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

[TheDustyOne]

Single target, WHM - WAR:

Glare - Storm's Path
Dia - Storm's Eye
Assize - Upheaval
Presence of Mind - Inner Beast
Misery - Primal Rend
Solace/Rapture - Fell Cleave
Thin Air - Infuriate

I'm gonna stop you right there and point out the problems with the comparisons.

Glare/Storms Path comparison; Storms Path eventually builds to a Fell Cleave after only 2 combos, Glare only does damage and leads to nothing else.

Fell Cleave is used frequently (used about 8+ times a minute) unlike Solace/Rapture. Solace/Rapture also aren't a DPS gain unless you use Misery under raid buffs.

Dia/Storms Eye is a fair enough comparison, likewise with Assize/Upheaval/Orogeny.

Presence of Mind/Inner Release is ludicrous to compare. Inner Release gives that major burst with free Beast Gauge options, PoM just makes you Glare faster, which again doesn't build up to anything. Also half the cooldown, you'll be using Inner Release twice as much, and with it Fell Cleave and Primal Rend more often. If it was really a one-to-one comparison, PoM would do something like let you use Solace/Rapture 3 times without spending lilies, and an additional free use of Misery.

Misery/Primal Rend is also bad to compare because of the uses behind them; Misery is a refund mechanic first, burst button second. Primal Rend is given for free as part of its rotation while Misery is about giving back what would've been lost. If there was no damage going out you wouldn't be using Misery, while you would be using Primal Rend.

Thin Air/Infuriate..... This is the worst comparison. Infuriate unlocks the use of an extremely powerful attack while Thin Air removes the MP of a spell. Not to mention that Beast Gauge abilities reduce the cooldown of Infuriate, making the cooldown something to track beyond once every 60s. You aren't typically using Thin Air in your rotation, as part of gauge management, or as a cooldown to actively watch, instead it's for the occasional rez or Cure.

Holy/Tempest has the same problems as Glare/Storms Path, one builds to something, the other is just spam.

The comparisons between the two shows just how barebones WHM is compared to its supposed contemporary in WAR. WAR frequently is building up to another attack with its primary mechanic (Beast Gauge) and has several abilities that interact with that mechanic. WHM just has Glare when Assize is on cooldown and Dia is applied.

[Saraide]

To Ren,
You have doubtless been in a 20 minute expert dungeon. This is a more acceptable outcome to most than timing out or having to quit because only the healer is simply unable to perform to a high enough standard to get through the boss. Healers already have a disproportionate amount of responsibility, I really can’t see bloating it further being a particularly good move. Then again random dps tend to be unaware that feint/addle and even tactidour samba can be helpful.

Is this an ideal solution? No. But it’s probably the better of a bad bunch.

For extra clarity, I haven’t seen anyone ask for 21111111 to be changed to 01189998819991197253 rotations, just another button and maybe timer to keep track of.

I do think the absolute limit of complexity is somewhere around tank levels of dps rotation complexity. SE should use that room as it improves the situation for healers that are bored while not threatening healers that are bad.

What we also need to keep in mind in this discussion and why adding a few damage buttons to healer is the preferrable solution is that SE cant make one role much more stressful to play than another. If one role is much harder to play it will in time get fewer players. I like my instant queues in many roulettes but they do come at a cost.

Upping the healing requirement through any combination of more incoming damage, less powerful oGCDs or slower heals poses the much greater risk of gating out bad players simply because every dungeon wipes you if everyone is dead but no dungeon wipes you if the healer damage is too low. There are no enrages in normal combat. It's why giving the damage rotation more depth is the much smoother option as it will increase the skill ceiling while not touching the skill floor.

[Mecia]

Only if it does the same amount of damage as performing the rotation. Otherwise you DO lose something if you're doing any content with Enrages or DPS checks.

Right but how many ''i want to heal not DPS'' people do content outside of DF? How many people here dont realize more damage options wouldnt hurt them because they only do DF so theyre arguing over nothing.

And if you are for some reason going outside DF then you clearly disagree with SE regarding healers, because as you said healer DPS matters. Why should they then be condemned to only a few damage buttons.

Are you asking for SE to change their philosophy in higher content and increase healing requirements?

