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

[ChrysOCE]

So what exactly do you want to do when there is no healing required?

If you want healing to be at a point where you're healing for a large majority of the fight, then you pretty much do just want healers to only heal. If you want there to be some level of downtime for recovery and optimization, then DPS should be more interesting in that period than Glaroillicosis + DoT and I have no idea why you would be against more DPS options.

Individual/party support management, boss debuff management, I don't know, I'm not a game designer. I'm not saying I don't want to do ANY DPS. I'm also not saying that ALL I want to do is heal. But if the majority of what I am doing is DPS, then it starts to feel like that is all I am.

[ty_taurus]

This is silly and reductive. Anyone who plays a class can ask for whatever they want. And anyone else is free to disagree and ask for something else. You're not being robbed of your free speech just because some people on a forum disagree with you.

Except it isn't silly and reductive. I have lost my preferred playstyle in part because of this mentality that healers aren't allowed to get more attacks, that if you want to DPS, then you play a DPS job or Tank, but healers aren't allowed that privilege. Scholar used to provide that playstyle, and it was eradicated, and nothing in the game makes me enjoy FFXIV combat like I did before Scholar was destroyed in Shadowbringers. And yet, often times when I ask for DPS spells returned to Scholar, for Sage to live up to its described identity by Yoshi P himself, I am met with someone who tells me to play DPS if I want to DPS, who says real healers HEAL. Who says what I want will ruin healers, even when it doesn't ruin tanks. I am constantly met with people who believe I shouldn't be allowed to have the playstyle I want--constantly met with a mentality that as taken my enjoyment out of the game.

And for the record, I've also talked about trying to design a healer specifically for players who do not like DPSing as a healer--to make the Astrologian rework about turning Astrologian into a engine builder, who rather than directly heals and buffs, sets up healing and buffing effects that they detonate later in the fight while passively generating DPS to stay balanced with the other healers. And that would replace the bulk of their Malefic spam.

We are both on the page that Glare spam isn't fun and needs to be solved. We have different ideas about how to solve that. Because of that we are arguing. We agree on the problem, not the solution.

But the point is that there is evidence that suggests your solution will not work: the fact that Abyssos, a raiding tier that did not have the highest healing requirements that the game has ever seen, and was not particularly difficult for veteran healers to heal through, was seen as 'too much' for many healers new to raiding or to FFXIV who were interested in raiding. And in Abyssos, healers still were using their DPS roughly just as frequently. If that only barely scratched the DPS-to-healing ratio and still overwhelmed people trying to get into Savage, how on earth could the healing requirement of a dungeon ask for even more healing from the veterans that are upset with DPS spam?

[TheDustyOne]

Individual/party support management, boss debuff management, I don't know, I'm not a game designer. I'm not saying I don't want to do ANY DPS. I'm also not saying that ALL I want to do is heal. But if the majority of what I am doing is DPS, then it starts to feel like that is all I am.

Then you and I don't fully disagree, the existence of extra DPS buttons doesn't mean that we heal/support/mitigate/debuff less. It just means we have more to do when those aren't needed. A buffer job like AST could fill the niche for buffing allies when healing isn't needed while still meaningfully contributing to the parties damage.

We do have to be careful however when increasing healing requirements. We can only go so far before it goes from engaging and fun to frustrating, and that can vary massively with player skill. I do think it needs to be higher in all forms of content, but casual content I think can't go too much higher than what Zeromus or P10 offered.

[Aravell]

And in Abyssos, healers still were using their DPS roughly just as frequently.

It's actually worse if you tried to clear it before the HP nerf. I went back and checked my first kill of P8S P1 before they nerfed his HP pool and I spent 97.23% of my GCDs on damage spells. And before anyone says I was only chadding my cohealer, she spent 89.18% of her GCDs on damage spells as well, and it's only lower because WHM has to spend GCDs on Afflatus spells.

This is what SE's version of increased healing requirements looks like.

[Mecia]

Couple things. Only heal healers could just keep on pressing a single button if they added more options for damage, you lose nothing.

Alternatively, wouldnt higher and more frequent damage deplete SCH/SGE of their resources faster than AST/WHM?

