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

[Shurrikhan]

it's like this: A car needs 4 tires. What is the point of adding more and more tires to your car? At what point do you just have tires all over the vehicle in a nonsensical fashion?

Small note: Technically, if XIV were okay with making MP an actual mechanic in this game, new healing skills could have involved greater efficient vs. bursty-ness instead of necessarily needing to be introduced as oGCDs.



Consider also:

If off-GCD heals were specifically needed, that'd mean that there were mechanics that force their use to specific moments (to possibly heal X up in time, you MUST have an oGCD ready to weave between or as a buff to your healing spells) or specific spans of time (within the next X GCDs, you need to do X+Y GCDs' worth of healing).

Which can be fun, but... especially in the prior, stricter case, can also make us feel like we have, on the whole, less agency, since the tool has dedicated/required moments of use and we need only identify those mechanics and hit those buttons on cue.


It's kind of like the difference between having only Cure III, Regen, Asylum, and Assize to deal with intense repeated damage that comes up every few minutes... vs. having a Liturgy of the Bell to drop. Liturgy is one more tool, which we'd normally expect therefore to add complexity, but since it has such an obvious use case, there's little agency, and no real decision-making, beyond that first instance of "Oh, here's the mechanic that wants Lilybell."

Oftentimes, fewer and less tailored tools can produce more complexity in practice than a slew of tailored tools.

[ForsakenRoe]

It's kind of like the difference between having only Cure III, Regen, Asylum, and Assize to deal with intense repeated damage that comes up every few minutes... vs. having a Liturgy of the Bell to drop. Liturgy is one more tool, which we'd normally expect therefore to add complexity, but since it has such an obvious use case, there's little agency, and no real decision-making, beyond that first instance of "Oh, here's the mechanic that wants Lilybell."

Doesn't help that Liturgy has a 3min CD. Most times I use it, it doesn't even get to burn all 5 stacks. Which is why I would like to see it get changed to 3 stacks, 90s CD, and have it's damage penalty for early detonation removed. That way, it's a 1200p OGCD heal if you need it, 3 blasts of 400p if you would rather have the healing staggered (to avoid overheal for example), and it being up twice as often gives it an interesting use case vs Macrocosmos, it's direct competitor skill. That being, 'its up twice as often'. Of course, that would run counter to SE's design of 'WHM has to be mainly reliant on GCDs to heal with'. But it would fit well with WHM's supposed aesthetic of 'big healing, on demand, simple and powerful and easy to access'

[Shurrikhan]

Doesn't help that Liturgy has a 3min CD. Most times I use it, it doesn't even get to burn all 5 stacks. Which is why I would like to see it get changed to 3 stacks, 90s CD, and have it's damage penalty for early detonation removed. That way, it's a 1200p OGCD heal if you need it, 3 blasts of 400p if you would rather have the healing staggered (to avoid overheal for example), and it being up twice as often gives it an interesting use case vs Macrocosmos, it's direct competitor skill. That being, 'its up twice as often'. Of course, that would run counter to SE's design of 'WHM has to be mainly reliant on GCDs to heal with'. But it would fit well with WHM's supposed aesthetic of 'big healing, on demand, simple and powerful and easy to access'

Wouldn't mind that. Would also be fine with the early detonation heals still being penalized, though, as to be more in character with the skill itself (even if that doesn't necessarily fit with the "instant, bursty healing" theme of WHM... which is likely as much fanon than canon, let alone a necessity, anyways).

I feel like new skills shouldn't be neither nigh un-interchangeable but not too interchangeable either. There's definitely a sweet spot, even if it gets increasingly narrow as the toolchest gets more and more (over)stuffed.

To me, it's reminiscent of persistence, storms weathered, etc., rather than a healing nuke, and that much should remain, but some part of its usability should likely be expanded. For instance, maybe once placed, it can reassign For Whom the Bell Tolls, so that it can instead go off whenever the target ally takes damage, rather than the WHM who placed it, exploiting a DoT for AoE healing. Maybe it can use a resource-CD, where it has 6 charges each with a recast of 30 seconds and can remain for as many chimes as it had charges (maybe minus 1 further charge, consumed upon just summoning it) when placed but can also be de-summoned early. Something that allows it to be woven into more situations without it being usable in virtually all of them.

Just my $0.02 / gut feelings on such skills.

[Renathras]

Your "4 Healers Model" does not give me what I want, by your own admission.

"most of"
not
"all of"

There's no situation where we all will get ALL of what we want. That's impossible considering both sides want things that cannot simultaneously be true.

So 100% healing uptime already happened? lmao

How do you go from "hasn't happened yet" to "so it's happened already?! lmao"? That's like the opposite. But, again, this is a side issue that isn't relevant.

Good game design would be ensuring that the majority of each healer's toolkit felt useful and necessary in all forms of content for every type of player. The problem is power creep.

