For those who main/semi-main a DPS (e.g. DNC, RDM) but like Healers...

[Shurrikhan]

Anyway, as to what you said above:

4 Healers Model.

That's the entire point of it as a proposal.

And that might get more agreement, or at least traction/discourse, if you clarified how much gameplay in total each of those differently-modeled healers would have available to it.
:: Well, that and if the name made sense for the goal, since you've suggested that only 1 or 2 should be "Healers" and the others more akin to "Supports", but I'll admit that "Categorically Diversify What Each Healer Offers in Both Capacity and Gameplay" wouldn't have much ring to it, even if it'd finally have clarity.

Thus far, you've framed it as much around each healer avoiding the others' aspects as each having an aspect or two significant and enjoyable gameplay added to the existing mostly-shared model of Healer gameplay, and you've been explicit in defining one by its having little going on (basic healer with Glare-spam)...

Perhaps a refresh on just what all you'd imagine each healer having added to its gameplay as a result of this model? (Since, at the end of the day, we play those jobs and not whatever mental frameworks by which they're taxonomized.)

[Renathras]

I mean with every post you made here in regards to me, you seemed to have made up your mind already about what I wanted

If I made up my mind, I wouldn't have asked the question.

Your non-answer answers it, though. So we're all clear, the answer is that you would at least try it out - as would I. Unlike you, I freely admit this. And I'm the most "dedicated pure/whatever healer" here. Don't assume duplicity so much.

.

You have supported having a single option for people who don't enjoy DPSing on Healers, but only if it's one specific thing, which I've informed you isn't what everyone who doesn't enjoy DPSing wants. The single thing you've rejected as "shit game design" is, as I've told you, something that people want. I am curious the game you work on, as I'm wondering if it has anything I would consider a healer in it or not...

What I think you get is that some people don't like what you like.

What I don't think you get is what some of those people do like. This leads you to proposing solutions that they don't find acceptable, then being confused because they seem like they should be acceptable to you. The problem is you aren't giving them what they want. You're giving them what you think they want/should want instead, even when they tell you over and over what they do want and you tell them no one could want that.

.

1) Every Healer in this game design does.
2) If one counts 1-2-3 as a single action for non-branching combos (since there's no case you don't use them as such and it's a "fatfinger" check, not a skill check), I wonder how many Jobs meet that criteria.
3) Why 10-12, not 3-5? What's sacred about that number?

In any case, as I've said, I'm fine with those criteria for a Healer Job. I disagree it should be for all of them. Many people would not find that fun.

And that might get more agreement, or at least traction/discourse, if you clarified how much gameplay in total each of those differently-modeled healers would have available to it.

Hm, I suppose I could do a more updated write-up, but given the replies from certain posters here of late, I'm not sure it's worth the effort since no one would read it. Also I don't think I frame the discussion/question(s) like you do. For example, "how much gameplay...would have available"? What does this mean? They all have gameplay. They all have the same gameplay. They run the same encounters, they heal the same damage inflicted on the party. Do you mean "how many buttons" or "how complex"? Those are different questions than available gameplay.

I also haven't defined one as "basic healer with Glare-spam", as none of our Healers today are that. I think one of the sticking points of the current situation is people engaging in hyperbole and refusing to acknowledge what actually does exist. For example, as I've shown before, in cases were absolutely no healing needs to be done by the healer ever at any time in a fight (a scenario which doesn't really exist in this game outside of unsynced content), WHM casts 4 Afflatus abilities, 2 Dias, and 1.3 Assizes per minute, as well as (normalized) 0.5 Presence of Mind every minute. With a 2.5 sec GCD, and 6 take by Dia and Afflatuses, that's 18 Glares, 4 Afflatuses, 2 Dias, 1.3 Assizes (oGCD), 0.5 PoMs (oGCD). Of course, if healing needs to be done, that cycles in more oGCDs, and eventually GCDs if it is insufficient. This is hardly "Glare-spam" in my book.

The worst part is, this is comparable to SB (widely praised as the height of Healer design) WHM's rotation.

I went over this in the "Healers, Then and Now" thread: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post6197639

In practice, SB WHM cast Aero 2 3.333... times per minute and Aero 3 2.5 times per minute. This is a total of 5.833... GCD casts per minute that weren't Stone IV.

In practice, EW WHM casts Dia 2 times per minute, 3 Afflatus (Solace/Rapture) per minute, and 1 Afflatus Misery per minute. This is a total of 6 GCD casts per minute that aren't Glare III.

On balance, EW WHM is casting non-Glare damage (or damage-adjacent Solace/Rapture) spells on roughly the same average frequency as SB era WHM did.

No one's ever quite been able to explain why it was good design in SB but not in ShB/EW to have the same rotational frequency of "Stone/Glare-spam". Arguing the DoTs made the timing different isn't an argument against the spam itself, especially when people like Ty routinely use the amount of buttons being pressed, not the pattern, in their arguments, as he did above.

Ironically, I'm the one that critiqued this by noting the difference was WHM had to rely on GCD heals more back then (more damage and less oGCDs), so some of those Stones were substituted for Medica/Cure spells by necessity. It wasn't just the oGCDs, encounter design - the thing people insist is immutable - was apparently mutable and required a different approach to healing, that is, MORE HEALING, at the time. And it's this I point to as a possible solution to the problem.

But regardless, that's also why I constantly rag on encounter design, and to a lesser extent oGCD use, and note they'd need to be part of any rework.

.

So I need you to lay out your questions more precisely and in more neutral language/language I would interpret closer to how you intend (or alternatively, make a Ren post explaining in detail what you're asking for - and not in tiny font, please - so I can understand it precisely and answer it), and I can see if I can address it.

In a nutshell, though, my proposed changes would amount to:

1) Encounters that require more consistent healing. Low difficulties would still have this, but the values would be so low that novice players could cover it with GCD heal fallbacks. Harder fights would actually make this threatening where the healing has to be addressed in a consistent manner. No more fights with lots of damage and then 45 seconds of nothing at all happening. This change would reduce the ability to address all healing with oGCDs, while still allowing oGCDs to be somewhat powerful for the Jobs that would continue to rely on them.

2) More somewhat randomized damage, like boss random targeting of players or continued auto-attacks of Tanks while prepping mechanics/casting. This was done in HW and was also generally well received for what that's worth. Again, this wouldn't hurt Jonny Casual as casual content would have the damage low enough they could handle it with their fallbacks if necessary.

3) A general reduction in oGCD power for Healers...but with caveats. Specifically, some Healer Jobs would be designed to work with their oGCDs being a source of their healing, and so they would be tuned to that end.

