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

[Niroken]

The state of the game right now is (assuming after first week of something being released) Normal mode stuff is way too easy, where healers spend 90% of the time pressing the two DPS buttons, while Savage content practically kills you outright if you get hit by anything you shouldn't be (and should be if you aren't max hp with shields and mits). So its both either too easy due to a severe lack of consistent damage dealt to the party or too hard cause of near instant death (which chain into bodycheck mechanics killing everyone).

For folks who dont do a lot of Savage for sure get super bored with their healing kit as they dont really need to use all of it. As for their DPS kit, of course it would be boring and the want for something more complex is obvious as they are basically just DPS anyways for Normal modes. So in both instances, the damage is problem. Its either so negligible that you could roll with 2 Dancers instead of healers, and in most Savage content, you need 2 healers, but if you mess up, you die and all of your party members along with you.

Well there is the issue with encounter design being lop-sided, the issue regarding player skill increasing and also increases in ilvl as well. This is also not including solo encounters also being boring considering that you need to DPS in those as well.

It's simply not feasible for the developers to put in the time and effort to make all encounters balanced around 80% healing. Yoshi-P would rather spend his focus on making sure BLM is the best designed class in the game.

[Renathras]

Yes, and you prove my point. Abyssos was so sudden and such a big jump in 'extra healing needed', albeit in the 'wrong way' design wise, that it was the 'enough to shake up the way we play' side of the binary. Unfortunately, the 'shake up' for an alarmingly sized portion of the healer base was that they would be doing the fights on a different role, or not at all in some cases. If we go by the assumption that SE would gradually increase healing required over time, so people can acclimatize, then there will be several patches of 'this is not enough, it still feels the same', followed by a sudden 'actually wait this is too much go back' when it turns out they overshot it

Having the buttons there that you don't use, might well prompt some players who think they wouldn't use them, to use them...

I will never understand your logic, my friend.

Upping healing won't be noticeable, you say, then that it's TOO noticeable but also wouldn't be noticeable if done incrementally and that if they do it too slow, people won't like it but, despite the Devs (presumably) being open and transparent with their intentions, it will somehow still either still blindside OR be insignificant. I feel that's missing the third and fourth options, those being (3) that the playerbase appreciates what they're trying to do and works through those growing pains (something we've seen the playerbase do whenever major but recognized changes happen) or (4) that they do, in fact, get it in the margin between too much and too little, where it IS about right and people love it.

I also don't understand the argument that more DPS buttons will make (more or less) everyone happy and not bother people that don't want to use them, but also make them use them even if they don't want to.

I get it's a thing you want, but the logic just seems conflicting. It is a matter of finding the sweet spot, but so is everything.

As for the "timeS":

THE POINT - and it's post like this here you made that agitate me because you're smart and you very much know what I mean, so why play stupid and be difficult when you know better? - is that when we made a major change on people, it hurt a lot of people and was clearly the wrong thing to do. I get you think that only works one way - more DPS actions hurts no one, less hurts people - but it happens both ways, and you should be smart enough to know that, too. Especially considering how much we've had these conversations. I don't get why this STUBBORN refusal to acknowledge the general principle "When you change something out from under people who do not want the change, it hurts them". I don't understand WHY that's a difficult concept to grasp EXACTLY, but I'll just keep restating it over and over again until it clicks at some point...

You understand the general principle, because it's not hard to understand. We have plenty of examples of it. "But they all reduced damage buttons"; THAT isn't the issue, and I can't imagine you not understanding it at this point. The issue is people lost playstyles they liked.

SMN went from being a DoT mage to being a mobile caster (SMN was already highly mobile in ShB and people seem to forget that, but what it lost was the DoTs and plate spinning). PLD went from being a sustain rotation with a lot of utility to being a burst rotation (and didn't lose damage buttons; what changed was the order you hit those buttons in). MCH, NIN, BRD; and recall BRD got MORE complex for one of those hated changes, becoming "Bowmage" in HW. Whether made harder/more complex or easier/less DPS buttons, the result IS THE SAME. The list of Jobs that were reworked where it changed how people interacted with the Job is extensive, and I can think of only two cases it seems to have been a resounding success and loved by most of the people that played the Job:

MNK. Which took a partial iteration across 5.4, 5.5, and 6.0 to complete and was made more complex.