[Lailani_Fey]

You are not getting the healbot game you want. This is not that game. In fact, many times this expansion we've had Japanese players complaining directly to Yoshida in open Q&A's because nobody was playing healer in party finder, a phenomenon that was also very true on NA and EU. He had to ask people to "please give Healer a try." [...]

Your point highlights a critical issue, but it overlooks several factors. Learning and executing fight mechanics as a healer is inherently complex due to the dual responsibility of keeping the team alive while also managing one's own survival. This challenge is compounded when healers must perform the same mechanics as other roles. Currently the shared responsibility for survivability across all roles dilutes the uniqueness of the healer role. While Square Enix might be hesitant to reverse this dilution, maintaining it only exacerbates the issue of role identity loss. I agree that, as content becomes familiar, healers are left with less meaningful engagement. Addressing this loss of role identity is crucial, and one approach could be designing mechanics unique to healers. This would help rebuild trust in their capabilities and differentiate their gameplay experience. Additionally, distinguishing between deaths due to lack of healer attention and those resulting from resource constraints is vital. The former, where a player dies because a healer is not attentive or occupied with other tasks, undermines team trust more severely.

[...] I main a healer because I like how healing works in this game. I enjoy prog and mapping out CDs and where I handle things in a fight, and I also enjoy that I contribute via DPSing. [...]

I appreciate your passion for the healer role as it currently stands. Let me share with you my perspective which is rooted in extensive experience with the game's older content. I've completed Coils up to E12S on Minimum Item Level. However, I've been hesitant to engage with EW Ultimates due to concerns about diminishing the challenge and engagement I value in healing. My favorite raids remain those in Coils, where every GCD matters, timing heals and managing resources are critical, and damage dealing fills the gaps between healing. These fights, unlike some newer content, lack isolated mechanics like telegraphed raidwides and TBs, offering a more chaotic and engaging experience. This chaos, where multiple things happen simultaneously, challenges healers in a way newer content often doesn't. My recent experience with downscaled Alexander raids at Lv90, especially in A8S and A12S, reaffirmed my belief that individual actions can significantly impact the outcome. This makes for highly engaging gameplay, something I would encourage Square Enix to revisit in their future designs. A careful blend of old and new mechanics could create a more fulfilling and dynamic experience for healers.

[Conchoidal]

My own proposal for about two years has been this:

WHM - stay the way it is.
SCH - get its SB kit back (DoTs mainly)
AST - get its SB kit back (Cards mainly; becomes more focused on buffing with Cards having a short CD like 10 or 15 sec so you're more often throwing them out and trying to keep higher support/buffing uptime instead of DoT uptime)
SGE - be a Disc Priest that actually heals by properly executing a damage rotation.

I've been told, by the "more DPS buttons" people in the Healer forum (which are many of the ones in this thread), that this is unacceptable.

Have you tried levelling with CNJ/WHM recently? It's awful. It has fewer unique abilities than any other ARR class/job (including SMN) and is stuck spamming Stone/Glare in every combat quest and solo instance. It would be completely unacceptable to leave it in this state whilst expanding the offensive options of every other healer.

[fulminating]

I appreciate your passion for the healer role as it currently stands. Let me share with you my perspective which is rooted in extensive experience with the game's older content. I've completed Coils up to E12S on Minimum Item Level. However, I've been hesitant to engage with EW Ultimates due to concerns about diminishing the challenge and engagement I value in healing. My favorite raids remain those in Coils, where every GCD matters, timing heals and managing resources are critical, and damage dealing fills the gaps between healing. These fights, unlike some newer content, lack isolated mechanics like telegraphed raidwides and TBs, offering a more chaotic and engaging experience. This chaos, where multiple things happen simultaneously, challenges healers in a way newer content often doesn't. My recent experience with downscaled Alexander raids at Lv90, especially in A8S and A12S, reaffirmed my belief that individual actions can significantly impact the outcome. This makes for highly engaging gameplay, something I would encourage Square Enix to revisit in their future designs. A careful blend of old and new mechanics could create a more fulfilling and dynamic experience for healers.

I'm not sure if it's ff16 related, but I believe the designer for these, o3, o4 and ucob left at some point in stormblood. I think there has been a noticeable shift in fight design style since then, but whether it's related or not is another matter.

