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

[Fendred]

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.

Healer DPS varies depending on how well the group is mitigating damage and avoiding damage. In contrast, a tank's DPS doesn't change depending on how much damage he takes. So giving us a DPS rotation is kind of pointless: Its setting an expectation for us to do damage in an environment where we have no consistency.

[Fendred]

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.



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 simple 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 decided non threatening anyway.

People are not scripted events. People do not mitigate raid wides or dodge mechanics consistently. Additionally, healing is an active ability, not a passive buff or OGCD like a tank's rampart.

Also please read carefully. I never said that ast had a DPS rotation. I said that AST is the closest thing we have to a healer with a DPS rotation due to its card mechanics.

[ty_taurus]

As someone who played ARR SCH on a PS3, should I be considered a literal deity for being able to manage generally 6 DoTs (with durations of 15 seconds, 18 seconds, 24 seconds, and 30 seconds), Ruin, Bane, Energy Drain and was able to keep my party alive through Lustrate, Adloquium, Physick, and Succor exclusively since that's literally all I had in an era where no one knew what the hell they were doing half the time, myself included, and yet somehow was able to DPS, manage my aggro, and keep my MP up while in EX content and coils? Also it was when the gross old Cleric Stance was a thing, too.

SCH players largely were able to keep up with it back then. What happened to make everyone so fragile that the thought of having even 1 additional DPS button and having to weave in an OGCD heal before or after that button causes them to faint into a bed of flowers?

[Fendred]

As someone who played ARR SCH on a PS3, should I be considered a literal deity for being able to manage generally 6 DoTs (with durations of 15 seconds, 18 seconds, 24 seconds, and 30 seconds), Ruin, Bane, Energy Drain and was able to keep my party alive through Lustrate, Adloquium, Physick, and Succor exclusively since that's literally all I had in an era where no one knew what the hell they were doing half the time, myself included, and yet somehow was able to DPS, manage my aggro, and keep my MP up while in EX content and coils? Also it was when the gross old Cleric Stance was a thing, too.

SCH players largely were able to keep up with it back then. What happened to make everyone so fragile that the thought of having even 1 additional DPS button and having to weave in an OGCD heal before or after that button causes them to faint into a bed of flowers?

I also mained scholar during ARR for coil turn 1. Tanks couldn't wall pull in a normal dungeon party with a scholar because we couldn't heal enough. The DPS abilities took the place of other tools.

Edit: To clarify, scholar did not have any powerful gcd pure heals, just shield heals. We lacked the horsepower of the white mage, and that was a design decision. Scholars back then were hybrid DPS/heals.

[ty_taurus]

I also mained scholar during ARR for coil turn 1. Tanks couldn't wall pull in a normal dungeon party with a scholar because we couldn't heal enough. The DPS abilities took the place of other tools.

Maybe you were just a bad SCH then? I healed wall-to-walls just fine.

Edit: I mean, I recall often trying to load up all my DoTs, then use Bane, and I would be stuck GCD healing for a bit, but SCH also didn't actually have an AoE button anyway, so Miasma II + Baned other DoTs and then going to heal was kinda the best thing you could do both for DPS and for healing really. Ruin's dinky 80 potency on single target wasn't an amazing way to clear down trash packs. You moreso focused on when DoTs needed to be reapplied.

[Sebazy]

Healer DPS varies depending on how well the group is mitigating damage and avoiding damage.

Again, no not really.

In high end content such as Savage, people eating avoidable damage can generally be topped with oGCDs, doubly so this expansion with how durable Tanks are relative to how infrequent/ignorable most tank busters are. If mistakes are happening frequently enough that neither healer has anything left, chances are the group is mid wipe and running into the wall anyway.

In casual content, again. As per my previous post, all I can suggest is to record your own gameplay whilst healing, make a mental note of when someone eats some avoidable damage and you panic heal them. Then actually count how long it is until some real damage comes in and how many incidental AoE heals they get in between. Unless they eat something when an avoidable AoE is imminent (Aglaia's Azyema is probably the best example), chances are they would have been absolutely fine anyway.

But yeah, in situations where mitigation is actually important, it's there to stop you being one shot. It's really not that likely to make much if any of an impact to the healer's DPS contribution other than perhaps making a more nervy healer less likely to reach for that medica II button when it probably isn't needed. Abilities like Asylum, Whispering Dawn etc are just going to overheal the excess anyway.

What kills our damage is of course simple 'inefficient play', self deaths particularly if we don't have an MP cooldown up soon and forcibly dropping GCDs to raise. A hard cast raise will do far more damage to our DPS than any forgotten mitigation that doesn't just cause a 1 shot wipe.

[Fendred]

Maybe you were just a bad SCH then? I healed wall-to-walls just fine.

Edit: I mean, I recall often trying to load up all my DoTs, then use Bane, and I would be stuck GCD healing for a bit, but SCH also didn't actually have an AoE button anyway, so Miasma II + Baned other DoTs and then going to heal was kinda the best thing you could do both for DPS and for healing really. Ruin's dinky 80 potency on single target wasn't an amazing way to clear down trash packs. You moreso focused on when DoTs needed to be reapplied.

