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

[Zeastria]

Healer gameplay should revolve around HEALING, not DPSING.
Asking healers to be more like dps..is like asking healers to become DPS..
Why play healer..when in truth you wanna dps ?.


Instead:
Let healers use their whole HEALER toolkit ! LET US USE OUR HEALS!!
I dont want to press x more meaningless/worthless dps buttons..

Downtime wouldnt exist if SE
actually could make fights depended on healing:

- More dmg during fights ( dot dmg/dispel-mech)
- More random unavoidable dmg..
- Remove self-heal/ress from other roles..

Instead of putting all that energy into asking for x more dps button.
How about fighting to get actually healer gameplay into picture instead!
People who enjoy healing.. do so because they enjoy the healing aspect of it..
not the **** 3 dps buttons we have!..


I said my piece..
not gonna reply anyone
or argue about it.

[Katish]

Downtime wouldnt exist if SE
actually could make fights depended on healing:

Nope downtime would still exist, when you are skilled enough as a healer downtime will always be a thing. ALWAYS. It even existed in ARR! I'm all for one with increasing healing requirements too but we should really be looking at these things as two separate issues that fall under job design as a whole. The FFXIV healer should be a balance where you answer the call to extreme healing but focus on dps on your downtime, as that's how it's always been to some extent. Our healing should not be replaceable, just as our damage contributed should not be replaceable. The game, and devs, need to factor that healers are an entity (not just a placeholder). Unfortunately their game design would have healers bring 0 value in a good team, in which case they become replaceable for dps, and they, the devs, haven't realized or don't care that it's a bad job design. We need to watch the jobs burn before they can rise anew, and hopefully the continuing of button bloat on heal buttons will finally bring the job to dwindle to a critical state that they need to do something lel.

Also when did 3-5 buttons extra dictact a dps? If anything that's still less than what tanks get lel.

[Supersnow845]

I said my piece..
not gonna reply anyone
or argue about it.

Imagine having so little confidence in your own opinions that you just outright refuse to defend them

[AmiableApkallu]

Let healers use their whole HEALER toolkit ! LET US USE OUR HEALS!!
I dont want to press x more meaningless/worthless dps buttons..

Downtime wouldnt exist if SE
actually could make fights depended on healing:

- More dmg during fights ( dot dmg/dispel-mech)
- More random unavoidable dmg..
- Remove self-heal/ress from other roles..

Instead of putting all that energy into asking for x more dps button.
How about fighting to get actually healer gameplay into picture instead!
People who enjoy healing.. do so because they enjoy the healing aspect of it..
not the **** 3 dps buttons we have!..

There will always be downtime. The time spent in an encounter can be split into two major categories. The first category:

1. Time spent on healing that's required by the encounter.

The second category:

2a. Time spent on healing to recover from people making mistakes.
2b. Time spent on dealing damage.

It is certainly possible to change job design and encounter design so that more time is spent on (1), required healing. And that would certainly take away from time that could be spent on (2b), DPS. However, it would also take away from time that could be spent on (2a), recovering from mistakes.

In roulette-level, story-mode content, there absolutely must be time available to spend on (2a), recovering from mistakes. Expecting perfect play at that level is exactly what will wall off players. At the same time, there will be parties that make fewer mistakes, or have better gear, so mistakes are more easily recovered from, meaning that we'll be able to shift time from (2a) to (2b), dealing damage.

[Sebazy]

<snip>

I genuinely don’t think you appreciate what you’re asking for.

I’d recommend looking up healer POVs of O8S part 2 aka God Kefka. To this day that fight is still the biggest *healing* check we’ve ever had. AoEs were non stop and generally hit hard enough to kill without a mitigation plan and to compound things, the fight repeatedly had 1 HP > Hard Hitting AoE + Certain death debuff if people weren’t topped to full before the mechanic resolved. And these weren’t huge long 10-30 second casts. Heartless Arch Angel was pretty damn quick.

At the risk of sounding utterly condescending. I don’t think you could cope with it. I honestly don’t think you’d have any hope whatever tbh. I don’t mean that as an attack, It’s just how challenging the fight was for healers.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/e...iOIZwZUB3j/pub

And do you want to know the kicker? If it was released again as a new fight now, it still wouldn’t be enough to keep us healing the whole time. It wasn’t even enough back then by virtue that we needed the celestriad phases to get MP and cooldowns back for the following phases. Downtime is inevitable and unavoidable.

