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

[Renathras]

I don't want to hear the argument where your side is giving up everything and the other side isn't giving up anything.

I know you don't.

Because it makes you have to address the fact what you want isn't a zero-cost thing. It has actual costs, and you'd need to address those by making some kind of redress for the people paying those costs, or at least offer sympathy and consideration for them, which you don't want to do.

[And before you "Where was the sympathy towards us when ShB launched?!" - people like me DID have that for you. Hell, the ENTIRE REASON I propose changing 3 out of 4 healers to suit you IS because I think what was done to you was unfair and want you to have some redress. I offer you the same thing I'm noting you don't offer in return - understanding, consideration, and a healing Job (or 3) that play the way you want to play. The very things you refuse to offer in return.]

Yes, people who enjoy healers right now have everything. Let's use your analogy:

I have a full pizza, I'm hungry so I bought it and I'm eating it. I see you starving. I offer to give you 75% of the pizza. That way, we can both enjoy the pizza together in friendship and both not starve, because I feel compassion for you as I see you starving. You spit in my face and say I'm selfish unless I give you the whole thing, and despite the fact I'm Human and have to eat or else I'll starve, too, you're insisting that it won't hurt me if you take and eat the whole thing and give me nothing/don't let me eat ANY OF MY OWN PIZZA that I currently have all of and am offering to give 3/4ths of to you out of the goodness of my heart.

That's the analogy here.

The SB kits are NOT the compromise. SB is the starting point for most people.

Moreover, even if we submit HW as the starting point for some gods forsaken reason...SGE did not exist in HW or SB. Meaning you have no version of SGE from HW or SB to roll back to anyway. Moreover, WHM in SB was waaaaaay worse than today. It's why almost no one asks for SB WHM back, people just ask for Aero 3 and call it a day. And SGE...I guess if we're changing SCH back to SB SCH, leave SGE like it is now? Considering this is literally the only form it's ever had?

But no, you don't get to dictate what is and is not a compromise for other people. Going back to the analogy, you don't get to say you getting the whole pizza is a compromise because it's anchovy pizza and you REALLY don't like anchovies, so you're compromising just by eating the anchovies. You're getting offered 75%, demanding the whole pizza, and then saying "Well, since I don't like these toppings, it's still technically a compromise, despite me getting the whole pizza and you getting nothing."

.

The solution IS right there. EW WHM, SB SCH, hell, HW AST, let's go! BAM, there's your compromise. Give WHM Aero 3 and we'll call it close enough.

Note, though, this was one reason I started the thread asking about what from EW people would want to take for the healers and what from SB. I suspect there's little from SB people want for WHM other than Aero 3 and possibly a shorter duration for Dia. I can't imagine anyone wants to go back to "Casting Cure 1/Cure 2 on party members generates Lilies" or "Casting Medica/Medical 2/Cure 3 on party members gives them Confession stacks and when you use a 1 min CD, it does healing based on that" (since if you just cast Cure 3 on people, they probably don't need more overhealing...), or "Lilies don't do healing or generate Misery, instead, they reduce the CD of the next Benison (lol), Assize (sorta lol), or Asylum by 4% (lol), 10% (sorta lol), or 20% (still kinda lol) when that ability is used while you have that many Lilies - remember, you get Lilies by casting CURE 1/2 on people...!"

...like...does ANYONE want THOSE mechanics back? Maybe, but...I kinda doubt it.

as long as the DPS players are at least competent.

As someone who does PF a lot, I can assure you - the average PF DPS players are not "at least competent". XD

I'd like to agree, but if SGE were to solve problems in a different way to the way SCH does, we'd have distinct playstyles for the healers and we wouldn't need to have all this conversation about it.

lol

You know what?

Fair enough, I agree. Hell, I think this is one of two things we agree on (the other being WHM needs a 1 min CD party mitigation, if I recall correctly).

I think my issue with the gauge is it's not clockwork like Misery. Since it's based on what DPS spells you cast, there are possibilities it isn't up at 1 min and 2 min, which isn't an issue with Misery/Lilies as they exist now. And I still think just turning Assize into a GCD, calling it "Water" from level 15 or so when you learn it to level 56 when it becomes Assize and level 80-90-something when it becomes Banish.

Also, for "several", it was Water/Banish, Quake, Tornado, Flood, and Blessing of the Elements. That's...5 (technically 6, but direct upgrades don't really count), 2 of which would also take up additional hotbar space.

.

