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

[Gemina]

I know this thread has been going on for a bit and I am just chiming in. However, this topic goes back many moons. Definitely at least as far as my join date. The main points are typically made within the first couple of pages and then they tend to be reiterated. That being said, I knabbed a few of them. I'm not contesting these views, but rather making a generalized statement that I feel is applicable to the state of healing.

Surely giving them 1-2-3 combos isn't enough, they have too many buttons already. So to make them more interesting you would have to twist their skills a little bit. I don't play every healer so I can't give an opinion about all of them, but here's what I would do with the ones that I play:

Scholar

Energy Drain - Doesn't cost any Aetherflow. Instead it gives Aetherflow I, have 3 charges and 20 second cooldown.
Aetherflow - Restores 10% MP instead, costs 1 Aetherflow.

I basically swapped Energy Drain with Aetherflow. This would make you deal damage consistently without having to grief your party by spending all Aetherflow stacks in Energy Drain. That will be at the cost of a more inconsistent MP gain, and a more strategic use of your resources (but at least you're not spending every resource on damage).

White Mage

Stone and Glare are two separate GCDs instead of one being the upgrade of the other. Stone gives a stacking debuff to the targeted enemy that does nothing on it's own and can be stacked up to 5 times. Glare consumes this debuff and deals damage based on the amount of stacks. Dia also gives 1 stack per DoT tick. Using Glare on max stacks also speeds the Lily Gauge.

literally just revert SCH's damage kit to how it was before Shadowbringers. it is the easiest and least intrusive way to make that specific job way more engaging.

Hmm, well I've done DSR on Scholar and that's a very pressing and busy fight that requires a lot of GCD shield casts, and the "simple DPS rotation" is still boring as sin, so...? It sounds to me like you just have an insanely unrealistic expectation of the amount of GCD healing this game should/could have.

When healer engagement is brought up, skills and rotations are very commonly the theme. It is not up to me to dictate what is and is not fun for players. Personally speaking though, I've never been engaged by any rotation in this game. Even DPS rotations, and they only tend to just add more to the frustration level than anything else the more extensive they are. Healers have never had any kind of true DPS rotation, but even having more skills at my disposal such as 3.x SCH still did not provide the engagement I experience when playing a healer in FFXIV.

That being said, a job's abilities and the harmonious flow of its skills provide only a very small portion of the fun with playing any particular job, and specifically a role. This includes healers. No matter how simple or complex a rotation, once it becomes second nature there is very little enjoyment to be found here. I can take any job in this game and practice on a striking dummy, and whether it is SAM, MNK, BLM, DRK, GNB, or any other non-healer job they all become as boring as a healer rotation after a certain point. What makes any flow of skills aka 'rotation' fun to do is when the enemy throws things at you to disrupt it, and you the player find improvisations in order to maintain the GCD. This is how it is for DPS roles, and does also extend to tanks, though they have additional responsibilities to consider.

Healers has always been an issue because they are technically a magically ranged class, and it is exceptionally easy to keep their GCD rolling. If the devs were to toss a skill or two in there that requires them to be in melee range such as SGE's Phelgma, or WHM's Holy, it immediately becomes more interesting. However, even these skills have their limits. Whether you have healed just casual content, or have done the hardest Ultimate to date, this really isn't going to change much.

Personally speaking, no matter what content I was healing, the only thing that made it engaging was when my finger wasn't pushing the DPS button at all, because my GCD allocation had be used towards healing the party. Unfortunately, the higher skill level of the group, the less likely this is going to happen. The most fun I've ever had as a healer is when the S**t hits the fan. I constantly seek this out. It makes me think of Zenos and how bored he is until his limits are pushed by the WoL. Like him, I'm constantly looking for encounters that push my skill as a healer to its very limits. THAT is when I am having the most fun. Unlike Zenos though, who has to seek an adventurer of exceptional strength and skill; healers have to seek out the opposite. This I feel is the true flaw.

How can the dev team emulate this in an encounter though? I believe this is what needs to be explored. We're not getting anywhere discussing skills and rotations.

[ForsakenRoe]

What makes any flow of skills aka 'rotation' fun to do is when the enemy throws things at you to disrupt it, and you the player find improvisations in order to maintain the GCD. This is how it is for DPS roles, and does also extend to tanks, though they have additional responsibilities to consider.

