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

[ForsakenRoe]

Long one, lots to catch up on, sorry to all in advance there is no TLDR

Strange, where did I complain about 2%?
I complained about 10% and 20%.
Or did you mean when I was quoting someone pointing out that complaining about 2% is the equivalent of complaining about crit variance?

I'm assuming it was because of this:

ForsakenRoe has proposed a WHM to you in the past where the difference between using the full DPS kit and only casting Glare would've been about 3%, that's an abysmally small difference even compared to the Warrior logs, and yet you rejected that for being too complex and/or punishing. Despite the fact that it would be less punishing than CURRENT WHM if you didn't want to use Dia and Assize. Anyway, the point I'm getting at is that the discrepancy can be down to number tuning and job requirements rather than just skill differences, otherwise you may as well say that SMN is just as hard as NIN because they have a similar gap between least and best skilled.

I'm thinking more like 1%, not 3%.

Dusty might have been slightly off the mark in 'how you'd get that Roe 3% difference' due to not remembering the design fully (understandable since it's someone else's ramblings), but you took issue with the % number given without knowing that they were mistaken in the numbers too. You 'complained about a whole 2% DPS difference' like Chair tells us all not to. That reminds me, I have a video to watch. Also yeh, crit variance is probably higher than the damage swing of 2%, depending on what it hits. The extra damage you get if your Misery's all crit vs none crit is ridiculous, but that's an issue across all jobs because SE thought it'd be a good idea to load every job with 4digit potency values. Why does Communio need to be 1000? Why does Phantom Rush need to be 1150 or whatever it is now?

Aside: There's no "playing incorrectly to prove a point". It's "playing correctly under the current system" vs "playing that same way under your proposed changes". Imagine if every DPS was given Vermedica and expected to press it every 10 sec and some DPSer refused saying "I picked this role because I want to DPS and juggle a complex DPS rotation, not to be a healbot" and someone said "oh, you can play the same way, you'll just be playing incorrectly to prove a point". That obviously wouldn't be taken well.

3) I think my big thing with this is "Blessing of the Elements" could just be Presence of Mind. See PLD. One of the big complaints right now is "Why do we need two separate buttons for Fight or Flight and Requiescat?" I feel like BoE + PoM would largely end up in a similar boat. And I've already told you my thoughts on Water/Banish vs Assize.

5) I somewhat agree. Honestly, there are just a few things from your design I think changing would make it entirely palatable to me. /shrug Granted, I also think just readding Aero 3 to WHM would work, so...

1: The issue is the interpretation of the line 'playing that same way under your proposed changes'. You could argue 'that means doing 2 Dias and 22 Glares, which is what the current rotation is down to the GCD'. I could argue it means the philosophy behind how the rotation currently is pieced together, that is 'refresh Dia when it falls off, fill with Glares as needed'. They are both 'correct', but one of them specifies an exact number of Dia's to use, so if the 'expected Dia per minute' amount changes, then it breaks that interpretation. If SE made Dia 60s so we used only one per minute, the way you word it would mean refreshing Dia early, causing damage losses (because you want to play the same way as now). The way I word it is that 'you refresh when it falls off' regardless of it's duration, and so the interpretation is scaleable to the number of Dia's expected. If it were a 6s duration and we had to press 10 per minute my interpretation's wording would still hold up. Just a quirk of language I guess

The Vermedica example also relies on SE balancing content in such a way that said Vermedica is mandatory to use, in order to clear the content. It's been shown, with data/evidence/maths, that healer damage contributions are close to last on the list of 'we wiped cos we did not have enough damage, what can we improve'. Since SE does not balance content in such a way as to enforce optimal use of every button (as evidenced by me having 65ish% DOT uptime and 31 Succors in first clears of things), I would imagine that the healing of Vermedica would likewise not be required. I would also, unlike the extreme example, assume that SE would make such a Vermedica skill be something more like 'if you use Vermedica to save people, you're compensated by building a large amount of White Mana, to help you get your next melee phase faster (which helps offset the damage loss of the spell)', not 'you have to press it or your rotation stops working' or whatever you're suggesting. Also, this Vermedica would presumably be a GCD otherwise the whole comparison is just apples to oranges, but it kind of already is, because you're comparing 'lose a full GCD of damage' to 'lose 40p per 15sec (by casting Glare instead of Banish)'