After those changes were made, since they're kind of essential:

1) WHM would largely play as it does today, with a few minor changes. First, a Protect spell (that Traits up to Pro-Shell and then Plenary with the Pro-Shell effect as a mitigation tool - WHM presently has less frequent mitigation than BLM. Yes, BLM. Addle has a lower CD than Temperance [lower reduction, true, but the point is, BLM can engage with party mitigation more frequently than WHM, and that's just silly]). Second, I'd honestly make it where all GCD heals nourish the Blood Lily. The point of this is to make WHM the GCD Healer...that actually USES its GCD heals. The Lily system has been admirable at trying to give this feel, but it's like saying SMN is just as much a Caster as BLM. While true in terms of the way the servers treat the Jobs, sure, but players routinely call SMN a Ranged that has the Caster icon because of all its instant (GCD, but instant) casts. WHM should be encouraged to engage with its GCD heals, not slapped with a big damage nerf for using them. It would also allow use of interesting abilities. WHM's GCD kit has redundancies, but with some tweaks (and looking back on its spell history...), they're more diverse than "Rapture vs Solace". Cure 3 vs Medica 3 vs Medica (when its MP cost was lower and it was actually what you used after Medica 2 while the HoT was still ticking) was a choice for how to deal with a problem based on the situation at hand. We no longer have that. Rapture is always the correct answer. Regen is a nice and pretty powerful heal...that we only use pre-pull because Solace is the DPS gain and Regen the DPS loss. Same with Cure 2. By making the GCD heals damage neutral, it means min/max damage optimization - which people here insist is the only thing that matters - isn't part of the decision on which heals to use. Instead, which heal is best for the situation is the decision on which heals to use...which it should be. MP management actually mattering would also be a consequence of this, though again, for casual healers in casual content, this wouldn't be something limiting them too harshly. But for skilled healers in high end content, this would be a serious consideration. For example, there could be a world where Medica 1 has lower range than Medica 2 and lower total healing, but has half the MP cost making it far more efficient when low on MP vs Medica 2 or Cure 3. Medica 2 could have some trait that has it work like Criterion regen where the power is boosted if the HoT is on the target, but with it having a higher MP cost than Medica 1. Cure 3 would have its higher MP cost, but apply its healing instantly in a big chunk, useful for stacked mechanics where the party also needs to be topped off quickly. Now each is actually a meaningful choice based on the situation, the party's positioning, the Healer's resources, and the encounter mechanics.

2) SCH I would mostly revert to the SB version. As I discussed in the Then and Now thread, SCH was the most harmed and is, today, the most "filler-spamy" of the Healers; the meme should be "Broil-spam", not "Glare-spam" (funny irony; WHM is about tied with SGE as the LEAST filler-spammy of the Healers). Specifically, with Broil being a 2.5 sec cast, it gave Ruin 2 (and Miasma 2 if you were in close to the boss and had ample MP) reasons to exist. Ruin 2 was both a movement tool and a weave tool that was optimal to use for weaving (even non-ED oGCDs), even though it was a damage loss vs Broil, since Broil oGCD use would be clipping and Ruin 2 allowed for more distance movement. Miasma 2 was actually a DPS gain, but at the cost of more MP, adding MP management into the mix here as well. The changes from SB I would want added would be the improved pet AI, and the capstones added since SB (Seraph/Consolation and Expedience), since those have been useful and interesting additions to the kit. We would also be reverting to (I believe it was ShB when we lost it) the changes where pet abilites were triggered by the player but didn't count against the player's ability use, allowing more effective weaving and allowing players to create macros for them if they wish. Aetherpact can remain as a boosted Embrace, but...I dunno if we want to just dump Faerie Gauge or try to salvage it into something useful. The goal here is to return SCH into its last "good" state, SB, while not taking away the actual improvements that would have made it better, such as better pet AI and utility like Expedience.

3) AST I'm not entirely sure what to do with. I play it enough now that I can speak more authoritatively on it than I used too, but I don't at all main it, and I know people that main it tend to like the opposite of what I like in terms of rotation and encounter approach. Where I enjoy reactive healing, AST is all about pre-planning. And where I like low APM Jobs, AST is all about bursts of high activity. Since its inception, it's had a higher APM. It was long the only Healer whose spam-nuke had a low cast time to facilitate frequent weaving, and every iteration of it has had a lot of them. So where if I was making AST for people like me, I'd make the card effects into GCDs (that boost the next Malific by 100% stacking to 5 or some such to facilitate a Draw/Play series of actions if needed), I also recognize that a lot of AST players would hate that because they like getting carpel-tunnel. So instead, I'd propose returning towards SB, but with a few modifications. The first would be to have two sets of Draw and Play, probably Major and Minor Arcana. One set would be damage increasing abilities, the other utility. The first might be X% flat damage, Y% added crit, or Z% added direct hit, with the ratio being 1:2:3 like BRD songs are. The utility set would be a damage reduction ability, a movement speed increasing ability, and a haste (spell and skill speed) ability. Next, I'd massage RNG a bit by allowing stocking of any card the AST chooses. This would allow, say, the damage reduction ability, if not needed now but needed in the future, to be "stocked" for later use at the time it matters, instead of pre-SB where it was just wasted or Royal Road fodder. I'd...also bring back Royal Road, because while I personally hated half of AST buttons being both oGCDs and card related...some people loved the hell out of that, and liked being able to modify cards to increase effectiveness, duration, or give them an AOE effect. AST's damage kit and healing kit don't directly need to be changed, since they're more or less what they were. Some more recent effects could be added to existing ones - for example, Exaltation or Intersection's damage reduction/shield could be a trait addition to the Bole card (there's no reason Cards can't get improvements with Traits at higher levels, now is there?). Oh, and one more little change that I'm sure (sarcasm) no one would really care about or notice - return Diurnal and Nocturnal stances. No, not hot swapping in battle. Pick one or the other, but the option is now there again. I feel that would be a pretty welcome change.

4) SGE there are two possible ways to go with it. One is to leave it exactly like it is today. The reasoning being it's always been this way, so there aren't any complaints from people about it having some core part of what they liked about its identity or function changed. That is, possibly even moreso than WHM, there's a strong argument to leave SGE as it is, since this is all its ever been, and this is what all players of SGE knew they were getting (more or less) when picking it up any time after the first month or so of EW, if not before. The OTHER argument, however, is that SGE was billed as effectively a DPS that heals by doing damage. In an ideal world, we'd add a new Healer and split the apple that way. But for the sake of argument (since the first of those is already known; we know how SGE operates now, so "leave it as it is" is self-explantory), the second version would be to really double down on the Kardia system. Kardia healing would now be variable based on the attack used to generate it. Most of SGE's oGCD heals would be removed. SGE's purpose is to heal by doing damage, not to heal by casting heals, oGCD or GCD. Correct performance of the rotation would lead to consistent and large Kardia heals, and SGE would have abilities that would amplify Kardia. One would be an oGCD that makes Kardia AOE for a short duration (say 10 sec) on a 1 min CD. This is the "Whispering Dawn/Fey Blessing" type of thing that Physis 2 and Kerochole are used for now. Another would be a short duration (10 sec) second Kardia that can be placed on a second target (e.g. the OT after a shared tank buster). Think Synastry, just in this case, Kardia procs. SGE would retain mitigation effects from Kerochole, Ixochole, and Holos, as well as Holos' shield, but would lose the healing associated with them. Again, its healing should mostly be happening via Kardia. I haven't quite worked out the damage rotation (or specifically, how to do it), but something on the order of RDM's Caster rotation, with the big finisher being Pneuma instead of a Melee combo with spell stingers on the end. Properly executing the damage rotation would build resources that could be used on Pneuma casts, which would lead to big healing. Where WHM is the GCD Healer in this system, SGE is the opposite take, being a GCD damage dealer that provides healing to the party by properly performing a damage rotation (peppered with some mitigation and Kardia modifier use) instead. Where WHM would be focused on GCD heals and do damage as more of an afterthought, SGE would focus on GCD damage spells and its healing would be the almost afterthought instead.