Wouldn't that logic also apply then to healers, if they actually had a rotation of sorts that could be disrupted?

An example would be the 15s Banish CD I brought up several times. I'd make it an instantcast so it could be used for mobility. If there's a mechanic which demands mobility from the player, that happens while Banish is still on CD, you don't have it for the mechanic. The 'optimal' solution would then be to purposely delay using Banish to use it instead to keep the GCD rolling in that mechanic. That mechanic has successfully 'disrupted' the rotation for the WHM, because they are not able to use Banish at the time they would normally want to (every 15s on the dot). But because of the player's skill, foresight, etc, they are able to counteract that 'disruption' and play around it, making what is intended by the fight design to be a 'damage loss' into a 'damage gain'. Which makes the player feel good for coming up with a solution to the problem posed

An alternative example would be any big healing moment. As it stands, the only thing that can happen to a WHM in a Styx/Harrowing Hell situation, is that Dia falls off and you can't refresh it at 'the right time', losing some ticks of the DOT. With additional abilities in the kit, however, this means decisions have to be made on the fly. If you find you can spare exactly 2 GCDs in Harrowing Hell, do you spend them on Dia or Banish? Do you spend them back to back, or spread them out? If you spread them out, would you be able to use them both on Dia (given that it's 12s duration under my design)?

IDK, it seems kinda obvious to me that if 'DPS and Tanks can derive 'fun' in trying to keep their rotation going while the fight design tries to impede them via mechanics', then the same logic would work for healers. Doubly so, considering 'have to stop and heal' is a potential mechanic for a healer to face. The issue though IMO is not just 'the game doesn't try to stop the healer's rotation often enough' like others suggest. That's only part of the problem, really. The real problem is that we don't have anything to interrupt. Whenever we have to heal, 90% of the time that translates to 'we lose a Glare/Malefic/the other two'.

But another potentially interesting quirk of this, is that when we have more skills with potencies that are higher than the filler, the times where a filler spell is removed by a required GCD heal are less punishing comparatively. Here's an example: Two raidwides are going to hit the party, 3 GCDs apart from one another. The first happens 1sec before Dia falls off, and the second, 8 seconds later (giving 3 GCDs of space to heal). Banish will also be up in 6s time from the moment the first raidwide hits. With this, rather than immediately healing after the raidwide, a player could go Dia > heal (replacing the filler Glare) > Banish > 2nd raidwide, to preserve the maximum amount of damage output while keeping the party alive. What we have right now is a game of 'how can I minimize the amount of Glares I lose?', what we could have is something more akin to 'how can I minimize the amount of damage I lose, and if I have to lose anything, how do I reorganize my healing timings, such that it's my Glare that I lose each time I'm forced to Medica2/Cure3?'

[Gemina]

Wouldn't that logic also apply then to healers, if they actually had a rotation of sorts that could be disrupted?

No. Something that seems to get continually dismissed is that healers are the only role whose support and damage dealing skills are tied to the GCD. There are some exceptions such as PLD's Clemency, RDM's Vercure/Verraise, etc. but generally speaking this is the case for healers. The meta always has been, and always will be to prioritize GCD allocation towards damage. Giving healers more ways to do X where X=damage will never change that GCDs towards damage will have to take a backseat once oGCD resources are used up. That is the disruption for healers that breaks their 'rotation' if we want to call it that.

An example would be the 15s Banish CD I brought up several times. I'd make it an instantcast so it could be used for mobility. If there's a mechanic which demands mobility from the player, that happens while Banish is still on CD, you don't have it for the mechanic. The 'optimal' solution would then be to purposely delay using Banish to use it instead to keep the GCD rolling in that mechanic. That mechanic has successfully 'disrupted' the rotation for the WHM, because they are not able to use Banish at the time they would normally want to (every 15s on the dot). But because of the player's skill, foresight, etc, they are able to counteract that 'disruption' and play around it, making what is intended by the fight design to be a 'damage loss' into a 'damage gain'. Which makes the player feel good for coming up with a solution to the problem posed

This is already a thing for some healers. SGE for example has Toxicon as their movement skill, but they have to ensure they have the resources. If they don't, then they have to build it up before movement is required or they can't keep the GCD rolling. However, building this resource requires non-offensive GCDs, so they need to try to apply it during downtimes. SCH has the ability to damage on the move as well with Ruin 2 + Energy Drain, which is actually a DPS increase over Broil IV, but you lose an Aetherflow charge that could be used for support, or you can just use Ruin 2 and lose a bit of DPS. These kind of choices are already present for healers in FFXIV. WHM and AST don't really have reliable means to do the same thing, and I agree that it wouldn't be a bad idea to fill those gaps. The thing about these choices is that they are really not going to make or break an encounter. This kind of optimization does not interest me.

