Make healers DPS with four or five healing actions

[Banriikku]

I have the feeling most of the time the proposed changes are comming from people that dont want to heal and/or use this role to "netlfix and chill".

More Buttons,try it, think about what happens if you give either dps or healing buttons. Think it trough, it will not change the problem of way too much OGCD and GCD healing, the extrem predictable damage and the HUGE timespan of doing only 1button dps.
These are the problems, none of them are solved, some of the ideas even introduce new problems.

Healer's need random damage, debuff's and buff's or we need to give up on holy trinity and give all jobs healing and kill the healer roll. There is no inbetween or maybe this button or mybe this damage. It is embrace encounter design - no dedicated healing role or it is embrace the trinity - and have a dedicated healing role. Encounter design or healer role design one of them has to go. Enocunter is desigened as if were no dedicated healer there and healer job design is as if random damage, buff's and debuff's are present. As if both dev team's do not talk with each other or through a bad filter.

[Zeastria]

Reminder:

The core issue with ffxiv healing is:
1) Low damage output and the frequency which it happens at.
2) Most damage is avoidable and predictable => which casues a lot of heal downtime when playing with an experienced groups.

Possible solution:
- Damage should be % based, meaning better gear does not reduce damage taken.
- Increase the damage output on all abilites,auto attacks and make it happen more frequently .
- Add DOT debuffs.
- Add stuff to dispell (Esuna mech).

[TheDustyOne]

Possible solution:
- Damage should be % based, meaning better gear does not reduce damage taken.

While I'm fine with most of your solutions, this is the one I disagree with as it makes the defence stats meaningless, and also makes it (technically) harder to heal someone with more HP, you'd ironically make the Vitality stats in better gear a detriment. Better gear requiring less healing doesn't have to be a bad thing, and it's why I and many others still argue in favour of a small rotation even if I would also like more incoming damage. It still gives that sense of progression and power, which is the point of the gearing system.

Everything else though I'm fine with. More incoming damage is nice, just that we also have to remember there's a limit to how much we can increase it by.

[Aravell]

The main problem with healers is actually more expansive than just increasing healing requirements is going to solve. If you make damage based on HP%, you get a situation where healers get weaker as everyone gains more gear, which is very unpleasant in a game, no one wants to get weaker as everyone gets more gear. If you apply more damage to the party, you will eventually get to the point where that amount of extra damage is no longer enough to force GCD heals.

Healing downtime will always exist, that is an absolute fact. That's why the best solution would be a mixture of cutting out OGCD bloat, making encounters hit harder and also giving us an engaging downtime kit, all this was already done pre-ShB before SE gutted everything and shoved so much free healing onto us with not enough damage to justify it. Increasing healing requirements alone won't cut it.

[TheDustyOne]

Well put, whether people like it or not, we're going to have some level of downtime, and that downtime has to be filled with something, and DPS is going to be the only viable answer for that with this games design.

Of course, we could explore other avenues, like crowd control, buffs, debuffs, etc., but damage is something that's always going to be needed. Not every boss is going to have stunnable adds, or interruptible attacks, and once everyone has their buffs up, we still need something else to do. Even Astro will have to rely on Malefic when all other responsibilities are finished.

[ForsakenRoe]

Again, SB was the design that solved this. There was a video I saw of Momo and his cohealer explaining how they got down to the lowest possible number of healing GCDs between them for O12S, that I found fascinating because it contained such leftfield ideas like 'Delay our 2nd pot window since we get 2 anyway, and have everyone use superpotions here to survive this particular mechanic', and 'instead of using Adlo>Deploy, use Succor, then deploy the same Succor off of the fairy to get a second shield for free'. The point of that video that I'm bringing up though, is they were the number 1 healer duo in the world on that fight, and they still had eleven healing GCDs used. No matter how good you are/were in SB, you'd still have SOME GCDS used, because the ratio of damage incoming: healing OGCDs available was much better balanced. Now we've got far too many and we can cover everything a lot easier.

However, back then we ALSO had a more in-depth rotation that we managed to keep up with just fine, despite the extra pressure to use healing GCDs, contrary to the current design (which seems to assume that if we have any more damage GCDs, people will just completely forget how to press Succor when it's needed). Not only did we have an additional button (or two), or extra depth on systems (like AST cards), we also had shorter durations. WHM, for example, might have been 'oh it only had Aero3 as well, compared to now', But Aero3 was 24s, and Aero2 was 18s. Dia is now 30s. Even if we just added Aero3 back exactly as it was, back into EW WHM, it still wouldn't be the same as then because back then we were pressing Aero2 40% more often than we do now for Dia. It's not just the number of different buttons, but the frequency of how often we press them, that is the issue. It's the same reason that if SE adds like, 'oh you get Purgation as a WHM 100 skill, it has a 2min CD' that doesn't solve the problem, it's a new damage move sure but it's going to be used in raidbuffs and ignored till the next, so it doesn't help break up the Glare spam at all.

