How to easily have healers dps engaged ( yet another thread)

[ty_taurus]

I don’t know if I want to get into another lore argument but why don’t you want bane or miasma back for SCH, that is SCH’s lore, SCH isn’t a pretty job, it’s a tactician/field medic

This trend towards “fey mage” has no basis in SCH’s lore and makes it feel too much like a WHM

I would be happy just with shadowflare back for some interesting interaction with sacred soil

Agreed. The actual SCH, in lore, is still a DPS poison mage like their ACN roots. It’s their faerie companion that’s meant to allow them to expand their otherwise limited healing repertoire to make them more support focused. And it would be fitting if SCH leaned into its dark magic roots and was the “dark” healer like DRK for tanks and now RPR for DPS. Many not quite as edgy. Maybe that’s not for everyone, but if not, then you still have WHM and AST.

[Supersnow845]

Sacred Soil stepped on asylums toes first with getting a regen on it
It's too late for Asylum to step on Sacred's toes if Sacred is stomping all over it already

Glad to see I'm not the only one who doesn't find Dots engaging. I Liked Aero 3s animation but that was it.
It was ALWAYS: Use Aero 3 then Aero 2, it was never an option to do anything else. It was just hit button 1, then your instant button 2, done. Repeat when Button 1 is about to fall off.
Sch's dot management was the same and that one short ranged 5 second one wasn't anything fun either, felt pointless to use on single bosses.
I did not feel anything by basically having 2 buttons that do the same thing that always get used at the same time, basically could have been 1 button from the start.

I liked Fluid aura when it did damage AND pushed. Pushing Caster mobs that don't run in felt SO good, i did it a lot until they took it from me (Like Paglth'an has a bunch of them, shoving them around would feel so good)

Give me something, anything to do in downtime, i already use benison and aquaveil in between because whm doesn't have much to weave with and if i feel like weaving, i do that.
Dunno what but buffing sounds more fun than using a dot because I personally don't see where they are engaging at all. I don't interact with them once they are on the target, so...

The idea of DOT’s on healers is you can’t have rigid rotations on classes that may have to triage at any moment

I know you aren’t suggesting this but it’s not like you can just stick SAM’s rotation on a healer because one succor and you mess up the tsubame loop, delaying a DOT by one GCD doesn’t lose you much and that’s only if you had to heal in the exact GCD you were supposed to refresh your DOT, something like DNC might work if you just took the 1 proc 3 - 2 proc 4 3/4 proc 5 idea and made it so healing wouldn’t break that combo and that is certainly a possibility

DOT’s are just the easiest way to have a somewhat varied rotation without forcing rigid restrictions required by always needing to be free to heal if necessary

[Cheremia]

The idea of DOT’s on healers is you can’t have rigid rotations on classes that may have to triage at any moment

I know you aren’t suggesting this but it’s not like you can just stick SAM’s rotation on a healer because one succor and you mess up the tsubame loop, delaying a DOT by one GCD doesn’t lose you much and that’s only if you had to heal in the exact GCD you were supposed to refresh your DOT, something like DNC might work if you just took the 1 proc 3 - 2 proc 4 3/4 proc 5 idea and made it so healing wouldn’t break that combo and that is certainly a possibility

DOT’s are just the easiest way to have a somewhat varied rotation without forcing rigid restrictions required by always needing to be free to heal if necessary

Yeah I don't say get rid of them nor that the healers should have have dps rotations.
But with all of them having 1.5 casttime, there are ways to make buffs a thing in some ways.
Juggling buffs might be the same as juggling dots, but your team actually benefits from whatever you would be doing. I don't even care what, I liked having mp/tp songs on bard because even back in HW, where it nerfed your damage, it was sometimes super worth to do.

PVP Sch is fun as hell because Expedient gives you so many options. Do you use expedient for big shield? It can and will save people if they have a beefier shield. Or do you use expedient on your dot?
Adlo -> expedient -> Bio-> deployment in a big cluster of people
Or are you in a pinch and Expedient-> adlo-> Deployment and RUN

Or, the big brain. Do you... Expedient to Adlo to Deployment to Seraph to Bio to Deployment so everybody is beefed up AND your enemies are debuffed.

Adlo also gives 8% Dps increade for everybody that has it
While Bio debuffs people by 8%

You only have 2 Adlo charges and only 2 Deployment charges, so cooldownplay is also a thing you need to check. Bio is just on cooldown, so is expedient. Gotta watch your rescources and make sure you have adlo before you dot things for more damage.