...of course (laughable given the length of this post), this is more an overview. Though at least the first three of these are pretty self-explanatory. The SGE rework is really the only one that would require more in-depth explanation, but the point of it is to make it heal by doing damage and appeal to people that prefer dealing damage and like their heals to be something they throw on the side as a result of performing their damage rotation correctly. A Healer analogue to GNB for Tanks who like a more (Melee) DPS playstyle, this SGE would be the Caster equivalent, playing more like a RIFT Chloromancer + a WoW Disc Priest or something.

Each one would appeal to a different type of player, and each would be balanced around providing a similar amount of healing and damage, but with the method they use being what distinguishes them.

Oh, and one more random addition to all of them: Each one's basic cure spell Traits up to become a spell that has the same MP cost and cast time, but also the Esuna effect of removing one status ailment. For WHM Cure 1 -> Esuna, SCH Physic -> Leeches, AST Benific 1 -> Exalted Detriment. SGE's can just stay Diagnosis but with the added effect. (The name already calls to mind a visit to the doctor, so it kind of just works.) At the same cost, cast time, and healing as the base Cure 1 equivalent spell, in low level content, nothing changes. In high level content, for the healers based around MP management, it would still serve the Cure 1 slot of "if you have nothing else left, you can keep healing with this". And for the rare content with a status ailment you can cleanse, it does the job of Esuna now without costing an obligatory additional hotbar spot that you have to have Esuna slotted in "just in case" as is the situation now.

Overall, minor QoL change, that, but I think a lot of people would like to see it, or at least be neutral towards it.

.

Hm.

Yeah, honestly, I just need to rewrite it and try to see if I can trim it down to something simple and digestible. And you can ask me your questions (in a way I can understand your intent) and I can answer them for you.

[Shurrikhan]

[@Taurus] What I don't think you get is what some of those people do like. This leads you to proposing solutions that they don't find acceptable, then being confused because they seem like they should be acceptable to you.

Please define or give actual examples of said "people"?

Thus far, here on these boards, his suggestions have seen broader and deeper agreement than your "4 Healers model" (be that due to poor clarity, excessive length, or --less favorably-- the actual content of said model even when understood as perfectly as possible), if responses to each and like counts are anything to go by.

1) Every Healer in this game design does.

Which is why it isn't a suggestion for a change, I would think -- only that he's not willing to accept a "Healer" being unable to actually fill that role just because of the elements added thereto.

2) If one counts 1-2-3 as a single action for non-branching combos (since there's no case you don't use them as such and it's a "fatfinger" check, not a skill check), I wonder how many Jobs meet that criteria.

Other jobs shitting the bed is not a reason to be satisfied with a shitty job design. DRK's spending 75% of its GCDs on its a single combo is one of the most criticized parts of its kit and has been since Stormblood (and at least back then TBN gave 50 Blood by which to reduce that portion to a mere ~67%).

3) Why 10-12, not 3-5? What's sacred about that number?

Reaching 80% of CPM from just the 5 most cast actions is literally current WHM.

WHM's CPM curve (of GCDs and oGCDs together) is comprised of ~55.4% Glare, 8.5% Rapture, 6.1% Benison, 5.6% Dia, 4.4% Assize (already ~80%)... with the remaining 15 actions available to WHM each averaging just 1.33% of its CPM.

Taking 10-12 skills (up from 5) to reach 80% of a given healer's CPM means that that job would have far less of the CPM invested into just its highest-CPM skill (presently, their single-target filler attack) and a far flatter distribution of actions across the board, or at least until reaching the several least frequently cast actions like Bells, Benediction, Medica II, Plenary, Temperance, and Infusion if one counts that.

So, I ask again, which people "don't find" that turn towards a broader distribution of our actions (i.e., not just Glare-spam) "acceptable"?

1) Encounters that require more consistent healing.

I think most would be for this, since consistent healing does far more to diminish Glare spam than it does to stress out healers. (It's in bringing back things like random spike damage that we see greater costs to providing greater %CPM spent on heals --especially, healing GCDs.)

Low difficulties would still have this, but the values would be so low that novice players could cover it with GCD heal fallbacks. Harder fights would actually make this threatening where the healing has to be addressed in a consistent manner.

I'm not sure here what you mean by a "consistent manner" that would be opposed to / different from being covered with GCD heal "fallbacks"? Would one have to consistently store oGCDs just for someone not to die even if they were to have a pre-cast GCD heal? That would be more intense than even our spikiest damage now.

I would think you'd want to leave any actual need for oGCDs for randomized damage.

2) More somewhat randomized damage, like boss random targeting of players or continued auto-attacks of Tanks while prepping mechanics/casting. This was done in HW and was also generally well received for what that's worth. Again, this wouldn't hurt Jonny Casual as casual content would have the damage low enough they could handle it with their fallbacks if necessary.

See above. While constant and randomized damage both reduce the effective reaction time available to a healer to prevent a death, the latter is likely to have the greater impact just because it not being constant means that it is applied far more sharply and its being random means that they can't pre-cast except via wasteful AoEs, making it so one has to tap into additional resources (unless they have spammable instant-cast-heals like SGE) in order to heal the victim(s) before the constant damage can finish them off.

3) A general reduction in oGCD power for Healers...but with caveats. Specifically, some Healer Jobs would be designed to work with their oGCDs being a source of their healing, and so they would be tuned to that end.

Theoretically, I'm fine with that, but I'd like to know what you think is a fair trade for the immediacy of those oGCD heals. Do they have a much lower HPS ceiling than less CD-flush after those CDs are exhausted? What's the impact on their Combined_HPS+DPS Curves as healing requirements increase? Who tends to handle low damage intake better, if anyone? Who can better deal with shit hitting the fan for a sustained period, if anyone?

Second, I'd honestly make it where all GCD heals nourish the Blood Lily. The point of this is to make WHM the GCD Healer...that actually USES its GCD heals.

Then you'd effectively have given WHM infinite Lilies / 20s-CDs, limited only by MP, at roughly half-price on each healing GCD when considering the Glare MP saved and the MP-free Misery GCDs (worth 500 MP per GCD), or 25% off when considering just one's near-maximum healing potential (due, again, to that MP-free Misery GCD every 4th GCD).

