How would you solve the boring "damage rotation" of the healers?

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Originally Posted by Nizzi

Here is their satisfactory solution: Go play another game or MMO where you do not have to do DPS on a healer.

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Beyond the nastiness of the sentiment, it's a bit of an odd stance to take considering that the designer of this game has gone on record saying that's not the game he's trying to make, which suggests that the fact that it is that kind of game is an accident and that given enough time he will eventually correct that mistake. That being the case, I hope you'll find it satisfactory if one day you need to find a different game because Yoshi-P achieves his goal. Not that I wish that on you; I would by far prefer a design that works for everyone.

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Originally Posted by Saraide

If someone wants to stay bad and not dps as healer then they can (doesnt mean they should) just not use DPS buttons. At that point it doesnt matter if you have one only glare or an entire damage rotation. This is why this point about "well some healers dont want more than glare" is kinda pointless because you can just be bad and the game doesnt really try to stop you.

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It's only pointless if you take a blind eye to the culture that is created by mechanics. As Yoshi-P himself put it (translated from Japanese):

So I totally understand that those healers that have a very high player skill level and they’ve really mastered their jobs go into these different raids or battles and when they do have some downtime between their heals they do cast more offensive spells. Some of them desire to have more technical aspects of it so they are more active and I totally understand that sentiment. But of course the basis of a healer is to heal so I think the development team and I have this thinking of getting that sense of exhilaration from doing really good heal work.

That being said I don’t think we would do any sort of dramatic addition of offensive skills moving forward. By having these offensive abilities some players, like new healers, might feel pressured like “oh do I have to have good DPS while I’m healing?” or some players might be aggressive like “oh hey you have an offensive skill in your kit, why don’t you use it?” and I don’t think that’s optimal either.

He's right.

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Originally Posted by LilimoLimomo

It's only pointless if you take a blind eye to the culture that is created by mechanics. As Yoshi-P himself put it (translated from Japanese):

So I totally understand that those healers that have a very high player skill level and they’ve really mastered their jobs go into these different raids or battles and when they do have some downtime between their heals they do cast more offensive spells. Some of them desire to have more technical aspects of it so they are more active and I totally understand that sentiment. But of course the basis of a healer is to heal so I think the development team and I have this thinking of getting that sense of exhilaration from doing really good heal work.

That being said I don’t think we would do any sort of dramatic addition of offensive skills moving forward. By having these offensive abilities some players, like new healers, might feel pressured like “oh do I have to have good DPS while I’m healing?” or some players might be aggressive like “oh hey you have an offensive skill in your kit, why don’t you use it?” and I don’t think that’s optimal either.

He's right.

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The basis of a tank is to defend, so why is it that tanks continue to get new attacks every expansion? Why aren't we expanding on their ability to control aggro and defend against attacks rather than adding Blade of Faith/Truth/Valor? Why does Dark Knight get Shadowbringer and Salt and Darkness, but White Mage get's Aquaveil and Liturgy of the Mouthful? What about all the new tanks that might feel pressured to do good DPS while tanking? What if someone yells at a Gunbreaker for misaligning their No Mercy?

Sure, tanks need some attacks to be able to solo, but why isn't Paladin's DPS library just Royal Authority as a spammable attack, Goring Blade as a 30 second DoT, Holy Circle as an AoE, and Confiteor as a DPS refund for using some GCD defensive cooldown? Why does a Paladin need more than that when they aren't a DPS? Why do they continue to get new attacks expansion after expansion, but I'm not allowed to have a Gunbreaker-level DPS kit on Sage, the healer who was marketed as a DPS-oriented healer?

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

I just can't stand this double standard where no one yells at a Warrior asking for a new attack to spend Beast Gauge on, but a healer asks for another attack and it's "I play healer to HEAL. If I wanted to DPS, I'd play a DPS" Bet. I play tank to TANK! If I wanted to DPS, I'd play DPS.

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Tanks already have a full arsenal of attacks. One more attack doesn't move the needle any more than giving a DPS one more attack. But if you give a healer two more attacks you've nearly doubled their offensive kit.

And this last part is just my subjective opinion, but I think that's because tanks in FF14 are already so lacking in mechanical identity that they are little more than DPS with a bigger health pool and some defensive cooldowns. Their fight was lost long ago, while healers still have a chance.

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Originally Posted by LilimoLimomo

It's only pointless if you take a blind eye to the culture that is created by mechanics. As Yoshi-P himself put it (translated from Japanese):

So I totally understand that those healers that have a very high player skill level and they’ve really mastered their jobs go into these different raids or battles and when they do have some downtime between their heals they do cast more offensive spells. Some of them desire to have more technical aspects of it so they are more active and I totally understand that sentiment. But of course the basis of a healer is to heal so I think the development team and I have this thinking of getting that sense of exhilaration from doing really good heal work.

That being said I don’t think we would do any sort of dramatic addition of offensive skills moving forward. By having these offensive abilities some players, like new healers, might feel pressured like “oh do I have to have good DPS while I’m healing?” or some players might be aggressive like “oh hey you have an offensive skill in your kit, why don’t you use it?” and I don’t think that’s optimal either.