Then there's the fact that people are all over the place in Frontlines especially, so gotta make good use of good positioned people or yourself to spread your adlo to as many of your alliance as possible.

THAT is fun DoT playing

I'm not against dots by themself, the way healers use it, even if it WAS multiple buttons, just was never engaging to me.
I put it on the mob, then what? Nothing, i just wait until the timer is low and do it again.
If something would come from the dot, it would change my opinion a bit because it would be interacting with them.

[Renathras]

I mean if you don't really want to engage with a healer's rotation, if all the healers get a more developed rotation, why not just ignore the rotation and spam whatever button you want? It's not like it matters at all outside of savage anyway. You can always just not use Dia if you hate it that much.

This is something people like you will never understand.

People not wanting something to have a high skill feeling aren't necessarily people who don't try to do their best anyway. There's this weird thing with folks who think like you that goes something like this: "If a person doesn't want an involved 15 button full on DPSer rotation on a Healer...it obviously means they don't care about optimizing, doing well in the Job, must not do Savage, and clearly only press 1 button now and will press 1 button only in the future, so them doing low damage and getting kicked from groups won't change their game experience at all (somehow)"

It's an inane "counter".

Especially to someone like me, who is genuinely advocating FOR SOMETHING YOU WANT, just with you 75% of the way instead of 100%. Do you always attack and belittle people trying to help you?

I engage with the full rotations on the three healers I play on, thank you very much. And I actually do Savage (now) and have done Extremes for three expansions. Good god, no wonder you don't get what you want with that attitude. I'm literally saying "we have 4 Healers, the Devs could increase the dps kits on 2-3 of them and mix things up without it harming the game", and your response was to attack me instead? Really dude?

.

EDIT:

While I'm no fan of homogenization in general, and Twelve know healers are the ones that need it the least, I think it'd make sense if Toxicon becomes Sage's version of Misery - get adderstings as a reward for shielding, get 3 stacks and you get a big boom spell.

One problem with this is it would likely be too powerful. Keep in mind Misery can't be generated by spamable heals (e.g. Cure 2s), only from spending a GCD consuming a resource you only get one of every 20 seconds. If SGE could just cast 3x Eukrasia Diagnosis and then get a DPS neutral/gain nuke, that would be pretty unbalanced.

Sacred Soil stepped on asylums toes first with getting a regen on it
It's too late for Asylum to step on Sacred's toes if Sacred is stomping all over it already

Honestly, I'd be fine with it coming with Confession/Plenary Indulgence. A 10 sec Protect/Shell would give me a reason to actually hit PI, and Expedience and Fey Illumination are precedent for "two in one" abilities like that. It has a 60 sec CD already and is rarely used because it's seldom needed. Normally using PI means one or MAYBE two AOE heals, probably Rapture, and you really don't use the full 10 sec duration and effect because you simply don't need to heal people for more than 100% health that often. Having a mitigation tacked on would actually make it more useful for its intended purpose, which is large incoming damage in several waves. The mitigation could be used to reduce it while the boosted healing would be used for restoring that damage. And when a fight doesn't require that, it would serve just fine as an additional party mitigation for when Temperance is on CD or when a smaller mitigation would do, and give WHM 3 total mitigations per 3 minute time period.

Glad to see I'm not the only one who doesn't find Dots engaging. I Liked Aero 3s animation but that was it.

Glad to see I'm not alone either! People have this weird idea that DoTs are somehow the pentacle of amazing game design when, in practice, they're "thing you press once every 30 seconds" boring and obnoxious. I wouldn't even mind them if it wasn't for the fact EVERY SINGLE HEALER has one as part of its carbon-copy "damage rotation". I've even said many times, I can actually like DoTs IF the class using them is built around using them and they have interactions. For example, a DoT that stacks to 3 and all three refresh when you refresh it, but if you let it fall off, you have to stack to 3 again (I haven't played it in years, but I remember Druids in WoW having a HoT that worked this way that you'd maintain on the main tank), or things like Bane and Fester (the old ones) that interacted with DoTs. The ones in FFXIV simply do not. WHM has never had any kit interaction with DoTs and they have always been "apply, don't let fall off...and that's it" for the Job.

Though I, too, miss twirly staff tornado storm Aero 3.

