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

[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.

[SalamanderIX]

The White Mage afflatus system, it's something that perhaps all/more healers should have? Trading GCD heals for a larger GCD damage neutral ability just is a good design. Neutrality of this type of ability is very important though, because it doesn't -force- or cause waste by overcap or not using it right away.

Some things that could be added to various healers to make them distinct:
Simply having long cooldown GCD damage buttons. I don't see how this would make healers playstyle any different, aside giving them something to do in burst. It can be a 30second, 60second or 120second.
Having another dot (Scholar could be good for this, since they used to have 2) that works like Black mage thunder. the dot reprocs itself by RNG, in which case it is an instant-cast.
Simply a few more OGCD damage buttons. something with a longer cooldown like 30/60 or 90. They can double as heals/shields.
When it comes to combos, I don't think it's a thing every healer should have but maybe one could. Astrologian? It could be a nice re-implementation of some of their thematic signs and arcana.

Perhaps not all healers need more complex rotation, I'm looking at White Mage. It's a very popular job and some healers might enjoy the one-button style.

[ty_taurus]

The White Mage afflatus system, it's something that perhaps all/more healers should have? Trading GCD heals for a larger GCD damage neutral ability just is a good design. Neutrality of this type of ability is very important though, because it doesn't -force- or cause waste by overcap or not using it right away.

Some things that could be added to various healers to make them distinct:
Simply having long cooldown GCD damage buttons. I don't see how this would make healers playstyle any different, aside giving them something to do in burst. It can be a 30second, 60second or 120second.
Having another dot (Scholar could be good for this, since they used to have 2) that works like Black mage thunder. the dot reprocs itself by RNG, in which case it is an instant-cast.
Simply a few more OGCD damage buttons. something with a longer cooldown like 30/60 or 90. They can double as heals/shields.
When it comes to combos, I don't think it's a thing every healer should have but maybe one could. Astrologian? It could be a nice re-implementation of some of their thematic signs and arcana.

Perhaps not all healers need more complex rotation, I'm looking at White Mage. It's a very popular job and some healers might enjoy the one-button style.

More ways to allow GCD heals to refund damage under certain conditions is something I think can be good for the healer role if it's done in different and unique ways, but the lily system does have a fair amount of flaws. Disregarding the fact that White Mage doesn't even have a functioning lily system until several hundred hours into the story since Misery is learned at level 74... Lilies have a nasty habit of encouraging needless overhealing.

Misery, despite being DPS neutral in terms of potency values, is actually a DPS gain under buffs, and because all three afflatus spells have no MP cost, it's more MP efficient to ensure you're never capping on lilies. So right out of the gate, anytime you're approaching your third lily and have no one to heal, there is a modest pressure to burn your lilies anyway. And there's considerably more pressure to burn lilies anytime the boss becomes untargetable and there's nothing to attack. In a window where you cannot deal damage with Glare, every lily burned is effectively an extra 1.25 Glares, but even better because buff windows, no MP cost, and chances to crit and/or direct hit.

The system is not a bad concept, but would really benefit from more polish.

[TheDustyOne]

I personally think lilies should be attached to the base healing spells in WHM's kit, why do we need Afflatus Solace when it's the same potency as Cure II? Just have Cure II burn the lily when one is available (and keep its usual cast time when a lily isn't there). So long as the lilies don't remove the MP cost as well, we at least have a reason to think about using Regen over Cure II, as well as risk the MP cost between Cure III and Medica if AoE healing is still needed. It rids us of 2 buttons (Solace and Rapture) that could be used for something more interesting... that Square will probably not give us.

[Rithy255]

The White Mage afflatus system, it's something that perhaps all/more healers should have? Trading GCD heals for a larger GCD damage neutral ability just is a good design. Neutrality of this type of ability is very important though, because it doesn't -force- or cause waste by overcap or not using it right away.

Some things that could be added to various healers to make them distinct:
Simply having long cooldown GCD damage buttons. I don't see how this would make healers playstyle any different, aside giving them something to do in burst. It can be a 30second, 60second or 120second.
Having another dot (Scholar could be good for this, since they used to have 2) that works like Black mage thunder. the dot reprocs itself by RNG, in which case it is an instant-cast.
Simply a few more OGCD damage buttons. something with a longer cooldown like 30/60 or 90. They can double as heals/shields.
When it comes to combos, I don't think it's a thing every healer should have but maybe one could. Astrologian? It could be a nice re-implementation of some of their thematic signs and arcana.

Perhaps not all healers need more complex rotation, I'm looking at White Mage. It's a very popular job and some healers might enjoy the one-button style.

I dont think adding refund mechs to healers (like white mage) would "fix" healers.

I think the issue is that you're never having a risk/reward with dpsing as a healer, theirs no risk in fitting in a extra attack because you can always heal and attack as a healer (even mostly in harder content), I feel that the issue is the amount of OGCD's other healers have (to the extent you could make lillies charge longer for WMH, but add more lilly complexity). What would make healer more fun is having to know when to heal and knowing when it's safe to DPS. The main two issues with that is 1. encounter design and 2. OGCD's and healing strength, Reducing that effectiveness would also help utility on non healer jobs be more effective and useful.

[Hyperia]

The problem is this: The more time healers are required to spend actually healing, the less time they have to spend patching up people's mistakes. That's the fundamental trade-off. Time is not a fungible quantity.

Now, perhaps that's a fair trade off in Savage and Ultimates. (I'm not qualified to comment there.) But normal mode content, anything that NA/EU queues up for in Duty Finder? It's utterly unrealistic to expect few to no mistakes / perfect play at that level. This means either required healing cannot be tuned that high, or encounters need to be designed such that mistakes cannot be made -- the latter reminding me of early Final Fantasies, where the trash and boss are on the left side of the screen, and the party is on the right side of the screen.

Edit: Which is not to say that the current balance of required healing is fine. It is not. I do believe there is room for increasing healing requirements, even at the normal/Duty Finder level, via various mechanisms: bringing back crit autos and untelegraphed mini-cleaves, reducing the self-sustain of other jobs and roles, rebalancing where a healer's healing potency actually comes from (GCD vs. oGCD), etc.

While I agree that more healing will reduce the ability to patch up some mistakes, proper management of the oGCD heals should cover most of that. It would also strongly encourage a pure and shield healer combo as somebody in trouble could get instant shields and then heals.

[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.

[Lailani_Fey]

Any content where more than 50% of my time is spent DPS'ing is generally badly designed

[ty_taurus]

Any content where more than 50% of my time is spent DPS'ing is generally badly designed

I'll repost my question from earlier:

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.