Whatever happened to “We don’t balance fights around healers needing to do damage?”

[Nizzi]

I disagree entirely. Healers are first responders to damage. Giving us a DPS rotation muddles the responsibility and we already have a case for why it would be a bad idea. The current data shows that the second they made meaningful healer checks in 6.2 raids, everyone dropped astrologian for white mage and sage due to being unable to tap astrologian's full potential. Being that astrologian is the closest thing we have to a healer with a full DPS rotation we can tell that (a) the ability bar gets bloated to high hell and (b) its disappointing to have to sacrifice the DPS for healing when heal checks come up. For healers, there is no perfect solution. There is only alternatives. I'd rather have meaningful healer checks with minimal DPS input required from healers than require they do damage. Even if they could do damage, they would never be able to do it consistently due to their first responder role. To do meaningful DPS consistently, the responsibility of healing would need to belong to all players and not just a healer role. That would be a totally different game system.

That's not "what the data" shows at all and you know it. Stop lying.

[Fendred]

Wait, how in the seven hells does AST have anything close to a DPS rotation? People don't like AST because it has a bloated opener for setting up future healing and its convoluted card system--something that is not synonymous with a DPS rotation.

Correct. I'm referring to the astrologian's bloated UI and opener. A healer with a DPS rotation would turn into a mess similar to the current astrologian. The DPS abilities would get pushed into all sorts of weird spots on their hot bar because heals need to be quickly accessible, and they'd be constantly swapping targets trying to keep up their DPS while healing the group.

[Fendred]

That's not "what the data" shows at all and you know it. Stop lying.

My source is this. Not sure what you're looking at... Care to post your source?

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxivdiscus..._october_2022/

Astrologian is down consistently across all data centers by roughly 10%.

[ty_taurus]

Correct. I'm referring to the astrologian's bloated UI and opener. A healer with a DPS rotation would turn into a mess similar to the current astrologian. The DPS abilities would get pushed into all sorts of weird spots on their hot bar because heals need to be quickly accessible due to their first responder role, and they'd be constantly swapping targets trying to keep up their DPS while healing the group.

Except that's not a DPS rotation. That's a bloated opener. The two are not the same thing, and an opener full of weaving isn't inherently bad, it's that AST's specifically feels bad because the cards don't feel impactful, Astrodyne is a joke, and min-maxing your opener for a sweat drop of added DPS demands the use of your Lightspeed to do it correctly.

If what you're saying is true, then how do you explain all the low APM DPS rotations that exist outside the healers? BLM? WAR? RPR? RDM? SMN? All non-healers with relatively slow, casual DPS openers and rotations--slower than AST's healing and utility driven opener.

Here's my solution: Add tank-like DPS toolkits to the healers since tanks have as much responsibility to other duties beyond DPS as the healers have. If you don't like it, take all the extra buttons off your hotbar and just spam Glareficoilosis. You'll lose not a lot of DPS and no one will probably notice.

[AmiableApkallu]

Healers are first responders to damage. Giving us a DPS rotation muddles the responsibility

This is like saying giving tanks a DPS rotation muddles their responsibility to hit their mitigations for a tank buster or raid wide.

It's perfectly possible for someone to juggle healing and doing damage, and to prioritize in the moment whichever is most likely, or necessary, to prevent a wipe. And that's what I actually want, to be making choices.

A DPS rotation by itself isn't about making choices; it's a personal test of skill. Spending 80% of the time healing isn't about making choices; it's just spamming Cure II instead of Glare (figuratively, if not literally).

[Nizzi]

My source is this. Not sure what you're looking at... Care to post your source?

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxivdiscus..._october_2022/

Astrologian is down consistently across all data centers by roughly 10%.