I will counter one thing, though: SCH's Miasma 2 was kind of nice for some fights like Brayflox Hard's final boss since the initial tick of damage counted for knocking bombs away in all those old fights where you had to do that. They just needed to make it where it was a DPS loss on single target but a DPS gain for AOE (like Art of War is) to allow spamming it for AOE situations but not force people to use an AOE ability for single target fights. Aero 3 should have been the same. They managed to do this with the regular single target vs AOE nuke spells, so they should be able to manage it for AOE DoTs in some way, too. Or just make them 1-2 AOE combos somehow.

I also agree with buffing. I never understand HEALERS that want to DAMAGE. Healing is a support role. The point is to aid and boost allies, and that's the player most attracted to the role. I don't even mind having damage focused healers AS ONE OF THE OPTIONS, but having them all be that is just silly. Other MMOs managed to figure this out, I'm not sure why FFXIV - and not even FFXIV, more FFXIV's hardcore/elitist players - can't.

SCH isn’t a pretty job, it’s a tactician/field medic

What part of "field medic" screams "I poison people to death", though?

This trend towards “fey mage” has no basis in SCH’s lore and makes it feel too much like a WHM

WHM's have no connection to Fey Magic, so it doesn't make SCH feel like WHM's at all. And it's not some new trend with no basis. SCH's ENTIRE lore is based on them working with their partner/pet. That IS their lore. The tactician part of their lore is expressed through it. SCH's being able to place Eos into the center of the arena or send her to the opposite side if the raid team has to split completely apart, being able to have her use abilities while the SCH is free to either deal damage or use their own heals, etc, is the tactician part of SCH. Issuing commands to their subordinate and leveraging both your character and your support minion to heal your party. I'm not sure what part about that DOESN'T feel like a tactician to you.

And that has been their lore from the start. It's not some new thing they've picked up. Whispering Dawn and Fey Illumination have been in the game since ARR.

The idea of DOT’s on healers is you can’t have rigid rotations on classes that may have to triage at any moment

This was a valid complaint in 2013, it isn't in 2022. If you weren't aware, the Devs have updated most Jobs to where combos don't break. On GNB, hit 1-2 then hit Gnashing Fang and watch something magical happen: You can go through your entire Gnashing Fang combo and that 3 button is still lit up and ready to go. PLD spells don't break their combos anymore, either. And I think RDM may not. Hop on MCH. Hit 1 then Drill then 2 then Chainsaw then 3. MAGIC!!!

Something amazing happened on the way to 2022: The Devs learned how to make it where combos don't break!

So a healer could have a "rigid combo" of 1-2-3 and be coded to where their healing spells don't break the combo. BAM! Problem solved!

DoTs on every healer are a relic from 2013/2.0 when healers only had one or two damage buttons to press. When WHM only had Stone 1 and Stone 2, which was better than Stone 1 in every way, and no oGCD heals to speak of, it made sense for them to have two DoTs since they might not have anything to do otherwise. That makes much less sense now with fights that have a lot more movement and higher APMs with oGCD weaves and instant cast movement heals and the like, as well as even WHM having more damage buttons now than they did in ARR.

[Cheremia]

I also agree with buffing. I never understand HEALERS that want to DAMAGE. Healing is a support role. The point is to aid and boost allies, and that's the player most attracted to the role. I don't even mind having damage focused healers AS ONE OF THE OPTIONS, but having them all be that is just silly. Other MMOs managed to figure this out, I'm not sure why FFXIV - and not even FFXIV, more FFXIV's hardcore/elitist players - can't.

Yes, altough a niche game, I LOVED Geomancer in FF Explorers. You could customize your fields to heal and buff and or to do damage. Or both at the same time. Multiple of them, it was super fun to put down fields to support my allies and all that shizzle. And the outfit was super cute, we need more massive round hats in XIV.
I want healers to heal more, but since the game design doesn't allow it, I want to buff my allies instead of dotting my enemies. I don't play healers to do damage. Don't be mistaken, i glare and dia and assize and lilly and misery and everything until i become more blind from my own light, but that is because the game does not support healing-healers... it is fine, if there was anything else to do.

I'm one of the few whms that use wings for big aoes, that uses benison and aquaveil etc. Many people don't even use their cooldown, it's especially noticeable on schs with no soils and no seraph etc. I know it's not ultra needed in most normal content, but it adds a little more engagement that just "aw man i have to spam 1 button". Yes, we do, but you also could use the rest of your kit more, even if its redundant in MOST normal content...

