I'm bored when I heal because I need more complex DPS rotations

[Nadda]

There have been multiple posts, in multiple threads, that can provide games in which healers had diverse skillsets that include damage abilities, utility as well as healing abilities, since you don't seem to have done the research ( I assume)

lol no obviously not I don't frequent these forums often for my own sanity. lol I digress but at the very least I appreciate you enlightening me on a couple of examples. I am aware of those two games but I've only played SWTOR as a Sage.

Which is ironic because Sage has multi dots for damage. To answer your question why take the same approach for every healer I wasn't I was more or less fishing for what people actually want... This is more so why I left it open-ended - Also because I like dots it gives people something to manage I figured players would appreciate something to manage. In most cases now that we have a bit more clear baseline I'll include WoW as well. Generally, a healer DPS involves the following. A couple of dots, big ogcd/long cool-down abilities, and filler. (some have some stack management for some bonus effect)

That being said - You can't exactly have 4 completely* unique healing classes without them overlapping each other and running a game it's not very practical. My issue would be ultimately the same as your concern which is button bloat and extra buttons introduced mindlessly. You only have a few options you can go to before you get similarities since we're all casters. Going back to of Swtor briefly though I know that combat medic and sawbones scoundrel are more unique they all sort of play differently and aren't all casting types in the conventional sense. Then there's also GCD and encounter design to consider. Even in SWTOR I found it to feel just a bit too clunky for my taste so I see the utility of changing a 3 button filler rotation to just 1 button if it's not gonna change much and my primary focus is on healing. :/ specially if the time between spells is so long it would feel the same to me.

It's not that I am against these things but the implementation I just don't see how it could work. I also don't really agree with things being boring to be quite honest. If people are bored or not engaged with the game that surprises me.

[Semirhage]

lol no obviously not I don't frequent these forums often for my own sanity. lol I digress but at the very least I appreciate you enlightening me on a couple of examples. I am aware of those two games but I've only played SWTOR as a Sage.

Which is ironic because Sage has multi dots for damage. To answer your question why take the same approach for every healer I wasn't I was more or less fishing for what people actually want... This is more so why I left it open-ended - Also because I like dots it gives people something to manage I figured players would appreciate something to manage. In most cases now that we have a bit more clear baseline I'll include WoW as well. Generally, a healer DPS involves the following. A couple of dots, big ogcd/long cool-down abilities, and filler. (some have some stack management for some bonus effect)

That being said - You can't exactly have 4 completely* unique healing classes without them overlapping each other and running a game it's not very practical. My issue would be ultimately the same as your concern which is button bloat and extra buttons introduced mindlessly. You only have a few options you can go to before you get similarities since we're all casters. Going back to of Swtor briefly though I know that combat medic and sawbones scoundrel are more unique they all sort of play differently and aren't all casting types in the conventional sense. Then there's also GCD and encounter design to consider. Even in SWTOR I found it to feel just a bit too clunky for my taste so I see the utility of changing a 3 button filler rotation to just 1 button if it's not gonna change much and my primary focus is on healing. :/ specially if the time between spells is so long it would feel the same to me.

It's not that I am against these things but the implementation I just don't see how it could work. I also don't really agree with things being boring to be quite honest. If people are bored or not engaged with the game that surprises me.

I'm the opposite. I'm shocked that -anyone- finds Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare *not* boring.

[ASkellington]

That being said - You can't exactly have 4 completely* unique healing classes without them overlapping each other and running a game it's not very practical.

WoW did this and so did RIFT. It is completely possible. For example and I'll even keep SE's stupid Pure/Shield split because they're stubborn (pure healing mind you no dps abilities in mind because I'm way too tired for that rn):

WHM:
- Make it a burst healer
- Increase the cost/reduce the amount of regens
- Regens are big (in healing amount) but infrequent
- Its heals are on demand so it remains a "low skilled healer" in that a new player doesn't need to worry about managing regens/shields etc.