And WHM in ShB, which was at that time praised as a massive improvement over SB and was made more simple.

And with 6.3 PLD being a "It's not terrible, but...I don't like it" with a lot of PLD mains, but it's the closest thing to a mixed bag/neutral.

While many of these Jobs took on new players (SMN is now possibly the most popular Caster in the game, though did it have to come at the expense of older SMNers? Could it not have been an entirely new Job instead?), the hole in the game from the lack of their old version still bothers people, with many people feeling "homeless" for years waiting for something. SMN mains are still crossing their fingers for the new Caster to be a DoT mage. Tanks that want to escape from the 1-2-3 doldrums of WarkKniBreaker are now out of luck as PLD is in that same mold and there's no escape.

The point is clear, as you must know by now, and the premise, sound. I wish you'd stop...playing dumb, I guess? You can make the argument you still think it's worth doing without pretending you don't understand exactly what I meant.

Next time just say something like "I get what you're saying, but I still think it's worth sacrificing those people for." Simple and honest. Expound on all the reasons you think so, but don't pretend you're unable to grasp the concept, please. I know you are and that you have.

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TL;DR:

When Jobs/roles are changed out from under people, it's almost always bad. Especially when there's a way to do it that doesn't leave those people homeless. It doesn't matter whether the change is more complex or more simple, the result is the same, and it's bad unless you give those people some safe port in the storm.

As someone who's healed in MMOs where MP concerns and incoming damage mean that you're spending 70+% of your time spamming a certain healing button, spam doesn't inherently feel better from its moving bars up instead of down.

I mean...it does to me and many others. Many people play healers BECAUSE they enjoy making bars fill rather than empty. It's why there is that bit about "Who are real healers" and all that, but the fact remains, it is more fun to a lot of people. And as HappyHubris said:

Strong disagree on "70% of of your time spamming a certain healing button," because a lot of incoming damage often requires switching up tools and making decisions on throughput vs efficiency, using procs, using mitigation, deploying cooldowns, building resource layers, etc.

And it's way, way better than spamming glare or broil or whatever for more than 70% of casts. People who play this game like to pooh pooh actual MMO healing, then go back to hitting that glare key like a woodpecker.

Though to be fair, Happy, they all want a DPS rotation on healers. That's what they keep asking for. What I don't understand is why anyone would enjoy a DPS rotation (even a mini-only one like Tanks) on a HEALER rather than enjoy...uh...healing. Like why even play the role if you don't want to do what's on the tin as your main thing? Maybe we should flip the script and have all healer damage spells be oGCDs and heals be GCDs only, I dunno. Something to drive home the point "This is the role for people that like to heal, not people that want to be damage dealers, as there's already a role for that."

[Renathras]

This thread has been enlightening in putting to bed the oldest lie spread around the healer forums, the lie that people who want more dps buttons just want to dps and not heal.

I can see several people who say they only want to heal, but not a single person that said they only want to do damage. Why?

...because as soon as anyone actually said those words they know they'd be hosed and their arguments drowned out with "go play a DPS Job, then!". No one's going to say that, even if they want that, because it would instantly negate their argument and expose them as a DPS player that just wants faster ques.

If anything, the insistance that we add DPS buttons but not rework damage dealt, encounter designs, the healing portions of our kit, the non-damage support portions of our kit, or tank and DPS healing and mitigation rendering healer healing unnecessary kind of does indicate that they want to DPS and don't really want to heal since there's an abject refusal to entertain any solution that doesn't include more DPS buttons/complexity and a general opposition to addressing the healing side of the balance first and foremost.

I think it more proves the adage true than exposes it as a lie, actually...
...and this from me, a person that doesn't ever argue that people are not "true healers" and defines healer players as falling under those three categories (pure healer, support/buffer healer, and damage healer; roughly analogous to the EQ Cleric, Shaman, and Druid classes).

