I hate to, but I think I put down healing for now. Please make it engaging again, SE.

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Originally Posted by LariaKirin

You are equally as likely as you are to mess up anything while doing mechanics.
Apparently "spam broil and press bio once every 30 seconds" is everything you do. Can you not mess up healing?
Isn't interrupting a Broil or a Succor an identical mess-up to interrupting a Fire IV when dealing with a mechanic?

You say "Give DPS the same rotation as healers and see if they'd be okay with it".
Once again, apparently "spam broil and press bio once every 30 seconds" is everything you do. Healing is not part of playing healer anymore?

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Healing is a part of healer, but look up any healer log and compare the heal casts to the DPS casts, see which one they press more, and by a wiiide margin. Is it "everything"? Of course not, is it what I do the vast majority of the time with very little breaks, and gets lesser and lesser if I don't have a team full of people that eat glue? Here, I'll design a DPS for you that plays just like healers, let's see how it goes.

RDM: healer edition, by Billy
Jolt: 500 potency (or whatever potency would be appropriate for DPS) main spam ability
Verjolt: does damage over 30 seconds, potency whatever
Contra six: same as now
Fleche: same as now
Veraero: oGCD 60 second recast time. Potency whatever
Verfire: oGCD 60 second recast time. Potency whatever
Vercure: same as now
Verraise: same as now
Vermedica: aoe heal
Jobgauge: press jolt 10 times and you can use scorch: potency whatever

There you go, maybe throw in a few oGCDs for flavor if you want. But I've just about made a RDM that plays close to healers, 3 panic GCDs, some oGCDs to cycle through, 1 dot and 1 spam. Is it 1 to 1 as healers? Eh, I only put as much thought into it as SE put into healers this expac, so prolly not, but it's close. Now, go ask RDMs if they would like my design or, if like I suspect, they'd throw it in the garbage.

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Originally Posted by Saefinn

To say that's 'all' we do is missing the point. It makes up a huge part of what we do. If that gap was filled with healing, then great.

But let's say hypothetically we still had TP and 30% of what DPS would do was TP management (or MP for casters) and the rest of what they did was spam 1 or 2 buttons, no matter how varied the skills are for managing their TP were, they'd still complain how boring DPS has gotten.

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You're missing the point or the context. I'm not saying that's all we do, I'm saying the opposite.

Comparing DPS rotation vs Broil/Biolysis in any of the contexts he mentioned completely ignores the healing part of playing healer.

This shows me that you're all hyper-aware of your Broil/Biolysis, so much that you forget that healing is still a significant part you have to think about. Healing is unique in its own way, because it's the collective effort of two healers. Meanwhile, playing DPS is a predominantly individual pursuit.

I don't know why you all choose to bring up so many flawed analogies. Your TP analogy fails because it's nothing like healing. Healing is single target, aoe, affected by mechanics, affected by other players and has much more severe consequences when you fail. TP management is completely individual.

I could point out some problems with your 30-70% split, but this all drifts away from my original point.

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Originally Posted by LariaKirin

You're missing the point or the context. I'm not saying that's all we do, I'm saying the opposite.

Comparing DPS rotation vs Broil/Biolysis in any of the contexts he mentioned completely ignores the healing part of playing healer.

This shows me that you're all hyper-aware of your Broil/Biolysis, so much that you forget that healing is still a significant part you have to think about. Healing is unique in its own way, because it's the collective effort of two healers. Meanwhile, playing DPS is a predominantly individual pursuit.

I don't know why you all choose to bring up so many flawed analogies. Your TP analogy fails because it's nothing like healing. Healing is single target, aoe, affected by mechanics, affected by other players and has much more severe consequences when you fail. TP management is completely individual.

I could point out some problems with your 30-70% split, but this all drifts away from my original point.

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The point of the analogy is that if you're doing 1 thing over and over for the larger part of the role then do something else for a smaller part of the role is boring. The TP thing was completely arbitrary and not to reflect like for like healing and something DPS do.

The point being if I'm not healing for a large portion for the content I'm doing then it feels like I'm doing nothing. So in the case of my analogy a large portion of what the DPS is doing doesn't feel like you're doing much.

If it felt like DPS was very minor and secondary to my role, that'd not be so bad. But the downtime we get a for an awful lot of content means it can feel the healing part is secondary, when it shouldn't. If it felt like healing was more significant then I would be more inclined to agree.

The 70% in cases is on the high end of the scale. 30% is the lowest I've tested for so far. Either way it's a big chunk where it feels like you're not really doing anything.


There are options. And we've been asking for the simplest solution with the least impact to the status quo. Accept downtime is a thing and fill it with more to do.

If I got my own way, I'd be healing a lot more, but the above to me is the fairest compromise.

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Originally Posted by LariaKirin

Comparing DPS rotation vs Broil/Biolysis in any of the contexts he mentioned completely ignores the healing part of playing healer.

This shows me that you're all hyper-aware of your Broil/Biolysis, so much that you forget that healing is still a significant part you have to think about.

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You know who else completely ignores the healing part of playing healer? Square.

Through constant oGCD inflation, Square has dumbed down healing significantly. They have also dumbed down healer DPS kits significantly by removing skills. The combination of the two results in a very dumbed-down role. Playing a healer in FF14 is playing the game on easy mode. As your rotation consists of "press 1 until the boss dies," the only thing you have to pay attention to are the fight mechanics, and that's just a matter of scripting your oGCD usage to match the scripted boss damage.

The "healing part" of playing healer is occasionally weaving an oGCD heal in between two casts of Glare/Broil/Malefic. That's it. If the rest of your party isn't huffing glue, you have very little reason to touch your GCD heals (except maybe to refresh a regen). Roughly 70-80% of your GCDs are spent spamming Glare/Broil/Malefic. Why is this state of affairs acceptable for healers, but not for tanks?

Tanks, like healers, have all their tanking functionality off the GCD. Defensive cooldowns are analogous to healer oGCDs. Yet tanks all have proper DPS rotations, while healers don't. Why don't we get anything interesting to occupy the significant downtime when we're not required to heal?

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Originally Posted by LariaKirin

Healing is unique in its own way, because it's the collective effort of two healers. Meanwhile, playing DPS is a predominantly individual pursuit.

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And DPS is the collective effort of five players, is it not? DPS openers are designed the way they are specifically to maximize synergy and synchronize raid buffs. Yet DPSers have complex rotations.

Tanking is also the collective effort of two or more tanks. The MT and OT have to coordinate to handle tank swaps, adds, and shared tankbusters. Yet tanks have complex rotations.

Healing, as mentioned before in posts you seem to have missed, can be done solo, because healers are so powerful. And yet, healers do not have any rotation at all, much less a complex one.

