Make healers DPS with four or five healing actions

[Shurrikhan]

until 6.1. o.O (I know, surprised me, too:

Fair enough; I should have specified "its replacement" or "our (current/relevant) ST, instant-cast DoT", expecting an irrelevant nit-pick on a technicality over a skill that was by then irrelevant to the earlier point in question. Good use of... Roe's resource (all in the same breadth you slight others for mentioning anything others may have already discussed earlier in the thread -- the very same one, it would appear)?

Fights are ALREADY constrained - so many oGCDs and instant casts means that fights all have to be heavy movement and have large spikes of damage. That's ALREADY constraining fight design. Smaller spikes can be easily handled, and low movement allows for GCD heal use, making the oGCDs redundant.

First, I said nothing of instant casts. But having more oGCDs does not "mean that all fights have to be heavy movement and have large spikes of damage". There is no paired requirement for heavy movement and large damage spikes. There is no requirement for either individually. And is what is thereby permitted goes beyond either.

It is more than a little absurd to say that "Now that we have this tool, fights must cause us to live or die through its advantages." The whole course of the game, and of pretty much any other MMO, has proven otherwise. Literally anything that can make unique use of oGCDs can be good design in the context of oGCDs, and even letting those tools merely be redundancies woven in for efficiency is technically still fully permissible design.

You're free to dislike movement. You're free to dislike damage intake of any sort that would require split-second heals and/or heals from finite resources (e.g., limited by gauge and/or cooldowns). But having those tools does not force X, Y, and Z, just as new mitigation tools do not force constant or per-CD mechanics that would be one-shots if not for a strict schedule of stacked mitigation; those tools are simply something that helps allow for that variance in fight design in a more engaging manner than would changes to the base, spammable kit as to allow for near-infinite mobility, etc.

_________


:: Again, I'm not a fan of, say, EuD / EuP spam having infinite mobility, so I'm not about to defend a strawman. I'll say only that EuD/EuP spam doesn't outright break the game to me because it's a perk of only a single healer and is generally ill-advised anyways in the present context, but I have not advocated for constantly spammable instant-casts. I just like a degree of additional burst healing available atop our GCDs because of the complexity in fight design and player interactions therewith that such permits.

OGCD heals would be far, far more useful to the game if they could act as something that isn't quite the core of healing nor saved only for specific mechanics (instead, having their consideration interwoven a lot more around our GCDs heals and time-sensitive attack GCDs), but included reasonably/sparingly, they are good thing. Their presence permits that much more from fight design, but they do not force anything. Yes, we should probably re-concentrate/consolidate some of them; they are become rather bloated. But they are not the reason for high movement, etc.; they did not force those outcomes.

Look to the other kits and to trends across the expansions. Movement is simply a growing design fad that fits poorly born partly of and partly for the watering down of role identities (especially, that of Melee and Casters), not a consequence of oGCDs heals.

[Renathras]

Good use of... Roe's resource

It was a nit-pick of a nit-pick, so turnabout is fair play. That said, I didn't use Roe's resource, I looked it up myself earlier to verify what she posted (Wayback sometimes does some weird stuff, as do some of the referenced pages; Mr Happy did a series on the Jobs through the game's history and worked through that process). Far as I can tell, she was using an archived version of it, I'm using the modern version's page with the version history.

But this is an aside distraction, and as I said, I don't hammer people for honest mistakes admitted fairly. Let's get back on track, shall we?

.

They kind of do mean they have to be, otherwise, there would be no pressure to use all the oGCDs and to plan out their use carefully to ensure you have them for the movement phases. If there was no movement, you could use them willy-nilly since they would be completely substitutable vs the GCDs that you have to use during the encounter.

Likewise, large damage spikes are necessary otherwise the kit isn't challenged. If the damage was not "several ways of large damage within a 10 second period every 30 seconds", you could easily deal with it without having to tax your kit at all.

So the oGCDs both encourage and nearly require the fight design to be high movement and heavy damage (when damage is applied) in order to at all pressure the kits. And it even ceases to do so as players gear, leading to the "too much downtime" problem.

Having these tools DOES force this encounter design. At least as much as not having them forces another. Your argument is equally applicable here.

[Shurrikhan]

It was a nit-pick of a nit-pick, so turnabout is fair play.

No. One error was used to draw an errant conclusion about the actual, relevant topic (portion of filler attack spam across expansions).

The other was about a then-replaced ability irrelevant to WHM's playflow in any endgame content in which Misery would also have been present.

There's a difference between a relevant correction (it literally changes the conclusion on a topic of some significance) and an irrelevant one.

This is the same reason why simply spinning the wording around on a critique on something flagrantly absurd you've said does not suddenly "turn about" that critique onto the one pointed out the issue. "Turn-about" is not equal when the objects of those actions vary qualitatively. I know that attempts at snappy/witty retorted in the best of light, but tough luck.

Having these tools DOES force this encounter design. At least as much as not having them forces another. Your argument is equally applicable here.

Show me where Benediction forces fight designs that would maximize its use.
Show me where Cover forces fight designs that would maximize its use.
Show me where Elusive Jump forces fight designs that would maximize its use.

