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

[IDontPetLalas]

My first healer was a Scholar. When I started out it was during the time that cleric stance was still in effect. I went on hiatus for a while, when I came back not only was cleric stance gone, so were multiple DPS skills (the offensive dots as above), but the buffs that were interesting to use ( such as eye for an eye) plus more- so many skills were removed it felt like someone had taken a hatchet job to it. I'm sure I've see a post here and there that listed them all, if I remember correctly it was around a hotbar or so.

If anyone, while I agree that SCH has had some interesting skills introduced, it already was dismantled (Selene and pet changes for example), the devs already reverted one change in the past, and admitted that they didn't know what to do with it- which to me is an admission that they need fresh blood in their design team if they are stock stuck for ideas.

[Nizzi]

Embrava, Adloquium and Regen V say hi lol. Also wasn’t Scholar used either as a support healer or a skill chainer / magic burster with Immanence lol? So…it focused on buffs, debuffs and support lol. Helixes (Helices? Lol) were cool and valuable, but I don’t really think they were supposed to be the entire focus of the job. An important aspect, undeniably, but I don’t think they conceptualised Scholar as a ‘poison Mage’ in ff11 or ff14 lol.

Why mention Embrava but not it's dark magic counterpart Kaustra, which is a DoT? And iirc you could use Immanence to set up skill chains into MB Kaustra in soloing? So in both games, it is a job that uses DoTs in combat, which is a part of its historic identity. Do you think it was just a coincidence it turned out like that when ARR was being developed? Also, the "poison theme" of the DoTs has nothing to do with wanting them back, I couldn't care less if it were Bio and Miasma or they were named something else honestly, though I do like Bio and Miasma as they are thematically. I ask for those back because it's no work, no new animations or developer effort and can be done in a minor patch while helping the monotony that Scholar has had for two expansions. It's the gameplay, not the thematics.

To turn the question back at you, where are you getting that Scholar is a job that uses DoTs in combat lol? The fact it used to share spells with Summoner? And if that were truly part of the job’s core design, how could the devs still think it does that with a single, uninteractive DoT lol? If anything it’s ‘historic identity’ is that of a versatile caster that can change tactics depending on the situation, i.e Dark / Light Arts, which in turn means it’s buffing, debuffing and attacking the enemy equally. But I don’t see how it could be categorised as an ‘offensive DoT job’ in either game really - it seems a little reductionist

What? Helixes were Scholar specific DoTs in FFXI. So was Kaustra. SCH used Modas Veritas to reduce its Helix timer but double the DoT's damage. Dark Arts gave bonuses to SCH's Helix spells, and Tabula Rasa did as well. Up until Shadowbringers, SCH had 4 DoTs it used in combat (more than SMN did in SB, and it has 1 more than SMN has now lol). The new PvP version of Scholar is built around using your DoT offensively and defensively, along with Biolytic using Miasma's icon for its debuff which is amusing. I don't get how that's reductionist at all, honestly. Was it simply a coincidence that its offensive kit had such a heavy DoT focus until ShB? I'm not trying to be rude by asking that either, but there was clearly a design philosophy shift with healers in ShB, the developers even stated as much when they said they wanted healers to focus on having a more "heal oriented playstyle" that has yet to actually come to fruition. There's a reason every healer has the same amount of DPS actions, but I don't think that changes much of anything when that design philosophy is the reason for this thread's topic and the discontent with the current design direction.

Further, "buffing" and "debuffing" in FFXIV is incredibly boring and there's less of a chance of that changing than there is of healers getting more DPS buttons because of how they've set up the modern game. DPS and Tank players really do not like it when you mess up their rotations; things like Selene's haste buff or AST's cards were removed or changed for this reason. For anything they could've given as a way for healers to lean more "utility support" they've either removed or jobs have ways to manage that themselves, such as Lucid Dreaming on Casters. This is why "supportive buffs" are all just "does x% more damage" etc, another player mistiming or not buffing correctly isn't going to effect a person's rotation. Say Scholar got Virus back as a debuff next expansion. You just use it as an oGCD when there's a heavy raidwide coming out that needs to be mitigated, just like you do any other oGCD for that same purpose. It doesn't stop you spamming Broil and it doesn't change any considerations Scholar has to make. There's nothing tactical about that. Every bit of this game is timelined, and that matters a lot in terms of the design of jobs. It's not that I like the fact that buttons get shoved off to the side because "there's no point to use this" but if there really is no point to using it versus something else, why would I use it?

