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

[Renathras]

I'd argue that WHM was the exception ; not SCH, as of HW AST had more going on in utility too

Strictly speaking, I was talking about ARR.

That said, the split was still more apparent in HW. AST, for example, was the pioneer of the "one spamnuke + one DoT" model of healing DPS kits.

Should also note here: Even WHM had more utility options back then. Protect (CNJ/WHM was the only one that got the Pro-Shell trait) and Stoneskin were, for the time period, utility actions.

I think what people have to realize is that 4 mans are always going to be kind of boring. It doesn't matter what they do, they're going to keep it simple for MSQ stuff. Anything MSQ and probably 24 mans are made for an extremely general audience. So at the end of the day, changes to make things "more exciting" (damage OR dps kits) won't happen there. So the discussion is really on Extremes and higher, since the other stuff...probably isn't going to change much, and if anything (e.g. Pantheon 24 mans) they're moving in the more accessible direction.

So are healer kits AS A WHOLE. What I mean by this is that they design healer kits for a really general audience. It's why I pitch my 4 Healers Model all the time, because it allows for wiggle room. BLM and MNK clearly aren't made for entry level play for the most part. MNK is pretty complex with high optimization but also a higher skill floor than a lot of Jobs due to both the unusual and more intricate base rotation as well as the faster GCD. Then you get into is resources and cooldowns and high end abilities and it completely throws it for a loop. But the Job is able to exist this way because there are other DPS Jobs - even Melee DPS - that are far simpler to pick up and play as well as to master.

Likewise, even with ShB SMN, The Caster role has had RDM since SB as an easy to pick up, play, and optimize/master member of the Caster role.

But the Devs are on record saying they got rid of Cleric because of the community fighting about it and new healers feeling too pressured both to DPS and to DPS in a way that compromised healing. Since that change, though, Yoshi P has also said that there was still too much, which is why they removed even more going into ShB. So the Devs are on record saying they consider DPS kits on healers to be too difficult for "accessibility reasons". That's their position. Meaning we won't likely ever have a case where they make the DPS kits more fleshed out BUT refuse to change healing requirements, since they've been even stiffer on less DPSing healers being more accessible than they have even on healing requirements. Recall in ShB, when they were saying that less damage was good, they were teasing at the time an intent to increase healing requirements, showing of the two, that was the one they were more willing to change.

I do agree that SE doesn't seem to like things being different because of balance...and yet, the Melee, Ranged, and Casters ALL have more diversity in their kits than Tanks and Healers do. And if anything, DPS Jobs are the ones where balance is more significant. If SCH did 2% more damage than WHM, that's 2% of 60% (since healers do ~60% of DPS Job output), which is 1.2%. On the other hand, if DPSers are off by as little as 1.5%, that's a bigger difference in overall party damage than a healer doing 2% less than another healer.

Not to mention we have RDM/SMN and BLM sharing a role, so even there the argument completely folds.

I still think they're more likely to say "We'll have an easy, couple mediums, and a hard for each role" than "We'll have all members of a role being hard/complex". Granted, complex is entirely subjective, but Yoshi P talks about old school MMOs where healers effectively had little to no damage kit and mostly only used it for soloing. I think he might be more willing to budge on something like GNB/SGE being more damage focused than on making all healers damage focused, since he's afraid of another healer exodus like SB.

It's why I think a solution that allows both to coexist has the most chance of success. Which is more likely, EW WHM + Aero 3, or HW WHM being readded to the game, or WHM with a full on "elemental phase" burst rotation along with more GCDs to optimize and shorter duration DoTs to drop? If we're being honest, we'd be kind of lucky for them to give us Aero 3 at this point. And how much LESS likely is it that we'll get a full on tank-level DPS kit for all the healers?