AST:
- Make it a regen/delayed time healer
- Increase the cost/reduce the amount of burst healing options
- Burst healing options are big but infrequent
- It heals by regens mostly. You can heal with your burst options but you are going to run out of mana quickly and struggle

SCH:
- Shield healer
- It heals with pet Fairy
- Like currently, pet heals are on longish CDs and not many
- You're meant to prevent damage
- You can burst heal, but it is going to cost large portions of mana (same as AST)

SGE:
- Shield healer
- Heals by doing damage
- Kardia affects more than JUST Dosis. It also affects every time your DoT hits (or DoTs) as well as scale with how many enemies you hit at once
- Supplement with a mixture of burst/regen heals on long CDs and/or large mana costs in case of emergency
- Like SCH meant to prevent damage
- You can burst heal but like AST/SCH it is going to cost you

Much more fleshed out ideas than the current healers we have RN. Yeah, you aren't wrong there's going to be overlaps, but to limit it you do so by usage of long CDs and/or Mana costs. SCH vs WHM is a good example present in game. WHM has Media 2 for "free". It has a mana cost, but it has a short recast timer vs SCH's Whispering Dawn which is on a 40s CD. Things like this and HOW a healer heals is what should diversify them. That I can straight up copy SGE's abilities in the EXACT SAME SPOT as SCH means that it is a clone and a failure of design on SE's part.

[Thoosa]

If only we had the incoming damage to handle like WoW and healers were like resto shaman or Druid - multiple dps buttons, and replace boring op OGCD heals with situational ground items and single target heals. We would be then busy with healing AND dps, and getting good dps in would then actually be a challenge. Don’t see it happening though.

[Calysto]

Just copy/paste :
-blm kit on whm with cure/glare instead of ice/fire
-rdm gauge on sge with shield/dps instead of light/dark
-smn summon rotation on sch (with fairies with regen/shield/dpsbuff/mitig specs)
-ast is already busy, so possibly rdm dualcast could help them

Healers jobs that feels differents -even if they basicaly keep the same healing tools- and possibly rewarding gameplay.
A few dps spells to add but not that much bloat compared to the caster dps jobs, just have a few [o]gcd heals stay instead of some dps tools.
Have the ressources go to skills like assize/pneuma so even burst phase doesn't make people feels like they're in too much danger.

[fulminating]

Summoner's rotation is currently less involved than any healer, please don't inflict it on anyone else.

[ForsakenRoe]

I figured that was partially the case. For Scholars.
OH Yeah we could use two aeros back then... Also Fluid Aura ... I thought I was the only one to use that ability. I don't believe it did any damage though just a knock or if it did only did a little bit. (never seemed to work on anything when it mattered) I never really used it for damage often.

And I understand wanting to break up the monotony but we got to do better than just want it for wanting its sake.
There was an individual who wrote here named ForesakenRoe who gave some pretty incredible suggestions but I think tying too many heal effects to dps abilities would make playing healer even more boring for people because you'd be dishing out so much healing with your damage that it devalues your decisions/agency you have while healing.

I was looking back into WoW for maybe some inspiration but that doesn't translate over well with how FF14 GCD works. Like if it was more dots would that be sufficient? Just to keep tabs on something?

I listed all that monk stuff from WoW not as examples of what to do here per se, but 'how WoW has a 123 combo that has interactivity with the healing side of it's kit'. The main issue here to me is not just 'spam one button for damage is kinda boring', which, dont get me wrong, it definitely is boring as hell, but also that the 'DPS time' and 'healing time' feel completely disconnected on most of the healers. You don't have to swap stances with Cleric Stance anymore, but it still feels like we 'mentally swap' from a healing phase to a DPS phase. Instead, what I was listing was ways WoW makes these two phases work in tandem, doing damage helps you heal. A simple example I can think of off the top of my head, imagine WHM healed in an AOE around itself for 50 potency (medica2 ticks are 150 for comparison) each time it hit an enemy with Glare, while the enemy had Dia on it. It's not much, but it helps to passively regen HP on people, incentivizes keeping your DOT up on the target, and rewards doing damage with 'it helps your healing'.

