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

[Eisi]

There are players like me who think that Healers should be inherently conceptualized and designed as priority-based nonlinear DPS classes built around the core of a spammable single-target nuke with the added notion that always losing out on DPS by casting a healing spell under any circumstance is bullshit design. I am 100% convinced that I am right on this and that to work under this paradigm could constitute a true future of healing jobs.

To increase healing requirements is dead ends thinking that will never bear fruit and that dare I say should not. It would be the equivalent of designing a class that has to clip GCDs to be maximally effective, it's just going against the foundations of satisfying gameplay in this game.

To have the ultimate goal of healer optimization be the total elimination of an entire class of GCD from your log and therefore further reduce the variety among GCDs is equally foolish - as is the idea of having healers only function properly while in high-end max level party duties.

Additionally one of the biggest issues for healing jobs is the amount of targeting needed to perform optimally. Dragoons can kind of empathize with their shiddy Dragon Sight ability. There needs to be a new mechanical type of spell introduced that doesn't yet exist in the game: Ground-targeted GCD spells that start the cast on button press along with giving you a ground marker that can be locked in at the desired location and then as the cast finishes has your character execute a spell targeting that location. Kind of like Bomb Toss, the Blue Mage spell, only that unlike that failure of a design the spell begins to cast (and thus the GCD to roll) on button press, not on location select - location is selected after. A design like this would allow stuff like Sacred Soil to be on the GCD or Cure III to function without a target.

Also to prime a target first to then later execute an ability on them without needing to target them again would be appreciated. Even auto-select focus target with a modifier would be quite nice, though not a panacea.

[SieyaM]

Maybe change the main Healer DPS ability so it levels up the more you use it continuously?

Like for Example : SCH Broil > Broil 1 > Broil 2 > Broil 3 > Broil 4 > Broil 5

Using any other action in between or upon using Broil 5 resets it back to basic Broil. Makes the Healer decide to either DPS more or heal lol I guess.

I would completely expect healers to absolutely not heal no matter the situation after their first broil cast until after the 5th one. Every party member could be dead on the floor and that healer is not going to break that chain.

[ty_taurus]

Are people really incapable of imagining anything beyond the most plain oatmeal take on a melee DPS 1-2-3 (or 1-2-3-4-5) combo as the way to give a healer more DPS gameplay? You know, the thing no caster DPS does except for Red Mage’s melee combo, the one part of their kit specifically trying to mimic a melee DPS?

[SargeTheSeagull]

Are people really incapable of imagining anything beyond the most plain oatmeal take on a melee DPS 1-2-3 (or 1-2-3-4-5) combo as the way to give a healer more DPS gameplay? You know, the thing no caster DPS does except for Red Mage’s melee combo, the one part of their kit specifically trying to mimic a melee DPS?

I mean if you only stated 14 after ShB and it’s the only mmo you play, i understand why it’s hard to imagine anything else. Socrates’ cave and all

[Zarkovitch]

add a new dot problem solve. Until the next expansion they might add a damage ability

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

Nah. Just 10 potency upgrade to Glaroilficosis baked with flashier VFX. Done!

[Lailani_Fey]

This thread might be focusing on the wrong aspect of healers in FFXIV as a couple of posters have already pointed out. Let me add to that what I think is wrong with healer design in FFXIV and that more intricate damage rotations would exacerbate the problem:

1. Simplification with Gear Progression:
- Healers, and to some extent tanks, find their roles becoming simpler and less engaging as their gear improves, along with the group's overall gear level.
- Improved gear offers better mitigation, higher HP, and enhanced spell effectiveness, making healing tasks less challenging.
- Certain fights, notably those with healing-intensive segments, become trivial once these segments are skipped due to gear progression (e.g., E12S Terminal, P2S Coherence, P4S Decollations and Curtain Call, P7S Harvests).

2. Dilution of Healing Responsibilities:
- With each expansion, healing and mitigation responsibilities are increasingly distributed across various roles, diminishing the unique impact of healers.
- Dungeons can now be cleared without healers, highlighting this dilution. Even some ultimate content has been cleared without healers.
- Tanks' self-sustainability further reduces the need for healers, who primarily focus on keeping DPS and themselves alive.
- The proliferation of mitigation and shields particularly affects pure healers, making their role more reactive and passive.

