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

[IDontPetLalas]

I agree with a lot of what was just posted, I just wanted to add that players are fairly smart, which makes it challenging for designers are multiple levels.

I would definitely agree that communication is not easy and players (just as forum posters!) may be well intentioned however a great deal may be lost via using just the written word. However if you want to look at the challenges of game design - I would point you to CC- "Good job" is so innocuous, isn't it? Perhaps not so much when it's spammed over and over though. So much for that design.

You are speculating about someone who is going to be called out by someone because unlike any other job they may not be able to hypothetically hit 2 buttons (which all healers could do previously, by the way) , in content where they would likely not be required to do that in order to complete it? That's a lot of "IFs".

Whereas in more difficult content, or in solo content, that option could be available for those healers who wanted to make use of available downtime but lacked options?

I don't see the option that you're proposing, what is less than "maintain one dot and use one DPS skill" when you're not healing?

[LilimoLimomo]

I don't see the option that you're proposing, what is less than "maintain one dot and use one DPS skill" when you're not healing?

Ah, I'm guessing you're misunderstanding what I meant when I said:

As I said before, nobody can criticize you for not pressing two DPS buttons if you only have one DPS button.

That wasn't meant as a literal suggestion to only have one DPS button, but rather an example of "Ought implies can". One cannot do what they literally cannot do, and therefore nobody can say that they should do it. For an example that is more precisely tuned to this discussion, there isn't a shred of validity in suggesting that a healer should use their 1-2-3 combo if there is no 1-2-3 combo.

To clarify, I'm not actually suggesting anything less than "maintain one DoT and one DPS skill". I'm suggesting that if there are healers who want a more involved DPS rotation, we should at the very least leave one healer's DPS kit the old way so that players who didn't want that additional complexity can continue to play their role at the same level of efficacy without the potential for increased expectations/criticism.

[ASkellington]

Ah, I'm guessing you're misunderstanding what I meant when I said:

As I said before, nobody can criticize you for not pressing two DPS buttons if you only have one DPS button.

That wasn't meant as a literal suggestion to only have one DPS button, but rather an example of "Ought implies can". One cannot do what they literally cannot do, and therefore nobody can say that they should do it. For an example that is more precisely tuned to this discussion, there isn't a shred of validity in suggesting that a healer should use their 1-2-3 combo if there is no 1-2-3 combo.

To clarify, I'm not actually suggesting anything less than "maintain one DoT and one DPS skill". I'm suggesting that if there are healers who want a more involved DPS rotation, we should at the very least leave one healer's DPS kit the old way so that players who didn't want that additional complexity can continue to play their role at the same level of efficacy without the potential for increased expectations/criticism.

That's not fair to the people who want their healer to also have that additional complexity.

I'm not saying all healers should have the same complexity. But all four healer's current design needs a massive change to their down time. Not a one is good for an MMORPG.

[LilimoLimomo]

I'm not saying all healers should have the same complexity. But all four healer's current design needs a massive change to their down time. Not a one is good for an MMORPG.

To be clear, I don't think a fancier DPS rotation is a solution to healer downtime. That's a much bigger issue that I feel is outside the scope of this thread.

That's not fair to the people who want their healer to also have that additional complexity.

True, but in the exact same stride it's not fair to the people who want less complexity if their job gains more complexity. The idea with some jobs getting that change and some jobs not getting it is that neither preference is entirely ignored.

[ASkellington]

True, but in the exact same stride it's not fair to the people who want less complexity if their job gains more complexity. The idea with some jobs getting that change and some jobs not getting it is that neither preference is entirely ignored.

This is not true. "Some jobs" is not, your job. This reads as "I want to see greater complexity to my job, but I can't have it, I must go to another job". When said job can have greater complexity, just not as much as one would like. Limiting a job to two buttons means it can't even get that extra complexity.