I would agree that we'd need either more things to pressure our more bloated OGCD kit, or a reduction in power/accessibility to said OGCDs. But the problems there are A: I don't expect SE will find a way to pressure our kit enough to solve the issue in the content it matters most (EX roulette and other casual content). EG I can do a pull as SGE with Krasis Physis Kerachole, then once Kera falls off, Taurochole and any one of Soteria, Haima, Panhaima, Pneuma or Holos. Buffing damage output of things to the absolute limit that I'd expect a casual to be 'okay' with would have me using up to three of those skills instead of one. But it doesn't get me to use a GCD still. So we'd be leaving that lower content as 'well it's going to be boring for you anyway but it's just not for you so thats ok', it's not ok because 90% of the game is that level of content. It'd be the same vein as 'if you want challenge, go play ultimate', I think I should be able to find engaging gameplay in any level of content and at the moment that just is not the case.

And B: Power/access reduction of OGCDs. Nobody likes getting nerfed. If SE did a patch where WAR's Fell Cleave got reduced by 10p, but their 123 combo all got increased by 20 each, people would complain that WAR got nerfed because FC lost 10. Losing access or power from our kit, in any form, would go down like a lead balloon, I'd expect. Instead, the only way to sneak a change like this through would be to, for example, increase damage output by 50%, increase player HP from VIT stat by 50%, increase GCD potencies by 50%, leaving OGCDs where they are. Then they're not 'nerfed', they just 'get left behind'. Blizzard did this recently, to try and address the fact that people were dropping healers from M+ runs, because off-healing (equivalent to our Curing Waltz and Phoenix regens) was strong enough to cover the healing required. Then, one patch later, they had to do it again because healers scaled too fast on gear and stopped needing to heal as much (meaning more DPS time). Also, they don't have OGCD healing per se, most things are on the GCD there (with only a select few exceptions). As such, I think we have a case study to see that this method would not work, or if it does, would require constant rebalancing patches as we get more gear

TLDR, addressing the healing side of things is a monumental task, adding new damage buttons to fill the downtime is a stopgap to alleviate at least a little bit of the 'its boring' issue we are facing, to buy a bit of time for the devs to work out this Gordian Knot, and additionally opens up massive space for new additions/interactions between damage/healing (since they apparently struggle to find new additions currently, hence 'we didn't really know what to do with SCH, here's Expedience). Also, release HW or SB Classic servers so we can see how class design interacted with battle design back then, and see if there's anything salvageable from those times

[Zeastria]

The main problem with healers is actually more expansive than just increasing healing requirements is going to solve. If you make damage based on HP%, you get a situation where healers get weaker as everyone gains more gear, which is very unpleasant in a game, no one wants to get weaker as everyone gets more gear. If you apply more damage to the party, you will eventually get to the point where that amount of extra damage is no longer enough to force GCD heals.

Healing downtime will always exist, that is an absolute fact. That's why the best solution would be a mixture of cutting out OGCD bloat, making encounters hit harder and also giving us an engaging downtime kit, all this was already done pre-ShB before SE gutted everything and shoved so much free healing onto us with not enough damage to justify it. Increasing healing requirements alone won't cut it.

Maybe make heals also based on % too, to balance it.

The issue with gear is that you take less damage with higher ilvl.
- which bring us back to the core issue => low damage output.

We need a solution to counter that.
Damage should stay relevant, and not eliminated by higher ilvl.
The Healing downtime we see in FFXIV doesn't exist in other mmos,
which proves there is solutions for it!

[Aravell]

Maybe make heals also based on % too, to balance it.

The issue with gear is that you take less damage with higher ilvl.
- which bring us back to the core issue => low damage output.

We need a solution to counter that.
Damage should stay relveant, and not eliminated by higher ilvl.
The Healing downtime we see in FFXIV doesn't exist in other mmos,
which proves there is solutions for it!

Instead of doing HP% things, they could also make the jump up in defensive stats lower and remove parts of our OGCD kit. That would make the GCD kit always required even as we get geared up, because if defensive stats go up slower, we won't invalidate mechanics anymore.

Although, due to the slower design of the 2.5s GCD system, I don't think they can do fast-paced healing catch up design, someone will likely die from slightly slow heal propagation if they tried. So, I don't think you can completely delete healing downtime without revamping the entire battle system, so there is benefit in at least making our downtime kit more engaging in addition to other changes.

[IDontPetLalas]

Well put, whether people like it or not, we're going to have some level of downtime, and that downtime has to be filled with something, and DPS is going to be the only viable answer for that with this games design.

Of course, we could explore other avenues, like crowd control, buffs, debuffs, etc., but damage is something that's always going to be needed. Not every boss is going to have stunnable adds, or interruptible attacks, and once everyone has their buffs up, we still need something else to do. Even Astro will have to rely on Malefic when all other responsibilities are finished.

AST "other responsibilities" are being overrated here, should not be left with just malefic spam

[Sebazy]

Damage should be % based, meaning better gear does not reduce damage taken.

Using fixed percentages for damage (and to a lesser extent healing) opens up it's own can of worms, especially so with today's kits. TLDR, it really doesn't play nice with abilities like Thrill of Battle and Protraction. If they wear off mid cast you can quickly end up with a hit that's far harder than it should be thanks to how snapshotting works.

I do agree on the other solutions listed though and I'll add old school mini tank busters and critical hits to the list like I usually do.

ARR bosses had the right idea for this. Tank damage was streakier and far less consistent which made it much tougher to spreadsheet a fight down to the last GCD like you can today.