I do appreciate, btw, even if perhaps not for the most altruistic reasons, that you did take into consideration the idea of your goal being less boredom and not a dps gap to lord over people...sorta. I still think you're comparing the wrong thing (glarespam vs optimal play instead of optimal play now vs optimal play then). The latter is what I'm talking about.

.

As to your reply to Aravell - provided encounters are tuned with current damage in mind, yes, that would work. Do you really think that would happen, though? If, as people often say, Devs tune for healer damage in mind, would they tune for that lower number or the higher one? That is, if playing like today did the same damage as now but playing the new way gets you 10% more, are the Devs going to tune Enrages for the lower number, such that people doing it are unimpacted but people doing it the new best way are finding encounters extremely easy to clear (they're doing something like 2-3% more DPS across the party if both healers are skilled with the new rotations), or do they tune it for the high end players to keep the prog experience and DPS check difficult the same, which then harms the people not doing that?

Why does it matter though?

Because it does.

If you ask someone their favorite color and they say blue, do you ask them why? If they say "It just is", do you keep demanding they have a reason for it? If you ask someone their favorite food and they tell you, do you ask them why? If they say they just do, do you demand they have a reason for it? We're talking preferences.

And what I said before applies: Whenever someone asks me why something is important to me, when it's clearly important to them, I tend to respond with "It's clearly important enough to you to argue about, thus it's important to me as well. If it's important enough to you that you won't bend on it, why should I?"

"I think mastery should be rewarded"? Again: Is the goal to do more damage than other players or to not be bored?

Frankly, I don't see anything wrong with telling people who want how healing works in this game to shift into something like another game...

The big problem I have with this argument is it HAS shifted. Healing HASN'T always been this way. In ARR, healers (at least WHM, but to a point SCH) were GCD healers. You didn't have oGCD healing plans of entire fights and optimizing to the point you didn't use a single GCD heal. WHM only had ONE oGCD heal (Benediction), and it had a longer CD (5 mins, I think?). Most WHM healing WAS on the GCD. It was often triage healing with Cure 1/Cure 2 or Regen (when time allowed).

That WAS this game.

Also, honest question here... With the healer's kits at where they are right now, and knowing that part of the hype of a new tier of levels are new 'toys', what they can even get in the healing front other than extra charges of stuff or potency adjustments? I don't see room for yet another healing action.

To be fair, isn't this true of everything?

In DT, whether we give Tanks a new defensive or attack ability, what is there left? They have short/weak, medium/medium, long/strong/big defensive CDs and a party defensive CD. What more can you give them there? They all have sword attack, better sword attack if used after sword attack, bestest sword attack if used after better sword attack that was used after sword attack, oGCD sword attack, maybe two, 1 min damage CD used on CD, ranged attack you try to avoid using, and a gap closer with charges. What else is there to give them?

All DPS have some selection of single target and aoe attacks, and some buff that increases their attack damage, and some ability that gives them attack resource, which they then have some resource spending ability to use. What else is there to give them?

I feel like we could say this about every Job/role. Yet they keep finding new things to give people. In ShB, who would have thought Expedient for SCH? Yet we got it and it was unexpected and highly lauded.

[Aravell]

As someone who does PF a lot, I can assure you - the average PF DPS players are not "at least competent". XD

I've done a lot of the current extreme in Raid Finder, Raid Finder does not allow you to select your DPS comp, so I've had runs where we had 3 DNCs and 1 MCH, we beat the enrage very comfortably even with 3% total party stat buff. Beating the enrage of extreme fights is very easy as long as the DPS players have a baseline competence and they don't die, that's it. None of the weird 'less than 5% party stat buff comps' that cleared had the DPS players as 99 percentile parsing gods either, everyone's average, and average is all you need.

Because it does.

And so we can have no agreement. I've provided numbers to prove that your fears are misplaced, but you're arguing against it simply because "it just matters to me". Until you care to fight my numbers with actual numbers of your own, I will just say I disagree and drop the topic.

Again: Is the goal to do more damage than other players or to not be bored?

You're asking me a completely different question to the things I've been saying. I don't know what everyone else is arguing but my concern is the lack of the skill ceiling, not people being bored. If the skill ceiling is expanded and we have more to strive for, people will become less bored as a byproduct, so I want the skill ceiling to be expanded, and yes, I want people to be rewarded for their mastery. I personally would want to see a 30-50% gap between regular gameplay and the skill ceiling, the 10-20% I'm pitching here is already reduced for people who would dislike the higher ceiling. 10-20% is more than fair and I've backed this up with actual numbers.

