interesting than dropping a Tetra instead of one of those Cure 2s?

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

Make triage a thing. That also means slowing and reducing incoming damage but making it more constant. For healing to work as a stream, damage needs to come in a steady stream too.

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I think I'd be really bored with this.

Healing is fun for me because I get to respond to situations instead of just maximizing numerical output. With constant streams of damage and healing...I'd just be playing HPS, and that's no different from playing DPS except for the bars moving in the opposite direction. :(

Triage is healing in WoW classic. You have very limited resources. Aoe healing is almost non-existant and the fun of healing comes from using the proper spells in the proper situation. Of course it's still a whackamole game with green bars but people calling for a decrease in healing downtime will essentially get this type of gameplay.

I personally would like to see other mechanics within the healer role that are not simply refilling bars.

I keep suggesting an expansion on already established identities for healers. WHM is the nuker: Weave Healing and Damaging together (maybe combo spells for lilly growth?)
SCH is the debuffer, Use AF to weaken target and boost fairy gauge.
AST is the buffer. More options to manage extend and spread buffs around.

We could also manage CC, Regen resources, redirect or reduce threat, push or reposition enemies/allies, change the enviornment to better suit the team. Lots of things a support class could do to besides dps.

While many did not enjoy cleric stance dancing, and found it tedious. I always thought it was a simple way that kept me engaged in the content. Idk I just had fun seeing how many casts I could get in before I had to heal the tank. Sure while learning I let many tanks die trying to find that sweet spot but I honestly never had more fun learning to play a job / role in a game prior or even after that.

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Originally Posted by Corbeau

Changing encounters to add some extra raid damage (whether AoE or single target) does not mean eliminating all downtime. The point is to get rid of some downtime in order to bring GCD heals back into play. Eliminating all downtime would honestly be more frustrating than the status quo given the state of mouseover macros, but having to make more decisions about whether to slam out a benefic instead of a malefic to reduce risk of a player dropping to random ambient damage before an oGCD is available would be a nice choice to have. Right now it's awfully, awfully rare.

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For the longest time there was something I just couldn't place my finger on that was wrong with the raid design in this game. I really think you hit the nail on the head with 'random ambient damage'

It just clicked and made me go 'that's it'. Bosses don't have abilities that target a random raid member, hit them with a dot that does a couple of ticks, and in the few cases the damage is randomized like Hello World and Tsunami 2, it's still randomized in preset patterns that become scripted for the raid to handle.

I was just thinking in my head comparing the current tier of ES to the currently last released WoW raid tier and immediately on the very first boss I can think of a few attacks in Eternal Palace's first boss that do ambient damage (spear, poison and frost novas) that can't be accounted for by choreographing the fight with your raid team in advance and require vigilant healers noticing which random players go in to help soak, and which random players move in front of the spear due to how the positioning in the fight randomly shakes out from attempt to attempt.

Well the thing is, this game wants you to do the dance. That is why several mechanics apply a stacking debuff when you get hit by them. That or they outright oneshot you.

It all comes down the size of Raids. In FFXIV endgame content is done with only 8 people groups.

In WoW its 10 or even more sometimes up to 40.

In ffxiv a single person messing up can wipe the whole 8 man team. I'd imagine not a single WoW raid would be successful if in a group of 40 a single person wiped the whole raid.

We did the dance just fine back when we had more dps buttons to push. This isn't our first rondo :P.
Even then, dps rotations for other roles (except tanks) actually got more complicated in a lot of ways. They gotta do the dance too.

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

Well the thing is, this game wants you to do the dance. That is why several mechanics apply a stacking debuff when you get hit by them. That or they outright oneshot you.

It all comes down the size of Raids. In FFXIV endgame content is done with only 8 people groups.

In WoW its 10 or even more sometimes up to 40.

In ffxiv a single person messing up can wipe the whole 8 man team. I'd imagine not a single WoW raid would be successful if in a group of 40 a single person wiped the whole raid.

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Is exactly why I fell out with Savage after Delta and Omega. The fights were a glorious spectacle, but doing the exact same steps and maybe clearing the boss a couple seconds faster wasn't much to drive me on. And as you said, if one person might not be paying attention because it was along day at work, didn't sleep well or is just bored of the fight you all go back to square 1. Sure you can keep going after ressurecting them but then you might hit enrage. It's not unlike having a very haughty DM with a very contrived campaign, that after you manage to ourtfight and outwit, but spend a second too long he announces the roof falls down and everyone dies.

Feels slightly strange as doing SB Primals Ex unsynced is very enjoyable. We can joke around and things can still hurt and mehanics still kill, so people get downed, but we get them up and manage to do it before enrage with a chance for a dog. This actually feel like the missing link between level 80 dungeons and Savage/Extreme in terms of difficutly. Can be difficult, but also forgiving. Though if I'm not ressurecting I'm probably still using Broil III which I think was the topic here.

An OP which I'm all for. Like with 2.0 and 3.0, want the game again have Scholar feel like a Swiss army knife I can take with me to anything and challenge myself to use every single tool without letting anyone die. A game that designed Scholar to be a Scholar, not a Role participent. oGCDs would be those rare and powerful bonus heals, and rest of the time you'd have to find somewhere safe to cast something for 2.5~s. Best time was when they seemingly made jobs by itself then threw it out there and saw how it thrived, numbers be damned and could be looked at later. This new approach feels very hands-on by limiting choice.