What Healer kit (not encounter) change would make GCD heals NOT bad gameplay?

[Llort]

Hello
My opinion on the problem as other have said is oGCD negating GCDS.
I think another solution would be to have healing CDs complement healing GCDs instead of completely replacing them.
Things like Plenary, Synastry, Horoscope (half of it), old Time Dilation/Celestial Opposition or generic healing magic amplification like Divine Seal use an oGCD in addition to a GCD.
And this would make CDs still potent while not negating the spammable spells.
You could even keep a few long CD capstone abilities like Lithurgy for flavour because you would then not be able to got lossless for every instance of damage.

Could also open up new kinds of healing:
If you rework Asylum to be a zone where regens are 50% more effective instead of applying the regen itself this opens up cooperative play with co healer.

[fulminating]

response to me

I think the a 5.3 storm’s eye style qol would be possible to help with uptime in the event that this was a chosen solution. I’m not sure if I’d necessarily support it, but it should make it easier to not drop a tick. Then against maybe letting it run its course from the buffed opener would be a gain.

I don’t really know how to respond to the second part. It seems they may have some larger issues to address than this optimisation post would be relevant for.

The obvious downside of dots is when the boss goes to have his tea break, and it doesn’t reach the x second threshold to be a gain. If you were hoping for some kind of stackable ogcd nuke refund accessed only through the use of non-damaging gcds then I’m afraid I won’t suggest it because it sounds like it would be extremely cursed. There would be incentive to heal meaninglessly in order to double or more your damage under raid buffs and probably make gcd healing during the 2minute mechanic feel worse because you’d see your three stacks of continubroil sitting there because you used fey blessing instead or whatever the case was.

[Sebazy]

The problem I have with this is the thing I see most in casual content is people dropping DoTs or not using them.

Eh, people will play to the standard that the content expects of them, sure it'll take some time and absolutely there will be people that moan about it no matter what direction things take, but at the end of the day, people will adapt.

Don't forget that we had a time in the past where the level cap dungeons had enrages and stuff would actually merrily kill you if people dropped the ball.

Also don't forget that if you go back to HW/Stormblood, that same player likely wouldn't have been casting nukes either. If dots get more important again, people will gradually adjust and warm to it. Stifling development progress over unimportant metrics such as a casual healer forgetting to refresh their dot in content that doesn't have an enrage timer is self defeating to the max.

People adapted to the likes of Cutter's Cry, Qarn and Amdapor Keep, they'll adapt to dots becoming more important.

On a sidenote, SE could also help things by taking more inspiration from the forbidden addons, there's one that pretty much doubles the size of your own debuff icons on a target making it much easier to keep track of dots if you don't have the timing down. Other routes include something like self only auras for dots to make it quite visible on the target when it drops off or even a distinctive fall off audio cue.

[Absurdity]

The problem is that even if we transferred most of the potency to DoTs to make GCD healing healing less punishing or reduced the amount of oGCD healing it still wouldn't make the job any more interesting.

As Semirhage has already said, most of the healing kits are simply incredibly boring, be that GCD or oGCD. They're all "Heal target for X potency" or "Heal entire party for X potency", there is no synergy, nothing but "Make HP bar go up by X" and the skills that break this mold are few and far between.

If they wanted to make GCD healing not only viable but also actually interesting we would need more skills like Macrocosmos, Panhaima, Time Dilation, old Celestial Opposition or, funnily enough, Free Cure (except actually useful).
We would need more skills that require some thought to be effective or the ability to have our basic healing spells enhance or unlock other, more powerful, spells.

[Supersnow845]

^this is why I don’t actually dislike the way SCH has 4 phases and they all interrupt each other, you should be punished for using your healing options at the wrong time, heals should have a purpose and if you use them at the wrong time there should be consequences

[UkcsAlias]

you should be punished for using your healing options at the wrong time

Like in most cases in this game, the only consequence is losing dps. That is the only measurement we get as a healer. And i would say its a fine enough measurement, since in most cases you already are the cover up for your team. The more they make mistakes, the more you need to waste GCDs to heal. DPS is a fair loss since your key measurement is keeping teammates alive. And especialy at normal difficulty content, dps for a healer isnt relevant at all (you can easily beat content without a single dps attack).

On higher content, your healer dps will start to matter, as that is an indication of efficiency. Even if as healer you have lesser influence, teams are still aware of this, so they know that if you push a healer too much, it will still reduce dps. At this point it becomes part of the teamwork. But usualy at these difficulties, damage values are high enough to demand healers to actively heal, and cooldowns will be burned. A single mistake here will often cause a healer to use a GCD. Its fine design idea on that part. Except plenty of fights dont even demand the healing to happen. The little healing of others jobs in most cases can cover enough already (which if ogcd is prefered over the healer gcd).

As this game is fully dps driven, thats why GCD heals are considered bad, in most cases these arent needed, so using one means losing dps. dps dps dps, thats all the game cares about. If the game would dish out damage values that force healers into using the GCD's, that wouldnt be an issue at all, as then instead of the dps focus, it truly becomes a game of keeping people alive (and their mistakes then will result in deaths faster rather than having a vuln stack that usualy expires without problems). It would make those abilities usefull, and add towards the healer experience. We are called healers, force us into healing!

But more damage has 1 side effect: if the healer dies and you dont have revives, the healer is going to be blamed for the wipe, where in plenty of cases if the tank dies, while it might cause the team to take heavy hits, a delayed revive can still save a lot. A safeguard a healer only has when a dps also can revive. Thats another issue they would then need to resolve.

[vetch]

To this day, l still can't get the why healer needs to contribute to dps check.

It hinges on that old, old MMO adage, "surplus is a waste". Once you've healed everyone enough to survive the next hit, and assuming you don't need to conserve MP (as was needed in older MMOs), what do? If you're a top-tier healer, you use your DPS spells just to have something to press.