As for a fancier DPS rotation being the solution. Well no. If you want my opinion on what needs to happen to healers:

• They all do need a few extra dps buttons.
• Said dps buttons need to connect with their theme and kit.
• Encounter design needs to change - faster telegraphs, more unavoidable damage.
• Healer kits need to be gutted and redesigned with all four receiving clear healing and as mentioned before damaging identities akin to what they have in PvP (as in diverse and not the same as the other).
• MP sustain should come back and be a focus.

Now what's the problem with all of that? SE doesn't want to do it and at this point likely can't.

All four healers need an overhaul close to what SMN got. Or more accurately, what the PvP classes got. SE has proven they don't have the resources to do that many classes at once.

Encounter design is where they like it. They don't want to increase healing requirements or make healing harder for the exact same reasons people don't want to add more dps: it will scare new healers. Same with MP.

Adding extra DPS is quite literally the bare minimum they can do to add engagement to players who want more out of their jobs. All four of them.

[LilimoLimomo]

This is not true. "Some jobs" is not, your job.

I mean, I get it. But again, it's the same thing. If my main is White Mage, and it gets changed in a way that I don't want, that's bad for me. So if Player A and Player B both play White Mage and both want different things, whether the job changes or not, one of them will be at a loss.

So, given that situation, if you're going to change White Mage in a way that will alienate a certain set of White Mage players, there are two basic ways to do it:

1. Change all the healers so that they all have the feature that alienates this set of players.

2. Change some healers to be the new way, but leave some to be the old way.

With the first option, if you're a player who is alienated by the change, too bad, sucks to be you, this game no longer welcomes your preferences. But at least with the second, even if you aren't getting your first choice, even if you need to change classes to do it, there's a class where you can still have the type of experience you enjoy, the one that fits your needs.

I think the option that caters to multiple preferences is the better choice because it serves the most people as best it can, thus maximizing utility.

[ASkellington]

With the first option, if you're a player who is alienated by the change, too bad, sucks to be you, this game no longer welcomes your preferences. But at least with the second, even if you aren't getting your first choice, even if you need to change classes to do it, there's a class where you can still have the type of experience you enjoy, the one that fits your needs.

I think the option that caters to multiple preferences is the better choice because it serves the most people as best it can, thus maximizing utility.

What you're not understanding is that it doesn't cater to multiple preferences.

AST has a card mechanic.
SGE and SCH are shield healers.

If you like WHM, a healer that has no card mechanic, a slower APM, and isn't a shield healer, you are out of luck unless you play another job. Is my point. WHM getting an extra dps button that fits its design of a GCD healer, may have a longer recast timer than Glare (say 20s for example), is not alienating people. If they forget to press the button? It really doesn't matter outside of EX and Savage.

Further, there's nothing stopping WHM from being an easy to access healer with extra complexity if you want it other than a limited design. Which is what it and all four healers have.

You used SMN vs BLM as an example, but a better one would probably be GNB vs WAR. WAR has Fell Cleave for its DPS burst as well as an extra buff to manage. GNB has 2 bursts in a minute.

WHM can get a similar treatment as WAR while also being something that current WHM mains and future ones like. And I still don't see why it can't get that.

[ForsakenRoe]

True, but in the exact same stride it's not fair to the people who want less complexity if their job gains more complexity. The idea with some jobs getting that change and some jobs not getting it is that neither preference is entirely ignored.

long response

Which is why the solution should not be 'leave one exactly as it is', but 'balance the extra complexity for one of the healers in such a way that it is mostly ignoreable for those who don't want to interact with it'. Look at it this way, if we have only Dia and Glare for the majority of our GCDs, then any movement that costs us a Glare is punished even harder, because that's the majority of our damage: Glare. Dia doesn't need to be 2.3ish Glare's worth of damage, it being that high just makes missing ticks of it (due to being bad at DOT management for example) more punishing. It could be 450p total instead of 715 with the missing potency moved elsewhere in the kit. But because SE has removed so much of our kit now, all of the potency has to be forced into the few buttons we have left.

