If Healers had Tank rotations, what would they be?

[ForsakenRoe]

I find GNB harder than SMN. Does this mean GNB is actually DPS complexity, or SMN is actually tank complexity? Or could it be, that 'complexity' is not actually meant to be divided into these brackets (who's bounds are entirely subjective), and is instead a spectrum that every job can exist on at the same time, such that we COULD have a healer more complex to optimize than SMN if we so wished? Well, in my books I'd make that SGE and/or maybe AST (based more on learning the card effects moreso than execution). Meanwhile, I've made every attempt to add some potential to WHM for it to have depth to optimize, while keeping it as new-player friendly and 'similar to current overall gameplay' as we have now for it, but apparently we're going full #NoChanges for it specifically.

WAR builds a 0-100 gauge by doing Path/Eye, and spends it on a big hit. WHM does not. You can argue that Glare is like Path, and Dia like Eye (without the 1-2), sure. But, for WHM to be '1:1' with WAR, would require that Glare and Dia build a gauge, which can be spent on 'something', not even necessarily a damage skill, it could be a heal or mit. But it doesn't. Glare is just 'it does damage' with no additional interplay. Solace/Rapture into Misery could be argued to be similar to the IR window of FellCleave X 3, and Primal Rend being 'like Misery', but the actual gameplay of the standard Fell Cleave is not present on WHM, and that's pretty much the core of WAR's identity. The whole reason WAR uses Path instead of Eye, is quite literally 'because it gives 2x as much gauge, so you get FC faster'. Without that distinction, you'd be able to just 123 Eye combos constantly. Maybe you'd want that, though, idk

I even asked for WHM to have this, this WAR 0-100 gauge analogue, built by using filler damage spells (to give them more purpose), and a spender to spend it on. I even made the spender a heal. You just dismissed it because it meant you'd have to deal damage to access said healing tool. I addressed this and added gauge build rates to every non-Lily heal GCD, vastly higher values than the damage skills would provide (Glare 1, Dia 5, Regen 10, Medica2 15, examples). I even had comparisons to WAR in that very post, because of how I'd have Glare upgrade to Quake for one hit, like FellCleave/Inner Chaos. You say WHM is 1:1 with WAR, I'm saying that 'if it were truly 1:1 with WAR, it'd look a lot like what I suggested'. Well, except for the Dia duration thing, but we've been over that

Healer already has more complexity in some regards than SMN: SMN only needs to worry about cast times for 3 GCDs per minute, healers have to worry about them pretty often. SMN's 'oops I messed up' is that they lose a bit of damage, but the rotation automatically realigns itself at the minute mark because if you have anything left over, you just skip it and move to the next Demi. Healer's 'oops I messed up' can be anything from 'lost a bit of damage', which is less punishing than other roles on account of having lower overall damage, all the way up to 'the party died because of your mistake'. In the grand scheme of things, adding a couple more damage buttons, which any healer worth their salt will KNOW they should ignore if healing is needed, who should KNOW to prioritize keeping people alive, those buttons will be the tiniest bump in 'complexity' compared to what SE throws at us each expansion: new healing buttons, and with them new mechanics specifically tailored to justify those buttons.

Here's an example: Harrowing Hell, Savage week 1. Imagine my WHM, who has a shorter Dia duration, a button that is 'not Glare' every 15s, and a gauge spending AOE heal. None of that stuff (maybe the heal) actually affects the situation, because the healer player thinks 'this is a lot of damage, I will use GCD healing to keep up'. Now contrast, a WHM with the current kit, but they refuse to use Lilybell on it. Or they used it early. Outside of tank LB (confirmed by the devs to be 'unintended strat'), you're screwed. You cannot keep up on damage without the plant. The 'complexity' of a mechanic like that is 100% tied up in healing, mitigating, and knowing to hold your tools for it (not using them on the wing tether-laser and stack mark web things that are about 60s before it). And 'complexity' only becomes a problem when it has a failure state with a high enough punishment factor. Messing up in Aetherfont as a BLM, the most complex (for most) Job in the game, who cares, because the punishment does not exist. You go back to Ice and go again. The punishment for WHM for messing up, depending on content difficulty, ranges from 'oops gotta sub in a GCD heal here because I didn't use my CDs right' to 'the party is dead and it's my fault'. And at no point on that spectrum, would one extra damage button and a shortened DOT timer, be the make-or-break for whether the team stays alive or not. The fact that a WHM uses Dia 5 times a minute instead of 3, does not have ANY effect on their capability to keep the party alive. If they were in the current game, those 3 extra Dia's would be Glares. If a heal is needed at that point, they swap the Glare, or Dia, or Luminaire, or Banish or whatever, for a heal.

You mistake 'what the absolute best players use at each GCD of their rotation' for 'the GCD map of what you MUST use for your rotation, with no deviation'. You mistake 'perform 100% optimally' for 'can pass the bare minimum expected by the game'. It's an innocent enough mistake to make, but you need to acknowledge that the mistake is being made. You don't need to press Banish on CD every 15s in my design. You can hold it to heal if needed, at a cost of merely 7p per GCD. You can hold it for 2-3 GCDs to have it up for a mobility section, gaining you a damaging GCD where you would otherwise drop one, turning a tiny loss into a proportionally massive gain. You lose less damage to having to cast Dia as your mobility option (if you're out of Lilies/pooling them, and have nothing else), because I had my on-cast Dia potency at 15o and currently it's 65. No matter how you slice it, my design would actually be more 'forgiving' than the current one, to the average player. Hell, I even created a way to incentivize players to put up Medica2 and then spam Cure3 for heavy healing scenarios, instead of using crappy ass Medica 1

But sure, keep making these false equivalences that WAR is equal to WHM. By the same mental gymnastics displayed, I guess we could also try and say that WHM is 1:1 with DRG, because both press a button 3 times (Solace/Nastrond) and a powerful button once (Misery/Stardiver). Or SMN, because one uses 3 Solaces and a Misery, which is like using 3 summons and then a Demi (said Demi having AkhMorn/Revelation). Trying to make these intra-role comparisons is weird, there's a reason we don't try and say 'oh RPR is just a melee MCH'. Enshroud and Overheat work kinda similarly, sure, but there's still differences that set them apart and the same is true of WHM/WAR. Namely, WHM doesn't have a 0-100 gauge, and because of the lack of such a gauge, it's damage buttons lack interplay within the kit, being just 'there for the sake of it'. Also, what clunk are you even on about? Because 'Ren does not like it' is not the condition for something to be called 'clunk' last time I checked, so I'd like a clarification. And if it is something that I already addressed at some point, I will be very disappointed. Especially if it's because of your DOTphobia

ps: If you want to make intra-role comparisons, here's one: WHM currently has less complexity in it's damage kit than ARR Bard, a Job design from 8 years and 40 levels ago. Think about that.