[QUOTE=Punslinger;5234411]Snip[QUOTE]

Disagree. PLD WAR AND DRK rotations are not as complex as you make them to be. The only exception might be GNB where different fights require you to do something wonky with your rotation like in E3S. The healer equivalent to your rotations/tank busters/whatever is planning out your oGCDS yourself/with a cohealer. People say that oGCDs are over powered, and that's fine. It's overpowered if you use them in the correct time and place. It's just not as stringent as what tanks have to do because you healing over your cohealer will not result in an auto killing you the same way tanks do with tank swaps. Are healer skills perfect as they are? No, and quite frankly with you I prefer the Stormblood iteration of SCH and AST over the mess that they are now. However, until you play healer at seemingly the worst situations possible, e.g. ultimates, baby sitting baboons in pf/df, you won't fully appreciate the toolkit that you have now. Also idk about you but I'm pretty sure healers have an opener. It might not be complex, but its an opener regardless unless you're telling me you don't press Chain on the third gcd or Divination by the fifth.

I think complaining about the lack of things to do as a healer in ex trials/expert roulette when you're decently geared or whatever is silly, since it requires very very little thinking. At any rate, I don't think all of the issues that you're feeling frustrated with healer comes from poorly designed healing on SE's part as of ShB, but with also how the game bosses are designed. If you look back at HW raids, they were a lot more healing intensive than now ontop of having to juggle old cleric stance. Even in SB, very little healing was required. But I think that adding Miasma 1+2/Aero 3 would make SCH/WHM somewhat more engaging again. Unfortunately until SE decides to listen to their healer playerbase, the best we can do is try to make things engaging for ourselves via healing zoo animals or by doing harder content with what we have for now :/

I suppose the question should be asked, Laria, why do /you/ think healers like myself, Billy, Sloprano, Forte and all of the regular complainers here, are unhappy?

Re-reading your post. I feel, honestly, yes you are absolutely right there is a lot more to healing jobs than just a handful of DPS moves. And yes, our focus seems to detract from a whole plethora of skills we do have. And you hold issue with the 70% I gave (which I used after somebody else did), yet for some content, that seems perfectly plausible to me. Given my own figures on SB and ShB content has been 30-60% (I think I posted the exact runs in an older thread, the 30% was a dungeon with a medium-to-full tank pull) and I sincerely expect there are better healers here than I, because it has been a long time since I really did any high-end raids as I'm mostly a casual player these days, so I think 70% is not necessarily insane, even if at the higher end of the scale.

And when I started this game, the way it was designed and how it worked with healers meant I healed more, whilst simulatenously having the most complicated version of healer DPS in this game (as a SCH at least). Back then it mattered less that I DPS'd too (in fact, I was told off a few times for it) because my healing was busy enough and the downtime wasn't long enough to find it dull if I didn't bother DPSing all the time. This was also a time when I was a raider and the balance between DPS and heals was never really an issue.

So I think if we're complaining that our DPS is too boring. I feel the question should be asked, "how much time is needed spent healing for them to feel that way?" I've seen plenty of arguments about accessibility for healers, and if say, I got my way, healers would be more complicated than they are and might be less accessible to somebody who is new, less experienced or have some sort of handicap. Although my argument would be to offer more to help them along the way, I realise my way might not work for as many, hence my willingness to meet somewhere in the middle. And taking the assumption that this is the direction SE want to take to make things more accessible, then what us moaners have asked for if anything is quite reasonable and quite fair, because what I tend to see people ask for is a varied DPS rotation or more to do in our downtime. This approach impacts nothing about how accessible the jobs are, it doesn't impact how they feel to heal or any of the healing mechanics in the game, no content needs to be adjusted, those who're finding it harder to keep up will not be impacted and so on. The only people who'd be impacted are those who have the downtime to DPS and those who believe in green DPS, which for the majority of content is not that important to have optimised DPS, and for the content where it is important, they're going to be at a level where they can handle it.

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Originally Posted by Punslinger

You know who else completely ignores the healing part of playing healer? Square.
[...]

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If you follow the trail of discussion you'll find my first post, in which I say that this will always be a problem so long as encounters are scripted. And that this is a problem for every job. I'll repeat myself, but - the fights are not designed to be fun forever and certainly not when you are overgeared/have 20 clears experience. This is true for every single job.

Do you know what going through Titan is like for a DPS player? It's 3 minutes of trying to fit the predefined rotation (stored in muscle memory) that you've been doing for weeks while making minor adjustments, followed by 9 minutes of a dummy fight with minimal movement.

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Originally Posted by Punslinger

And DPS is the collective effort of five players, is it not? DPS openers are designed the way they are specifically to maximize synergy and synchronize raid buffs. Yet DPSers have complex rotations.

Tanking is also the collective effort of two or more tanks. The MT and OT have to coordinate to handle tank swaps, adds, and shared tankbusters. Yet tanks have complex rotations.

Healing, as mentioned before in posts you seem to have missed, can be done solo, because healers are so powerful. And yet, healers do not have any rotation at all, much less a complex one.

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Why five? It's the collective effort of eight players in the grand scheme of things. But that's not the kind of thing I'm talking about.

What your co-healer is doing directly impacts your skill usage. If you change your co-healer, you change your rotation - or they do.

It amuses me that you think healing is so easy. Take a look at a world first log or early clear to find 20+ Succors. Not at coordinated speedrun groups who have cleared the fight 50 times and have gone through the trial-and-error to minimize healing to such a degree that a missing Reprisal is a wipe.

What do you think is going to be easier to do? Go into a PF as a healer or a DPS?

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Originally Posted by LariaKirin

If you follow the trail of discussion you'll find my first post, in which I say that this will always be a problem so long as encounters are scripted. And that this is a problem for every job. I'll repeat myself, but - the fights are not designed to be fun forever and certainly not when you are overgeared/have 20 clears experience. This is true for every single job.

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You'll also find that I made a follow up post to address your point.

Having played since the game's BETA and not really having stopped, I've experienced exactly what you're talking about on healers, tanks and DPS. And I've always been fine with that, because it's one of the downsides to scripted content and even then, not all encounters were unenjoyable when you got to that point. Heck, I still like getting Wanderer's Palace and that was the original farming dungeon, I've done it to death and when I tank I still have the speedrun pulls engraved into my brain. There's nothing challenging about it.

SB and to a greater extent ShB I found healing a lot less interesting to play, even before I hit that point you describe. Nowadays, I'll opt for DPS over healer on any new content not because I have less hassle as a DPS, but because I'll enjoy it.

This is coming out of a person who loves healing. Has always loved healing and wants to continue to love healing in this game. Now I know what I loved about healing, I know what specifically worked for me and what didn't. I know what changes have affected that. I've even picked points where I have enjoyed healing in ShB and what made it work.

I don't think these are things that can easily be dismissed as "but it's like it for every other job and has always been a problem", because then I would find it easier to relate your points here. As, again, I've gotten to the point multiple times in this game before I had anything to complain about for healers. And gotten there with all 3 roles. And I'm in a position where I'd be able to tell the difference.

