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

[Sebazy]

To be fair, what determines someone's fun IS opinion/preference, is it not? So when advocating for designs to be fun (to the person), that's the only thing that actually IS relevant in the end: Is it fun (for them) to play or isn't it.

They can't think that highly of the role's fun factor given that they barely play it

It's a time old classic post and IMO you're reading far too much into it. These comments generally boil down to 'make healers impossible to mess up on so I never have to worry about them letting me die'. It has nothing to do with actual fun outside of their own on an entirely different role. FFXIV has this wild and wacky aversion to failure at any level of content remember.

Same problem. Balance for the middle and the lower half that can clear content now no longer will be able to, thus leading to them being harmed/bothered.

It doesn't work unless you balance to the bottom.

In my humble opinion, this is only an issue because SE have brought it on themselves precisely by balancing to the absolute bottom for years now. ARR on release was impeccably tuned and balanced and had a fantastic difficulty curve that steadily ramped up from AV, through the expert dungeons, into HM primals and onto Coil, even Alliance sat neatly in line. In essence, ARR had midcore content because it had a smooth curve that lead up out from leveling dungeons and into the endgame.

It was very possible to wipe in an expert dungeon, never mind a HM primal, people got used to it and as such, it was less of a problem, more people were happier to dust themselves off and put a bit more effort in. You saw that going into Titan HM where people would pool together huge shells that could field multiple teams capable of clearing it all night long to help those that were struggling (I refuse to believe that Ragnarok was alone on this, I had like 4 full linkshells and people were still had to be asked to leave once they had all their weapons and weren't up for helping others to make more room).

Now we're in this weird state where it's actually kind of challenging to wipe outside of Extremes but on the rare occasion that it does happen, people lose their minds.

I'm not saying that we need to return to the days of FFXI, but you yourself have commented that we have no midcore content so you're clearly aware of that problem. Where is that midcore content? It vanished into the casual mire when it all got tuned to the bottom of course.

If we want midcore content, the difficulty has to start somewhere, it doesn't need to be a steep curve and it certainly doesn't want to be a wall. It just needs to be a ramp that starts from somewhere like Alliance and needs to be tuned just a little above the bottom to wake people up and get them watching their screens again.

[Renathras]

It's a time old classic post and IMO you're reading far too much into it. These comments generally boil down to 'make healers impossible to mess up on so I never have to worry about them letting me die'. It has nothing to do with actual fun outside of their own on an entirely different role. FFXIV has this wild and wacky aversion to failure at any level of content remember.

It really isn't this, though. Have you see this thread: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...mplex-DPS-kits

You posted in it, but have you followed the discussion?

A lot of those people aren't posting in this thread - I can't really blame them - but are healer players talking about how they don't want complex DPS kits, they want to do more healing. Many of them seem not to want any more healing buttons at all (another coin in the "Ren isn't alone" bucket). None of them are arguing for healing to be braindead. Quite the opposite, they want healing to be the part that is challenging.

I know your opinion there - but novice healers won't be able to clear 4 mans - yet this is what a lot of healer players want. Besides, we can keep 4 mans as braindead as they are now, "but we'll be bored"; you'll get over it, there are other ways of grinding tomes. Regardless, it's clear there's a hunger for healing kits to be what are more interesting, not damage kits, and for encounter design to be changed. A lot of people there are saying what I do all the time, that the solution has to involve encounter design changing and giving people more opportunities to heal.

Feel free to tell them they're wrong, I guess.

.

As for the balance argument:

Who are you arguing against, me or Aravell?

It's not "balancing to the absolute bottom", it's "Can people clear the content right now? For all the people that answer is 'Yes' for, post-change, those people should be able to clear content playing the way they do today. This ensures no one is being 'hurt' and that the change is not only net positive but ONLY positive having not cost or drawbacks to consider or weigh or make allowance for". If at any point that statement becomes untrue, then that means there is actually a cost to the proposed change, and that cost must be addressed.

Again, some people felt bad FOR SCH players who lost their damage kits in ShB. And SMNs in EW. Those changes shouldn't have happened. Doing the opposite here would be just as harmful.

EDIT:

Also, the midcore content isn't gone because it became casual.

The midcore content is gone because it became hardcore (or was removed).

Bozja/Eureka were removed, Extremes became Savages. The midcore content is gone because it was substituted for more hardcore content, not because it became casual content. The way to get midcore content back would actually be to make Extremes easier (specifically, less body checks), probably make the first boss Savage fights easier (and the third harder, to provide a better gradient into the fourth), and to return content like Bozja/Eureka to the game, complete with their varied dungeon difficult and crazy mechanic FATEs from Bozja.

