Healer kit adjustment idea, 40% dps to 60% heals/utility

[Renathras]

...

Honestly, Lucid is one of the things they COULD remove. Depending on how you play, you either use it on CD, or use it after you're below some MP threshold (70% or 80%). This means you never "save" it for an emergency, like death or having to Raise. Meaning if you KO and get raised just after you used it, you don't have it to use. It's not a reliable recovery tool since healers (not AST) are MP negative (6.0 WHM says "hai!") and so have to keep using it. It's like Astrodyne. AST isn't holding onto it for recovery situations. Not being optimal, anyway.

The way it's used, Lucid is boring and should honestly be removed and just increase healer natural MP regen to have the same amount of overall MP generation per unit time. The encounters and kits are based around that much MP regen, so it makes no sense to waste a button on it that brings nothing to the table. At one time, Shroud of Saints lowered threat, so it was a secondary tool in that sense, but now it doesn't.

This makes Lucid the highest healer role action to put on the chopping block - at least Repose has use in Deep Dungeons and stuff. Lucid, if healer MP pools were boosted to account for it being removed, brings nothing to the table worth keeping it. Surecast is also heavily used by high end players in Savages, and some Extremes, and some Ultimates are designed to incorporate it to be used at some points. That would be a far more damaging change than removing Lucid rebalancing MP regen.

I'd be fine with SCH having dots and a return of bane, in fact I'd welcome that, it used to be enjoyable. I definitely would not want to see dots on AST For multiple reasons: there's no connection to the job as there is with SCH (job identity), if I have a job where I would be centered around tracking dots (SCH) - I don't want another one

Up until this point, what you say is very similar to what I suggest all the time...I know, after this point it diverges, but it makes me wonder if the gulf is not more narrow than if often seems in terms of potential compromises...

Having a high amount of buttons isn't strictly necessary for a cohesive damage kit. We want a breakup of the filler spam, yes? We really only need 4-6 buttons that we press regularly that also have heavy kit interaction.

The crazy thing is, healers have 4-6 damage buttons NOW. We just don't use them well.

[TheDustyOne]

The crazy thing is, healers have 4-6 damage buttons NOW. We just don't use them well.

The key phrasing with Aravells comment is "that we press regularly". Phlegma once every 40s I wouldn't say counts as "regularly" as it's too infrequent and has no real depth to it. What I think she's asking for is a more standard rotation like what I've suggested; a short buff to maintain, reduced DoT duration, more cooldowns (that are 20s or lower ideally), and other sub-mechanics like builder/spender gauges, procs, etc. and for these to interact with each other a little more meaningfully beyond "does x potency to target". Just because we have Assize doesn't make it interesting, just because we can press Energy Drain a few times a minute doesn't make it regularly engaging. Divide those mechanics I listed amongst the healers and now we have a less homogenized role where we only need like 4-5 spells each for them to be engaging.

[Renathras]

Right, that's my point.

We don't need MORE damage actions.

We need the damage actions we have reworked to actually be...meaningful?

.

Personally, I hate "plate jugging" "busywork" like DoTs and upkeep buffs. I really don't find either enjoyable or engaging.* Take RDM as an example. It has neither, but I find it enjoyable to play because the caster phase (short/long casts) has decision making related to balancing MP. While I wish the proc system was reworked (personally, I'd rather always have fire/stone, remove jolt, and have the fire/stone procs do something else, like double the amount of mana they generate, which would change how you interact with them that way), I like the overall system. It's easy to understand and work with, but requires you to continually evaluate the situation to make a decision on what action to use. And the amount of damage we're talking here is also pretty insignificant. Not to mention damage shouldn't be a heavy decision focus of a healer to begin with.

DoTs and upkeep buffs don't have that. There's no decision making. On the VERY niche min-max hyper-optimization, you can get into "if the boss is going to die in less than 12 seconds, Glare is more damage than Dia", but that will almost never factor into a clear and is strictly a parse padding argument, not enjoyable gameplay or moment to moment decision making. Likewise, upkeep buffs have the same calculus of "will it wearing off decrease your damage or increase your damage", which is a niche thing as the answer is GENERALLY going to be "upkeep it" with only some minor thought to "the boss is about to be untargetable for 40 seconds, so refresh your WAR self-buff to 60 so you already have it up on the reopener" type situations. Which, again, is once or twice a fight, not an ongoing thing you're thinking about as you choose which action to use.

