Encounter Design needs to be overhauled at a fundamental level

[Billythepancake]

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

My biggest issue with that is, I DO enjoy the responsibility of healing, I am not opposed to healing more, but I don't like the idea a lot of people push around where you just wouldn't have time to do anything BUT heal. If square could somehow reach a balance where you were healing 30-40% of the time, I'd be happy with that, tbh.

Moreso, what I want is for them to stop pretending like healers don't DPS. I want them to recognize that DPS is a part of our kits, and it's a big part of our kits. I don't even want a DPS rotation akin to tanks, I just want SOMETHING and I want it to be integral to my kit, as in, in order for me to get the most out of it, I'd have to do my DPS buttons. The perfect example for me is Moira from Overwatch, she is a prime example of a green DPS. She is a healer, yes, but DPSing isn't something she does because she has nothing else better to do, it is an essential part of her kit, she either does damage, or she's missing out on her abilities. That's what I want more than anything, I want the healers to lean towards a hybrid of healing AND DPSing, SCH was the closest for me back in SB, and that's why I fell in love with it as soon as level 40. And now that's been diminished to just spam broil/art of war. If you're doing solo content, it's even more boring because you have practically no reason to touch the healing half of your kit.

[Kalise]

My biggest issue with that is, I DO enjoy the responsibility of healing, I am not opposed to healing more, but I don't like the idea a lot of people push around where you just wouldn't have time to do anything BUT heal. If square could somehow reach a balance where you were healing 30-40% of the time, I'd be happy with that, tbh.

Though, the problem is, that with the game as it stands, the only place where healers actually heal 30% of the time is in Ultimate content.

However, they're never going to make even Savage as difficult as Ultimate, let alone normal content and dungeons.

It would still require a large overhaul of the game in order to bring out an increase of healing without simply making things as hard as Ultimate content.

Moreso, what I want is for them to stop pretending like healers don't DPS. I don't even want a DPS rotation akin to tanks, I just want SOMETHING and I want it to be integral to my kit, as in, in order for me to get the most out of it, I'd have to do my DPS buttons.

Though, I think they're well aware that healers DPS. Given how strict they make enrage timers. They KNOW that both Tanks and Healers DPS and that both maximize their DPS and so people often find enrages tight even when Tanks and Healers are maximizing their DPS output.

Outside of that, making a cohesive healing kit that utilizes both healing and damage skills first requires that there exists something to heal in the first place.

For example, it's all well and good that WHM has the Lily system that can turn healing into a damage skill. But personally, I've actually not participated in any content where I've been able to cast Misery. Perhaps in Savage you might have some more damage that requires GCD healing... But from what I've done, everything can be handled with oGCD's and Medica II rather than popping Afflatus skills (Also, using Afflatus skills purely to use Misery is a DPS loss, because it ends up being 4 GCD's for 900 potency making it 225 potency per GCD compared to Glare's 300 potency per GCD)

Hence why my OP mentions that this is merely a baseline change to the game that can be expanded on with future job changes/reworks and additional mechanics. Overhauling the core systems used by bosses to increase the amount of space to design Tank and Healer kits because they can actually include mitgation and healing in them as it will be relevant outside of "Tankbuster CD's" and oGCD heals.

The ideal scenario is that both Tanks and Healers utilize offensive and defensive skills to form a dynamic and fluid combat flow, that feels as nice as the more well designed DPS jobs damage rotations, but while retaining the essence of actually playing a class from one of the support roles rather than feeling like just a gimped DPS class.

[SturmChurro]

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.

A Complex DPS rotation on a healer wouldn't do well. Many DPS as it stands right now barely use more than 5 skills total, and not in any particular order either.

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.

Good. I could use faster queues.

[QooEr]

A Complex DPS rotation on a healer wouldn't do well. Many DPS as it stands right now barely use more than 5 skills total, and not in any particular order either

Scholar had a complex rotation and did well, and frankly even a proc based rotation like a mini dancer would be engaging enough.

What is the latter half of this comment even supposed to mean even? If it's that "many dps players are bad", casual content in the game can literally be cleared by people with 5 apm pressing random buttons so what's your point lol ?

[TheUltimate3]

What if there was no difference between healing and dps? Something like to single target heal, you mark the player, then attack the boss and that person gets healed. To AOE, you hit your aoe button and it heals friends and damages enemies.

As you go through the dps rotation the heal parts also increase. And if you need just a big heal you could still just target someone and heal directly.

This is rough but would this be possible?

[Shurrikhan]

My biggest issue with that is, I DO enjoy the responsibility of healing, I am not opposed to healing more, but I don't like the idea a lot of people push around where you just wouldn't have time to do anything BUT heal. If square could somehow reach a balance where you were healing 30-40% of the time, I'd be happy with that, tbh.

