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

[SargeTheSeagull]

Insert talking to a brick wall here bc i can't figure out how to make jpegs work on this forum. So from what I can tell everyone basically wants healers to have more complexity in some way. Their DPS kits, heal kits, both etc. Ren meanwhile wants three of the healers to improve but not white mage. WHM needs to stay boring and braindead so that people who want to put in zero effort can still purple parse. Am I about summing that up correctly?

[Renathras]

Their DPS kits, heal kits, both etc. Ren meanwhile wants three of the healers to improve but not white mage. WHM needs to stay boring and braindead so that people who want to put in zero effort can still purple parse. Am I about summing that up correctly?

No, you are not.

Firstly, because I've openly said there are changes to WHM that I would make.

Secondly, because I already pointed out explicitly just within the last page or two that healing changes/complexity increases are more than welcome.

Third, because I've never supported "boring and braindead" gameplay (I don't think healers are that, so I wouldn't use those adjectives to describe them anyway).

Fourth, because I've never advocated for people putting in "zero effort" to "purple parse". Not only have I said parsing is irrelevant to my concerns, I've never advocated for anything that allows for high parsing by doing zero effort. Take WHM as it is now. What's the most zero effort thing you could do with it? Press the Medica 1 button over and over and nothing else, right? Will you parse purple doing that now? No you will not. So how would advocating for WHM's DPS kit to remain as it is now allow people exerting zero effort to parse purple when the kit, as it is right now, does not allow for that?

Fifth, why'd you even ask the question in your post a couple pages back about what my suggestion is if you already decided it was "braindead" to let lazy people "parse purple" and weren't going to listen to what it actually is?

Sixth, why'd you even post this completely wrong "question" when you had to know, if you'd read literally ANY of my posts, that it would not be correct? Did you just not read any of my posts? Why ask a question if you aren't going to read the answer posted by the person you asked the question of, and instead did what I cautioned you against - only listening to the people opposed to the idea?

A large issue with healing is just how bored people are with the lack of dps rotation for downtime...

...which is the entire reason I suggest making a couple of the healers more DPS focused.

Serious question: Why do you think I'm suggesting that?

Not why do you think I'm proposing my overall idea. I mean, SPECIFICALLY, why do you think I'm suggesting TO give a couple healer Jobs more complex DPS kits? It's obviously not for my benefit. So why do you think I'm proposing to do it?

[Also, I talk about changing encounter design. All the time. I've even done it in my posts in this thread.]

I get hyperbole isn't your strong point, but at least try to understand the point being made, not going off on another subject....

I don't think hyperbole is often useful in discussions, and it tends to be highly toxic to understanding between people. AT BEST, it annoys people. At worst, it genuinely confuses people preventing understanding. "Oh sure, you just want EVERYONE to be bored." "No, I don't, where are you even getting that from?" "I didn't MEAN everyone, I was being sarcastic. Why can't we discuss the issues?" "Oh, I thought you were serious." It just isn't useful in MOST cases.

1) I wasn't ignoring one in favor of the other "because it's helping me". I pointed out in the first one it wasn't a scientific survey. Regardless, my stated estimate for a while has been that my position is probably held by around 15-30% of the playerbase, which even that data supports. The idea of writing off 1/6 to 1/3rd of your playerbase is just a bad idea. And didn't I directly address the multiple choice problem? When you have no "none of the above" or "none" or "no change" option, OF COURSE people are going to pick options like "more DPS buttons...I guess?" since they don't have a "none of the above" option. One could also argue it's pointless to have a "more complex DPS kit" option when the Devs seem like they won't do that, either.

2) It IS - WHEN DID I SAY IT IS NOT? I'm really tired of people insisting I'm making arguments I'm not. Sometimes I think it's intentional strawmanning, but other times, I think people just aren't reading what I write. I could understand a misunderstanding or two, but when I'm outright saying NOT THAT, continuing to say I'm saying that seems malicious. No, I have not said we cannot have both. IF I WAS SAYING THAT, why would I be proposing we make some of the healer kits have more DPS complexity? How could I be saying "We can't have both DPS and healing optimization at the same time - IN AN UNRELATED NOTE, I propose we make SGE and SCH have both more DPS and healing optimization at the same time"? Does that make any sense? No, no it does not. If you're going to argue against me, please stick to arguments I made, not arguments you want me to have made instead.