[Renathras]

Why are you asking again what I literally just answered.
Why would I assume we do more damage? Because I'm doing more than before.
Also let's not forget we want the keep the skill floor where it is. If our damage stays the same, then it's those who don't adapt who suffer since they won't optimize.

What?

1) Because you answered it with a bunch of extra stuff and I'm trying to get to the answer, not the extra.

2) But you didn't want to do more damage, right? So you don't need to do more damage, regardless of "doing more". The goal was TO do more, for the sake of...doing more. Not to do more for the sake of doing more DAMAGE...right?

3) Well, no, that's actually based on encounter design. If Enrages are based on the new higher level of max damage, then the skill floor will be raised because people can't clear not doing it. On the other hand, if it's based on the lower damage, then people doing the max will complain the content is too easy and bosses are falling over left and right. Depending on how big the gap is - 20% would be pretty significant since healers already do more than half a DPSers worth of damage. Considering a healer doing ~60% of a DPSers damage, 20% of that would be an additional 12% of a DPSer worth of damage for the party as a whole. That's pretty significant when you consider you have 2 healers, since it'd be like having an extra 24% (or about 1/4th) of another DPSer in the party, or all your DPSers doing 6% more damage. A 10% gap would be like if all your DPSers were doing 3% more damage. Those are pretty significant amounts when it comes to meeting enrages.

so I've had runs where we had 3 DNCs and 1 MCH

Great.

I've had clear parties with SAM, NIN, DNC, BLM that failed enrage. So yay, we both have anecdotes. The thing is, it happens, so it's still relevant. I know you don't want it to be, since it throws a wrench into your position, but it is.

Seriously, how hard is it to just admit that some people WILL be hurt by what you propose? Almost nothing in life has zero cost. Pretty much everything has some costs. Refusing to admit that is irrational, especially when the costs can be readily pointed out. Now, you can say "Okay, I acknowledge that happens, so..." and either say you don't care (of course, that makes you appear selfish and your goals not altruistic) or you can offer something that would prevent or mitigate the negative (a 4 Healers Model, perhaps) or recompense for the people affected (healers now get to bypass the "duty completion" requirement - I think this is a bad idea, mind you, but who knows, maybe it would work).

But continuing to refuse to admit to reality isn't an argument.

And so we can have no agreement.

Why?

THAT IT HAS HAPPENED means my fears are not misplaced.

Your numbers do not prove my fears are misplaced, your numbers suggest that statistically, it shouldn't happen often (it still does, mind you). But that's a very different argument.

I think the problem here is you believe your position is ironclad when it is not. You seem to think it has no costs, does not harm anyone, and that your numbers are absolute and true of every party composition and group - now you'll say you know they are not, because you ARE a rational enough person to admit to that, but you'll then still insist it doesn't matter when we both know it happens and will happen under your proposal.

And keep in mind, we're fighting over a 10% DPS difference. That's the sticking point right this second. Not whether healers should have more damage actions, not what encounters should be like, not some high minded design philosophy - this entire argument is you thinking you need to do 10% more damage than other people or something is wrong with the game.

You're asking me a completely different question to the things I've been saying. I don't know what everyone else is arguing but my concern is the lack of the skill ceiling, not people being bored.

Alright, that's different.

So your fight isn't what those other people who are saying they just don't want to be bored is.

Your position is that you want to do more damage than other people.

Fair enough.

In that case, I have no pity for your position, since it's not one of being mistreated by past game design choices robbing you of something, it's that you want bigger parse numbers than other people. I don't care to entertain that, so I won't other than to say that's pretty selfish and elitist and, in that case, you ARE right about one thing:

We can have no agreement.

Actually lmao. Really? Okay Ren. How ‘bout this? Every single ability on every healer now heals everyone to 100% HP. All of them. You can set down your earthly star, you can use opposition and collective unconscious correctly, you can plan out your heal kit to the millisecond if you want. That’s fun right? Or you can just press benefic and get the exact same result. It doesn’t matter that benefic does the exact same thing as the rest of your kit, the point is to have fun! So you can have fun busting your proverbial butt tryharding by planing your heals and I can do every bit as good as you by hitting benefic. If you have a problem with that, then surely you’re just an egomaniac who wants to be better than everyone else /s

Actually lmao? Really?

I didn't say to do that. I showed you how it's entirely possible to have something more engaging with NO damage gap. So a 1% gap should be just fine.