That'd be broken. Without MP limitations you'd have made it so that WHM could put out up to 76800 healing potency per minute atop its oGCDs... at a cost of only 810 offensive potency per minute (9.8% less DPS), or 70400 healing potency per minute atop its oGCDs with zero loss to its offensive potency per minute.

With MP limitations, your free additional HPS/DPS still starts out that high, and only later falls to about half that amount being sustainable, since every 4th GCD is MP-free. After Dia, one spends at most 16400 MP per minute --even before accounting for reductions from Thin Air-- while regenerating almost 8000 per minute, meaning one could sustain half that healing indefinitely.

Actually, unless needing all that AoE potency ever minute, you'd actually be getting well over half your effective maximum healing in practice, given that you can replace every Glare with a Cure for a Glare's worth of potency but also a free 500 cure potency and effectively 150 less MP (given Freecure, which you'll have suddenly made relevant for the first time since Coil).


So, hard no for me on that one from a balancing standpoint. From a gameplay standpoint, too... that doesn't seem great, since it essentially turns every action into Glare-but-with-variable-amounts-of-healing-attached-at-barely-variable-MP-cost. That honestly sounds more like a SGE gimmick.

2) SCH

Yeah, I'm fine with all you're suggesting here. I'd probably go further, personally, but yours seems the safer bet for general approval.

3) AST I'm not entirely sure what to do with.

Honestly, kinda same, though I would actually milk the hell out of its Cards, Time and Space magics, and its Diurnal-Nocturnal aspects, which I would absolutely NOT make a rigid preset (and WOULD allow/oblige one to swap/skew between in combat).

4) SGE

Honestly... I don't care enough about SGE to have any horse in the race except in that if it's to have heal-by-dealing damage aspects, I'd like that damage to actually be relevant to the healing, instead of being flat cure potencies resultant from a flat stream of triggers. Give it damage CDs, have Kardia scale with damage dealt, etc., etc. Then I'd actually think of SGE as more than just a brain-smoothed SCH copy.

Oh, and one more random addition to all of them: Each one's basic cure spell Traits up to become a spell that has the same MP cost and cast time, but also the Esuna effect of removing one status ailment. For WHM Cure 1 -> Esuna, SCH Physic -> Leeches, AST Benific 1 -> Exalted Detriment. SGE's can just stay Diagnosis but with the added effect.

Nitpick, but... why wouldn't you just turn Cure into Cure II and add Esuna in the slot Cure II would have added in, so you're not randomly switching your heal-function button between your actual heal key and your cleanse key when you're doing low-level roulettes?

If the purpose is to save a button in getting rid of any discrete MP-efficient ST GCD option (e.g., because you've given up on any potential for meaningful MP management that'd leverage such) and to buff Esuna... Just upgrade the ST heal into the next ST heal, average out their MP costs, and then add separately at level 30 or whatever the uniquely-named-version-of-Esuna-but-now-with-some-extra-heals-too.

______________


Anywho, thanks for the examples. They weren't overlong, imo, and were very elucidating.

[Renathras]

Oh, sorry missed this.

...

As you note, "on these boards", which do not encompass the entirety of the playerbase. Indeed, there are around 10 people that post frequently. It's a pretty tiny microcosm of the community as a whole. Note this isn't a "majority" argument, but the reason you don't see agreement is that. Moreover, it's been clear from the critiques. The people opposed to the idea don't enjoy current Healers, so they want none to remain as such. Some even specifically mentioning wanting to play particular Jobs by their aesthetics, so they are unwilling to surrender them. This was shown in a past discussion where the only allowance for a Healer to play like today was if it was a new Healer Job added and WASN'T one they found the aesthetics of compelling to play.

You shouldn't take that to mean that I'm literally the only player in the game who disagrees with the stated "good design" that my idea supposedly doesn't comply with.

1) I don't get the point in mentioning it if it's true now and would be true then, but let's just call this a "we agree" and move on.

2) I think the disconnect here is that not everyone agrees this is "shitting the bed". Some people enjoy different things. Turns out, some people ENJOY what you call "shitting the bed". This is the entire point of the proposal - to have different Healer Jobs so people that enjoy different things have...well...those things to enjoy.

3) "Reaching 80% of CPM from just the 5 most cast actions is literally current WHM" and the problem with this...is...? What? What is inherently bad about this? Again, some people happen to like that. It's like saying every Job in the game needs to be BLM because anything less is "boring", or alternatively, saying no BLM-like Job should be allowed. People state this as a bad thing, but not why other than they personally think it's bad game design. As to the "which people", again, people who play the game and think like I do. There are at least 3 in my FC alone. I'm not sure what you're suggesting here. Do you SINCERELY think that no one else thinks like I do on this topic? In a game of 1.5-2 million active players, that I'm literally THE ONLY HUMAN BEING who thinks as I do? What on earth would you use to support such a claim?

Second set:

1) You would think, but I've proposed it in the past and been told by the same posters here that it's impossible since it would require changing literally every encounter in the game (for reasons they can never justify and despite this change clearly happening in the reverse from SB to ShB without them changing every prior encounter) and thus it is impossible to do so the only solution is more damage buttons. We've had that actual conversation here, and I've banged my head against that wall more than once.

2) This one - oddly given the above - there's more consistent agreement on, btw.

3) My belief is that things that "cost more" should be more powerful. In this sense, costing more in either cast time, MP, or both. If we had a Cure 4 spell that cost 4000 MP and had a 5 sec cast time, it should be something like 3000 potency of healing, for example. Short duration (60 sec or less) oGCDs shouldn't be more powerful than spells that actually have a cast time, MP cost, and incur a damage loss. Using Cure 2 means being rooted for 2 seconds, losing 1,000 MP, and losing 310 potency in a foregone Glare. Using Tetra means you...can't use Tetra again for 60 seconds. There is no damage loss, no MP loss, and no lost mobility. Solace is in a similar vein, btw, except in that case, you're also foregoing a Rapture but in return have a potential DPS gain if placing Misery under buffs (if not, it's neutral still, though). Some people have argued oGCDs are more punishing because you lose use of the oGCD itself...but that's the Megalixir argument "What if there would be a better time to use it later?!", and for short duration CDs, it just doesn't fly. Especially when you get into cases like Divine Benison or Essential Dignity that have charges so you can keep one in stock. Note that an often praised game in terms of healing here, WoW, doesn't have "oGCDs". It has cast time spells and instant cast spells, and those are your options.

.

