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

[mallleable]

It would be cool if SGE got like a hypercharge like ability granting them a few instant 1.5 sec dps spells especially considering it would have interactions with Kardia, and Soteria.

[Turtledeluxe]

It's the job of the devs to balance the healing classes. Jobs are defined by their dps, healing, mitigation, mobility, buffs etc. BLM lacks a lot of what other casters offer because in exchange it gets high DPS. I'm not saying to make WHM a BLM but imo devs need to look at healers from this perspective as well as perhaps a more engaging gameplay loop for WHM if it's going to be the straightforward strong healing class. The downside of wanting diverse gameplay styles is that some class in every role has to be super accessible bc you have to leave something for the casual and or inexperienced player.

What we have currently is that devs want every job to be for the casual and inexperienced player so there's no barrier to entry for anything and I just think that's the wrong philosophy, to be completely honest. It's like not having small, medium and large options for clothing and just making everything small.

[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]

... 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 harsh as it was, there's a reason I described it as "3 healers + 1 lobotomy".

Even when polled with Tys survey, most WHM that responded were more interested in seeing extra damage buttons than anything else by far. As much as Ren says that WHM should stay the same because people currently like it, there's a hell of a lot of people that want to see it expanded upon.

Keeping WHM the same I think also consigns it to the same fate that SB WHM had; no identity apart from "green number be big now" and spamming 1 button most of the time. The lily system may have been fixed since then, but I still remember people complaining back in SB that it was mostly spamming lots of Stones. That has yet to be addressed and the 4 Healer Model™ insists on not fixing it.

It also has another big problem; whenever a new expansion rolls around, what does WHM have to look forward to in the keynotes and action trailers? SCH might be looking forward to a new DoT, SGE more pew-pew lasers, AST throwing stars everywhere (teammates included). What does WHM get? A Glare replacement, oh but sometimes it gets a Dia replacement! How exciting... We have a job stuck at level 4 with a level cap of 100 and beyond.

[AmiableApkallu]

The downside of wanting diverse gameplay styles is that some class in every role has to be super accessible bc you have to leave something for the casual and or inexperienced player.

What we have currently is that devs want every job to be for the casual and inexperienced player so there's no barrier to entry for anything and I just think that's the wrong philosophy, to be completely honest.

I disagree. No job should have a barrier to entry, and every job should provide room for mastery.

By way of analogy: We have Tic-tac-toe, Reversi, Chess, and Go. Anyone can read the rules for these games, play them, and have a bit of fun, so long as their opponent plays at a similar level that they do. (Anyone should be able to pick up any job and get through the MSQ.) However, we don't speak of masters of Tic-tac-toe because the game is far too simple for "mastery" to mean anything, and we recognize that it's okay for some games to be more difficult to master than others. (No job should be like Tic-tac-toe, but it's okay if some are more like Go than others.)

[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.

[TheDustyOne]

I personally like the idea of making Toxikon oGCD since Sage is lacking any damage oGCDs. Toss a few addersting procs under Phlegma, have Dosis proc some other skill, and I'd probably play Sage a lot more than now.