Why Healers haven't got combos aswell?

Seriously it could help healers jobs to be less borring than right now.

Why healers are the only one with none combos?

We could have healing and dps combos, for example as main SCH :

- First ruin = 1 energy ball with 1 hand
- Second ruin = a larger energy ball with 2 hands
- Third ruin = aoe

Ok you push 3 times the same button but it would feel less borring visually and it won't add number of skills on skillbarrs.

or

- First ruin = 1 energy ball with 1 hand
- Second ruin = a larger energy ball with 2 hands
- a single target dot spell = aoe dot


Example for a healing combo :

- single target cure
- RNG Eos proc = the single target cure skill become an instant shield done by the fairy on the same player in instant
(Selene could do something else))

or

- single target cure
- RNG Eos proc = the fairy spreads the cure to the closer player next to the 1st target
(Selene could do something else)

It's just some random ideas but damn SE you have to do something about Healer's situation >.<

You spent 2 years for "balancing" healing jobs but in fact you just killed all the fun.

Why no healer rigid "combos", as seen on tanks and DPS? So you don't spend all but one out of every n (where n is the length of the combo) GCDs locked out of all but one Spell at a time.

Why no actual synergetic but fluid combinations of skills (i.e. actual combos)? No idea, save for a lack of imagination on the devs part coupled with a vast overestimation of the game's healing requirements and their ability to interrupt any such flows of casting.

At the more concrete level, while I'd love to see more synergy among our spells, RNG skill-unlocks are not that. That's just bloated gimmicks that badly conflict with the needs of a healer, imo.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Why no healer rigid "combos", as seen on tanks and DPS? So you don't spend two out of every n (where n is the length of the combo) GCDs locked out of all but one Spell at a time.

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honestly this isnt necessarily true (or bad)
some combos dont get broken by some actions (like you can use some GNB gcds mid combo and it doesnt break), and it could also add Some degree to complexity to healers in planning when to cast a healing spell during a fight, if you break your combo its not the end of the world

but yeah, i wish there was more to healer rotations than 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2

Doubtful we'll ever see true combos like the melees and tanks have. SMN is the only caster I play, and it doesn't really have any true combos like that either. Just an optimal flow of skills, and SCH used to have the closest to that.

Their reasoning for the limited DPS skillset and I suppose pruning as well is something along the lines of having to break the flow of DPS skills in order to perform primary duties (healing), and/or a worry that players would focus too much on the DPS aspect of the jobs, and not perform their primary duty. The later was already present in pre 5.0 healers, and I can admit to tunnel visioning as well, especially during the days of 3.0 Cleric Stance.

While I agree mostly with this assessment, I strongly disagree with the limited offensive skillset healers have currently been given. All three are in serious need of an AoE DoT, and I believe those will return sometime this expansion, even if only to give us a little something to chew on, but this is something that is actually missing from gameplay that I don't think can really be disputed. It's as needed as giving SCH back Energy Drain. However, offense doesn't always have to come by way of direct dmg and I know the devs can come up with ways to give healers something else to do. But one way or the other, they are going to have come out of that safe space of theirs when it comes to this role.

I wonder if giving healers a 3 stage 1 button combo like what’s seen in a lot of character jump MSQ quests lately would be an interesting thing to throw in there? It’s certainly not deep gameplay, but it’s something.

I think the "best" way would be what Shurrikan mentions with more synergy within the kits.
It does not have to be combos for the sake of pressing 2-3 buttons rather than one, but rather "casting X amount of DPS spells charges Y amount of healing resources" or "using this DPS sequence within that window is somehow beneficial to some healing option". Any enemy attacking a tank with your regen would take some bits of damage. A shield on a target could be detonated as DPS on enemies if it is not consumed... that kind of stuff.

There are shy steps in that direction with systems like Earthly Star or the WHM lillies, but there is still much potential. I think the devs are afraid this would be too complicated to grasp or intimidating for casual / new healers, but honestly it does not have to be that way at all.

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Originally Posted by Mansion

There are shy steps in that direction with systems like Earthly Star or the WHM lillies, but there is still much potential. I think the devs are afraid this would be too complicated to grasp or intimidating for casual / new healers, but honestly it does not have to be that way at all.

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You're right that they are shy steps. But I still really like what they did with lillies - finding chances to heal helps DPS, or at least makes healing hurt DPS less. I would absolutely love it if keeping regen up on the tank played into dealing damage somehow, or at least mitigating the loss.

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Originally Posted by Loki

Why healers are the only one with none combos?

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Disregarding the special case of Red Mage Melee Combo and maybe the Firebird Trance of Summoner, I wouldn't say that Casters have proper Combos.

Or do you refer to procs as Combo as well?

Combos on healers can only happen if nothing but the combo skills themselves can cancel it as a healer duty could (really emphasise could) change on a dime depending on what is happening from pure dpsing spam to all the heals full power.

I'd support combos as long as it's more interesting than just increasing damage with each subsequent spell. 100 POT > 150 POT > 200 POT is fine as a baseline, but there needs to be something more.