Rotationally necessary gap-makers like pre-Engagement Displacement constrain fight design if left with only one charge, by giving a minimum space available for that backstep. Displacement has not and will not, however, create a per ~30s mechanic in which a RDM is forced to rely on Displacement to avoid damage. The presence of backsteps does not force mechanics that make unique use of those backsteps.
The frequency of available mitigation constrains the frequency of otherwise OHKO tankbusters. However, they do not force tankbusters to go off at that limit of frequency.


No tool forces its unique/maximal use onto fight design, but fight design is forcibly constrained by the minimum capacities available through the jobs' kits.

My giving you $50 for lunch does not force you to spend $50 on lunch, nor necessarily any more than whatever the cheapest lunch costs. If, however, all lunches cost at least $5, then you are forced to at least have $5 for lunch.

Minimums and maximums are not the same thing.

[Kewitt]

I play WHM, But I spam DPS unless I need to refresh regen or toss out a heal.
I wish I had a dps combo honestly.

The only time you need to know how to heal as a heal is in Extreme contant.
I would love to give more DPS option, or more big DPS tied to healing.

[Aravell]

As for the PVP woes, do you really want PVP to be decided entirely on 'who has the healer on their team' because I would prefer not to have janky systems like Dampening to 'force' a death to eventually occur. Culling Time in The Feast was bad enough. What are you after, an infinite charge Cure1 spell that heals for, say, 4000? It'd do little to help in CC and even less in Frontlines. Putting pressure on the enemy to drain them of their sustain before running out of yours is the whole reason PVP even works. There were times in pre-EW times, you literally could not kill a healer in PVP, as a DPS, if you were solo. They just healed through everything you threw at them. I remember walking away from FOUR DPS all wailing on me, as a Noct AST, because reapplying the shield over and over was instantcast. That is absolutely toxic design. Even if it had a cast bar so I had to stand still, the fact I could keep 4 of the enemy team busy, making space for my allies to take objectives etc, was ridiculous. I'm glad it's gone. All that is needed is Cure2 should be instantcast like the rest

Funny thing about old Feast, you could actually dive the opposing team and camp their base in 8v8 matches and just never die as a SCH, the balance was ridiculous back then. If I recall correctly, a single WHM can also keep their entire party alive indefinitely in Frontlines.

[ForsakenRoe]

Far as I can tell, she was using an archived version of it, I'm using the modern version's page with the version history.

An archived version of the Job Guide, from SE's site, yes. It only goes back to SB due to that being the first time they actually made said page, though, so for HW or ARR changes we are entirely reliant on either Gamerescape's version history tab, or Consolegameswiki which exceptionally crispy and sluggish to load for some reason. I figured it would be better to get the info directly from the source as it were, rather than risk transcription errors with a 3rd party (eg they might write that a change happened in 5.15, when it technically happened in 5.15c, and I would want that specificity)

Next time you're wrong about something, do you want me to say in your following posts you don't get to speak/it's not right for you to talk because you were wrong about one thing?

So long as it's a situation identical to this one (where I am wrong, get corrected, and then try to continue talking from a position of knowledge on the subject using the updated information, as if I knew the 'real answer' all along), sure go nuts

Funny thing about old Feast, you could actually dive the opposing team and camp their base in 8v8 matches and just never die as a SCH, the balance was ridiculous back then. If I recall correctly, a single WHM can also keep their entire party alive indefinitely in Frontlines.

I used to do it for the GARO event as WHM, infinitely accessible Repose was absolutely disgusting too. Infinitely accessible Stella on AST as well, for HW specifically. Was especially nasty in frontlines, you hit one guy at a time and watch your blob of attack dogs just pile onto the 'straggler who fell behind'

[Renathras]

So long as it's...

No. One error was...

Okay, yeah, we're done here.

This is the part where the conversation turns from "We're having a good conversation" (you can tell because no posts are getting more than 1 or 2 likes) to "We're bashing Ren now" (where the likes go up above half a dozen - as I always say, just bash Ren and you get likes, proving that the like feature is useless for judging worthwhile posts since actual good conversation posts get few or no likes).

It as a good talk, glad we had it until you and Roe decided to switch into bash Ren mode.

Looking forward to the next time we can have a good conversation.

[OdinelStarrei]

What did he mean by this?

I just like Shurrikhan's posts anytime I see them because they're my favorite person on the forums to talk to and the stuff they write I find either interesting or enjoyable, not because they're clowning on you in particular.

[ty_taurus]

I almost never like any post unless it’s a really solid OP that I think is important.

[BaconBits]

Okay, yeah, we're done here.

This is the part where the conversation turns from "We're having a good conversation" (you can tell because no posts are getting more than 1 or 2 likes) to "We're bashing Ren now" (where the likes go up above half a dozen - as I always say, just bash Ren and you get likes, proving that the like feature is useless for judging worthwhile posts since actual good conversation posts get few or no likes).

It as a good talk, glad we had it until you and Roe decided to switch into bash Ren mode.

Looking forward to the next time we can have a good conversation.

You rang?