3. Simplicity of Healing Mechanics:
- Damage taken rarely exceeds maximum HP, reducing the challenge of healing, especially outside of week 1 raiding.
- General healing strategies, like group heal spamming, are often sufficient for most encounters.
- Resource management, like MP, primarily serves to rectify group mistakes rather than being a core aspect of healer gameplay.
- Larger health pools allow for slower reaction times, diminishing the need for quick responses unless correcting mistakes.
- Most Savage fights could be managed by a single healer, with mechanics targeting two healers being the main obstacle to this approach.

4. Healer Damage Output and Role Conflict:
- The focus on healers dealing damage can detract from their healing responsibilities, leading to issues like the 'Glarebot' phenomenon.
- Enhancing healer damage rotations could exacerbate this problem, potentially leading to a scenario where healers are phased out, similar to what happened in Guild Wars 2.

[Aravell]

4. Healer Damage Output and Role Conflict:
- The focus on healers dealing damage can detract from their healing responsibilities, leading to issues like the 'Glarebot' phenomenon.
- Enhancing healer damage rotations could exacerbate this problem, potentially leading to a scenario where healers are phased out, similar to what happened in Guild Wars 2.

We already had lesser free healing, less healing on the rest of the party and we also had more complex damage kits back in HW and SB, you know what we called healers that didn't heal and only did damage back then? We called them bad healers and then we kicked and replaced them, then life goes on. Can we just call Glarebots bad healers and just kick them again?

It's frankly ridiculous that we have to have our kit design hamstrung because some healers can't do the job they queued up for. You know that some tanks don't mitigate during their burst because they think it's too hard, right? They just demand that the healer shields them, should we then ask for tank burst to be deleted because some of them can't weave mitigation?

Lowered healing requirements and gear creep is only part of the problem, if you only address that portion, you don't satisfy people in the end. Every part of the problem has to be addressed at once or we still end up with greatly unhappy people.

[TheDustyOne]

This thread might be focusing on the wrong aspect of healers in FFXIV as a couple of posters have already pointed out. Let me add to that what I think is wrong with healer design in FFXIV and that more intricate damage rotations would exacerbate the problem:

1. Simplification with Gear Progression

No argument here, better gear = less to heal. However, any attempt to "fix" this to make healing more engaging effectively amounts to "Defence and HP stats are useless". It's fine for better gear to make content easier over time, it gives that feeling of power and progression as people get through the content. Healers having access to a greater DPS kit just means that they don't get bored later in a tier from lack of healing, simply because they have another engaging thing to focus on.

2. Dilution of Healing Responsibilities

Also don't disagree, I'd happily be in favour of reducing tank self-sustain greatly and increasing healing checks.

3. Simplicity of Healing Mechanics

Damage exceeding maximum HP is a mitigation check, not a heal check. Remove the tanks in such a situation and people die, remove the healers in such a situation and people still live, albeit at low health. A heal check is continuous, back-to-back damage such that even with mitigation, you will die. Apart from that, I also don't disagree with the rest of the statement.

4. Healer Damage Output and Role Conflict

This however, I fully disagree with, someone tunnel visioning is not a reason to kneecap a jobs kit. Imagine if we decided that Warrior shouldn't have Fell Cleave, Inner Release, and Infuriate because it "detracts from their tanking responsibilities". Or if we removed the cartridge abilities from GNB (and Continuation with it) because it also detracted from their tanking responsibilities. Or if we removed Healing Waltz from DNC because it detracted from their DPS responsibilities. All this does is simplify a job down to its role and not what that job specifically offers.

Healers can and should have increased healing responsibility compared to now, but that doesn't mean they can't also have more than Glaroilificosis spam + DoT. We know it can work because that's how it worked pre-ShB. SCH had like 7 different attacks back in SB while raiding (Broil, Bio, Miasma, Miasma II, Ruin II, Shadowflare, Energy Drain) and it didn't detract from its ability to heal. Now, it only has Broil, Ruin II, Biolysis, and Energy Drain in that same raid environment, with Broil being spammed much more compared to how it used to and Energy Drain being nerfed since then.

[Saraide]

4. Healer Damage Output and Role Conflict:
- The focus on healers dealing damage can detract from their healing responsibilities, leading to issues like the 'Glarebot' phenomenon.
- Enhancing healer damage rotations could exacerbate this problem, potentially leading to a scenario where healers are phased out, similar to what happened in Guild Wars 2.

We should remove damage oGCDs from drk because players might ignore mitigation in favor of their burst.
We should remove cast times from casters because players might prioritize them in favor of moving for mechanics.