Moreso, what I want is for them to stop pretending like healers don't DPS. I want them to recognize that DPS is a part of our kits, and it's a big part of our kits. I don't even want a DPS rotation akin to tanks, I just want SOMETHING and I want it to be integral to my kit, as in, in order for me to get the most out of it, I'd have to do my DPS buttons. The perfect example for me is Moira from Overwatch, she is a prime example of a green DPS. She is a healer, yes, but DPSing isn't something she does because she has nothing else better to do, it is an essential part of her kit, she either does damage, or she's missing out on her abilities. That's what I want more than anything, I want the healers to lean towards a hybrid of healing AND DPSing, SCH was the closest for me back in SB, and that's why I fell in love with it as soon as level 40. And now that's been diminished to just spam broil/art of war. If you're doing solo content, it's even more boring because you have practically no reason to touch the healing half of your kit.

This. It doesn't have to be resource generation as it is for Moira, either, but just a feeling of working towards some powerful opportunity that isn't limited to healing. Heck, every Overwatch support does it well. Their offensive powers are arguably more tide-turning than their healing, yet they never feel any less like Support for having those powers; quite the opposite.

[linay]

Moreso, what I want is for them to stop pretending like healers don't DPS.

I don't think that's the case at all, otherwise healers would have even lower DPS output than they do now. I think it's simply a case of lowering the skill floor. It fits with the general trend of making things easier in the game rather than a case of them not wanting healers to output DPS, or pretending they don't.

[ElciaDeiLinus]

Generally all increasing passive damage and adding random spikes does is cause random wipes- that was generally the formula MMOs used to use, and some still use. It generally results in a battle being hard before you get gear, and easy after- with gear being the key factor rather than learning the fight.

FFXIV fights are more mechanically intense than most other games I've played, even retail WoW I went through the new raid, Heroic Nyalotha, and most fights there may be a few players that need to do something but for everyone else you move maybe once a minute and there's really no urgency in most cases. People are getting hit by things even with DBM that would one shot you in FFXIV. For example to compare the second last boss of Azshara's Palace to Ravana- both of them have a circular arena, in WoW there's a mechanic where a tentacle will show up and after ample time knocks people back if they're in the way- the penalty for being hit is a bit of damage, if you happen to be near the edge you might die to the shadow damage outside the arena... or you might get back in and survive.

Ravana, on normal, just tosses you off the side and you die. Titan, tosses you off the side and you die. The Goddess- you get my point. Even with DBM and generally far more time to move out of danger in WoW- stuff like this is a challenge for even coordinated guilds.

There are numerous fights I've come across from each FFXIV that'll require more movement and attention in a single boss combo sequence than on an entire boss in WoW.

But there does have to be some sort of balance to the complexity of FFXIV's mechanics- and that generally seems to be that if you do pay attention and follow mechanics you take considerably less damage and also have far more lenient dps requirements.

I think it's a fair enough trade, the whole 'grind or useless' mentality of most MMOs feels obsolete.

Coming from WoW at least, I like having mechanics for once, and I find it surprising how well groupfinder groups handle so many mechanics.

Earlier in BfA, in the first raid- I remember wiping frequently on a boss called MOTHER in LFR. She had two mechanics. One- to avoid the lasers that give you all the time in the world to move away from, and tickle if they hit. Two- to walk forward about 10 steps every two minutes. That second mechanic was the cause of most of the wipes, and you'd see multiple tries where people still couldn't handle the mechanic of going from one room to the next when it starts to fill with fire.

[ElciaDeiLinus]

Frankly, Xande as easy as he must seem to people is more complicated than most of the bosses in WoW under mythic level. It's extremely rewarding in this game to follow mechanics, and very punishing to miss them- to me that feels closer to Dark Souls, one of my favourite series. While considered one of the most challenging game series around, you also could get through many bosses without taking any damage once you knew how. If there's one downside to that- it does make the healer's job too easy if dps are paying attention. But if you keep the game mechanically heavy and make it tight on healing/damage/mitigation requirements without add ons you're going to find the game becomes very unfriendly to a lot of players.

And while now it generally swings between 'nothing to do' for healers to overly frantic if a mechanic is messed up- if you make it so healers are always frantic, that'll just cause mechanical missteps to be devastating. In a game like WoW, having a mechanic happen once a minute sure, you can make that a wipe event if you screw it up. (Heroic Nyalotha, there's a boss where you have to bounce a ball into a net, basically, 3 times over the fight as pretty much the sole mechanic other than a few very slow 'don't stand in the bad' parts... even on Heroic, out of those three times you can mess up once and it's fine). You can't be that punishing when there's a constant, endless slew of mechanics.