Healer dps is unfairly boring

[Elladie]

How anyone finds healing in this game stressful, outside of maybe ultimate, is beyond me. You spend 90% of your time dpsing anyway and when you do need to heal you stop dpsing for just a second, use an oGCD, and go back to dpsing. Sometimes if you somehow run out of OGCDS you'll use a GCD. Unless your tank has glass bones and paper skin, or your the kind of healer that has to kiss away any booboo and cant let the tank miss even 10hp, you will be spending the vast majority of your time dpsing as a healer so why shouldnt they have more to do besides spam 1?

I don't find healing stressful in this game. It's engaging, and I enjoy it. And as I have said previously, all the other healers in my FC and linkshells are also happy with the current iterations. I have 4 DPS buttons on SCH and 4 on WHM and that's plenty thanks. If I wanted to focus on a more complex DPS rotation, I'd play a DPS.

[Saefinn]

Oh gods please no. Healing is bad enough as it is, we don't need to start gutting the kit.

Whilst in my set up, I have plenty of extra space for DPS skills I expect they'll only allow a certain number of skills before considering it "button bloat", so I expect they'll remove healing spells to accommodate DPS skills they're going to have to remove some healing spells, which arguably are underutilised anyway. My preference would be to not get rid of them of course, because as I say, I've got room in my set up. But if Blue Mage taught me anything less is more. My healing experience was improved by having less bloat. Sadly 95% of the game's content doesn't utilise your kit.

I don't find healing stressful in this game. It's engaging, and I enjoy it. And as I have said previously, all the other healers in my FC and linkshells are also happy with the current iterations. I have 4 DPS buttons on SCH and 4 on WHM and that's plenty thanks. If I wanted to focus on a more complex DPS rotation, I'd play a DPS.

This is the counter argument I keep hearing, "if I wanted to focus on a more complex DPS rotation, I'd play a DPS". The problem with this is that the changes haven't made me lose that green DPS focus, it's just made it boring as heck. These changes would have been fine if they adjusted the game's design to reduce that downtime and utilise more of our healing toolkit for more variety instead of periods of time where in effect it feels like you're spamming 1 button. However, by design they've made green DPS a focus in this game, which is appropriate, given it's not uncommon in Final Fantasy design for your healer job/character to contribute to damage when they're not healing and if anything separates it from something like WoW. So if we have the DPS focus, it's not unreasonable to want that part to feel more engaging than it currently does, especially when they used to have a good balance where it didn't feel boring.

That said, I don't mind if they replaced the DPS with something else, support, enfeebling, crowd control, the need to heal etc. What I don't want is this big chunk where it feels like I am doing nothing.

However, DPS is the simplest solution, because it respects how this game's encounters are designed, doesn't screw with current healing design and it's how the jobs /were/ designed before they were gutted and we did just fine back then.

I get that there are people who praise the current healer design. I feel like they should have put all that design philosophy into a new job. This is the advantage to having multiple jobs, you can accommodate different playstyles. This way they would have appealed to the people who want a simpler DPS rotation without negatively impacting those who were already satisfied with the level of complexity their respective healers had.

An evolution on HW's healers would be good (but not make SCH OP this time, maybe SB for AST? I don't have much pre-ShB experience of AST to make a call) and a 4th healer taking the ShB design philosophy for healers (perhaps an adaptation of ShB WHM because it is the best designed of the 3)

[Dzian]

we could also just have one healer with things like more complicated dps have different classes in the same role appeal to different niches instead of all being the same.

This would never work with the devs obsession on balance.

If you have a healer with a complex dps rotation and a healer that can do comparable dps with 1 button spam. Then the one with the complex rotation is going to get benched because of all the extra effort and work required to achieve the same results that another class can achieve with 1 1 1 1 1 1.

If you make the one with the complex dps rotation noticably better as a reward for that complexity then every other healer is going to get benched because ultimately dps is all that matters...

[Saefinn]

This would never work with the devs obsession on balance.

If you have a healer with a complex dps rotation and a healer that can do comparable dps with 1 button spam. Then the one with the complex rotation is going to get benched because of all the extra effort and work required to achieve the same results that another class can achieve with 1 1 1 1 1 1.

If you make the one with the complex dps rotation noticably better as a reward for that complexity then every other healer is going to get benched because ultimately dps is all that matters...

Ultimately it'll boil down to which healer class does the most rDPS to be considered in the best place, which will always be a problem because of how the game is designed to value rDPS above all else and arguably the difference only /truly/ matters once you're hitting the top percentile groups that want to really optimise their numbers. My argument is it's fine as long as it can do the content competently enough. "True" balance will never be achieved and I don't want to see jobs stripped of things that make them interesting to try and achieve it.

But DPS complexity will not necessarily impact that. You only need to look at the difference between SMN and RDM. RDM has a really simple, straight forward rotation, but SMN has a carpal tunnel rotation that's complex by comparison. SMN is in a much better position for DPS than RDM currently is (or at least the last time I checked). And I don't recall RDM being 'benched', even if it could be in a better place.

