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

[Aravell]

I honestly don't understand. Upping healing requirements also increase the responsibilities to the same or higher degree as people place on healers who are expected to do damage, so it's not people being lazy trying to keep Netflix dungeon healing. Must be some kind of superficial aversion to attacking monsters maybe? Maybe they only get a tingly feeling when health bar goes up. No idea.

I would say upping healing requirements would increase healer responsibilities to a higher degree, because while a healer that's doing damage in regular content is nice to have, it's not strictly necessary to clear in the first place. But healing requirements must strictly be met or people will start dying, and when people die through no fault of their own and can no longer press their buttons, they justifiably get big mad.

There also remains the inevitable fact that you can never increase healing requirements enough to engage a veteran healer while not completely (or at least partially) walling off inexperienced healers. Some argued that healing requirements should be boosted sky high then (but only for savage+), but that doesn't solve the root cause of healers being boring in 90% of content. I can't fathom why people think only the healer role should be boring for 90% of all content while the other roles get to have fun at all levels.

[Hyperia]

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.

If they really want to make things more interesting, try making healer damage ogcd and have more healing and buffing. Weave in damage between heals and buffs.

I know I know, this can’t happen because they would have to revamp 10 years of content but I can dream.

[RitsukoSonoda]

I honestly don't understand. Upping healing requirements also increase the responsibilities to the same or higher degree as people place on healers who are expected to do damage, so it's not people being lazy trying to keep Netflix dungeon healing. Must be some kind of superficial aversion to attacking monsters maybe? Maybe they only get a tingly feeling when health bar goes up. No idea.

It has to do with the overwhelming majority of the game content being dumbed down to the point it nearly makes the role itself irrelevant.

Tanks were given spammable AoE enmity generation making it extremely easy to hold aggro on large groups of enemies. Therefore non-tank party members aren't taking damage unless they stupidly stand in AoE markers or you fight a boss that does a room wide AoE that cannot be dodged.
All tanks were given self HP recovery via forms of sustain on top of their mitigation reducing the need for external healing.
Healers were loaded with 0 cast time healing CD's because apparently cast bars were hard for some people.

Stances were pretty much deleted because managing them was deemed "too difficult" This resulted in cleric stance getting nuked completely as a job action and tank stances just becoming a generic enmity on/off button. This may have also been around the time they removed the defense penalty to blood for blood because ppl kept either using it right before a hard hitting room wide AoE or standing in AoE markers afterwards resulting in them instantly kissing floor.

IMO the ideal healer gameplay would have the healer frequently shifting back and forth between assisting with damage output and healing/supporting the party. However overall job design choices not just limited to healers on top of encounter design choices has resulted in this Red DPS, Blue DPS, Green DPS situation we have now which honestly doesn't feel sustainable for the longevity they've hinted at wanting this game to have content wise.

[Rithy255]

If they really want to make things more interesting, try making healer damage ogcd and have more healing and buffing. Weave in damage between heals and buffs.

I know I know, this can’t happen because they would have to revamp 10 years of content but I can dream.

could work, wouldn't mind it I just personally think healing is most fun when you're actually making a active choice between healing and dpsing, this game lacks that.

Trinity system currently makes no sense and is fundamentally broken in this game Imo. When healers can keep up 100% uptime with no real struggle in 99% of content (they're not even needed in ultimates lol) It causes other roles to even be worse mainly tanks, like making use of your defensives for incoming damage and autos... but the game practically forces you to kitchen sink your defensives in high end duties or in casual duties you can usually just not think about defensives and just make sure you got one or two running at a time in AOE. Not like tank busters are a actual threat in anything that isn't savage.

Some DPS are less effected, but utility skills on phys range, Casters, some melees utility even become really not important... when in a system where that utility could have more impact if healers weren't designed to barely heal and only through ogcds which they have many of.

