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

[Renathras]

It was always this way, it's just the devs are out of touch with how the job is played. Just because the dev disagrees, doesn't mean it wasn't.

I think you misunderstand the argument.

First, though - no, it wasn't always this way. Again, it wasn't in ARR. Some people optimizing stuff later in the expansion started doing it, and it went mainstream in HW. The Dev response was to nerf it.

But THAT gets at the actual point - it clearly isn't INTENDED to be this way by the Devs. Them being bad at encounter tuning doesn't change the fact of the intend they're going for.

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.[/URL] That's the fundamental trade-off.

This is honestly the big counter in a practical sense. But there are solutions to that. For example, people messing up get damage downs instead of massive damage. Not to mention it's irrelevant in a world of pass/fail (one hit KO) attacks and body checks anyway. Other ways are to have healing "panic" buttons that are actually supposed to be used as panic buttons, not "healing plan" buttons.

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?

You have literally this same exact problem if you make healers more DPS focused. Oh, your party now has a healer that sucks at doing their DPS rotation - ENRAGE! WIPE! FAIL DPS CHECK! - it's literally the same situation.

That's 2 non-free Medica II's, 11 non-free Cure II's, and one Glare Esuna. Three more GCDs devoted to Lilies, and one more Cure II thanks to Thin Air, and we up to 18 GCDs. At a 2.5sec GCD, you get 24 GCDs. Thus, I conclude that without reworking WHM's MP economy, the upper limit for how much time a WHM can spend healing is somewhere around 75% of the time. Furthermore, 66% of the active GCDs are Cure II, which is still one-button spam, just by a different name.

Two things to remember, though, are (a) no potential changes would happen in vacuum, they'd happen alongside other things changing, and (b) even single target "whack-a-mole" healing is more engaging than Glarespam for the simple reason you're prioritizing and switching targets. Contrast SCH Chain Strategem vs AST Arcanum. On paper, they're achieving the same general concept of thing - increasing the party's overall damage done to the boss for a short time - but clearly the AST version is more involved, even completely ignoring Astrodyne and Seals. This is because you're both prioritizing and selecting individual targets and using more frequent, single target versions (for the purposes of this discussion, Chain is a "party buff") instead of a party-wide one. If you don't like Chain, Searing Light or Embolden. Same argument.

While many players DON'T like whack-a-mole healing, many do, and that was the staple of what MMO healing was for over a decade (and still is in some games, just with more options of mallet to use).

So for example, the MP issue goes away as a "problem" if you just cut the cost of WHM spells by 25% (which, arguably, should already have been done anyway since it's dumb they cost more than AST with the same potencies despite WHM having no Astrodyne)

Sorry I was not home,...

The thing is, "if you observe the forums" and "the ones that are speaking out" are some PRETTY hefty qualifiers.

CLEARLY the ones that don't want more DPS skills are not "nonexistent". Of the 10 or so active posters in this thread, there are 3 of them (close to a third) and of the 40 or so individual posters, something like 5-10 (so 1/8th to 1/4th). And that's here, a place that isn't really cordial to that position. The healer forum, as I've pointed out before - even just after it happens (at which point the locals attack me instead) - is not friendly to dissenting views and actively drives away anyone who empresses the contra position. Here in General, you can see more people with the view that either we don't need more damage buttons/rotations on healers, or that we can use the existing buttons in more interesting ways, and there are more than a few that want to focus on more healing, not more damage.

So "nonexistent" isn't a valid term. It's an attempt to belittle and gatekeep. There clearly is sigh of "major...representation" here. And that's ignoring that many people who like healers now obviously aren't on the forums complaining.

This is for feedback - not ONLY negative feedback. As Synodic Scribe recently pointed out in his video, the problem comes when only the people dissatisfied are speaking and the people who are satisfied are not, as that leads to the Devs making changes to benefit the upset, that then upset the people that were content or even happy before. This forum is for ALL feedback, and this game NEEDS feedback from both those upset AND those happy. Or, in this case, both those that want more damage buttons AND those who do not. Changes will affect all of us, so we all need to speak, then the Devs can weigh how many voices are on each side to determine either an overarching change, a compromise, or a 4 Healers Model "something for everyone" split.

The idea of "just add them and if people don't like them, they'll complain" is bad. Imagine in SB someone saying "Just gut the healer DPS kits. If people are mad, they can complain then." And that's basically what DID happen. And look how poorly that turned out.

Clearly, you need the pros AND CONS of decisions BEFORE making them, not after making them.

ALSO a reason I think the 4 Healers Model is the best option, as it compartmentalizes changes so if they are bad/alienating to players, there's an escape hatch to save us.

Honestly, SE have backed themselves into a sorry old corner with the forwards march towards oGCD cooldown dominated healing.

This is ultimately the issue, and quite a few people are saying it at this point. The thing is...some people LIKE oGCD healing weaving heals between damage. It's their jam.

So the question is, how to satisfy both groups?

I say 4 Healers Model. So far, I haven't seen an alternative proposal that does satisfy both groups. Other proposals tend to favor one side at the expense of the other (often not realizing it/feeling that it's more of a compromise than it is), which just gets us back to the same situation with different people pissed off instead.

I know, I know, tired of hearing it, but we need a solution that does appeal to all sides, and no others have been proposed that do. Most either appeal to the more damage side and try to make it where it just doesn't matter "if you're bad" in casual content (which ignores people wanting to not have a damage rotation AND do hard content...as a HEALer), or are middle-point compromises that mean the non-damage side has to give up something (having more damage rotations forced on them) so the pro-damage side is less bored than they are now, but that won't ultimately satisfy them so they'll ask/demand more later anyway. None of those are permanent solutions, and none actually work by appealing to all sides of the discussion. They either favor one (damage) at the expense of the other (healing), or they are a "first step" middle that takes from the healers and gives to the damage dealers more and more over time, or they are an empty compromise that benefits the damage dealers and locks the healers out of difficult content and makes them "bads" in non-difficult content.

None of these are good solutions.