Even SMN's widely panned "braindead" rotation has more thought than a DoT, since the right answer for the DoT is always "refresh as it falls off", not "let it fall off" outside of the very niche situations above. Using Ifrit at the wrong time is a pretty substantial issue, and trying to find where you can do so safely so you can work Titan - the most movement friendly one - into the Burst phase - a fixed phase that might not always be when you need movement - is actual optimization and decision making. Likewise, as a DPS Job, having to consider when to use a Raise, when to save Swiftcast vs when it's safe to use it, etc, are active decisions that all have more meaning than "do I refresh my DoT or will the boss go untargetable within 12 second so I lose 200 potency of damage over the course of the fight?"

.

But my point here was:

Do we really need to add more actions when we have these buttons already? Just retool these buttons to do what we are asking for. Why do we need Assize if we have something better to put in that hotbar slot instead? Just turn Assize into...that.

.

EDIT:

*Obligatory "4 Healers Model" mention - I don't think it's bad to have a Healer Job or two that DO this, because some people DO like it.

I DO think it's bad to force it on all the Healer Jobs, because there are people that DON'T like it, and they need a way to escape it that isn't "you're being bad/sub-optimal".

[TheDustyOne]

I'd say that yes we need more actions for that because we've only got 2 that we regularly interact with on the GCD. Adding more cooldowns alone won't suffice, they need other sub-mechanics to interact with like procs (which you mentioned you enjoy with RDM), or gauges (again, another RDM thing here). There's nothing wrong with cooldowns of course, but what does Assize do outside damage and heal every 40s? It's a very shallow skill. It also doesn't matter whether you consider buffs/dots "busywork" or not, they're still sub-mechanics we should take advantage of when deciding on how to design healer kits beyond Glaroilificosis.

What more can you do with WHM for example with only Glare, Dia, Assize, and PoM that doesn't involve adding more buttons? Does Glare occasionally proc Dia and turn it into a bigger nuke like Bard Refulgent? Well now you've lost the DoT timer aspect and it's still pretty shallow. Does Dia proc Glare back and make it more powerful? Well I'm pressing Glare regardless, so nothing has changed there. Does Assize get reworked to a chance based Dia proc and so we have to pay attention to that every 3s? Well now we've lost a cooldown to track. PoM is too long a cooldown to consider changing without affecting its overall identity. Does Glare instead proc Holy? Well now we've added a new skill to the ST rotation regardless, which isn't that different from adding a new button anyway, so why would you be opposed to a Super Glare or something?

I agree that buffs and DoTs alone aren't deep, but they're still a groundwork for further depth, like old BRD, SCH, SMN, as well as the suggestion earlier for a "fast-forward" on AST. Suddenly that DoT has more going for it than "press and forget", and the shorter the duration, the more the player has to pay attention to it. Deciding "I hate DoTs and buffs, they're busywork" isn't conducive to providing a way to make them meaningful, it instead sounds like you're shutting off avenues to improving them because of your own bias. DoTs also act as pace-setters for a kit, that was how old Goring worked on PLD, and that alone is worth having one around, regardless on how you feel about them. Hell, that's technically how most cooldowns work, as pace-setters.

Also highly disagree on SMN having more thought than a DoT. There's a reason old SMN is seen as more complex than the new one as a DoT focused job. There's not much to "optimize" for SMN beyond "do I have to move in the next 7s?".

Also in regards to your 4 healers model; it honestly sounds more like 3 healers and a designated lobotomy, all of them need extra depth, we can't just single one out and say "that one is the designated one with a skill ceiling only 2 cm high". Even Warrior deserves a skill ceiling, and it's the job I'd set as the ideal "easy to learn, still engaging to master". Most of the suggestions I've had for WHM pretty much amount to making it closer to WAR in complexity.

[ForsakenRoe]

The last time I suggested making the buttons we have, have 'more frequent use', and 'more interactivity within the kit', I got told it was a bad idea because I had the temerity, the gall, to commit the cardinal sin of 'making the player press Dia more often'. So, if 'we need the damage actions we have reworked to actually be meaningful', why is it that only some are valid targets for such a rework? Why does the idea of Dia being refreshed 5 times a minute instead of 2 times cross a line? And the answer is, it doesn't cross a 'bad design' line, it's just a personal preference being shouted from the parapets like it's holy gospel

I agree, that things like 'Assize every 40s' and 'Dia every 30s' and 'Holy literally never on singletarget' are not good, and SE should retune the durations on them. The problem then is that 'the right duration' is different between people

"Proximity of a theoretical sun is causing damage over time." This must be preserved.