[Renathras]

Imagine having so little confidence in your own opinions that you just outright refuse to defend them

That's really not fair.

I will argue with a brick wall. I do it with the Healer forums all the time. But a lot of people in life aren't as stubborn as I am, and don't like the verbal riposte. That is, they don't like to debate endlessly with people they know will refuse to change their minds no matter what they say. For my part, I think it's still a worthwhile exercise because of other people potentially reading the discussions. But a lot of people are conflict averse and would rather just say their piece, possibly offer a rebuttal or two to points people bring up opposed to them, and if by then they judge the other side of the argument will not budge no matter what - which does describe most of the prevalent posters here in the pro-DPS camp - to gracefully and diplomatically back out of the discussion.

I feel like that parting shot you tried to make there is pretty unfair and, frankly, kind of meanspirited. Against me, sure, I probably deserve it. But Zeastria is always respectful and kind of a go-along/get-along friendly person here. She didn't deserve that.

Actually Astros only had 1 dot in stormblood. THey just had Malefic 3 and combust 2. The other damage actions were earthly star and random minor arcana single target lord which was rng. It was heavensward where they actually had 4 dps buttons. Malefic 2, combust, combust 2 and aero. The thing that stormblood did was reduce their cast time to 1.5 for the card weaving.

I was wondering this, too. I thought I had looked back at SB and seen only the one DoT for AST at that point, but I wasn't sure and didn't play it at all back then. Thanks for the info.

By what warrant? You're using this as an excuse to limit what options for engagement are available to any and all players,

What are you even talking about? My proposal has always included at least 2 (I think that was the initial pitch) and for over a year 3 healer Jobs with more complex rotations. The players that want that would have 75% of the healer role as options to choose from. Where is this "any and all players" coming from?

Also, what you ask for is not "A small increase in depth". It's a big increase. It's small TO YOU but not to others, clearly.

A lot of people who joined in ShB have been repeating certain phrases....

Let's be real, there are people that will complain about literally anything. Remember people complaining about SCH after the Job reveal trailer for EW before getting their hands on Expedient? Even universally good changes will be opposed. I forget which, but one of you (Sabezy?) was posting about how people were glad Cleric was removed and how it was a good change for the game (old threads) a week or so ago, despite people for months/years insisting it was a super good ability and everyone hated it being removed. Ironically, in trying to prove me wrong, she proved the position I've held for years actually was the majority position.

The better way to put it is some people have complained about things, and do so no matter what.

The trick for developers is to see which things are actually worth moving on and which are not. For example "Nature spells" isn't a gameplay thing, it's an aesthetic one. And while aesthetics are important, BEFORE ShB, as far back as ARR, people were complaining "Why does WHM have nature spells instead of holy spells?" There will always be those kinds of complaints because of people thinking Jobs should be different things. There are WARs who love the unga bunga and WARs who enjoyed the more technical version of the Job before it was made unga bunga.

Some WHMs complained about Aero 3, but a lot were also very pleased with Misery. Misery was, in fact, the most praised change to the Job going into ShB, and is an ability that has become Job defining since then, and effectively it replaced Aero 3 in the rotation (between it and the two builders that lead to it).

What I want is different from what I'm fine with. I've said before that I'd be satisfied if they reverted AST and SCH back to the SB playstyle, though I'd prefer a playstyle more like HW SMN myself, but I can see that not everyone wants or enjoys something so convoluted. SB, however, is a decent baseline which most can accept to be a good compromise between HW and ShB.

That's fair.

But that wouldn't satisfy the 4 Healers Model for AST being "the one left alone". I guess we're having two parallel arguments here. One is your take on AST and one is Roe offering it as tribute so that WHM is made into a DPSer instead.

For AST to fill that role, it would NOT be the SB version. It would be, as I said, something more simplified with a far lower APM cadence more akin to WHM now. Something I suspect will never happen, but I suppose it depends on what they do with the rework. My own proposal, as you know, is to leave WHM alone and to revert SCH and AST to their SB toolkits. But that's been soundly rejected by the "more DPS" people.