I get it we can't fully fix old duties? (I mean removing a lot ogcds would partly do that) But at this point anything below 70 isn't even fun in the first place for 80% of jobs, Personally I rather they focus on *new* content anyway if abilities over time are going to be took out and put back in later, that or they can actually overhaul older content to be fun in the first place

[Renathras]

Surely giving them 1-2-3 combos isn't enough

Honestly, in some cases (WHM in particular), a 1-2-3 combo (making it more like WAR) would probably be fine.

As to your specific examples:

SCH: This wouldn't work well. Now you're telling me instead of fighting between using Soil/Excog or doing damage with ED, I'm forced to fight between using Soil/Excog...going OOM?...or Aetherflow. It's the exact same problem, and it just shifts ED from being dumped all at once before you refresh Aetherflow to having to press every 20 sec or you hamstring your healing by having a shortage of AF (unless it has a charge system...at which point it would be used JUST like today where you dump them all in burst?). I don't see that fixing the problem at all.

WHM: That's...I disagree with the ability aesthetics/elements (Stone and Glare don't really go together, it could be Stone and Water at low levels with Aero as the DoT and they upgrade to Glare/Banish/Dia, respectively, at high levels), but the idea itself isn't too terrible. I had an idea a while back to make it work kind of like PLD does with the 1-2-3 then Holy Might, just where you use Glare x3 then Holy (Holy would be changed to being a ranged attack like Misery or Cure 3 that can have a target or be AOE on the caster's position). But it was similar to this in the sense of "stack it a couple then use ability #2 to 'combo' more damage". Something like that would probably be fine. Though I also contend a 1-2-3 rotation would be fine as long as we got rid of the DoT first.

[Renathras]

By not worrying about damage input from healers and have encounters actually require healers to focus and provide heal/mitigate/support, with healer DPS as a distant secondary concern? If I wanted an interesting DPS rotation, I would play DPS. When I play healer, I want to heal/mitigate/support.

Also this.

SO MUCH this.

Most veteran healers will correct you in that the desire for a healers damage kit to be more involved...

1) A lot of healers play healers because they want to heal.
2) "Most veteran healers" don't speak for all healers, or even all veteran healers.
3) You can't "correct" someone's desire. If they want a thing, they want that thing. It's not a thing you "correct".
4) "more engaging" is ill defined and often means completely different things to different people. Many people find healers engaging as it is right now, for example. It's highly subjective.
5) We also have 4 healer Jobs, so we could always just have different ones focus on different things, I suppose. Some for the people that like more damage buttons, some for people that like more healing buttons.

And if the encounter design was better, healers wouldn't require a complex DPS rotation. We would be busy throughout the fight providing healing/mitigation/support. Instead, it's DPS..... heal in between.

You hit the nail on the head.

[Mayhemmer]

1) A lot of healers play healers because they want to heal.

And a concern I see brought up by healers worryingly often is how is how, in the absence of needing to heal during encounters, what they're left with to fill time often feels woefully dull. The presence of players with differing skill levels will always ensure that some healers will be required to spend more time healing to fill holes left by themselves or others, but the presence of players on that side of the meter does not invalidate the concern of players the other side, and vice versa.

2) "Most veteran healers" don't speak for all healers, or even all veteran healers.

Then I'll add the postface of "Most veteran healers -that I've observed with my own eyes airing their grievances in a public space. Huh, that sure is a lot of them I see..." next time, just for you.

3) You can't "correct" someone's desire. If they want a thing, they want that thing. It's not a thing you "correct".

Yes, I was being snarky there. And you're conveniently leaving out the part where their own comment was in response to the OP's desires of their own in having more complex dps options. It was met with a "we shouldn't worry about it." You even emphasized that response. So where are and aren't you ok with complete dismissal of a person's desires? It looks inconsistent, and might be one of the reasons why I've seen so many people around the forums just stop taking you seriously. Consistency is important.

4) "more engaging" is ill defined and often means completely different things to different people. Many people find healers engaging as it is right now, for example. It's highly subjective.

