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

[T-Owl]

Part 1

I aggree with the sentiment that WoW probably came out in the right time and did the right things right. It was the casual players MMO and one part of its appeal was, that it had plenty of solo player quests that allowed players to reach max level without grinding mobs for prolonged periods of time or being forced to play in a group, they could just level on their own and get groups when it was to their convenience. Though actually most healers being that restricted was mostly a problem for the first raid tier, even during Vanilla WoW, Blizz managed to give the healers each a strong distinct identity in what they are doing. Druid was the HoT healer, Paladin was already going in the direction of chunky single target heals and becoming the most effiicent tank healer by the time Naxxramas hit, Shaman was the group aoe healer and Priest was the all in all Jack of all Trades. Thats all in all more than we can say about the FF14 healing classes and healers roughly kept their identities while at the same time transitioning to a more modern action-focussed playstyle that added to that identities. I think in that regard, WoW also did the transition to healers dpsing quite well, which I think is an inevitability for a modern MMO in which mp-management isn't enforcing total downtimes. Especially since in WoW, healer dps actually improves on the class fantasies. Paladins and Monks should be on the frontline, battling foes while healing their enemies, the discipline priest feels like some sort of Inquisitor balances light and darkness and Druids cat- or owl-weaving is making this old fantasy of the versatile druid who can fill in different combat roles. Being a former Paladin Main myself, modern Paladin design is my absolute favorite, because why shouldn't a holy Knight in full plate armor with a hammer and a shield not being out there in the melee?

Part 2

To be honest, I don't think that the problems of FF14s healers go that deep in. There are some superficial problems with the games design, but I think the biggest difference is, that it just doesn't feels like the devs have anybody in a position of authority who actually plays or understands healers. Healer Design feels catered towards people who don't even main healer, but who pick the role up to get faster invites at the occassion and don't want to be bothered and pushed to heal too hard. It doesn't help that the devs obviously adapted dps checks to the reality of healer dps, but never bothered to look into the issues and reality of that playstyle. Healing overall feels like designed for people, who consider the role a chore tbh, when in reality, it should be easy to pick up and just engage with casually on the starting level and from then on allow for more and more complexity up to its highest levels, which I feel like is left out.

[Renathras]

quote

Yeah, in SB there was more going on, but this still rings true today. A lot of players don't manage DoTs well. Contrast a 30 sec DoT with WAR's 30 sec buff from Storm's Eye. DoTs are a tiny icon on the enemy. Yeah, you can mess with the UI to make it larger and more visible, focus target and so on, but how often do CASUAL players do this? I didn't even use Focus Target until Memoria because I needed a way to reliably see what Solus was casting even while I was targeting different players for healing. On the other hand, WAR's buff is on their own healthbar. You can clearly see it in your buff list at the top of your screen and on your party bar. If we had to bet money, which do you doubt casual players drop more often and don't remember to reapply? I'd wager DoTs. And, the best part of WAR's buff is you can stack it twice (up to 60 sec), so if you fat finger it early, it isn't a DPS loss unless you're just using SE combo over and over.

And note that this is WORSE with DoTs that have different timers, like the old 15/18/etc second ones, since it's easy to not mentally track different length timers.

DoTs tend to widen the gap between casual and skilled players, not make it smaller. That was the point I was making there.

As to the sustainability argument:

Well, we're now on expansion #2 of this model, and we're not seeing (yet) some mass loss of healers. Indeed, we're more prone to lose healers by encounters being harder (e.g. the nasty bleeds) than from healing DPS rotations being boring. Moreover, this is really closer to expansion 3 or even 5 of this for WHM. WHM had one more DoT reliably used in SB (Aero 2 - a lot of people thought Aero 3 was only a DPS gain in AOE and so didn't use it in single targets) which is partly countered by them having Misery how (hit about 1/3rd as often). HW and ARR also did this, but one could argue that (a) the DoTs were used more often (shorter CDs), (b) more healing was GCD (so it broke up the "rotation" more with other button presses), and (c) there were other interactions (Cleric) that weren't true in SB and beyond. But the point is, we've had this for a while and it's been sustainable thus far. While past isn't always prologue, it doesn't seem to have been horribly detrimental for the game (in terms of numbers and content clearing/filling healer slots) to date, so it PROBABLY isn't doomed, per se.

