White Mage Attraction

[AmiableApkallu]

White Mage needs a cooler damage rotation, you're telling me they fought against Black Mages in the War of the Magi spamming Glare and Dia?!

People always want the identity of WHM to be burst GCD healing but why not just a full GCD identity in general? Give them something similar to BLM (Stone = Fire, Water = Blizzard, Aero = Thunder) but without any timers to manage. That way they can pick up on their rotation when they're done healing or raising. They have an abnormal amount of healing abilities that they never need because lilies cover almost everything that happens. I think some of these can be replaced with damage abilities so it isn't just glareglareglare.

The moment you add any sort of multi-button DPS rotation to a GCD-based healer like WHM, someone's going to point out that those GCD heals are a DPS loss (à la the old lilies) or find a way to turn GCDs spent over-healing into a DPS gain (because of how damage is "refunded"). It's a balancing act the current WHM avoids because of Glare-Glare-Glare-….

The story could play out differently if healers received DPS credit for healing and mitigating [1] [2], but that's non-trivial to work out.

[vetch]

The moment you add any sort of multi-button DPS rotation to a GCD-based healer like WHM, someone's going to point out that those GCD heals are a DPS loss (à la the old lilies) or find a way to turn GCDs spent over-healing into a DPS gain (because of how damage is "refunded"). It's a balancing act the current WHM avoids because of Glare-Glare-Glare-….

The story could play out differently if healers received DPS credit for healing and mitigating [1] [2], but that's non-trivial to work out.

What point are you trying to make? It's currently a DPS loss to GCD heal as well, you just suck it up and do it when you (almost never) have to.

[flowerfairy]

Glare & Dia function as WHM's damage. What I want is for those buttons to have more flavor to them rather than mashing the same thing forever. GCD healing will always be a DPS loss because you aren't dealing damage. Glare being 1 button only or being split into 4 different buttons will never change that predicament healers have to deal with. Lilies as they are now are DPS neutral GCD heals (and actually plus if it's half-charged before burst), isn't that great for a GCD-based healer? I don't see how changing Glare affects that at all. I'm not asking for more damage, I'm asking for unique ways to output that damage.

I agree with your arguments in the hyperlinks. Healing just isn't very engaging or rewarding this expansion. Bosses fart a raidwide once every minute and then it's back to Glare spam. And the solution to that isn't easy to think about because only changing future fights to be more heal-dependent neglects old content and it'll be a snoozefest to revisit them. What I and other people propose is to add more engaging gameplay for healers. When there's no one to heal or raise in a fight, give them something else to look at. SCH's old DoT rotation was a good example of how a healer can contribute to damage. They're just buttons you press when the boss isn't being hurt by it anymore. It's minimal pressure on the SCH to both deal damage and heal the party. Why do we want this out of the game?

[AmiableApkallu]

What point are you trying to make? It's currently a DPS loss to GCD heal as well, you just suck it up and do it when you (almost never) have to.

Eh? 4 GCDs spent on Glare = 3 GCDs spent on Rapture/Solace + 1 GCD on Misery, or "DPS neutral" as people like to put it.

The point being that a GCD-based healer will always be constrained and limited compared to an oGCD-based healer, especially when the "the community" assigns zero utility to healing and mitigation. (And for WHM, as long as combat values mitigation more than HP restoration...)

[vetch]

Eh? 4 GCDs spent on Glare = 3 GCDs spent on Rapture/Solace + 1 GCD on Misery, or "DPS neutral" as people like to put it.

Oh, I see what you mean. But, as long as you're not overcapping on lilies, you still lose potential DPS from your maximum by using them to heal instead of saving two to dump during GCDs where you can't Glare (due to the boss being offscreen or whatever), so oGCD healing would still be preferred. No?

The point being that a GCD-based healer will always be constrained and limited compared to an oGCD-based healer, especially when the "the community" assigns zero utility to healing and mitigation. (And for WHM, as long as combat values mitigation more than HP restoration...)

It's not that healing isn't valued. It's that having the most healing power isn't any kind of identity when one of the game's design goals is that all comps need to be able to clear, meaning all that healing power can't be required by the content. 'Guaranteed surplus healing' can't be an identity when one of the cornerstones of MMO combat gameplay is 'surplus is a waste'.

Mitigation is properly valued at the extreme high end, however, which leaves WHM with the least and worst mitigation of any healer, also least valued.

[Punslinger]

...especially when the "the community" game design assigns zero utility to healing and mitigation.

FTFY.

The "community" assigns zero value to healing because the game design assigns zero value to healing. In most scenarios that most players will encounter, healing is not necessary. When everything except for two Savages and three Ultimates can be cleared without healers at all, that is a pretty strong sign that the game design does not prioritize, require, reward, or value healing. So why would any rational player place a value on something that the game doesn't value?

When every fight is on a static script, and when healer kits are absurdly overpowered relative to the pitiful amount of incoming damage, and when avoidable mechanics are frequently one-shots or give a damage down debuff, and when enrage timers are tuned as they currently are, the game is practically screaming at you, "I want you to DPS, not heal!"

[AmiableApkallu]

In most scenarios that most players will encounter, healing is not necessary.

Most scenarios that most players will encounter will involve normal mode content with standard party comps of players of average skill playing their jobs and mechanics less than perfectly.

But anyway, a rational player would place value on healing so that the game design itself might come to value it. Why would a game designer ramp up damage so high that a healer would find it necessary to use GCD heals when the players complain that "GCD heals are a DPS loss"?

[vetch]

Most scenarios that most players will encounter will involve normal mode content with standard party comps of players of average skill playing their jobs and mechanics less than perfectly.

But anyway, a rational player would place value on healing so that the game design itself might come to value it. Why would a game designer ramp up damage so high that a healer would find it necessary to use GCD heals when the players complain that "GCD heals are a DPS loss"?

Your horse and cart are backwards. The community has developed an emphasis on green DPS as a response to FF14's design degenerating to value DPS so nakedly. If enrages had stayed as loose as they were in ARR, outgoing damage as high, and healer design as difficult to DPS effectively with, then you wouldn't even need to explain to players that healing is important; they'd know it (as they did know it) from having experienced the disastrous outcomes of healers DPSing away when they should heal.

You can't blame players for learning how a game works and adapting their behavior to be better at it -- that is the point of playing a game.

[AmiableApkallu]

You can't blame players for learning how a game works and adapting their behavior to be better at it -- that is the point of playing a game.

Yes and no. I can certainly appreciate healers determining how best to play the game as it is given to them, and I can still insist that it's a travesty that they don't fight harder to demand that the game evolve (or return to its roots -- apologies for having played FFXIV for ~1 year) so that their nominal role be valued.

[Liam_Harper]

Why would a game designer ramp up damage so high that a healer would find it necessary to use GCD heals when the players complain that "GCD heals are a DPS loss"?

Unnecessary GCD heals are a dps loss. Big difference. No one has a problem using a GCD heal when it's genuinely needed.