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

[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.

[SargeTheSeagull]

The point is, if the point is to "not be bored", then how much damage you do or don't do above someone else isn't relevant

…

Not really. The only difference would be based on the numbers assigned to the abilities. Imagine, for example, that on SCH right now, Energy Drain did 1 potency of damage. Engaging with it optimally would, in absolute terms, give you more DPS than not doing so...but the margin wouldn't be noticeable. Granted, the margin is barely noticeable NOW. The point is, that's a matter of tuning. And when I said "Sure, so how about 1%?", people were like "NO! It needs to be like 10% or something or people won't feel rewarded". Now hang on, I thought the reward was not being bored. Which is it?

…

Do you not want to be bored, or do you want to do more damage than other players?

Because that gives you something to optimize to not be bored WHILE not doing more damage. The question is, is it that you don't want to be bored OR that you want to out damage other players? OR...that you want to not be bored but ALSO want to out damage other players?

The reason I ask the question is that "doing more damage" or "being rewarded with more damage for more work" aren't relevant concepts IF the thing you want and are asking for is ONLY to not be bored. The only reason doing more damage or the damage gap between optimal and not becomes relevant is if you want to DO more damage than other players.

So is that it?

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

[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."

[Shougun]

God, Cleric Stance was SUCH an awful ability. The best way I've ever seen it described is "the worst case of rose tinted goggles in MMO history".

I agree having it on one Job could work, if the Job was actually designed around it, but it definitely shouldn't be a role-wide thing for healers.

I also greatly disliked cleric stance. >...<;;

I don't mind that others liked it, though from my post definitely you could see even the general concept I'd think should have been 'smoothed'. For example Warrior used to have to be Esuna'd by a healer due to their self pacification after berserk, certainly thematic but it's the kind of thematic that is like eating your own toe nails (imo). I am probably the king of thematic desires in the forums and even when I read stuff like that I have mental gag reflex lol. (It's also why I /greatly/ dislike BLU's Diamondback and Moonflute mechanics, I just think they're entirely unfun and could easily be made fun while still feeling thematic or unique, and any use by them by my part is not because they are fun but because their effects are too potent to ignore... emotionally pressured into using them, just like old warrior berserk and healer cleric stance were totally worth using anyways). I've already exampled a few variations for BLU, and recently made a weak outline for bringing back a more friendly (yet allowing for a decently high skill ceiling) cleric stance.

Like I used to stance dance as a tank and I hated it, and I, personally, am glad I no longer have to do that. Though I can see certain tanks might have certain mechanics remain that could be fun mental dances, like when it was a discussion I was mentioning unique Oath mechanics for Paladin. Or before BLU was released potentially describing Azure Eye and Immortal Lion stance mechanics that allowed it to tank.


Generally I would like to see jobs attempt to meet certain people in the place they enjoy (while not being too balance different). Ideally not changing too much once establishing a crowd too (can revamp jobs but it would be unfortunate to remove a playstyle from the game entirely). Other unfortunate element is because we are opting for more jobs than specializations (which is fine), you don't get to play a job theme you like in different styles. Like say how you might play a Paladin as a healer, tank, or damage dealer in WoW (as they have less 'jobs' but use that to allow each job more options). Win some lose some.


It's interesting to read everyone's takes on the situation. Since I don't "main" healer I've only had minor thoughts to add here and there, with the largest being the suggestion of splitting the healers down offensive playstyle and supportive (SCH/SGE offensive, AST/WHM defensive). End result of damage being similar but the road to get there being thematically different for different people. WHM might get pray which replaces cure 1 trap, an oGCD heal that you can use with high chance after you or an ally you've buffed takes damage. Maybe Holy gets buffed per prayer in a way that makes focusing on buffing allies and building prayer more effective Holy over Holy spam (meaning damage and stun duration may be O_o on first cast). Out of combat pray could charge up (so when you first start a dungeon you can charge the first wall to wall pull). Just shifts that make the end results be similar but, the action to action more focused on two types of healers. The blood drenched healers and the team players who picked healer because they wanted to be, in the cool way, the team's cheerleader.

Plus I think this way simply because I think changing other systems is going to be a bigger pain in the choco booty, with potentially game wide nerfs to fix all the system wide issues that lead to healers being, or at least feeling, optional in some content. Though I am all for reading people's reasons why they think it's worth it.


Not that I have a major horse in the race... I enjoy playing most of the healers, particularly in PvP though lol, but I haven't ran a dungeon for 50000 times to die of 1 2 damage spam (I have seen where once geared, or sync on older content, you can oGCD the party especially if your tank uses their support skills too, just haven't had to run the dungeons so much that it makes me bored).

[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

[SargeTheSeagull]

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"

No, you don’t understand. Doing 2% more damage than people who refuse to improve isn’t fair. There can’t be any damage variance because I might have trouble clearing an extreme /s. Aravell is right, it’s not worth engaging with him.

[Aravell]

No, you don’t understand. Doing 2% more damage than people who refuse to improve isn’t fair. There can’t be any damage variance because I might have trouble clearing an extreme /s. Aravell is right, it’s not worth engaging with him.

I'm just laughing over how much of a stretch it is to get "I am an evil elitist who wants to lord it over everyone else" from my statement of "Skill ceiling should be higher and mastery should be rewarded". It's even funnier because if you go by my logs, I'm an awful player, I mostly parse grey/green because I overheal the party and play safe for clear. But sure, in the mind of Renathras, I am the big evil elitist who only wants to trod the poor healer playerbase into the ground by making them lose 600 dps.

[IDontPetLalas]

Well if you want a good laugh, he cited Misshapen Chair (who keeps on making amazing videos) however that's not his most recent video, as he just made another good one recently, and one of the lines that got a lot of feedback was "I don’t think putting two more dps buttons on healers will brick the game".

Available at https://youtu.be/RrUZmhtbPQ0?si=09bgOF_eAU0buBJB made just over a week ago. Enjoy!

[ForsakenRoe]

Well if you want a good laugh, he cited Misshapen Chair (who keeps on making amazing videos) however that's not his most recent video, as he just made another good one recently, and one of the lines that got a lot of feedback was "I don’t think putting two more dps buttons on healers will brick the game".

Available at https://youtu.be/RrUZmhtbPQ0?si=09bgOF_eAU0buBJB made just over a week ago. Enjoy!

Damnit I was just about to go to bed and now I see this alarming revelation, how can I sleep knowing the future of the healer role is under threat /s

JK, I'm sure there's some fine print in his video editing that says 'well actually this only applies to SCH/AST/SGE, WHM should remain exempt for various reasons'

edit: 35 min nah this one's waiting till tomorrow, I can't be watching 35 minutes of 'the same stuff we go round in circles about here' in this state