EDIT (for space):

What it's likely to do is, over time, drive the people that enjoy DPSing on healers to other roles, which isn't a great thing, but that's not the same as causing a shortage in the role itself, since there are still a lot of people that are either fine with, or even attracted to, that playstyle of healers that aren't main DPSers and don't have DPS-like rotations. Though YET AGAIN I'll point out that this is why I DO argue for having different healers have different rotations, so that we have Jobs that appeal to these different playstyle. With 4 healing Jobs, there's no reason that we can't have different rotations between them.

I aggree with the sentiment that WoW probably came out in the right time and did the right things right.

Mhm. We agree on a lot of this. Though I am one who disagrees that healers as DPSers should be a thing in all cases (thematically it DOES fit in some cases, like Paladin, but much less so with, say, Holy Priest or arguably Druid), and I'd say BC is really when healers in WoW (except Disc...) came into their own with developed and functional niches. Disc flirted with being functional in Wrath as a tank healer substitute and damage curve smoother because of shields, and then in...I think it was Mists or Warlords where it shifted into being the RIFT Chloromancer healer that healed through dealing DPS after slapping/rotating that heal buff thing onto allies.

To be honest, I don't think that the problems of FF14s healers go that deep in.

I kinda do, and I think it includes what you mentioned - that the key Devs likely don't play Healers or don't play them much. I would argue it's catered to people that don't enjoy DPSing. Which makes sense to a point as, of the 19 Jobs in this game, 11 are explicitly for DPSing. It's reasonable - despite some people insisting otherwise (not here, but like on Reddit I've literally seen the phrase "If you don't like DPSing, don't play healer", which makes zero sense conceptually; that's like saying "If you don't like carrying a gun and shooting people, don't become a doctor")

The problem is that ENCOUNTER DESIGN assumes healers are DPSing, so the game has this conflicting, Spiderman pointing at other Spiderman-meme thing going where healers are expected to DPS per encounter design, but they aren't given tools to make that DPS interesting or even...distinct. ONE healer being DoT + Nuke is probably fine. FOUR doing so is kind of silly.

Then we have the second role conflict that we discussed in that other thread (I think) where you have GCD heals where oGCD heals look like, based on when you get them leveling and how powerful they are, that they're suppose to be "break glass in case of emergency" - like how Vanilla/BC WoW, Paladin's Lay on Hands ability had a 60 minute CD, and so did Druid in combat battle raise, I think Shaman Reincarnate, etc; and FFXIV has some ultimate abilities with 4 HOUR cooldowns. And yet, the FFXIV "emergency" tools are somehow supposed to be our first-use go-tos? The first button a SCH should hit to deal with party damage, for example, is Fey Blessing or Whispering Dawn, despite them being instant cast and on a moderate 1 minute CD.

Conceptually, this leads to the weird situation where the "emergency" abilities have become the "routine use" abilities, the spamable, routine use abilities have become the emergency ones, and new players are taught to use them exactly the opposite way of this. And because oGCDs so rule, it means all those GCDs you'd have spent on Cure 2 or Medica or Succor and etc are free now. So what do you fill them with?

...Glarespam.

It's that there are just backwards/opposed/competing elements all over the place - Are healers supposed to DPS to beat enrage or not? Are GCD heals or oGCD heals our emergency tools? Are healers for people that don't like to DPS or for people that do like to DPS but oddly won't play a Red icon Job? - that it leads to this bizarre design that WORKS, but conflicts and clashes all over the place.

[T-Owl]

part 1

I think healer dps is just the inevitable reality of healing downtimes in games which don't actively enforce to be passive in those, like old WoW did with their stand 5 seconds still for mana regen rule, which I think we all can agree was horrible. Where I think it can vary is how much dpsing is actually involved in healing. Holy Priest for example is pretty similar to most ff14 healers, the healing toolkit is mostly there for downtimes and outside of the kyrian covenant ability, which is sadly tossed out in DF, its really something you do inbetween heals. Restoration Shaman feels a bit more aggressive and is bit more maintenance heavy, but mostly the same though it gets some neat boons in Dragonlight, for example causing its ground targeted hot field to also cause damage. In some cases it is heavily involved with the act of healing itself, fistweaver monks, melee holy paladins and discipline priests and in the case of Restoration druids, it is kind of a reward for proper hot management. You have your hots up on the party and their LP are smooth, time to catweave which is kind of a nice minigame inside the class where you get a simplified version of the feral druid toolkit. Fun note on Discipline priest, their dps healer playstyle was actually created because they couldn't balance it being a shield healer well, for the most part it was just too good in reducing incoming damage which frustrated the more reactive healers.