[monk-dps]

Run or RP walk? If I have to RP walk for two minutes I'm tapping out.

I won't comment on that but I will say I'll never forget one time in rath I had someone ask me how to click on him to mount him. Like... they were seriously lost and didn't know how to click on him. I wish I was making this up.

[GrimGale]

WHM deserves a more complex DPS rotation. They could benefit from Spells that deal damage and heal at the same time. Maybe something that refreshes the duration on active Regen effects on nearby allies.

SCH and AST should have their secondary mechanics expanded as to fill their healing downtime with something to do beyond Single target dps. AST have their cards and SCH should have debuff mechanics.

Managing enemy intelligence, finding weakspots for your allies to exploit and triggering coordinated assaults would be a fun alternarive to SCH mindless broil spam, considering how much free time their fairy and shields get them.

[Dzian]

I don't want to see jobs stripped of things that make them interesting to try and achieve it.

Generally I agree with your post but many players myself included generally feel this has already happened. Jobs have generally been so homogenized they lost so many of the things that make them interesting and unique. And what isn't lost entirely has just become a role action so any uniqueness has been all but destroyed.

Balance is fine and all but jobs need strengths and weaknesses that balance each other out in well designed content.

FPS games often demonstrate this. You can gave sniper rifles or shotguns or rpgs all with totally separate strengths and weaknesses and yet balance is attained through intelligent level design.

So do racing games. You have super fast cars with zero handling, cars that stick to the road like glue but lack in acceleration. And many others. And again balance is done through intelligent track design.

Mmos are no different you can totally diversify jobs and attain balance through good encounter design many older rpgs did this. Where some jobs might hit weaket bug with more accuracy against evasive mobs. Other jobs would hit harder but slower so have a hard time against evasive mobs but crush armored mobs with that extra power. All that then needed is well thought out encounters.

And not a repeat of Alex where you have a physical damage tank a magic damage tank and an entirecteir if raids that's exclusively magic based example of bad encounter design.

[Saefinn]

Generally I agree with your post but many players myself included generally feel this has already happened. Jobs have generally been so homogenized they lost so many of the things that make them interesting and unique. And what isn't lost entirely has just become a role action so any uniqueness has been all but destroyed.

Balance is fine and all but jobs need strengths and weaknesses that balance each other out in well designed content.

FPS games often demonstrate this. You can gave sniper rifles or shotguns or rpgs all with totally separate strengths and weaknesses and yet balance is attained through intelligent level design.

So do racing games. You have super fast cars with zero handling, cars that stick to the road like glue but lack in acceleration. And many others. And again balance is done through intelligent track design.

Mmos are nice different you can totally diversify jobs and attain balance through encounter design many older rpgs did this. Where some jobs might hit weaket bug with more accuracy against evasive mobs. Other jobs would hit harder but slower so have a hard time against evasive mobs but crush armored mobs with that extra power. All that then needed is well thought out encounters.

And not a repeat of Alex where you have a physical damage tank a magic damage tank and an entirecteir if raids that's exclusively magic based example of bad encounter design.

I agree that it has already happened. EG: the 2 tanks on my main are DRK and WAR and I soon realised trying to level them from 70 to 80 that there was very little difference in how they played, so my choice boils down to "do I want an axe and have brutal animations? Or a big sword and edgy animations?". My complaint in another thread is that DRK had a lot of interesting stuff it doesn't have anymore, which was kinda the train of thought that influenced my comment.

And of course, my healer complaints. I would like to see them revert these changes and provide an evolution on versions that were more interesting to play and feel less homogenised.

But I think you raise a good point. Balance doesn't have to be about having what is similar or the same, but how the strengths and weaknesses are applied through design. When, say, SCH gets something, the thought shouldn't be "why hasn't WHM or AST got something like that?"

One of the things I preach is about the relationship between ARR SCH and ARR WHM is that they had this, where SCH had to work harder to top up health, but were much better at preventing damage. And in a raid situation complemented each other. AST's initial design was to try and fit into that relationship, but at the same time, they patched SCH's weakness, started taking stuff away from WHM and IMO made that relationship and therefore AST's design philosophy redundant. Hence SCH was so OP in HW.

[Jandor]

Oh gods please no. Healing is bad enough as it is, we don't need to start gutting the kit.

The case could be made that "gutting" some of the massive healing kit would make the actual process of healing people more interesting.

There are very few real decisions to be made when you have a big pile of healing oGCDs ready for every situation.

[ForteNightshade]

The case could be made that "gutting" some of the massive healing kit would make the actual process of healing people more interesting.

There are very few real decisions to be made when you have a big pile of healing oGCDs ready for every situation.

I have long advocated that healing potency needs a drastic nerf. Healers are comically strong in this game, which is one of the many reasons you'll spend so much time DPSing. Unfortunately, nothing will change unless the devs move away from balancing content around the lowest common denominator. When their primary concern is addressing how that White Mage spamming Medica II for every little AoE needs to not feel stressed, it leaves healers in the state we have right now.