Paired Threads: What would it take to make Heaker kits "complex/interesting"?

[Rilifane]

You'll forgive me for not believing the claim that healer downtime gameplay, specifically dps options, must be simple, that 1111 is actually good or that "interactions are forbidden" or would provide a negative effect by healers trying to optimize after playing a WoW healer in something as simple as LFR, having plenty of constant and spiky damage all over the place while having more elaborate downtime gameplay for something that I was able to maybe 30% of my time tops.
The servers or healer brains won't suddenly explode if we have options, something to strive for as we get more and more practice while someone that still lacks this practice simply focusses on fulfilling their primary role. As I did in LFR after hopping into it for the first time in years.
Interaction between heal and dps spells would work, interaction between dps spells would work, rewarding optimized gameplay would work, having more options in general would work. How I know? Because FFXIV is so far the only game that actively refuses to give any of these - pretty much every other MMO I ever played, both old and more modern ones, weren't so stubborn about refusing to give options and it worked perfectly fine.
But somehow in the world of FFXIV that isn't possible, servers would explode, nobody would play healer, baby healer brains would explode and so on.

And I'm firmly against 123 combos for healers simply because they're indrecibly inefficient in terms of button economy while barely adding anything.
Avoiding button bloat is a constant issue and a 123 combo takes up 3 buttons for something that gives very little room for error since it's so binary, easily committed to muscle memory and doesn't involve any decision making. When we want to add engagement to downtime gameplay it's important to consider the cost (how many slots would it take up) vs reward (how much engagement and skill ceiling it provides).
And basic combos cost a lot for little reward.
Branching combos are another matter, however they are best for more than 3 buttons. 4 or even 5 is more realistic here to make it worthwhile.
Procs or cooldown/ dot duration decreases are also more efficient as they "scale" with your gameplay level and are great for adding synergy and interaction.
Something like a Mudra system or modifiers like Eukrasia or procs are good options as well and can be designed in a way that they "scale" with gameplay level as well.
Basic combos are barely a step above the skill ceiling being firmly pancaked against the skill floor as it is with 1111. You just hit the ceiling way too easily and then there's nothing more to it. If they decided to give every healer a 123 combo with 7.0, I'd laugh my ass off over how tone-deaf and off the mark it is. Healers are still the only role that gets the bubblewrap treatmen to this extend.

[Iedarus]

You'll forgive me for not believing the claim that healer downtime gameplay, specifically dps options, must be simple, that 1111 is actually good or that "interactions are forbidden" or would provide a negative effect by healers trying to optimize after playing a WoW healer in something as simple as LFR, having plenty of constant and spiky damage all over the place while having more elaborate downtime gameplay for something that I was able to maybe 30% of my time tops.

Funny enough I tried WoW again fairly recently and decided to be a disc priest. Despite their heal on damage mechanic, I wound up letting my team die so many times because I didn't realize incoming damage was so frequent. Imagine that, I have to actually heal as a healer? Who would have thunk?

[Rilifane]

Funny enough I tried WoW again fairly recently and decided to be a disc priest. Despite their heal on damage mechanic, I wound up letting my team die so many times because I didn't realize incoming damage was so frequent. Imagine that, I have to actually heal as a healer? Who would have thunk?

I underestimated the damage at first as well because I was used to snoozing away for 40s after a raidwide, knowing perfectly well that nothing can happen except people running into the death wall. It's not even high, it's just constant, unpredictable and more dynamic in general. It shows that FFXIV has babied us for so long, the mere thought of healing as a healer becomes almost foreign.
Although it was quite easy to get back into dealing with that kind of damage. And refreshing.
And once I'm back into being better at it in general, I have a more elaborate downtime kit to look forward to. The option is there, I just don't choose it for now.

A lot of the mechanics there would work beautifully over here as well.
The filler spell reducing dot duration by one tick for extra potency on hit.
A skill having the chance to instantly reset the cooldown of another skill on a short-ish cooldown.
A skill stacking a debuff that makes another skill into a dps gain after a certain amount of stacks.

All of these mechanics gradually take more effect the better you become at a fight, healing and downtime gameplay.
A beginner healer would probably simply try to keep their dot up that has a more forgiving duration, use their cooldown on cooldown and the other skill occasionally since they don't accumulate stacks as often.
An experienced healer will refresh their dot far more often, will have somewhat frequent cooldown resets and thus use the cooldown more often as well as the accumulating stacks faster that turns another skill into a dps gain. Even if all of it combined would only result in a relatively small dps gain, veterans would at least have something to look forward to. Something that doesn't reward them with less the better they become but rather with more - but a different kind of more. Instead of watching HP bars like a hawk you'll gradually shift to paying more attention to cooldown resets, procs, dot durations and stacks as an experienced healer since the party is safe enough to do so. And it doesn't even take a "complex full dps rotation" to implement it. It's still just a handful of buttons at the end of the day.

