Give Healers a simple DPS kit

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Originally Posted by Carighan

Basically the idea was to mostly keep the unique DPS mechanic that at least somewhat interacts with healing limited to a single button if possible, or existing buttons (I wrote this before knowing about evolved). For SCH if meant to be a fairy summoner I'd add a "fairy swarm", and every X seconds your fairy returns to it and a new one pops out, 3-4 different ones which each modify your main nuke, a single fairy ability and what the tether does. One is a damage fairy, etc. But, randomized (though I'd fudge the chances so excluding some outliers you get an even just randomized cycle through them as the fights drag on).

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This is more of a tangential thought about your ongoing debate about healer DPS, generally, with Roe. You commented on my fixed White Mage thread but didn't say anything about the DPS options outlined there. Were those seen as acceptable options to you?

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

This is more of a tangential thought about your ongoing debate about healer DPS, generally, with Roe. You commented on my fixed White Mage thread but didn't say anything about the DPS options outlined there. Were those seen as acceptable options to you?

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On paper yes but it wouldn't work in the FFXIV context because unless I missed something you'd just never spend a single lily on a heal, seeing how you can spend them all on the line nuke and get >2x the per-cast potency that way. It'd just be all-damage-all-the-time. And then that in turn also feeds the blood lily, so it's all a damage->damage->damage feedback loop.

It could work if the middle part - Purgation - requires healing, but then that's basically what SQEX is doing now with Holy Sanctuary tbh.

I like having various changing AoE patterns though, makes dungeon DPS more interesting.

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Originally Posted by Carighan

On paper yes but it wouldn't work in the FFXIV context because unless I missed something you'd just never spend a single lily on a heal, seeing how you can spend them all on the line nuke and get >2x the per-cast potency that way. It'd just be all-damage-all-the-time. And then that in turn also feeds the blood lily, so it's all a damage->damage->damage feedback loop.

It could work if the middle part - Purgation - requires healing, but then that's basically what SQEX is doing now with Holy Sanctuary tbh.

I like having various changing AoE patterns though, makes dungeon DPS more interesting.

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What? I think you misunderstand. Any action with (Lily) after the name was to indicate what you spend lilies on. Which is only healing.

Oh yeah, Thin Air spends sanctity! Sorry, misread that. No that makes sense then. Pretty neat. I like the complex intermesh between abilities. I wish there was a way to retool modern White Mage into feeling more "whitemage-y", but that's tricky given how much of it was left behind for e.g. Glare or so. And how short cast times across the board have become in this game, although of course classic FF White Mage had 0 cast times to begin with.

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Originally Posted by Carighan

Oh yeah, Thin Air spends sanctity! Sorry, misread that. No that makes sense then. Pretty neat. I like the complex intermesh between abilities. I wish there was a way to retool modern White Mage into feeling more "whitemage-y", but that's tricky given how much of it was left behind for e.g. Glare or so. And how short cast times across the board have become in this game, although of course classic FF White Mage had 0 cast times to begin with.

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Casts weren’t a mechanic in FF1, but in every Final Fantasy where it is, like IV, X-2, XII, White Magic does have a cast.

Actually, thinking about it more… Even in several of the games where casts still aren’t a mechanic, they still simulate a cast time in the animation. VII, VIII, IX and X, the caster takes a few seconds of channeling to cast a spell and in III’s DS remake. In V and VI they do a little chant first. only in XIII XV and i presume XVI do they abandon any sort of casting element.

"More buttons dont solve problem"
Prune the excess healing ogcds to make room. Nerfing healing is one way to make healing harder and therefore more engaging. More healing required=less need for dps engagement. Two birds with one stone.

And you can make the new buttons dynamic, they dont have to be 123. Use resources, combos, cast times in meaningful ways, reward other aspects of gameplay, That's up to the job designers but to be fair I dont often accuse them of being good at their jobs.