[ty_taurus]

In order for White Mage to be on Warrior’s level, we’d need to add a 0-100 gauge. Every Glare, Dia, and Holy cast increases this gauge by 10.

Then, we add a new attack that consumes 50 gauge, deals a small amount of damage, let’s say 150 potency or so, and nourishes the Blood Lily. Then we add a new cooldown that enables you 3 casts of this new spell at no gauge cost, and another cooldown that increases this gauge by 50.


That would bring White Mage closer to where Warrior is.

[UkcsAlias]

Are you asking for SE to change their philosophy in higher content and increase healing requirements?

For all healers this is almost mandatory to make content more engaging, and the real issue healers face. Having just a single dps ability wouldnt be a problem if 80% of the time you were using gcds for healing.

Now for normal content, demanding such high percentage has problems on its own (healer dead = wipe, if no revive is possible). But the current 80% is dps also isnt healthy. Spicing that up slightly does help to some degree, but doesnt break the real problem.

I realy think that normal dungeons should be made significantly harder, and just rely on the echo to potentialy weaken to its current state (for Duty support use a difficulty setting). For weaker players it might take longer to beat it then, but as it can quickly scale down, wont cause blocked progression.

And in the worst case: give more jobs a revive method: We have 2 duty specific buttons available that rarely are used. What if this sometimes provides an emergency revive for a healer (maybe at the cost the limit break they can revive 1 healer)? It would be undesired to be used, but when it otherwise would be a wipe, its better than nothing. And if in a trial both healers died and lb3 was up... its barely going to do anything (as the lb is lost mass revive wont happen afterward). It then only would need the game to teach the players about its existance.

[Aravell]

It needs to be understood that there is no realistic way to make healers heal for 80% of their GCDs without gating out a lot of the healers that aren't as good. Even back in HW, when every healer had far fewer OGCD options, we still didn't spend 80% of our GCDs on healing. Now, if you don't care at all about the less experienced healers, then sure, boost healing requirements and watch the role die overnight as people can't handle it and leave the role.

Why are people so opposed to a balance of the healing and damage kit? It actually would benefit both sides, reducing the healing kit by expanding the damage kit also means the healing kit would have to become more creative as there are less buttons to just dump raw potency with no interactions on.

[Nizzi]

For all healers this is almost mandatory to make content more engaging, and the real issue healers face. Having just a single dps ability wouldnt be a problem if 80% of the time you were using gcds for healing.

Honest question: Do you know and understand that GCD healing is binary? You either do it if you need to, and if you didn't, doing damage was the correct choice. From there, you have two possible outcomes from the use of GCD healing on a per GCD basis; you either lose whatever potency of the attack that would've replaced it because you didn't need the heal... or you needed the heal and you didn't use it, and someone died/you wiped. It's that simple. So even if GCD requirements are increased, which nobody is against, you are still going to spend the supermajority of your time using GCD attacks because it's how the role works, unless SE decides that a massive shift in difficulty is a good idea, despite multiple points in this expansion showing that the majority of players who don't raid in statics are not capable of handling it.

Now, of course, using GCDs for comfort and overhealing in prog/reclears is a thing that exists and what you're doing until you've learned a timeline or to cover for errors; we are not robots that make optimal decisions every 2.5s and are able to optimize on that level, so there's nothing wrong with pressing the occasional Succor or Medica II when it may not be "needed". But the suggestion of increasing GCD heals to that level solves nothing except making the game that much harder and less accessible, and makes the healer the biggest failure point in any party, which is something SE clearly doesn't want.

I'm also seriously confused at why people to say what the solution for it is at all levels, and then offer suggestions that only very high end healers are going to be able to handle it. The DPS rotation is not only boring in Savage and Ultimate you know? It's boring in every bit of content. It's boring in the MSQ, it's boring in instanced story fights. It's boring in dungeons and it's boring in every bit of "normal" mode content, far more than it is in high end content. I don't only do raids because that's all I want to, I only do raids because they're all that gives me any engagement anymore. I did all of the EW MSQ on Scholar and let me say that the Venat fight and the Zenos fight were among some of the most boring things I've ever done in any videogame ever. I couldn't wait to be done, and it actively ruined moments that are supposed to be memorable high points in the story for me.