Encounter Design needs to be overhauled at a fundamental level

[Billythepancake]

I'm much more in favor of the game just embracing green DPS instead of trying to fight it and fail miserable. Both the classes and the game itself are not built to have healers heal even 50% of the time. You'd be stretching it at 20%. I'd rather then find ways to make the times where you aren't healing more interesting than to go and redesign the entire game and the classes.

[SamRF]

If they take way more damage, we won't consider Cure because Cure II is much higher potency per GcD. Spamming little heals on a tank taking huge chunks of damage means a dead tank. You see this in dungeons when inexperienced healers try to Cure spam a tank on big pulls.
Cure isn't even a terrible ability, it gives you a weave window, good potency per MP and a decent proc. We just don't need GcD ST heals.

Another thing I haven't seen mentioned much, more than oGcD's, is how op AoE healing is. A Medica II in terms of potency is like casting Cure II on the entire party for a fraction more mana than a single cast, never mind buffing it up with Temp or Plenary on top. Raidwides, several people making mistakes, even aoe markers should be some threat, but 2 healers can have the entire party from 20% to full in 1-2 GcD's and are back to spamming their one dps button. If I had to target something in the toolkit, I'd look there first.

But you also can't heal effectively if you are out of MP, right? You wouldn't spam Cure I but you'll throw some in there just for conserving MP. Could be wrong tho but that seems to make most sense to me.

[SamRF]

I'm much more in favor of the game just embracing green DPS instead of trying to fight it and fail miserable. Both the classes and the game itself are not built to have healers heal even 50% of the time. You'd be stretching it at 20%. I'd rather then find ways to make the times where you aren't healing more interesting than to go and redesign the entire game and the classes.

I'd prefer this as well. Give healers a proper and more engaging dps rotation. Doesn't have to be anything complex, just something more than spamming 1 button and keeping up 1 DoT.

[SturmChurro]

I'd prefer this as well. Give healers a proper and more engaging dps rotation. Doesn't have to be anything complex, just something more than spamming 1 button and keeping up 1 DoT.

Why bother? Most healers don't even use the DPS skills they have right now.

[SamRF]

Why bother? Most healers don't even use the DPS skills they have right now.

I wouldn't say "most". At least in my data center, I definitely see more than half the healers dps. It's only fair imo for players who get most competent at the role that they have something more engaging to do when there are no healing needs. Adding more complex dps rotation is an easy way to do this since it increases potential engagement in all combat content in this game (solo content as well) no matter the situation.

[Volkaj]

Why bother? Most healers don't even use the DPS skills they have right now.

Why bother giving tanks defensive cooldowns? Most tanks don't use them anyway. /s

Why bother giving DPS self-buffs/combos/party buffs? Most DPS don't use them anyway. /s

Lowering the skill ceiling "because most healers are bad anyway" will just make good healers quit to more interesting jobs, or to other games with better healing gameplay.

[Rilifane]

I'm much more in favor of the game just embracing green DPS instead of trying to fight it and fail miserable. Both the classes and the game itself are not built to have healers heal even 50% of the time. You'd be stretching it at 20%. I'd rather then find ways to make the times where you aren't healing more interesting than to go and redesign the entire game and the classes.

Same.
In my recent Ruby ex runs on SCH I had spent a whooping 3 GCDs on non-dps spells. Two being raise, one being Succor that wasn't even intended or neccessary. Just fat-fingered.
The other GCDs were spent on Broil, Ruin II and Biolysis.
And it's not any different in dungeons or savage. The amount of hardcasted heals is somewhere in the single-digit area with lots of them being deployed Adlos during transitions in savage.
Once you get comfortable with a healer you usually only spent 5-10% or less of your time actively healing while the rest is done as a sideline activity while dpsing.

I think it's too late to fundamentally change the encounter design to force healers to spent more time healing. If they were able to change encounter and class design in a way that makes more time spent actively healing interesting and engaging I'd love it. But as it is, it's probably best to simply raise the skill ceiling for healer dps and give us more interesting dps rotations.