[EDIT: I should note, btw, that this is entirely irrelevant anyway. Whether it's true or not doesn't matter, that's an ad hominem fallacy if used to discount arguments and it's a steelman fallacy if used to support them. What matters is their arguments themselves, how that works with all the other healer players and positions, and whether or not it addresses the problems that we collectively recognize and agree with each other are the problems. Whether or not those people are 3 DPS in a trench coat or not is irrelevant. I only post this to rebut your contention that it's somehow a debunked lie; it seems not to be at all debunked. But for my part, I don't think it matters even IF it's true. I prefer to stick to the arguments. :ENDEDIT]

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THAT SAID:

I agree with both the things you say in that post. Attrition vs dance and healer kits so they heal and do damage differently from one another. Hell, I've been saying this very thing for, what, 2 years now? Very much agree.

[Shurrikhan]

When Jobs/roles are changed out from under people, it's almost always bad. Especially when there's a way to do it that doesn't leave those people homeless. It doesn't matter whether the change is more complex or more simple, the result is the same, and it's bad unless you give those people some safe port in the storm.

In other words, "The stopping point around which a given status quo should be given additional weight for the mere fact of existing at that point in time... is wherever it favors my interests, regardless of however many healer mains' favored experiences were stripped from them to the point of their leaving their main job, role, or even the game in getting to the point I like and want protected."

"Don't let me do any more than I do now, as I don't want to feel encouraged to do any more than this. No, I don't care that others' experiences had to be trimmed/dumbed down just to get here."

Though to be fair, Happy, they all want a DPS rotation on healers.

Wanting the occasional priority conflict and some actual decision-making does not make a "DPS rotation". Wanting a bit more downtime complexity, especially to add some aforementioned priority conflict when paired with increased healing requirements, does not make a "DPS rotation". Stormblood healers did not have a "DPS rotation".

Maybe we should flip the script and have all healer damage spells be oGCDs and heals be GCDs only, I dunno. Something to drive home the point "This is the role for people that like to heal, not people that want to be damage dealers, as there's already a role for that."

So, a worst of all possible worlds... just out of spite? In order for healers not to spend large portions of their time merely idle, there'd have to be almost zero ability for them to help the party recover for mistakes -- something generally considered a feature, not merely a burden, of healing.

The only players to whom outright replacing any ability to contribute outside of healing --and therefore have one's contributions scale with competence without necessarily making the role painfully inaccessible (and with wholly bimodal, non-scaling contribution even then)-- would appeal is those who want an easier time of same-monitor Netflix-and-fill-while-cycling-CDs.

[hydralus]

I dunno what you people want I've got 3 hotbars full of abilities and you want more!?

[Shurrikhan]

This is like saying that we can't have enrage timers, because you can't entirely screw DPS up and be fine. MMO encounters are generally designed with a tolerance level that requires a floor of performance but not perfect execution.

It's not remotely like that. Again, I'm not saying you can't make healing interesting -- only that merely tuning the damage higher won't be enough because of how badly designed the actual healing actions are at present.

Healer's healing actions are too imbalanced relative to each other to prompt any decision-making. At best it would make The-Triangle-goes-in-the-Triangle-Shaped-Hole mechanics because damage intake is so intense that you must eventually trickle down to using your Cure II equivalent to meet categorical needs (as in dealing damage, STing only when its effective sustain provided is greater than can be had through AoEs). More likely, though, it would mostly devolve into all going into "the square hole" (Medica II) because you simply can't tighten the existing wildly imbalanced kit well enough to prevent that while still having any tolerance (not even enough for casual players, but even just your average Week 1 progression grinder).

Again, we're looking at skills with over 10x the healing of others, and barely even a soft CD (that requires less than three quarters' charge to break even per target) for the same cost; a spammable with 4x the healing at less MP cost than the ST spammable; etc. It's not a GCD heal kit designed for significant engagement through that healing alone. It was designed for MP being a far greater constraint and for priority conflicts with frequent offensive soft-CDs (DoTs, in the case of ARR-StB) to reward short-, mid-, and longer-term foresight.