I said that specifically because this is a thing I see brought up often when discussing healers in general (-do I need to add that postface again for you here?) 'Subjectivity in enjoyment' is also a talking point that just tends to go nowhere, and one you partially answer in your following point.

If a person does not find subjective enjoyment in one healer, there's always other options. I myself don't like how constantly busy AST tends to feel, and while I like SCH in 8/24-man content, I struggle in dungeons with it. So, I play SGE and found the more consistent enjoyment.

5) We also have 4 healer Jobs, so we could always just have different ones focus on different things, I suppose. Some for the people that like more damage buttons, some for people that like more healing buttons.

Yes. I never argued there should not be variety in the purpose of toolkits.

Anyway. Again, I really just want the devs to integrate healer support tools into their overall kit more interestingly, and in ways that directly interact with other parts of that kit. AST has some of that with it's cards contributing to Astrodyne; whether or not it keeps that after the rework is a question... SGE has a bit of it with abilities that contribute to Kardia healing. I'd like to see more of that.

[Renathras]

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.

As another WHM main, 100% agree with you.

When I feel in the mood to DPS, I play SMN. It's...not at all often that I play SMN. The rest of the time, when I'm playing healers, I don't want to muck with DPS complexities/rotations. If I did...I'd be on my DPS Job, not on my not-DPS-Job.

.

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.

For one thing, you wouldn't keep the existing pool of abilities.

The biggest change right now that would make healing more engaging would be removing oGCD healing from the game. That ALONE would make choosing heals (and MP management...) more frontline, and would obliterate the "111111 spam" in an instant, even if healing requirements were unchnaged. But, of course, we wouldn't leave them unchanged. Bosses being able to autoattack all the time would be done as well (this USED to be a thing, no standing and casting for 5 minutes), and there'd be balancing done on the Tanking sustain side.

So it's not a simple fix, but nothing worth doing is.

I've seen a fairly large amount of people say that upping healing requirements is all that's needed to completely fix healer boredom, please explain how casting Cure/Physick/Benefic/Diagnosis 150 times is more engaging than casting Glare/Broil/Malefic/Dosis 150 times? Because it looks equally boring to me.

Well, for one thing, at least casting Cure 150 times means you're picking targets (presumably somewhat intelligently) while pressing Glare 150 times on a single target boss means you aren't.

...and I don't mean that to be snarky; it's not trivial. As people point out all the time with AST, the higher APM is only partly due to the oGCD weaves. It also includes the player targeting individual party members.

I don't think anyone is arguing, btw, to just have Cure 1 and no other spells and just use Cure 1 150 times. But people aren't wrong in that would be more engaging than Glare 150 times.

So I guess my suggestion would be to give each healer something unique to do with their DPS during downtime. This problem isn't going to be fixed with a single addition/modification.

I've been saying this for...a while. I even have a name for it, the "4 Healers Model". Which is a simple concept: We have 4 Healer JOBS, why do they all have identical rotations and near-identical gameplay?

SGE and SCH are the biggest offenders, since you can play them almost the same and probably 80% of their kits map 1:1 with each other. WHM (due to Lilies) and AST (due to Cards and some of its oGCDs) are the most different, though they still have a MOSTLY identical basic rotation.

I think it's good for some healers to work like they do right now, because there are a lot of healers that DON'T want DPS rotations/complexity/a DPS Job.

But there are some that DO. In the case of Tanks, they fixed this by adding GNB as a "Melee DPS that tanks". That's what SGE should be, a "Caster DPS that heals". (Arguably it's what RDM should have been, but we crossed that bridge half a decade ago, lol)

The answer isn't "more damage rotation for everyone!" since that's going to alienate a lot of people, too. Trading alienating part of the player base (boring DPS) with alienating the other part (complex DPS) isn't a good answer, since we have the same problem, just the opposite people pissed off.

