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

[Renathras]

So how do you make the people who are bored need to heal more, without affecting the healing demanded of the people who are content with current healing requirements?

This question is a double edged sword - how do you make a damage increase for the people who are bored without affecting the people who are content with the current model?

[HyperiusUltima]

This question is a double edged sword - how do you make a damage increase for the people who are bored without affecting the people who are content with the current model?

Simple: SE dumps the baby with the bath water and decides they’re doing it their way - even though there is much criticism about how they do things.

[WaxSw]

Increase the dps options and a casual player can keep playing the same because dps is optional there
Increase the healing required and a casual player wont be able to keep playing the same because the hps requirements are unavoidable

They are not the same and increasing the healing for the kit we have should go past "I just have to press *insert generic GCD that has no interactions with the rest of the kit* a bit more often" (which could be said the same for dps actions, I cant believe people find pressing glare and maybe handle other cds that hard yet here we are) or it wont solve anything

[ForsakenRoe]

This question is a double edged sword - how do you make a damage increase for the people who are bored without affecting the people who are content with the current model?

By, as we've been through hundreds of times, making the potency difference between 'optimal' and 'suboptimal' low such that 'doing it wrong' is not enough to cause an enrage, but 'doing it right' has a gain in potency over 'wrong'. Avoiding the failure state of 'not dealing enough damage', that being 'you hit enrage'. Whereas with healing, you can increase the amount required to sate the higher end, but the lower end is not allowed to 'ignore' the extra requirement, it's unlikely the balance would allow them to play 'suboptimally' without it causing a wipe. And if it IS possible to play suboptimally re: more healing required, then it's not changed anything for the higher end, as they're already playing optimally as it is. Going from zero healing GCDs used to 'still zero GCDs used, but more OGCDs were needed' in a dungeon run is not gonna go down as 'successful rework' for the best players

[AmiableApkallu]

This question is a double edged sword - how do you make a damage increase for the people who are bored without affecting the people who are content with the current model?

The other edge of ForsakenRoe's question is better phrased as: How do you make the people who are bored able to damage more, without affecting the damage demanded of the people who are content with current damage requirements?

• Need to heal more > Able to damage more
• Healing demanded > Damage demanded
• Current healing requirements > Current damage requirements

I admit that there's a loss of parallelism in changing "need" to "able" in that first bullet point, but I think it better preserves the whole "healers should be required to heal more" versus "healers should have more interesting DPS options".

And the answer to that is straightforward: Don't tune DPS checks any differently than they're tuned currently. Pick from any number of healer DPS kit proposals that are specifically designed with the first bullet point above in mind.

[Shurrikhan]

So how do you make the people who are bored need to heal more, without affecting the healing demanded of the people who are content with current healing requirements?

You'd pretty much have to have a reward for more quick/timely (not more) healing that results in an rDPS increase, rather than impacting survival.

That'd be something like players having lower output when on the verge of death (e.g., 1% less output per %HP missing below 50% HP), and/or the ability to cleanse Damage Dealt Down stacks, though that "healing" then would be solely Esuna.

In that gamestate, you'd maybe want to save ST oGCDs just to more quickly pop people's HP back up after unpredictable damage that isn't best solved via just another AoE, while using precast GCD heals on the more predictable stuff. That in turn would probably have us want a bit more granular control over the timing of our heals, etc., none of which would necessarily be bad.

However, it would ultimately be actions done and considerations made to increase rDPS... not survival. Which is not a "need" so much as a "want", as there is very little chance of that being significant enough to really impact one's chance of hitting Enrage (especially compared to just not letting people die, not wasting GCDs, and keeping one's casts rolling, as per now).

This question is a double edged sword - how do you make a damage increase for the people who are bored without affecting the people who are content with the current model?

Literally any increase to damage that isn't so negligible as to not be worth bothering with (in favor of focusing solely on more rewarding factors of gameplay) but continues to be miles away from making a difference to the likelihood of an enrage in a normal party (the full number of players, none with broken gear, minds, or internet).

A commonly mentioned dependence on using or not using an additional tool, for instance, has been less than 10% of maximum DPS, which in turn tends to be at most 1.5% of party DPS -- i.e., negligible to one's chances to hit enrage compared to any given mistake that'd be easily visible to others or even just standard deviation in/from Crit/DHit luck across the party.

___________

Unless you specifically nerf of the damage contributed by the existing tools, allowing Healers more damage through their agency does not at all affect the engagement required of others. It's excess to requirement, and therefore will not affect those who do not wish to use it.

If Healers are not indirectly buffed through those new actions, and their PPM is instead siphoned off from their filler action, etc., to support the bonuses-over-filler of the new skills, then that loss possible would still negligible (e.g., under 1.5% of party DPS). However, there seems little need to avoid buffing healer damage, given that healers are already the role most likely to be skipped over in favor of others, so that is pretty well moot.

Requiring more healing, however, will affect all players, whether they want it or not -- because it's healing, and the only way to require healing is to make the party die when the healing is insufficient.

[ForsakenRoe]

I admit that there's a loss of parallelism in changing "need" to "able" in that first bullet point, but I think it better preserves the whole "healers should be required to heal more" versus "healers should have more interesting DPS options".