3) I HAVE NO HABIT OF SPEAKING FOR THE SILENT MAJORITY FOR CHRIST'S SAKES. Good FORKING GOD! If one more person says that stupid damned lie, I'm just going to start reporting posts for rude slander at this point. FIND a post where I've said that. Go looking for one. You won't find one unless you go back literal years where I've said it could be possible. MY STATED POSITION is that I speak for a minority, and I suspect everyone does as I suspect the "silent majority" is kind of ambivalent. QUOTE me in a post saying I speak for the silent majority. FIND IT. Or retract the claim, please. Because otherwise, it's slander.

...further, there are other niches than "higher DPS", not to mention "hither DPS" doesn't work in a role which is DPS penalized. We've seen this with MCH. It had "higher DPS" than BRD and DNC...but was still slapped with the Ranged Phys penalty. What happened? People blacklisted it. It was only when they added UTILITY for it that it started being looked at seriously again.

As for the survey: What is the best iteration of WHM? ShB 15%. EW 39.1%. 15 + 39.1 = 54.1%. Is 54.1% a majority/greater than 50%? Oh, yes, it is. What about the rework question? 16.9% no rework, 33.1% mini-rework (I got onto Ty for how vague those questions were and open to interpretation, but for the sake of argument, these would be the "Leave WHM (mostly) alone" answers). 16.9 + 33.1 = 50%. Oh look! HALF of WHM respondents - in a sample already favoring changes and higher complexity and more DPS buttons - answered that they don't want a big or major rework and want the Job to remain mostly the same or even entirely the same. HALF. Suddenly, 54.1% and 50% aren't looking like such a "minority", are they? And even at the low end, we have 16% opposing any change at all, which is RIGHT IN LINE with (the lower bound of) my estimate for the number of people that agree with my position, now isn't it?

The fact, btw, is that the 54.1% prefering ShB (15%) or EW (39.1%) says that they do, in fact, "prefer ShB/EW". Kind of by definition. Now, it may be an argument of "least bad", but if everyone was really clamoring for a return to HW WHM, SURELY that would have gotten more than 24.8%.

Note the only other healer with this much of a "hold the line" view (that is, no rework + mini rework being anywhere close to half) was SGE - 27% (no rework) + 27.7% (mini rework) = 54.7%. Contrast AST where "major rework" BY ITSELF (41.5%) with a further 33.9% wanting a major rework, for a whopping 75.4%, more than 3/4ths, wanting a major or total overhaul of the Job, and with only 0.6% wanting no change. SCH wasn't quite that bad, but was pretty close to it, with only 8.4% wanting no change at all and major (38.5%) + total (23.5%) coming out to 62% who want a major or total rework. Only 50% (27.7% major, 22.3% total) for WHM and only 45.2% (29.9% major and 15.3% total) for SGE.

This suggests there are a lot of people - even in this somewhat biased sample - that do like WHM and SGE as they are now and are the majority of SGEs and a 50/50 split of WHMs. And, because I do think it's important to keep pointing out, this is a sample that is MORE BIASED TOWARDS more DPS actions and changes/complexity to the healer Jobs overall. (See how this same sample treated SMN and hates it while they rated BLM better than almost everything else, both in diametric opposition to the playerbase's play/use/popularity numbers as a whole...)

4) I wasn't trying to "put words in your mouth". Reading the long form answers, the thing that I saw continually popping up was people asking for Aero 3. Do you disagree? That's just one, ONE damage button. It wasn't some attempt to argue in bad faith, it was pointing out that the thing most requested is "can we just have this one button?", a position I've even supported myself.

(I am trying to break mine up. See how short you can make posts when you're replying to half a dozen people. It doesn't help that I also have a lot of just antagonistic, argumentative, and sometimes rude and gatekeeping and heckling people in the mix, too. But like see how two of my points are basically debasing you of something I've already debunked for other people that you chose to repeat anyway, causing me to spill more digital ink to correct YET AGAIN where, had you read those rebuttals above, you would simply not have made those accusations? I have to deal with that, too, which further inflates what might already be good sized posts.)

I was under the impression that you wanted a discussion, so I asked you to clarify some points so we could have a discussion. But you only want me to say "I see your point, but I disagree"? Ok then.

I see your point, but I disagree.

Also, it's hilarious that you think I have a static because I only mentioned reclears. I cleared the first 3 floors of savage purely through PF and P10S took me 10 hours, thank you very much. I also tend to do some community service where I join random PFs and try and get them some clears, but thank you for painting me as a toxic elitist that wants to gatekeep the poor, downtrodden PF players.

Oh my...

Good god.