He's right.

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He isnt right. The average DF experience proves this beyond a shadow of a doubt. Many dps players also do not use their full kit. They still exist and will continue to exist. They are not bullied out of the game. Many healers in your average DF experience also do not frequently use their singular damage button. His logic should apply here already but it doesnt.

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Originally Posted by LilimoLimomo

Tanks already have a full arsenal of attacks. One more attack doesn't move the needle any more than giving a DPS one more attack. But if you give a healer two more attacks you've nearly doubled their offensive kit.

And this last part is just my subjective opinion, but I think that's because tanks in FF14 are already so lacking in mechanical identity that they are little more than DPS with a bigger health pool and some defensive cooldowns. Their fight was lost long ago, while healers still have a chance.


I would personally say that the tanks in this game have the same DPS/tank mechanics ratio as RDM has DPS/heal mechanics ratio. It's low. There is not much that a tank does that is different than a DPS.

Healers, on the other hand, actually have a mechanical identity.

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I love using 2 AoE heals in a 4 minute dungeon boss fight as my mechanical identity because that's how infrequently many dungeon bosses actually deal damage to the party. I've had to have surgery on my thumb because of the damage mashing Dosis has done to it for the 82 casts of it I perform during that 4 minute fight, but I'm sure glad I got to use Kerachole twice.

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Originally Posted by Saraide

He isnt right. The average DF experience proves this beyond a shadow of a doubt. Many dps players also do not use their full kit. They still exist and will continue to exist. They are not bullied out of the game. Many healers in your average DF experience also do not frequently use their singular damage button. His logic should apply here already but it doesnt.

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You're focusing too much on the most extreme outcomes, when there's actually a lot of room for unpleasantness between "totally fine" and "bullied to the point of leaving the game". Because while you're right in saying that many players do play sub-optimally, you would not be correct were you to say that there wasn't negative pressure being applied to many of these players to play differently. As a key person in charge of the game, Yoshi-P cares about that, and understands that he his decisions can make that worse or better. I will simply say that I agree with his choice.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

The basis of a tank is to defend, so why is it that tanks continue to get new attacks every expansion? Why aren't we expanding on their ability to control aggro and defend against attacks rather than adding Blade of Faith/Truth/Valor? Why does Dark Knight get Shadowbringer and Salt and Darkness, but White Mage get's Aquaveil and Liturgy of the Mouthful? What about all the new tanks that might feel pressured to do good DPS while tanking? What if someone yells at a Gunbreaker for misaligning their No Mercy?

Sure, tanks need some attacks to be able to solo, but why isn't Paladin's DPS library just Royal Authority as a spammable attack, Goring Blade as a 30 second DoT, Holy Circle as an AoE, and Confiteor as a DPS refund for using some GCD defensive cooldown? Why does a Paladin need more than that when they aren't a DPS? Why do they continue to get new attacks expansion after expansion, but I'm not allowed to have a Gunbreaker-level DPS kit on Sage, the healer who was marketed as a DPS-oriented healer?

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Tanks in this game are essentially just a melee DPS that exchanges some damage potency to gain increased durability and enmity generation. The devs have already overtuned the enmity generation to the point it's become a braindead process. Healer however is a role that normally should be adapting and reacting to changing circumstances during combat. Hence it's lack of any sort of proper rotation for healing or damage output. The issue is everything that has been done for the sake of "accessibility" which has created a situation where a healer often feels unnecessary unless playing with extremely bad players.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

I love using 2 AoE heals in a 4 minute dungeon boss fight as my mechanical identity because that's how infrequently many dungeon bosses actually deal damage to the party. I've had to have surgery on my thumb because of the damage mashing Dosis has done to it for the 82 casts of it I perform during that 4 minute fight, but I'm sure glad I got to use Kerachole twice.

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With respect, you're telling me this like we're not on the same page about that being a problem. We just have different ideas of how to solve it.

Unrelated to anything in this debate, as someone with hand and wrist issues myself, I strongly recommend you don't mash, especially if it's resulting in medical issues. The GCD is 2.5 seconds, so only press it that often. Your GCD slipping is not worth your physical well-being. Especially in a dungeon. Regardless of which side either of us takes in this silly debate over what will make our free-time game more fun, you're a living person and I care about your well-being.

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Originally Posted by LilimoLimomo

It's only pointless if you take a blind eye to the culture that is created by mechanics. As Yoshi-P himself put it (translated from Japanese):

So I totally understand that those healers that have a very high player skill level and they’ve really mastered their jobs go into these different raids or battles and when they do have some downtime between their heals they do cast more offensive spells. Some of them desire to have more technical aspects of it so they are more active and I totally understand that sentiment. But of course the basis of a healer is to heal so I think the development team and I have this thinking of getting that sense of exhilaration from doing really good heal work.

That being said I don’t think we would do any sort of dramatic addition of offensive skills moving forward. By having these offensive abilities some players, like new healers, might feel pressured like “oh do I have to have good DPS while I’m healing?” or some players might be aggressive like “oh hey you have an offensive skill in your kit, why don’t you use it?” and I don’t think that’s optimal either.