I'll draw on a couple of examples where healing was more enjoyable ShB.
When I first ran Scholar through Qitana Ravel. It was at this point I thought, "maybe healing gets fun later in the game and that maybe the new content is balanced to healer design and maybe I'll enjoy it". Then I got to Malikah's Well and the experience was the same and I was ready to start saying positive things, even if they'd be prefaced with "but everything before that is bad".

Then I got to Mt Gulg and it was an Art of War spam for most of it and was getting bored again. Then I checked people's gear and everybody was adequately geared, not over geared, but adequate. Then I realised in the previous runs, we were all not in great gear. Then all the trials and dungeons that followed didn't feel engaging. This is all when the content was still fresh.

It might just be me but I enjoyed being able to cast miasma,II,& III, being able to bane it to the whole group, then throwing shadowflare on the ground. Or in the case of one target switching fester with bane.

Now it's just run like a mad man into melee range and spam art of war while trying to dodge AoEs on the ground. Or single target casting miasma every 30 seconds then spamming broil.

Well I guess a good thing that comes out of the changes making healing braindea- I mean "streamlined" I can catchup on all my favorite shows on popular streaming services like Netflix or Disney's new Disney+™ while running dungeons, raids, and/or trials!

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Originally Posted by LariaKirin

nonsense

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yes fights will be boring to do cause they are scripted,in the end the fight itself will be boring to do but healers don't have it the same as every other job. healers have 2 different parts in their kits.
the part used for healing and the part used for downtime.unlike other jobs that actually have fun and interesting gameplay to do during their runs healers have nothing but 1 button spam the entire run.
the fight may be repetitive and with enough experience you know what and when to dodge but that it,most of the time dps and tank just follow their rotation and it keeps them busy cause they have more then 1 button to press the entire time.
on the other hand healers don't have anything to do during downtime,the fight might be repetitive and boring but again unlike tanks and dps the issue is when no one being damaged you got nothing to do.
so now you know what is the bullshit of your point is with titan for a dps player? ITS THE FACT THEY HAVE MORE THEN 1 SKILL TO PRESS AND IN CERTAIN ORDER AND TIMING WHILE FIGHTING THE DUMMY WHILE HEALERS HAVE 1 BUTTON SPAM THAT ENTIRE TIME.

fights might not be designed to be fun forever it doesn't mean that what you do should be boring as well.

yes healing is so easy cause its main goal is basically making sure hp is above 0. it can be done by 1 single healer it can be even with 2 it isn't much of a collective effort if the only thing your co-healer will impact is save 1 skill or 2 and he wont impact any rotation especially since in healing there isn't one,it just cast ,heal and back to full hp.
if you want to argue about it then the only point you got in it is speed but again if 1 healer can fill enough hp and do it fast enough then what i said before still count and your co-healer or even not your co healer but your tank or another party member using his heal will simply just save you 1-2 skill casts and won't impact your "rotation".

also casting 20+succors isn't indication to the difficulty of healing ,its indication to how much shit that party probably eaten from mechanics.casting healing in its core is easy in nature,you don't have a healing rotation ,you don't need memorize when to use which heal,you just choose 1 of the many healing skills you have to cast and save the rest for later if needed.

DPS became much more harder to do then a healer cause the more you play the fight the less buttons healer press until it becomes a single button called glare/malefic/broil unlike dps who need to actually memorize a rotation and keep doing it the entire time while avoiding damage.

we don't ignore the healing part of our kits ,we welcome it,we love it and would like to use it more then 50% of the time we do a run but it isn't like that.
ignoring the other half of the healer which is to support his party during downtime is simply wrong, especially since the nature of runs is basically to avoid getting hurt meaning you wont be doing heals for most if not all the time in a run.

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Originally Posted by LariaKirin

If you follow the trail of discussion you'll find my first post, in which I say that this will always be a problem so long as encounters are scripted. And that this is a problem for every job. I'll repeat myself, but - the fights are not designed to be fun forever and certainly not when you are overgeared/have 20 clears experience. This is true for every single job.

Do you know what going through Titan is like for a DPS player? It's 3 minutes of trying to fit the predefined rotation (stored in muscle memory) that you've been doing for weeks while making minor adjustments, followed by 9 minutes of a dummy fight with minimal movement.

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You're not wrong, but my point is that healers hit this wall much faster than tanks or DPSers, because healers have fewer ways to optimize their play. As the group becomes more skilled, whether you're in a static or just enjoying the average improvement over time in the PF pool, less healing is required. A healer can fill that downtime by doing DPS, but it's trivially easy for a healer to maximize their DPS, because all that's required is to press 1 until the boss dies, and press 2 every half-minute. Tanks and DPSers can practice higher-uptime strats, or iron out the slop in their rotation during mechanics. There's more headroom for a tank or DPSer to improve their play in any given fight, compared to a healer, and that's why I find healing unengaging.

Simply put: any given piece of content stays fun, for me, for longer if I play it as a tank or a DPS job.

On a side note, you can't really solo heal TEA because healers are the only class that can esuna on demand with the BRD being on a cd. You have to clean 6 debuffs in 10 seconds, at most a single healer can only get 4 cleanses. Not to mention the auto attack damage during that bit. And there are some really tight heal checks here, with the nisi dot ticking while photon goes out, the autos from Brute Justice and Cruise Chaser and the fact if one person dies everything can easily snowball from there so I'll say that this fight can't be solo healed.

On that note, while the heal is intensive here, it's a shame it isn't anywhere else.

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Originally Posted by LariaKirin

If you follow the trail of discussion you'll find my first post, in which I say that this will always be a problem so long as encounters are scripted. And that this is a problem for every job. I'll repeat myself, but - the fights are not designed to be fun forever and certainly not when you are overgeared/have 20 clears experience. This is true for every single job.

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This is the crux of my issues aswell: Dungeons are as scripted as they've always been, but our skillset's potential has gone down. Before, after I had healed and shielded there was another world of oppertunities waiting on me, today I heal and shield and only thing left to do is Broil III.

The strength of a scripted sequence is that you can take every chance to improve, if you want to. That's why in my first run of Wanderer's Palace I was at the edge of my seat, finger ready over Adlo, Lustrate and the fairy hotbar for the slighest new dent in the tank's hp. By the twentieth I was sprinting with the tank, seeing if I ccould apply all dots while pulling, when to cast Shadowflare or prevent aero from dropping off the boss and stilling finding new openings where it was safe enough to Cleric Stance.

And the good thing is: If I didn't find Scholar interesting beyond healing and shielding, I could still run those places successfully. It's not like a DPS job, it's exactly the same for different reasons: I kept getting more and more active because the job would let me get more and more out of it for each run.