On the one hand, that particular line is pretty funny. On the other hand, Combust 3 removes it in favour of 'Sustaining damage over time', very bland very sterile. I also liked 'Lungs are failing, causing damage over time' for one of the old SCH ones, wonder how that makes sense for fighting Garlean warmachina (which presumably do not have lungs)

DoTs and upkeep buffs don't have that. There's no decision making. (then gives, ironically, an example of decision making with the DOT)

Even SMN's widely panned "braindead" rotation has more thought than a DoT

Okay, this one I've actually seen explained to me by someone far more into highend stuff than me, so I'll retell what I was told, word for word (or as near as I remember). Look at this picture:

This is the rotation of what skills to use for TOP as a SMN. Every phase, mapped out. If you screw up, and press Ruin 3 instead of something marked here as 'not Ruin 3', what is the thing to do? You just continue as before, and do the thing you should have done before, in place of the Ruin 3 that should end the loop before the next Demi. Or sacrifice that stack and continue exactly as before (eg if it was a Titan phase, and you used Ruin3 instead of TopazRite, just sac that one stack of Titan and move on as normal). If you have anything left and the Demi comes up, you bin it, and use the Demi, and you're back on track to what the chart says. There is, unlike the above 'no decision making', quite literally ZERO decision making involved here. You play on rails. If you derail somehow, you carry on as if nothing happened, because at the 1min mark you automatically get realigned with the track anyway. There is no 'I don't have enough resource because of the mistake I made earlier to do my burst properly' like on another class eg MCH or RPR. There is no 'now I don't have things lined up right for this mobility section' like... any class with mobility issues and instantGCDs to play around it. Don't adapt, don't improvise, just follow the flowchart and carry on as normal.

At least with forgetting to refresh your Healer DOT, it causes SOME butterfly effect down the road re: refresh timings (and how that lines up with mobility portions of the fight). Moving out to the platforms for Bonds1 in P10S happens right as a burst window comes up. As WHM, you'd have one or two GCDs where the bridge is active, after the linestack, but the raidbuff window isn't up yet. So you can move over there by healing the linestack via Rapture, then DOT refresh, then Misery, then Swiftcast a Glare if needed. If you drift your DOT however, then it's not going to be refresh-time at that moment for it, meaning you either don't get that GCD worth of free movement, or you have to clip and lose damage

What more can you do with WHM for example with only Glare, Dia, Assize, and PoM that doesn't involve adding more buttons?

Deciding "I hate DoTs and buffs, they're busywork" isn't conducive to providing a way to make them meaningful, it instead sounds like you're shutting off avenues to improving them because of your own bias.

Also in regards to your 4 healers model; it honestly sounds more like 3 healers and a designated lobotomy

1: There seems to be some kind of unwritten rule that is being insisted on, that jobs must NEVER go beyond 32 buttons (including RoleActions, LB, Pot and Sprint), which is hilarious to me because SE doesn't seem to give a damn about such a thing. PLD's running at 36 keybinds including all that stuff iirc. SAM's at 36 or 35. SCH is at like, god knows how much, thanks to having an entire extra set of binds for the fairy (and yeh, you mainly only want Heel and Place, but that's still +2). Kinda odd to me that there's such an insistence on 'why give a new button to WHM when we can just make Assize do that thing', what do we replace the Assize gameplay with? Or is it going to be more akin to how SE 'redistributed' content from dungeons, so we get less per patch but get Ultimates and Criteron etc in their place? Unlike that, where there's a limit on devtime available, why do we need to 'choose' between current Assize and 'reworked Assize', when we could just have both by putting the 'reworked' effect on a new skill instead?

2: I can't bloody stand DOTs either. But I know people that love them. I know how powerful they are, not in terms of damage, but as a design option, a tool in creating a cohesive rotation and/or kit. Tracking them could stand to be a bit better, but to write them off entirely because 'I don't like them' is indeed quite silly. If I were SE, I'd look into making it so your DOT icon (and only YOUR icon) appears on the... whatever it's called, Emnity List, this thing:

Forgive the bad paint drawing, but as we can see, the middle mob does not have the DOT active and we can very easily see, and even target directly, to reapply. The issue of 'you can only see 5 mobs on that list, what if you have more than that pulled' is not actually an issue, as multi-DOTing drops off in favour of 'spam AOE skill' at 5 currently. Reworking things would potentially bring that threshold even lower (my WHM idea would drop it to 'if there is 3 targets it's better to just spam Holy')'

I bet there's a plugin someone's made that can do exactly this, so we just need a popular streamer to catch a ban by streaming their gameplay with it active, and we'll have it implemented by the next patch (if the 'timers on party list debuffs' drama was anything to go by)

3: lol

[TheDustyOne]

1: There seems to be some kind of unwritten rule that is being insisted on, that jobs must NEVER go beyond 32 buttons (including RoleActions, LB, Pot and Sprint), which is hilarious to me because SE doesn't seem to give a damn about such a thing. PLD's running at 36 keybinds including all that stuff iirc. SAM's at 36 or 35. SCH is at like, god knows how much, thanks to having an entire extra set of binds for the fairy (and yeh, you mainly only want Heel and Place, but that's still +2).