3: It could just be POM, if we wanted it to be the absolute most bland stale bread possible. The reason FOF and Req get that question asked, is because they do the same thing: Activate a burst window. I agree, I don't think Req should exist in it's current form. I think it should be made a GCD, have one stack removed (so it gives 3 stacks) and deal big damage (cos it's now a GCD), gaining a trait to change it to AOE and get a small potency bump at 80 as it evolves into Confiteor. Thus, rather than Confiteor being a part of the burst combo, it's the starter for it, rather than weaving FOF>Req>Confiteor it'd just turn into FOF>Confiteor and everything would carry on as normal. But it'd allow for Req to feel good as a button, atm it does only 300p, I'd make it like 750-800, upgrading to whatever Conf is atm at 80 (900 iirc?).

Back to WHM though, the problem I have with your amendment of having BOTE and POM be 'one upgrades to the other' is that they just don't fulfill the same function. BOTE is a heal with a refund attached. POM is a self-haste buff to make 2min windows have more damage. The two are just not comparable to each other. BOTE/Quake and friends, if anything, is more like Rapture/Misery. If BOTE were an upgrade of POM, we'd use it at 2min, never deviating from it, and it would not have a heal attached (or if it did, it'd be incidental like Assize's). I find that to be very sterile and bland, and I can guarantee that it wouldn't solve anything about why people are having issues with healers at the moment. Part of the reason I designed it that way is because I enjoy the flexibility of moving 'when to build to a Misery' based on damage in the fight, I can bank Lilies for hard hitting sections, or spend them roughly once per 15-20s to keep them generating. There's very little optimization to be done with POM, because it's so set in stone. There's a lot more in Rapture/Misery use timings, because of how they're designed, allowing movement openings, being MP cost free (so it helps MP economy), etc. As for Assize/Water, I view it like when we lost a dungeon per patch. Sure, we got something cool in it's place (Ultimates), but let's be real, we'd rather have the Ultimates AND the dungeon, if devtime weren't a limited resource. Shifting from 'we have Assize' to 'we have Water, and it upgrades to Assize' doesn't hold as much excitement as 'we have Water and it's new, and we also still have Assize as it was before'. Also, Water/Assize would work differently in terms of targetting, Water's like Glare (or Gravity when it upgrades to Flood), Assize is around yourself. One of the things that angers me more than any other in this game is SAM's AOE changing from a Cone to a Circle based on level, because going back to old content suddenly changes the way it targets, I wouldn't want that on WHM. Unless you're suggesting that Water work like Assize too which... IDK I've seen some wipes caused by 'oops my very large AOE radius hit your Doll in TEA' (had to hold my Assize there too)

5: It's probably a case of 'if we could see it in action, we'd be able to make a much better judgement of how good/bad it is', because atm we are arguing over something that neither of us fully understand the gameplay of. I can sort of picture it, because I came up with it, but there might well be some issue that I didn't foresee with it, that a playtest would reveal. Just readding Aero3 would be better than nothing, sure, but I think we should be aiming higher. After all, as others have said, it'd be tantamount to admitting that 'we spend 4 years going in a circle, only to end up at where we were in SB damage kit wise'. I think it's better to go bigger, so that the announcement will have much more hype. Remember 'we didn't know what to do with SCH'? SO imagine at the job action trailer reveal, option A:

"We received feedback that healer players often felt like they needed more to do in their downtime, so we readded Aero 3."

versus option B:

"We received feedback that healer players often felt like they needed more to do in their downtime. Because of this, we have added Water, which upgrades to Banish, since many of our players who enjoy the lore noted that WHM does not have Water spells in their repertoire now, but used to in the past. We also decided to add a new gauge element to WHM, built by using damage or healing spells. This gauge can then be spent on a powerful healing tool, and using this tool allows you to unleash the elements with Quake, Flood and Tornado, the pinnacle spells of the Earth, Water and Wind elements. Additionally, we have added Afflatus Sanctuary and Afflatus Bastion, allowing you to convert Lilies into Shielding instead of pure healing power, allowing the WHM versatility in how to sustain their party's health."