I keep bringing up Arcanist skills, fairy hotbar and Cleric Stance, not entirely because, if just very partially, for nostalgia, but also because I've come to dread the expansions. Instead of being filled with wonder of what kind of interesting new spells like Emergency/Deployment or Dissipation they will reveal or start a expansion Live Letter "Hey Scholars, we're sorry to say we're removing X for x.0 after being in the game for six years, but oh boy! Are we excited about these new things you're gonna get!", they've instead proven two times in a row an expansion is a harbinger for removing choices, backtrack on what they removed, introduce more oGCDs and buff Broil.

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Originally Posted by Sloprano

I keep bringing up Arcanist skills, fairy hotbar and Cleric Stance, not entirely because, if just very partially, for nostalgia, but also because I've come to dread the expansions. Instead of being filled with wonder of what kind of interesting new spells like Emergency/Deployment or Dissipation they will reveal or start a expansion Live Letter "Hey Scholars, we're sorry to say we're removing X for x.0 after being in the game for six years, but oh boy! Are we excited about these new things you're gonna get!", they've instead proven two times in a row an expansion is a harbinger for removing choices, backtrack on what they removed, introduce more oGCDs and buff Broil.

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This really resonates with me, because while my friends (who play dps and tanks) were all very happy and excited for the expansion, I was very much dreading it because I knew what made Scholar fun for me would be lost once the expansion hit. Sure enough too, I hate what they did with the job. I absolutely loved Scholar too. I loved doing all content with it and it made me love the game so much more. I miss old Scholar a lot now and I only just dread updates now because I have no faith in the development team making these changes.

Since we're talking about removed spells, Aero III. A new dot, great for si gle targets and groups alike, 24s long so it's not hard to maintain, and it also works as a cheap aoe since Holy burned through your mp in seconds. A cool spell that nobody had any reason to dislike, and it's been there unchanged for four years.

And now it's gone, haha! Zoop! Bye! Now Aero II is stronger instead!


Just... why, Square? What was the point? Was healing so hard that people physically couldn't click another button every 24 seconds? Give us damage CDs and put a bigger emphasis on gcd healing, if you are afraid of us healing too little. And if you're gonna remove useless and niche skills, then maybe take a look at Fluid aura or Cure III first, instead of one of our most used spells? Or why not rework Cure so it's more useful in the later levels? Please?

The current state of healers makes no sense.
We deal more damage than ever, healing is the easiest it has ever been, but our dps is so boring and discouraging us to be involved in our figths.
What are we supposed to do?
Healing all the time? Then why can we get away with so much dps?
Dpsing all the time? Then why was it made so boring and uninspired?
Somewhere between the two? Then why do we have several times more damage skills than healing skills?

I just don't know what Square wants us to be, and the deafening lack of communication from them just makes having faith a harder task.

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Originally Posted by Lodi

Since we're talking about removed spells, Aero III. A new dot, great for si gle targets and groups alike, 24s long so it's not hard to maintain, and it also works as a cheap aoe since Holy burned through your mp in seconds. A cool spell that nobody had any reason to dislike, and it's been there unchanged for four years.

And now it's gone, haha! Zoop! Bye! Now Aero II is stronger instead!


Just... why, Square? What was the point? Was healing so hard that people physically couldn't click another button every 24 seconds?

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Given what happened between HW to SB especially AST but it affected all 3, yes having more than 1 DoT is way too hard we need consolidation everywhere wah wah wah /s

AST from inception had a much easier time with DoT management than WHM and SCH with only having 2 yet even this was cut in SB, i could get behind stuff like malefic/malefic II being consolidated as you just used the most powerful one for your level but DoTs were entirely separate and added a tiny fraction of extra complexity (Do i have time to spend multiple gcds to maintain DoTs, can i afford to DoT at this time for each different DoT duration etc).

But SE don't want to embrace their own encounter design and how the community sees healers being more than healers, no doubt the only reason dps spells exist is because you need to kill things in msq if you didn't i could see them getting rid of everything altogether :/

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Originally Posted by GhostXO

This really resonates with me, because while my friends (who play dps and tanks) were all very happy and excited for the expansion, I was very much dreading it because I knew what made Scholar fun for me would be lost once the expansion hit. Sure enough too, I hate what they did with the job. I absolutely loved Scholar too. I loved doing all content with it and it made me love the game so much more. I miss old Scholar a lot now and I only just dread updates now because I have no faith in the development team making these changes.

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That was about the same experience I had. I was excited for Shadowbringers until I saw the healer changes at the media tour. I got told "don't overreact, wait until you get your hands on it before judging how it plays." So I spent the rest of SB playing healer and trying to enjoy it while it lasted, and boy, when ShB released, I was just as disappointed as I thought I would be. Every upcoming patch disappoints me again and again. When SE told us SCH got an "improvement on usability" and it just turned out to be that steady paused embrace? It was salt in the wound. I didn't want to support SE's direction for healers anymore, so that's why I decided to put it down (in addition to just being tired of spamming one button).

I forgot medica spells existed heck even succor when u got fey and succor.

So based on an Amaurot run, I've measured SCH DPS percentages.
Art of War: 51%
Broil III: 7%
Biolysis: 3%
Which totals for 61% of button presses as DPS moves.
Given Art of War and Broil III don't rotate with each other. I'd argue it's effectively 58% of the dungeon being single button presses. Even if we were to just use the 51% for Art of War, that's really high.

If I compare to DNC and SMN rotations. The most used I got for DNC was Fountain, which accounts for 20% and SMN it's Ruin III, which accounts for 16%.

Taking roughly the same percentage on SMN there is:
Ruin III: 16%
Ruin IV: 13%
Fester: 13%
Tri-Disaster: 6%
Fountain of Fire: 6%
Crimson Cyclone: 6%
Total: 60% with 6 skills

In the 61% bracket for DNC there's the following:
Fountain: 20%
Cascade: 16%
Fan Dance: 13%
Fountainfall: 6%
Fan Dance III: 6%
Total: 61% with 5 skills

Versus the 61% with 3 skills on SCH, two of which account for 58% and are basically single button rotations. At least DNC's 20% cascade is broken up by all skills that follow, SCH's 58% here is a lot of repetition in a row before throwing a heal or a Biolysis. Historically this would be broken up with 2 or 3 DoT's instead of 1, a Bane and Shadowflare. And if we go back to pre-SB I'd argue the downtime was shorter too, particularly in ARR.

This is likely why healer DPS is brought up so much, because whilst it's -only- a part of what we do, DPS is secondary to our role and that was have a tonne of healing spells at our disposal, those healing spells are effective enough to make it so that most of the time we are DPSing. I'd argue for a lot of content our healing is our secondary role, though I'd actually prefer that not to be the case. For all the people who say "if you wanna DPS, play a DPS class" it's not like I have anything else to do once I've got people to health.

