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

[IDontPetLalas]

To be fair, even though I'm a big fan of SB SCH and consider SB healers as a whole to be better than what we have here, I think the criticism of "spam filler between DoTs" still applies to then too. It was much less of an issue back then because the times on those DoTs were smaller and broke up the monotony more, or the job had other sub-mechanics to make up for it (SCH Quickened Aetherflow comes to mind, same with AST cards).

Well, AST had the the sects as well. It was much more interesting than the bland "pure" healer that it became now.

[ForsakenRoe]

All that said, I don't think WHM needs to be really complex, just some nice interactions between things, delete some redundancies, add a couple of situational stuff, just a general rounding out of the kit. There's nothing wrong with the image of a powerhouse healer, it's mostly the implementation that's extremely questionable.

Exactly, I don't mind 'simple and easy to pick up', as long as there's some depth that can be tapped into as well. But it feels like nowadays, the best we can hope for with 'some nice interactions between things' is things like 'when you use Asylum, which will get everyone to full HP after the raidwide, it also boosts the healing of the other heals you use by 10%, so you can likely cause your Asylum to become overheal'. And next expansion, because it was so popular with DRK, I'm gonna assume we'll get the Salt and Darkness treatment for Asylum: press it again for a 400p blast of OGCD healing. At least it'd benefit from the +10%, I guess?

[Thurmnmurmn]

Alright slightly unrelated but I just had this idea. Highly doubt it would ever get implemented due to technical limitations but.
What if the bosses scale per the average ilvl in your party? Like in terms of outgoing damage that is.
So essentially the better geared you are, the more you have to heal. And the advantage of better gear would still be felt since you would still dish out more DPS to finish the fight faster.

Just a random thought. I definately don't think about it as much as some of you on here so feel free to ridicule my idea if you want

[Renathras]

Apologies in advance for the length.

Ok, are you aware that what you propose would be harming WHM players who want for engagement?

Again, you frame everything from one side.

Are you aware that what you propose would be harming WHM players who do not want DPS complexity?
Are you aware that what you propose would be harming ALL healer players who do not want DPS complexity?

Why is this question only asked from one side?

I am not approaching from the position that the 4 Healers Model would be an unmitigated good. I've been EXTREMELY consistent in saying I think it's the BEST solution, not that it's perfect. I've said there are still people harmed by it, but it's the one that causes the LEAST people to be harmed. I've said it's a compromise; compromises by their very nature mean that they are not perfect, and there are trade-offs.

1) Correct.
2) False. As I've pointed out, I've been party to enrages that barely were cleared - through me having done damage. Had my damage been 10-20% lower, they would have failed.
3) Correct.
4) True, but that isn't the issue. Any change should ensure that people that can CLEAR NOW can CLEAR AFTER. That is, the goal of the change is to make some people less board, not to lock other people out of content, fair?
5) False, but somewhat irrelevant.

That isn't the argument, and I THINK you know it's not the argument. And "I don't enjoy it" IS a compelling argument, since Job design should be based on making things that are fun/enjoyable.

What do you propose for the people that don't like dps complexity - and, indeed, play healers FOR THAT REASON - do if we change all of the healers? If THEY FEEL that it is damaging to them, what do you tell them? "Oh you poor thing, it's all in your head, you'll be fine?" If someone told you that right now about current healers, would you find that acceptable? I suspect you would not. That means any solution requiring such is not acceptable.

.

In any compromise, there are pros and cons. The pros of the 4 Healers Model is that there are Jobs for all playstyles, so if players WANT more complex or less complex DPS rotations on their healers, they have the option to pick the healer Job that is right for them. Note this is true of literally every other role in this game right now. The cons is that people that like a certain aesthetic will have to chose whether aesthetic or rotation is more important to them. Will people that don't want rotational complexity all be happy with whichever one (probably, though not necessarily, WHM) ends up being simple? Probably not. There are probably some SCH, AST, and SGE players right now that like their kits as they are and will be upset. What do you offer them? Nothing. At least with the 4HM, they have an option. There will be some players of whatever Job is the simple one that want a more complex kit. What is their option now? Go on the forums and complain. They have no other option. So if they have 3, then that's an improvement, isn't it?

Both sides lose something. One side gains something at the expense of the other - the players that gain more DPS complexity on healers. One side loses something to accommodate the other and gets nothing in return - the players that do not prefer a more complex DPS rotation.

...yet you're talking like the people that want more DPS complexity are the ones giving something up. How does that make sense? Are you genuinely incapable of fathoming what the other side is giving up for you in this proposal? And that you would take even more, while they gain LITERALLY NOTHING from even the more limited exchange I propose?