[AmiableApkallu]

I am honestly confused why you would mention good faith debates and ask me this. Because it's clear from the context you stripped my previous comment from that 100% GCD required is not intended to be a desirable way to play the game, just an exercise to prove that it's possible and thus disprove the proposal that GCD dps for healers can never be below 50% or whatever was said. And based on your wording, it seems like you have discovered at least one way to successfully do this. Thus, the proposal that I was intending to disprove has been effectively disproved. This was not the proposal of an actual design, but an exercise to determine the boundaries of the possibility space designers solving this problem have access to.

You've yet to demonstrate in any meaningful way that "it's entirely possible", where "it" is "there are a lot of different ways to make 100% of GCD's required for healing." The point isn't whether it's technically possible. The point is whether it's possible to design something that might plausibly considered fun.

Because here's my one way: The boss deletes 99% of the main tank's health every GCD. This is all they do, the entire fight. The healer has a single button that restores 99.1+% of someone's health, at a cost of zero MP and zero cast time. This design is complete and total garbage. You know it. I know it. We all know it. The idea that this is Yoshi-P's "good heal work" is preposterous. But it is "100% of GCD's required for healing." It's even accommodating of the least skilled of players.

I have trouble believing that anyone who argues for healers spending 100% of their time healing (or maybe more accurately, 0% of their time directly dealing damage) has what I just described in mind as a desirable goal. That design isn't the basis of a good faith discussion.

So, where's the pudding?

[holydiver1286]

You are just proving the point? You barely need to heal and end up DPSing for the most part. So is this good healer design? Is this good content design? It's just DPS more and have a complex DPS option because, as it currently stands, all healers are, are a DPS with healing tacked on. Is that good?

Do you.....actually read? Where did I say at all that any of this was good design or good in general? This is not good design even a little. By me saying that the hardest content being cleared WITHOUT healers, I'm literally saying that healers are not designed good and the fights are not designed well around healing? Having more damage dealing abilities as a healer to fill in those complete healing downtimes would be better than what we have now or alternatively having more healing being necessary so healers would have things to do OTHER than just be an extra boring dps would be good.

[LilimoLimomo]

But the point is that there is evidence that suggests your solution will not work: the fact that Abyssos, a raiding tier that did not have the highest healing requirements that the game has ever seen, and was not particularly difficult for veteran healers to heal through, was seen as 'too much' for many healers new to raiding or to FFXIV who were interested in raiding. And in Abyssos, healers still were using their DPS roughly just as frequently. If that only barely scratched the DPS-to-healing ratio and still overwhelmed people trying to get into Savage, how on earth could the healing requirement of a dungeon ask for even more healing from the veterans that are upset with DPS spam?

With respect, I think it's hasty to suggest that a set of fights using the kits this expansion is limited to offers meaningful evidence that no possible kit and no possible tuning could yield a solution. I would say that's probably fairly decent evidence that relying only on damage output won't yield a solution. But there is so much more possibility space outside of the status quo.

[LilimoLimomo]

The point isn't whether it's technically possible.

With respect, you quoted an instance of my demonstration whether something was technical possible. That was the point of what I wrote when I wrote it. Trying to leverage it for other purposes it wasn't intended won't result in a sound argument.

The point is whether it's possible to design something that might plausibly considered fun.

If the point is whether something will be fun, then generally speaking, all of this talk is meaningless. Most of the time you don't realize what's fun until you feel it and ask others to feel it to, with the controller in their hands, or a paper prototype if that works. You get a prototype functional, and that's when it's time to iterate and actually find the fun. Sometimes it's actually there, sometimes it's not. A write-up is an undependable way to find fun.

[ChrysOCE]

Do you.....actually read? Where did I say at all that any of this was good design or good in general? This is not good design even a little. By me saying that the hardest content being cleared WITHOUT healers, I'm literally saying that healers are not designed good and the fights are not designed well around healing? Having more damage dealing abilities as a healer to fill in those complete healing downtimes would be better than what we have now or alternatively having more healing being necessary so healers would have things to do OTHER than just be an extra boring dps would be good.

LOL then why quote me directly and start off by saying I am missing the point, when you are actually, what, somewhat/half agreeing with what I said?