I realise Amaurot isn't exactly difficult content, but there are damage spikes on the tank, particularly on the bigger pulls, and also Amaurot is more representative of the kind of content people do on a daily basis as it's a part of their roulettes, which in my mind should be the base level for jobs to feel fun to play, at least at level cap (and IMO are for tanks & DPS and used to be for healers too). There's dungeons that also require much less healing than Amaurot too.


And whilst I get Laria's argument that there is a fall off in terms of enjoyment once you've done things 100 times. But as you can imagine, that fall off is a lot sooner when you have much less to do by comparison.

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Originally Posted by Saefinn

So based on an Amaurot run, I've measured SCH DPS percentages.
Art of War: 51%
Broil III: 7%
Biolysis: 3%
Which totals for 61% of button presses as DPS moves.
Given Art of War and Broil III don't rotate with each other. I'd argue it's effectively 58% of the dungeon being single button presses. Even if we were to just use the 51% for Art of War, that's really high.

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Thanks Saefin, never did consider getting statistics for it. Because what you found definitly reflects how it feels to play Scholar today, which I think is more important than balance when the creators expect us to run Duties with these for daily miniscule rewards. Just getting to play it should be a reward in itself. The crown example of this being why I'm so enamored with old, archaic Cleric Stance. Don't mind the description of "swapping stats, increase X% and decrease Y%. The important bit being it made a big enough difference so you could feel it's effects. You could see more damage done and almost half healing done. Being locked in for five seconds was enough to get off a BMB2+Bane or enough time for a tank to go from healthy to dead if you didn't see what he pulled. When leveling ShB with a friend I came to grow envy of the joy in his voice as he told about ever increasing Fire 4 critss. Not for the high damage numbers mind you, but that he had something in his favorite job to build towards a big payoff. It's the same kind of joy I remember getting when I manage to Bane just right or deploy a critlo and laugh at the text "0 damage taken" or brown my pants when I activated Cleric Stance when I thought I was turning it off. It's memory even further put in positive bias compared to the flaccid spells that replaced it, looking at you Chain Strat and 4.0 Cleric Stance.

Also to add above, after running the dungeons for twenty to thirty times, I did lose count, I might've gotten all I needed, or a new one had come out in that time. Point being that I wasn't a soulless husk that never wanted to enter those place again. I still have very fond memories of Baelsar's, Sohm Al (HM), The Burn despite running them countless times for the Fending and Healing sets. While beautifully orchestrated, presentation gets lackluster after the severalth viewing, that's why I had an arsenal of endlessly untapped potential to not only to help the fights go faster, but to have a bloody good time while doing it. While the job stopped short at dispensing endorphin the moment you equipped the job stone, it was sublime when I got into the flow of it.

Actually, Quicksand appeard on Spotify earlier so to elborate further: Noted the remark how it was pointed out earlier that "we only have Broil III" isn't entirely correct, and that is completely right. Let me explain. The "1 nuke/ 1 dot", or "Just Broil III" is a simplification and summarization of the problems I have with current Scholar. As you said, we have plenty other skills, at least 24. My issue is with how many of those goes unspent in the majority of the game. Reasons I like to think Scholar in ARR and HW was designed by a human being that understood unlimited potential is fun by that the job at any time had access to the following:

Ruin
Ruin 2
Bio
Miasma
Bio 2
Miasma 2
Aero
Stoneskin
Cleric Stance
Shadow Flare
Embrace
Summon Eos
Summon Selene
Pet hotbar
Summon Selene

Healing skills not included, but still important, since those have we still have aswell as things like AF (out of combat), Bane, Virus, Rouse etc., because they had a cooldown of 10s or more. That's fourteen skills or features, some casted, some instant, some added a bit more stuff to do. Several dots on different durations, Shadowflare had a painstakingly long cast but could be used anytime, Cleric Stance locked you into it for five seconds and the glorious danger that brought with it. Also counting Selene twice because still shame on you SE for what you did to her. All those skills, and even more if you count those on longer cooldown and even those are short, right available at your fingertips, but in a dungeon rarely found the time to actually use everything. Thats why I ran them again, and again, until I started noting the landmarks in a dungeon where best use what.


It's so good to think about that I could go from single-target to a group just with Bane, M2 and Shadowflare, it's overly long cast time allievated because I had LCP, Lily Control Panel, I could fiddle with instead of counting the millisconds on the cast bar (You know, like what Im currently doing when casting Broil III again). Compare that today with individually placing Bio, shift from Broil III to Art of War and everything else is a cooldown. It's like changing gear in an engine out of lubricant, it still moves, but god is it clunky.

This is what wanted to say before claiming "it's complexity is gone", as that word mean nothing and is useless on itself without actually a bunch of knobs, dials and switches you can press at any time. My biggest failing in this situation is probably that I couldn't give a damn about perfect balance (the tweaking of playstyles so in the eyes of a measuring device they perform exactly the same, not the card(s)), while SE went ALL IN, MOTHERFUCKERS on Balance at the 5.0 table with only a hand consisting of a pair of 4s, a Jack, a CAH card that says "Cabbage" and a a Window Washer's business card. Everyone else had folded so nobody could challenge such a ridiculous hand.

I'm sorry but if there is absolutely one thing I never want to see the return of, it's cleric stance. That unreliable, borderline-buggy ability was not "engaging" in the least.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Saefinn

snip

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Thank you for pointing this out, it's appaling how much free time we have on our hands, and so few means to be entertained during said time.
Any semi-decent healer will spend at the very least half of their time pressing 1111111211111112 in any content. Even BLM, whose entire kit revolves around casting as many Fire IVs as possible, still spends less time pressing the same button than the average healer does.

We're not asking for much, even gaining a dot or two or a proc system would make me want to heal full time again. I'm just tired of "healing" being nothing more than spamming Glare and using a CD when needed.

Healers are so spammy right now than even during my first Copied Factory run, I had to solo heal my alliance in maximum turbopanic mode and yet I still used Glare twice as often as my second most used spell. I mean, come on.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Saefinn

So based on an Amaurot run, I've measured SCH DPS percentages.
Art of War: 51%
Broil III: 7%
Biolysis: 3%
Which totals for 61% of button presses as DPS moves.
Given Art of War and Broil III don't rotate with each other. I'd argue it's effectively 58% of the dungeon being single button presses. Even if we were to just use the 51% for Art of War, that's really high.

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39% of your actions spent healing in a dungeon alot of people have overgeared and have likely spent so long in they have the mechanics memorized isnt a very small amount. Where's the Energy Drains in this? Or the Ruin IIs you likely used to weave your ogcd heals and Energy Drain.


I'm not going to disagree with the arguement that healers hit the "I know how the fight works and have less to do" wall faster then other roles as I've seen in this thread. However. Healers have always been very dependent on how well the rest of their group functions, what if the tank was undergeared, what if the dps ate all the aoes and such. One run might be so good that you spend 51% of the dungeon spamming your aoe. The other might be so bad that the 51% might drop to say... 47% as you are forced to heal people more. Just because the variables may not be massive doesn't mean it isn't there.

