I'm bored when I heal because I need more complex DPS rotations

[ChonkGoblinSuprem]

No wonder they ignore the EN forums…

[Darnath]

As I've admitted in another thread I'm one of those panic healers who have to keep people at least 80% off and thus a more complex rotation wouldn't be as useful in some group content.

BUT, during MSQ'ing and lighter loads in raids/dungeon bosses a more complex DPS rotation would be nicer than DoT/Nuke Nuke Nuke. Kinda why AST is nice as we have cards to keep us busy.

So I'm for removing a spell or two (Undraw can die die die!) to make room for another DPS spell. Not sure what to remove for the other 3 healers, just pointing out Undraw since it's so damn useless. Even I, a GCD healing dum dum, see it has no use.

[Renalt]

Either make DPSing more satisfying for healers or make attacks actually hurt so healers have something to heal. Go full on one direction or the other.

[Kacho_Nacho]

2-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-2-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-2-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1

THIS is the main problem of healers, yes, the healing kit could be far more interesting and less generic, yes, the content could require more healing but even with that you can't reward the mastery of the the healing with a 2 button spam, especially when even if the new content required healing the remaining of the game does not require that amount of healing.

If you are using healing spell, you're not hitting a damage button. So, there is no spamming going on. If there was something else you could cast which would help the party's performance, you wouldn't be hitting a damage button, So, again, no spamming is going on. The only time spamming 2111 etc... would happen is when you had nothing to do except deal damage. So, the big issue isn't the damage kit, it's the healing kit and the content.

People say they want more healing but the reality is that the majority of those who ask for it (and the playerbase) wouldn't be able to handle the healing required to justify those tools, because not even savage justify the tools we have now, and most healers can't handle it. That's why the solution lies in the dps kit, because it's the easier one to execute and the one that most players would be able to handle.

I disbelieve this. I feel most people drawn to being a healer would rise to the challenge.

Sure, there will be some who won't; but, it'll be silly to make healers into primarily damage dealers with a side of healing abilities. Healers shouldn't be like Blue Mages.

Players who want to be healers know what they are getting into. It's just like players who want to be tanks know what their role entails and damage dealers know what their role is. It's not like a healer is going to be surprised that they have to heal in a duty.

[Maltothoris]

I disbelieve this. I feel most people drawn to being a healer would rise to the challenge.

You said this but we got stuff like this. Have to edit since it exceeds the 1000 limit.

Q2: For this Savage, there seems to be a serious lack of healer participation going on. My question here to you is: Are you aware of the reason and is there something you will reflect on, and if any are there plans to address this issue (that is within the means and intention of the dev team), and if there is, may I know the plan to address the issue?

YoshiP: (Super long paused followed by a long "hmmm") Things to reflect on......things to reflect on? Well for one I did read something written on Matome (Summary) sites, something about "Green river"※......Hmmmm? (another long pause) ...n...nothing much I can say about that... But we also experience situations where there is a serious lack of tank participation and this seems to depend on the timing and situation...(another long pause) If I have to make a comment about it, I think the reason would be because it's a high difficulty content, and there are other factors which contributed to this issue....well, this is hard to answer...I mean there's also the request we got from players that asks us to create more situations that require healers to heal, and among other things that is asked of us...(another long pause) So in this case, due to certain circumstances and certain "wall" which caused deviations (biases?) to occur, and this is definitely a thing after operating this game for a long while, but as for the state of healers right now, I think it's just an extremely......I mean this simply is due to the healer population in general as well as the population of raiders participating in this tier...but if I have to say anything on this matter what I am able to say at this point is "please give healers a try", and that's what I want to convey, since this is a game where you are allowed to handle multiple roles, and when you try playing a completely different role you'll definitely find something interesting through that experience....hmmm...well we will need to observe the situation a little more...yeah.

