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

[CamuiKushi]

I'm not a healer main, but my perception is that healer kits are so powerful but there's not a lot to use them on outside of the highest of high end content. Having a few bosses that hit like Diabolos Hollow or something with super hard hitting autos where the damage can't be cheesed by tank invulns could help with that.
A specific thought for maybe one or two healers is maybe they could have a builder/spender combo where using GCDs will give them access to a big oGCD (think lillies, but the big hit is oGCD).

But again, I'm not a healer main.

[Hyperia]

As a WHM, I don’t want a damage rotation, I want more healing and buffing. Having to dps all the time is bad design. If I have to dps, I’d rather keep the WHM dps setup as is.

[Raikai]

I'm not a healer main, but my perception is that healer kits are so powerful but there's not a lot to use them on. Having a few bosses that hit like Diabolos Hollow or something with super hard hitting autos where the damage can't be cheesed by tank invulns could help with that.
A specific thought for maybe one or two healers is maybe they could have a builder/spender combo where using GCD healing will give them access to a big oGCD (think lillies, but the big hit is oGCD). This would work well in conjunction with the above idea where they need to spam more heals than they have oGCDs for.

But again, I'm not a healer main.

The only situation where the full healer kit may come of use is when you're in a very unlucky Party Finder group where the co-healer will do just the bare minimum to help. That turns out to be frustrating because, even though you're doing the medic's job keeping the group alive, you know it's affecting your personal dps because most likely you're having to spend GCD healing.

As a PF raider, I feel through that, as well as other minor nuisances (people without food, tanks not pressing mitigators in time, etc), that the 'triage' part of a healer's job is well served, but that doesn't excuse the 111112111112 in between the scripted damage.

[Kes13a]

As a WHM, I don’t want a damage rotation, I want more healing and buffing. Having to dps all the time is bad design. If I have to dps, I’d rather keep the WHM dps setup as is.

I would agree. I didnt main WHM so I could dps, I have dps jobs for that. what I would really like though, is a more engaging experience.

Given how they have "Reworked" things in the past, I have no confidence of that happening. They will just remove some of the more complex skills deemed "too hard" and add in some dps buttons. it has been proven that unless your job starts with Black Mage there isnt a lot of thought going in to making it better in both play style and substance.

[Kes13a]

The only situation where the full healer kit may come of use is when you're in a very unlucky Party Finder group where the co-healer will do just the bare minimum to help. That turns out to be frustrating because, even though you're doing the medic's job keeping the group alive, you know it's affecting your personal dps because most likely you're having to spend GCD healing.

thats the problem with healing. too many people thinking they should be doing dps levels of damage instead of healing. personally I find the challenge of keeping everyone up when my co-healer is admiring their nail or doing dps at least interesting... I dont give a flying one about my "personal dps" as a healer...

[Nizzi]

With respect, if you're casting DPS spells often enough to get bored of them in the highest end content available, then it sounds like the healing requirements are tuned too low.

No offense but this is just a bit of an absurd comment, especially when the shield healer in DSR is the one who is super pressed for the first 11+ minutes of the fight (shield healers have been the harder of the two subroles to play this entire expac and definitely the more important of the two in the party). And you're saying DSR is tuned too low?

Too many people in this community seem to want healers to be designed for an entirely different game than the one we're currently playing, and I notice this more often than not with DPS/Tank mains and people who don't do high end content on healers. This game isn't WoW, it isn't Ragnarok Online, it isn't FFXI - it's FFXIV, a game where healers do damage constantly, focusing on always keeping their GCDs rolling like every other job and have always had an inherent tradeoff built in between using a GCD for healing or for dealing damage.
This is baked into the system and they are the only role that has this consideration; it is always where healer optimization has been in and what the mark of a good healer is. Replacing Broil Broil Broil with "Succor Succor Succor" or "Physick Physick Physick" doesn't suddenly make pressing 1-1-1, or 2-2-2, or 3-3-3 fun, meaning that there's no amount of pressing your GCD heals that will suddenly make only having Broil and Bio fun.