I f you want the results to be more accurate you would need a far bigger sample size then this.

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Originally Posted by Brandedblade

However. Healers have always been very dependent on how well the rest of their group functions, what if the tank was undergeared, what if the dps ate all the aoes and such. One run might be so good that you spend 51% of the dungeon spamming your aoe. The other might be so bad that the 51% might drop to say... 47% as you are forced to heal people more. Just because the variables may not be massive doesn't mean it isn't there.

I f you want the results to be more accurate you would need a far bigger sample size then this.

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I sought to represent what the figures meant in what I would consider a typical run by giving an example of one. Getting the data required for a proper full-on analysis taking into consideration a plethora of variables into account would take more time than I am prepared to put in, especially as I feel that level of detail isn't needed to validate my argument.

Hence it was more anecdotal and made sure to clarify that it was a run, rather than anything grander. I have posted examples before, and I made reference earlier in the thread saying I get between 30% and 60%. And my experience of how SCH felt to play in Amaurot didn't feel different to a lot of other content. At 30% it was more enjoyable, if I recall that was a Susano run in trials where people were taking damage more.

And yes, bad runs can happen, people can be undergeared or be inexperienced, also in this thread I made reference to my first healing runs of Qitana Revel and Malikah's well, where they were enjoyable /because/ people were undergeared for it, contrast to Mt Gulg where everybody was geared, which was boring as heck, despite being fresh (2nd ever run). So I agree, it's better in these cases.

But I don't think sub-par runs should be the base level of enjoyment for healing, as it never used to be that way and it wasn't an issue. If DPS screwed up and caused wipes, it has generally been accepted that they screwed up. And if the healer carried, freaking sweet.

I think the base level for enjoyment/engagement should be at a standard roulette run on high level content. At least for people who aren't new to the game. It'll be different for people who are new.

That said, I also realise people have varying levels of experience and skill when it comes to healing, so that 60% might be a 25% for the next guy. Or for those who're better healers than me, it could be more than 60%. Hence why I'm in the "give us more DPS skills or more to do in our downtime" camp instead of the "lets make healing more engaged" camp, even though I would prefer the latter, but I'm willing to settle on the former, so I can find normal content enjoyable and just find something harder if I want to get a tougher healing fix. This is just so I can go back to enjoying the role and not negatively impact those who're fine with how they heal.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

I'm sorry but if there is absolutely one thing I never want to see the return of, it's cleric stance. That unreliable, borderline-buggy ability was not "engaging" in the least.

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The only bad things about Cleric Stance was the times you think everything will be fine and you go into it and that is exactly when things go awry. Then you're stuck with weak heals for what was it.. 20 seconds? The other thing was it double activating. You turn it off, and it flicks itself back on O_o, thankfully that wasn't very common. Either way, I liked cleric stance.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Brandedblade

I'm not going to disagree with the arguement that healers hit the "I know how the fight works and have less to do" wall faster then other roles as I've seen in this thread.

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For me, knowing the fight minimizes my need to look at the party list and increases the preferred "watching the battlefield".

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

I'm sorry but if there is absolutely one thing I never want to see the return of, it's cleric stance. That unreliable, borderline-buggy ability was not "engaging" in the least.

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Could be a tough relationship, and I would very much let it lie with a red bar over it had they made anything that came as close to shake up and keep the active playstyle.

I look at all the interesting things that could've been done with Aetherflows that is not oGCD cd heals but powerful mitigation tools like putting a shield spike on a target that rivals the use of Lustrate, an level 30 unlocked Fairy Gauge with endless applications both in healing, supporting or damage that didn't make me miss the pet hotbar, our unique fairies you could carefully place so the three of you made a delta area for damage and healing, exploding Galvanize effects or Fey Flare where Lily lights up an area with pixie dust, signaling a Royal Marine to mortar the area. Oh and when we are Exalted with the Pixies Lily couldcall in Feo Ul with a mob to beat up your target. Instead we got a buff to Broil III.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sloprano

Instead we got a buff to Broil III.

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5.0 in a nutshell. We could have gotten this, or that, or this, or that. But instead, we got more potency on our autoattack. I mean, main spell.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Brandedblade

39% of your actions spent healing in a dungeon alot of people have overgeared and have likely spent so long in they have the mechanics memorized isnt a very small amount. Where's the Energy Drains in this? Or the Ruin IIs you likely used to weave your ogcd heals and Energy Drain.


I'm not going to disagree with the arguement that healers hit the "I know how the fight works and have less to do" wall faster then other roles as I've seen in this thread. However. Healers have always been very dependent on how well the rest of their group functions, what if the tank was undergeared, what if the dps ate all the aoes and such. One run might be so good that you spend 51% of the dungeon spamming your aoe. The other might be so bad that the 51% might drop to say... 47% as you are forced to heal people more. Just because the variables may not be massive doesn't mean it isn't there.

I f you want the results to be more accurate you would need a far bigger sample size then this.

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If I'm actively rooting for the rest of the party to be incompetent, just so I can be engaged when playing my job, something has gone terribly wrong with the design process.

The need to recover from party mistakes doesn't preclude healers from having a DPS rotation, just as RDM's Vercure and Verraise don't preclude it from having a DPS rotation. In the worst-case scenario, a healer would just stop DPSing and switch to spamming their heals. In the best-case scenario, a healer would still have an engaging rotation to execute. Healing shouldn't be a role that's only fun if everybody else screws up.

And, as always, there is also the MSQ. It is painfully, dreadfully boring to level a healer through the MSQ. Tanks don't have that problem. DPSers don't have that problem. But outside of parties, 90% of a healer's kit is useless.

I have my issues with healing but it has very little to do with the DPS aspect of the role, and most of those issues go back to HW.

Right now, my biggest problem with healer DPS kits is SCH does not have some kind of nova bomb to drop outside melee range for AoE damage, and AoW is extremely unsatisfying. That's it. Not kidding. The "OMG, all I do is smash one button" statements don't hold a whole lot of weight with me because I honestly couldn't care less about DPSing as this role. I do it because there is nothing else to do. It doesn't matter if they made it more intricate and engaging. If I am not healing as a healer while dodging crap, I am bored out of my mind.

My biggest issues with healing have to do with scripted encounters, ilv inflation leading to reduced healing requirements, ogcd heals being too powerful, GCD heals being too weak, pet issues with SCH. magic defense does not compensate for weak physical defense, perceived neglect towards healers from the dev team; among some other things that again, have been present in FFXIV for years.

The lack of randomness in high end duties is a big reason why I spend the majority of time in PUGs for alliance raids and occasionally EX fights. Having to be reactive as a healer is not a bad thing, and those with quicker reaction times are going to be a greater asset than the opposite when things don't go according to the 'script'.