[ForsakenRoe]

I should clarify (or try to), when I say that 'I don't think 123 combos is the solution', I mean for a healer, and the healer design specifically. Since we're on the subject of WOW, I'll use an example from that. Disc Priest has, while doing it's 'damage to heal' bursting combo, Smite as it's filler, Schism to open the 'deal more damage' window, Mind Blast (2 charges), Penance (gives mobility, channeled, very short CD), MindGames (longer CD but very strong effect), ShadowWord: Pain (DOT), ShadowWord: Death (bursty hit but deals selfdamage), maybe I missed one idk I don't play Disc much. Point is, all of these are unlinked, they don't '123' into each other, and they all have different CDs. You'd ideally want to use them all in a certain order for 'the most optimized burst possible', sure, but sometimes one of them's not up when you need to do a round of healing. The game's not gonna go 'oh I see you don't have both charges of Mind Blast back yet, I'll let you chill till you're ready', so you have to do the burst, without that second charge, and adapt your burst window accordingly, filling that missing GCD with something else.

So back to FFXIV, we could have something like, SGE could have Dosis (filler), E-Dosis (DOT), Phlegma (Hard hit, 2 charges), Toxicon (gives mobility, very short CD, get rid of/rework addersting it sucks), Dyskrasia (some kind of proc that causes it to deal bonus damage so it's a gain on ST), maybe an E-Toxicon or E-Phlegma if we're feeling spicy. None of these have to be linked via a 123 combo, they can all be standalone moves, with their own separate CDs or charge timers or whatever. I wouldn't do this to SGE, as I've already made a post about what I'd do to it on the healing side of things, but the premise can be put onto other healers too. SCH having 2 DOTs, a ground effect, an AOE with a DOT component to discourage spamming, etc. to manage in SB for example.

[ty_taurus]

Combos in general are things that can be used effectively or poorly. MNK's single target GCDs are an example of a good combo system, because it's not a 1-2-3... It's a 1-2-3 4-5-6, and sometimes it's a 1-5-3 or a 4-2-6 or other possible orders. There's fluidity there, and you need to keep aware of things like when you need to reapply Demonlish or when Twin Snakes needs refreshing. Its AoE combo, on the other hand, is not the worst offender thanks to Perfect Balance, but is really just a 1-2-3 > 1-2-3 > 1-2-3 situation, and that makes me ask the question of "what's the point?" That's three buttons--three spots on the hotbar that have no value in most combat scenarios since AoE is just reserved for trash mobs anyway. It's the same with MCH's combo. There's no branching there--no choices. What's the point of eating up so much space for something that is highly repetitive?

RDM's single target combos work nicely because it's also very fluid. You have You can start your 1-2 combo with Jolt, or Verstone, or Verfire, and any can go into either Verthunder of Veraero depending on your needs. It's in constant motion. Its melee burst combo is just three buttons that always go in the same 1-2-3 order though.

It's really just about how its handled, and preferably that it feels unique and different from other job combos as well.

[Allegor]

FFXIV has babied us for so long, the mere thought of healing as a healer becomes almost foreign.

And I keep wanting to point out the double standards that healers doing more than standing there and look pretty, or pressing 11111111 is allegedly too hard and/or stressful for people, while the same doesn't apply to giving tanks, ranged dps, and RDM support skills on top of what their own roles demand of them.

Why is the babysitter role the one being babysat!

[Xelanar]

While 12345 and 11111 can be effectively the same in result. There are diffirences to note:
- A healer should not be punished for interupting the dps rotation
- A dps often has trees that branch and allow other effects to trigger
- Healing must be more reliable per ability, than dps must be (for dps, the average acros a rotation is what counts - but healers must be able to interupt these)

As a result, healer dps must be simplistic. But there are a few catches that do enable freedom (and also apply extra restrictions):

DPS rotations must be standalone. Healing cannot interupt these (not even based on a timer!). While interactions are forbidden, some interactions still provide a null net result (for example, after a heal, the next gcd cast deals double damage), these can still provide the negative effect in which healers try to optimize these bonusses, but normal dps casts already feature this same risk/reward feature.