Instead, I'd like to see either healing or supporting effects on the third spell in a combo. 1,2,3 for raidwide hot, 1,2,4 to decrease hostile target's damage for a few seconds, things like that. Maybe one for a long (30, 45, or 60 sec) dot, but definitely no direct damage combo that would be spammed endlessly.

Button bloat could be kept low if the order of GCD spells determines the effect. Think Mudras, but GCD and automatically triggers when the third spell is cast. Three spells could give up to six possible effects: 1,2,3 / 1,3,2 / 2,1,3 / 2,3,1 / 3,1,2 / 3,2,1.

Off the top of my head, some possible effects include a party hot, party direct heal, party shield, reduce damage taken by party, damage down on enemy target, increase damage taken by enemy target, party haste, aoe stun centered on target, decreased MP cost for party, create persistent zone at either self or target location (could either buff party in zone or harm enemies in zone), or increased healing by self or party.

If we add some sort of permanent buff can be given to a chosen ally (similar to Dance Partner) then there could be some single target buffs that apply to that player. I'm thinking of something to heal or support the MT for this.

Completing a combo could also reduce the CD on certain abilities, or replenish class resources, or build charges for an entirely new resource. SCH knocks five secs off Aetherflow by doing a combo, or AST gets a stacking buff from each combo and can consume three to draw a card, or WHM gets a stacking resource that gives +10% potency to the next GCD heal, up to +50%.

You know what, it doesn't even have to be different buttons for me. Even if just the animation would change after each use of the main dps ability I'd be pretty satisfied at this point. It would at least feel less monotone.

I remember an MSQ solo instance in which you play as Hien, and you had 1 button that automatically changed after each use to next combo (just like samurai pvp I think) and it felt pretty satisfying. Even though it was just pressing 1 button, for some reason it felt more engaging. If you think about it, kind of makes sense that spamming 1 ability as healer that is just the same animation over and over again will look and feel monotone and boring real soon.

Of course I'd prefer a more complex dps rotation, but I think this small change would for sure get me to play healer more often.

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Originally Posted by SamRF

You know what, it doesn't even have to be different buttons for me. Even if just the animation would change after each use of the main dps ability I'd be pretty satisfied at this point. It would at least feel less monotone.

I remember an MSQ solo instance in which you play as Hien, and you had 1 button that automatically changed after each use to next combo (just like samurai pvp I think) and it felt pretty satisfying. Even though it was just pressing 1 button, for some reason it felt more engaging. If you think about it, kind of makes sense that spamming 1 ability as healer that is just the same animation over and over again will look and feel monotone and boring real soon.

Of course I'd prefer a more complex dps rotation, but I think this small change would for sure get me to play healer more often.

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Kind of reminds me of a friend talking about Fell Cleave: "How is repeating the same thing 5-9 times over supposed to be interesting? If not for needing to be banked for chain-usage, I'd enjoy it a lot more if they at least ramped up in power and visuals with each use."

It's almost strange how much it can do for a sense of gameplay just to see some minor visual variation. Take Magic Missile or WoW's Arcane Missiles for instance -- suddenly firing that one or one pair more per barrage, even if for a relatively minor damage increase, just feels good. Sure, those aesthetics aren't going to work if there's no damage to back them up, and there won't be any damage to back them up without something constraining gameplay (though obviously not all constraints are bad, or combos would be entirely "clunky" and no part "tactical", and TG would be a pain to everyone and exciting to none), but that's okay. We can afford a little ebb and flow and capitalization among healers with as much free time as XIV's.

They'll never make dps spell affect healing or something else because it would push out non dpsing healer out of these boost. While I agree with many ideas and I'd like our kit to synergize better, since from SB they tried to reduce skill gap between player and make classes easier... Well. Maybe healing should give other boost even to dps. But not the contrary. This way it could encourage to contribute to damages

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Originally Posted by KDSilver

They'll never make dps spell affect healing or something else because it would push out non dpsing healer out of these boost.

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Making DPS spells affect healing (i.e. have a lower healing opportunity cost) is no different from making healing spells affect damage (i.e. have a lower damage opportunity cost). We see the latter half in XIV already, via WHM's Lily skills, and the prior half isn't particularly rare even among MMO healers with far, far more intensive and chaotic healing requirements than we have in XIV.

There's literally nothing wrong with DPS skills affecting healing so long as healing isn't nerfed to require excessive ramp-up to compensate for (overpowered) damage-based effects, which is no more uniquely a problem than any single spell proc (throughput delayed) or oGCD (throughput overly bursty) being too strong.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

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Agreed, there's already been that kind of situation for tanks, where pushing out DPS before ShB required stance dancing (understand ; dropping tank stance), but it had no effect on casual/bad tanks (like me) who could keep tank stance on and do the job just fine in casual content.

Fleshing out DPS possibilities on Healers while keeping the simple "press there to heal" part of their kit would not be detrimental to casual healers in casual content at all.