- Scripted Doom mechanic: healer plans for it and no player is ever in danger (unless healer misses the debuff)
- Random Doom mechanic: inflicted player(s) are in immediate danger, and the healer must react.

I honestly don't get why such a simple formula is so difficult for the devs to grasp. Or they are just scared to make healers true healers.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Punslinger

If I'm actively rooting for the rest of the party to be incompetent, just so I can be engaged when playing my job, something has gone terribly wrong with the design process.

The need to recover from party mistakes doesn't preclude healers from having a DPS rotation, just as RDM's Vercure and Verraise don't preclude it from having a DPS rotation. In the worst-case scenario, a healer would just stop DPSing and switch to spamming their heals. In the best-case scenario, a healer would still have an engaging rotation to execute. Healing shouldn't be a role that's only fun if everybody else screws up.

And, as always, there is also the MSQ. It is painfully, dreadfully boring to level a healer through the MSQ. Tanks don't have that problem. DPSers don't have that problem. But outside of parties, 90% of a healer's kit is useless.

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Mmmh, if only we had a flexible rotation that involves pressing several different buttons every 18-30 seconds that do damage over time, so we're not using the same spell again and again all while allowing us to step out of our rotation and heal without breaking combos...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Gemina

The lack of randomness in high end duties is a big reason why I spend the majority of time in PUGs for alliance raids and occasionally EX fights. Having to be reactive as a healer is not a bad thing, and those with quicker reaction times are going to be a greater asset than the opposite when things don't go according to the 'script'.

- Scripted Doom mechanic: healer plans for it and no player is ever in danger (unless healer misses the debuff)
- Random Doom mechanic: inflicted player(s) are in immediate danger, and the healer must react.

I honestly don't get why such a simple formula is so difficult for the devs to grasp. Or they are just scared to make healers true healers.

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A nerf to healing has already happened. If you look at a SB video, you'll see crit Indom healing for ~24k. If you try it in-game right now, you'll see crit Indom healing for ~24k. The difference is of HP pools at 50k+ (SB) vs 90k+ (SHB). Unfortunately, this makes little difference in trivial content (dungeons, ex trials).

The nature of healing in general is that you don't heal when you don't have to. The nature of scripted encounters is that they're very predictable in terms of healing.

It's not difficult to grasp - it's foolish to think that designers don't consider such aspects. They are simply too afraid to move away from scripted encounters.

And for good reason. If we take the tether pairs in Titania as an example - they target dps - nondps pairs. So you simply send dps north and nondps south to trivialize it. Now imagine if the pairs were truly random and you had to look around carefully and adjust every time. This change alone would halve the encounter clear rate. We may not care about this, but SE does.

Designing encounters is a whole lot more difficult than this forum would have you believe.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Gemina

I honestly don't get why such a simple formula is so difficult for the devs to grasp. Or they are just scared to make healers true healers.

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What you're asking is for content to be challenging enough to make healing the largest portion of our activity. BUT: how does one define "challenging" for the general population? If you base that definition on the "average" healer, those with faster reflexes who are adept at choosing the best heal for each situation and quick at targeting/casting, are going to be bored and need something more to do. And perhaps more importantly in a game like this, those who are a little slower than average are sometimes going to find such content overwhelming -- and the other 3 or 7 people in the party will suffer for it.

So really, it's impossible for Squeenix to create content which requires healers to spend most of their time healing. Even the "average" player is going to eventually gear up and learn encounters to the point where they too are looking for more to do similar to the above-avg crowd, yet there will always be that subset of healers struggling.

Bottom line is: each healer class needs non-heal abilities to occupy their time. And those abilities need to be engaging, interesting, and have enough impact that they don't feel like they're just pressing buttons as busy-work. That's why so many former AST mains are playing other jobs, despite astrologian having been given an adequate patch bump in healing power; its card/dps feels like playing poker with only pennies and nickels in the pot.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by LariaKirin

A nerf to healing has already happened. If you look at a SB video, you'll see crit Indom healing for ~24k. If you try it in-game right now, you'll see crit Indom healing for ~24k. The difference is of HP pools at 50k+ (SB) vs 90k+ (SHB). Unfortunately, this makes little difference in trivial content (dungeons, ex trials).

The nature of healing in general is that you don't heal when you don't have to. The nature of scripted encounters is that they're very predictable in terms of healing.

It's not difficult to grasp - it's foolish to think that designers don't consider such aspects. They are simply too afraid to move away from scripted encounters.

And for good reason. If we take the tether pairs in Titania as an example - they target dps - nondps pairs. So you simply send dps north and nondps south to trivialize it. Now imagine if the pairs were truly random and you had to look around carefully and adjust every time. This change alone would halve the encounter clear rate. We may not care about this, but SE does.

Designing encounters is a whole lot more difficult than this forum would have you believe.

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The nature of healing isn't "you don't heal when you don't have to." That's just common sense. Optimal healing is doing as little as necessary in order to maximize DPS windows. This isn't the nature of healing either. The nature of healing is knowing that doing your best to keep the party up is in your best interest even when it comes to DPS because should anyone fall, that particular branch of DPS output falls off.

I am not suggesting that an entire encounter be randomized. However, healers right now can witness raid wide damage that brings most players down to 50-ish% and can comfortable still DPS because they know that nothing threatening is coming that can wipe the raid. Healing will NEVER be engaging like this. Not to me anyway. The only way this is achieved is by forcing me to react. Now if a boss does an AoE that brings everyone down, and the healer knows if another one of those fires off we're done, then they have go to their resources to patch players back up.

This is why I mentioned the doom mechanic, which is already in the game. The mamajool boss in Wanderer's Palace HM does it, and so does Doomgaze (sp?), the first boss in Dun Scaith. These are concepts that force the healer to stop what they are doing and heal/cleanse.

On the contrary, I think making healing more engaging is far easier than you're leading on. I have the confidence in our community. I am not sure why you and the devs feel different.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Side-Eye

What you're asking is for content to be challenging enough to make healing the largest portion of our activity.

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Incorrect. I am asking for healing to be challenging enough that I don't get to DPS for 90% of the encounter. Players getting frustrated that they only have two buttons to push is a natural circumstance when encounter design allows for such large DPS windows.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Gemina

The nature of healing isn't "you don't heal when you don't have to." That's just common sense. Optimal healing is doing as little as necessary in order to maximize DPS windows. This isn't the nature of healing either. The nature of healing is knowing that doing your best to keep the party up is in your best interest even when it comes to DPS because should anyone fall, that particular branch of DPS output falls off.

I am not suggesting that an entire encounter be randomized. However, healers right now can witness raid wide damage that brings most players down to 50-ish% and can comfortable still DPS because they know that nothing threatening is coming that can wipe the raid. Healing will NEVER be engaging like this. Not to me anyway. The only way this is achieved is by forcing me to react. Now if a boss does an AoE that brings everyone down, and the healer knows if another one of those fires off we're done, then they have go to their resources to patch players back up.