Now, why would this be a problem? Well, good healers can identify and reach the state of 'everyone will survive the next hit' faster, so they end up nuking more, so they end up doing more DPS. A lot more DPS. Therefore, good healers help clear fights much faster. But... the devs don't want us to clear their high-end fights too fast. They have a particular timetable and content lifespan in mind and they don't like it when big chunks of the playerbase finish early and get bored. Not least because we pester them about it on the forums, but also because we do things like unsubscribe until the next raid tier drops.

So, as a game dev, there are three design paths you can take to prevent healers from just blasting away all the time and breezing past the DPS check -- 1.) make healer damage spells worth less damage, though this makes soloing and questing as a healer horrible, 2.) make healing and resource management harder so healers can't DPS as much, or 3.) increase the DPS check so that healer DPS is factored into the expected clear times.

FF14 devs chose the third path. DPS checks were much stricter in the Heavensward raids than in the ARR raids, and healing checks were much more forgiving. Healing checks have gotten more forgiving in every expansion since.

And then, peripheral to that is the problem that healer kits grew around the wound as more expansions released. I don't know if the devs perceived a desire from the players to just have more flashy buttons that can top everyone off instantly, or if they're just not good at designing fun heal spells with kit interplay that still work on controller, or both, but now in Shadowbringers and Endwalker you can handle most healing with free party-wide oGCDs without ever dropping a nuke cast, making the problem worse than ever.

[GoatOfWar]

To this day, l still can't get the why healer needs to contribute to dps check.

It's not complicated.
Do you need more healing? If Not, then why heal if you can do damage?
This is true in every MMO. Even in WoW, where you spend a lot more time healing than in FF because of the lack of ogcd healing.
They should just lean into it at this point and give healers actual damage rotations.
Healbots aren't a thing.

[Darkmoonrise]

Didn't read everything here but I'll throw my thoughs into the pit. Remember, this is my opinion and my suggestion, not an absolute truth.

The main problem is that, except in very specific cases, ogcd heals are enough to keep the party alive. So why would you waste gcd to heal instead of DPSing? That's the core of the problem : gcd heals are not needed. That leads to the main problem of all the good healers : every encounter boils down to spaming 1 gcd DPS while weaving ogcd heals when needed. It is basically spamming a single button for 5 minutes straight. And it is boring. That's why I like AST, at least there is the card system to manage.

There are multiple reasons SE designs healers like this. The main one is because FFXIV needs to be appealing for casual players, they represent a big majority of the player base. And because the healer is one of the less forgiving role, you cannot design them without backup plane for player not understanding the optimal way to use their kit. Those players need gcd heals by lack of knowledge, or just out of laziness.

To make the gcd heals not a bad design, you should render them useful. Needed to survive the encounder. How to do that? Let's go back to the core problem : why are they useless now? Because ogcd heals are suffisant. So take out ogcd heals.

Make the healer a healer again. With heal gcd rotation and DPS ogcd. So we weave ogcd DPS into gcd heal. I'll see the healer kit something like this. With some variations of course, to make every class unique.

HEALS:

• a main single target heal gcd rotation (3 buttons rotation) to keep tank alive. If done correctly, could apply hot, shield, leeching, dot, etc.. effect depending on the healer.
• a main aoe heal rotation (3 buttons rotation) to keep the party alive. If done correctly, could apply hot, shield, leeching, dot, etc.. effect depending on the healer.
• 1-2 ogcd heals. Healer dependent (hot, shield, leech)

DPS:

• 1 single target DPS gcd rotation (3 buttons)
• 1 aoe DPS gcd rotation (2 buttons)
• 2-3 ogcd DPS

GIMMICK:

• a specific gimmick for each healer tide to ressources. Like the card for ast, to vary the pleasures. and weave stuff between gcd.

MISC:

• a usual : asuna, rescue, battle res, sprint, etc..

But this won't be enough, some encounter rework are needed:

Casual content (aka dungeons, trials and 24raid)

• Spamming a single gcd heals without rotation shall be enough to keep the party alive.
• Unexperimented players will do just that, spamming a single heal. The only thing they can or want to do anyway.
• Experimented players will heal the minimum (with ogcd) and then switch to DPS rotation and ogcd, which is always better than spamming a single button.

Introduction to hard content (aka extreme and unreal)

• Here heal gcd rotation is needed to keep the party alive. Frequent aoe damage should be introduce here as well.
• Unexperimented players will need to learn how to use their heal rotation, which is the goal of an introduction, learning the basic.
• Experimented players will heal the minimum (with ogcd and some gcd) and then switch to DPS rotation and ogcd, which is always better than spamming a single button.

Hard content (aka savage, ultimate)

• you barely don't have time to use gcd DPS. Aoe damage on the party is almost constant.
• Unexperimented players won't be able to clear this difficulty, which is the main idea of this difficulty.
• Experimented players will need to spam gcd heal rotation and use only ogcd DPS to contribute to damage, which is the actual role of a healer.

I think this will be a good solution

[Aravell]

Hard content (aka savage, ultimate)

• you barely don't have time to use gcd DPS. Aoe damage on the party is almost constant.
• Unexperimented players won't be able to clear this difficulty, which is the main idea of this difficulty.
• Experimented players will need to spam gcd heal rotation and use only ogcd DPS to contribute to damage, which is the actual role of a healer.

Would spamming GCD heals with OGCD damage spells be more engaging than spamming GCD damage spells with OGCD healing though? It sounds like the same thing, just reversed. I'd rather see kit diversification to make both GCD heals and GCD damage spells interplay with each other so you have a more or less equal time on both, encounter design would also need to change to necessitate GCD heals.