Seriously, you're insisting it doesn't harm me when I'm telling you it does, but set that aside, do you realize what all I'm giving up and you're gaining - at my expense - without giving up anything at all yourself?

Even the 4 Healers Model is an extremely one-sided compromise as one side is exclusively giving up things and the other side is only gaining and losing nothing, yet you say by not getting everything, they're losing out. Does that really seem fair to you? Imagine a compromise in life where one person had $100,000 and the other $0, and the one with the money gave 75% of it so the end result was the $100k person went down to $25k, the $0 person went up to $75k, and was complaining that the other person wouldn't give them the other $25k as well. How does is it a fair compromise for one side to take it all from the other while leaving them nothing?

I don't think you know or understand what I want either. Though I think it's...due to something else, not sure.

Regardless, no one is advocating for stagnation. Saying "no complex dps kit on at least one healer" isn't saying "never touch or change anything about this healer OR THE ENTIRE ROLE from now on". If absolutely nothing else, the 4 Healer Model would do the exact opposite of have the healer ROLE stagnating. The initial implementation alone would be a huge break from the status quo, and there would be all kinds of balance and encounter design changes that would stem from it.

If your concern is the healer role stagnation, doing what we're doing now is going to lead to that, not the 4 Healer Model.

The biggest downside is it would devalue Succor more as the shield on Adlo would always be stronger this way. Emergency Tactics has similar issues in that it also devalues Physick to an extent, but even then Physick still has the (admittedly not very useful) niche of only costing 400 MP compared to the 1000 of Adlo/Succor.

Adding the Bio and Chain spread to Deployment would be a net positive at least, and maybe it could have a reduced cooldown if used on a mob instead of another player so as to not disrupt single target balance while providing something more fun for dungeons.

Fair enough.

One solution would be to make Succor more accessible and Adlo a bit less to compensate. For example, if Succor cost 750 MP while Adlo was 1500 (not set in stone, just saying), then there would be cases (in a world where MP mattered) where Succor was your "general" AOE choice and you still saved deployment Adlos (and Adlos in general) for more emergency situations, preferring Succor and Physic. Which...would consequently make Physic actually worth having.

And as you say, having "Bane" would be a nice bonus.

Pros: you bring back spreading DOT (helps with dungeon packs), you play more into the SCH theme of 'set up mitigation' (it feels more thematic to deploy a shield rather than just Succor it onto people), SCH is made stronger, button has multiple use cases

Cons: It kills SGE. A SGE/SCH shield lasts 30s, so you'd be able to put it up at literally any time, and be guaranteed that it either covers a hit, or will be 'ready again' at the same time it falls off. But, an Adlo is 540p effective shielding, and a Succor is 320p. SGE, however, has to use Zoe as their 'Deploy Adlo' equivalent, and it's already 'not as strong', making their usually 320p shield into 480p. Zoe's 90s CD, so you'd have SCH being WAY better at mitigating big hits. To keep the playing field balanced, SGE would have to see Zoe lowered to 30s in order to not get told 'you are bad class' (you can see DSR and the Holos shield addition to see that SE thought that 'not as much mit as SCH' was a very real problem for SGE on release). BUT, Zoe doesn't just affect shields, it affects all healing spells. So now SGE's base healing has just been buffed through the roof to try and keep parity with SCH, and now it's an arms race situation

Giving it a second charge though (keeping it's 'recharge time' at 90s) would maybe work, and be less 'destructive' to SGE's health in the PF-Sphere

The problem with charges is they don't allow more frequent use, they just allow compressed use. Instead of one at time 0 and one at time 90 and one at time 180 and one at time 2700, you can use one at time 0 and one at time 90 and two at time 180, or two at time 0 and two at time 180, or two at time 0 and one at time 180 and two at time 270. Basically, it lets you accordion them together if you want, but it doesn't give you more uses per se if you were, for example, using some on spreading DoTs. It's the one problem with the PvP dual use is that the two cases seldom happen together. You'd generally use the Bane side only in 4 mans during trash, but you'd want one for each wall-to-wall, but not need them during the boss fights.

I feel like part of this problem is the SCH/SGE problem more than the idea itself. That is, that SGE is too close to SCH and needs to be split up more/have its kit changed instead of holding SCH back. For example, make Zoe double the potency of the next SGE GCD shield instead of increasing the healing done. "But what about Zoe Pneuma when you need a big heal?" Zoe + Eu Prognosis + Pepsis (have Pepsis scale off the size of the originally applied shield).