Both would be cheered, I'm sure. But while the cheers for Aero 3's animation appearing on the screen would be loud, SE would rake that amount of cheering in, three times, by having an Earth and a Water equivalent animation too, I'd bet. And for the healers who prefer the healing side of the healer role, well, that's three whole healing tools announced right there, which have synergy with your other healing tools (eg Plenary would cause Afflatus Sanctuary, the AOE shield, to also heal for 200, turning it into something more akin to Succor where it heals and applies a shield)

[Lailani_Fey]

"We received feedback that healer players often felt like they needed more to do in their downtime. Because of this, we have added Water, which upgrades to Banish, since many of our players who enjoy the lore noted that WHM does not have Water spells in their repertoire now, but used to in the past. [...]

While I appreciate the reference to job fantasy and would like to try out if this suggestion also works well in practice I cannot help but notice still that accepting this as only solution to the current problems would amounht to admitting defeat. Defeat to the ongoing threat of the healer role getting gutted of its distinguishing properties.

I think the focus needs to be much more on making the healer role feel needed, valued and powerful again. I get that people prefer self-sustain versus being reliant on few others but the degree this has taken on is simply depressing. It feels to me like, taking P11S as an example, two healers are only brought because its a habit and there are mechanics that need to target two non-tank players predictably.

The push for mitigations and shields surely has not helped this either because it makes pure healers ever more obsolete. Looking at Criterion, to bring a pure healer is actually a liability compared to a shield healer.

[Renathras]

Long one, lots to catch up on, sorry to all in advance there is no TLDR...

Maybe. I will give them the benefit of the doubt, but I'm inclined to think that ISN'T the case because of other similar comments done in the past. Not to mention I wasn't insisting much of anything at the time other than saying I feel like a difference of 1% is more in the ballpark of working. And yeah, "Crit variance + ridiculous aligned party buffing: What could EVER possibly go wrong?!"

1) You could argue that, but keep in mind you're having a discussion with someone. So when they're using a term or statement, you have to consider what THEY mean by it, not what you MIGHT mean by it. And if there's confusion and they lay out what they mean clearly, then you should use that (it's why I was harping on that "no effort" thing a few pages ago; clearly there's disagreement on what that means, meaning discussion participants need to clearly and explicitly define what they mean by the term in question - something I did but the other person and their heckler groupie did not). Your definition there is also bad since "philosophy" isn't a playstyle or mechanic, and the context made it more or less clear what I was getting at, and even if it didn't, I explicitly laid it out when it was clear there was confusion on the point. And yes, the way I worded it looked at it, Dia early refresh would be a DPS loss. Of course, in that case, we're talking about making something even easier/simpler to manage, but it would apply.

The reason NOT to use the "scalable" position is that that isn't comparing play now to play post-change. It's comparing play post-change to play post-change. If the argument is "this should appeal to people who enjoy play now", then it has to compare against how they play NOW. Now "how" as in a philosophical sense, but how as in a mechanical sense, as your proposed changes are mechanical/to Job abilities, not (exactly) philosophical. While your desire for them is philosophical, the changes themselves, and what content people will and won't be able to clear, are game mechanics/mechanical arguments.

2) Medica thing - you wouldn't have to use it ALL the time. You could have 10% or so downtime and still clear. Argument remains the same. This is a case of arguing a technicality to avoid arguing a point. The point being people would be pissed if they, as DPSers, were called on to have a non-DPS thing as something they still need to frequently engage in. Some people, mind you, would love it. A lot of people, though, would hate it. You'd hear "I play a DPS Job BECAUSE I don't like healing" all over the place, and I suspect you know/agree. A lot of Tanks complain that they're just budget DPSers now. For all the Healer players asking for Tank-level damage rotations, ask the Tanks and a lot of them will tell you they don't like being a "DPS at home" and want more buttons and gameplay related to enmity management, boss positioning, and defensive/sustain, not more DPS buttons or a DPS rotation. Again, there are some that DO like it (and that's what GNB was specifically designed to tap into), but not all of the people in the role feel that way.

3) "if we wanted it to be the absolute most bland stale bread possible". Yes please. Requiescat should just be part of something else, probably Confetior. It shouldn't be a separate button. Nor should Goring Blade. Reading the threads on the PLD changes, most people agree with those positions.

4) BoE is also (if I remember right, I have slept since reading your proposal. Several times.) a damage boosting ability, consuming gauge to enable a DPS burst combo. PoM is already that with less steps/annoyance. And aside, I genuinely think PoM having a 1 min CD would be good. Hell, tack on SB Cleric's 5% damage increase and throw in a 5% healing increase for funzies, I'm flexible. WHM gets a NIN-like Trick Attack self buff on a 1 min CD that just so happens can also be used for healing. I'm down with that. The difference with BoE/Q/T/F vs Lilies/Misery is that the latter does it with less buttons, does it by healing (mostly), and doesn't require several dedicated GCDs to it, as it's really flexible when you use Solace/Rapture in your rotation. You can use them like clockwork every 20 sec or you can use them strategically as movement tools or dump them all at once before Misery. BoE/Elements doesn't have that functionality, and is tied to a charged gauge which is dependent on your DPS uptime.

