What if Tanks were designed like Healers?

[Aravell]

In short, I have been saying over and over and over and over and over and over again that there should be a healer who is easy to pick up and forgiving to the beginner--a 4 out of 10 on the difficulty scale--the Dancer or the Red Mage of healers. That is asking very little of someone who wants to be good at one job, but isn't interested in something overly challenging like Ninja.

I firmly believe that aside from the jank and various problems associated with Cleric Stance, HW design nailed this perfectly.

WHM was never a difficult job, it was always the simplest of the healers, the 4/10, you could just react and heal whatever damage comes out, or you could meld some accuracy and throw out some damage when you were comfortable. SCH was the advanced job that you went to if you were interested in taking some of the burden of the dps check on yourself, while AST was the advanced job that you went to if you were more interested in taking a more supportive approach to combat rather than doing the damage yourself.

If they simply took this design and evolved it instead of breaking it down and rebuilding everything, the healers might actually have a solid foundation right now.

[ty_taurus]

I firmly believe that aside from the jank and various problems associated with Cleric Stance, HW design nailed this perfectly.

WHM was never a difficult job, it was always the simplest of the healers, the 4/10, you could just react and heal whatever damage comes out, or you could meld some accuracy and throw out some damage when you were comfortable. SCH was the advanced job that you went to if you were interested in taking some of the burden of the dps check on yourself, while AST was the advanced job that you went to if you were more interested in taking a more supportive approach to combat rather than doing the damage yourself.

If they simply took this design and evolved it instead of breaking it down and rebuilding everything, the healers might actually have a solid foundation right now.

Stone III, Aero, Aero II, Aero III, Fluid Aura, Assize, Presence of Mind, Holy, and Cleric Stance. If we cut Cleric Stance and add Afflatus Misery, then consider something else that could take the spot of Fluid Aura, Aero, and Aero III--something that's maybe not just 3 DoTs (counting Dia), but something that's perhaps a bit flexible, then that could be perfectly fine for a still-approachable White Mage.

[Shurrikhan]

Ngl, I really don't want to see rehauls, reworks, or even retouches done on the basis of "Let's just grab these things, and a bit of that, and a bit of that." If we're to rework anything, I'd like to see a legitimate focus on some core theme and organic expansion therefrom.

[ty_taurus]

Ngl, I really don't want to see rehauls, reworks, or even retouches done on the basis of "Let's just grab these things, and a bit of that, and a bit of that." If we're to rework anything, I'd like to see a legitimate focus on some core theme and organic expansion therefrom.

I don't disagree, but at the same time, I also feel like Sisyphus forced to tirelessly push against the bolder of hell that is healer design in this game, and while I would like to see a really fresh reboot of the healer role entirely to actually compliment this game in any conceivable way, I'm willing to take a smaller victory of revamping an older form of these jobs. But I was also just referencing WHM having 8 different actions for offensive gameplay.

[ForsakenRoe]

pictures

For a second I got a heart attack I thought you'd pulled up my trash p12s p2 log from last week, but no it just looks similar (unsurprising given what little choice of filler GCDs we have to work with). For the RDM specifically, we don't need those 12 uses of the 123 melee combo, Scorch and Resolution to be separate if it were on a healer. Just have the 123 as a single button (wouldn't want the healer players getting stressed by complexity after all), which puts it up to '36 casts' of that button and therefore actually taking top spot of 'number of casts'.

Also, as a little thought experiment, were I to change WHM as I deem fit, the Glare count in that picture would be reduced by 3 per minute, to add some extra Dia casts, 4 per minute for Banish casts, and 4 per minute again for 'the cool heal tool', Quake, Tornado, and Flood casts. Let's be generous and ignore Quake, since it's the same button, that still means that in the 7:40 fight you refer to, that 134 Glares drops by ((3+4+3)*7), or down to 64 (plus a bit more reduction due to the other 40 seconds). With a total cast count of 233, and a new Glare total of 'roughly 60', this puts the 'percentage of actions being Glare in a given encounter' all the way down to about 25%

edit: a comparison, because pictures speak a thousand words:

But I was also just referencing WHM having 8 different actions for offensive gameplay.

I reckon I could scrounge up 8 damage actions for a WHM. How about... Glare, Dia, Holy, Misery, Banish, Quake, Tornado, Flood, Assize, POM, Cleric (maybe, not the HW version though). Wait that's more than 8, even if we took out QTF cos 'its the same button don't count' then it's 8

[ty_taurus]

For the RDM specifically, we don't need those 12 uses of the 123 melee combo, Scorch and Resolution to be separate if it were on a healer. Just have the 123 as a single button (wouldn't want the healer players getting stressed by complexity after all), which puts it up to '36 casts' of that button and therefore actually taking top spot of 'number of casts'.

For sure. It's not that WHM should have a cast list identical to the RDM cast list or anything. In fact, we can look at BLM as a better example of what a better designed WHM (or any healer potentially) cast list could look like.



Unlike RDM where a lot of its 'filler' gameplay is split across 5 different actions (Verthunder, Veraero, Verfire, Verstone, and Jolt), BLM does have a rotation that centers around trying to spam a single spell, Fire IV, and as a result, you see a different curve here, and yet from the data I was able to collect, it was the highest rated job, beating DRG and RDM by roughly half a point. But there's a distinct difference regarding how BLM regularly has to engage with other parts of its tools to allow it to cast Fire IV, otherwise they'd run out of MP or drop their Enochian. And yet even being a DPS that's centered around using a single spell as much as possible, it still casts that spell half as much as a WHM casts Glare.

I'm not suggesting that the healers need to have all these other DPS outlets to support their filler per say, because the responsibility to heal should take up a percentage of that, but that healing in combination with other DPS tools together should cut Glare usage in half consistent across various types of content.