I want to agree with this, but I don't think it's true OTHER THAN the last five words. I think that's true.

Consider a player that likes melee and tanks. They like being right up next to the boss engaging with them, and they hate combat with casting. They won't be happy with RDM because it can't just melee all the time, it has to use cast bars. They also won't like SAM for the cast bars. Should we make every Job in the game have melee combos to appeal to this type of player who doesn't enjoy non-melee combat or caster gameplay?

At some level, we have to accept the basic premise that no Job will appeal to everyone at the same time. We accept this across Jobs and across roles, but for some reason, people insist it's not allowed for healers, despite it being true of every other role and Job in the game, and in general, true of classes and specs in other MMOs as well. There's no game ever invented that had different classes where every class was appealing to every player or type of player. Maybe someone likes using shields and barriers, so they pick SCH or SGE...but then a lot of SCH/SGE healing is through oGCD regens and direct heals. That player doesn't find Indom or Physis enjoyable, they want to use more Adlo/Succor/EuProg/Diag. But the game doesn't shift to accommodate them.

Small note: Technically, if XIV were okay with making MP an actual mechanic in this game, new healing skills could have involved greater efficient vs. bursty-ness instead of necessarily needing to be introduced as oGCDs.

Mhm. It's kind of a mess where we are with the oGCDs at this point.

.

Also seconding Roe's comment on Liturgy's CD being too honkin' long.

EDIT:

I'm just saying, there were people who struggled with Storm's Crown EX because it did more frequent raidwides than usual, and that's nowhere near even 60% healing uptime.

You're conflating two issues here, I think. Storm's Crown also had heavy movement during the damage phases, meaning players trying to use hardcast spells weren't able to. You can have that level of damage with less movement and resolve that issue, which is what we had more of back in ARR fights, so it's not like the game hasn't done it before.

As for "Sylphies"; they realistically don't exist. In the literal sense, Sylphie in the CNJ quest wasn't "I don't wanna dps, I just wanna HEAL!" that people caricature. She was "I don't want to take power from the Elementals because my mother said it hurts them, I'm going to heal from my own life force and I think I learned the BLU Transfusion spell that will kill me when I raise someone, let's go try it out!". Never was it mentioned that she "didn't want to dps". That's an invention of the pro-damage community so they have a convenient insult to poison conversations with.

[ty_taurus]

I want to agree with this, but I don't think it's true OTHER THAN the last five words. I think that's true.

Consider a player that likes melee and tanks. They like being right up next to the boss engaging with them, and they hate combat with casting. They won't be happy with RDM because it can't just melee all the time, it has to use cast bars. They also won't like SAM for the cast bars. Should we make every Job in the game have melee combos to appeal to this type of player who doesn't enjoy non-melee combat or caster gameplay?

At some level, we have to accept the basic premise that no Job will appeal to everyone at the same time. We accept this across Jobs and across roles, but for some reason, people insist it's not allowed for healers, despite it being true of every other role and Job in the game, and in general, true of classes and specs in other MMOs as well. There's no game ever invented that had different classes where every class was appealing to every player or type of player. Maybe someone likes using shields and barriers, so they pick SCH or SGE...but then a lot of SCH/SGE healing is through oGCD regens and direct heals. That player doesn't find Indom or Physis enjoyable, they want to use more Adlo/Succor/EuProg/Diag. But the game doesn't shift to accommodate them.

Your example doesn't really match though. You're talking about a playstyle: melee vs magic. Not wanting actions is not a playstyle. If someone does not want to have more than 5 or 6 actions in PVE, that's not something that should be supported, because that's now how this game is structured.

[Renathras]

Your example doesn't really match though. You're talking about a playstyle: melee vs magic. Not wanting actions is not a playstyle. If someone does not want to have more than 5 or 6 actions in PVE, that's not something that should be supported, because that's now how this game is structured.

No, I'm talking about the type of actions.

Right now, all four healers have basically an identical playstle of dot, spamable nuke filler, 1-3 other Job gimmick damage actions, lots of oGCDs that the bulk of healing is through, and some backup GCDs used mostly in low level content before you get the oGCDs. They're different, but very similar at the same time. And there's complete opposition to making them distinct if that doesn't involve making them all equally more dps focused and complex. All the healers use more than 5 or 6 actions in PvE (oGCDs count).

I agree that we should have less oGCD/GCD overlap. I disagree that every healer Job should be made to appeal to one type of player (which is bad design) or to everyone (which is impossible). This was more a reaction to other comments, though, it just bleeds over here.

