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

[IDontPetLalas]

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.

First of all, that's a scenario that could be applied to any job. Tank isn't using their mitigation? Sure, we can "get on their case" so that the tank remembers to rotate/use their CDs. Tank forgets to turn the boss so the party isn't cleaved- similar story when half of them drop to the floor. What if the DPS isn't using any AOE skills in a W2W - similar story.

We don't take the approach of saying "take out all the DPS skills for tanks except one AOE and a single target, give them plenty of mitigation, self heals and mob controls so they don't get stressed over exceling at their rotation"

As I said previously and have seen for myself, in "normal" content a healer can literally do no - zero- DPS and no one will say anything- first of all because the content is still completed, and secondly because people likely are aware that the TOS constrains how this type of request can be made. So they don't say anything. So one button, two button, a proc, a combo- that wouldn't change unless it is in the content where it matters- and those healers already hit their DPS buttons and heal.

[Renathras]

We don't need much, just a couple of small, focused changes is enough to spice things up. For example, for the damage side of things, all I would ask for WHM is to reduce Dia's duration to 12s (because 30s feels stupid), and to add a new Water/Banish GCD with a 15s CD. That's all. That's not going to suddenly make WHM gigabrain to play, you could even make a macro to auto-use Banish if it's ready and Glare if it isn't, if you wanted.

Just make Dia a direct damage GCD with a 12 sec recast and Assize a GCD with a 15 sec recast. Done.

It's the same effect in practice as what you're asking for, but I doubt you'd find it actually reduces your boredom. Maybe I'd be mistaken...but I feel like the people asking for more damage/engaging play would be complaining again with a few weeks if we just made those changes.

I'm bored when I heal because I need more complex healing

I'm right there with ya.

I understand that and I agree with you...

This whole post is basically spot on. More support and more healing.

Spreadsheet warriors asked for this, so SE obliged them. We used to have more support, more job synergy more Individuality but then someone broke out a calculator, declared a certain job combination suboptimal and a few years later this is the result. Blissful uniformity.
People also bitched about melee uptime so SE made bosses bigger.
Honestly, I don't envy them. No wonder they stopped replying in the EN forums years ago. lol

Bingo.

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.

It's like RDM if people are dying during their burst phase "I'll raise once I'm done with my burst combo!"

Come on, some comments in this thread are ridiculous.

"Play a dps if you want to dps".

People aren't really saying that so much as they're saying "If you want a complex DPS rotation, play a DPS Job". Which isn't "spouting bs" or "clueless"; even at the most complex (HW), healer Jobs have never had a DPS rotation anything like DPSers. The closest was probably SCH during that timeframe, and it kind of broke the game, balance, meta, and had both one healer Job (WHM) and both Casters (BLM and SMN) blacklisted out of PF.

Healers have never been green dps, end of line.

They quite literally made tanks' 123 combo no longer able to be broken by their ranged GCD aggro attack and most of the healers heal on the oGCD where they can weave their combo.

I do think this was a gamechanger. Though it would be a requirement. RDM doesn't have this during their melee combo, btw.

Then healer isn't the role for you,
- playing the wrong role is boring...

I'm bored when i play dps..
but that doesn't mean/make dps jobs = bad.

Agreed.

People that insist DPS are "so fun" no matter the content, I have to wonder what they're seeing in it. I don't derive any pleasure or joy from playing a DPS Job. It's my least played role for that reason. "Perfect opener...yawn..."

Whenever I say this, I get attacked as "How DARE you suggest we aren't 'real healers!!!'", which, amusingly, is an argument I've never actually made and you're doing it here more than I ever have or would.

Hell, when I suggest that they add a fourth role for Support, they also take it as some kind of personal insult, even after I've said myself even I'd like to play a Support role Job sometime if they made it a serious fourth role. I love being supporty on RDM or SMN, for example.

I think the point is that playing a healer is boring on its own merits – that between job design and encounter design and gearing, something is lacking. Which of those should change or be fixed, if any, is the question.

I agree to the point that I agree encounter design (and gearing) is the problem.

If Yoshi-P wasn't a tired old man, he might consider making healers a buff/debuff class instead (a la FF13).

Just for clarity:

FF13 had Synergist (buff), Saboteur (debuff), and Medic (healer). FF14's healers are like Medic, with a touch of Synergist in some cases, but those were three different classes. That's like asking why Casters don't all have Melee abilities like Ravagers (Flamestrike and such), or why all Melee don't have Caster spells (Commandos used Ruin and Ruinaga). In fact, FF13 is where the spells Ruin and Ruinega came from, so if anything, it should dominate the discussion for the use of those spells...

lol. I thought the thread's title was familiar. Previously.