And this is precisely why you are viewed as a complete joke.,

Seriously, what the hell happened to you, Sebazy? You've become a total dick.

As for data:

When I posted various census records, when I did deep dives into rotations with action use per minute (normalized) counts, where I did a deep dive into the Steam numbers comparing apples-to-apples points in expansions, where I posted the damage profile of the Halone fight to counter your argument on the Byregot one (you can reject my conclusions, but not that I didn't present data with the argument)? I know this is your new bullying tactic "attack of the month" now that you've decided to make it your life's mission on this forum to harass and heckle me, but I've provided data. You're like that person that decided "racism" is a good insult and call people you don't like it, whether it fits or not.

YOU, on the other hand, have not. You provide anecdote, insist it's data, then demand actual data to contest it.

You have absolutely *ZERO* right to hand wave off other peoples views as anecdotal given that's *ALL YOU EVER DO YOURSELF*

BOTH OF US present data as well as anecdote as well as argument. YOU have just decided this lazy attack is damning and keep waving it around like a cudgel since I happened to agree with someone - ONE PERSON in ONE POST - in the Healer forum that you thought was a troll and you've become an absolute jerk to me over it. Cool off.

I see absolutely no appeal in purposely leaving Holy as button-bloat in single-target situations. There's nothing wrong with making it a situational/infrequent ST-GCD-#4.

(Personally, I love when utility sees overlap, like Rockbreaker often being the only way to keep up GL3 all the way to meteors in T9/T9S, or Sonic Thrust being useful for uptime and BotD/LotD on Neo Exdeath. It's often best that certain situations do exclude certain actions of shared opportunity cost, but never categorically; having Glare lack even an infrequent use in AoE or Holy even an infrequent use in ST just seems wasteful.)

Imagine ARR through Stormblood BLM, for instance, if Flare were purposely made useless in single-target. Just... why? Bonus damage to primary target / (higher base damage and) reduced damage to later victims is enough to deal with tuning implications.

Agreed, and that was kind of my point with the proposal. I'd like to see more efficient use of existing buttons, not adding buttons "just because" when we have extant buttons that we're just never using (in single-target, which is the bulk of the game/bosses, at least in theory) that could fill in that gap instead.

...But, (A) what do you mean by "stacks" here (and are they applied to the ability? the healing recipient?) and (B) why would that be necessary?

I could be wrong, but I think it means like WHM in PvP.

Pre-EW, it had Cure 1 cost no MP and you could spam it indefinitely (I rather liked that as a "filler"; healer smamnukefiller damage is garbage in PvP and almost never actually gets kills) and Cure 2 that cost 1k MP so you were limited in its use since it would burn through your MP quickly. Post-EW, it was changed to Cure 2 only, with it having 2 charges.

I don't agree with the idea, but I think that's the idea.

It’s literally the same conversation people have been having since the game began (don’t think I don’t remember people asking for more dps buttons during Stormblood lol), but as I said before:
...Sylphies are not ruining the game by wanting to heal more. Green dps are not ruining the game by wanting to dps more.

And this is why I believe the best way forward is the "4 Healers Model", since it means "Green DPS" have healer Jobs they can play, "Sylphies" (that don't even exist, but whatever) have a healer Job they can play, and there'll probably be one somewhere in the middle for people that want something somewhere in the middle.

It's really the only answer that addresses everyone's needs in at least a passable way.

I do disagree with "damage feeding into healing/vice verse". I think that some Jobs can and should be made that way (SGE is), but not all of them. DIVERSITY is the solution, not trading one form of homogeneity for another. Especially as it still doesn't address the problem of people wanting to play healers to heal. Imagine if all the DPS Jobs in the game had to use a heal on someone before they could use their big attacks. BLM has to use a Cure 1 equivalent on someone, and it can't overheal, before they can use Xenoglossy. SAM must use a Physic equivalent on someone, and it can't overheal, before they can use Iaijutsu.

That would go over like a lead balloon.

So the idea that healers must damage before being able to heal or to access some of their heals just seems counter to understanding, on a basic level, a lot of people play healers because they DON'T ENJOY dpsing. If they did enjoy dpsing, they'd probably be playing a DPS or one of the hybrids like DNC or RDM or SMN.

