Proposal the embrace the green skin.

[Aravell]

I've been lurking and reading the healer discourse for some time now and I'm wondering if this proposal can satisfy both sides:

1) Return cleric stance and complexity to the damage side of the healer kit.
2) Cut the maximum potential healer damage output to half of a tank's.
3) Design fights so that healer damage helps out in a weaker party, but is ultimately irrelevant to beating the enrage.

Personally, I think this would allow for skill expression from the veterans while allowing the healers who dislike doing damage to also not be harassed since doing damage on a healer would then be irrelevant but fun.

Thoughts?

[ty_taurus]

I've been lurking and reading the healer discourse for some time now and I'm wondering if this proposal can satisfy both sides:

1) Return cleric stance and complexity to the damage side of the healer kit.
2) Cut the maximum potential healer damage output to half of a tank's.
3) Design fights so that healer damage helps out in a weaker party, but is ultimately irrelevant to beating the enrage.

Personally, I think this would allow for skill expression from the veterans while allowing the healers who dislike doing damage to also not be harassed since doing damage on a healer would then be irrelevant but fun.

Thoughts?

These changes would literally do the opposite of what your goal is. Old cleric stance does not add complexity. It doesn't change Glare spam. All it does is return Healer DPS to an immensely punishing state that now heavily gatekeeps scared or inexperienced healers who don't feel comfortable taking the ultimatum. Cutting total damage output does not allow for more skill expression, it decreases it as it means you working harder has diminished returns. Even if healer DPS is lower, it doesn't change the fact that your DPS is incredibly important in increasing the rest of the party's margin for error. Fights could be designed without demanding that DPS contribution to meet enrage at minimum ilvl, but it would possibly make healer DPS even more important because now you can skip a large segment of the end of a fight with good healers.

The true problem is thus: Healer DPS contributions are baked into the game's core design, yet the designers have designed the healers in ignorance to this fact. If we simple rework how each healer is designed to compliment this, we can not only have more fun and engaging healers that directly engage with DPS, but we can also create healers who are able to work around their DPS requirements by generating DPS as a consequence to other actions, like I was mentioning above. There are a lot of ways we can do this in practice, it just requires a bit of creativity.

[KelTheKeeper]

I've been lurking and reading the healer discourse for some time now and I'm wondering if this proposal can satisfy both sides:

1) Return cleric stance and complexity to the damage side of the healer kit.
2) Cut the maximum potential healer damage output to half of a tank's.
3) Design fights so that healer damage helps out in a weaker party, but is ultimately irrelevant to beating the enrage.

Personally, I think this would allow for skill expression from the veterans while allowing the healers who dislike doing damage to also not be harassed since doing damage on a healer would then be irrelevant but fun.

Thoughts?

I think keeping the healer damage the same is fine, or even increasing it to match a tanks. At the end of the day, Savage and Ultimate are higher end tasks in the game that not everyone can complete and that's okay. The people who complain about needing to do damage as a healer are not the ones playing in the upper tiers of this game. That's fine, most normal dungeons are fully completable without a healer at all. Hell, even some trials can be completed without them.

I think adding to the healer damage complexity is a great idea, but that should come with more damage. If someone had to put more effort in to get less results, that's going to make healers even more upset than they are. If you go and take away 2 button spam and replace it with a large kit that does half the damage, I don't think many would be happy with that. It would feel like we were punished for wanting more to do. Give healers a better DPS kit, but reward them for using it well.

I think Pnuema is a fantastic example. Its a button that does damage *and* heals! I wish it was a gain to use it, but I digress. I think that baking some healing actions into damage buttons and vice versa would be a huge improvement. Imagine if SCH/WHM bubble did damage to enemies who stood in it or if casting a heal made the next target to hit that ally take a bit of damage. It would reward smart healing with better numbers. Add some extra healing that isn't scheduled or planned to give us something to dynamically respond to and it'll be a good time.