※ - A meme referring to "Healer slots being so open and available in PF due to so little healers willing to join recruitment". There's also a DPS equivalent of such meme, called "Red River", where the excessive amount of DPS slots open for Ranged role (PFs usually are full of melees and casters, but not so much on ranged, which created the perception of ranged being undesirable). The "Red River" meme usually applies to PFs with practice parties as their objective.i

and then the follow up question

Q7: This is a question regarding the fourth floor of Savage (P8S), the Savage content, which includes the DPS check required, is definitely a challenging content, the healing check for the second half of this battle was really tight and compared to Dragonsong Reprise (DSR), I feel that there are certain parts in the second half of the battle contains healing check that is required which is comparable to what Ultimate would require, personally I welcome the increase in healing intensity but it causes the parties to be lack of healers when it comes to PF recruitment (be it progging or weekly clears) so I wonder what is your thoughts and opinion on the matter?

YoshiP: Ok I mean this happened before, but if I give an answer to one question, it won't work on the other one (for some reason). Right, we are told that (healers) are free, which is why healers tend to focus on firepower instead, and we should give healers more situations where they need to heal, and we increased the healing work required... I mean for the entire expansion and we did it but as expected this happens....so what are we supposed to do now hahaha...oh god if any I should be the one trying to discuss with you guys here. Aaaaaaahhh I mean yeah I knew this will definitely happen (long sigh). I mean I thought we've achieved quite a good balance here....(long ponder), Well yeah I mean if I have to start decreasing the difficulty and I'll get comments saying it's too lax (laughs). Well I will need data...either way we did indeed increase the intensity for sure, although this was the balance that was asked of us......I mean this is personal disparity, yeah, there are healers who are completely fine with this tuning, and there are other healers who would go "this is too hard I can't do this".

Yeah I apologize but please allow us to continue ponder on this matter and find out what is best and this is what we can do for now.

[WaxSw]

If you are using healing spell, you're not hitting a damage button. So, there is no spamming going on. If there was something else you could cast which would help the party's performance, you wouldn't be hitting a damage button, So, again, no spamming is going on. The only time spamming 2111 etc... would happen is when you had nothing to do except deal damage. So, the big issue isn't the damage kit, it's the healing kit and the content.

You could have the most interesting healing kit of the history of gaming, if the content is designed in a way that does not push it it will be useless because healing has a usefulness cap, and the game is not precisely lacking of content that does not push not even the current healing kit (like msq or normal content). On top of that due to healing being something with a usefulness cap (because if the enemy is going to deal 10k damage its useless to heal 20k instead of those 10K) the more the gameplay evolves and players optimize the more present the 2-1-1-1-1 rotation is making the job more dull the better the player is when the opposite is what should happen.

This is leaving outside factors like how the encounters are scripted which makes this optimization (and the subsequent abundancy of moments spamming 2-1-1-1-1-1) even more present.

I disbelieve this. I feel most people drawn to being a healer would rise to the challenge.

You can disbelieve it as much as you want but look at what happened the previous tier, the healing requirements increased drastically and a lot of healers simply left because they coudnt handle them (among other factors), no only that but if you go to the forbidden raiding website you'll see how the majority that ask for more healing have never faired well/entered in content that required that healing they ask for.

Sure, there will be some who won't; but, it'll be silly to make healers into primarily damage dealers with a side of healing abilities. Healers shouldn't be like Blue Mages.

No one is saying they should be primarily damage dealer, that's the strawman that those who dont want to engage in an actual useful discussion throw around. We ask for a better rotation, that does not mean we are damage dealers, look at healers in the past of the game and they were not only healers but also capable manage much more damage actions. There is a wide margin between dps rotation and the current 2 button rotation, we ask something closer to the middle not something all the way up to dps.

It's not like a healer is going to be surprised that they have to heal in a duty.

See the paragraph about EW 2nd savage tier, one thing is that they know that they may have to heal, another very different is if they can handle that healing

[Aravell]

What I can see happening, which is a concern I've voiced before, about adding an actual rotation or burst phase to healers is that healers will be encouraged to not heal if it will interrupt the rotation or burst phase. No matter how dire the situation you will either be healed at the end of a rotation when it won't interrupt other abilities they use for DPS or not at all during a burst phase so they don't waste GCD or oGCDs if they have them for dps during that time.

If a healer doesn't heal when required, they are a bad healer, it really is that simple. Whether or not healers have more damage spells or not, if someone is not healing when needed, they are bad. Also, no one is asking for a 20s long double Enshroud window on a healer or a 20s long No Mercy burst window, healers by nature are flexible, you don't need to keep 100% dps uptime or not have enough gauge for the next burst.