Besides that, the 'leave one exactly as it is' has been argued to death already. For my part, my reasoning for why it's not a great idea is twofold: one, the job that usually gets thrown out there as 'the one to leave alone', WHM, previously did have more buttons than currently. 'Keep it as it is, for those who enjoy the current gameplay' didn't seem to matter going into SHB, so I equally don't see it as a reason that applies now, at least, no more than it should have back then. Secondly, 'keeping one simple for those who like simpler healer design' does not have to directly translate to 'keep it exactly as it is, with zero changes at all'. We already know that SE will add stuff for the expansion, so that alone will cause 'changes to the job', so that falls flat IMO. I would agree that there should be a spectrum of 'complexities', going WHM>SGE>>>SCH>>AST probably, but that spectrum does not necessitate WHM stays exactly where it is. I made a chart a while back, here is a retrofitted version to illustrate what I mean:

This is something along the lines of what I'd like to see for each job's complexity. Green is 'complexity of getting your healing out', red is 'complexity of dealing damage, either by direct skills or buffing allies', and gold is 'the absolute theoretical maximum complexity, which you'd run into if you were aiming to get rank 1 parses'. The reason for the SGE 'gold bar' being so long is because I would like to see it's 'damage>healing' identity properly realized, so optimizing that would theoretically be quite technical. Bearing in mind that the DPS classes, not shown on this chart, would have their bars fall anywhere between the 4th and final lines (with BLM probably having it's 'gold bar' going off the side of the chart), I'd say the proposed complexity totals for healers, even AST, is quite respectful of casuals and of the players that the 'one needs to stay the same' intends to benefit.

As the chart shows, I would like to have WHM's healing AND it's damage both be simple and easy to execute, as it is the case now. But I would also like for there to be a bit of optional depth, wherein optimizing your healing and damage adds up to a complexity total larger than the sum of it's parts. This would not affect it's simple 'easy to get into' nature for casuals, just be an extra minigame for the hardcore optimizers to mess with. The minigame of 'use Lilies to prep Misery for raidbuffs, but still make sure to use them in good places for healing' is a good example of one of these optional optimizations

As Skellington put, and I have mentioned elsewhere: I am a good example of why this idea (keep one as is) would not work well. I want to have more complexity in my healing downtime, to keep me more engaged in lower difficulty content. Doesn't matter how good I get at the game, EX roulette is still the fastest way to cap my tomes. So, I have an alt I use to reclear Savage fights with a friend, so she can 'skip' her static to the later fights they want to do (because they no longer need gear from earlier ones). This alt has one class levelled. For the sake of the example, let's say it's WHM. I do not believe that watching the other 3 healers, that my alt does not have levelled, getting more complexity to their downtime damage rotations while WHM stays exactly where it is, is going to feel good. Doubly so, when people suggest that 'if you want more complexity, play one of the other healers'. It takes time to level another job to max, I don't believe that telling someone they have to grind another job to max is a 'solution'. It's like if DRK was dying too much in dungeons because Dark Mind only affects Magic damage, and the suggested solution is 'level another tank'. Maybe I like WHM's aesthetics, or it's healing-side gameplay, or my personal reason, 'I really do not want to have to do the AST opener over and over while progging because it makes my hands hurt', but whatever my reason, I'm apparently going to be told 'nope, it's gotta stay as is, play another job'. Compared to just making all four healers have extra complexity, and said extra complexity be optional, I just don't see how it's a valid solution.

Besides, if someone's going to be a melt and complain that 'healer didn't do their optimal rotation in Aetherfont', report them. But also, if they're going to get whiny because a hypothetical reworked SCH that has 3 DOTs of staggered duration (30/24/15 for example) forgot to refresh 1 or 2 of their their DOTs for a couple of ticks (movement for example), then I'd expect they'd also be whiny about the SCH in the current design missing their one DOT for a few ticks. Doubly so in fact, because 'it's easier to refresh one DOT than three' or something. Point is, if someone's gonna be a dick, it's not going to be made less likely or more likely to occur based on job design. The healers could have passive 'you deal 100p damage to any enemy you're within 10 yards of' and they'd be complaining if you ran out of range to do a mechanic, y'know?