[Zairava]

It really isn't this, though. Have you see this thread: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...mplex-DPS-kits

You posted in it, but have you followed the discussion?

A lot of those people aren't posting in this thread - I can't really blame them - but are healer players talking about how they don't want complex DPS kits, they want to do more healing. Many of them seem not to want any more healing buttons at all (another coin in the "Ren isn't alone" bucket). None of them are arguing for healing to be braindead. Quite the opposite, they want healing to be the part that is challenging.

I know your opinion there - but novice healers won't be able to clear 4 mans - yet this is what a lot of healer players want. Besides, we can keep 4 mans as braindead as they are now, "but we'll be bored"; you'll get over it, there are other ways of grinding tomes. Regardless, it's clear there's a hunger for healing kits to be what are more interesting, not damage kits, and for encounter design to be changed. A lot of people there are saying what I do all the time, that the solution has to involve encounter design changing and giving people more opportunities to heal.

Feel free to tell them they're wrong, I guess.

Care to explain how they won't be able to handle a couple more dps buttons to make the healing downtime there will always inevitably be more entertaining then? How they won't get over that, despite still being able to glare/broil/etc. spam and ignore the rest if they so chose? Even in EX healbots can be carried doing almost no dps at all by a competent group.

It's not "balancing to the absolute bottom", it's "Can people clear the content right now? For all the people that answer is 'Yes' for, post-change, those people should be able to clear content playing the way they do today. This ensures no one is being 'hurt' and that the change is not only net positive but ONLY positive having not cost or drawbacks to consider or weigh or make allowance for". If at any point that statement becomes untrue, then that means there is actually a cost to the proposed change, and that cost must be addressed.

They will still be able to clear normal mode content just fine even if the healing was more demanding like it was in the past (which, ironically, was also the period they handled more dps tools). There's also the matter of the overwhelming amount of time spent using glare/broil/etc even inside the high-end content. I also hold the belief that healers currently have too many tools at their disposal. Especially in groups with two of them, it's honestly a detriment how hard they can trivialize any incoming damage.

I will repeat what I ever will say. Stormblood was the time period they hit that perfect middle ground.

[Zairava]

They WON'T be able to.

That was the point.

Well, sorta - that wasn't even the argument. The argument HAS NEVER BEEN "someone just hitting glare over and over again". At any point. "Refreshing Dia, using PoM on CD or with party buffs, using Misery under buff windows, using Assize on CD unless small delays can be used to improve healing" is not "someone just hitting glare over and over again" and never has been.

And as I say, there are cases where healers, doing that currently optimal stuff, have barely made it through an enrage because PF be like that sometimes.

It's not hard to explain at all, and I have explained it. Rejecting the explanation doesn't make it cease to exist. And no one can explain something to you when your refuse to listen.

Bro, my dude.

The amount of dps needed to meet enrage is down to balancing and whether or not too many people made mistakes and died. Not because joe blow decided to not press Dia at exactly the 5 minute and 43 second mark to get .017% more dps.

Assize is on a 40 second cooldown and is an oGCD, the DoT is 30s long and you only need to worry about refreshing it outside that if you're going for fractional increase in dps. If these are your ideas of "shaking up the boredom of having one single GCD spellcast to use ad nauseam" then that is as barebones as barebones gets.

For someone who repeatedly babbles on how "people aren't listening" you sure didn't listen to when I said I'm a below average healer who is bored by how they are currently structured and would like to be more engaged.

"normal mode content"?

This discussion has never been about "normal mode content", either, now has it?

Have you actually read any of the posts you're replying to?

Yes, have you?

Care to explain how they won't be able to handle a couple more dps buttons to make the healing downtime there will always inevitably be more entertaining then? How they won't get over that, despite still being able to glare/broil/etc. spam and ignore the rest if they so chose? Even in EX healbots can be carried doing almost no dps at all by a competent group.

They will still be able to clear normal mode content just fine even if the healing was more demanding like it was in the past (which, ironically, was also the period they handled more dps tools). There's also the matter of the overwhelming amount of time spent using glare/broil/etc even inside the high-end content.

Regardless, it doesn't discredit what I'm saying.

That being said, let's take normal mode out of the equation.

The only players interacting with the amount of dps to matter are the players already doing savage and above content, of which are the players most interested in optimization the everliving piss out of their job or role. So why in the hell would it matter for the players that don't? And outside of week 1 and 2 progression, it begins getting easier to clear these dps checks due to power creep, of which healer dps can be carried.