WHM: You're going to have to explain this. I said nourish the Blood Lily (e.g. contribute to a Misery) not generate a standard Lily (that can be used on Solace/Rapture). E.g. casting three Medicas in a row would allow you to cast one Misery. How is this broken, exactly? The cheapest spamable heals are Regen and Cure 1, which both cost the same amount as a Glare, so you're not generating tons of free MP via Misery casts in place of Glares. Right now, the reason "Lilies are an MP management tool" is because you substitute 4 Glares per minute for three Solace/Rapture + one Misery, so 4 less Glares is 1600 MP. But if you just chain casted Cure 1 for a minute solid, you'd generate 6 Miseries...but you'd be doing this at the cost of 24 Cure 1s. And note that the actual heals you'd typically be using would be Cure 2s for single target and Medica/Medica 2s/Cure 3s for AOE (depending on situation), so you'd be spending more MP not less, I think. 18 Cure 2s + 6 Miseries per minute = 18,000 MP vs 20 Glares + 4 Lilies = 8,000 MP. Even if we kept the 3 Solace/Rapture + 1 Misery in the Cure 2 case, that's 14 Cure 2s + 3 Solace/Rapture + 7 Misery = 14,000 MP. I'm confused where you see infinite MP/"without MP limitations" coming from?

(Misery is worth 400 MP per CD, btw. I'm sure that was a typo, just saying it for clarity. )

Though I do think it's funny that Freecure would actually be...relevant. I hadn't thought of that, lol.

The only issue with it that I can tell is "But why have Glare at that point other than one just feeling bad about overhealing?"

.

SCH: /shrug

I guess that was kinda the point. Something generally acceptable to everyone. And considering how often people say they want SB SCH back (not HW, SB), it seems the safe bet.

.

AST: I think being able to swap Dirunal/Nocturnal in combat would be too powerful. As long as the Pure/Barrier split is in effect, it would make AST the ultimate Job since it could freely adjust on the fly. It arguably already is because it's a Pure Healer that is also 1/2 Barrier Healer when it wants to be. Neutral Sect pre-EW gave AST a taste of being able to swap in combat, but without making it unlimited. (I think it's funny you think the WHM proposal would be unbalanced but that a combat swapping AST wouldn't be. ) And being able to change at any point that ISN'T in combat is already more flexibility than any other Healer Job has or would have.

As for the rest, I didn't mess with AST much before ShB - because it was even MORE to my dis-like prior to ShB (and is still the one I like the least) - which is why I'm so deferential to what AST players want. I do think a starting point of "SB AST, just with some kind of RNG protection and some way to not make Balance fishing a thing again" would be the most practical.

.

SGE: You may have missed it, but I did address this: "Kardia healing would now be variable based on the attack used to generate it."

For a simple sake of argument (BIG FAT "THESE ARE PLACEHOLDER NUMBERS FOR THE SAKE OF EXPLANATION NOT AN ACTUAL PROPOSAL", just to be clear), let's pretend for a moment that SGE had three damage spells in a sort of combo. Let's call them "Jolt", "Thunder", and "Flare" (since we all know RDM well enough to see the general connection). Let's say Jolt generates 150 potency of healing to the Kardia target(s), Thunder generates 250, and Flare generates 400. The total combo would generate 800, meaning properly performing your 1-2-3 combo in this simplistic structure would result in the equivalent of casting a Cure 2 on your Kardia target every 7.5 sec. (maybe we could use 75/125/200 for a total of a Cure 2 every 15, which is close to a Solace, but you get the general idea). You would thus want to perform your combo CORRECTLY in order to ensure maximum healing. Any combo action used out of turn (e.g. casting Thunder without Jolt before it or Flare without a Jolt-Thunder before it) would only generate 100 potency of healing, and be both a DPS and HPS loss, obviously. Doing this enough would require using the fallback heals (Diagnosis/Prognosis) to make up the difference, which would return HPS to neutral but at a further DPS loss and possibly greater MP costs, taxing your sustainability over a long enough fight if you do it too frequently.

The goal of this design is that your various CDs enhance Kardia effects. So think like Soteria for more healing, "Pankardia" for party healing (the above-mentioned "party-wide Kardia on a 1 min CD") or "Dikardia" for healing a second target like with shared tankbusters (again, on a CD), and so on. Aside from that, SGE would have damage reduction abilities (like the reduction of Kerochole), but reduced healing. Aside from Kardia, if SGE wants to refill health bars, it has to use Diagnosis/Prognosis. No more Physis 2, Ixochole, Kerachole, Holos healing. Shielding is fine, but not healing. Kardia is for healing, and Kardia requires doing damage.

Note: The damage rotation would probably be more than this with some kind of rotation via "Ready" procs or the like. For example, suppose RDM's rotation was Jolt-Fire-Thunder-Stone-Aero-Resolution. You could have some system akin to that for SGE with Pneuma being the big line AOE at the end that also does a big Kardia heal and possibly an AOE heal like it does now.

oGCDs that remain, aside from the mitigation ones, would include Zoe and Pepsis, and possibly something like WHM's PoM or BRD's Raging Strikes (which would increase the Kardia heal procs for its duration).

Does that make more sense to you as far as what I'm aiming at here? Because it sounds like your critique here was what I already proposed...

.

Cure -> Cure 2 is my alternate proposal. It's the one I've actually pitched for a while. I've just seen the Cure -> Esuna pitched by some people and like it just as well. The problem with Cure -> Cure 2 is that Cure 2 has a longer cast time and MP cost. Esuna does not. The shorter cast time and debuff removal qualities would legitimately feel like an upgrade, whereas Cure -> Cure 2 would feel like a downgrade due to being slower cast (less responsive) and more MP expensive. Note that unlike pre-ShB, our MP pools are fixed at 10,000, so we don't have growing MP pools over time to support more expensive cast spells. Cure 2 cost 2.5x the MP of Cure 1 and has a 33% longer cast time. And the Esuna being a separate button would retain this functionality of "that case you're too low on MP for Cure 2 and/or don't have enough time to cast a Cure 2 before the target takes fatal damage". Cure -> Esuna would preserve (and slightly improve the latter) functionality there, even if it is generally considered niche today.

Note that Benefic is a particular exception to this rule, as Benefic 2 has the same cast time and only a modest MP cost increase. (Honestly, given AST's insane MP economy, I could almost be convinced they swapped WHM and AST's MP costs for their Cure 2, Medica, and Medica 2 equivalents by accident...)

.

EDIT:

It's kind of like arguing to greatly reduce traffic by making people not idiots. It's a simple idea, but not so simple to execute upon. The lack of responsive, mobile, and GCD-stackable oGCD heals would greatly change the viable tuning of fights.

To be fair: That's if none are instant cast. Solace is a GCD. Solace is instant cast. Solace is actually used FOR movement where Tetra isn't.

[Shurrikhan]

As you note, "on these boards", which do not encompass the entirety of the playerbase. Indeed, there are around 10 people that post frequently. It's a pretty tiny microcosm of the community as a whole. Note this isn't a "majority" argument, but the reason you don't see agreement is that. Moreover, it's been clear from the critiques. The people opposed to the idea don't enjoy current Healers, so they want none to remain as such.

Welp, I figured that would be twisted, but... whatever.

Look, Reddit is no nicer to healers. There is no community by which to warrant through contrast to these official forums the idea that your ideas would be disliked only because of small sample skewing responses to only those of people with abnormal taste.