But, again, "4 Healers Model" is all about the concept of diversity; so some healers functioning that way BUT SOME NOT is the ideal solution. And that is a hill I will die on.

Anyway, good post, thank you, sir.

Healer gameplay should revolve around HEALING, not DPSING.
Asking healers to be more like dps..is like asking healers to become DPS..
Why play healer..when in truth you wanna dps ?.


Instead:
Let healers use their whole HEALER toolkit ! LET US USE OUR HEALS!!
I dont want to press x more meaningless/worthless dps buttons..

Downtime wouldnt exist if SE
actually could make fights depended on healing:

- More dmg during fights ( dot dmg/dispel-mech)
- More random unavoidable dmg..
- Remove self-heal/ress from other roles..

Instead of putting all that energy into asking for x more dps button.
How about fighting to get actually healer gameplay into picture instead!
People who enjoy healing.. do so because they enjoy the healing aspect of it..
not the **** 3 dps buttons we have!..


I said my piece..
not gonna reply anyone
or argue about it.

100% agree. This is the post to /thread

And honestly, I think I should take a que from you:

I've said my peace, and people want to be bullies to get me to shut up and just take it are tiring. I'm done dealing with people who just want to be dicks because they got butthurt that I wouldn't agree with them, especially when I've offered the most compromise solution possible, and have even compromised on the details of it no less than 8 iterations from the original proposal, yet it will never be good enough because they don't want to compromise. They want to get everything they want and screw anyone who doesn't like it, and bully anyone who dares oppose them getting everything they want.

Wanting to heal in a game with a healer role isn't a crime. Wanting minimal dps in a game where DPS is a role but the player has selected a different role specifically to avoid it also isn't a crime. And wanting a compromise where both sides can coexist side by side isn't a crime, either.

[Sebazy]

100% agree..

Is this a 100% agree where you don't actually 100% agree but are trying to kiss up for forum points or is this actually a 100% agree? I can't keep up anymore

[AmiableApkallu]

And this is why I believe the best way forward is the "4 Healers Model", since it means "Green DPS" have healer Jobs they can play, "Sylphies" (that don't even exist, but whatever) have a healer Job they can play, and there'll probably be one somewhere in the middle for people that want something somewhere in the middle.

It's really the only answer that addresses everyone's needs in at least a passable way.

The problem -- or at the least, my problem -- with your "4 Healers Model" is, in short: the fact that Black Mage exists. Let me unpack what I mean by that.

Black Mage is known as the "complex" caster, with a sky high skill ceiling. This comes from the existence of a library of "transpose lines" that challenge even the best amongst us.

However, Black Mage also has a simple, straightforward rotation that you can stumble your way into if you give the job any amount of thought. That rotation still lets you perform at a high level, so much so that the advice for improving your performance is to start with mastering the basics, not to worry about all those transpose lines. You won't be prevented from clearing content if you go with this rotation.

Now, if even that "simple" rotation is too much for you, and you still want to get through the story, you can muddle your way through solo content (Very Easy mode exists, yes?), somehow, and then for group content, just go Blizzard-Fire-Blizzard-Fire.

The point is that within a single job, we have a healthy gap between the skill ceiling and the skill floor, with a passable option if the skill floor is too high and you just want to get through the story. If you favor the Black Mage aesthetic, the pointy yellow hat and blue robes (and things going "boom"), then by all means, you are welcome to play the job and select between "simple" and "complex" rotations.

Why must we categorically reject that approach for WHM? Or for any of the four healers? Why can we not choose a healer based on our favorite aesthetic and have a similar healthy gap between the skill ceiling and skill floor?

To be clear, I don't want a skill floor that's as high as Black Mage's (the current healer skill floor is just fine /two cents), but I do want that gap between the floor and ceiling.

[Shurrikhan]

Also, what you ask for is not "A small increase in depth". It's a big increase. It's small TO YOU but not to others, clearly.

The two ideas going into our discussion that you had been quoting were "1 more DPS action (while, say, increasing healing requirements back to HW/StB levels)" and "swapping the portion of time spent damaging with the portion of time spent healing (such that the current small numbers of downtime tools nonetheless feel fitting)".