Alternatively, have you read this thread? -> https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...mplex-DPS-kits

You should.

Yes, and you should read my reply to it where I said I don't think either need to be overly complicated.

[Sebazy]

Quite the opposite, they want healing to be the part that is challenging.

Ok cool yep, I'd be more than happy for some of that. I don't think it entirely solves the issue of healers being boring in mundane content but absolutely, bring on the challenging healing requirements as far as I'm concerned....

I know your opinion there - but novice healers won't be able to clear 4 mans - yet this is what a lot of healer players want.

Oh right.... I think you've completely misunderstood my point that I'm trying to make. Here goes one more time, if you fail to understand it then so be it, that's a you problem.

Look at a boss like Cagnazzo, he hits hard enough to kill people that are caught napping. Not a significant wipe threat, but dangerous enough that you can't sleep on him like some bosses.

Let's take his most damaging sequence: Over the course of a minute and a half, he dealt 4 hits to me totalling slightly under 72k. How much HP did I have in this dungeon as a DNC? Oh... 72k....

Now granted, that run had a Sadge, so lets recalculate on the assumption that I'm the WHM and not a single mitigation button was pressed by the entire team. That nets us roughly 100k damage taken over the same minute and a half window, lets go with my WHM having 65k hp, so I need to do 35k healing to pass the heal check.

1 single Medica II cast + the hot running it's full duration is ~25k HP per person. Therefore 2 Medica IIs over a 90 second period aka 30% uptime would *comfortably* get us through this damage window. The biggest damage window in the fight. 30% uptime on a level 50 GCD PBAOE with a 20yalm reach and a 15 second duration. On a dungeon boss that's far from the most braindead out there. Think about that for a moment.....

This is a fight that is decidedly middle of the road as far as current dungeon bosses go and 1 cast every 15 seconds of a level 50 GCD spell has it covered with room to spare.

Thus my point ISNT that we can't raise the healing requirements because we absolutely can, people survived stuff like the old Demon Wall bosses and Bardams, they'll survive higher healing requirements than we have now.

Rather my point is: I don't think these people actually realise how comically vast a gap we have between what mainstream content expects of healers and what our current healing kits are actually capable of.

If we increase Cagnazzo's healing requirements by 50% that basically has it breaking even with rolled Medica IIs assuming no mitigation or cooldowns are used. How far do you think we have to go to actually push what's on tap once we start dipping into Lilies, cooldowns and multipliers like Temperance, PI, Asylum, let alone powerhouse CDs like Lilybell? If you're unsure, it's basically Harrowing Hell Savage minus the positioning/movement. That's literally what it takes to make healing genuinely challenging now.

I'm absolutely down for that coming to mainstream content.

Of course, this still doesn't solve the tedium when doing more casual or solo content now does it? Or should that force us to dip into our cooldowns too?

Feel free to tell them they're wrong, I guess.

I guess I just did.

For all the people that answer is 'Yes' for, post-change, those people should be able to clear content playing the way they do today.

I can clear an alliance raid today without barely looking at my screen. Make of that what you will.

Again, some people felt bad FOR SCH players who lost their damage kits in ShB. And SMNs in EW. Those changes shouldn't have happened. Doing the opposite here would be just as harmful.

No it wouldn't, and because I'm not you, I'll even explain why:

Because SHB took away a substantial facet of the job and replaced it with nothing. That is harmful. We can both agree on that right?

You suggest that adding damage complexity would somehow be just as harmful. What are you basing this conclusion on? Are you forgetting that we have actual prior examples of this to go on?

Remember Cleric Stance? Many didn't like it or never clicked with it's risk vs reward and as such, they simply chose not to use it. Say what you will about the eventual drama, but the fact remains that a very sizeable chunk of healers simply chose not to engage with that portion of their kit despite the fact that it dropped their damage contribution to the group not by 1%, not by 3%, not even by 10%, but by something like 90% or more depending on the timeframe.

More relevantly, until Gordias Savage landed and pushed the importance of DPS as a metric upon the community, people generally didn't care all that much. It wasn't a problem. If a ~90% drop in damage contribution wasn't a problem back then, why would a ~10-20% damage drop for not engaging with the new mechanics be an issue now? It's absolutely not going to stop them from clearing anything that they couldn't already given that once people stop dying to mechanics, modern extremes are usually getting cleared with minutes left on the enrage timer.

EDIT:

Also, the midcore content isn't gone because it became casual.

The midcore content is gone because it became hardcore (or was removed).

Serious question, did you do Crystal Tower on it's release? Or Lighthouse?