How would you solve the boring "damage rotation" of the healers?

[Raikai]

1) Greatly educe the number of oGCD healing actions either by removing the healing component or completely reworking them into something else. Leave a couple for 'emergency healing' and add a considerable MP cost to them.

2) Now with less oGCDs dedicated to heal, healers need to actively use their GCDs to meet the healing checks.

3) Healing GCDs follow a similar logic to Lilies and Addersting - the proper usage of shields and heals fuel a resource to be used offensively in different ways depending on the job.

4) Now you have room to explore different damage options that are not just the 'glarespam'. Healing becomes a bit more engaging and now they have a way to make MP management relevant again.

[Higashikata]

make the use of DPS spells boost your healing or give you OGCD charges

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

[...]Do you see how this is different from XIV? In XIV, you just press one button 95% of the time and the team can generally survive fine without you. There's no feeling that you matter at all. But to implement any good changes here would force players to actually rely on each other again. Or it might make people "anxious" about their performance, and we can't have that. God, just writing all this made me want to heal in tera. It's such a shame that tera died despite pushing the envelope on so many things, while this game doesn't even bother trying to innovate anymore and gets more and more players with each expac. I could talk about this for days. They did tanking better in that game too. If you're curious I could elaborate, but w/e

Hahahahahahaha. Unironically I think that's what CBU3 wants too: make every job Endwalker's WAR-esque eventually.

Who cares about other roles? I'm one man army wahahaha. You exist only to speed up the DF queue Everything is working as intended!

If your main is not called "Black Mage", just you wait. It will happen, one way or another, and you will like it!

/s

[Connor]

Support spells that are actual GCDs like Bravery / Protect could also make having such few damaging skills less painful, if they don’t want to go the ‘more damage buttons route’. At least some of the gcds wouldn’t be Broil lol, especially if they had a fairly short duration (like 15s maybe). And debuffs on enemies like Virus or the old Eye for an Eye (when struck). Make them gcds with a base MP cost. Like, not dealing damage doesn’t have to be boring lol. It’s not the number of available offensive options that’s the problem in my opinion, it’s more the fact that there’s simply nothing else to do.

Also I’m not saying that healer should just never get more offensive abilities. But personally I’d rather have like 2 DoTs with interesting and supportive effects than 4 DoTs that are just straight potency and nothing. Naturally that doesn’t apply to Sage since it’s specifically designed to be a healer that’s offensive instead of supportive (but SE forgot to tell their job designers I guess lol).

Idk what I’m trying to say is the offensive side of healers is definitely super boring, but I think having them take a more supportive role (i.e increasing party damage rather than lowering enemy health) is also an option for the devs, if they’re truly that against making healers dps

[Turtledeluxe]

If you make fights more healing intensive you risk alienating less skilled healers. Imo the devs won't risk this.

The solution is not complicated. If a class, any class, isn't fun to play...reevaluate it and make it fun to play. That's a developer's job. That's the purpose of games. Fun. If devs think a class is fun but player feedback isn't matching up, look at player feedback and make adjustments. Adjustments can always be changed again. It would be nice if there was a perfect instant solution that would satisfy all healers but it's likely that any new rotations will attract additional feedback. It's just a question of whether devs are willing or capable of imagining unique and interesting ways to spice up old jobs.

[SieyaM]

If you make fights more healing intensive you risk alienating less skilled healers. Imo the devs won't risk this.

The solution is not complicated. If a class, any class, isn't fun to play...reevaluate it and make it fun to play. That's a developer's job. That's the purpose of games. Fun. If devs think a class is fun but player feedback isn't matching up, look at player feedback and make adjustments. Adjustments can always be changed again. It would be nice if there was a perfect instant solution that would satisfy all healers but it's likely that any new rotations will attract additional feedback. It's just a question of whether devs are willing or capable of imagining unique and interesting ways to spice up old jobs.

I get the feeling that fun is very distant from the priorities of job design. Balance in 8 man savage raids is the only concern they have when creating new jobs and adjusting exiting ones. What they are trying to do above all else is make sure that everyone is capable of the same DPS in a short encounter against a single enemy in an arena and that the tools they have will make up for any difference in these numbers.

[Raikai]

I get the feeling that fun is very distant from the priorities of job design. Balance in 8 man savage raids is the only concern they have when creating new jobs and adjusting exiting ones. What they are trying to do above all else is make sure that everyone is capable of the same DPS in a short encounter against a single enemy in an arena and that the tools they have will make up for any difference in these numbers.

That's both a blessing and a curse... I remember my days in WoW being awful not really knowing wether or not my class (or favorite spec) would be viable or miserable to play in the following patch because it was a rollercoaster of adjustments every major patch. While I love the fact that I won't really worry about this in the same way by playing XIV - and pointing to the fact that the dps 'abyss' here is much narrower withing jobs of the same role - the lack of diversity gets to me at some point.