But I don’t want to see it reduced to a DoT Botter (lol) that just sits around pressing the same 3 buttons all day without actually having to do anything tactical or strategic. There should be a purpose to them beyond ‘hit every X seconds to deal damage’

What do you mean lol, it's been reduced to a Broil Botter that sits around pressing the same 1 button all day. Is that interesting to you now? There shouldn't have to be any purpose, justification or "strategy" to it other than the fact that spamming Broil 160+ times in an encounter for 90% of your GCDs is not fun, simple as that. Besides, the tactics and strategy of Scholar comes from using your shields effectively while minimizing their usage and maximizing your Energy Drains; knowing where you can get by not shielding and not using Aetherflow on Soil or other Aetherflow resources is that in the job. This game and its encounters are simply not built for strategy or tactics that do anything more than optimizing your damage at the current time. Things like 'Malady' and 'Heavy' on Miasma and 'Blind' on Ruin II, while flavorful, ultimately don't serve any purpose than added flavor. With a fight's timeline, you're always going to use your buttons at the same time, on every job.

The healers DO have varied healing kits and considerations, though small as they may be between SCH and SGE. That's why they should play differently DPS wise as they did in the past, considering you spend the overwhelming majority of your GCDs as a healer on DPSing.

[ForsakenRoe]

Personally, I’d be happy with just Biolysis and a Second DoT, Miasmalysis lol?

All I'd ask for is:

Broil V (we know it's coming), 300p
Biolysis, 30s, 350 total
MiasMalady/MiasMalaria/MiasMalign pick any pun you like, 24s, 340 total (30 per tick, 100 on cast)
Shadowflare, AOE blast around target, drops puddle centered on them. 100p on cast, plus 50p per tick (total 350). This makes the move also be a gain to use in AOE pulls, but not enough damage to spam instead of AOW.

That's all. It's not like this would suddenly make the class be 'BlackMage hard to play'. Let us hit em with the MiasMumps Measles and Rubella SE


Unrelated to the above pitch, doesn't it make sense that SE would say 'we didn't really know what to do with SCH', having neutered it's DOT focused identity in SHB? As in, if it still had, say, the above pitch for DOT kit, wouldn't they have found it easier to fit a new skill in, like idk Salted Earth SCH ver., 'it makes your Shadowflare puddle bubble up and deal 100p more damage, as an OGCD!' kind of thing? By insisting on the healers having such simple DPS kits, they've artificially hamstrung their potential design space on what to give the jobs. And it's super apparent on WHM, because that job is a 'pure healer'. It can't get shields, that's Barrier healer stuff. It can't get buffs that help deal damage, that's AST territory. So instead it just gets the Overheal Weed, and Aquaveil which, while cool, could also have just been a Trait/Upgrade to Benison to add the effect of 'while the shield holds, damage taken is reduced by X% too'

[Connor]

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I’m sorry, but thinking FFXI SCH existed just to deal damage with DOTs is simply untrue lol. It’s completely ignoring the vast majority of their other spells lol. Plus the fact that SCH in XI was overwhelming used as a support healer lol. It had DoTs, and they were crucial, but they were not the literal definition of the job lol. They also had a suite of powerful buffs. That’s like saying Black Mage’s historical identity is an ice Mage. It’s an aspect of the job undeniably, but it’s also just one aspect of it, and it’s inaccurate to act like that one half of the whole is the entire identity of the job.

It’s also difficult to deny that XIV’s Scholar was heavily impacted by their decision to make it split from Summoner. They literally admitted it was a huge mistake. If those DoTs were part of some bigger picture that’s absolutely crucial to Scholars, I still don’t understand where they are now? Why would they make Scholar a DoT Fiend then remove all its DoTs? Yeah maybe they’ve just done it out of spite because they hate the western healers or whatever…or maybe they just didn’t think the DoTs were the sole determiner of Scholar’s identity.

Plus, how do you reconcile the existence of old Summoner? Scholar was a DoT heavy spell caster that does big dick deeps…Summoner was a DoT heavy spell caster that does big dick deeps. If Scholar was supposed to be a super damage dealer, why is it a healer and why was it adjacent to a literal DoT dps? That still doesn’t add up

I mean, saying ‘buffing’ and ‘debuffing’ in ffxiv is doomed to forever be non-existent is one opinion I guess, they’re gonna have a hell of a time with Astrologian then lol. And Dancer, and Bard. I’d say that White Mage and Sage already exist for players who don’t want to support the party and just want to deal damage (in theory).