Opposition to how healers play right now... is not abnormal, by any measure that can contextualize itself with a spoken/written opinion, or even a godsdamned 1-N satisfaction poll.

WHM: You're going to have to explain this. I said nourish the Blood Lily (e.g. contribute to a Misery)

That's exactly how I read it.

If every single GCD heal contributes a third of 1240 (4-filler-attacks) potency attack that itself costs no MP, then that means that even Cure is effectively producing 310 offensive potency atop its 500 cure potency all while contributing to a saving of 400 MP (via the Glare not cast) even without considering Freecure (which would effectively produce an extra 150 MP's [15% chance of 1000] worth of MP savings, or 250 when also counting the Misery contribution of that free Cure II).

The cheapest spamable heals are Regen and Cure 1, which both cost the same amount as a Glare, so you're not generating tons of free MP via Misery casts in place of Glares.

No, that is exactly what you'd be doing.

In your model, a Glare III would give 310 offensive potency for effectively 400 MP.
A Regen would 310 offensive potency and 1500 cure potency for effectively 300 MP, since it contributes a third of a free GCD otherwise costing 400 MP (since that GCD itself a GCD, the Regen is 1 in 4 GCDs and therefore would be associated with a fourth of its savings).

You'd never touch Glare. Ever. Because you made it so every GCD nourishes the Blood Lily.

Without AoE spam, that's self-sustaining. You have 24 GCDs per minute, two of which have to be Dia for maximum DPS. Of the remaining 22 otherwise spent on Glare, you can now use Regen or Cure instead for free healing on 15.67 of those GCDs per minute, thereby also saving MP on the 7.33 consequent Misery casts made available per minute, in total saving ~2932 MP per minute compared to beating down a striking dummy, in which situation we already gain more MP than we spend.

That means not only can you turn Glares into Cure or Regen for free additional healing; you can put out some goddamn Medica IIs for 8000 cure potency apiece without losing any offensive potency or becoming MP starved.

So no. That's broken. It is not a good idea to have every WHM healing spell nourish the Blood Lily. Hard stop. No.

To be fair: That's if none are instant cast. Solace is a GCD. Solace is instant cast. Solace is actually used FOR movement where Tetra isn't.

Cool. Now for SCH? AST? They don't have Eukresia or Lilies. If your solution relies on CD-limited capacity or one unique to a single job... that's obviously not going to be a broadly applicable solution.

Note that an often praised game in terms of healing here, WoW, doesn't have "oGCDs". It has cast time spells and instant cast spells, and those are your options.

Yes. Because it was and has always been built around that, and offers dynamism in varying MP expense for varying levels of HPS/responsiveness.

But you can't simply swap from one design paradigm to another (mostly oGCD-based healing to entirely GCD-based healing) without adjusting encounters and/or healers' dynamism accordingly.

[Renathras]

Look, Reddit is no nicer to healers.
...
Opposition to how healers play right now... is not abnormal,

Actually, Reddit IS nicer to healers. There is a far more diverse view there than here. Probably because there are far more posters there, and there seems to be a more general audience. Oh, there are a LOT of people there, too, that hate current Healer design and want it changed (like the people here), but also a lot that are more neutral to it, and some that actually prefer it as it is. So it seems that the view here is not universal.

NOTE: I didn't use the word "majority" in that paragraph.

Opposition to healers is not abnormal. Where did I say it was?

I'm pointing out that NOT being opposed to healers as they are right now is ALSO not abnormal. That it is here is one of the reasons to point to this place being an echo chamber.

.

WHM:

Right...? But that's what I'm saying, no heal costs less than Glare. Casting Cure 1 (or Esuna, depending on how and if we Trait it to Esuna or Cure 2 or not) or Regen would be the same MP cost as Glares. So you're only saving MP based specifically on how many Miseries you cast per minute. The maximum savings, assuming you still get one Misery from 3 Solace/Raptures (so that changes nothing and still takes 4 GCDs per minute) is that you are left with 20 - 2 (for Dias) GCDs per minute (24 total, 3 Solace/Rapture, 1 Misery associated with those, 2 Dias; leaves 18). For every 3 of those you fill with a GCD heal, you get 1 Misery. 18 / 4 = 4.5, meaning you get, on average, 4.5 extra Misery casts per minute. Given foregoing Glares to get there, that's the equivalent of 400 x 4.5 or 1800 (funny, that) MP in savings. (This is casting 12 Cure 1s + 4 Misery and the extras are split over every 2 minutes, 2 Cure 1s in the first minute and the other Cure 1 plus the Misery in the second minute.)

But, how do you generate those Miseries? Well, you can cast Cure 1/Cursuna/Regen over and over. That results in a 1800 MP gain per minute. Which, for reference, is not even enough to cast a Raise. Not sure that's "gamebreaking". But that's if you cast your cheapest healing spell over and over. If you cast Cure 2, you're now losing MP per minute. Each Cure 2 cast is 1000 MP, or 600 more than Glare/Cure 1/Regen. And you're casting 12 of those per minute, meaning -600 x 12 = -7,200. -7,200 + 1,800 = -5,400. That's a MP deficit, not an MP gain. Medica 1 is slightly better (900 MP so -500 per cast), Medica 2 slightly worse and Cure 3 significantly worse.

Point is, at best, you're generating enough MP for 3/4ths of a Raise, which is hardly gamebreaking, and at the worst, you're just refunding a small portion of your much higher MP burn from casting your higher expense heals. The reality, of course, is that people would mix it up a bit, and that MP management RIGHT NOW isn't a thing. So there's no logical way that this would be broken or overpowered. The only argument is if you're having to cast lots of Raises, but WHM is already the Job that has 2 Thin Air charges, and most Healers can easily sit around 90-100% MP all the time in the game at present. Overcapping MP isn't helping you, so often that MP "savings" is just going to be wasted, not powerful.

Again, the main issue with it I can see is that it would make Glare entirely pointless to cast unless you just feel like it. A solution could be to slightly increase Glare's damage so it's a slight DPS gain, but meh.

Personally, if "heal by doing damage" is something we're doing under this proposed system - which we are, with SGE - then "damage by doing healing" under this same system seems like the proper inverse so both playstyles are represented. The only issue comes down to tuning so they do similar levels of damage and healing to each other, but no, that's not broken in any way.

Think about it, in the WORST case scenario - that you never touch Glare and exclusively keep Regen rolling on all party members, maintain Dia uptime, and fill dead GCDs with Cure 1 spot healing, you probably wouldn't even be touching Cure 1 much since you'd be rolling HoTs on people like a WoW Druid in raids (which is a playstyle I always enjoyed, so not seeing the problem there) - isn't that WAY more active than WHM is now? You're actively rolling through party member targets, through the boss, and you're using at least three GCDs for the majority of your casts unlike the complaint right now you're using just Glare. Casting more than 1 Medica 2 per minute would be an MP loss: 2400 - 1800 = 600 MP net loss.

