Would you rather healers get more complex healing kits or more complex DPS kits?

[Saraide]

Healers don't need MORE healing but there could be a lot of extra work done in the area of debuff management. Most healers in regular content seem to forget they have the Esuna skill. Perhaps a few extra Esuna style skills like a short duration Esuna-type buff skill that negates the death penalty or vuln stack. There are many other ideas. Would also allow the devs to introduce new mechanics that need to be countered by Esuna/buff/debuff mechanics rather than just HP numbers.

One aspect I would like to see more of is Mesmer/Enchanter (GW2/Everquest) type mechanics. Say for example DPS (or healing) skills that have a tiny duration (like 3s) that need to be placed on a target that reflects a small portion of the enemy's damage, a good solid hit but you need to place it on the target of the attack within a very precise window, like Prot Monk in GW1. Also possibly convert some heals into high value/very small AOEs, rather than just a monster arena blanketing AOE regen, reward the healer for well thought out placement of a 2m placement healing AOE. One of the most fun healers I ever played was the grenade user in that monster hunting game Evolve, the arcing grenades she fired had a small splash so you had to have good aiming with an arcing weapon to get your heals down but were rewarded with high potency healing.

I was on esuna duty this tier and it honestly didnt feel great. The game isnt set up to allow for quick reactions. Snapshots are weird and unintuitive. Esuna isnt nearly snappy enough for those situations and very small aoes or super short duration buffs arent either.

[Katish]

Neither. Remove healing button bloat, increase dps skills (nothing needs to be "complex" here).
The only time I feel complexity can be added to the kit is if new mechanics introduce a need to press one button over the other. OR, a new skill is added that answers a new mechanic.
But at this point that seems unlikely, so progression favors DPS skills over everything else. They need not be complex however...as it's not really changing or adding anything we aren't already doing. (It's just n+1)

[Gemina]

Neither. Complexity doesn't necessarily equal more fun, and on the same token simplicity doesn't necessarily equal less fun. This does not mean that our current kits cannot be improved upon because they most certainly can, but this only goes so far when it comes to engagement.

I can't speak for everyone, but for me there are two main things that make healing fun and engaging for me. The first is respectable mechanics. I want mechanics that cannot be ignored, and cannot be doritoed. The second are my own teammates when they need to be patched up, forcing me to go out of script and improvise. Combining these two make for very interesting and fun encounters, which is probably why I find learning parites in PF to be the funnest content this game has to offer. What I seek to not be bored during PvE is already in the game. I would not mind, and I do believe that the dev can up the difficulty a notch or two in casual content because when the threat level is essentially zero, which is the case for the majority of casual content, it just isn't very fun to do, especially repeatedly.

The mechanics of the Antlion in the newest dungeon is a great example of a decent threat level to throw at players, and if they are willing to do it here, they can do it everywhere.

[UkcsAlias]

There has to be downtime between outgoing damage at some point to make it recoverable when things go wrong. If nothing goes wrong however we are again at the point where having a more intricate dps rotation makes sense to have. Compared to tanks that complexity would still be a bit lower probably so it's not like I am reaching for incomprehensible rotations like monk or black mage. They're still going to be easily understandable simply because so many buttons are already in the healing side and I dont expect that to change too much.

Not everything needs to be damage either! Stuns etc are just as anoying to face, and especialy on extremes can be punishing as they waste time.

A debuff like a vuln stack (in this case making them near undodgable and some even forced as a raid wide), which then just needs the healer to act anywhere in the next minute can do fine already. As long as there is a clear visual clue for normal mode. Taking it to extremes, we can obvously make it more harsh.

And note, that debuff can be as simple as: next raid wide deals 20% of your max hp per stack. On which 5 stacks become lethal (5 can be survived with shield/mits, but 6 and 7 can make even that near impossible). On normal mode the marking then can already bait healers to mitigate it at 1 (which is fine!), but on extremes, you can add a lot more to that.

For extremes you can even make an esuna just change the effect applied: phys vuln is converted to magic vuln and vice versa. And then have the next attack either do a single type. Or demand a 50/50 split to soak both types.

And yes, in the end its still damage. but the way to resolve it isnt healing then, and could even mitigate the need to heal. Although it might require an aoe esuna at some point to have these work.

[KenZentra]

Healers currently are setup to deal with how encounters deal damage. So both really need to change. I do think healers should have a little more in terms of doing dps, but I also think healers need to be able to heal more often. Out of necessity, not because they get more buttons that heal. And if they handle the damage constantly coming out correctly, they can still deal damage.