Take my reply as a whole don't isolate one sentence.

I'm gonna rip off WoW just to show how WHM would be with a similar 'rotation' as a holy priest:
-Fluid Aura is now an instant burst damage that leaves a dot
-Casting Stone/Glare has a chance to reset Fluid Aura's cd
-Each cast of Stone/Glare reduces Presence of Mind's cd or the time for a lily to proc by a few seconds.

You still basically have 1 spell, but it synergizes with other abilities from your kit and makes it more engaging, without causing more button bloat. I'm not saying "make it like this" but even a 1-button rotation would be more fun to spam if we had a reason to spam it other than just to kill time.

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Originally Posted by KDSilver

Take my reply as a whole don't isolate one sentence.

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I mentioned only the part I did because the rest has been talked to death across these forums or already largely proved my point.

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Originally Posted by KDSilver

They'll never make dps spell affect healing or something else because it would push out non dpsing healer out of these boost. While I agree with many ideas and I'd like our kit to synergize better, since from SB [1] they tried to reduce skill gap between player and make classes easier... Well. [2] Maybe healing should give other boost even to dps. But not the contrary. [3] This way it could encourage to contribute to damages

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[1] Yes, they've tried to reduce the skill gap between players and make classes, especially healers, easier? How well has that been received, though? Almost everything to do with healing save for the Lily system (increased simultaneous offensive and curative output through reduced relative opportunity cost), everything they've done to make healing easier, has been heavily criticized.

[2] Healing giving a boost to damage-output is no different from damage output giving a boost to healing output. They are mutually exclusive uses of time across any given GCD to the point that, say, Lilies can as easily be called a dps tool with embedded healing (the slight margin over Cure II potency) and/or mobility in its steps to prepare Afflatus as be called a healing tool with embedded dps. It's linked output; which side tends to be used first and which second doesn't matter -- only that as near to possible to all that is generated for one output is also spent in the other before the fight ends.

Nor is there any difference between your healing output increasing your own damage output and your healing output increasing the damage output of a party member, save that as long party-based means is stronger, you're going to feel hamstrung in solo content. Yes, to a degree, support functionality and its indirect damage makes for a different feel and aesthetic than purely personal or direct damage, but only insofar as it changes the way we play -- what we pay attention to, how we weigh concerns, and which gameplay loops we participate in. But to deny healers any increase in direct throughput in favor of solely indirect, party-requiring means isn't more engaging or fitting unless the kit fully embraces that; as only a few effects tossed in haphazardly, it's just convoluted and punishing to solo play.

[3] Healers are already plenty encouraged to deal damage. Downtime itself is encouragement. The only way to increase that encouragement is to make it essential for curative or defensive functions, which is neither sustainable (since it will typically be overpowered during periods of high healing downtime and make the job infeasible if we ever were to have periods with very little healing downtime) nor what anyone here has requested. We can make that healing more fun, but encouraging it is hardly a breakpoint we need pass at this point; we passed it back at the game's launch.

Think when they decided to start trimming out heals well prolly get some more dps skills added in. Not sure a like direct 1 2 3 combo would really work all that well on healer, hard to give healers a decent flow cause of, well... healing, also skill space as I said, healers got a fairly full hotbar as is and devs always try to keep the amount as low as they can. But yeah procs could work as combos, would be using the same skills but if they procd into something else after certain conditions that would at least mix things up.

Combos are a War thing, generally reserved for melee classes and ranged physical DPS classes excepting BRD. RDM’s physical/caster involves casting, then a physical combo, because that’s what RDM is supposed to be,

Casters’ inherent difficult is the necessity to stand still for a period of time. Phase mechanics like that which SMN and RDM work.

SCH/AST both used to have depth and complexity in the concept that you had elements that could be used aggressively or defensively, and the crux of healing was milking out all the aggression you could afford. The excitement came from knowing fights, familiarizing yourself with people and jobs, and riding the razor’s edge to see what you could get away with. Selective use of abilities gave you windows to get off things like SCH’s crit boosted double dot Bane in dungeons. Without those rewarding elements, there’s no depth- just pick whatever is easy, there’s no reason to do more than spam AoW.

Getting ED back was a step in the right direction but too little too late.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

[1] Yes, they've tried to reduce the skill gap between players and make classes, especially healers, easier? How well has that been received, though? Almost everything to do with healing save for the Lily system (increased simultaneous offensive and curative output through reduced relative opportunity cost), everything they've done to make healing easier, has been heavily criticized.

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On top of this, I just want to mention: The skill gap in healers isn't narrow at all. Stroll on over to FF logs and you'll see it's very, very wide. The different between, say, a 99 percentile healer, a 75 percentile, and a 25th percentile healer is enormous - far, far bigger than the same differences between tanks.

And for extra fun - it's wider than DPS most* of the time too, even if you don't adjust for DPS classes' much higher damage ceiling. I don't think it's unfair to say that, overall, healers have the largest skillgap in the game.

*with 2 exceptions, black mage and red mage, that are comparable to healers' skill gap.