IDK, it seems kinda obvious to me that if 'DPS and Tanks can derive 'fun' in trying to keep their rotation going while the fight design tries to impede them via mechanics', then the same logic would work for healers. Doubly so, considering 'have to stop and heal' is a potential mechanic for a healer to face. The issue though IMO is not just 'the game doesn't try to stop the healer's rotation often enough' like others suggest. That's only part of the problem, really. The real problem is that we don't have anything to interrupt. Whenever we have to heal, 90% of the time that translates to 'we lose a Glare/Malefic/the other two'.

And this loss would be even greater if healers had more ways to deal damage. This is because overall healer offensive potency will not change with more skills. It will be disseminated from their ST and DoT skills. Healers have to learn to and/or work with each other to figure out how to optimize their oGCD restoration so it is always available and keep the GCD rolling towards damage. This becomes more difficult the more incoming damage there is. Again, healers don't have to deal with interruptions due to just mechanics. Disruptions also come from player mistakes, including their own. When you break things down, oGCDS are typically reserved to deal with the game's scripted damage output. GCD heals are there to restore health after abilities are exhausted, which is going to happen. We simply cannot allow optimal, ideal situations to dictate healer design. The dev team must account for player mistakes.

Improvisation is where I feel engaged with the content. And this is true for all roles. I want my choices to significantly matter. I greatly enjoy situations where if I make the wrong choice, it's not just my DPS that suffers, the actual % of clearing the encounter goes down because that choice lead to a player KO. That within itself is a substantial drop in DPS. Please note that my intention is not to argue. I think all points you've made are valid, but I am also thinking of the community as a whole. The situation where healer kits are pushed can happen anywhere from dungeons, to alliance raids, to EX and beyond.

[TheDustyOne]

No. Something that seems to get continually dismissed is that healers are the only role whose support and damage dealing skills are tied to the GCD. There are some exceptions such as PLD's Clemency, RDM's Vercure/Verraise, etc. but generally speaking this is the case for healers. The meta always has been, and always will be to prioritize GCD allocation towards damage. Giving healers more ways to do X where X=damage will never change that GCDs towards damage will have to take a backseat once oGCD resources are used up. That is the disruption for healers that breaks their 'rotation' if we want to call it that.

"Healers are the only role, no don't look at the exceptions I listed."

Keeping the GCD rolling is always going to be meta, yes. Using GCD heals when you have no oGCDs is good play, yes. Just because it's "always been this way" doesn't mean Square can't change how it works. It's kinda like saying "SMN has always been a DoT job, it'll never change", Warrior used to be able to spend Beast Gauge on a mitigation under Defiance, so even tanks had a GCD to mitigate option. Also no one would deny that a rotation would be disrupted if healing is needed, that's part of the job description and the responsibility of a healer. GNB and DRK already may have to sacrifice weave slots during burst to mitigate as part of their responsibility, healers having an actual rotation that gets disrupted wouldn't be all that big a deal outside someone being completely parse-brained.

This is already a thing for some healers. SGE for example has Toxicon as their movement skill, but they have to ensure they have the resources. If they don't, then they have to build it up before movement is required or they can't keep the GCD rolling. However, building this resource requires non-offensive GCDs, so they need to try to apply it during downtimes. SCH has the ability to damage on the move as well with Ruin 2 + Energy Drain, which is actually a DPS increase over Broil IV, but you lose an Aetherflow charge that could be used for support, or you can just use Ruin 2 and lose a bit of DPS. These kind of choices are already present for healers in FFXIV.