If you want it to be engaging, that kit needs fixes first. And for players to retain interest after any performance threshold beyond "I didn't let people needlessly die," you're going to need a more interesting context for those healing actions via non-healing actions, too.

[ty_taurus]

Wanting the occasional priority conflict and some actual decision-making does not make a "DPS rotation". Wanting a bit more downtime complexity, especially to add some aforementioned priority conflict when paired with increased healing requirements, does not make a "DPS rotation". Stormblood healers did not have a "DPS rotation".

I'm not really sure what others deem a "rotation" Because in my mind, the requirements for a set of attacks to be considered a "rotation" is extremely low. If Sage got the PVP treatment of reducing the DoT duration to 15 seconds, reducing Phelgma's cooldown to 20 seconds, made Pneuma a DPS tool instead of a healing tool every 60 seconds, and made Toxikons OGCD and generated offensively, that I would describe as a rotation. I would describe Stormblood Scholar as having a rotation. What makes current healers not have a rotation in my eyes is that repeatedly casting a single spell is not a rotation because there is no looping of anything, and there isn't enough variation to keep the healer breaking away from that. It's one thing if there's a rhythm where you're, say, casting your neutral three times, then doing something else, but having... what is it? twelve casts of your neutral game between DoT application? When you have repetition of action usage in games, generally you do it in groups of twos, threes, or fours, not groups of twelves.

[Sebazy]

I dunno what you people want I've got 3 hotbars full of abilities and you want more!?

I'd be happy if I used them with regularity outside of Savage++

[Shurrikhan]

I'm not really sure what others deem a "rotation" Because in my mind, the requirements for a set of attacks to be considered a "rotation" is extremely low.

That's fair. I suppose the term is pretty vague.

I would generally consider it an APL (action priority list) of at least 3 non-glideable (e.g., can't just key-swipe a step that's never worth holding and is greyed out except on proc) steps among spammables OR at least 3 non-fillers (where glides procced by and which glide into the filler count as the filler) of frequent use and which doesn't spend more than two-thirds of its casts of a given category on a single action (again, including its glide, if any), which is still extremely light so far as "rotations" go.

...Though, by that count, neither does Bard have a rotation among its GCDs unless combining AoE, ST, and treating Apex Arrow as a standard weaponskill. 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,2 (of RA>BS, IJ) is no more a rotation than 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,2 is (Broil, Biolysis), imo.

And for a rotation (this over this over this) to be at all "interesting", imo, it should also have a sort of meta-rotation. For instance, two skills that normally have a fixed priority over each other may shift that priority under some other condition, so that your "Do's" and "Don't" rotate into new frameworks, or may be grouped into larger series with a degree of player control that rewards player knowledge or, in a lack of complete knowledge or reliability therefrom, player intuition / a good gamble.

[AmiableApkallu]

When trying to define "rotation", I would draw inspiration from The Balance's BLM guide:

A line is a sequence of casts with specific characteristics that ends after a fire phase. A rotation refers to a line or lines that can feasibly loop and repeat itself. This is why only the standard line is typically referred to as a rotation, while other lines are more strictly referred to as lines.

So, I would call 121111111111 a rotation, albeit a trivial and uninteresting one (more on this in a moment). I can imagine SGE having "Kardia lines" that allow it to respond to various healing scenarios, but where those sequences of actions cannot be looped upon themselves indefinitely, and thus wouldn't form a rotation.

Now, 121111111111 is uninteresting because it's entirely "filler", which I would describe as:

Actions that do not build up anything or towards anything, and that do not themselves have the feel of ending or finishing some sequence of actions.

That informs my thinking whenever someone talks about "interactivity" or "interactions" in a kit.

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I think we're all in agreement that healers -- whether it be via job design, encounter design, or some combination of the two -- need to spend less time on filler. By my definition, I think there's also a fair argument to be made that most healing skills are also filler.