He's right.

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Double standard.

Majority of players in ALL roles already sitting on some of their kits playing within their dream bubble freestyling beyond recognition. People stayed silent for the most part. And if there are oddballs who think it's a great idea to be rude about it, ToS already protects these snowflakes.

So why is it okay for DPS/Tanks but suddenly it's a different story for Healer? (not directed at you, specifically).

Again, even if this is really an 'accidental' rather than done on purpose, how many times do you wish to excuse them with the same reason after 6+ years of questionable job design? There's got to be the point where one would begin to doubt this is accidental, at all. Once or twice seems plausible. Beyond that it's either ignorance, incompetence, or a mix of both.

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Originally Posted by RitsukoSonoda

Tanks in this game are essentially just a melee DPS that exchanges some damage potency to gain increased durability and enmity generation. The devs have already overtuned the enmity generation to the point it's become a braindead process. Healer however is a role that normally should be adapting and reacting to changing circumstances during combat. Hence it's lack of any sort of proper rotation for healing or damage output. The issue is everything that has been done for the sake of "accessibility" which has created a situation where a healer often feels unnecessary unless playing with extremely bad players.

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All I'm hearing are excuses. So basically, there is no good reason for tanks to continue getting more and more DPS variety while healers don't, for tanks to have free speech to ask for new DPS attacks while healers get kicked in the balls every time we bring up wanting a few extra attack spells to make downtime less brain-rotting, or for tanks to not have the same miserably shallow DPS options in favor of an egregious amount of defensive cooldowns they don't need.

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Originally Posted by LilimoLimomo

Tanks already have a full arsenal of attacks. One more attack doesn't move the needle any more than giving a DPS one more attack. But if you give a healer two more attacks you've nearly doubled their offensive kit.

And this last part is just my subjective opinion, but I think that's because tanks in FF14 are already so lacking in mechanical identity that they are little more than DPS with a bigger health pool and some defensive cooldowns. Their fight was lost long ago, while healers still have a chance.

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That seems incredibly unfair then to Scholars who used to have a lot more DPS skills. Now if they ask for those back, suddenly they're asking for "triple the amount they currently have". If SCH never lost those, would you suddenly be okay with them having another DPS skill? And if it's okay for Scholars to have extra attacks in that scenario, why is WHM and AST suddenly not allowed to have that?

Tanks are also about 50/50 in DPS/defensives, the ratio is a lot higher than you realise. Aggro wasn't all that meaningful when it was there beyond the opener or someone forgetting Diversion, so it's loss wasn't felt all that painfully for most tanks. The loss of positioning is seen as more of a problem, and that's a fight design issue, not a kit issue.

DPSing as healers is ultimately going to be necessary no matter how much healing is required, and the lax healing requirements in casual content means that someone doing that with a modicum of skill behind them is going to get bored quickly. The solution is to make the downtime engaging in some way rather than forcing savage-level healing on the healer who can't keep up with that. DPS is the obvious answer because it is always useful, and buffs are just indirect DPS.

Also healers having mechanical identity... SCH and SGE say otherwise. The two are so close in design that I have the same buttons on the same places on my hotbar. Tanks have a similar issue, especially between WAR and DRK, but you don't see nearly as many people complaining about those 2 compared to the healers. WAR at least plays differently enough in how frequently it uses and generates Beast Gauge compared to Blood Gauge, while DRK is extremely oGCD heavy and requires rapid inputs. That alone gives a separate feel for the jobs.

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Originally Posted by LilimoLimomo

With respect, you're telling me this like we're not on the same page about that being a problem. We just have different ideas of how to solve it.

Unrelated to anything in this debate, as someone with hand and wrist issues myself, I strongly recommend you don't mash, especially if it's resulting in medical issues. The GCD is 2.5 seconds, so only press it that often. Your GCD slipping is not worth your physical well-being. Especially in a dungeon. Regardless of which side either of us takes in this silly debate over what will make our free-time game more fun, you're a living person and I care about your well-being.

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And I don't believe your solution will make a dent in that problem, at least not for the people who actually have a problem with the lack of healing, because you will never be able to demand enough healing at all difficulty levels to demand frequent enough healing that the atrocious DPS options the healers suffer will no longer be an issue without making the role unplayable for probably most of the current healer population.