And you know what? Screw it. Fine. Sure, I'll take that bet:

Make our healer kits that. Consider your bluff called. "Boring conversation anyway". Make the difference between healing flawlessly under the new system and healing what would be considered optimal right now a 1% gap. I'm fine with that.

If you think like Aravell does, then please stop lying and start being honest. I think that's the reason for all the confusion and argument. People aren't being honest about what they want. If you just said from the start "I'm an elitist and I want to do more damage than other players and look down at them", then I wouldn't be offering compromises or suggestions. I'd go "Okay, fair enough. That's a jerk thing to do, but if that's who you are, then so be it. Advocate for what you want, I'll advocate for what I do, and we'll see who the Devs side with."

[Aravell]

In that case, I have no pity for your position, since it's not one of being mistreated by past game design choices robbing you of something, it's that you want bigger parse numbers than other people. I don't care to entertain that, so I won't other than to say that's pretty selfish and elitist

If that's all you got from what I'm saying, then I'm starting to suspect that you're misreading me on purpose to stir things up, or you're a troll. But either way, you're not worth engaging with anymore, other people have provided me with better discussion than you.

You have this weird twisted concept of evil, elitist people who want to trod you into the ground, and you're trying very hard to cram me into that box, so go ahead and do as you please, I'm just going to instead talk to people who are more open to ideas and are less likely to throw a tantrum and try and make me out to be pure evil whenever I say something they don't like. Have a good day.

[ForsakenRoe]

answering it "Tell them their reward is not HAVING FUN and not BEING BORED (out of their F-ing minds)" and to "shut up about a WHOLE 2% dps variance".

I decided to try and do the maths on potencies and see how close I could get to the current potency per minute (PPM). As a baseline, not including any buffs like Presence of Mind, external buffs, prepping Misery's, anything, just me VS the dummy in a Glarefest. Currently 1min of combat looks to be 2 Dia's and 22 Glares, totaling 8140 potency. With the addition of Banish and the change to Dia's duration/potency, we'd theoretically get 5 Dia applications, totaling 2150, 4 Banish's at 1400, and the rest is 15 Glare's at 4650, with a grand total of 8200. If I really wanted to, I could probably work out maths to make it match the current total exactly, but I think it's close enough (and it being 8200 looks nice and neat)

From my original design post. And as has been mathed out several times, playing as you do now (that is, refreshing Dia when you see it falls off, and pressing Glare otherwise) would be 8040. And 8040 is '98.04878048780488%' of the potential 8200 of the new design. The only way to get around this inconvenient maths, is to massage the numbers with things like 'well what if I only want to press Dia twice per minute, instead of the suggested 5 times per minute?' To which I could counter, 'what if I just don't press Dia at all in the current design and cost myself 1430p a minute because I insist on playing incorrectly to prove a point?'

I'm not sure I, or others, are the ones who need to "shut up about a WHOLE 2% dps variance"

edit: oh lord three in a row idk if I can respond to all of this today

Fair enough, I agree. Hell, I think this is one of two things we agree on (the other being WHM needs a 1 min CD party mitigation, if I recall correctly).

I think my issue with the gauge is it's not clockwork like Misery. Since it's based on what DPS spells you cast, there are possibilities it isn't up at 1 min and 2 min, which isn't an issue with Misery/Lilies as they exist now. And I still think just turning Assize into a GCD, calling it "Water" from level 15 or so when you learn it to level 56 when it becomes Assize and level 80-90-something when it becomes Banish.

Also, for "several", it was Water/Banish, Quake, Tornado, Flood, and Blessing of the Elements. That's...5 (technically 6, but direct upgrades don't really count), 2 of which would also take up additional hotbar space.

I do appreciate, btw, even if perhaps not for the most altruistic reasons, that you did take into consideration the idea of your goal being less boredom and not a dps gap to lord over people...sorta. I still think you're comparing the wrong thing (glarespam vs optimal play instead of optimal play now vs optimal play then). The latter is what I'm talking about.

As to your reply to Aravell - provided encounters are tuned with current damage in mind, yes, that would work. Do you really think that would happen, though? If, as people often say, Devs tune for healer damage in mind, would they tune for that lower number or the higher one? That is, if playing like today did the same damage as now but playing the new way gets you 10% more, are the Devs going to tune Enrages for the lower number, such that people doing it are unimpacted but people doing it the new best way are finding encounters extremely easy to clear (they're doing something like 2-3% more DPS across the party if both healers are skilled with the new rotations), or do they tune it for the high end players to keep the prog experience and DPS check difficult the same, which then harms the people not doing that?

