Healer DPS is too boring for how little healing is needed in the game

No new healer means I really want to take a look at things that I think would shake up healer gameplay in an enjoyable way.

Right now Healing in the majority of content is low. REALLY low. Damage isn't scary, and even when a tank pulls an entire dungeon I find myself spamming gravity and holy and especially on single target boss fights the "rotation" for healer dps is way too simple half of the healer gameplay.

There is a little variation between the three healers, usually with how aoe works, but the rotation is generally Dot 1 > dot 2 > spam spell.

Healers spend most of their time doing dot 1 > dot 2 > spam spell. (and only one dot as Ast) Can we get more added to this? Ast has cards so their dps rotation being simple makes sense. Sch is still playing with fairy/aetherflow and they have the most complicated dps with things like Bane, Energy Drain, and Miasma 2, but Whitemage being as simple as it is for having the least things to do really screams "add more to my dps tool kit".

Either way though please make healer dps more engaging since its half of our gameplay experience.

The problem is that healer spend 80% of their time DPSing... not the boring DPS rotation.

If they just up damage I'm going to start saying that spamming benefic I and II is not exciting enough though.

Bring back old Clerics Stance.

I'm gonna have to disagree. Healer DPS is simple because they also have other, more important things to do. A healer who deals damage in a style like the Bard, with so many buttons to press and effects to keep refreshed at all times, would develop tunnel vision too easily and end up dying or letting other people die just from having too much to keep track of. You shouldn't have to be a superstar player to succeed at healing.

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Originally Posted by BiffWellington

I'm gonna have to disagree. Healer DPS is simple because they also have other, more important things to do. A healer who deals damage in a style like the Bard, with so many buttons to press and effects to keep refreshed at all times, would develop tunnel vision too easily and end up dying or letting other people die just from having too much to keep track of. You shouldn't have to be a superstar player to succeed at healing.

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Current healing gameplay would work perfectly with a full DPS rotation... as healing is mostly done by off GCD abilities. Whatever cast time healing that is needed can easily be compensated by adding a few more off GCD abilities for healing.

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Originally Posted by Canadane

Bring back old Clerics Stance.

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pls no ; ;

Real talk im with you, im so bored of spending 85% of a fight pressing malefic while tossing in an aoe for the usual boss does X aoe every min or so. All we do is trade off gcd heals with our other healing for everything else anyway.

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Originally Posted by BiffWellington

I'm gonna have to disagree. Healer DPS is simple because they also have other, more important things to do. A healer who deals damage in a style like the Bard, with so many buttons to press and effects to keep refreshed at all times, would develop tunnel vision too easily and end up dying or letting other people die just from having too much to keep track of. You shouldn't have to be a superstar player to succeed at healing.

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> Implying that things can only be a binary "Current Healer" 1 button spamfest or "Bard-esk" juggle 7 oGCD's (With CD refresh procs), maintaining 2 DoTs and a buff while also looking out for other procs to use on yet another skill.

:rolleyes:

As things currently stand, Healers would be able to work with like 90% of DPS classes rotations. Given that so much healing is done via oGCD's.

So it's only oGCD heavy DPS rotations that would be an issue due to conflicting with heals. Of course, the side effect of having to swap between targeting enemies for DPS and targeting allies for heals would also be a factor.

Though, to be fair, they could try and make damage actually notable and make actually healing with GCD's interesting.

Like, why couldn't we have a healer that uses combos for progressively stronger heals?

Why can't we have a HoT healer that gets bonus healing potency when direct healing targets with their HoT on (Similar to how BRD's Sidewinder works with their DoTs)?

Why can't we have a shield healer who can detonate their shields to do direct healing?

Etc.

More involved healing would reduce the need to worry about having interesting DPS combos by reducing the amount of time spent flinging Stones/Malefic's/Broils.

I'd personally be okay with a very slight increase in complexity. But as a healer, I don't want to start being judged on my ability to play as a DPS. I mean, obviously we're already judged on our DPS, and that's fine. But then, our DPS output is not linked to knowing how to use a complex DPS rotation. It's about knowing how to HEAL effectively and get more uptime with our basic DPS rotation.

As for people who are bored, I would suggest looking at more minute ways of increasing your DPS. What I love about healing is the simplicity of the DPS. I'm a crap DPS player, but even I can do fair DPS on healer because I know what I'm doing when it comes to healing. Being able to focus on other stuff also means I can really get into positional efficiency. Which is something 99% of players don't do. In fact, I don't even see this done by high-tier players in world-first videos. So needless to say, while I respect their abilities, I'm not one of those people who treats them like gods whose every action is unimpeachable.

The amount of opportunity lost through ignoring micropositioning is likely more than what is lost from things like WHM spell clipping. And yet people complain about that instead of learning how to play a low-movement class.

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Originally Posted by NocturniaUzuki

I'd personally be okay with a very slight increase in complexity.

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I wouldn't be OK with it.

I already have too many buttons, but I don't want healing abilities to get slashed. I like having a variety of healing tools to fit different situations. I don't want secondary downtime filler to occupy even more space on my hotbar.

Literally anyone can switch to DPS right now if they want a more complex rotation. Red Mage if you want relatively simple, Machinist if you hate yourself, and the others for varying degrees between. And "DPS queues" are about to stop mattering, too.