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Originally Posted by holydiver1286

As someone said, you're missing the point entirely. Of course healers focusing on healing/mitigating/support is what the main focus of a healer should be. I have been a healer main since 2.0 and love healing, but let's be realistic. After a certain point there is barely anything to heal. A tank buster happened? I probably didn't even have to heal it if the tank used a cooldown or I can pop an instant heal and go back to dps'ing. Oh a raid wide happened? Instead of panic mashing heals, I can literally throw one aoe regen or if I'm feeling spicy, assize or pneuma then go back to dps'ing. Oh a mechanic that drops everyone's hp to 0 or gives everyone a bleed happened? Yet again, an aoe regen and maybe a bubble will cover that and I can go back to dps'ing. All of 1 to 2 seconds of healing negates any danger. There is simply not enough damage going out to make the healing part of healers engaging. You begin to hope that people mess up so you'll have something to do. I just started doing ultimates recently. Even in them, it seems like a lot at first, but quickly diminishes into being efficient with just a couple heals and then back to dps'ing. I'm all for focusing on healing, but make it actually needed without throwing heals out in to the wind when none are needed. When the hardest content in the game can be cleared without healers (not that it's meant to be that), then that should tell you there's room for improvement in the healing category. Either have enemies shooting out more/random damage that needs to be consistently monitored or give the healers the option to do more except spam glare/broil/etc in the vast amount of time they spend attacking.

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You are just proving the point? You barely need to heal and end up DPSing for the most part. So is this good healer design? Is this good content design? It's just DPS more and have a complex DPS option because, as it currently stands, all healers are, are a DPS with healing tacked on. Is that good?

Healers not healing enough is a fight design problem, not a healer kit problem. It only becomes a healer kit problem when we don't have enough healing tools for the incoming damage.

That still doesn't take away from the fact that:

1. We can still have a varied DPS kit when healing isn't needed.
2. The existence of a DPS kit doesn't mean that less healing is needed. That's up for the boss to dish out.
3. Damage from the bosses should be increased in all content going forward.

Handicapping healer kits by telling them that they shouldn't have more DPS options because "hEaLeRs OnLy HeAl" is destructive to how we can design healer jobs. At least if healers have a more compelling DPS kit, they won't get bored during the lull periods where no damage is going out from the boss.

Only fixing damage output from bosses isn't good, it only solves half the issue. Only adding in DPS spells isn't good, it only solves half the issue. Both are needed to solve the healer issues.

I think I'm starting to understand how Ty feels.

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Originally Posted by TheDustyOne

Handicapping healer kits by telling them that they shouldn't have more DPS options because "hEaLeRs OnLy HeAl" is destructive to how we can design healer jobs.[/SIZE]

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Who here has actually said "I ONLY want to heal, as a healer"?

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

And I don't believe your solution will make a dent in that problem...

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I think it's fair if you disagree with me on whether my preferred solution will work, but I hope you'll at least do me the respect of acknowledging that we both agree there's a problem. Your previous post seemed to imply that I was fine with the status quo that was contributing to your bad time, when I am very much not. You and I have been debating this issue for long enough that I would hope that you would at least understand that we agree there's a problem to be solved.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

All I'm hearing are excuses. So basically, there is no good reason for tanks to continue getting more and more DPS variety while healers don't, for tanks to have free speech to ask for new DPS attacks while healers get kicked in the balls every time we bring up wanting a few extra attack spells to make downtime less brain-rotting, or for tanks to not have the same miserably shallow DPS options in favor of an egregious amount of defensive cooldowns they don't need.

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This is silly and reductive. Anyone who plays a class can ask for whatever they want. And anyone else is free to disagree and ask for something else. You're not being robbed of your free speech just because some people on a forum disagree with you.

It has cropped up in this thread in the past, and usually it comes across from people asking to keep DPS kits how they are "because I'm a healer, not a DPS, make me heal more", typically not realising how much we need to increase incoming damage to actually make us use most of our kits, or that you can have more to heal alongside extra DPS options. You yourself said in the first page:

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Originally Posted by ChrysOCE

If I wanted an interesting DPS rotation, I would play DPS. When I play healer, I want to heal/mitigate/support.

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The sentiment is still very much the same. Healer kits should be bad because you're a healer and not a DPS.

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Originally Posted by LilimoLimomo

With respect, you're telling me this like we're not on the same page about that being a problem. We just have different ideas of how to solve it.

Unrelated to anything in this debate, as someone with hand and wrist issues myself, I strongly recommend you don't mash, especially if it's resulting in medical issues. The GCD is 2.5 seconds, so only press it that often. Your GCD slipping is not worth your physical well-being. Especially in a dungeon. Regardless of which side either of us takes in this silly debate over what will make our free-time game more fun, you're a living person and I care about your well-being.

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You're not on the same page. You have been arguing against ty's point for the entire thread. You're being told that your solution is not realistic and doesnt change anything in the first place. You're arguing against that with questionable levels of experience.

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Originally Posted by LilimoLimomo

I think there are a lot of different ways to make 100% of GCD's required for healing. To be clear, I'm not saying that's the goal, I'm just saying it's entirely possible.

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Care to share any one of those ways, with enough detail to form judgements such as, "that works," "that doesn't work," "I don't like that kind of mechanic," "that's a cool new ability," so on and so forth -- something enough to have a good faith discussion/debate over? (I mean, I can think of at least one way, but it's so atrociously bad that to put it forth would be to stand up a man made of straw.)

There are more than a few examples floating around these forums of how healer DPS kits might be made more engaging. There are at least a few ideas floating around these forums on how to make healing more required.