Again, that's not "what the data shows" and you're drawing wild conclusions to support your point that aren't there. Your "source" does nothing to bolster your point when your point has literally nothing to do with the reasons why Astrologian isn't being played right now. I've made this point to you in your other post stating the same unfounded idea. A healer with a more involved DPS rotation has existed before (recently, in fact) and it worked - it was Stormblood Scholar, a job that was able to heal all 3 tiers of Omega and 2 Ultimates while having more than a 2 button DPS "rotation" and was meta while doing it. Healing requirements haven't changed since Stormblood. You could add back Miasma, Miasma II, Shadow Flare and Bane to Scholar today and it would still be the "best healer in the game" and able to heal every bit of content there is. AST's bloated opener has nothing to do with "why DPS abilities on healers wouldnt work" and instead has everything to do with SE's awful 2 minute burst meta and their continual lack of care towards Astrologian as a job.

[Nezerius]

Correct. I'm referring to the astrologian's bloated UI and opener. A healer with a DPS rotation would turn into a mess similar to the current astrologian. The DPS abilities would get pushed into all sorts of weird spots on their hot bar because heals need to be quickly accessible, and they'd be constantly swapping targets trying to keep up their DPS while healing the group.

Except a big reason why the AST opener is bloated, is because Draw and Play are separate buttons. Although 6.2 helped by merging Crown Play/Minor Arcana, and making sure Redraw would guarantee a different Astrosign. Aside from that, it's just using Divination at the 3rd GCD, and Astrodyne after getting 3 seals.
After that, it's back to spamming Fall Malefic/keeping your dot up/placing Earthly Star every min. Y'know, their actual rotation.
Unless they decide to add multiple oGCDs for a more involved healer dps rotation, it's never really gonna have this opener issue.

Also "first responder role"? What? This is the first time I've ever heard anyone describe healers like that, lol

Why are you constantly swapping targets trying to keep up your dps and healing? Incoming damage really isn't all that random, and you can generally plan ahead on when you need to use heals/CDs. Giving healers a dps rotation isn't going to change this heal/CD planning, it just means we aren't hitting the same button repeatedly while waiting for those moments.

[Fendred]

Except that's not a DPS rotation. That's a bloated opener. The two are not the same thing, and an opener full of weaving isn't inherently bad, it's that AST's specifically feels bad because the cards don't feel impactful, Astrodyne is a joke, and min-maxing your opener for a sweat drop of added DPS demands the use of your Lightspeed to do it correctly.

If what you're saying is true, then how do you explain all the low APM DPS rotations that exist outside the healers? BLM? WAR? RPR? RDM? SMN? All non-healers with relatively slow, casual DPS openers and rotations--slower than AST's healing and utility driven opener.

Here's my solution: Add tank-like DPS toolkits to the healers since tanks have as much responsibility to other duties beyond DPS as the healers have. If you don't like it, take all the extra buttons off your hotbar and just spam Glareficoilosis. You'll lose not a lot of DPS and no one will probably notice.

Lots of non-heal related ability weaving is absolutely an issue for healers because they need to be paying attention to everyone's health/status bars, incoming raid wides, tank busters, etc. Burst windows and major boss mechanic windows are on independent time tables and sometimes happen in parallel. So if we were trying to burst, we'd be potentially overlapping with the same time period we're supposed to be popping stuff on a tank so he survives a tank buster, or some group buff to avoid dying to a raid wide. DPS often fail to mitigate incoming AOE damage because they're so distracted trying to min-max their damage during a burst.

[ty_taurus]

Why are you constantly swapping targets trying to keep up your dps and healing? Incoming damage really isn't all that random, and you can generally plan ahead on when you need to use heals/CDs. Giving healers a dps rotation isn't going to change this heal/CD planning, it just means we aren't hitting the same button repeatedly while waiting for those moments.

