More engaging DPS for healers

[Sebazy]

My take:

Run of the mill combos for healers are a huge nono in my eyes for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it’ll boil down to a negative mechanic that’s only there to punish when not done right, we’ve just got rid of Cleric, we don’t need another reason for a huge chunk of the playerbase to refuse to DPS as healer. Secondly, it’s sending the wrong message, healing is the most fluid of the 3 roles and combos don’t fit into that ethos. We need something positive to make people more inclined to throw dots/rocks. This isn’t that.

Your suggestion of better heal/dps synergy is a much better approach, it doesn’t need to be massive. Just a noticable nudge. Imagine if maintaining both Aeros gave you a Lily every 10 seconds, 4 sch dots amped embrace by 15%, or Earthly Star gained a 5% potency boost per enemy hit. None of these things would make or break much of anything. But they are tasty enough, entirely positive and fit well with ‘good play’.

[Zojha]

Your suggestion of better heal/dps synergy is a much better approach, [...]

Depends on what your goal is: To make DPSing as healer more interesting/engaging, or to get people to do it.

Heal/DPS synergy primarily addresses rewards for a given gameplay, the gameplay as such doesn't change much unless you make the synergy an integral core aspect of the job/role to the point decisionmaking is defined by it.

Just looking at the suggestions given by the OP and you, you'd still just keeping Aero 2&3 up and then spam Stone, but you'd get a higher reward for it by not just doing DPS, but also boosting your healing spells in the process. DPSing thus doesn't become more interesting or less boring, because the decisions involved in it are largely the same as before. It simply becomes more rewarding - And perhaps ironically, the reward is even more DPS uptime due to more healing power. This is a solution that aims to get people to do DPS, it doesn't really seek to make DPSing more interesting.

And I repeat: The condition is that the synergies are minor and not game changers. If you go the route to make them game changers, the above doesn't apply.

[Ayer2015]

I'm not sure synergies between dps and healing are necessarily a good thing, though I do think it could be interesting. The devs would need to take the highest output and factor that into content design, which would then force everyone to adept to the play-style, which in reality would just create more complaining about bad players.

that said, I think having more dps skill would be a nice addition to healers. putting up DoTs then spamming stone, is not really what I'd call fun.

[Claire_Pendragon]

My only comment on this, is dont change jobs we "currently" have, to make this a thing, so much as put this into a new healer job. (This logic applies to all jobs)
Its annoying as heck to fall in love with a job, only for its playstyle to completely change, and then no job offers the same playstyle anymore.

But there cant be any complaints, if the playstyle ur talking about was added into a new job, as no one is losing their old job.
(While i hated the old WAR playstyle, this is why I was against the change to WAR, since some people want a complex tank job, and now the closest thing is DRK, but its also quite different.)

[Sida]

I think that all said, instead of inputting these said synergies I to already existing healing classes which many people like as they are, the best bet would be to hope a completely new healer class which is designed around interesting damage play, synergies between healing and damage as well as less pure healing power unless playing on those said synergies. I for one wouldn't want my current class/job ruined because someone wanted it to be what it isn't. But I do recognise some people might be taken to the idea.

In the meantime, please give us more interesting healing challenges instead.

[Kazrah]

Depends on what your goal is: To make DPSing as healer more interesting/engaging, or to get people to do it.

If the goal is to make healer damage output more engaging, then the people clamoring for that need to be reminded that they're playing the wrong role. If the goal is to get healers that aren't dps'ing to do that, then it's already dead in the water since there's no factoring in why the "pure healers" prefer that playstyle in the first place.

What should be done is make healer damage output more useful. Giving Stone or Aero spells a chance to grant a Lily or increase the healing of their next Cure 3, Broil or dots having a chance to grant an Aetherflow application, or maybe have Malefic give a stacking buff reducing the cast time of the next healing spell used. Just examples like those that could provide incentives to DPS'ing as a healer with the overall goal of rewarding dealing damage as a healer, but the risk would be in not getting it to the point where those who prefer healing in other games are turned off because they find themselves doing something they don't want to do as healers in this game.

As for a more complex damage setup on a healer, I think that would require a new healing job altogether.

[Connor]

I mentioned something similar in another thread, but wouldn't this be impossible to balance?

If healers done the same damage they do now but with a more complex dps rotation then why add the extra hoops in the first place?
If they were to do more damage due to rotational complexity, they'd be at risk of being overpowered.

Furthermore, as I've seen some others say, I don't think this would be very good for existing healers. For starters, all three would have to be completely reworked, which isn't going to happen. A new healer that focuses specifically on dealing damage or heal/damage synergy is interesting (though not to my taste), but would fall into one of the two categories above (either too powerful or too weak).

I completely understand that dealing damage as a healer can become very uninspiring, especially when you're just pressing the same button over and over and over and over. But in my opinion, adding more complex damage dealing mechanics to healers wouldn't fix it.

[Sebazy]

Aye, I’m basing my opinion on actual healer DPS remaining as it is when done perfectly, thus a combo system or other complexity would likely result in a net loss when done incorrectly. The odds of SE willingly handing healers more single target DPS are very very low in my eyes.

[akaneakki]

Ugh, please just leave WHM alone. I don't need crazy rotations or synergies or whatnot, its why I play the class because it's simple. I can deal with no "heal needed, stone stone stone, holy, holy, holy" and whatever. Complications will make me drop it in a heartbeat. :/

WHM might be the simpliest of them all but to excute and perform as a good whm is another thing. And what OP said isn't making things harder really.

[Lord_Zlatan]

I think that the OP is really on to something here. I would absolutely welcome these changes.