[WaxSw]

For me it would be all about differentiation and trying to give every healer a unique identity in both how they heal and how they provide damage support to the party, personally I would like something like this:

-Whm: Mix between warrior and blm, make the most damaging actions (the fell cleaves) long casts that force a slower apm and give whm some mobility tools tied to its gcd like blm has, bring back the nature theme and keep the light theme for those stronger actions. For healing, all about GCDs and its modifications, give it some ways to make some GCD heals dps neutral or even gains and more actions that can interact with the GCD and the afflatus system.

-AST: For damage keep the direct actions simple and rework the card actions so they have to be managed much more and give them maybe a proc attack. For healing I think it should lean more into the time mage identity having skills that have to be primed or have delayed activation, some rewind skills would help too and even some that change the damage profile of the attack (transforming part of the raw damage into a dot for example)

-SCH: RESOURCE MANAGEMENT. For dps give it back its dots with multiple timers and give some interactions to them, make ruin 2 better if they are going to keep the 1.5s cast time so its niche is not only mobility. For healing the fairy and fairy gauge should be the central point and aetherflow something that fuels that pet, bring back selene with a different kit and make sch all about managing its aetherflow and fairy resources to efficiently heal with allies using both fairy kits.

-SGE: For starters it should be given an identity that is not Sch 2.0. For damage I think leaning more into eukrasia-like effects even if they have cooldowns and making it a healer that wants to be on melee range more often should be a good start, they could even give its offensive actions effects that increase that either lower the cds of other actions or increase the speed sage attacks, emulating a more dps-like style. For healing I think instead of trying to replicate Sch kit they should focus on its unique skills, kardia, haima-like skills and pneuma.

1-2-3 combos are not the solution if they do not serve a better purpose, look at any tank or melee and you'll see how their 1-2-3 is just a means to an end and currently healers lack that end.

[Espon]

Healer damage abilities should really only be to help them solo out in the world, not be 90%+ of what they do in dungeons and raids. If healers were forced to focus on healing majority of the fight then they would probably find combat far more interesting as they'd be utilizing their whole kit instead of just reacting to occasional damage with oGCDs. Unfortunately that would require a complete redesign of how they design encounters, and I doubt they'd ever do that.

When I choose to play a healer in a game, I want to be a healer and not just another DPS who has to occasionally heal. Imagine taking Red Mage and reducing their damage and increasing the potency of Vercure and giving them Vermedica; while it might seem fun, it's not how I envision a healer in FF14.

[Rithy255]

All Healers:
Increase outgoing damage on average and reduce OGCD heals in general. This makes healers actually heal, makes tanks defensives more useful, makes any utility more useful. The issue with healer healing being low hurts every Job Imo. This way optimising DPS VS healing is more fun rather then just pressing ur ogcds.

White Mage:
I'd argue it's current issue isn't it's "damage rotation" more that it's spell cast time is 1.5, Personally I'd like to see White Mage become the "black mage" of healers, with long cast times for glares (2-2.5), This even works with how White mage doesn't really ogcd heal *often* I'd make it attack with more elemental powers (like it should lol), Glare and Dia are really boring visually, I'd also like a Areo Proc skill while your DOT is ticking, which would give you a slightly stronger instant cast spell, you don't have to make this job complicated to keep it interesting really.

Sage:
This healer should have a mini rotation (I don't think healers need this, but it can be nice on one healer... it should never be something complicated either way) and be somewhat the more complicated healer, Actually add more to Kardia (maybe more buffs or making it AOE for a short time ect) because sage's identity of the "healer who heals while dpsing" isn't really there, Personally I just want it to feel different to scholar, I think its ogcds/healing skills in general are fine design wise, just how often you have them despite not really needing to use them all to much kind of makes it a bit frustrating.

Astro:
Rework Cards (I saw something similar as a suggestion reply to my post on a different thread) Make lady of crowns be something separate from lord, make it the RNG "utility" card aspect with added utility effects (not damage increase), make Draw interesting? I had a idea for draw to be more role based instead of just ranged or melee, obviously numbers might need to be higher on more supportive jobs (tank/healers) for them to make use of it and not be a massive loss. Personally I'd also like it if they added back your barrier stance. DPS wise? I dont think it needs a whole lot but maybe a extra button or something would be nice

Scholar:
Energy drain i used to dislike but I think it's actually a cool small optimization skill, I'd kind of like it if they add a extra (or even two) DOT's and maybe a proc as well, Mainly I just want sage and scholar to feel different enough in general.