1: We also agree on 'Medica and Cure should probably upgrade to the sequel, instead of taking up hotbar space, after all, Medica 2 equals Medica 1 after just one tick of the HOT', in fact I'm the one who showed that those were the numbers iirc

2: My Misery is hardly ever up for 1min/2min. My priorities for using it are 'use the heal to heal', then 'use the heal/Misery cast for movement', THEN 'try and line it up with raidbuffs'. And the best part is, if I'm going to go for a funny coloured number (which I don't aim for specifically), it could be argued that it's better to do it that way, so that I keep all of the 'damage accredited' and I don't get a lucky Crit taxed by a raidbuff.

3: yes, 5 buttons. But three of them are Inner Chaos style 'this replaces another button based on context', so it's 2, as you say. But, as I say, Cure and Medica would ALSO be upgraded based on context (the context being that you hit level 30 or 50 respectively) and so it would equal out to 0 'additional keybinds'. You could say 'its still 2' because of my desire to bring down the Pure/Barrier wall, but that'd be done by adding a ST shield Lily spender, and an AOE version. And IDK about anyone else, but I still got a bit of space on my hotbars as WHM, definitely enough to fit two shielding abilities. If it's that much of a problem, I guess you could dispense with the ST version and only have the AOE version. That's the 'important one' that'd be instrumental in the downfall of the Pure/Barrier split

4: Sometimes I refer to 'literally only Glare' and 'current optimal rotation' as the term Glarespam interchangeably, this might cause confusion I agree. For what it's worth, I think when I mean 'literally only Glare', I make sure to also note 'literally only Glare'. The current 'optimal gameplay' for WHM, to me, still deserves the title of 'Glarespam', because even with Misery Prep tech, 75% of our minute-ly GCDs are Glare. In most comparisons, I am trying to compare 'optimal now' vs 'optimal in proposed design', only swapping to 'literally only Glare' to make points about the punishment factor of Dia, and how if you forget it at times, it's a loss to even put it back up due to it's low on-hit potency of 65 (something I tried to address by making mine 150 so it has some punch on cast)

5: The Aravell stuff, I would assume that, given my numbers above (and the current numbers, 8140 per min), the difference would be so small that it doesn't matter. SE would be able to keep the tuning as is and nothing (or exceptionally little) would change. Probably would make their job quite a lot easier in that case, and I'm sure that'd be quite a selling point, were I doing a Shark Tank/Dragon's Den style pitch to them at the board meeting. I think you might have got your wires crossed though, I don't recall me asking for a 10% more damage. Again, the only way to end up with anything like 10% (well, 14% technically) was to say 'I want to do exactly 2 Dia's, and 22 Glares, per minute, the exact same rotation as now'. And from what I know of raiding, SE already balances the raid in such a way that I could get away with horrendous DOT uptime anyway. They and me might well disagree on potencies, and how much 'playing perfectly' should grant extra compared to 'playing averagely'. I decided to try and keep the total output of 'playing the proposed design perfectly' quite close to 'playing current design perfectly', it was a kind of test of sorts to myself, to see how well I could get the maths to line up. And with a difference of only +60p per minute compared to the current, I think I did quite well. Of course, if you want it exactly the same as now, that's possible too. Just knock 15p off of Banish (such that it's +25 over Glare, rather than the proposed +40), and with 4 casts a minute, that lines it up exactly

[Raikai]

I feel like we could say this about every Job/role. Yet they keep finding new things to give people. In ShB, who would have thought Expedient for SCH? Yet we got it and it was unexpected and highly lauded.

The reason why I asked in this thread in specific, that healing is a binary functionality. You need heals until the HP bars are full, which is something already achievable with probably a single oGCD from both healers. So, in that front... there's literally nothing else to add without being redundant.

Tank mitigation, is not as capped as a healing parameter... you can have more and more, and even if isn't exactly that, they aren't shy on giving tanks more damage oriented toys. Dpsers, or at least some of them, are at capacity already with stuff to shove into the 2min meta, but they still have a lot of room to expand outside of that. This matter is more egregious on healers because of the nature of healing itself.

You mentioned Expedient, and yeah it's a nice addition. But what other kind of utilities can appear in an 'on leashes' design like XIV's? So, if there's nothing new to add on the 'healing' front, and not a lot to think about new utilities that aren't covered yet, all that remains, with clear room for growth, is simply giving more dps tools, even if they are cooldown based.