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

[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.

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