SGE shouldn't be solving every problem the same way SCH does. I don't want to say "balance be damned"...but other people have been saying that a lot lately pointing out it's what's preventing Job identity and distinction in designs...

To be fair, even though I'm a big fan of SB SCH and consider SB healers as a whole to be better than what we have here, I think the criticism of "spam filler between DoTs" still applies to then too. It was much less of an issue back then because the times on those DoTs were smaller and broke up the monotony more, or the job had other sub-mechanics to make up for it (SCH Quickened Aetherflow comes to mind, same with AST cards).

We also had a lot more GCD healing.

All that said, I don't think WHM needs to be really complex, just some nice interactions between things, delete some redundancies, add a couple of situational stuff, just a general rounding out of the kit. There's nothing wrong with the image of a powerhouse healer, it's mostly the implementation that's extremely questionable.

I suppose this comes down to "what are nice interactions?"

Having to DPS to heal is generally bad, and having to excessively overheal to DPS (or maintain MP economy) often feels bad to people, too.

And what redundancies would we delete?

Situational stuff is kind of problematic because the more situational it is, the less useful it is in general, and the more people feel it's a waste of a button. "Sure, Lilybell is great in some specific situations, but most of the rest of the time, it's overkill. Wouldn't we be better off with just a second charge of Assize?"

My opposition is to DPS rotations/complexity since I don't enjoy that. I'm fine with more interesting healing interactions. I'm even fine with a little more DPS stuff as long as it doesn't detract from or interfere with that. As I said pages ago, Diacloud procs with at least 2 charges (on the buff, so it doesn't have a high risk of overwriting if you're stuck in the middle of GCD healing people) I'd be fine with. An entirely new rotation based around an entirely new gauge and several new abilities and upkeeps to juggle is a rather different animal than Diacloud or Aero 3.

[kaynide]

For 1- most healers don't currently spam heals, we try to heal as needed. Also, I wouldn't want the same skills for every healer. For (2) So you want us to heal efficiently, so that means our DPS is going to be limited? We need to overheal to DPS in some cases? (3) So everything stops because healers run out of MP? Wasn't this a thing 20 years ago? I could understand managing mp, but stopping? No.

1) I did not say everyone got the same skills; rather each kit would have its own gimmick (more in line with lilies/sage stone), but much less of what we already have. Everyone has the cure 1 and cure 2 and AoE cure and better AoE cure and 3 different AoE cures that can pop whenever. My point was resource management over just being able to spam. Aka spamming would get you into trouble, which ideally wouldn’t be happening. What’s the point of having mp and cast time delays to if you basically don’t have to use hard casts it for healing? To spam holy?

2) only if you are thinking 1 heal yields 1 dps skill; lilies are a good way to visualize this- as long as someone is recovering HP, the healer is gaining some kinda resource, which is used to dps. It need not be a one off ability, but maybe the start of a chain a la paladin’s 90 sword thing. Or resources for something akin to Miasma/miasma related dps. Alternatively when a shield has been consumed (see adderstone), up these stones are not necessarily used for 1 shot heals, but also dps, having the healer choose to spend it all on dps, or keep 1 or 2 in reserve.

3) again, you wouldn’t run out of mp unless you were wasting it/casting carelessly. And if so, yeah, you would need to back off a bit and let your mp recharge for a sec while tanks paying attention pop defensive cooldowns.

Dunno, I just liked how complex things were in HW. Like 2 deaths in a boss fight and you could be in serious trouble with low mp and serious teamwork. Now? I rarely see less than 50% mp u less I’m spamming AoE dps in something like Eureka Orthos.

Just my opinion, mind you, I def see your concerns with hard stops mid fight/dungeons etc, which wasn’t my intent.

[Thurmnmurmn]

snip

You are asking the same questions that people have already answered.
Heck even I answered some of those.

As I said before, the only thing doing more damage will do is give you a faster clear. Just because we are suggesting to raise the ceiling doesn't mean we have to raise the floor too. The bad players who don't want to adapt can still get their clears.
So no it would not harm WHM's who don't wanna change. However not changing WHM at all would indeed harm those who want to play WHM but see all the other healers get nice upgrades while they get nothing (talking about dps here).

Arguing healers are a large factor in beating enrage because you played with bad players one time and barely got the clear is such a weak argument. We have the stats via logs to prove it.

