Make healers DPS with four or five healing actions

[ForsakenRoe]

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.

Ah yes the Death Sentence-crit auto iconic duo of Twintania, is it any wonder WHMs back then tended to avoid Cleric Stance when that was potentially looming on the horizon for them to have to deal with?

[TheDustyOne]

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

I was speaking in the hypothetical of "if we had crowd control, buffs, and debuffs". In the end we end up where we're at currently.

[Turtledeluxe]

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.

Making your boring dps routine do more damage isn't going to make it better. The rotations need to be engaging, the number getting bigger does nothing for the class or the game. In fact it makes it objectively worse.

And maybe that's what you're saying tbf, I'm unsure. I just think if any dps is added it should be the result of a rotation and optimization (ie damage based on skill level). As far as I know there's already a decent spread of damage for every class so that doesn't seem to the be the issue. The issue is whether it's engaging to play.

The question really is if devs will do that. Because they aren't going to make casual content harder, they aren't going to make damage % based, they aren't going to nerf tanks. Their only real choices are to do nothing or make the healer gameplay more diverse. I'm not confident you will see progress in this area.

And the reason i say that is because it's not just WHM. It's SAM, it's SMN, DNC, the list goes on. Devs are deleting agency and uniqueness from the gameplay of classes more than expanding it in favor of expanding it via new classes.

[TheDustyOne]

I've always advocated for more dps BUTTONS, not bigger numbers. I don't care for bigger numbers. I just want to not be bored when I have a wall of Glares staring down me when the boss is twiddling its thumbs. It is possible to have both more damage we need to heal, and more buttons to press when we don't need to heal.

I'm just going to leave this here so people better understand my position.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post6258953

TL;DR: More interesting downtime (an actual rotation), more to heal, reduce oGCD heals, interaction between healing and dpsing, and MP management.

[Turtledeluxe]

I've always advocated for more dps BUTTONS, not bigger numbers. I don't care for bigger numbers. I just want to not be bored when I have a wall of Glares staring down me when the boss is twiddling its thumbs. It is possible to have both more damage we need to heal, and more buttons to press when we don't need to heal.

I'm just going to leave this here so people better understand my position.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post6258953

TL;DR: More interesting downtime (an actual rotation), more to heal, reduce oGCD heals, interaction between healing and dpsing, and MP management.

Ah OK, then yes.

Though to be clear, I still think it is asking a lot to ask for more buttons, more to manage, etc. Not only because devs are deleting more than adding over time, contracting vs expanding existing class gameplay. Maybe I'm wrong and the DRG rework with give us some kind of indicator of where the team philosophy currently is post Endwalker. I'm not optimistic because of the trend and the fact they keep adding classes vs perhaps taking a break and deepening the gameplay of the classes that exist. Imo the game doesn't need classes, it needs specializations that give current classes more gameplay variety. But again it all sounds like a pipe dream because frankly it seems the devs want single rigid rotations that are simple and oriented around a two minute meta that erases need for strategy. We will see.

Given the popularity of sage and reaper it seems like the playerbase has accepted this as the norm so we will see a big migration to the new dps classes again and new complaints about the old ones will roll in by 8.0.

[TheDustyOne]

I'm not all that optimistic about the future of job designs either honestly. If I could go back to SB style job design, I would in a heartbeat (sans WHM lilies back then, they were legitimately awful). I don't think the problem is necessarily that they keep adding jobs, more playstyles and archetypes is always a good thing, but that there's a tendency to streamline over time and Squares attempts to "smooth the edges" ends up removing what may have made something unique.

The big thing is that I think they don't have enough combat designers for the amount of jobs, so to make it easier on them, they homogenize between the roles, which makes it much easier to compare the numbers and capabilities between them. Sebazy has suggested in the past (and probably still advocates for it) that Square needs a designer dedicated to healers, as that seems to be the role they struggle with most to make engaging. It's not exactly a simple problem to fix though, "lolol just hire more designers" since that's extra people to train for the role, and they need a good understanding of not only how the game plays, but also the design constraints put on them by the engine and current design philosophy.

[IDontPetLalas]

"It's not exactly a simple problem to fix though, "lolol just hire more designers" since that's extra people to train for the role, and they need a good understanding of not only how the game plays, but also the design constraints put on them by the engine and current design philosophy."

It should be expected when you are a major game studio, have invested in a product for at least 10 years and routinely plan your roadmap well in advance.

Square has had a relatively small number of job designers relative to a number of other studios for FFXIV for years, with less jobs, so the risk that issues related to addressing job changes could suffer should have been brought up. It's not an "lolol we're in school and we're just learning here". You plan and hire for multiple roles based upon knowing you need to onboard them - whether it's developers, architects, your product team, your designers, etc. There's no excuse here.

[TheDustyOne]

Don't get me wrong, I don't disagree, Square has made their bed, and they're now lying in it.

The problem that they face is that there's not a lot of MMO designers within Japan, Square has a near monopoly on Japanese MMOs. So any designers they hire need to be trained for that particular skillset, as well as on the game itself. This is something they should've done years ago back before ShB got released imo, and they absolutely should hire extra devs. I'm just saying it's not easy and requires time.

[IDontPetLalas]

Don't get me wrong, I don't disagree, Square has made their bed, and they're now lying in it.

The problem that they face is that there's not a lot of MMO designers within Japan, Square has a near monopoly on Japanese MMOs. So any designers they hire need to be trained for that particular skillset, as well as on the game itself. This is something they should've done years ago back before ShB got released imo, and they absolutely should hire extra devs. I'm just saying it's not easy and requires time.

Yes , thanks, agreed , I would even had said pre- ShB, but you're more generous than I am

[Turtledeluxe]

Imo the DRG rework coming in 7.0 is the final nail in the coffin. The fact they haven't addressed feedback about the two minute meta (I've never heard anyone praise it, maybe I'm wrong) plus a new, but soulless rework of DRG indicate to me not only do they not have the resources, but perhaps no intention of reversing course on the combat. I understand they may not have hired or trained or whatever. MMOs with significantly less budget (GW2) have shown you can reinvent classes multiple times. SE's idea of reinventing them is making them braindead in most cases...that's not a question of resources imo but intention. Maybe it's because of XVI and FF otherwise but I just get the feeling SE is terrified of mixing depth and difficulty into standard modes or casual content.

I genuinely think SE believes what turning people off from their games is dying too much or having to make decisions about your character. When that isn't it at all, for XIV or any single player games.