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

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

I agree that that's what the game is. But at least according to the man at the top, it's not what the game is supposed to be. Yoshi-P has gone on the record numerous times (in 2017 and 2021) saying that in group content, there is no expectation that Healers do damage and that for balancing purposes their DPS is assumed to be zero. And since those times, he has never said anything to the contrary. So if that's his stated design goal, and the highest difficulty content in the game leaves enough time to spam DPS spells that healers get sick of it, then I would say that there are some tuning issues there where the design goals aren't quite being realized.

Soo... how long do you think it'll take for them to get that 'tuning' right when if we look across the entire span of game's history, they've only been going further and further from that 'design goals'? lol

[LilimoLimomo]

Soo... how long do you think it'll take for them to get that 'tuning' right when if we look across the entire span of game's history, they've only been going further and further from that 'design goals'? lol

I honestly don't see the point of asking me this. The thread is titled "How would you solve the boring "damage rotation" of the healers?". Given that context, policing the likelihood of the devs implementing every given solution seems superfluous.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

I honestly don't see the point of asking me this. The thread is titled "How would you solve the boring "damage rotation" of the healers?". Given that context, policing the likelihood of the devs implementing every given solution seems superfluous.

You are correct. It was a rhetoric question to show how your post that I replied to doesn't make sense to me because none of the changes and adjustment they've given to the role for as long as I played & learned have been anything to accommodate their supposed 'design goals'.

Even the arguably hardest encounters to heal such as O8S & DSR does not have that much of a healing uptime. Do people seriously want to bring that sort healing intensity (or higher) *everywhere* just to ensure healer gameplay wouldn't be boring (because according to devs, we aren't needed to DPS, so what else we should be doing when utilities are also being stripped away)? Is that what really people genuinely believe in? I'd like to ask those players to step back and ask themselves: do they even know how much HPS their chosen healers can output & how much outgoing damage is going to be required to fulfill this fantasized healing intensity? It gets even more convoluted when you start accounting things like 2nd healer's potential HPS in 8-man duties.

[LilimoLimomo]

Even the arguably hardest encounters to heal such as O8S & DSR does not have that much of a healing uptime. Do people seriously want to bring that sort healing intensity (or higher) *everywhere* just to ensure healer gameplay wouldn't be boring?

I should clarify that I in no way think that intensity of healing should be applied everywhere, just to the very highest end content. If healers in the very highest end content are bored from how much spare time they have to DPS, that's a problem that transparently goes against the devs' stated design goals.

Healers in less intense content should require less healing. There's plenty of room for a more nuanced discussion about what that would look like and how adequately it would solve the overall problem. But when it comes to the very peak of high end content, my opinion is that Yoshi-P's stated goal is a good one, and I'd like to see it realized.

[Aravell]

I should clarify that I in no way think that intensity of healing should be applied everywhere, just to the very highest end content. If healers in the very highest end content are bored from how much spare time they have to DPS, that's a problem that transparently goes against the devs' stated design goals.

Healers in less intense content should require less healing. There's plenty of room for a more nuanced discussion about what that would look like and how adequately it would solve the overall problem. But when it comes to the very peak of high end content, my opinion is that Yoshi-P's stated goal is a good one, and I'd like to see it realized.

How would that solve healers being bored in anything below savage though? That's 90% of the content that they would get to be bored in.

It's not just high-end players that say they're bored, you know? There's been quite a few people who made a thread on the healer forums saying they only just picked up healing not long ago and are bored out of their minds and they're making a thread asking if things will eventually get more fun.

[LilimoLimomo]

How would that solve healers being bored in anything below savage though? That's 90% of the content that they would get to be bored in.

It's not just high-end players that say they're bored, you know? There's been quite a few people who made a thread on the healer forums saying they only just picked up healing not long ago and are bored out of their minds and they're making a thread asking if things will eventually get more fun.

Fundamentally it's all the same principle: tune encounter damage, player healing output, and mitigation tools such that more healing is required. The only difference between different tiers of content would be what percentage of cast time is mandatory healing/Esuna/etc and what percentage of cast time is wiggle room for player mistakes (fewer mistakes = more potential for DPS); as content increases in difficulty, there should be less of that wiggle room.

[fulminating]

Fundamentally it's all the same principle: tune encounter damage, player healing output, and mitigation tools such that more healing is required. The only difference between different tiers of content would be what percentage of cast time is mandatory healing/Esuna/etc and what percentage of cast time is wiggle room for player mistakes (fewer mistakes = more potential for DPS); as content increases in difficulty, there should be less of that wiggle room.

So what happens if a bad healer queues for something - is the party just stuck in the instance until they git gud or are kicked? We already know that abyssos managed to cause issues for pf healers between damage and body checks to the point that yoshi p asked people to try healer in a live letter. If normal content also gets tuned more aggressively then the impact must be more severe simply by the fact that there's more casual than high end content.

I'm also entirely certain that replacing 4 broils with 4 esunas is not really addressing the problem. It could well be that the hyper scripted combat encounters do not lend themselves to engaging healer gameplay, but they seem to have not intention on changing that.

[Aravell]

Fundamentally it's all the same principle: tune encounter damage, player healing output, and mitigation tools such that more healing is required. The only difference between different tiers of content would be what percentage of cast time is mandatory healing/Esuna/etc and what percentage of cast time is wiggle room for player mistakes (fewer mistakes = more potential for DPS); as content increases in difficulty, there should be less of that wiggle room.

You say that they could do the same thing, but you also say that there has to be an upper limit, therefore, it likely won't be any different than it is now. Any experienced healer would be able to breeze through dungeons and they would still be bored when they don't get an absolute disaster of a team, adding a couple more AoE heal casts or Esunas per minute will not be any more engaging than it is now. Experienced healers at this moment can go through dungeons with 0 GCD heals, if you add in some Esuna casts, they would still be casting their 1 damage spell 90+% of the time.

New players don't stay new forever, they also will eventually gain experience and also become bored, they absolutely do need to strike up a balance between healing and non-healing activities. It's not acceptable that content should be segregated in such a way that you have to be at the level that the content is tuned for to be able to enjoy said content, because MSQ is a required part of the game, so everyone should be able to have fun in any battle content in the game, whether it be dungeons, alliance raids or ultimate raids.