I agree all the actions should be useful - I don't like a lot of the PvP kits, but one thing they have going for them is nothing feels useless other than the filler nukes...those feel pretty useless most of the time. Unless someone's AFK, you'll never get a kill with your filler nuke, and other than SGE, which HAS to use it for healing, it doesn't really do anything useful. Like WHM I'd get WAY more use out of a filler Cure 1 than a filler Glare, but that's neither here nor there. The point, though, is that they are very slimmed down kits with very few buttons, forcing the buttons they have to all be pretty useful. There's not a lot of overlap or redundancy, but the gametype also has a very different pace. For example, imagine PvE with 20 second Deployment Tactics. Instead of having lots of buttons, they make the buttons pull more double duty because of it.

We could do that. Slash half the kits out and make abilities double up a lot more. I'm not sure if that would be well received or not, since whenever people suggest it in the healer forum, they tend to get...disagreement.

[ty_taurus]

We could do that. Slash half the kits out and make abilities double up a lot more. I'm not sure if that would be well received or not, since whenever people suggest it in the healer forum, they tend to get...disagreement.

And this is where my ugly shows, because if it were me behind the wheel, I'd rip the bandage and do it anyway. I would just make it my goal to try and make the gameplay that I replace all that bloat with more enjoyable than the negative of losing cooldowns and OGCD healing. And this also includes reworking AST to be the healer designed for healers that don't want to DPS. A while back you asked me if I'd do that regardless of the couple AST players who responded not liking that suggestion, and my response would be "tough. We need this to end this eternal feud, and AST is the healer that makes the most sense to do it with." Now it wouldn't just be the theory crafts I've regurgitated in the past, but something that would be worked on and refined with the help of the other designers, as well as playtested, but I would redefine AST regardless of what any existing AST player wants, because that's the only way I see this war ending before healer number 5 comes along in 2030.

[Renathras]

And this is where my ugly shows, because if it were me behind the wheel, I'd rip the bandage and do it anyway. I would just make it my goal to try and make the gameplay that I replace all that bloat with more enjoyable than the negative of losing cooldowns and OGCD healing. And this also includes reworking AST to be the healer designed for healers that don't want to DPS. A while back you asked me if I'd do that regardless of the couple AST players who responded not liking that suggestion, and my response would be "tough. We need this to end this eternal feud, and AST is the healer that makes the most sense to do it with." Now it wouldn't just be the theory crafts I've regurgitated in the past, but something that would be worked on and refined with the help of the other designers, as well as playtested, but I would redefine AST regardless of what any existing AST player wants, because that's the only way I see this war ending before healer number 5 comes along in 2030.

I feel weird.

I've never simultaneously disagreed AND agreed with a post as much as I simultaneously disagree AND agree with this one, lol

Not sure how to say that, but it's a funny feeling of "This part is completely wrong" and "But THIS part I couldn't agree with more".

[Kacho_Nacho]

I feel weird.

I've never simultaneously disagreed AND agreed with a post as much as I simultaneously disagree AND agree with this one, lol

Not sure how to say that, but it's a funny feeling of "This part is completely wrong" and "But THIS part I couldn't agree with more".

You're not the only one.

[Shurrikhan]

And this is where my ugly shows, because if it were me behind the wheel, I'd rip the bandage and do it anyway. I would just make it my goal to try and make the gameplay that I replace all that bloat with more enjoyable than the negative of losing cooldowns and OGCD healing. And this also includes reworking AST to be the healer designed for healers that don't want to DPS. A while back you asked me if I'd do that regardless of the couple AST players who responded not liking that suggestion, and my response would be "tough. We need this to end this eternal feud, and AST is the healer that makes the most sense to do it with." Now it wouldn't just be the theory crafts I've regurgitated in the past, but something that would be worked on and refined with the help of the other designers, as well as playtested, but I would redefine AST regardless of what any existing AST player wants, because that's the only way I see this war ending before healer number 5 comes along in 2030.

I feel like I agree with much of this, though perhaps just incidentally? I'd definitely have an authoritarian streak when it comes to de-cluttering healer oGCDs. If someone cried out "But I love my Panhaima button. I don't care whether I'm still capable of a near identical action without using up that button on it separately!" I'd still take their button without even offering a pacifier.

Long CDs with highly specific use cases (basically hit Button X only when you see Cue X; if no Cue X, Button X mostly goes to waste) are just an utter waste to me. (Much like inflexible 123 combos, Cleric Stance existing just to grey out one half one's kit or the other, most actions --like Lucid Dreaming-- that exist solely to be hit on CD, purposely sabotaged macro systems, etc.)



In the case of AST, it's the job I think least needs a bunch of damage actions only because to me damage is just downtime/additional complexity, and Cards are already a huge factor there, so I'd like for what damage options AST has to synergize well with them as sort of big, pivotal, and set-up (kind of like a revised no-CD, more flexible, and more involved Earthly Star).

But, I wouldn't tell them "No additional downtime tools for you because internal-rotation-phobes might get offended at there being an option they don't want to use, even if they literally have no need to do so." It's simply that there are some things that fit better than others with its core (Cards and Time-Space Magic), so I'd want their kit to account for and build around what's core to that job.