You're infuriating.

HERPDERP, nooooooo! I don't want you to just see my point but disagree. You said you didn't UNDERSTAND me. I wanted to see if, by you asking questions, me giving answers, and you seeing what those answers were, you could reach a point of UNDERSTANDING. You might still disagree, but it should be from a position of understanding - understanding MY positions, not caricatures of them. You said in the post before the questions you didn't understand me, so I petitioned you to ask questions that could lead to understanding.

...and then you turn that around on me to "You just want to force me to say <words>??"

NO!

I want you to UNDERSTAND a thing you DIDN'T understand, by your own admission, BEFORE.

And I wasn't painting you as anything, despite your tireless efforts to paint me as such.

This point about ex trials is so bad. It's not those evil elitist raiders keeping you from clearing or wanting to prevent you from clearing. If your group has enrage problems then the fault lies squarely with the dps. You cant say you care about clearing if you ignore the problem in the room that is preventing you from doing so. And that's dps players who are bad at their job and/or bad at mechanics. The reason why I say it takes effort to see enrages in ex trials is because it takes effort to keep the party alive through numerous half wipes all the way until enrage without having an actual wipe.

Oh I'm SORRY, I didn't realize I needed to pay 4 people's subs to insist they have to play up to a certain standard so I can clear content. MY BAD. /sigh

For my part, I keep people alive. That's because...I'm a healer. That's what good healers...do. And I'm sick and tired of being condemned for it.

.

/sigh

This is pointless.

Believe what you want.

But whether or not you want to believe it, there are people that disagree with you, and do so for good reason. They also play this game. They also get to speak. And the Devs are, frankly, listening to them more than they're listening to you, at least thus far. It might pay to try to make allies of them rather than constantly trying to find new and exciting ways to insult and deride them.

But as I said, if you get nothing come DT because of your intransigence, you have only yourselves to blame. For my part...I'll just be carrying on. /salute

EDIT:

So you agree this point is completely irrelevant for this discussion? Bad dps players have no bearing on raising the skill ceiling on healers, while leaving the skill floor untouched.

No, I do not agree with your framing, nor your argument, and I'm not going to even waste a postcount for the day to dispute it. Try again.
Or don't.
I kinda don't care right now.

You've seemingly tried your best to misrepresent everything I say, so forgive me for not being...overly enthusiastic...in answering you.

Not to mention the argument isn't about "skill floor" or "skill ceiling", it's about "dps complexity/actions". I've said myself I'm fine increasing the skill ceiling on the healing side, which means that isn't the issue at play. The issue at play is if we must have all healers have their skill ceilings increased on the DPS complexity side by adding DPS complexity and DPS actions. That's a very much more narrow and specific argument.

[Aravell]

I want you to UNDERSTAND a thing you DIDN'T understand, by your own admission, BEFORE.

And? I understood your argument and made a rebuttal, that's what discussion means, it's what I'm trying to do. There was absolutely no need to make a snide jab at me as if I was trying to gotcha you or something. You're making things difficult, I asked you a question to clarify, you clarified, and we continue to have the discussion, no? Seems to run counter to your asking for good-faith discussion if you turn around and take jabs at me for trying to have a discussion.

Also, why go out of your way to paint a picture of "terrible raiders" when you're quoting me if you don't actually mean to tag me as one?

[Renathras]

And? I understood your argument and made a rebuttal, that's what discussion means, it's what I'm trying to do. There was absolutely no need to make a snide jab at me as if I was trying to gotcha you or something. You're making things difficult, I asked you a question to clarify, you clarified, and we continue to have the discussion, no? Seems to run counter to your asking for good-faith discussion if you turn around and take jabs at me for trying to have a discussion.

Also, why go out of your way to paint a picture of "terrible raiders" when you're quoting me if you don't actually mean to tag me as one?

Okay, so you now understand my argument - not a caricature of it? - and won't tell me anymore that you don't understand my position? Good.

I wasn't making a jab or making things difficult, though, so it seems you still don't understand. And now you're trying to make a snide jab gotcha about "good faith".

Though I have to ask, where...did I say anything about "terrible raiders"? o.O I can't find the phrase in my post responding to you. Or ANY of my posts, actually. How is it good faith to make up things other people haven't said? /sigh

EDIT:

Anyway, this is, again, pointless. So I won't keep participating in this tangent.

If you don't understand something, ask questions.