Succor is my second most cast ability in DSR. I looked at my log and I had 325 GCD presses over the course of the 18:51 minute encounter (DSR). 48 of those were Succor Casts, 19 were Adloquiums, and then there's one cheeky Physick. That's 21% of total GCDs spent solely on healing, disregarding all healing oGCDs and also disregarding any of those that are used in downtime. Healer is already the hardest role during prog in Savage and Ultimate; increasing the healing requirements or saying something like DSR is tuned too low for a Scholar is going to gate infinitely more people out of this game than would ever be able to handle it. Healing is already the main focus of what healers do; but measuring it by GCDs spent is never going to work because healing fundamentally does not work like that in this game; there's a reason heal GCDs cost 10% of your MP versus the 4% that your DPS buttons do. Changing that would require an entire fundamental rework of the entire role, the game's encounter design/philosophy and likely a lot more to make this style of healing work in FFXIV, and again; pressing GCD heals does not make the time where you press Broil Broil Broil Broil more interesting. Upping that does nothing for that. It is not a fix. P8Sp2 did not make it fun. DSR did not make it fun. TOP has not made it fun.

And at that point, I just find it easier to say that if you don't like how healing fundamentally is in this game and you "don't play a healer to DPS", you should go play another game where healing is more like that. This type of feedback has been a death sentence for this entire role since Shadowbringers because not only is it never going to happen with how encounters are designed and the amount of players that would be gated by healers who couldn't keep up with the healing requirements, but it limits healing being satisfying for the people who do main it. The role has been slowly strangled by this for years now. It's okay to not like certain things, I don't like tanking or DPSing in this game bar playing BLM last tier, but even then I haven't touched it in probably a year now.

I like healing in this game - it's why 99% of my posts here are Healer/SCH related- and I like that I have to deal damage and focus on healing when it's required, mitigating and having a plan. It's why I've mained Scholar for years now, because Scholar is the only job left with the trade off of heals vs DPS on an oGCD level and that means my healing plan can radically shift beyond cutting GCDs once I've learned a fight and know what the timeline is like and where I'm going to put certain heals, and where things aren't needed anymore.

We can make arguments that healers should heal more, I won't disagree. We can make arguments that oGCDs are too powerful, there's too many of them, tank healing has gotten too high and needs to be nerfed into the dust, the fight design this expansion has basically been "Okay the SGE/SCH gets to play now while the WHM/AST doesn't need to do much of anything except Glarebot" and other arguments and I wouldn't disagree. But the argument that increasing healing to a ridiculous level or "make us do something that's not DPS!" would somehow make 2 DoT refreshes a minute and then only Glare/Broil etc "fun" is just not true. It will not.

We already know that healers with more DPS buttons that have to GCD heal even more works; we had it in the game until Shadowbringers. It works, it's how the role is fundamentally designed and making our GCD DPS rotation fun and satisfying at all levels is the biggest core issue facing this role, and the problems with the healer role design are the biggest issues facing the game at the moment - more than any 2 minute meta boogeyman, more than huge hitboxes and 100% uptime guaranteed fights, more than ANYTHING else.

But unfortunately, the "i just play to heal, if you want to DPS, just play a DPS job!" players who don't engage with healing outside of their casual roulettes will get what they want in Dawntrail, as usual. These people are like little spoiled children who constantly scream for more and more to go their way in regards to our role, and they will always get it. There's no point caring, it won't change and people with no investment will continue to ruin it for another expansion and whine "why isnt it more like other games?? i dont play this to DPS!!!" because the developers only care about what Tank/DPS mains complain about in regards to healers, and not what healer players say about their jobs. /shrug

I'm so excited for another 3 years of my Yoshi-P approved healerslop. Non-healer main approved!

[Rithy255]

As a WHM, I don’t want a damage rotation, I want more healing and buffing. Having to dps all the time is bad design. If I have to dps, I’d rather keep the WHM dps setup as is.

I think white mage just needs elemental attacks visually, Longer cast times (glare used to cast longer like in shb), DPS to healers can add some interesting things, but I really don't think a full on rotation is "needed" I kinda like damaging on healer but what makes healers doing damage fun is having to know when to heal and when to damage, If healers had more to heal it would actually make damaging more fun because you'd be trying to fit in as much damage while also keeping your team alive, currently you can just do both with no effort (obviously not in all forms of content but the vast majority, even then the healing is very scripted and its more doing mechs then anything).

This also effects support skills/tanks, because they can ease up the healing requirements for healers in situations... sort of like its a team based game? This makes tanks more fun aswell as using defensives correctly makes your healers job more easier which slightly can increase team damage (which is king in the game).

I think the issue is the healing rate and not because healers have one button... obviously I wouldn't mind a proc or a extra dps skill on healer but I think they need to make healers actually heal more first before all of that.