It’s the exact same with PvP? You’re saying that SCHs are there to spread death and destruction through DoTs, but if only they had another useful ability that could also be spread. Like…a damage buff…lol. It’s almost as if they’re intended to buff and debuff equally depending on the situation. Furthermore, if having a single DoT makes the job ‘a dot damage dealer’, how does having a single buff spell not make it ‘a buff healer’? Why does having a single DoT spell completely redefine the jobs identity, but having a single buff spell means absolutely nothing lol. How can you say you’re not being reductionist when you’re literally ignoring all but one of Scholar’s PvP abilities lol. Is Adloquium a DoT damage spell now? Did they give Deployment Tactics two charges just so you can spread DoTs twice in a row? Why doesn’t Scholar have a damage Lb in that case?

The logic you’re giving kind of supports the exact design for all healers we have now. Buffing and debuffing is a waste of time, healing is a waste lf time, anything except dps is a waste of time. Minimising all support and healing as close to absolute 0 just so you can focus purely on damage rotations sounds exceptionally boring to me…yet it’s literally the exact same design we’re using now, we just only have 2 damage buttons.

Also, isn’t it possible that they ‘didn’t know what to do with Scholar’ because they every time they try to move the job towards it’s intended playstyle it causes a ridiculous amount of backlash from some players? They can’t/don’t want to give it more DoTs, yet all anyone ever asks for is more DoTs lol. Of course they’d not know what to do then, because essentially it leaves them with nowhere else to take the job. If they go with what they think it should be the forums are drowned in ‘SAVE SCH’ posts. If they take it the direction the community wants, it becomes more dps focused than the literal dps lol.

That’s not accounting for the whole ‘damage potency’ issue. If Scholar gets 3-4 DoTs, either the potency of Biolysis is distributed equally amongst them, which leaves them working harder for the same amount. If each DoT gives Scholar additional potency, it then needs rebalancing or it becomes disproportionately stronger than the other three healers. I mean, how could a White Mage or Sage hope to compete with a Scholar dealing more damage than them, and having Chain and Expedient, and being completely immune to ever using GCDs on non-damage spells. And where would that leave Sage? (Besides the garbage lol)


Don’t you see that you’re saying we should literally keep it exactly how it is now? But it’ll all be ok because we’ll have 3 more DoTs lol. Except Scholar can’t have three DoTs because as aforementioned it would literally be managing it’s dps more than the actual dps jobs. Good luck convincing the developers otherwise lol
Again, the only remaining DoT class in the game has 2 DoTs, reapplies them with a single spell, no Bane, and they do not interact with its toolkit. Yet we want Scholar to pumping out giant damage with a slew of DoTs, spread them, extend them, and we want it to be able to just keep healing through the entirety of content with Recitation - Indomitability lol.

[Nizzi]

I’m sorry, but thinking FFXI SCH existed just to deal damage with DOTs is simply untrue lol. It’s completely ign g the vast majority of their other spells lol.

Please show me where I said FFXI SCH existed just to do that? I said they're apart of its historic identity in combat. This is a thread discussing healer DPS rotations being boring in combat.

It’s also difficult to deny that XIV’s Scholar was heavily impacted by their decision to make it split from Summoner. They literally admitted it was a huge mistake. If those DoTs were part of some bigger picture that’s absolutely crucial to Scholars, I still don’t understand where they are now? Why would they make Scholar a DoT Fiend then remove all its DoTs? Yeah maybe they’ve just done it out of spite because they hate the western healers or whatever…or maybe they just didn’t think the DoTs were the sole determiner of Scholar’s identity.
If Scholar was supposed to be a super damage dealer, why is it a healer and why was it adjacent to a literal DoT dps? That still doesn’t add up

"where are the dots if they were apart of scholar's identity? also they try to ''move it towards its intended playstyle'' but never end up actually doing that, the intended playstyle is totally the one i want and SE agrees with me and it wasnt the one the job was designed with from the start"

okay man lol

I mean, saying ‘buffing’ and ‘debuffing’ in ffxiv is doomed to forever be non-existent is one opinion I guess, they’re gonna have a hell of a time with Astrologian then lol. And Dancer, and Bard. I’d say that White Mage and Sage already exist for players who don’t want to support the party and just want to deal damage (in theory).

Yeah, they are. Do you think AST has "interesting" buffs? They're all flat damage buffs except for Astrodyne, can you guess why that is? Because people don't like it when someone else messes up their rotation or changes their control of situations. Even minor abilities like Minne or Paean on BRD do not make it interesting nor do they change anything about how it plays. Like cool, a BRD in the party can save a healer a total of 2 GCDs across P12sP2 if they want to take over Esuna duty for the two times a healer has to use Esuna in that encounter. It's still just an oGCD that doesn't change anything. All of BRD's rotational buffs are just "does x% type of damage", that's BORING. All of DNC's are the same way, flat DMG increase or a 2m crit/ dhit buff. Do you think that they will completely change how the game works and go back to a way of buffing and debuffing that was either largely hated or largely useless? Further, even if they did, you haven't answered how any of that changes the fact that BROIL SPAM IS BORING!