But all healing, all the time? Crickets. Nothing. The proof is in the pudding, except no one can seemingly offer any pudding, or even something that might aspire to be pudding one day.

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Originally Posted by TheDustyOne

It has cropped up in this thread in the past, and usually it comes across from people asking to keep DPS kits how they are "because I'm a healer, not a DPS, make me heal more", typically not realising how much we need to increase incoming damage to actually make us use most of our kits, or that you can have more to heal alongside extra DPS options. You yourself said in the first page:



The sentiment is still very much the same. Healer kits should be bad because you're a healer and not a DPS.

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No that is not the same sentiment. Saying that, when I heal, I want healing/mitigation/support to be my focus is not the same as saying "hEaLeRs OnLy HeAl".

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Originally Posted by TheDustyOne

That seems incredibly unfair then to Scholars who used to have a lot more DPS skills. Now if they ask for those back, suddenly they're asking for "triple the amount they currently have". If SCH never lost those, would you suddenly be okay with them having another DPS skill?

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That's a fair point! And in my opinion, I do think there should be more disparity between classes. If half the healers given a more involved damage rotation to keep their thumbs busy, I think that would be fine. I just don't agree with a solution that gives that to everyone, because not everyone wants that.

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Originally Posted by TheDustyOne

And if it's okay for Scholars to have extra attacks in that scenario, why is WHM and AST suddenly not allowed to have that?

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Because many healers don't want this functionality, so I oppose it becoming a universal feature.

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Originally Posted by TheDustyOne

Tanks are also about 50/50 in DPS/defensives, the ratio is a lot higher than you realise.

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I'm talking about gameplay, not just counting the buttons. Frequency of using defensive parts of the kit are meaningfully lower compared to the DPS parts.

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Originally Posted by TheDustyOne

Aggro wasn't all that meaningful when it was there beyond the opener or someone forgetting Diversion, so it's loss wasn't felt all that painfully for most tanks.

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I'll agree that I don't think tanking reached its potential, but aggro was something, replaced with nothing.

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Originally Posted by TheDustyOne

DPSing as healers is ultimately going to be necessary no matter how much healing is required, and the lax healing requirements in casual content means that someone doing that with a modicum of skill behind them is going to get bored quickly. The solution is to make the downtime engaging in some way rather than forcing savage-level healing on the healer who can't keep up with that. DPS is the obvious answer because it is always useful, and buffs are just indirect DPS.

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I've addressed this earlier in the thread so I will respectfully acknowledge your thoughts. If you'd like to see mine they're earlier in the thread, but no pressure.

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Originally Posted by TheDustyOne

Also healers having mechanical identity... SCH and SGE say otherwise. The two are so close in design that I have the same buttons on the same places on my hotbar. Tanks have a similar issue, especially between WAR and DRK, but you don't see nearly as many people complaining about those 2 compared to the healers.

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I meant that healers overall have a mechanical identity, not the individual roles. Because I agree: healers blur together and overlap too much. And I also agree that tanks have the same problem, which I have complained about numerous times on these forums ^^.

Well there a thing with the mitigation and support for healers. They've taken away quite a few things that healers used to be able to do in those categories. In mitigation, scholars lost virus and that was turned into addle and feint while astros lost disable and that was eliminated. For support,astro had all the different cards but not it can only do damage and its clear in their minds that only astro and sch should be able to buff the damage of the party.

I hate to be rude but Yoshi-p and his team are fools when it comes to healers.

So what exactly do you want to do when there is no healing required?

If you want healing to be at a point where you're healing for a large majority of the fight, then you pretty much do just want healers to only heal. If you want there to be some level of downtime for recovery and optimization, then DPS should be more interesting in that period than Glaroillicosis + DoT and I have no idea why you would be against more DPS options.

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Originally Posted by Saraide

You're not on the same page. You have been arguing against ty's point for the entire thread.

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We are both on the page that Glare spam isn't fun and needs to be solved. We have different ideas about how to solve that. Because of that we are arguing. We agree on the problem, not the solution.

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Originally Posted by LilimoLimomo

Beyond the nastiness of the sentiment, it's a bit of an odd stance to take considering that the designer of this game has gone on record saying that's not the game he's trying to make, which suggests that the fact that it is that kind of game is an accident and that given enough time he will eventually correct that mistake. That being the case, I hope you'll find it satisfactory if one day you need to find a different game because Yoshi-P achieves his goal. Not that I wish that on you; I would by far prefer a design that works for everyone.

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You are living in a fantasyland if you believe that. He's been given a decade, why hasn't he done it? It's been nearly 5 years since ShB came out and the healing requirements have not increased to only have "some downtime". He pruned SCH's DPS kit going into Shadowbringers and got rid of Aero III on WHM to equalize all of the DPS kits to be the exact same monotony, surely that was the time to finally do this? What about when SGE came out and they split the role in two subroles? We're still spamming our 1 key more than ever? Got it. Getting rid of healer damage rotations solved none of the issues it was supposedly meant to address; and if we're Word of God-ding, remember that Yoshida has already said many times that the level of healing that we're getting is the highest they can see it going. He specifically said this about E12S and how he considered that fight the ceiling for Savage healing for where the playerbase can handle it.