Lowering the skill ceiling "because most healers are bad anyway" will just make good healers quit to more interesting jobs, or to other games with better healing gameplay.

Which is precisely what happened during ShB.
If you spent 90%+ of your time pushing dps buttons, might aswell switch to a job that makes it fun and engaging to push them.

[technole]

- Shift healing power away from oGCD's towards GCDs.

Essentially, make oGCD's more for panic buttons that you use when you really need to heal someone up right now, with more throughput from GCD's (You can have more instant cast GCD's that's fine, as it still causes you to stop what filler action you're partaking of)

- Make ALL stats for Tanks hybrid Damage/Defence ones.

So as to make gearing more interesting, provide defensive bonuses from Crit/DH/SkS while improving the gains from Det/Ten. So that gearing can be more interesting than "Stack the highest DPS gain stats" or if mitigation was more important "Stack Ten/Det"

Examples could be stuff like, PLD getting chances for Critical Blocks from Crit that absorb more damage. GNB getting reduced defensive CD's from SkS allowing more freedom to use them to mitigate passive damage. Etc.

Someone apparently wasn't around in 2014 ARR when that was all that healers had for all content, all GCDs except for Lustrate and Bene at level 50.

Parry was a horrible tank stat, and you can't have CDs go down in-time because that automatically adds another advantage. DRK TBN is already stupid good for this reason.

[Kalise]

Someone apparently wasn't around in 2014 ARR when that was all that healers had for all content, all GCDs except for Lustrate and Bene at level 50.

Again, shifting the power from oGCD to GCD doesn't mean deleting oGCD's. It just means toning down the potency of oGCD's so they're not as strong as your strongest GCD's (Or stronger)

Causing you to want to target large amounts of missing health with a GCD heal, possibly supplemented by weaving oGCD's. Rather than leloGCDfullheal.

Parry was a horrible tank stat, and you can't have CDs go down in-time because that automatically adds another advantage. DRK TBN is already stupid good for this reason.

Parry was a horrible tank stat because all it did was provide RNG mitigation. Meanwhile, the meta for Blue DPS was still stacking damage because what even is a Tank anyway?

CD's can be shorter, if encounters aren't all about "Who can immune the most actual threatening attacks". Especially if more consistent mitigation is relevant so giving up passive mitigation (From, i.e. Tenacity) for shorter CD's for to be able to more freely use said CD's to mitigate passive damage is possible.

Also, TBN is stupid good because it has insane throughput, up to double the strength of other Blue DPS's similar CD's.

I'm much more in favor of the game just embracing green DPS instead of trying to fight it and fail miserable. Both the classes and the game itself are not built to have healers heal even 50% of the time. You'd be stretching it at 20%.

Though, going down this route can beg the question "Why even have the Healer role?".

If healing requirements are kept minimal, why not just actually make them into Green DPS? Just give everyone the Echo bonus from solo duties that auto-heals them.

Why not go further and delete Tanks too, heck, bosses already auto-position themselves or are stuck at the side of an arena for the most part. Just delete their auto attacks and Tankbusters and make them simply sit there and spam DDR mechanics at everyone.

Why would SE continue to try and make Healers and Tanks relevant and fail, when they could easily just embrace the Blue/Green DPS memes and just actually make everyone a DPS?

It'd instantly fix any issues with DF queues too, which is one of their primary concerns, making sure that DF is full of people so newbies can finish their MSQ's.

It might seem like I'm just being facetious, but this is actually something they could consider.

Given how ShB changes have affected the Healer population in DF content and how much difficulty they've had in balancing (The reason why no 4th healer in StB or ShB has been "We need to focus on healer balance") AND given how so many people are asking for more complex healer DPS rotations, why not just go the easy route and make everyone a DPS outright.

[linay]

why not just go the easy route and make everyone a DPS outright.

Probably because the easier route is to keep the status quo.