Sorry if Bard was a bad example, Kalise; I just don't have much experience with any other jobs, and I don't see a lot of people talking about it being all that complicated, so I guess maybe I figured it wasn't too far outside the norm. I see people venting about running with terrible Bards, but I also see them venting about running with terrible players of all jobs.

If combos were not interrupted by healing skills, it would be fun to have more of a rotation. Healers have really been carpetbombed with feces for the past couple of years, so I'm not gonna hold my breath. I would be nice, though!

It's not that healing requirements are low. It's that the majority of it is taken care of with ogcds and regens. With the news of healers being reworked entirely, don't be surprised if this goes away and forcing healers more into that role, and further away from DPS support.

That's not to say that their DPS can't be made more interesting, but I'd put money I don't have on wagering that healers essentially being a DPS with healing capability is not the intended vision they had with them.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

It's not that healing requirements are low. It's that the majority of it is taken care of with ogcds and regens. With the news of healers being reworked entirely, don't be surprised if this goes away and forcing healers more into that role, and further away from DPS support.

That's not to say that their DPS can't be made more interesting, but I'd put money I don't have on wagering that healers essentially being a DPS with healing capability is not the intended vision they had with them.

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It's kind of necessary evil going forward that they either up the healing requirements, or compensate by making oGCDs not as easily accessible. The whole Scholar job is designed for oGCD work, because of high costs of GCDs, so that's an animal that'll need re-work. I think they can strike a balance here, pun intended.

And then they get gobsmacked by the wall to wall tanks that dont toss up mitigation.. no it's fine where it's at really.

If they just rebalance bosses again to actually strain healers, that would be fine. If you go back and play old content, you'll notice that they do a lot more damage. Particularly with their autos and basic cleaves. If you do things like Coils on MinIL... Try DPSing on even T1 MinIL without perfect internal timing on the damage output, and you'll risk dropping your tank. Some of the other bosses certainly do allow some DPS time, but it's still pretty heavy stuff. I'd like to see at least a partial return to healer mechanics that don't have a giant cast bar warning us of the impending damage spike. Cleaves that hit very hard with no cast bar. More timed debuffs that go off (they do use still use these occasionally). Raid-wides that come out of nowhere. Even a bit of randomized stuff would be interesting. As lovely as being prepared feels, there's merit in throwing out damage without warning as well. Though over using it could cause great frustration among solo healers who rely on regens.

The game needs to get the 80-90% DPS and 10-20% Healing down to like 40-60% of either first before considering making either half more interesting, personally i prefer 70%+ healing and a lot of effort maintaining my resources, but I don't see it happening but at least balancing out the amount of time you have to do either is a more worthwhile endeavor.

And why they hell are people playing healer if they want more interesting DPS rotations... There's 3 times as many options for that out now/soon, pick one, any one. Same with tanks but more twice as many than thrice.

OP- Be careful what you wish for. You might end up with having to spam heals instead of DPS abilities and then it would be just as boring, you'd just be pressing a different button.

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Originally Posted by Reiryuu

OP- Be careful what you wish for. You might end up with having to spam heals instead of DPS abilities and then it would be just as boring, you'd just be pressing a different button.

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Nah, you'd probably have to change targets at least with healing. At least when considering how few multi-target fights are around these days.

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Originally Posted by OcieKo

Nah, you'd probably have to change targets at least with healing. At least when considering how few multi-target fights are around these days.

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I thought that's what people used mouse target macros for...?

Oh... but then you wouldn't have a hand free to................err..........to.............pet......your kitty... yeah... pet your kitty that's it... >.>;

If futur fights could be designed in the same way as Proto-Ozma (from my experience as SCH,), healing would be much enjoyable (and not enough time for dps).

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Originally Posted by Hustensaft

Current healing gameplay would work perfectly with a full DPS rotation... as healing is mostly done by off GCD abilities. Whatever cast time healing that is needed can easily be compensated by adding a few more off GCD abilities for healing.

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If it works more or less like the RDM's rotation, I'm in.

I would love to have a build up dps rotation. Like keeping dot uptime and after some time you get a enhanced version with more dmg or no cast time. Like healing is so stale and boring and on whm not fun because you are a cheap blm with lousy mobility.

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Originally Posted by OcieKo

And why they hell are people playing healer if they want more interesting DPS rotations...

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Because when you're playing a healer and 80%+ of the healing is done through stuff off the global cooldown, the player needs *something* to do to keep from slipping into a self induced coma.

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Originally Posted by Orbus

Because when you're playing a healer and 80%+ of the healing is done through stuff off the global cooldown, the player needs *something* to do to keep from slipping into a self induced coma.

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Holy spam almost does that to you anyway =p

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Originally Posted by Orbus

Because when you're playing a healer and 80%+ of the healing is done through stuff off the global cooldown, the player needs *something* to do to keep from slipping into a self induced coma.

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You could try challenging yourself instead. There's always room to improve, and there's always a way to make it harder. And by taking on those extra challenges, you learn how to heal better in different situations.

I hate duo healing because it's way overkill on the heals. So I usually just use duo heals to practice a solo heal rotation and micromanage positioning stuff, then go and use those tricks in solo healing situations.

Nice thing about solo healing is that the DPS to healing ratio is much more balanced. I'm still throwing out a lot of DPS, but I also have to focus a lot more on heals.

And if that's still too easy, just start getting rid of other things. Solo tank/heal O6S was always fun, with the tank taking so much damage. Or you can just go do content that is actually hard.