Unless you mean the thread I made and posted a huge WHM idea in, in which case, no, you wouldn't heal directly by doing damage in that idea, you'd build a new gauge that you spend on a heal. WHEN you spend that heal is still down to you the player, you can hold it for burst 'I need to heal NOW' moments or you can spend it to stabilize the party as they are taking slow chip damage from some environmental thing like the fire rain in P3.

You say 'tying healing effects to our damage would make playing healer more boring' because 'it would devalue decisions/agency' but I'd argue the opposite: It'd make healing exactly the same for people who dont care to optimize damage, because they'd still be able to hit Medica2 whenever they see a raidwide hits, but the people who want to optimize the hell out of their class would find new interactions and tools to play with, to try and reduce the amount of healing GCDs needed to spend on healing. Can they afford to let this passive 50 potency heal effect tick everyone up in time for the next raidwide, or is the gap too short and they have to spend a lily on Rapture? Stuff like that. I've been very clear with my ideas, suggestions, etc: I do not want to make it harder for 'casual players' to do the job of 'keep the party alive'. Instead, the ideas I vouch for keep the job of 'keep party alive' as simple as it currently is, and only add to the DPS or Buffing side of things. It's a fallacy that keeps coming up, that 'new players wont be able to keep up with the extra complexity', but I keep saying, they dont need to because they're new players. By the time it matters, they're in Savage content. Not exactly the place to 'protect the poor precious new player' healers.

If we're gonna steal anything from WoW though, please let us steal their DOT tick system, where it's every 2sec and haste (spellspeed here) affects the rate they tick at, not just the strength

That being said - You can't exactly have 4 completely* unique healing classes without them overlapping each other and running a game it's not very practical.

If you look at tanks, they have insane overlap, a 30% 2min CD (learned at level 38 on every tank, no less), all have rampart, all have a short, mostly 25s CD with Heart of Corundum/Bloodwhetting/Sheltron (TBN has it's own quirks), a 'party mit' CD with Veil, Veil-but-better aka Shake, and then DRK and GNB's is functionally identical. Their mitigation kits are hilariously homogenised, because that allows the devs to create an encounter and know for sure 'ok every tank can get through this with their mitigation kit'. Where the tanks are able to seperate their identities a bit, is how they do damage. PLD has a DOT to maintain with Goring Blade. WAR's all about the crits. DRK's a doubleweave monster at every 2min window. GNB has it's cartridge combo and Continuation weaving.

Now we look at healers. As Skellington pointed out, it's a pretty telling thing that for SGE you can just place it's skills in the same place as SCH skills on your bars and it works out. Ixochole is just Indom. Kerachole and Soil are the '10% mit bubble' skill. Pepsis is 'Emergency Tactics but after the shield is applied'. Druochole is Lustrate. Holos used to be Fey Blessing, then they attached the 10% mit to it between Media Tour and release (it used to be on Pneuma lmao). You can even look at the learn levels of these skills and transplant them pretty close. Physis is learned at the same level as Whispering Dawn, Holos and Fey Blessing, Ixochole and Indom, Rhizomata and Recitation (both give 'one free use of gauge spending heal' i guess?), list goes on. This would be okay, if the healing kit was homogenized and the identity was formed by the DPS side of the kit, like tanks. But it's not, because all four healers are 'Apply DOT, spam nuke skill'. Yeh it's cool we have Phlegma, but 3 GCDs per 2 mins that aren't Dosis does not make it suddenly 'epic engaging rotation poggers'.

Which is ironic because Sage has multi dots for damage.

Name two.

If only we had the incoming damage to handle like WoW and healers were like resto shaman or Druid - multiple dps buttons, and replace boring op OGCD heals with situational ground items and single target heals. We would be then busy with healing AND dps, and getting good dps in would then actually be a challenge. Don’t see it happening though.