[IDontPetLalas]

1) I did not say everyone got the same skills; rather each kit would have its own gimmick (more in line with lilies/sage stone), but much less of what we already have. Everyone has the cure 1 and cure 2 and AoE cure and better AoE cure and 3 different AoE cures that can pop whenever. My point was resource management over just being able to spam. Aka spamming would get you into trouble, which ideally wouldn’t be happening. What’s the point of having mp and cast time delays to if you basically don’t have to use hard casts it for healing? To spam holy?

2) only if you are thinking 1 heal yields 1 dps skill; lilies are a good way to visualize this- as long as someone is recovering HP, the healer is gaining some kinda resource, which is used to dps. It need not be a one off ability, but maybe the start of a chain a la paladin’s 90 sword thing. Or resources for something akin to Miasma/miasma related dps. Alternatively when a shield has been consumed (see adderstone), up these stones are not necessarily used for 1 shot heals, but also dps, having the healer choose to spend it all on dps, or keep 1 or 2 in reserve.

3) again, you wouldn’t run out of mp unless you were wasting it/casting carelessly. And if so, yeah, you would need to back off a bit and let your mp recharge for a sec while tanks paying attention pop defensive cooldowns.

Dunno, I just liked how complex things were in HW. Like 2 deaths in a boss fight and you could be in serious trouble with low mp and serious teamwork. Now? I rarely see less than 50% mp u less I’m spamming AoE dps in something like Eureka Orthos.

Just my opinion, mind you, I def see your concerns with hard stops mid fight/dungeons etc, which wasn’t my intent.

Thanks for returning with the clarification, I think I get a better idea of your concept now, I'd say it's a bit rough around the edges but you have some good points.

[Renathras]

You are asking the same questions that people have already answered.
Heck even I answered some of those.

As I said before, the only thing doing more damage will do is give you a faster clear. Just because we are suggesting to raise the ceiling doesn't mean we have to raise the floor too. The bad players who don't want to adapt can still get their clears.
So no it would not harm WHM's who don't wanna change. However not changing WHM at all would indeed harm those who want to play WHM but see all the other healers get nice upgrades while they get nothing (talking about dps here).

Arguing healers are a large factor in beating enrage because you played with bad players one time and barely got the clear is such a weak argument. We have the stats via logs to prove it.

No, I'm not.

I've already told you WHY the damage gap is a problem.

Moreover, what is this even about? One question I asked that HASN'T been answered:

Is asking for healers to have more complex DPS kits because you don't want to be bored, or because you want to do more damage than other healer players?

[EDIT: Related but I don't want to distract from that - that is the question that needs to be answered - However changing SCH, AST, and SGE at all would indeed harm those who want to play SCH, AST, and SGE but see only the WHM healers get nice rotations while they are gutpunched with a complex DPS kit they didn't ask for and didn't want (talking about dps here). See? This works both ways. And as I've pointed out "It wouldn't hurt them" is a lie. It WOULD hurt them, you just consider the harm to them acceptable. They might disagree. :ENDEDIT]

[Thurmnmurmn]

No, I'm not.

I've already told you WHY the damage gap is a problem.

Moreover, what is this even about? One question I asked that HASN'T been answered:

Is asking for healers to have more complex DPS kits because you don't want to be bored, or because you want to do more damage than other healer players?

[EDIT: Related but I don't want to distract from that - that is the question that needs to be answered - However changing SCH, AST, and SGE at all would indeed harm those who want to play SCH, AST, and SGE but see only the WHM healers get nice rotations while they are gutpunched with a complex DPS kit they didn't ask for and didn't want (talking about dps here). See? This works both ways. And as I've pointed out "It wouldn't hurt them" is a lie. It WOULD hurt them, you just consider the harm to them acceptable. They might disagree. :ENDEDIT]

So the answer is to not be bored. However if you add new abilities, you'd assume dps would be higher since you're putting in more effort as well as are literally casting more spells than before. Why wouldn't you do more damage if you're doing more?

I haven't read everything in here but I don't recall seeing people advocating for a very complex dps kit. Pretty sure a lot of the suggestions still allow for the old play style to work but allow for more optimization to increase your dps.

[SargeTheSeagull]

No, I'm not.

I've already told you WHY the damage gap is a problem.

Moreover, what is this even about? One question I asked that HASN'T been answered:

Is asking for healers to have more complex DPS kits because you don't want to be bored, or because you want to do more damage than other healer players?

It’s because we don’t want to be bored. Obviously. This has been said literally dozens of times by dozens of people. However, as a consequence of healers’ DPS kits being more fleshed out, there will inevitably be people who are better and people who are worse just as there are now but it will be slightly more noticeable. Obviously.