But I don't need brds and dancers to be support. I don't mind that they are, I like support classes a lot, I want healers to also count more to it.
Shields is nice and damage buffs are nice, but something... it's hard to explain what i would want, but something else i have to juggle.
What if i have to combo my attacks/heals with some oGCDs? They won't interrupt each other and you'd have enough time on each juggle for heals to not break it.
Breaking whatever you're juggling won't be the end of the world either, you just have to build it up again or something.

Timers aren't a bad thing, putting dots on a mob you only have to refresh and nothing more, is.
Bufftimers are more fun to juggle than that, in my opinion. It's hard to explain. I just want to do more for my TEAM instead of just.... set it and forget it dot.

It's just that i don't see where more dots would help me be more engaged if it's less engagement because I only have to press the button every 30 seconds or more or less... doesn't really matter which way. It does ALL the work by itself when I press it, even if i die after it.

[Supersnow845]

What part of "field medic" screams "I poison people to death", though?



WHM's have no connection to Fey Magic.



This was a valid complaint in 2013, it isn't in 2022. If you weren't aware, the Devs have updated most Jobs to where combos don't break. On GNB, hit 1-2 then hit Gnashing Fang and watch something magical happen: You can go through your entire Gnashing Fang combo and that 3 button is still lit up and ready to go. PLD spells don't break their combos anymore, either. And I think RDM may not. Hop on MCH. Hit 1 then Drill then 2 then Chainsaw then 3. MAGIC!!!

Something amazing happened on the way to 2022: The Devs learned how to make it where combos don't break!

So a healer could have a "rigid combo" of 1-2-3 and be coded to where their healing spells don't break the combo. BAM! Problem solved!

DoTs on every healer are a relic from 2013/2.0 when healers only had one or two damage buttons to press. When WHM only had Stone 1 and Stone 2, which was better than Stone 1 in every way, and no oGCD heals to speak of, it made sense for them to have two DoTs since they might not have anything to do otherwise. That makes much less sense now with fights that have a lot more movement and higher APMs with oGCD weaves and instant cast movement heals and the like, as well as even WHM having more damage buttons now than they did in ARR.

1) the part that is basically “a field medic will do whatever it has to to be victorious in a fight and it learned poison magic as an ACN so it’s going to use it, what do you want a field mage to use, a knife, should we bring back book slap meta
2) WHM may not actually be a fey mage but the animations for the two are starting to look far to similar and nor did I ever say the fairy shouldn’t be a support tool you should use to gain an advantage, you know buffing and debuffing, not “replace the SCH as the healer“, the fairy is a support tool (remember fey covenant, fey wind etc) not a healer proxy
3) yeah so DOT juggling is boring but enforced 1-2-3’s are interesting just because succor won’t break my combo, pls explain that logic, and you used to have to weave as much as you do now, especially on SCH, let’s not pretend that the healers have to be insanely simple on DPS because heal weaving is gigabrain because we have 8000 oGCD’s now

DOT’s don’t have to be everyone’s shtick (I’m actually totally in favour of other healers losing DOT’s for something different) but why are people suddenly so opposed to that being what makes SCH more interesting because that is literally their lore, it’s like completely deleting cards off AST then going “yeah but like AST is star magic, a star mage doesn’t play yugioh”, it’s established lore within the game

[Rilifane]

One problem with this is it would likely be too powerful. Keep in mind Misery can't be generated by spamable heals (e.g. Cure 2s), only from spending a GCD consuming a resource you only get one of every 20 seconds. If SGE could just cast 3x Eukrasia Diagnosis and then get a DPS neutral/gain nuke, that would be pretty unbalanced.

There's a fairly easy way to fix it: add MP cost to Toxikon.

The strongest healer sets have very dangerous MP economy to the point where a rezz can make you chug a Super-Ether to offset the loss and avoid doing punchy things. If they added a 400 MP cost to Toxikon, a SGE would lose 1500 MP for every 2min burst they do the full 3x Toxikon fish. That's not something you can do with a min-Piety set (not even with a mid-Piety set in uncoordinated settings) and you'd lose more dps by doing this than sticking with your higher dps set.
It would make Toxikon into a movement and, closer to the end of the fight when you know how much MP you can sacrifice, dps optimization tool that is limited by MP. It would also give an option to optimize MP usage a bit if a boss had downtimes that brought your MP higher than necessary and could even lead to overcapping with LD or delaying it and losing a usage.

Overall I'd prefer a more active approach to Addersting as ty_taurus suggested though.