Some people...are weird.

Return Miasma, Miasma II, Shadow Flare, Quickened Aetherflow and Bane to Scholar, Yoshi-P.
That is all.

Not to be snarky and being totally genuine: That's the "4 Healers Model". In fact, that's an even more narrow version of it. Maybe you should join me in championing it in the Healer forum?

I fully agree, no more complex DPS rotations. Healers are not DPS mains.

...and...

Maybe they should gut healing ogcds, make gcd healing a required thing again, and make healing actually you know, fun.



Making healers dps is the same mistake they made with tanks. They need to redo the way combat is to make tanks actually do tank things and not just be dps with defense.

Agreed. And that's what is the point people seem to not want to accept.

We have Jobs that have complex DPS rotations. They're called DPS Jobs. There are even three subroles and it's the most diverse set of Jobs in the game, so people that want that have PLENTY of options to do so. And bonus points, two of them can Raise, around a third can heal, and all of them have mitigation abilities.

[AmiableApkallu]

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 27+ months of playing FFXIV, that is literally something that's never happened to me, and something that I've never had to worry about.

I've run content with my FC-mates, several of whom are obviously on-content Savage raiders. (It's obvious from the gear and mounts they're sporting, even if they don't say anything.) Not once have I heard them remark on anyone's DPS, let alone the healers'. For the healers -- It's always, "Here's a good time to use Temperance." Or, "Here's a good time for Lilybell/Panhaima." Or when a few members of the party are tanking the floor, "F everyone else, just keep yourself alive for 10 seconds, and then LB3."

Every reasonable player I've ever encountered pushes the healers in the party to keep themselves alive and then to keep party alive. Healer DPS is the lowest priority.

In the end, it is true that FFXIV players expect healers to excel... at actually healing and keeping the party alive. If they can do DPS, that's an added bonus.

[RitsukoSonoda]

IMO don't need a more complex DPS rotation. You need encounters that actually make you play as a healer instead of a green DPS.

[SweetPete]

We have four healers. They already separated into regen/shields so why not do the same with dps/support. Whm/Sage should have more dps abilities to fill those who want to dps more while Ast/Sch should be the healers that lack the dps rotations but offer more support to the group as a whole.

So you can have a choice. All healers will still be viable in all content but it will kill these kinds threads about some people wanting more dps abilities while others wanting more support abilities.

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

IMO don't need a more complex DPS rotation. You need encounters that actually make you play as a healer instead of a green DPS.

A Healer should be a Healer. (Insert Meme)
And the Game needs to be made so that a Healer can Play its intended Role.

[Shurrikhan]

IMO don't need a more complex DPS rotation. You need encounters that actually make you play as a healer instead of a green DPS.

They're not mutually exclusive, after all.

Yeah, you'll lose some of the filler, and sometimes have too much healing required to fully optimize the new DPS options in themselves, but... so what?

[Aravell]

They're not mutually exclusive, after all.

Yeah, you'll lose some of the filler, and sometimes have too much healing required to fully optimize the new DPS options in themselves, but... so what?

It seems like some people are under the misconception that it's an either-or situation, like people will kick a healer that's not doing a fully-optimised dps rotation in regular content(nobody does that).

What baffles me is that everyone can agree that a healer's main job is to heal, but when the topic of extra dps buttons is brought up, suddenly all the dps buttons must be pressed in perfect order before you can heal? It doesn't make any sense.

[Shurrikhan]

It seems like some people are under the misconception that it's an either-or situation, like people will kick a healer that's not doing a fully-optimised dps rotation in regular content(nobody does that).

What baffles me is that everyone can agree that a healer's main job is to heal, but when the topic of extra dps buttons is brought up, suddenly all the dps buttons must be pressed in perfect order before you can heal? It doesn't make any sense.

Heck, we could even say "A Healer's primary job is to maximize their contribution to rDPS" and... that'd still mean keeping people alive over optimizing their own dps, unless everyone else came in with broken gear and a single brain cell.

[ASkellington]

I do think this was a gamechanger. Though it would be a requirement. RDM doesn't have this during their melee combo, btw.

RDM doesn't need it. They aren't in melee enough to justify it.

As for it being a requirement, if for some reason the devs aren't smart enough to allow for it to continue after using a GCD heal, I'm pretty sure the forums will quickly inform them.

If not Reddit and Twitter also.

Now whether or not they do it, who can say. I swear the devs hate healers with the passion of a thousand fiery suns.