All DPS clears highlight a problem with encounter design in ShB

[Corbeau]

Having to weigh the necessity of GCD heals, rather than discounting them in 95% of circumstances, would be more interesting that what exists now.

[ForteNightshade]

You feel like hardcasting heals is inherently more exciting? That those buttons are just, what, the fun ones to push?
I'm not really sure I can agree that making us heal with more GCDs = better design.

In a vacuum? No. Spamming Cure II is equally as boring as Glare. But as QooEr said earlier, it's the planning aspect that made GCD healing more interesting. In the past, we had significantly less tools to work with, thus you had to plan out where to use specific oGCDs.

Since I tank more than heal, I'll use that as a reference point. Cooldowns are essentially a button press but I enjoyed having to strategize their usage; if I use Vengeance now I won't have it for this buster. I can get a Feint there and use Rampant later. While it might seem like nothing. That small interaction with my cooldowns and potential coordination with the DPS made things more interesting. Nowadays, I barely pay attention to my CDs since I know I'll always have something given how infrequent busters are. Hell, Leviathan was so bad. If you didn't cheese his dash, you could literally throw Vengeance, Thrill and Rampant off your bar. Holmgang and Raw/Nascent could pretty much carry you through everything. Obviously, you'd still want to mitigate autos but that's about it.

This is even worse in normal mode. E2S literally does not have a tank buster. As a MT, you're just there to hold aggro and nothing else. The OT may as well be a fifth DPS. Healers feel similar in that they're gimped DPS more than healers. I appreciate they want to make things easy and "accessible." But there's such a thing as going to far. They haven't just crossed that line, in my opinion. They sailed over it full speed ahead.

[EaMett]

In terms of the current expansion I'll raise first week titan clears cause of the ending with voice of the land into tumult spam at the end but thats all else I can think of. For stormblood there was also

• Bahamut Trios in Ucob
• Add phase in Ucob
• Garuda Cleanses in Uwu
• Post Predation in Uwu
• Primal Roulette in Uwu

There are really hardly any heal checks in the two extremes that came out and nothing really in hades or ruby weapon that come to mind given how many ogcds we have to deal with it.

Ah yes titan. I was skipping ultimates.

[BloodRubyXII]

I mean, this is pretty standard Final Fantasy healing if you think about the single player game series.

[QooEr]

You feel like hardcasting heals is inherently more exciting? That those buttons are just, what, the fun ones to push?
I'm not really sure I can agree that making us heal with more GCDs = better design.

casting benefic 2 while someone has low health and hoping it goes off before damage goes out is alot more exciting than Instantly healing them

or casting aspected helios but i have to move for this mechanic is still more exciting than moving while pressing celestial opposition


im not saying theyd be gamebreaking but theyre definitely moments that i at least used to get in heavensward and sometimes stormblood and now they're completely gone

[Gemina]

You feel like hardcasting heals is inherently more exciting? That those buttons are just, what, the fun ones to push?
I'm not really sure I can agree that making us heal with more GCDs = better design.

On the contrary, GCD healing is exactly how you make it engaging. I feel like this is the answer that is right in front of the dev's face: Increase the power of GCD heals, and reduce the power of ogcd heals. The meta is aimed at maximizing damage through efficient optimization of your tool kit, and because our ogcd heals are so powerful and we have so many, we are bored to tears with whack-a-mole healing while mindlessly spamming one of our two DPS GCD skills.

Healers right now are forced to smash button 1 because there is literally nothing else for them to do. With this change, you will force healers to have to use their GCDs on healing the party, and healing immediately becomes more interesting because with their ocgd heals exhausted, healers will no longer be able to comfortably allow health gauges to get as low as they do now. If the devs have to loosen up DPS checks, then frickin' do it.

[Semirhage]

On the contrary, GCD healing is exactly how you make it engaging.

Why on earth would forcing us to spam Cure over and over and over and over and over again be somehow more engaging than spamming Glare over and over and over and over and over again? The GCD kits aren't exactly engaging either.

[Morningstar1337]

Why on earth would forcing us to spam Cure over and over and over and over and over again be somehow more engaging than spamming Glare over and over and over and over and over again? The GCD kits aren't exactly engaging either.

I assume its because, With the mentality of healing as less as possible, it would force players to try to find windows of opportunity for their DPS again as opposed to seeing it with the frequency of Don Quixote seeing giants in windmills.

Also would bring more use to their other cooldowns like Horoscope and Temperance.

[Liam_Harper]

On the contrary, GCD healing is exactly how you make it engaging. I feel like this is the answer that is right in front of the dev's face: Increase the power of GCD heals, and reduce the power of ogcd heals. The meta is aimed at maximizing damage through efficient optimization of your tool kit, and because our ogcd heals are so powerful and we have so many, we are bored to tears with whack-a-mole healing while mindlessly spamming one of our two DPS GCD skills.

I'm not sure how this would make things more engaging with how low damage intake is right now. GcD heals are already quite strong, if you increased their power we could just Medica II each Raidwide, throw an occasional Regen on the tank and mash Glare for the rest of the fight. Also do we count damage neutral instant-cast Gcd's like Rapture as GcD's, because then even less changes. Damage just happens far too infrequently. Look at fights like e7s, where you spend the first 2 minutes barely needing a heal. If you force me to Medica II the Empty wave and maybe consider a Regen after the TB, then spam Glare for the rest I'm not going to suddenly feel engaged.

[bundythenoob]

so it would seem that Square Enix has 2 choices for healer design:

1. make healers heal constantly and keep their dps toolkit the same, which requires an overhaul of the last 6-7 years worth of content and a new direction for the future game design, but would keep the homogenised healers balanced and allow anyone to press cure 1 to beat savage

2. give healers back their DPS options, which requires reintroducing buttons and consolidating some abilities to keep the balance, but would once again bring back job identity and skillful gameplay that new players could strive to achieve

I wonder which one they will take for 6.0. with the current state of affairs, I wouldn't be surprised if they removed the dots on healers because they're taking up the slot a new healer would use for a cure 1 cast.