The logic you’re giving kind of supports the exact design for all healers we have now. Buffing and debuffing is a waste of time, healing is a waste lf time, anything except dps is a waste of time. Minimising all support and healing as close to absolute 0 just so you can focus purely on damage rotations sounds exceptionally boring to me…yet it’s literally the exact same design we’re using now, we just only have 2 damage buttons.

I never said any of that? You use your buffs at the same time in an encounter, your party uses their debuffs at the same set times in the fight (Feint, Addle, Reprisal), you shield if you will die to the hit without one, otherwise you heal after it with oGCDs. You use certain CDs at heavy damage moments and all the while, you are spamming your damage button. That doesn't change if SCH gets Miasma and more back. All it does is give SCH more engagement again and cuts up the Broil spam.

Also, isn’t it possible that they ‘didn’t know what to do with Scholar’ because they every time they try to move the job towards it’s intended playstyle it causes a ridiculous amount of backlash from some players? They can’t/don’t want to give it more DoTs, yet all anyone ever asks for is more DoTs lol. Of course they’d not know what to do then, because essentially it leaves them with nowhere else to take the job. If they go with what they think it should be the forums are drowned in ‘SAVE SCH’ posts. If they take it the direction the community wants, it becomes more dps focused than the literal dps lol.

Sounds like they should just return SCH to how it was, and not some ""intended playstyle"" that it has literally never had in this game? These jobs should be designed so they're fun for the people who main them. I don't want SCH to change to suit people who don't play the job or who just play it casually. I play this job in every bit of content I do, of course I have a personal investment in wanting it to be as good as possible. And "more dps focused than the literal dps"? Do you think replacing a Broil cast with a Miasma cast is some gigabrained, galaxy tier struggle of herculean proportions? It's not.

That’s not accounting for the whole ‘damage potency’ issue. If Scholar gets 3-4 DoTs, either the potency of Biolysis is distributed equally amongst them, which leaves them working harder for the same amount. If each DoT gives Scholar additional potency, it then needs rebalancing or it becomes disproportionately stronger than the other three healers. I mean, how could a White Mage or Sage hope to compete with a Scholar dealing more damage than them, and having Chain and Expedient, and being completely immune to ever using GCDs on non-damage spells. And where would that leave Sage? (Besides the garbage lol)

SCH already only deals more damage than SGE or WHM in optimized environments that can take advantage of Chain. Outside of that, it does less damage and SGE/WHM are better in unoptimized groups. Also "completely immune to ever using GCDs"? That isn't true at all? I use Succor like 40+ times in DSR.

Don’t you see that you’re saying we should literally keep it exactly how it is now? But it’ll all be ok because we’ll have 3 more DoTs lol. Except Scholar can’t have three DoTs because as aforementioned it would literally be managing it’s dps more than the actual dps jobs. Good luck convincing the developers otherwise lol

Yeah I actually like how SCH heals right now, and the DoTs would slot back in effortlessly and only replace Broil casts, so that's what I want. I don't want SCH to change radically, I like Scholar and play it in high end content. Again, "managing its dps" because of added DoTs is ridiculous and it says a lot if you think that replacing a Broil cast with a DoT is harder than "actual dps jobs".

Again, the only remaining DoT class in the game has 2 DoTs, reapplies them with a single spell, no Bane, and they do not interact with its toolkit. Yet we want Scholar to pumping out giant damage with a slew of DoTs, spread them, extend them, and we want it to be able to just keep healing through the entirety of content with Recitation - Indomitability lol.

Do you notice how you're the only one mentioning anything about "giant damage" or the numbers? Nobody is asking for that, they're asking for ENGAGEMENT and for the job to go back to the engagement it once had. Also:
"we want it to be able to just keep healing through the entirety of content with Recitation - Indomitability lol"

That isn't true at all and doesn't reflect how SCH heals, if you think it's only healing things with Recit Indom every 90s I would kindly ask that you play SCH in things above alliance raids and normal raids.

[Kacho_Nacho]

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 it's 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 abundance of moments spamming 2-1-1-1-1-1) even more present.

You are talking about the healer paradox. Simply put, the better the party plays, the less healers are needed. This is true in all MMOs, at least the ones I've played.

While I'm not denying the current situation is boring, I feel the answer is to make changes to the healing kit, such as giving healers the buff/debuff abilities which damage dealers have currently. One idea I've seen bantered around is having heal spells restore a percentage of health, instead of having potencies. Perhaps, that'll address the issue of having healing spells being too powerful for the content.