Reminding me yet again why trying to talk to people on these forums is pointless. People just venting at others for no apparent reason.
In random groups it was a complete crapshoot if someone could wall pull as a scholar because our healing resources were limited in a way that white mage was not. Of course when ilvl started to kick in things got a little better. White mage could save an underperforming group, but everyone had to be on top of things for scholar to do it. There were only so many charges to use on lustrate before we were out of gas.

Also cleared all of coil turn 1 as scholar when it was the current tier, so I think I was pretty competent as a scholar.

[Sebazy]

People are not scripted events. People do not mitigate raid wides or dodge mechanics consistently. Additionally, healing is an active ability, not a passive buff or OGCD like a tank's rampart.

Please read carefully sir:

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.

Let me make this very very clear:

Mitigation barely matters at all in casual content. Someone forgot to Addle in Aglaia? Oh noes! About the only situation where it starts to have value is in dungeon trash pulls, but that's generally more a leveling dungeon thing and even then, mainly if people are under geared. Eating AoEs in casual content? Again, barely matters. I'll merrily sit in some dungeon trash AoEs as long as it's not multiple stacked and continue to AoE through it on my healer. Why? Because outside of key ones such as more dangerous cleaves or the Ochu bad breath, Asylum/Assize will take care of it. They aren't threatening in the slightest. Dungeon bosses even more so, I always get a chuckle when I see people griping about DPS and Tanks eating vulns from Expert roulette bosses. It makes literally no difference to me and if they are doing good damage then all the more power to them.

As for healing being an active ability. That's not entirely true. A WHM worth their salt will be blowing Assize on cooldown in combat as well as burning Lilies if they aren't Holy spamming. Sure, technically they are active abilities, but given that it's frequent healing that's coming regardless of if it's needed or not, it's functioning like a passive heal. WHM isn't alone in this regard.

[ty_taurus]

Reminding me yet again why trying to talk to people on these forums is pointless. People just venting at others for no apparent reason.
In random groups it was a complete crapshoot if someone could wall pull as a scholar because our healing resources were limited in a way that white mage was not. Of course when ilvl started to kick in things got a little better. White mage could save an underperforming group, but everyone had to be on top of things for scholar to do it. There were only so many charges to use on lustrate before we were out of gas.

I mean don't get me wrong, I was a really bad SCH in ARR and HW. I was an even worse AST. I sucked at the game both because I was on a PS3 and because I didn't understand a lot of the nuance of the game. I didn't know what weaving was until the second half of HW. I understood that there was a difference between the GCD and abilities with cooldowns, and I did recognize that there was a timing aspect, but actually recognizing that as a core aspect of skill usage was beyond me. AST especially, I would frequently be standing there playing with cards without actually casting Malefic or a heal. The really of ARR is that most of us were awful.

Take a look at footage from old WHM players in the coils during ARR. All of them not only don't DPS, they're spamming Cure and sometimes even Cure II on a full HP tank. We were bad at the game, and that's okay. It doesn't mean that any specific strengths or weaknesses of the jobs were bad design choices. Not all of them were good either, but my point was that people were able to make due with SCH's DPS tools and really bad AoE healing potential in a time were all of us were terrible at this game. Now many of us are much better, the game is at least a little more effective at helping players get better, and there are better resources for learning how to manage your actions across the internet now. If we were, by in large, perfectly capable of managing a bunch of DoTs and OGCD DPS buttons all while healing with an incredibly limited healing toolkit back when all of us were awful at this game, why does the idea of having a similar level of DPS engagement plus an immensely superior healing toolkit cause you to fear for your ability to heal?

[Fendred]

Please read carefully sir:



Let me make this very very clear:

Mitigation barely matters at all in casual content. Someone forgot to Addle in Aglaia? Oh noes! About the only situation where it starts to have value is in dungeon trash pulls, but that's generally more a leveling dungeon thing and even then, mainly if people are under geared. Eating AoEs in casual content? Again, barely matters. I'll merrily sit in some dungeon trash AoEs as long as it's not multiple stacked and continue to AoE through it on my healer. Why? Because outside of key ones such as more dangerous cleaves or the Ochu bad breath, Asylum/Assize will take care of it. They aren't threatening in the slightest. Dungeon bosses even more so, I always get a chuckle when I see people griping about DPS and Tanks eating vulns from Expert roulette bosses. It makes literally no difference to me and if they are doing good damage then all the more power to them.

As for healing being an active ability. That's not entirely true. A WHM worth their salt will be blowing Assize on cooldown in combat as well as burning Lilies if they aren't Holy spamming. Sure, technically they are active abilities, but given that it's frequent healing that's coming regardless of if it's needed or not, it's functioning like a passive heal. WHM isn't alone in this regard.

Oh, you're referring to non-savage content. I was talking about savage. Mitigations in savage are actually way more significant. There are times when a raidwide is going out and if only one person mitigates people survive at maybe 5-10% and that's with shields.