DPS rotations must not be based on a 'better to cast one now, and heal a rotation later' effect. Any boost that was applied, must be applied on a longer basis (this can be a real mess). If there is a teamwide dps boost, yet you are healing, your dps casts will be even less valuable. Which especialy with combo systems could mean you lost your highest potency cast. This would force people into doing more dps casts, rather than just doing what they should have done. Where in the previous example skipping a dps cast only lost you 1 gcd of dps, in this case it could be 0.8 or 1.3 effective dps casts lost, just because of combos.

And now imagine only having 2 abilities of 200 and 150(base)+150(combo) potency. Its already quite a mess at this point. Since you generaly want to use that 300 potency during buffs. It can make players skip a heal (and cause a death, or other players to drop their dps for survival). For a healer that just doesnt work.

Now imagine each heal adds 1 dps cast worth of potency to the next dps cast. So heal>heal>dps means 3x the damage on that single dps cast. while dps>dps>dps would just be the same. Now healing becomes favored as its more efficient. But the moment you go for 90% of potency added to the next cast, this heal>heal>dps cycle becomes useless since you want that extra 10%. It doesnt matter how you assign the buttons here, you dont want to lose dps for free (but often useless) heals. This is why freecast is useless (the many cure1 casts negate the dps you could have delivered).

It might be strange, but 11111 is actualy quite good. And the only system that would work is just a standalone constant rotation which regardless of what you do makes 1 and 2 just be the exact same, but with a forced alternating between the 2 (or you lose potency). Healing does not interact here, and as both values are the same, its never going to be a potency loss (unless mispressing - as its desired when making such rotation).

Also, tanks have more complex rotations since their aggro management is still just dealing dps. Something that healers cant do with healing.

Well... you are correct, IF those were the rules.

However, do you not believe developers to be capable of addressing obvious flaws like "heals are not allowed to break a combo"? What if heals did in fact NOT break a combo? Because developers are very capable of making that possible if they wanted to.

The issue here is, that assumptions are made, and conclusions are drawn from those. And while those conclusions are in fact correct, they are based on something that does not have to be the way it is assumed. Personally? I think developers are able to increase healer DPS complexity with a system that makes sense. The main issue is, for some reason they do not want to.

Their philosophy is, healers should not be distracted by DPS-related things, because they should focus on healing. Which is fine. However those same developers also force us to focus on DPS, because there is not enough to heal. One of those needs to take the lead, yet here we are, right in between, being asked to press one button most of the time, while nothing happens.

[Nizzi]

It might be strange, but 11111 is actualy quite good.

No, lol

Also, tanks have more complex rotations since their aggro management is still just dealing dps. Something that healers cant do with healing.

*turns on stance*
*hits button*
*holds aggro for the rest of the fight*

Love this community defending the pigslop healers get and then saying that tanks get to have fun because they have to press one button to turn their stance...? There is literally no reason tanks couldn't have the exact same DPS rotation that healers have. You manage aggro with your co tank by turning off your stance, using Provoke and Shirk. Wow, that's definitely a justification for why they get to have "complex rotations" while we get the 'actually quite good' 111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111

[Allegor]

No, lol


*turns on stance*
*hits button*
*holds aggro for the rest of the fight*

Love this community defending the pigslop healers get and then saying that tanks get to have fun because they have to press one button to turn their stance...? There is literally no reason tanks couldn't have the exact same DPS rotation that healers have. You manage aggro with your co tank by turning off your stance, using Provoke and Shirk. Wow, that's definitely a justification for why they get to have "complex rotations" while we get the 'actually quite good' 111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111

It's also outdated, since aggro management is near nonexistent now, the only way to lose aggro as a tank is to straight up be afk. So no, they don't actually need a whole 123 rotation, let alone those fancy capstone abilities that tend to have nothing to do with mitigating damage/self sustain (you know, a tank's job!) - they can literally get rid of tanks 123 st/aoe rotation to releave some button bloat, but what would be the fun in only pressing 111111111 all fight?

[ty_taurus]

It's also outdated, since aggro management is near nonexistent now, the only way to lose aggro as a tank is to straight up be afk. So no, they don't actually need a whole 123 rotation, let alone those fancy capstone abilities that tend to have nothing to do with mitigating damage/self sustain (you know, a tank's job!) - they can literally get rid of tanks 123 st/aoe rotation to releave some button bloat, but what would be the fun in only pressing 111111111 all fight?

But what if the tank gets distracted by DPSing and forgets to mitigate!?