Considering SCH can now use Energy Drain with Broil IV, using Ruin II at all is a loss compared to ShB. We're all happy that Ruin II exists, same with Toxikon (albeit that is its own can of worms), but that still doesn't stop our filler being 90% Glaroilificosis. Ruin II is a movement tool, not a rotational skill, same with Toxikon, so dismissing the complaints of pressing the same button over and over again because we have this one button that we MAY have to press (and ideally not want to press with Ruin II) every 20s isn't a comfort.

And this loss would be even greater if healers had more ways to deal damage.

Not necessarily true.

Let's say I have a skillset with just 3 buttons; a GCD with a 5s cooldown (so used every 2nd GCD) and 700 potency, a standard GCD attack with 100 potency, and a heal. The "rotation" is about 400 ppgcd, but if I needed to heal, I would use the heal whenever that GCD is on cooldown, meaning I only lost 100 potency, not 400. Even if I healed when it's off cooldown, I lost an average of 350 potency (which isn't strictly true, if I still used that cooldown just as a boss became untargetable or dying, I still got the full 700). Compare that to just having 1 GCD that's always doing 400 potency, if I have to heal, I always lose 400 potency, so in fact you don't lose more damage if you have more damage options, you lose less.

Someone correct my math here, I'm too tired to correct it.

[ty_taurus]

Considering SCH can now use Energy Drain with Broil IV, using Ruin II at all is a loss compared to ShB. We're all happy that Ruin II exists, same with Toxikon (albeit that is its own can of worms), but that still doesn't stop our filler being 90% Glaroilificosis. Ruin II is a movement tool, not a rotational skill, same with Toxikon, so dismissing the complaints of pressing the same button over and over again because we have this one button that we MAY have to press (and ideally not want to press with Ruin II) every 20s isn't a comfort.

I'm not sure I'd describe myself as happy they exist. Toxikon is insulting to me, because it's what I think the designers thought would make Sage satisfactory to the collection of players who were complaining in Shadowbringers. And Ruin II has been disappointing for ages, and its use cases are hanging on by a thread as of EW because of the 1.5 second cast time. If they got sliced off as well, it wouldn't make me anymore unhappy with healers than I already am.

[TheDustyOne]

I'm not sure I'd describe myself as happy they exist. Toxikon is insulting to me, because it's what I think the designers thought would make Sage satisfactory to the collection of players who were complaining in Shadowbringers. And Ruin II has been disappointing for ages, and its use cases are hanging on by a thread as of EW because of the 1.5 second cast time. If they got sliced off as well, it wouldn't make me anymore unhappy with healers than I already am.

That's fair honestly, I don't have huge interest in Ruin II as it is currently, and yeah Toxikon is a letdown, but I don't hate the general ideas that they offer, they just need refining (lots of refining in the case of Toxikon).

[ty_taurus]

That's fair honestly, I don't have huge interest in Ruin II as it is currently, and yeah Toxikon is a letdown, but I don't hate the general ideas that they offer, they just need refining (lots of refining in the case of Toxikon).

I mean, "refining" may very well end up being something unrecognizable compared to the Toxikon we have now. If it were addressed, I don't think it I would look at the two as the same action. We need to ship of Theseus Toxikon.

[Aravell]

I'm not sure I'd describe myself as happy they exist. Toxikon is insulting to me, because it's what I think the designers thought would make Sage satisfactory to the collection of players who were complaining in Shadowbringers. And Ruin II has been disappointing for ages, and its use cases are hanging on by a thread as of EW because of the 1.5 second cast time. If they got sliced off as well, it wouldn't make me anymore unhappy with healers than I already am.

I find neither spell interesting as well, some quick thoughts about how they could be made better:

SGE
-Phlegma now costs 2000 MP and has no cooldown
-Toxikon now generates 500 MP and reduces Phlegma MP cost by 50%
-Everytime Kardia procs, you fill a new gauge, when this gauge fills, you get an addersting charge

Phlegma is now your movement tool, you don't lose damage but you take out a chunk of your own MP. MP management would become relevant again and you'd have to be careful not to run out of MP during burst.

SCH
-Can consume 50 fairy gauge to charge Ruin II
-Charged Ruin II does the same damage as your current Broil and returns 20 fairy gauge

This would make Ruin II useful as a movement tool again while giving an extra use to the fairy gauge, it's not a gain either so the fairy gauge won't be emptied for dps.