Moreover, did you read SGE? It's going to be doing the opposite of this. The only issue here comes from proper numbers tuning and, again, encounters actually requiring consistent healing, something you agreed was a needed change.

So no. That's not broken. It's a good idea. Hard go. Yes.

(Another alternative I once saw presented is make Glare nourish the Blood Lily, so you have a semi-combo of Glare Glare Glare Misery, which was proposed to break up the Glare spam. Not sure if that one's good or bad, but it and this would conflict so...)

.

SCH/AST:

Are you missing the part where every healer Job works differently? Because that's the point of the entire proposal and I've said it over and over again...

.

WoW: Yes, something FFXIV USED to have back in ARR. MP costs of spells were, once upon a time, RELEVANT. We did, in fact, swap from one design paradigm to another, roughly around SB. It's also why WHM sucked so much in SB, because it wasn't given the oGCD healing tools to make the transition. The only reason ShB/EW worked is because they shoehorned Solace/Rapture/Misery in as a "pseudo-oGCD GCD" to try and merge the two systems.

EDIT:

...

Answer the damned question or shut the hell up about it. I'm tired of you derailing and wafting over this stupidity and trying to use it in some weird technicality to "win".

If a Support role was added to the game: Would you at all be interested in playing it?

It's a yes or no question. And if you won't answer it, as I said in the post before, I'm done beating the dead animal.

Actually? You know what? Duck it. I don't give a damn anymore. You can answer or not, I legitimately don't care and won't respond any more to you on this derail.

.

You. Are. Wrong. Say it with me.

The supposed support role is P.Ranged.

They were.

For some reason, when ShB hit, the Devs decided Support was bad, so stripped BRD and MCH of their support. Then they promptly introduced DNC as a Support. Then BRDs were mad so they gave them some of theirs back, but it's all basically the same type of thing. And then nerfed AST cards into being just another form of the same thing. It's all "+X% damage" just through different proxies.

As to your points:

1: That's why I think the 4 Healers Model is the answer.
2: Agreed, it's also why I encourage changes to encounter design.
3: Also agreed, it's why I think non-Healer HEALING should be nerfed.
4: See 2.
5: See 1, and to an extent, 2 and 3 both.
6: See 1; if the Healers actually were different, there would also be different levels of damage tools between them (e.g. the SGE proposal would play like RDM without melee attacks, the SCH one would be the same damage profile it had in SB), meaning players who find something like current WHM boring but still want to play a Healer, just with more damage abilities for solo or downtime would have those options.

This has been said before as well. The conversation has spiraled (because of course it did), but the original post was about what if we had a 4th role, "Support," that was more support-y than the current physical ranged, offering more buffs and more utility. I'm not sure what other context would apply to this role, but I assume it would have less damage than even Bards and Dancers have now in exchange for that higher support potential while still having things like a rotation and active gameplay. I presume the intent of the entire thread was to try and get people in favor of expanding supports so that we'd leave the real healers alone.

You assume...incorrectly (a surprise to no one).

Note I wasn't even the one that brought up Support as a fourth role:

Aye Square, give us healer RDM specs and support DPS Astrologian specs. Shake it up a bit, hahah.

Vetch brought up the concept, which I agreed with later (in one of the few posts I make around here that gets a lot of Likes, btw), and then it was third-ed by someone else:

I will die on the hill of my stance.

Support could, and should, be its own role. Rift had this, and it to this day baffles me that no other mmo replicates it.

Meaning it can't have been my intention with the thread, because I wasn't the one that even brought it up.

Maybe, Ty, you should be more careful about assuming other people's intentions...

Not that I suspect you care at this point, but if you do:

What would make a Support role different than PRanged is that it would actually be...well, Support. PRanged isn't even consistently supportive (MCH doesn't have anything itself other than Dismantle; TrubaticianSamba is just the Ranged's version of Feint/Addle, so no more "support" than Casters and Melee, it's just more generalized. It's like comparing AST ShB/EW cards to AST HW/SB cards. Clearly they're different - everyone complaints about them being different all the time here, so I don't think I need to hash that one out - and then you have DNC and BRD being ShB/EW card-like.

While the Devs COULD make them into an actual Support role, they've thus far declined to really do so. Nothing like Bole or CC (lol?) or TP/MP regen (lol..?). Hell, look at ARR BRD. Even ARR NIN. Even SB BLM with that MP transfer ability had more of a support capability than modern BRD does. DNC's only unique thing is Curing Waltz. Otherwise it's a targeted BRD song that's up 100% of the time. Hell, look at PvP AST's cards.

Damage buffing might be considered support more if, as Askellington said, it wasn't something that so many Jobs do to the point it's more a combat mechanic than support (and is done on a rote timer, not in reaction or preaction to any encounter abilities themselves).

.

Anyway, I didn't start this thread with any intent of discussing Support as a role or subrole or half-role or people moving roles or anything else.

I was actually trying to see what people like about specific DPS Jobs SPECIFICALLY so I could consider how to add that in a more robust way to my Healer Job design proposals. Knowing what people find enjoyable is part of making a design that people would find enjoyable. Everyone knows what THEY like. What they need to do to be good designers is to see what OTHER people like, and then make proposals that incorporate those things.

It's why echo chambers are so bad for good design, because all they do is tell you over and over something you already think is true, but they aren't telling you what everyone else who isn't part of the echo chamber thinks.

And it's why I actually ask questions like this. Because instead of having decided how everyone should enjoy playing (and berating them if they do not), I actually want to see how everyone enjoys playing and then propose a set of healer Job designs where at least one appeals to each type. It's really that simple.

[ForsakenRoe]

WHM MP

The changes to WHM after 6.0 and it's horrid MP economy, was to make Misery damage neutral, and reduce the Lily charge time to 20s, incentivizing us to use 4 MP-free GCDs per minute, which saves us 1600 MP. This change singlehandedly moved WHM from 'it needs like 800+ Piety to not feel like ass' to 'it can run base Piety comfortably (340)'. To say '1800 MP per min won't make or break anything' is a fundamental misunderstanding of what 'a gamebreaking amount of MP economy' is. A change like this, and you'd put WHM into the AST world of 'I prefer to meld SpellSpeed even over Crit, because I have so much excess MP in my economy I literally cannot spend it fast enough!' Admittedly, it'd be pretty funny, but the fact it'd cause such a shift in gearing should be giving pause for thought about how 'small' the change really is (or isn't, as the case happens to be). For reference, AST's Astrodyne gives 1500MP over it's duration, and is available after 90s worth of cards. And the fact AST has that extra MP source is enough to cause the 'I'd rather meld Spellspeed' effect. In fact, it's possible that given your change gives 1800 per 60s instead of AST's current 1500 per 90s (or 1000 per 60s for easier comparison), not only would WHM be melding Spellspeed, it'd likely be looking for it on gear too!