I'll also add, I used to play SCH and AST exclusively both on the PS3 and on the PS4 with controller during ARR-SB (SCH only during ARR obviously). I definitely wasn't that great during HW, but I started really improving my craft by the end of the expansion going into SB and I was able to make AST cards work on controller for me. Yeah it was tight, but I just got used to it. I liked the job aesthetically, mechanically, and thematically, so my determination to make it work had me adapt. And that's a job that actually did need to rapidly switch targets. The other healers barely do a fraction of that since they don't have cards, and the thing is, if that target swapping is such a chore for someone who also is trying to juggle DPS, then you can play a different healer. The whole point of the job system in my mind is enabling more divisive gameplay styles since you can swap to something more comfortable for you. AST does need to be reworked because it's a disaster (whether or not the rework will be better is a whole other can of worms), but it having more on-the-fly target swapping is not a bad thing on principle. Let people have that if they want it, not unlike how NIN offers melee players a really heavy APM job, GNB offers tank players a more DPS-like rotation, or DNC offers some luck-based proc rotation.

Lots of non-heal related ability weaving is absolutely an issue for healers because they need to be paying attention to everyone's health/status bars, incoming raid wides, tank busters, etc. Burst windows and major boss mechanic windows are on independent time tables and sometimes happen in parallel. So if we were trying to burst, we'd be potentially overlapping with the same time period we're supposed to be popping stuff on a tank so he survives a tank buster, or some group buff to avoid dying to a raid wide. DPS often fail to mitigate incoming AOE damage because they're so distracted trying to min-max their damage during a burst. When something like a raid wide is going out we have a lot more to worry about than a single mitigation.

As others have said, this is not an issue. Maybe for you it might be, but like I said, just take off your other DPS buttons and spam your filler if you feel too pressured to DPS and heal at the same time. I'm not going to say anything. Let us have the fun and engaging healer gameplay we're asking for and you can take a gameplay shortcut. MNK has the ability to do this with Dragon Kick still while losing almost no DPS and they don't even have healing to manage.

[Sebazy]

Being that astrologian is the closest thing we have to a healer with a full DPS rotation we can tell that (a) the ability bar gets bloated to high hell and (b) its disappointing to have to sacrifice the DPS for healing when heal checks come up.

Uh no.

First off, just to make this very very clear

**AST DOES NOT HAVE A DPS ROTATION**

Outside of it's two minute burst window it is close to the same as any other healer in this game. You spam your nuke, you keep a 30 second dot ticking and you try to maximise value from your 'DPS' oGCD (Earthy Star in AST's case).

AST's kit isn't bloated because of a DPS rotation. It's bloated because it's a horridly designed job. Celestial Opposition in it's current form is a poster child for Bloat, Undraw is a poster child for bloat, the whole convoluted split Draw/Play combo is a poster child for bloat. None of these abilities are part of the job's DPS rotation. (Before you say Draw, no it is not. You dogpile as many cards as you can into the 2 minute burst window, if you're just mindlessly pulling on cooldown, that's a you problem).

DPS rotations don't need to be bloated monstrosities that front load everything into a 10 second burst followed by a minute and 50 of monotony. You play Dancer, it's Endwalker incarnation was a perfect example of how a job could be super simple yet fun and engaging don't you agree?. There are lots of different ways to achieve this without the need for umpteen buttons.

Lots of non-heal related ability weaving is absolutely an issue for healers because they need to be paying attention to everyone's health/status bars, incoming raid wides, tank busters, etc.

There's one huge glaring (Sorry not sorry) issue with this point.

Everything is scripted, everything is timed, everything is memorisable. Designing jobs entirely around fresh new content is all well and good, but it ignores the problem of how bland things get once people have learnt the content.

And before it gets said. If the boss is doing enough damage to actually be threatening, chances are that mistakes will simply result in a forced death/party wipe. Classing other peoples mistakes as something healers need to be ready to react to is fine, but the content in which you can carry people through repeated mistakes typically puts out so little damage that A) You've got most of your kit up most of the time to just oGCD bomb them between nukes that it's irrelevant until the vuln stacks get them one shot right through it and B) If you've got multiple people making the occasional mistake, circumstantial 'splash' healing from the likes of Assize, Earthy Star, Lilies etc will typically do just fine given that unavoidable AoEs are usually a minute + apart and decidedly non threatening anyway.