Edit:

And on the topic of dots: one advantage of them is, that if you have multiple dots on different timers, you have a constantly shifting rotation which I find far more engaging than a basic, generic 123 combo. And unlike cooldowns, there is also the option to refresh them earlier to take a lower dps loss than losing a full GCD.
Ideally they also offer something like Thundercloud proc or any form of interaction with the kit but even without that, 3 dots on different timers offer more engagement for me than a 123 combo where I can only ever press 2 after 1 and 3 after 2.
If we're talking about multiple branching combos like MNK had, then I'm down for it. It would need more buttons but constantly switching between branching combos would offer more variety for downtime as well.
It all boils down to breaking up monotony for me, anything that isn't easily predictable and rigid.

[Cheremia]

Edit:

And on the topic of dots: one advantage of them is, that if you have multiple dots on different timers, you have a constantly shifting rotation which I find far more engaging than a basic, generic 123 combo. And unlike cooldowns, there is also the option to refresh them earlier to take a lower dps loss than losing a full GCD.
Ideally they also offer something like Thundercloud proc or any form of interaction with the kit but even without that, 3 dots on different timers offer more engagement for me than a 123 combo where I can only ever press 2 after 1 and 3 after 2.
If we're talking about multiple branching combos like MNK had, then I'm down for it. It would need more buttons but constantly switching between branching combos would offer more variety for downtime as well.
It all boils down to breaking up monotony for me, anything that isn't easily predictable and rigid.

Dots getting something out of them is what i would want. Otherwise its also just pressing a button combo at the same time. Depending on a fight
Given, it always will be… button combos, so there is no point in saying that.
And i get what you mean, sometimes you have to refresh early for healing or whatever.

Anyways, juggling dots and juggling buffs would just be fun for downtime.
Branching options and a dot or two, depending on the class.
Schs can have more dots or whatever, even if they never interested me, not everything needs to be for me (pvp sch rules tho)

Your glare gives option for two things, these two things can procc something else
Or your dot could get a buffed version if you do something else before…
And then if you buff your dot and use it, it could procc something else…

Not the best ideas but juggling buffs/debuffs (dots) that obviously aren‘t too short in duration to not hinder you having to heal sounds fun to me

Would buffs be harder to balance? Yeah
But healers havibg buffs/other support would mean they have more options for their downtime…

Like i‘m pretty sure schs could juggle selene/eos alone sometimes, each giving different skills for different situations.
Sooomethibg like that-ish

[ty_taurus]

I engage with the full rotations on the three healers I play on, thank you very much. And I actually do Savage (now) and have done Extremes for three expansions. Good god, no wonder you don't get what you want with that attitude. I'm literally saying "we have 4 Healers, the Devs could increase the dps kits on 2-3 of them and mix things up without it harming the game", and your response was to attack me instead? Really dude?

The thing is though is that the healers as they stand are very badly designed for the combat system of XIV and no job should be subjected to 1 button being roughly 80% of their casting focus. It's just not healthy design. Every healer should be reworked to have a healthy library of GCD actions they rely on, and the undeniable truth of FFXIV's foundational design is that it does not require much healing even in some of the hardest fights in the game. So while not every healer needs to have a DPS focus, all of them need to be designed within respects to DPS contributions, hense the AST example I've vomited more than enough times on the forum rewarding buff usage with passive Malefic-potency damage. There still has to be restrictions on that system though, whether that be MP, cooldowns, or external resources like lilies, there can't just be free, unlimited healing that also deals as much damage as filler spells. Every healer will need to eventually return to some filler spell usage. There is a lot we can do to reduce that from 80% down to something far more manageable, but the healers can't just stay as they are if we ever want to see healthier design.

[Gemina]

I don’t know if I want to get into another lore argument but why don’t you want bane or miasma back for SCH, that is SCH’s lore, SCH isn’t a pretty job, it’s a tactician/field medic

This trend towards “fey mage” has no basis in SCH’s lore and makes it feel too much like a WHM

I would be happy just with shadowflare back for some interesting interaction with sacred soil

Lorewise, skills like Miasma, Bane, and Shadowflare were part of ACN's kit; not SCH's. The link that exist for SCH to ACN is in name alone, and if they were to ever sever the ACN tie between SCH and SMN, the latter is the job that will likely retain its ACN roots. SCH's lore begins at 30, and their fairies are as much a part of it as the SCH themselves.

Personally, I let go of 3.x SCH a long time ago. I was never really all that attached to it to begin with, but I was one of very few SCHs who were in favor of the changes that came with ShB, and the direction they chose to go with healing. I much rather see SCH continue to move forward than revert back to a time where I am not even sure if it would still be viable in today's content.