part 2

Its actually both and pretty self-contradictory. SE doesn't wants to push high healing uptime because they are afraid it will drive away the casuals which creats high dps uptime which they take into account by adjusting enrage timers with high dps uptime in mind and yet at the same time they don't want to cater towards this high dps uptime playstyle by giving healers more tool because they are afraid that it will make casual healers feel forced to dps. I think it boils down to why I say healers are the role of low expectations: They are designed this way because whoever is responsible for this obviously seems to consider healing more of a chore.

And personally, I would say yes, Healers always should be expected to dps during downtimes. Its basically the only productive thing that you can make them do during inevitable healing downtimes, anything else would just boil down to occupational therapy, especially since healers need dps tools for solo play. I think the differences boil down to how much healers would be pushed to dps and how much it affects their gameplay loop, where you can have varrying degrees. In terms of wow healers, you could have the holy priest who can just push some dps inbetween heals without worrying you much. Then you go a bit further, like restoration druid, where you can chose your dps style and on the extreme you have holy Paladin, who is what Zenos would play if he was a healer.

[GrimGale]

Again, the intrinsic problem with healing is that experience and practice rewards you with an awful gameplay loop.

[T-Owl]

Again, the intrinsic problem with healing is that experience and practice rewards you with an awful gameplay loop.

I think it goes further. Healing itself is counter-intuitive, with GCD healing being undesirable in any situation outside of emergencies or having to survive big incoming damage as a shield healer, when its the opposite in pretty much any other game. And due to the way makros are shit in this game, healing is just clunky for Keyboard and Mouse.

[flowerfairy]

I think it goes further. Healing itself is counter-intuitive, with GCD healing being undesirable in any situation outside of emergencies or having to survive big incoming damage as a shield healer, when its the opposite in pretty much any other game. And due to the way makros are shit in this game, healing is just clunky for Keyboard and Mouse.

Too right. Healing would become 500x more engaging already if half of the oGCDS were purged and the other half put on a longer cooldown. I'm okay with macros in general being unwieldy, but mouseover actions is definitely something this game should improve.

[Mortex]

Too right. Healing would become 500x more engaging already if half of the oGCDS were purged and the other half put on a longer cooldown. I'm okay with macros in general being unwieldy, but mouseover actions is definitely something this game should improve.

The Problem with ogcds heal pruning is that the entire situation would change from glare spam too a 3 gcd medica spam before you resume glare. It changes one button for another, for 2-3 gcds and that’s it. There is still tons of downtime and 1 button spam just because ff 14 has these fight like this.

[T-Owl]

Too right. Healing would become 500x more engaging already if half of the oGCDS were purged and the other half put on a longer cooldown. I'm okay with macros in general being unwieldy, but mouseover actions is definitely something this game should improve.

To be honest? I won't. With how low healing requirements are and how lacking the dps toolkits of all healers are, especially lacking much synergy with their toolkit for the most part, weaving most of my heals inbetween dps casts and having to manage my ogcd cooldowns is the one fun thing the game has going for in terms of healers. The GCD heal just are not exciting in this game.

[flowerfairy]

The Problem with ogcds heal pruning is that the entire situation would change from glare spam too a 3 gcd medica spam before you resume glare. It changes one button for another, for 2-3 gcds and that’s it. There is still tons of downtime and 1 button spam just because ff 14 has these fight like this.

Yeah of course. I think that pruning the oGCDS that add little to your gameplay makes space for buttons that make downtime less boring. That will be knocking down two birds with one stone.

[flowerfairy]

To be honest? I won't. With how low healing requirements are and how lacking the dps toolkits of all healers are, especially lacking much synergy with their toolkit for the most part, weaving most of my heals inbetween dps casts and having to manage my ogcd cooldowns is the one fun thing the game has going for in terms of healers. The GCD heal just are not exciting in this game.

I'll gladly sacrifice those oGCD heals for a better dps toolkit. Healing requirements will never be demanding so long as every instance of damage is predictable.