damn took so long to type that like 3 people already said what I wanted to

[LilimoLimomo]

Which is why the solution should not be 'leave one exactly as it is', but 'balance the extra complexity for one of the healers in such a way that it is mostly ignoreable for those who don't want to interact with it'. Look at it this way, if we have only Dia and Glare for the majority of our GCDs, then any movement that costs us a Glare is punished even harder, because that's the majority of our damage: Glare. Dia doesn't need to be 2.3ish Glare's worth of damage, it being that high just makes missing ticks of it (due to being bad at DOT management for example) more punishing. It could be 450p total instead of 715 with the missing potency moved elsewhere in the kit. But because SE has removed so much of our kit now, all of the potency has to be forced into the few buttons we have left.

I've read this a few times, and I'm not sure what you're trying to say. I see a lot of data, but what's the conclusion you're trying to build to, and how is it connected to those values?

We already know that SE will add stuff for the expansion, so that alone will cause 'changes to the job', so that falls flat IMO.

It's not about changing nothing about the job, it's about not making additions to the DPS rotation. Which isn't uncommon for healer jobs. Off the top of my head, WHM didn't get any additional DPS buttons in Endwalker, and it wouldn't surprise me if it was the same in Dawntrail.

one, the job that usually gets thrown out there as 'the one to leave alone',

To be clear, it's not explicitly about leaving it the same as much as it's about having a simpler option. And recently, Summoner was made much simpler and is a common class to see played. I think it's a great model of how you can have both simpler and more complex classes in the same game serving different parts of your audience.

As Skellington put, and I have mentioned elsewhere: I am a good example of why this idea (keep one as is) would not work well. I want to have more complexity in my healing downtime, to keep me more engaged in lower difficulty content. Doesn't matter how good I get at the game, EX roulette is still the fastest way to cap my tomes. So, I have an alt I use to reclear Savage fights with a friend, so she can 'skip' her static to the later fights they want to do (because they no longer need gear from earlier ones). This alt has one class levelled. For the sake of the example, let's say it's WHM. I do not believe that watching the other 3 healers, that my alt does not have levelled, getting more complexity to their downtime damage rotations while WHM stays exactly where it is, is going to feel good. Doubly so, when people suggest that 'if you want more complexity, play one of the other healers'. It takes time to level another job to max, I don't believe that telling someone they have to grind another job to max is a 'solution'.

I agree wholeheartedly that it's not ideal. What I'm trying to say is that offering one class that does what you want is a better solution than offering you no classes that do what you want. Nobody is going to get everything they want. And if they do, it will be at the expense of other players. That's not my kind of solution.

I mean, let's put the shoe on the other foot. Given two choices, which would you prefer:

1. All healers stay basically exactly the same as they are now in Dawntrail; there are new abilities, and they're all new ways to heal that don't shift the game one way or the other.

2. Two of the healing classes (including your healing main) are the same as what's written in 1, but the other two healing classes get all the changes you personally have wanted to see...they're just not in your current main.

Which would you prefer, and why?

[ASkellington]

To be clear, it's not explicitly about leaving it the same as much as it's about having a simpler option. And recently, Summoner was made much simpler and is a common class to see played. I think it's a great model of how you can have both simpler and more complex classes in the same game serving different parts of your audience.

Here's where I think you're not understanding. Ignoring the backlash SMN got, you are right that the Caster role is diverse in complexity.

The problem is that said complexity doesn't not equal 2 buttons. SMN still has a simple rotation despite how many buttons you may need to press.

"Well SMN is a DPS" I hear you say. This is why I made the comparison between WAR and GNB. GNB has much more complexity to its rotation in comparison to WAR. It can still do the basic job of tanking as most of the buttons they press to mitigate are role actions, and the ones that differ, don't differ too much.

Healers can have a similar model where in they have a similar healing kit (as they do now) with minor differences with varying degrees of DPS complexity that isn't just primarily a DoT and a Nuke. So why then are we forced to just have 1 or 2 healers with 2 DPS buttons when it works for tanks just fine?