Any actual healer players here who dont want more challenging healing and more engaging dps? And why is that?

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Originally Posted by Wildheaven182

"More buttons dont solve problem"
Prune the excess healing ogcds to make room

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The more I think about it the more I feel that doesn't go far enough:

Prune oGCDs. Like, as a concept. Game-wide.

Every button has an execution time / animation, and the GCD it causes it exactly that length, too. That's it. No further complications. Some are very fast animations, some are very slow animations. Some interrupt from movement (=castbar). That's it, no more weaving, although it could very well be that current-GCD A + current-oGCDs B and C still fit into one GCD window due to their animation speeds. But there's no more weaving at all, just different speeds and effects of abilities.

Yeah, that is true. Healing has a lot of problems and I only mentioned one change. But we dont need to get into the nitty gritty so much. We need to address what makes a bad experience good before considering what would make a good experience great.

Prune excessive ogcd heals
Add some dps options with dynamics flexible with healing
Nerf healing potencies in some areas
Higher boss damage output
More nonmenchanical damage output
Remove or greatly reduce effects of vulnerability debuffs to allow the more unavoidable damage output.
Less punishing damage = more damage can be inflicted
Diversify healers more, more thematic with their job themes

Ive expanded on these before but altogether would be quite long. But we tend to look for reasons to defend the status quo to defend the game because well, we like the game. Criticizing the game doesnt mean we dont like it.

People can say, oh this is impossible, but that's an excuse we've heard a lot and then things were done anyway. Or people intentionally misunderstand the meaning of the idea conveyed and take it to an extreme in order to dismiss it.

All we can do is talk about ideas. Whether squex has the competence, willingness, or capital to implement ideas that benefit the game the most for the most number of customers is up to them, and determines whether the game will thrive or decline.
So far i think theyve been strangling their golden goose with minimum cost production and exporting its revenue to other projects that fail, instead of investing in it.

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Originally Posted by Sendosheng

My proposal and my hope here is that they integrate the DPS move with the healing kit so that it actually has meaning beyond being a filler or trying to a hit the DPS check. As a skeleton, give all healers a 1-2-3 but like most of the jobs, have it give the healer some sort of gauge or resource that gives them access to further healing skills or support skills.

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This is exactly what I've been saying in a roundabout way. The healer issues can be solved through more kit interaction--gauges, resources, procs, conditionals--and right now when they are trying to rework EVERY job and condense EVERY kit, it is the best time to solve it. Simply adding a 1-2 on the same button, rendering it still 1-1, is not at all what people meant and they know it. It's solving the issue in bad faith. Even feels a bit like a passive-aggressive response to the healer strike--I'll say it for those of you who won't.

And it's all to "keep WHM simple." Keep it simple then, but don't show us the simple job and expect us to believe the others will be more engaging and complex.

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Originally Posted by RiseBlackheart

One critical difference between healer jobs and DPS/Tanks jobs is that Healers job gauges are very barebones. Think about it, What does the astrologian job gauge actually do for your job? Whitemages job gauge is basically only there to tell you when afflatus is going to be ready, sages is a hard timer and scholars is mostly just juiced for energy drain.

What I propose that healers should advocate for is, reworked job gauges for each healer that...

1.) separate the healing from the damage portions from the job so over healing is discouraged.

2.) to allow for simple rotations that interact with a job gauge like any other job.

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Again, circling around the same point that we can all see but are just phrasing differently. The healers aren't interacting well with their kit--their gauges, their resources--in a way to make them more engaging.

You're right about WHM and AST. AST's gauge is entirely useless (now). It does literally nothing. It's not a gauge but a HUD. WHM's gauge has the true end goal to track the Blood Lily. SGE's and SCH's are a little better though. They both have 2. SGE's other one tracks broken shields for Toxikon. SCH's primary one is for more than ED, and its second could be used for far more than just Aetherpact. WHM's is probably fine for the simple job but the rest could be better.