I'd personally love it if we had to heal more, if MP management was a skill we healers had to use again, Piety is an actual consideration instead of 'we can run base Piety easily lmao just stack Crit', and even regular dungeons hit hard. But we're not in that world, and we can't go to that world because if we did, the casual players who are used to THIS world, where EX roulette can be completed with a WAR and 3 dps (no healer) would not be able to keep up. Like Cataclysm Heroics all over again. So that's why I advocate for making the DPS side more interesting. Less skilled healers won't be affected by the changes because they won't be doing optimal DPS anyway, and more skilled healers who want to optimize their damage will have new ways to optimize. It's only this hypothetical 'midcore healer that somehow clears Savage but also isn't competent enough to press a different button every 6th GCD instead of Glare' that wouldn't keep up, and well, they don't exist. And if they do somehow exist, they probably shouldn't be in Savage, there's much more complex stuff in there than 'one extra button in your rotation' to worry about.

[Adeacia]

I'm the opposite. I'm shocked that -anyone- finds Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare *not* boring.

Why would that, compared to anything else, be boring? Either I'm pressing a key to do something, or I'm pressing a key to do something. As long as that remains true, it doesn't matter what skills anyone has. Of its 1 or 5 keys, pressing a key = pressing a key.

[Kansene]

Why would that, compared to anything else, be boring? Either I'm pressing a key to do something, or I'm pressing a key to do something. As long as that remains true, it doesn't matter what skills anyone has. Of its 1 or 5 keys, pressing a key = pressing a key.

By that logic, should all the tanks and dps also be reduced to a single dps button, since all button presses are the same?

[ForsakenRoe]

By that logic, should all the tanks and dps also be reduced to a single dps button, since all button presses are the same?

Don't bother, I've tried. Sometimes they'll say 'no because DPS's job is to DPS' and sometimes they'll say 'Yeh actually tanks should be reduced to one button too that sounds good'. But it does beg the question: If the game's story will eventually be completable solo via Duty Support and Trusts, would it paint a good picture of the game, if someone (say, a reviewer for a very influential journalism site) were to play through the WHOLE story, as a WHM. From level 4 to 90, their way to complete all those solo instances is to put up DOT, then spam Stone/Glare. I imagine they'd say 'yeh the story's cool, but the combat sucked pretty bad'. Contrast this to if they had picked a tank, where they're the main guy, the front of the charge, and have cool damage skills fairly often to help protect their team by killing the enemy that threatens the team. Probably a lot more favorable reviews, wouldn't you say?

Besides, just contrast level 90 skills between tanks and healers. WHM, 'plant that does a Medica each time the WHM is hit'. SCH, 'damage mit and 10sec of sprint' (this one's actually kinda cool). AST, 'rewind 50% of damage taken', cool that it's damage neutral, would rather it's OGCD though. SGE, 'damage neutral laser that does big heal (and is on GCD just so it can be buffed by Zoe). Now look at tanks, PLD gets 'Confetior 2/3/4, also it applies the buffed version of your DOT', WAR gets 'Monke Flip', DRK gets 'We definitely didn't just reskin Dark Passenger' with 2 charges, and GNB gets 'God damn it, Double Down didnt crit guys can we wipe' with 1200 potency. Notice something? All of these classes are healers, who get 'healing skills', and if there's damage attached it is just to keep them damage neutral. All of the classes that are tanks, however, get 'do more damage', but they have zero effect on their 'role' of 'tanking'. No mitigation in sight, the only one that could be argued to be 'tanking adjacent' is PLD because it selfheals. But it didn't on launch, that was added later. So what gives? Why do healers keep getting 'look at how much HARDER you can heal, in the 95% of content that doesn't ask you to heal this much', but tanks keep getting new damage skills that make them curse the RNG of Crit Variance?