Right now, healers mostly only have to heal when there is Raid-wide damage or tank busters, and both have a bunch of options for even a single healer to deal with them. Especially too, all healers have ways of quickly reversing big raid-wide damage. I think healers need different and maybe even weaker kits, with more consistent damage, and less often nuking raid-wides. I also think healers should be much more different from each other, not just by Shield or Pure (which means nothing honestly) by excelling at different aspects of healing, whether that be a focus on single target heals, raid heals, mitigating damage as they heal, preventing damage with shields, healing via HoTs, reversing damage taken, healing via reactive buffs, and so on and so forth.

[Absurdity]

I dont want more complex healing, nor complex dps rota...or many buttons..
I want higher HEALING REQUIREMENTS such has:
1) Bosses deal more auto atk damage
2) Remove self healing from dps/tank
3) Raid-wide dmg happens more often
4) Random damage spikes.
5) Mech that evolve around dispelling
6) AOE DoT DMG!

While I agree with the need for increased healing requirements I think the current healing kits are an absolute joke.
There is little to no synergy between healing skills as they are all just fire and forget "Heal target for X amount" on different cooldowns.

Let's take a look at a really basic ability in XIV and compare it to a really basic ability in WoW.
Since they roughly have the same baseline effect I'll be picking Aspected Benefic and Riptide.
Aspected Benefic: 250 cure potency initial healing + 1250 potency healing over 15 seconds, single target.
Riptide: (221% of spell power) initial heal + (132% of spell power) healing over 18 seconds, single target.

From a quick glance they look very similar but as a Restoration Shaman you will always pick up the Tidal Waves passive and suddenly
Riptide: (221% of spell power) initial heal + (132% of spell power) healing over 18 seconds. Grants 2 stacks of Tidal Waves, reducing the cast time of Healing Wave and Chain Heal by 20% or the critical healing chance of Healing Surge by 30% until all stacks are expended, single target.

Healing Wave is your MP efficient and strong single target heal but with a slow cast time, Chain Heal is your strong AoE healing with a slow cast time and Healing Surge is your weaker heal with a fast cast time and high MP cost.
Suddenly your weak single target HoT empowers your next 2 heals, making you think about which heal to cast next while also making you want to ideally always use Riptide before your stronger heals to make them more effective.

All that increasing the healing requirements in content is going to achieve with current XIV healing kits is that you replace some Glare/Broil/Dosis/Malefic casts with your equally bland AoE GCD heal. If you think that is really an improvement then fine I guess.

[KenZentra]

We need more synergy absolutely. We also need the boss encounters to allow use of stuff like this as currently most healers just use stuff that is weak on the surface, such as Cure 1, to be able to use much stronger heals like Cure 2. Of course, currently, there is really no reason to ever cast Cure 1 after you get Cure 2. MP issues usually only occur if a lot of raises are going out, and I think that needs to change, because as of right now, even someone who over-heals a ton in endgame, shouldnt have MP issues. Imo, right now healing is about how fast and how much damage you can reverse (which leads to having tons of time to DPS), when it should be how long/efficiently you can keep people alive before running out of MP (which would keep healers healing using large portions of their kits, and not much time to DPS)

[UkcsAlias]

While I agree with the need for increased healing requirements I think the current healing kits are an absolute joke.
There is little to no synergy between healing skills as they are all just fire and forget "Heal target for X amount" on different cooldowns.

This feels by design and for a good reason. It motivates people to avoid spamming them and preserve GCDs for more damage. This way you never will interupt damage, and damage wont interupt healing potential.

That to me is an aspect of healers they should preserve. Combos risk the issue in which someone who saves GCDs suddenly will lack potency because he didnt just randomly spam cure2 to get some other boost ready.

Any combo system to me should work more with things like charges and not be a strict chain. The lack of chains is why healers can be versatile and adapt. The only issue is that there rarely is any motivation to do so, the only one we have is saving ogcds for bursts.

[Derio]

If all the tanks had the same self sustain as DRK healers would have more to do. I would like more complex DPS kits. Pretty much more than just 2 buttons.

I want 2-2-2-2. Two GCD damage moves think of the dot and single target skill we have now, Two OGCD damage moves with 30s cooldowns with small healing attached. Two 60s damage moves with 1 being a OGCD, and two big hit 2 minute damage skill with one being OGCD.

[Raven2014]

Neither, I want the fight just to have more damage, a LOT more damage.

- The healer kit is already extensive as it is, anything more will just add to the bloat.
- If there is enough damage to keep healers busy most of the time, then a complex DPS rotation becomes unnecessary.


Everything else is just a symptol, the core issue with healing is always there isn't enough damage done to the party.