This is why I mentioned the doom mechanic, which is already in the game. The mamajool boss in Wanderer's Palace HM does it, and so does Doomgaze (sp?), the first boss in Dun Scaith. These are concepts that force the healer to stop what they are doing and heal/cleanse.

On the contrary, I think making healing more engaging is far easier than you're leading on. I have the confidence in our community. I am not sure why you and the devs feel different.

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there is also cid with his party wide doom effect.randomize damage would indeed increase healing times or not but SE can slightly shorter healing downtime intervals, that could also increase healing uptime.
but the end result is that healers need something to do during downtimes either DPS/buffing people/debuffing anything really that will break pressing malefic/glare/broil all the time.
WHM got it with assize or misery every once in a while but the other 2 not so much.
to me ,the nature of healing is "restore hp to a safe spot" and the "you don't heal when you don't have to." isn't just common sense because once it reaches it there is nothing to heal and nothing get healed but this is just my view on it.

to me ,things to do don't mean breaking gameplay all together ,it simply meaning both healing and supporting your party will be engaging no matter which moment comes.
as for what you said about "The nature of healing is knowing that doing your best to keep the party up is in your best interest even when it comes to DPS" ,to me it isn't the nature of healing but its the basic nature of the healer player(at least it how it should be for us that play healers)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Gemina

I am not suggesting that an entire encounter be randomized. However, healers right now can witness raid wide damage that brings most players down to 50-ish% and can comfortable still DPS because they know that nothing threatening is coming that can wipe the raid. Healing will NEVER be engaging like this. Not to me anyway. The only way this is achieved is by forcing me to react. Now if a boss does an AoE that brings everyone down, and the healer knows if another one of those fires off we're done, then they have go to their resources to patch players back up.

This is why I mentioned the doom mechanic, which is already in the game. The mamajool boss in Wanderer's Palace HM does it, and so does Doomgaze (sp?), the first boss in Dun Scaith. These are concepts that force the healer to stop what they are doing and heal/cleanse.

On the contrary, I think making healing more engaging is far easier than you're leading on. I have the confidence in our community. I am not sure why you and the devs feel different.

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If you read my other posts you'll find that I agree with you - encounters could use more randomness.

My point there is that you have to be careful when introducing randomness, because it can immediately change things from easy to very hard. The Titania example is not even related to healing, it's merely an example to make this point obvious. Do you disagree that a change like this would suddenly make Titania a much harder fight and have a big impact on clear rate?

I know that Doom exists - but both of your examples are of scripted Doom. The two bosses have a cast bar or an animation telling you they're casting their Doom mechanic.

You say it's far easier than I think, but these are just empty words until you give a more thought out description of how your random Doom mechanic would work.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Gemina

Incorrect. I am asking for healing to be challenging enough that I don't get to DPS for 90% of the encounter. Players getting frustrated that they only have two buttons to push is a natural circumstance when encounter design allows for such large DPS windows.

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A moment, good person. Do you want to fear for your tank's life aswell as your own? Do you want to not have the time to cast even one Stone because the tank's hp can drop at incredible speeds fighting just one mob and it's chance to crit? Do you want to see an overeager dps run head and cut a corner ahead of the tank only to be smeared on the floor by a patroling manticore? Open a gold chest desperatly hoping for a useful pomander only to get a mimic, step on a luring trap seeing four red lines target you and clench your closing muscles as you hide in a corner, hoping the patrols don't find you so you can ressurect rest of the party knowing that if you die too, you all go the whole way back to the start where you were five hours ago? Dare you enter the Deep Dungeons?

Coming straight out of a recent Heaven-on-High run, it really still is one of it the highlights for me in this game in terms of healing. And while you need to spend 2-4 hours getting to floors 151+ in PotD and 71+ in HoH, it's been very worth as no two runs have ever been the same with tons of near misses and wipes, memories still vivid today. And it's a great breath of fresh air from getting Anyder, Steps of Faith and Satasha again for Roulettes, where after running so many times and I can feel the thousand little hands choregraphing the whole thing from start to finish. Comparing to PotD in 2016, with 3.0 Scholar was even more of a riot there for how much application I had for the tools and Selene (still shame on you SE).

To get over the "3 hours in less than dangerous floors to get where shit gets real"-requirement would love to see random versions of old dungeons. I'd call it "The Soused's Song": "After brewing business booms in Wright you find a soused patron claiming to be a great adventurer and wants to tell you of his exploits. Problem is he can't remember the name of places he's been. So you tell him the name of a dungeon you've been to and he recounts his timethere. Being incredibly drunk his story twists, turns, ebbs and flows each time, prepare for a new experience each time." Enemy placement, traps, bosses hypertuned mobs, enemy type, patrols, buffs, debuffs, coffers and loot all randomized. No particular reward for getting through, only what you can find and succesfully bringing to the exit. Some good unpredictability and danger with fear of losing both items and time and soon as you enter a train of chimeras start patroling toward you.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Gemina

Incorrect. I am asking for healing to be challenging enough that I don't get to DPS for 90% of the encounter. Players getting frustrated that they only have two buttons to push is a natural circumstance when encounter design allows for such large DPS windows.

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Encounters are, for the large part, designed to give EVERY player some responsibility for his/her character's health -- with mechanics and scripts. Obviously there are also parts of each encounter in which healers must react to unavoidable damage. And devs have to walk a line between challenging healers with those parts, and not overwhelming the folks who aren't as good (or as hardcore) in min-maxing their performance. However, it is also obvious that devs want players to feel rewarded when they learn mechanics and can avoid some of the pitfalls; your notion of making encounters more random takes away a big chunk of that reward.

I don't think you'll find many of us who will back down from arguing that we need more comprehensive non-heal abilities, because we aren't expecting SE to suddenly change the nature of its design parameters. We know we're probably never going to spend 90% of our time healing, and even if we did, we'd want that remaining 10% to be more than spamming one nuke and one dot.

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Originally Posted by LariaKirin

The nature of healing in general is that you don't heal when you don't have to. The nature of scripted encounters is that they're very predictable in terms of healing.

And for good reason. If we take the tether pairs in Titania as an example - they target dps - nondps pairs. So you simply send dps north and nondps south to trivialize it. Now imagine if the pairs were truly random and you had to look around carefully and adjust every time. This change alone would halve the encounter clear rate. We may not care about this, but SE does.

Designing encounters is a whole lot more difficult than this forum would have you believe.

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The encounters are designed in a way to prevent players from catching up to their mistakes. A huge chunk of the mechanics involve instant death in some way. That's what makes encounters complicated. The problem is no amount of healing can solve those prevalent mechanics nor is it meant to. The mistake is bound to either kill the player or simply kill the party. So from time to time SE puts some scripted "heal checks" where healers need to keep the party from dying from unavoidable damage.

Those moments are an exception rather than a rule.