You are not getting the healbot game you want. This is not that game. In fact, many times this expansion we've had Japanese players complaining directly to Yoshida in open Q&A's because nobody was playing healer in party finder, a phenomenon that was also very true on NA and EU. He had to ask people to "please give Healer a try." because the increased healing requirements from Asphodelos into Abyssos caused a lot of people to stop playing healer or were otherwise unable to handle it, resulting in parties taking sometimes hours to fill while waiting for healers. There are two options for the role: Healers getting more buttons to press when no healing is needed, or fights doing a lot of damage to keep them engaged. This expansion has shown many times that if you go the latter route, it results in the fight being harder for party finder players and results in more people being gatekept from clearing while they wait for healers who can handle the increase of requirements. You are gating more players out by increasing healing requirements from clearing content than you are by giving a few extra buttons to engage healer players when there's no job to do.

There's no nastiness in that statement either, I mean it sincerely: go play another game if you don't like the fact that healers deal damage in this game and are constantly dealing it. I main a healer because I like how healing works in this game. I enjoy prog and mapping out CDs and where I handle things in a fight, and I also enjoy that I contribute via DPSing. Why should what we like about healers in this game change for you and people who don't even seem to enjoy healing in this game at all and want it to be like other MMOs when you could instead... just go play those to get that gameplay? Sincere questions: Do you main a healer? Do you do high end content on a healer at all? Because I do, do you think I would've sunk hundreds of hours into prog on a role if I didn't enjoy it? No, but if they take away what I like about the job I play and the role I will quit the game entirely and I am very clear about that in many of my posts.

I want to play this game, not "make it like other game but in this game!!" I will continue advocating for the healers to fit the game that they are designed for and for this role to not be designed for the people who don't like them fundamentally, or for people who would be better suited playing a different game.

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Originally Posted by AmiableApkallu

Care to share any one of those ways, with enough detail to form judgements such as, "that works," "that doesn't work," "I don't like that kind of mechanic," "that's a cool new ability," so on and so forth -- something enough to have a good faith discussion/debate over? (I mean, I can think of at least one way, but it's so atrociously bad that to put it forth would be to stand up a man made of straw.)

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I am honestly confused why you would mention good faith debates and ask me this. Because it's clear from the context you stripped my previous comment from that 100% GCD required is not intended to be a desirable way to play the game, just an exercise to prove that it's possible and thus disprove the proposal that GCD dps for healers can never be below 50% or whatever was said. And based on your wording, it seems like you have discovered at least one way to successfully do this. Thus, the proposal that I was intending to disprove has been effectively disproved. This was not the proposal of an actual design, but an exercise to determine the boundaries of the possibility space designers solving this problem have access to.

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Originally Posted by LilimoLimomo

I think there are a lot of different ways to make 100% of GCD's required for healing. To be clear, I'm not saying that's the goal, I'm just saying it's entirely possible. And if 100% is possible, then lesser thresholds will be possible as well. There's no need to settle for a huge amount of DPS time unless we choose to restrict ourselves to systems that prevent alternatives.

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Bit late to the party on this one sorry.

We actually had this at one point, 3.0 AST in Gordias Savage.

It didn't work at all and effectively lead to AST needing to obscenely overtuned by 3.4 to get people to give the job a fair shake again.

The problem with approaching 100% GCD uptime on heals is that you're left with very little on the table. With 3.0 Gordias Savage and AST, I kid you not when I say that a shield or mitigation being missed was enough to start a snowball that could lead into an inevitable wipe in A1S unless your co healer was massively on the ball and had some MP/GCDs to spare.

Saying that people can pocket burst healing abilities to catch back up doesn't really ring true, those abilities will get planned in to the rotation and suddenly you're not at 100% anymore.

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Originally Posted by LilimoLimomo

But healers have more pressing concerns: keeping the party alive from moment to moment. That's innately engaging in a way that slowly depleting a lengthy health bar simply isn't. Is it enough? The answer will vary from player to player.

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It's only engaging so long as the player doesn't realise how little pressure they are actually under. Once the illusion is shattered and they realise that frankly, some tanks can practically maintain themselves these days then that leaves the player in a bit of a hole.

For a newer player coming up from sprouthood, it's much harder to notice. But for a vet that's done the rounds in Extremes and Savage and remembers the day where you *Needed* to maximise Regen uptime, stepping down to more casual content has this glaring and unmissable void of responsibility, engagement and purpose.

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Originally Posted by LilimoLimomo

That's a fair point! And in my opinion, I do think there should be more disparity between classes. If half the healers given a more involved damage rotation to keep their thumbs busy, I think that would be fine. I just don't agree with a solution that gives that to everyone, because not everyone wants that.

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While I do sympathize with someone that wants a simple kit, a single nuke + DoT is not a good kit. Warrior is a good example of a simple kit and that's what WHM should try to match in complexity.

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Originally Posted by LilimoLimomo

Because many healers don't want this functionality, so I oppose it becoming a universal feature.