And the answer to that is straightforward: Don't tune DPS checks any differently than they're tuned currently. Pick from any number of healer DPS kit proposals that are specifically designed with the first bullet point above in mind.

Man can you just do my job for me, you worded what I was thinking but couldn't find the words to say

Yes, 'more healing required' suffers the same binary flaw as we currently experience with our healing output, either we do need it, or we don't and it's a waste. Being 'able' to heal more doesn't mean anything. We can pump Cure3 if we want, it doesn't do anything for us in terms of gameplay engagement fun etc, unless we have the damage coming in to require that HPS. And if we DO have that damage coming in, then it's no longer a case of 'we are able to pump Cure3', it's 'we NEED to pump Cure3'. In contrast, more damage tools, should they be tuned correctly (big ask for SE I know), would be mostly ignoreable. Let's say WHM got Banish tomorrow in a patch, and it's 350p. That's more than Glare. As long as the player uses EITHER button, they meet the DPS output for that GCD that was expected of them today, which is the 310p of 'Glare'. Banish's additional output would be, in the current tier, completely optional. Doubly so because we have gear now

[Sebazy]

I've explained it before, but it constantly gets ignored. Some people don't have a mind for DPS. Give them more DPS buttons and they can't handle it. But give them more healing requirements and they handle that just fine.

This idea that people can't press Regen or Cure 2 is just inane to me.

Because APM matters.

Because Hotkey muscle memory matters.

Because Spatial awareness matters.

Because Content experience matters.

Because Resilience under pressure matters.

These are all things that non DPSing healers have a tendency to struggle with. Deny it all you want, it's a simple fact.

It's not just as simple as pressing Regen or Cure 2. They can't handle more DPS buttons because they don't have the APM or awareness and oversight to utilise them effectively. And if they don't have good enough awareness or APM, that is going to hamper their ability to heal as well. Go look through your 24 man co healers over the last few years, it's right there in the logs. Look at the healers that have a low CPM rate, odds are they are the ones that are failing at DPSing, failing at healing and failing at mechanics. All 3 things go hand in hand. As such, holding some kind of belief that a healer who isn't able to handle doing DPS with some vague level of complexity will be more than fine at being an Osu superstar once the red buttons turn green is insane to me.

[Connor]

I still feel like the ‘if healers had to heal more Lil Jimmy NoFriends couldn’t complete the content’ is ignoring that like all things (unless you’re solo) it’s a team effort.

He might struggle to deal with enhanced healing requirements, but will the tanks? And the Red Mage? Did the Summoner fall asleep? What about the Bards and the Dancers? I mean, Warrior exists lol.

(Almost) every non-healing job in the game has ways they can directly or indirectly impact how easily healers can meet those requirements. Is it really right to say that higher healing requirements put an unfair pressure on newer healers when they aren’t alone in managing it? And that’s not even accounting for the fact that a large amount of content has two healers?

Overall I think it’s a fairly low probability of ending up in a party composition where there’s only 4 party members, one is a Black Mage, one is a Samurai, one is a tank who’s so bad they don’t know how to hit party defensive abilities or healing abilities, and a healer who simply cannot meet the requirements no matter what.

I guess what I’m saying is, i don’t think it would just take ‘the healer not being skilled enough’ for higher healing requirements to completely crush new healers. It would also take refusal from dps to use their various abilities to relieve that pressure and the refusal of the tank to use any kind of defensive or auxiliary healing abilities. Which, you’d have to be really unlucky if you were getting super bad players consistently, isn’t it law of averages? Most players are, well, average lol

Also as an addendum: I’m not using this in defense of the ‘make healers only heal’ debate lol. But I do think that if healing requirements were to go up from what they are now in general content, there’s more to consider than just the healers themselves in a vacuum. The burden can be shared with others if it becomes too much to carry, for want of a better explanation lol

[Shurrikhan]

Because APM matters.

Because Hotkey muscle memory matters.

Because Spatial awareness matters.

Because Content experience matters.

Because Resilience under pressure matters.

These are all things that non DPSing healers have a tendency to struggle with. Deny it all you want, it's a simple fact.

Though, increase their healing requirements and you tend to get at least the same degree of frustration as if their damage optimization required were increased (e.g., if their filler+DoT loop were specifically nerfed AND Healer DPS were actually made more impactful), except now it spills over from just them... to the party they repeatedly end up letting die.




To be clear, I think we could increase healing requirements quite a bit before we our answer should go from "...Learn at least the basics of play, then?" to genuine concern...

...but I don't get how anyone could think that others living or dying by their making correct decisions as to the necessary healing to be done in the next 2, 5, 10, etc., seconds and the most efficient ways to do that over time, and what mitigation will have to be out by what moment -- as per life under 75+% of uptime spent healing -- would somehow stress players less than 1-2 extra downtime tools.

Hell, even a 10% increase in the healing required (i.e.., 10% sustain potency per minute needed to prevent deaths) would be a fair bit more stressful to most than a 10% increase to damage possible (10% higher ceiling to rDPS, which may require optimizing additional tools to generate).