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I know I get maligned a lot for "wanting braindead rotations", but my own proposal includes adding complex rotations to a couple of the healer Jobs, and strikes me as the most likely one Yoshi P would listen to. "So, WHM will still be easy for people picking up healers, so I don't have to worry about a mass exodus of healer players, but I also will have some people coming to the role that typically main DPS Jobs?", or "So now all healers are complex, trying to appeal to the types of players that like to DPS, but it's risky since we don't know how many of them will actually take on the added stress of managing player health bars AND we run the risk of people that don't enjoy DPS rotations leaving the role, causing a healer shortage?"

I feel like the mixed approach/4 Healers Model is actually more likely to get more damage buttons on a couple of the healers than any demands of a blanket "all or nothing" approach that demands all of the healer Jobs get more.

What I want is to actually heal as a Healer,...
...It's all well and good to give healers more DPS but they will still be boring DPS without adressing the issues that both Healer and Tank have currently.

Basically agree with most of this post. I don't even think we need more damage on all of the healer Jobs, some are already in a good place, they just need to actually need to use GCD heals. I'd add one other thing - MP/resource management so you actually DO think about which heals you want to use. Do you want to use that expensive Medica 2, or Medica 1 that costs half the amount but does far less healing? Cure 2 to heal a lot now or Cure 1 to be sustainable with your MP pool or Regen to be somewhat sustainable as well while healing for more but taking more time to do so (is it safe enough to take time to heal or do you need the healing now, and if now, do you need a LOT that justifies the high MP cost of Cure 2, or will a Cure 1 or two be acceptable?)

I'm struggling to see the appeal with a focus on constant heal GCD uptime.

Because a lot of people play healers because they want to heal people. They want their gameplay focused around a healing rotation/skills, not a damage one.

The big problem with oGCDs isn't that they exist, it's that they're as or MORE powerful than our GCDs, often enough to do all the healing on their own, and we have so many of them (other than WHM) that you can heal entire encounters without ever hitting a GCD heal. This would be fine, except then what do you do with that empty GCD? Do you just sit in place? Well, you want to do something productive, so what do you do? Well, you spam a damage spell, and that's boring. People often complain that around 80% of their GCDs cast in an encounter are Glare/Broil/Malific/Dosis.

There are two ways to fix that, only one of which is "more DPS buttons as part of the rotation". The other is "more GCD healing required", since a GCD spent healing is a GCD NOT spent casting a boring spam nuke over and over again.

That is the appeal.

oGCDs are NEARLY spamable because we have so many of them. Let's take SGE as an example. Here's a list of oGCDs it has and their CDs:

No CD (limited by Addersgall, 1 per 20 sec): Durochole
30 sec: Ixochole, Kerochole, Pepsis
45 sec: Taruochole
60 sec: Physis, Krasis
90 sec: Soteria, Zoe, Rhizomata
120 sec: Haima, Panhaima, Holos (arguably Pneuma)

While not all of those are direct healing, a lot of them are healing + bonus additional effects, and they're both frequent and powerful, replacing GCD needs entirely. SGE is a big offender here, but other than WHM, all of the healers have a ton of oGCDs. WHM itself has a lot, having Benediction, Assize, Asylum, Tetragrammaton, Divine Benison, Temperance, Aquaveil, and Lilybell as outright healing or mitigation, with Presence of Mind, Plenary Indulgence, and Thin Air working to make your GCD heals stronger/faster/more accessible. And that's also not counting Afflatus Solace/Rapture as "oGCDs", despite them effectively being equivalent to them in the sense of having no MP cost, a resource based CD, and damage neutral.

They're too powerful AND too many/too frequent, so they outright replace GCD healing for the most part.

Which is fine if we have a couple healers that work that way, but not for a healthy overall healing model.

But having too pick and choose which heal is best based on the situation, how quickly the healing needs to be applied, how much healing needs to be applied, what resources you have available, and what resources you need to save is really engaging and fun. Far more fun to many people than doing a DPS rotation and weaving the occasional oGCD heal.

Healing comes first? Sure but It's not like healing comes before damage when you can already do both at the same time, Pressing your ogcd button once in a while when a AOE or stack comes out isn't really fun "healing"
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That also has a helps other Job's utility abilities be more impactful.

Yet again I find myself saying I agree with your posts. Well said.