PLD is at 34 before adding in pots, sprint, and LB, it's the one with the highest button count. It's probably at 36 for you instead of 37 because you removed Shield Bash (don't blame you). SAM I think was also at 33 before pot, LB, and sprint until Kaiten got deleted, so it's now sitting at 32.

The fact that PLD is the only one to "break" the rule is another reason I consider the rework to be pretty slap-dash and rushed, it's the only time I can think of where Square made the button count higher than 33 on a job. That said, I'm not super hung up on the rule, and I'd be fine with Square moving past that limit and giving us extra buttons, I put my pots, LB, and Sprint on separate hotbars anyway.

Also yes there's a plugin for that, you didn't hear this from me.

[ForsakenRoe]

the rule

SE is not the ones that hold themselves to 'the rule', it's one specific forumgoer who insists on it. Because 'controller players' or something (despite controller users having easy-access to like twice as many keybinds as my setup). Maybe if SE DID hold themselves to a rule of 'only 32 binds allowed' we wouldn't be in this mess, because we'd have like 5 less fluff skills on healers that are another flavour of 'does a heal'

Ah who am I kidding, they'd just remove the DOTs, the Cards and Energy Drain to make room for their latest brainchild: another 15s AOE HOT that heals for a total of 750p

[TheDustyOne]

TBF, I also considered it an unofficial Square Enix rule to only have 33 skills on a job, and I tried to keep to under that number when I did my theorycrafts. But my reasoning for it was that it only required 3 full hotbars when taking into account pot, LB, and sprint. So less controller players and more keyboard players that don't want to use one of their modifiers. Either way I don't mind it being broken.

[Katish]

The last time I suggested making the buttons we have, have 'more frequent use', and 'more interactivity within the kit', I got told it was a bad idea because I had the temerity, the gall, to commit the cardinal sin of 'making the player press Dia more often'. So, if 'we need the damage actions we have reworked to actually be meaningful', why is it that only some are valid targets for such a rework? Why does the idea of Dia being refreshed 5 times a minute instead of 2 times cross a line? And the answer is, it doesn't cross a 'bad design' line, it's just a personal preference being shouted from the parapets like it's holy gospel

I'd say most of the kit could use reworking...as to what is reworked to integrate with the kit is up to the developers (if and when am I right?). But wanting interactivity within the kit in a theoretical rework is not so much because doing otherwise would be bad. The bad thing is that knowing the developers, should they ever touch on the healers, they will only do it once. Then they will say "This is want everyone wanted, right? So we're continuing with it". So it doesn't matter where they start as long as it's somewhere and they continue with that specific development, it should eventually integrate with the rest of the kit. (Although as stated I am open to any change at this point. "Healer Copium is Bad, Mkay" lel.)

This makes Lucid the highest healer role action to put on the chopping block - at least Repose has use in Deep Dungeons and stuff. Lucid, if healer MP pools were boosted to account for it being removed, brings nothing to the table worth keeping it. Surecast is also heavily used by high end players in Savages, and some Extremes, and some Ultimates are designed to incorporate it to be used at some points. That would be a far more damaging change than removing Lucid rebalancing MP regen.

I can see the counterargument being, that mp management is just an artificial way of generating difficulty, not that I would agree with that but it's just one I can see (I do believe they should make mp management harder). But the original post was to dictate that role actions equal the same amount across roles (i,e each job has the same role actions as the role hence the name), and have been unchanged in the longest [unless they remove role actions all together]. It would be unfair to consider them given the fact buttons are different between jobs (sum-wise) and that's the ratio (what the job has individually) that would be better considered when adding or appending skills to a specific job. Role actions already answer unique premises outside of healing (which we could do more with outside of just role actions but party-wide within the kit itself). Their real issue of them is that their under-utilized. (with the exception of a few) [This is not just a healer thing considering Role Actions]

Which is why I said a fixed number of added buttons per job would better get the idea across. [i.e doing the math on 40% when considering each heal skill to dps skill when comparing the original kits. So theoretically some healer jobs would have a different amount added to them.] (With hopes what they add would be meaningful to some.)

I should also add on that a dps skill that has the same potency of your nuke skill is that not really a solution as it falls into the niche category of "dps" skills. (It's more for healing or perhaps AoE in Macrocosmos's sake (dungeons).)

[ty_taurus]

As a controller player, you don’t actually need to set sprint to your hotbar as it can be bonded to R3 instead of first person mode.