Doing nothing to meet the extended ceiling of the first means that one does about 90% of that maximum output regardless... which you accused of being an oppressive level of difference that would cause casual healers to get flamed...

The other literally increases at-cost healing from around 0 to 12% of GCDs to 88 to 100% of GCDs... on which added likelihood of wipes and healer frustration you commented only that 'hard content is supposed to be hard'...

....

Make this make sense, please?

There is no way, whatsoever, that a difference of roughly 1% of party dps is going to invoke as much flaming as healers even in casual content needing to meet far, far higher relative healing requirements than are seen even in Ultimate and thereby frequently wiping their parties, so clearly the difference can't be concern for casual healers or their potentially getting flamed...


I get that you do not enjoy the kinds of optimization that go into damage dealing (as if that were ever separate from healing in XIV), but unlike higher skill ceilings for downtime activity and higher healing requirements, there is actual mutually exclusivity between [A] the current small amount of downtime tools feeling satisfying due to [a shift in] context (for a simple majority or greater of healers) and [B] having healing requirements that are still reasonably accessible to most players who would be interested in the given context.

The current amount of downtime engagement available is not large enough to support sufficient slack for less skilled and more skilled players alike to engage enjoyably with healing if offense and healing were flipped. Proportions of relevant actions more similar to what we had in Heavensward would be far more sustainable.


You've seen my own preferences, laid out quite a few times now: Much stronger relative healing requirements (though not nearly so far as 7x-or-more) atop a higher skill ceiling for downtime activity so that any and all healers can still feel reasonably engaged (even when the party is overgeared and/or makes few to no mistakes).

Note also that I haven't been okay with simply adding free damage, but have instead preferred options (choices made within the same set of opportunity cost); that is because in such cases the reward for optimization diminishes with each additional thing optimized. Whereas just adding an offensive oGCD has all the difference of its ppm directly, adding an offensive GCD action, for instance, has only its value-over-filler.


Thus far, you've pretty consistently disregarded accessibility and approachability the moment you'd otherwise get something more in keeping with your personal preferences, all while --the moment things step away from your personal preferences-- making out differences less than would result from typical run-to-run deviations from Crit RNG as if they would single-handedly wipe parties and nearly provoke harassment.

Wanting to heal in a game with a healer role isn't a crime. Wanting minimal dps in a game where DPS is a role but the player has selected a different role specifically to avoid it also isn't a crime.

No one has said that it is, only to be mindful that when a healer fails to optimize an additional downtime tool, the boss dies a few seconds later (because there are diminished returns for those optimizations and the output is shared enough to have high slack), while if you make relative healing requirements so high that the scarcity of downtime tools would finally feel appropriate, you leave almost zero slack and make healers a uniquely extreme bottleneck to each party.

It's not a matter of "We shouldn't increase healing requirements," but rather a matter of "(Nearly) removing healer downtime altogether is not a realistic solution to the lack of downtime engagement, because a single short-term and largely unshared output such as healing cannot by itself support so large a range as exists between highly skilled and unskilled healers; if tuned to be appropriate for the best of the best, it would be overwhelming for most of the rest, while if tuned to be appropriate even for less experienced healers, the problem would remain for those most skilled."

You've been insisting on a false binary. You can have BOTH less downtime and greater engagement in what downtime remains. The only thing you can't simultaneously have is a fulfilling experience at either end of a spectrum (player competence/experience) that is more widely varied than the tolerance of the output (healing) you vary them by (since healing is capped and bimodal, therefore lacking in slack or useful overflow).

[Aravell]

Some WHMs complained about Aero 3, but a lot were also very pleased with Misery. Misery was, in fact, the most praised change to the Job going into ShB, and is an ability that has become Job defining since then, and effectively it replaced Aero 3 in the rotation (between it and the two builders that lead to it).

I don't know if this is a conscious thing you do, but do you notice that you tend to minimise things you don't agree with by saying "Some people want X" "Some people complained about X"?

Sure, some people complain about things. But if the complaints all pile up and generally hit on the same points, then it's safe to say that there's an actual problem there and it should be looked into.