[Niroken]

I don't think healers should have a "damage rotation" as having a proper rotation would conflict with their main objective. It works with tanks because you are limited on defensive CD's for balance purposes. Damage skills would exist alongside healing spells and honestly you could have as many as you wanted as long as you aren't constrained to having to use a particular pattern within a set amount of time.

DoTs: Great way to do low damage consistently that won't punish you when you need to focus on healing. Old Scholar would have been great as a DoT based healer. Single DoT, Spread DoT, Add debuffs to the DoT, Make the DoT explode for the remaining damage/set amount of damage/additional effect/etc. There is a lot of interesting things you can do with DoTs.

Charge Skills: Basically Lilies but using damaging skills instead of healing skills to gain some kind of token to unleash a large attack. Example would be WHM having two separate gauges, GCD healing charges the Mend Gauge which gives you access to Solace, Rapture, etc. Using three gives you access to Lilybell. For the Maim gauge you would have access to a single target instant damage skill and AoE instant damage skill, using three gives you access to Misery. Using the AoE instant while a target is stunned causes an increased damage taken debuff but removes the stunned effect. So basically you are charging your skills to use later, no time limit on when to use them.

Buff Skills: Essentially you lower your damage potential to be a support. I'm a bit hesitant on this because it's hard to balance. You have to pick a good target if you want to do good damage, some classes would benefit more then others depending on the buffs. So the effects can either be really good, really bad and can be problematic when you run into minmaxers. Buff skills also don't need to be all set and forget, you could have a Scholar with a buff that adds damage to a player when they receive damage that you can accumulate stacks for an additional attack. Example, Scholar debuffs themselves with a Tonberry curse for 25% damage reduction to themselves while giving 2-4% damage increase for a limited time. During that time, whenever any party member takes damage the Scholar gains a stack of Everybody's Grudge. Once the time limit is reached, the Scholar is able to perform a powerful attack at any point to remove the 25% damage reduction debuff. Skill starts it's CD once Everybody's Grudge is released. At any point you can still heal because the debuff only effects the damage of the user.

The biggest issue I see is the request for having healing/damage work off each other and I don't see that working well. It's a great idea on paper but it doesn't translate well as you can see with skills like asylum where the majority of uses will be used for damage purposes. Another example is Sage Toxicon and Pneuma, with Toxicon requiring barrier breaks to allow you to use the ability. Great idea on paper until you get into multiple barriers (which for Scholar they had to make Sage barriers override them so that you can use the ability while having another Sage might mean you barely get to use the ability because both of you are fighting for Addersting). Then you got Pneuma which is a 2 minute CD while pretty abysmal damage while it can have insane healing since you can greatly increase the amount with Zoe and Krasis. The vast majority of the time you will be using it for the healing effect.

In my opinion Healing spells should build off of healing and damage spells should build off of damage.

[ty_taurus]

To those who believe that the issue with healer design can be completely resolved by increasing the healing requirements only, I have a challenge for you:

Design for me 1 minute of a fight against an unnamed dungeon boss that showcases the increased healing requirements you believe will solve the problem with healer design, and show me how you will force a Sage to spend more GCDs on healing than on Dosis spam. You have 24 GCD casts in 1 minute, and you'll need to force them to burn through all of their OGCDs in order to get a Sage to start relying on GCD heals, or you need intense enough back-to-back healing that a heal weave > heal GCD > heal weave will be necessary to resolve the mechanic successfully. Show me the breakdown of where that Sage uses each cooldown, taking into account cooldowns that are shorter than 60 seconds (Ixochole and Kerachole). You can use approximates, such as "mechanic A will bring the party down to around 30% remaining HP" or something like that.

A reminder of Sage's cooldowns:
- Physis II
- Soteria
- Druochole (limited by Addersgall, 1 per 20 seconds)
- Keracholex2 (limited by Addersgall, 1 per 20 seconds)
- Ixocholex2 (limited by Addersgall, 1 per 20 seconds)
- Taurochole (limited by Addersgall, 1 per 20 seconds)
- Haima
- Panhaima
- Rhizomata
- Holos
- Zoe
- Krasis
- Pneuma

Prove to me that you can make 1 minute of a dungeon level fight that will make the healing side outweigh the DPS. Show me each GCD in that 1 minute and how more of them will go to healing instead of Dosis spam. I know it's a tall order, but I'm only asking for 1 minute.

[mallleable]

Not a healer main, but I feel like healers could use more semi-spammable dual-purpose spells that both deal damage, and heal to break up the pace of spamming the same damage spell over and over again.