[Nizzi]

I think adding to the healer damage complexity is a great idea, but that should come with more damage. If someone had to put more effort in to get less results, that's going to make healers even more upset than they are. If you go and take away 2 button spam and replace it with a large kit that does half the damage, I don't think many would be happy with that. It would feel like we were punished for wanting more to do. Give healers a better DPS kit, but reward them for using it well.

I highly disagree. Balancing based on "complexity" for healers would only eventually return us to where we are at now; within any given role there is always going to be one job that is considered "the easiest" by SE and also the community. WAR, DNC, RPR, SMN, etc. Further, I see no reason for why healers should be doing more damage than they're doing now. We were actually doing more damage than the tanks in Shadowbringers, but they changed that in Endwalker and nobody is complaining about it because the issues with healers have nothing to do with us doing 2k damage or 5k damage.

Thinking that putting in "more effort to get less results" is bad is exactly how we got here. Just look at Stormblood Scholar's 2 main DoTs, Bio II and Miasma. Bio II was 35 potency on 30s, and Miasma was 35 potency on 24s + 20 upfront potency. Together, that's 350 potency for Bio II and 300 potency for Miasma. Endwalker Scholar's DoT, Biolysis, does 700 potency, sound familiar to the 650 of the two old DoTs? Scholar is doing relatively the same output of damage it was back in Stormblood now, but it's doing less actions. However, having Bio split back into two DoTs on different timers would be infinitely more fun and engaging than SCH currently is at the moment. I wouldn't mind if the more "simple" healers were doing as much damage as I was with my "complex" kit because I'm able to have fun.

The reward for having a better DPS kit should be getting to have more fun and not having to slam your 1 key so much; it doesn't need to be more damage. A hypothetical return to an older SCH kit would not suddenly mean SCH "deserves" more damage compared to other healers with "less complex" kits, the fun and engagement is reward enough. I'm fine with the fact we aren't doing as much damage as we were doing in Shadowbringers. I'm not fine with how boring our downtime kits currently are. Hitting 5k rDPS right now on a healer isn't a reward, it's boring and I could not care less about my numbers as a healer. With a more engaging and involved kit though, that 5k number would probably feel really good. It would feel really good if it was 3k, because I would be able to know I did my best to achieve that.

[AmiableApkallu]

I think Pnuema is a fantastic example. Its a button that does damage *and* heals! I wish it was a gain to use it, but I digress.

If it were a gain in single-target (as it already is in AoE), then I think I'd call it a badly designed button:

Do I push it on cooldown, for the damage, or do I hold it for when the heal is actually needed?

Attaching healing and damage both to a button works when incoming damage is more or less constant: the heal is likely to be useful, and the damage is always useful.

[Elizasylen]

If it were a gain in single-target (as it already is in AoE), then I think I'd call it a badly designed button:

Do I push it on cooldown, for the damage, or do I hold it for when the heal is actually needed?

Attaching healing and damage both to a button works when incoming damage is more or less constant: the heal is likely to be useful, and the damage is always useful.

I think something that refunds you for healing would be good like the lily systems. For example Using Aetherflow on healing instead of Energy Drain is a DPS net loss, but Using Aetherflow gives you fairy gauge. What if you moved the damage from Energy Drain to a spell that costs Fairy Gauge instead?

[ty_taurus]

I think something that refunds you for healing would be good like the lily systems. For example Using Aetherflow on healing instead of Energy Drain is a DPS net loss, but Using Aetherflow gives you fairy gauge. What if you moved the damage from Energy Drain to a spell that costs Fairy Gauge instead?

I detailed my own take on how I'd redo SCH if I could and it basically does this in reverse: Aetherflow is used to turn your DPS spells in to stronger spells for one cast, and the Fey Gauge gives you GCD heals that earns you Aetherflow.

[Elizasylen]

I detailed my own take on how I'd redo SCH if I could and it basically does this in reverse: Aetherflow is used to turn your DPS spells in to stronger spells for one cast, and the Fey Gauge gives you GCD heals that earns you Aetherflow.

I think as long as there some form of "rebate" through the system it'd be good either way.