[vetch]

If a healer doesn't heal when required, they are a bad healer, it really is that simple. Whether or not healers have more damage spells or not, if someone is not healing when needed, they are bad. Also, no one is asking for a 20s long double Enshroud window on a healer or a 20s long No Mercy burst window, healers by nature are flexible, you don't need to keep 100% dps uptime or not have enough gauge for the next burst.

Healers already do have a 'burst window'; it's exactly as long as their group's raidbuffs are up and they try to fit as many damage GCDs & oGCDs as they can into it. Same as every other job under the current boring game design. Any incoming damage during that window that can't just wait until buffs fall off is getting an oGCD heal that doesn't interrupt the DPS 'rotation'.

[LilimoLimomo]

Then you missed the point of the bit from ForsakenRoe that I quoted.

You can always carve out a simple DPS style from any kit. Indeed, even Black Mage, the hallowed "complex" caster, illustrates the point: "The standard rotation is more than sufficient to play at a high level of Black Mage." You want to play BLM but don't want to deal with transpose lines zaniness for a theoretical few percent more damage? Then don't. Focus on doing the basics well.

I fail to see how that same philosophy and approach can't be applied to healers. Allowing room for complexity takes nothing away from those who prefer something non-complex.

I see what you're saying, and if this were a single-player game, I'd agree with you 100%. Unfortunately, it's an MMO where plenty of players feel entitled to expect other players to not just do good enough, but to excel (or at least be trying to excel). Which is to say, if you aren't using all of your DPS buttons, you can expect a certain kind of player to get on your case. As a designer, you can largely mitigate this kind of conflict by providing options to players that align with their play preferences; because if you only have one DPS button, nobody can reasonably to criticize you for not using two DPS buttons.

[Renathras]

A more thoughtful reaction would be: why not? Just as DPS jobs offer both SMN (simple) and BLM (complex), maybe there should be a single healer job that adds that complexity for players who want something more involved to diddle with between heals.

If you ever visit the healer forums, I pitch this argument all the time. I call it the "4 Healers Model", which in a nutshell is "We have 4 healer Jobs, so why not make them play differently so they can appeal to different types? Leave one as it is, change 3 to variations so that people who want more complexity have options?" The typical way I pitch this is "Leave WHM as it is today, give SCH its SB damage kit back, give AST it's SB/HW Cards and extra effects (Time Dilation, etc) back and more party buffs to make it a buffer support, and give SGE a Caster-esque rotation like SMN or RDM have where Kardia procs for more and their gameplay is about efficiently using Kardia while properly performing its damage rotation. This way, every type of player would have a healer Job they can main and enjoy."

I get called LOTS of names in there and am the subject of near constant dogpiles - to the point the common Healer forum posters will dogpile on me in any other part of the forum now, such as General or the Tank or DPS forums - since they don't like the idea of a compromise that has even one healer Job still appealing to people that like healing as it is today.

They're inflexible and uncompromising and don't realize it, but I genuinely think that would be the best solution. And yeah, I use both Caster and Ranged and Tanks as examples - SMN vs RDM vs BLM, DNC vs BRD vs MCH, WAR vs PLD vs DRK vs GNB. They insist that ALL healers must be more complex or no deal. And when I point out "no deal" means the status quo and we stay with what we have now, they go ballistic.

They also like insisting that their complexity won't affect people that don't like complexity...but we all know that isn't true, as you said well here:

I see what you're saying, and if this were a single-player game, I'd agree with you 100%. Unfortunately, it's an MMO where plenty of players feel entitled to expect other players to not just do good enough, but to excel (or at least be trying to excel). Which is to say, if you aren't using all of your DPS buttons, you can expect a certain kind of player to get on your case. As a designer, you can largely mitigate this kind of conflict by providing options to players that align with their play preferences; because if you only have one DPS button, nobody can reasonably to criticize you for not using two DPS buttons.

In short - I agree with you. Why not? Why not have a healer Job (or even two or three) that add complexity for those players that want it? As long as at least one is still enjoyable to the people that like current healing, this shouldn't' be a problem and everyone wins. (Except the people that want ALL healers to be more complex and won't be satisfied until people that don't like complex DPS on a HEALER class are out in the cold.)