If I keep saying you're wrong about what you're saying about me or my arguments, it might pay to ask questions there to lead to understanding - That is, if you say "Are you saying X" and I say "I've be outright opposed to X this whole time, are you even reading my posts?", it should be clear you're misunderstanding something. Especially if I'm saying it over and over again to the same people.

I feel like at least half of the opposition to me is people NOT doing that and making assumptions "You said people should be able to parse purple doing the bare minimum one-button spam" (someone above, not you) type stuff, outright making up stuff I didn't say and that is directly opposed to stuff I have said ("you're saying we can't have more dps and healing complexity at the same time" "I've literally proposed a system where we would have more dps and healing complexity at the same time on some healer Jobs..."), so they have something to disagree with me over since, if people actually took only the arguments I've made, and noted the rebuttals I've presented, at least half the arguments used in opposition to me wouldn't be voiced since they aren't things I've argued for/against.

...and that's not counting the just outright insults from people who don't know and don't care to know my positions - they've just made up what they WANT my positions to be, so they can hate me for having them, and then not bother even arguing them instead going with mockery and discrediting to "defeat" them via ad hominem fallacy - as those aren't even arguments at this point.

I suspect, at the core, people would generally agree with my positions on SCH, AST, and SGE, that oGCD heals are too prevalent and too powerful, and that encounter design is too much on the "light tickle" side when it comes to healing and damage output. That's like 90% of the argument right there that we likely agree on if people bothered to read and understand.

[Aravell]

Though I have to ask, where...did I say anything about "terrible raiders"?

Your little rant about terrible, awful raiders that clear early and don't let people into their parties. It's not me being bad-faith if I'm pointing at things you actually say, so don't assume.

The problem here (I'm talking about Extremes, btw), is that high end players with statics DO NOT understand the average player experience in this game. You guys have your BiS Savage gear and your static team, you go into an Extreme on patch launch week, and get your clear. Or you join with all the other top players clearing it week one. People like me wait a few weeks, watch videos, get some additional gear, then go into the content. By then, all you high achievers are done and we have to do the content with...well, everyone else who isn't. AND you won't let us join your reclear parties since we haven't gotten our FIRST clear yet. So we have to deal with the "rabble of scrubs" from the general PF community who ALSO haven't cleared yet (otherwise they'd also be in farm/reclear parties), don't know optimal rotations, and often you can't even get to watch a YouTube video, much less expect they will go to the Balance to know their optimal rotation even ignoring that they won't have hours of target dummy practice even if you could get them to do so...all to get said first clear. Only then is the "reclear experience" relevant. This disconnect between high end raiders and people with statics vs everyone else is one of the cruxes of these discussions, and I don't understand why people don't understand this. I get we're often insular in life where we know our own experiences and underestimate what everyone else has to deal with, but it's extremely important in discussing changes like this to understand it.

For the record, if we're talking about savage, it's not early clearers not wanting to help, it's that people want a full loot clear, and people who already cleared can't join without reducing the amount of loot.

Also, I'm here on the forums for actual discussion, so how about you not assume everything is a gotcha attempt and stop treating everyone like an enemy? It makes it very hard to get a discussion going. You've also made caricatures out of my argument before, so don't even pull that one on me.

[Thurmnmurmn]

...which is the entire reason I suggest making a couple of the healers more DPS focused.

Serious question: Why do you think I'm suggesting that?

Not why do you think I'm proposing my overall idea. I mean, SPECIFICALLY, why do you think I'm suggesting TO give a couple healer Jobs more complex DPS kits? It's obviously not for my benefit. So why do you think I'm proposing to do it?

[Also, I talk about changing encounter design. All the time. I've even done it in my posts in this thread.]

You're suggesting that to try to accommodate to everyone but it's falling short. That's what everyone is telling you but you can't accept it.
I'm repeating myself but the issue is that you want WHM to remain the same (dps wise) and for other jobs to become more complex. All while keeping the dps for all of them similar. So essentially there's no pay off to play the harder jobs.

You also tried to imply previously my point didn't matter because I'm talking about dps and not healing. Last I checked the thread was called "How would you solve the boring "damage rotation" of the healers?"

Also, I'm here on the forums for actual discussion, so how about you not assume everything is a gotcha attempt and stop treating everyone like an enemy? It makes it very hard to get a discussion going. You've also made caricatures out of my argument before, so don't even pull that one on me.

Ren can't stop viewing everything as a bait. It's part of why people can't stand him.
He'll write a novel and intentionally bypass the character limit for ALL his posts and yet constantly misinterprets or ignores arguments.