The answer is to split half and half. We have 4 healers, there's no reason we can't do that. Heck, if they got rid of the stupid "Pure/Barrier" split (which is dumb because (a) barriers/mitigation are ALMOST always better and (b) AST is already half-barrier healer anyway), then we could have even more variation since we'd now have all 4 healers to work with if they ALL had barriers/mitigation tools instead of being segmented like they are now where WHM has less party mitigation than BLACK MAGE (seriously, Addle is 90 sec CD vs Temperance at 120!)

Yes, I was being snarky there. ... So where are and aren't you ok with...

Because I was replying to you, not them? I've been told by people, when I asked them, that they can call me out for things and not others and it NOT be inconsistent because it's not their job to call out everyone for everything and they can pick and choose. Those are, btw, the people "around the forums who stop taking (me) seriously".

Also also: Trying to make a conversation about a person (me and people taking me seriously or not) is bait, and one I'm not going to indulge further.

.

There ARE, absolutely, people that want more damage buttons.

There ARE, absolutely, people that do not.

Both groups should be addressed. Trying to appeal to authority fallacy or the like (which is what the "veteran healers" argument is), or attacking people pointing this out, is not a winning argument. Worse, it does nothing to address your concerns because it leads to us all bickering instead of agreeing.

As I said in Ty's thread, I very much think they should have some healers that are more DPS/complexity focused (SGE and AST are two good candidates). However, they should not do this for all the healer Jobs. I fully support doing it with some. I will fully oppose doing it with all.

Yes, the healing needs fixing but more importantly the dps and support buttons need to be addressed as that is what you're doing in most of your downtime...

The problem is, that's not what everyone healing WANTS to do - and contrary to minority opinion, it wasn't "always this way", either (ARR healing, particularly on WHM, was more consistent and more GCD focused, with far less spared on damage due to MP actually being limited back then and Cleric being dangerous at the wrong times).

That HAS to be addressed. That can't be the "we'll get to that later, but first shiny DPS rotation!". That CANNOT be the way to address the problem. It'll just alienate tons of people.

a game where healers do damage constantly,

I think that's the problem, though - and as noted above, wasn't always the case. That's bad design. Having healers in your MMO designed to be DPSers is bad design. Most MMOs recognize this, which is why "the healer that heals by doing DPS" is usually a special, often higher skill variant, not the general design.

Because it's bad design.

FFXIV isn't an ARPG, so it doesn't work that way. The oGCD thing is more a problem here, which is why we DIDN'T have this problem back when we DIDN'T have a wash of oGCDs. Boss damage being reduced to a tickle just made thinks even worse.

[Mayhemmer]

Because I was replying to you, not them?

Also also: Trying to make a conversation about a person (me and people taking me seriously or not) is bait, and one I'm not going to indulge further.

OP presents their desire to see healer damage toolkits become more complex.

Poster A dismisses the idea that it is needed and highlights an off-topic issue.

I point out that fact that it's a widely requested change.

You hold Poster A's dismissal on a pedestal before admonishing me for dismissing their off-topic concern.

I'm not baiting you. I'm pointing out that it comes off as a lack of self-awareness.

There ARE, absolutely, people that want more damage buttons.

There ARE, absolutely, people that do not.

Both groups should be addressed. Trying to appeal to authority fallacy or the like (which is what the "veteran healers" argument is), or attacking people pointing this out, is not a winning argument. Worse, it does nothing to address your concerns because it leads to us all bickering instead of agreeing.

You could change the term "veteran healer" to any variation of "person who has long-term experience with healers" and their feedback and desires would not change. It is just a synonymous term in this scenario.

[undull1]

1. Remove most OGCD healing and expand your GCD healing
2.Keep some support skills and add some damage OGCDs to keep DPS uptime relevant
3. Make MP management matter, yes you COULD use your curaja instant party heal gcd now......but it costs 5000mp and should be saved for appropriate moments.

What im suggesting is that healing rewards players for choosing the correct tool for the correct situation, rather than giving us so many tools that your choices don't matter