And no, I don't think I'd personally find 'use Regen on every raid member, one at a time, with a GCD gap every 3 placed to fire a Misery' fun. This would incentivize just spamming out Regens on people who don't need them/won't need them, literal 100% overheal, and being told 'its okay, you still get to do the same damage as someone who's putting thought into who to heal and when'. I struggle to believe it, but I think you have just tried to make 'Cure1 spammer' not only viable at endgame, but also equally optimal, that's almost an accomplishment in it's own right (but not one to be proud of)

[ASkellington]

They were.

For some reason, when ShB hit, the Devs decided Support was bad, so stripped BRD and MCH of their support. Then they promptly introduced DNC as a Support. Then BRDs were mad so they gave them some of theirs back, but it's all basically the same type of thing. And then nerfed AST cards into being just another form of the same thing. It's all "+X% damage" just through different proxies.

The devs decided Support was bad because they don't want to deal with the balancing nightmare. I understand the work load, but they lost any and all sympathy the moment they thought "removing it all" was the best course of action. It wasn't for anyone BUT them. Doubly so because they gave nothing as an alternative.

1. No its not. See 6.
2 + 5. I don't see it happening because SE doesn't know how to design encounters that promote proper healing checks or unscripted damage or are afraid of scaring away healer mains as if the vast majority of us who have this issue aren't prepared for them.
3. Good luck convincing WAR.
6. And the reason why your 4 healers model doesn't work is because you do nothing to address WHM Veterans other than "go play another job". That's not fair. SMN had that happen to them, and so did AST. TWICE. No. WHM mains deserve to be given something too.

Now I'll agree that all 4 healers should be different from one another. And WHM should remain an ease of access healer in comparison to the other 3. That does not mean, however it shouldn't get something for WHM mains and veteran healers something extra other than boring game play.

Damage buffing might be considered support more if, as Askellington said, it wasn't something that so many Jobs do to the point it's more a combat mechanic than support (and is done on a rote timer, not in reaction or preaction to any encounter abilities themselves).

@Post said that, not me.

[Sebazy]

Actually, Reddit IS nicer to healers. There is a far more diverse view there than here.

You mean like when I got downvoted to oblivion and shadow banned from the reddit for suggesting that Eos was actually a group damage gain over Selene back in late ARR / early HW?

The FFXIV Reddit is notorious for burying viewpoints that don't fit the mind think, it's more that people outside of that have figured out how to work around it now. If this was reddit and we were all posting there, your threads would be long hidden and gone by now because that's just how it works when you disagree with people.

This place isn't perfect (General is basically unusable now) but at least it provides a fair platform for counter points and debate. Sure people can argue back but your posts aren't going to get wiped once people start disagreeing with them.

[ty_taurus]

If I made up my mind, I wouldn't have asked the question.

Your non-answer answers it, though. So we're all clear, the answer is that you would at least try it out - as would I. Unlike you, I freely admit this. And I'm the most "dedicated pure/whatever healer" here. Don't assume duplicity so much.

The fact that you decided to answer for me is exactly why I say that you've made up your mind on what I want. Is that not obvious to you? You're wrong by the way, because your answer severely lacks context for what happens to the other roles. In your hypothetical world where the support role is added as a 4th, are the healers fixed, or do they stay hot feces for the rest of eternity? Because if your idea of adding the support role is specifically to allow the healers to remain in the ass tier of design quality, then obviously I'm going to go for support because there is no healer role to go to. If the healer role is allowed to be fixed, then I'm going to play the healer role and would probably be a Sage one-trick. Would I try the support jobs? I suppose technically I would when I level them to 100, since I level every job to max level, but I'd probably never actively try to play it or queue as it. Depending on what the new caster DPS will be, I might either make that my back-pocket DPS for when I can't heal (like if I'm doing treasure maps with my FC and someone else wants to heal) or maybe I'd keep that as Dancer. If the caster is Onmyoji, there's a good chance I might swap to that if the healer role continues to be defecated on because I like that concept. Whether or not Dancer remains in the physical ranged DPS role or the new support role is irrelevant to me.

You have supported having a single option for people who don't enjoy DPSing on Healers, but only if it's one specific thing, which I've informed you isn't what everyone who doesn't enjoy DPSing wants. The single thing you've rejected as "shit game design" is, as I've told you, something that people want. I am curious the game you work on, as I'm wondering if it has anything I would consider a healer in it or not...

What I think you get is that some people don't like what you like.

I have proposed one specific take on a healer for healers who do not enjoy DPSing, but I am not exclusive to that design and am open to alternative suggestions. I continue to promote Astrologian for that position because it's the healer that already has an identity of being buff-focused. Any attempt at designing such a job has to consider a few things:

1. It needs to be competitive with the other healers and have a reasonable solo-playability factor, so it does need to have a certain threshold of personal DPS somehow.
2. It should be one of the existing healers both because we won't get another healer for at least another 6ish years, and because it should be available earlier in a new player's playthrough.
3. It can't depend on needing to heal in order to achieve this playstyle, because healing requirements will almost certainly never be high enough to demanding constant healing output in this game.

I have acknowledged that the two Astro players that have responded to my original takes were not entirely satisfied, and I reworked that idea as well with their feedback because I actually know how to receive feedback. I'm just not receptive to your stance of "leave one healer alone and never change it." That is the one singular healer suggestion that I am vehemently against because as a game designer, I have integrity. I thought it was good when you brought up enjoying Paladin and were open to White Mage concepts that felt more like Paladin. You also ignored every response from the few of us that tried designing a White Mage specifically for you.

1) Every Healer in this game design does.
2) If one counts 1-2-3 as a single action for non-branching combos (since there's no case you don't use them as such and it's a "fatfinger" check, not a skill check), I wonder how many Jobs meet that criteria.
3) Why 10-12, not 3-5? What's sacred about that number?

In any case, as I've said, I'm fine with those criteria for a Healer Job. I disagree it should be for all of them. Many people would not find that fun.

If you had read the post where I initially posted those criteria, something you find incredibly important to do when responding to someone's post, you would've seen that I explained your questions already. I looked at Black Mage and Gunbreaker as references--a caster DPS with a nuke-spam playstyle and a Tank, another non-DPS role. I counted Gunbreaker's 1-2-3 as one singular action where each of the 1-2-3 held an approximate 10% action usage, so 30% action usage is spent on your filler, and for Black Mage, Fire IV is also almost 30% (28% on the specific player I looked at). The 80% spent on 10-12 actions was also based on those jobs, which isn't to say 10-12 actions that had relatively equal usage, but pretty much anything that was used more than 10 times or so in a 7 minute fight. For White Mage, that would very likely include at least Afflatus Rapture/Solace. Notice I also didn't specify that any of that had to be DPS buttons specifically, just actions that you will always use regardless of the state of the party.

The criteria I gave is very broad, and I find you saying "many people would not find that fun" to be insulting to me as a gamer because of how broad that criteria is. Also you're wrong, there are literally millions of ways you could meet that criteria in a healer. Suggesting that there are people who would never be happy with any of those is a joke.