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Ty I believe had a survey that asked jobs what they wanted most. 70+% Healers outside AST wanted more DPS buttons, which instead wanted more damage buffs. That last one is ultimately what would better suit those players.

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Originally Posted by LilimoLimomo

I'm talking about gameplay, not just counting the buttons. Frequency of using defensive parts of the kit are meaningfully lower compared to the DPS parts.

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The gameplay is down to the fight design. We need more incoming busters and raidwides for the tank defensives to be more in play, which also in turn makes the healers more integral. It's a fight design issue, not a kit issue. But otherwise I agree there.

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Originally Posted by LilimoLimomo

I'll agree that I don't think tanking reached its potential, but aggro was something, replaced with nothing.

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I don't disagree honestly, I wouldn't mind aggro returning, but it would have to be rebalanced to where it becomes an integral part of tanking instead of opener only.

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Originally Posted by LilimoLimomo

I've addressed this earlier in the thread so I will respectfully acknowledge your thoughts. If you'd like to see mine they're earlier in the thread, but no pressure.

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A lot of others have already said what I wanted to say, so I'm not too worried about responding to what you said earlier because I think it'd just be a repeat of other sentiments.

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Originally Posted by LilimoLimomo

I meant that healers overall have a mechanical identity, not the individual roles. Because I agree: healers blur together and overlap too much. And I also agree that tanks have the same problem, which I have complained about numerous times on these forums ^^.

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I can agree at least. I've had suggestions in the past on how to diversify healer kits on the healer forums. I liked the idea of AST going full time mage and fast-forwarding regens, snapshotting buffs to reapply them after they expire, etc.

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Originally Posted by TheDustyOne

So what exactly do you want to do when there is no healing required?

If you want healing to be at a point where you're healing for a large majority of the fight, then you pretty much do just want healers to only heal. If you want there to be some level of downtime for recovery and optimization, then DPS should be more interesting in that period than Glaroillicosis + DoT and I have no idea why you would be against more DPS options.

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Individual/party support management, boss debuff management, I don't know, I'm not a game designer. I'm not saying I don't want to do ANY DPS. I'm also not saying that ALL I want to do is heal. But if the majority of what I am doing is DPS, then it starts to feel like that is all I am.

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Originally Posted by LilimoLimomo

This is silly and reductive. Anyone who plays a class can ask for whatever they want. And anyone else is free to disagree and ask for something else. You're not being robbed of your free speech just because some people on a forum disagree with you.

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Except it isn't silly and reductive. I have lost my preferred playstyle in part because of this mentality that healers aren't allowed to get more attacks, that if you want to DPS, then you play a DPS job or Tank, but healers aren't allowed that privilege. Scholar used to provide that playstyle, and it was eradicated, and nothing in the game makes me enjoy FFXIV combat like I did before Scholar was destroyed in Shadowbringers. And yet, often times when I ask for DPS spells returned to Scholar, for Sage to live up to its described identity by Yoshi P himself, I am met with someone who tells me to play DPS if I want to DPS, who says real healers HEAL. Who says what I want will ruin healers, even when it doesn't ruin tanks. I am constantly met with people who believe I shouldn't be allowed to have the playstyle I want--constantly met with a mentality that as taken my enjoyment out of the game.

And for the record, I've also talked about trying to design a healer specifically for players who do not like DPSing as a healer--to make the Astrologian rework about turning Astrologian into a engine builder, who rather than directly heals and buffs, sets up healing and buffing effects that they detonate later in the fight while passively generating DPS to stay balanced with the other healers. And that would replace the bulk of their Malefic spam.

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Originally Posted by LilimoLimomo

We are both on the page that Glare spam isn't fun and needs to be solved. We have different ideas about how to solve that. Because of that we are arguing. We agree on the problem, not the solution.

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But the point is that there is evidence that suggests your solution will not work: the fact that Abyssos, a raiding tier that did not have the highest healing requirements that the game has ever seen, and was not particularly difficult for veteran healers to heal through, was seen as 'too much' for many healers new to raiding or to FFXIV who were interested in raiding. And in Abyssos, healers still were using their DPS roughly just as frequently. If that only barely scratched the DPS-to-healing ratio and still overwhelmed people trying to get into Savage, how on earth could the healing requirement of a dungeon ask for even more healing from the veterans that are upset with DPS spam?

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Originally Posted by ChrysOCE

Individual/party support management, boss debuff management, I don't know, I'm not a game designer. I'm not saying I don't want to do ANY DPS. I'm also not saying that ALL I want to do is heal. But if the majority of what I am doing is DPS, then it starts to feel like that is all I am.

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Then you and I don't fully disagree, the existence of extra DPS buttons doesn't mean that we heal/support/mitigate/debuff less. It just means we have more to do when those aren't needed. A buffer job like AST could fill the niche for buffing allies when healing isn't needed while still meaningfully contributing to the parties damage.

