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

[Turtledeluxe]

I disagree that a rotation is irrelevant to job identity or job fun. It isn't that a rotation needs to be complex, it just needs to feel good to execute. Despite people commonly saying BLM is "the hardest class omg"-- it really isn't as far as the rotation goes. The rotation is pretty straightforward but it feels relevant to its lore/premise, has a sense of progression, leads to suitable payoff (or not if you drop it). This is the question we should ask of every Job...because even as a DPS sometimes things die so fast it feels like my damage is pointless. So why do I play anyway? Because the core loop is fun.

I would argue if devs can't make encounters healing intensive for for various reasons, what will keep people invested in the healer classes is distinct gameplay even if they all have the same effects and results. Why can't AST be a slightly more complex rotation if the lore itself allows for that? Because some people won't play it or take it to TOP? The dev team needs to accept the reality not every class is going to be for everyone and every meta all the time. They need to design classes with unique quirks and challenges like they did in the first place.

[ForsakenRoe]

Why can't AST be a slightly more complex rotation if the lore itself allows for that? Because some people won't play it or take it to TOP? The dev team needs to accept the reality not every class is going to be for everyone and every meta all the time. They need to design classes with unique quirks and challenges like they did in the first place.

Agreed to an extent, the problem with the first part is that while I (and others) suggest WHM remain 'the simple to execute healer', there are voices that say WHM should remain exactly as it currently is. The problem with the second part is that SE has a pretty good track record of avoiding the problem of 'you're playing the wrong class, reroll or accept you can't clear this content idiot'. Abyssos and it's 1% too much HP showed how bad a reaction the playerbase has to being told 'sorry you're playing the wrong class'. If it's a case of 'every class can clear, but some have tools better suited to the encounter', then that's more acceptable, as long as each class has their moment to shine. Macrocosmos in P3S felt great, being able to delete a mechanic. The issue with it was that WHM did not delete any mechanics on the same scale as Macro could. Fountain of Fire, or Firestorms of Asphodelos, could have been WHM's 'moment to shine' by having enough hits in a row to make it hard for an AST to cover everything (since they have only 15y range on their kit), while Lilybell would handle it with relative ease.

We get some 'WHM moments' now thanks to multi-hit stack markers, or bleed-raidwides. The issue with them is that anything WHM can 'easily handle', AST has to be able to handle too, so the 'extra healing power' WHM brings is often just 'surplus to requirements'. I think WHM needs a new 'identity' carved out for it, because 'heals bigger' isn't cutting it, and hasn't cut it since AST got 'fixed' in one of the HW patches. We've seen what I'd do: make it all about using damage neutral healing GCDs, and piling up multiple refunds at once, so that when the burst window comes, you unleash everything at once for a massive burst. In a way, it'd be like WAR's IR. Just, it wouldn't auto-crit

... Why leave WHM the way it is??? Surely whatever changes could be made to WHM would be largely ignorable if you want to spam medica 2 and occasionally hit glare like people do currently.

As others have said (was trying to solo Seiryu for WT, couldn't), this is the problem most of us have with the idea. We agree with the premise (four healers, should have four distinct playstyles), we just disagree with the assertion that one must remain exactly as it is.