I mean, you said the same thing. TECHNICALLY there is optimization with PoM, we just don't use it that way. For example, in an imaginary world where PoM was a 1 min CD with 2 charges and the 2 min meta didn't exist, WHMs could use it for movement heavy periods of fights and/or frequent damage periods of fights instead of holding for burst phases. AST has this same problem with Lightspeed, this amazing ability that...in practice is held for burst phases because of AST's otherwise nearly unmanageable hyper weaving during burst phases. Lucid is a similar situation where you kind of use it somewhat on CD (or at 80% MP), you don't save it for deaths and raises, so it's not necessarily there when you need it to allow for on the fly adaptation or strategic uses. As for Assize/Water - the problem is more dungeons doesn't bloat your hotbars. More dungeons means less scenery overlap and more boss encounters and gear. A second button that you use slightly more often doesn't really offer a lot. Further, going from 2 to 1 dungeon is taking something away (negative magic) where making a low level Water that upgrades into Assize isn't taking anything away. If anything, WHM NEEDS more low level versions of spells. Probably all the healers do.

I consistently praise WAR design because the entire rotation is more or less established by level 50. What happens after that is not a lot of new abilities, but mostly abilities upgrading into better forms. This gives a feeling of becoming more powerful while not really disrupting the muscle memory flow that you train, and it doesn't feel as jarring to sync to 50 from 90 on WAR because you still have MOST of your rotational abilities. The only thing you lose from your single target rotation is Onslaught (which is a weave anyway, so doesn't break your cadence) and Primal Rend. Inner Chaos and Fell Cleave are Inner Beast upgrades. You already have Infuriate at 50. You already have Steel Cyclone. The only real change to cadence is Infuriate comes off CD slightly faster, but that's something you're already watching to not overcap anyway. Most of the changes you get are defensive CDs, and if they swapped Vengeance with Raw Intuition in the leveling rotation, even that wouldn't change much since that's WAR's go-to right there.

Contrast with RPR, which feels REALLY empty and quite different at 50 from 90. And if it's unfair to include a Job that doesn't start until level 70, look at NIN. At level 50, you have no Ninki, no Ninki spenders, no TCJ, no Meisui, no Raijus, no ARMOR CRUSH...meaning you have to manually burn Ninjutsu as spoken for to maintain Huton. Imagine if WAR didn't get Storm's Eye until later. (Granted, it's just level 54, but still means you don't have it if you get CT or MSQ roulette). It's not COMPLETELY a different Job, but compared to WAR, it plays pretty differently at 50 than 90.

Healers are noticeably bad at this because some don't get their core mechanics until late. WHM doesn't get Misery until the 70s, and doesn't even get Solace until 52. Getting Solace at 18 and a low level version of Misery around then would completely change how the Job feels when syncing and leveling. So having a "Fluid Aura" as a bubble that bursts around you upgrading into Assize would hardly be jarring. "Now your self-centered big CD AOE does healing, too, isn't that lovely?"

5) To be fair, they probably wouldn't say "so we readed Aero 3". They'd just add it and have it upgrade to Banish, and BANISH is the ability they'd show off in the trailer. "Look everyone, a new powerful AOE spell that also is a DoT on the enemy and a DPS gain in single target breaking up glarespam" would probably go over pretty well. Not to mention people love twirly-staff animation to this day. Watching that video in this thread https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...ld-be-combined... (Shameless plug, I know, video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwQjhCQFu0Y ), one thing that got me was watching the video playing in the background as the guide author narrates and goes through the WHM SB abilities (that's where I "remembered" Fluid Aura was changed to do no damage in SB), and I keep seeing the Aero 3 animation. You know I dislike DoTs, but damnit if I don't want that animation back for SOMEthing, as it's just a cool animation. Hell, at this point, they could make a 2 sec trailer showing JUST the WHM up close casting SOMEthing (that you don't see because it's out of frame) and the twirly-staff animation and people would probably lose their minds, you know?