We do have to be careful however when increasing healing requirements. We can only go so far before it goes from engaging and fun to frustrating, and that can vary massively with player skill. I do think it needs to be higher in all forms of content, but casual content I think can't go too much higher than what Zeromus or P10 offered.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

And in Abyssos, healers still were using their DPS roughly just as frequently.

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It's actually worse if you tried to clear it before the HP nerf. I went back and checked my first kill of P8S P1 before they nerfed his HP pool and I spent 97.23% of my GCDs on damage spells. And before anyone says I was only chadding my cohealer, she spent 89.18% of her GCDs on damage spells as well, and it's only lower because WHM has to spend GCDs on Afflatus spells.

This is what SE's version of increased healing requirements looks like.

Couple things. Only heal healers could just keep on pressing a single button if they added more options for damage, you lose nothing.

Alternatively, wouldnt higher and more frequent damage deplete SCH/SGE of their resources faster than AST/WHM?

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Originally Posted by LilimoLimomo

I am honestly confused why you would mention good faith debates and ask me this. Because it's clear from the context you stripped my previous comment from that 100% GCD required is not intended to be a desirable way to play the game, just an exercise to prove that it's possible and thus disprove the proposal that GCD dps for healers can never be below 50% or whatever was said. And based on your wording, it seems like you have discovered at least one way to successfully do this. Thus, the proposal that I was intending to disprove has been effectively disproved. This was not the proposal of an actual design, but an exercise to determine the boundaries of the possibility space designers solving this problem have access to.

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You've yet to demonstrate in any meaningful way that "it's entirely possible", where "it" is "there are a lot of different ways to make 100% of GCD's required for healing." The point isn't whether it's technically possible. The point is whether it's possible to design something that might plausibly considered fun.

Because here's my one way: The boss deletes 99% of the main tank's health every GCD. This is all they do, the entire fight. The healer has a single button that restores 99.1+% of someone's health, at a cost of zero MP and zero cast time. This design is complete and total garbage. You know it. I know it. We all know it. The idea that this is Yoshi-P's "good heal work" is preposterous. But it is "100% of GCD's required for healing." It's even accommodating of the least skilled of players.

I have trouble believing that anyone who argues for healers spending 100% of their time healing (or maybe more accurately, 0% of their time directly dealing damage) has what I just described in mind as a desirable goal. That design isn't the basis of a good faith discussion.

So, where's the pudding?

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Originally Posted by ChrysOCE

You are just proving the point? You barely need to heal and end up DPSing for the most part. So is this good healer design? Is this good content design? It's just DPS more and have a complex DPS option because, as it currently stands, all healers are, are a DPS with healing tacked on. Is that good?

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Do you.....actually read? Where did I say at all that any of this was good design or good in general? This is not good design even a little. By me saying that the hardest content being cleared WITHOUT healers, I'm literally saying that healers are not designed good and the fights are not designed well around healing? Having more damage dealing abilities as a healer to fill in those complete healing downtimes would be better than what we have now or alternatively having more healing being necessary so healers would have things to do OTHER than just be an extra boring dps would be good.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

But the point is that there is evidence that suggests your solution will not work: the fact that Abyssos, a raiding tier that did not have the highest healing requirements that the game has ever seen, and was not particularly difficult for veteran healers to heal through, was seen as 'too much' for many healers new to raiding or to FFXIV who were interested in raiding. And in Abyssos, healers still were using their DPS roughly just as frequently. If that only barely scratched the DPS-to-healing ratio and still overwhelmed people trying to get into Savage, how on earth could the healing requirement of a dungeon ask for even more healing from the veterans that are upset with DPS spam?

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With respect, I think it's hasty to suggest that a set of fights using the kits this expansion is limited to offers meaningful evidence that no possible kit and no possible tuning could yield a solution. I would say that's probably fairly decent evidence that relying only on damage output won't yield a solution. But there is so much more possibility space outside of the status quo.

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Originally Posted by AmiableApkallu

The point isn't whether it's technically possible.

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With respect, you quoted an instance of my demonstration whether something was technical possible. That was the point of what I wrote when I wrote it. Trying to leverage it for other purposes it wasn't intended won't result in a sound argument.

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Originally Posted by AmiableApkallu

The point is whether it's possible to design something that might plausibly considered fun.

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If the point is whether something will be fun, then generally speaking, all of this talk is meaningless. Most of the time you don't realize what's fun until you feel it and ask others to feel it to, with the controller in their hands, or a paper prototype if that works. You get a prototype functional, and that's when it's time to iterate and actually find the fun. Sometimes it's actually there, sometimes it's not. A write-up is an undependable way to find fun.

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Originally Posted by holydiver1286

Do you.....actually read? Where did I say at all that any of this was good design or good in general? This is not good design even a little. By me saying that the hardest content being cleared WITHOUT healers, I'm literally saying that healers are not designed good and the fights are not designed well around healing? Having more damage dealing abilities as a healer to fill in those complete healing downtimes would be better than what we have now or alternatively having more healing being necessary so healers would have things to do OTHER than just be an extra boring dps would be good.

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LOL then why quote me directly and start off by saying I am missing the point, when you are actually, what, somewhat/half agreeing with what I said?