As for the damage kit, it could be expanded somewhat. But, my concern is S.E. will not provide us with challenging content. That would result in healers using their damage spells most of the time. They'd be like blue mages rather than healing classes. That's why I lean toward the idea of changing the healing toolkit to make healing fun again; rather than, adding a more involved damage rotation.

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 couldn't 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.

I believe two facts can be concluded from that circumstance. Bad healers will be bad and many of healers of the previous tier had become complacent because nothing prepared them for the previous difficulty. This is a tuning problem on the part of Square Enix and has nothing to do with the actual abilities those healers had at their disposal, healing or damage spells.

No one is saying they should be primarily damage dealer, that's the strawman that those who don't 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.

Actually, that is what people are saying. Asking for a complex damage rotation is pushing healers further into the role of green dps, especially when players are saying they have nothing to do but spam two damage buttons. If you are a class primarily pushing damage buttons, what are you? It doesn't matter how many healing abilities you have on your toolbar, if you aren't using them.

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

So, the answer is to increase the number of damage spells healers cast? That makes no sense. Again, it is a tuning problem on the part of Square Enix and not an issue with what abilities healers have at their disposal. Changing the content is the solution to this issue.

The big white elephant in the room is we healers have been spoiled by the ease of the content, the potencies of our heals, the MSQ, and all the other challenges presented to us by Square Enix. That needs to be addressed before anyone starts changing healer damage rotations.

[Shurrikhan]

So, the answer is to increase the number of damage spells healers cast? That makes no sense. Again, it is a tuning problem on the part of Square Enix and not an issue with what abilities healers have at their disposal. Changing the content is the solution to this issue.

In part, yes. Why not?

If you change the tuning such that, say, we spend as much time healing then as we do dealing damage now, that's going to be outright oppressive to your less skilled healers and, by extension, their parties. If we go back to even just Stormblood levels of relative healing requirements, well, we also had more involved damage-dealing back then.

By all means, nerf free tank sustain back to roughly Shadowbringers levels (adjusted slightly, perhaps, for better parity and greater skill expression) and nerf Healers' healing by a good quarter or so (just flat out remove Maim and Mend [+30% damage and healing trait] from Healers while increasing attack potencies by at least that 30% in compensation), but there's no reason not to also add (back) new/returned offensive skills at the same time; we were plenty able to handle them back even in the most intensive eras of healing requirements and, to most, they felt good to use.

[Nizzi]

The big white elephant in the room is we healers have been spoiled by the ease of the content, the potencies of our heals, the MSQ, and all the other challenges presented to us by Square Enix. That needs to be addressed before anyone starts changing healer damage rotations.

Can I just ask you something, respectfully - what is the highest level of content difficulty you're talking about and doing? Are you claiming that Savage and Ultimate are easy for healers?

[Kacho_Nacho]

In part, yes. Why not?

If you change the tuning such that, say, we spend as much time healing then as we do dealing damage now, that's going to be outright oppressive to your less skilled healers and, by extension, their parties. If we go back to even just Stormblood levels of relative healing requirements, well, we also had more involved damage-dealing back then.

Shouldn't less skilled players be given a reason and opportunity to improve? It isn't engaging to go through content mindlessly. Players only stay with a game if it hooks them in some way emotionally.

Also, is it fair for Square Enix to balance healers around the lowest denominator? If they continue to do that then FFXIV will continue to lose veteran healers, because they're bored, leaving only the least skilled.

from Healers while increasing attack potencies by at least that 30% in compensation), but there's no reason not to also add (back) new/returned offensive skills at the same time; we were plenty able to handle them back even in the most intensive eras of healing requirements and, to most, they felt good to use.

Totally agree.

Can I just ask you something, respectfully - what is the highest level of content difficulty you're talking about and doing? Are you claiming that Savage and Ultimate are easy for healers?

I'm saying everything up to that point was too easy. Healers weren't prepared for the sudden leap in difficulty. Difficulty should be a steady slope instead of big steps up, if you know what I mean.

[Katish]

Shouldn't less skilled players be given a reason and opportunity to improve? It isn't engaging to go through content mindlessly. Players only stay with a game if it hooks them in some way emotionally.

Also, is it fair for Square Enix to balance healers around the lowest denominator? If they continue to do that then FFXIV will continue to lose veteran healers, because they're bored, leaving only the least skilled.

Unfortunately FFXIV has always had healers to dps, even way into ARR. It was just less frequent due to how cleric stance in particular operated. Where we are now, dps is expected...even if you increase healer checks...