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

[ty_taurus]

Also, you are incredibly rude.

Thank you, I take that as a compliment.

Every guide on Youtube, every player you talk to, the first thing they mention is "Healers have to do DPS too!". These guides also tell you how to optimize your healing, so you can do more damage. You hear often times in Savage content, "Healers, you shouldnt need to use any GCDs on healing in this duty. Only used oGCDs for healing."

Maybe take a step back, and look around elsewhere on the forums to see what folks are saying? There are folks falling over themselves begging for more DPS buttons because they spend a majority of their time DPSing. You can find plenty of people on the forums and on Reddit for "Tales From Duty Finder" that complain when a healer is healing too much. If I can find it, I'll post a quote from someone who told me, (not exact words) they'd hate to have more consistant damage coming out from bosses, because it would cut into their DPS.

Alright, let me break this down. Healing is a complicated metric, because it has an inverse relationship to itself in contrast to DPS. With DPS, the better you perform, the more you DPS. Healing is the opposite: the better you heal, the less you heal. This is an undeniable reality. Why?

Let's first establish what constitutes "better" healing. As healers, our job is to prevent a game over state, namely by preventing ourselves and our teammates from running out of HP. That is the bare minimum requirement for us to be successful, so how do we do that better? When we have a variety of different types of heals with different pros and cons, the better healer is the one that is maximizing the pros of their heals while minimizing the cons. For example, let's say a Sage could recover from back-to-back damage with the use of 3 Prognosis casts. If they, instead, weave Physis II first, a regen that also increases healing received by the party, the combination of that regen and the increased healing may mean you can weave a Physis II and cast 2 Prognosis instead. That's less MP spent, and opens up that third cast for something else, something that isn't healing.

Let's use some visuals and hypotheticals to help communicate this idea. Every minute, we basically have 24 opportunities to cast different spells, and each opportunity also comes with 2 weave windows. In this hypothetcial, we have a GCD attack and a GCD heal as well as 3 healing OGCDs with 1 minute cooldowns. That will look something like this:

Our job is to assess the situation of a fight and place each of those actions in a given GCD slot that yields us the greatest net value. Now, let's say that in that minute of gameplay, the fight will ask you to heal every other GCD. There is no content in FFXIV that demands an amount of healing at that frequency, but let's use that metric anyway for the sake of simplicity. Let's start by looking at how that might look if we only use GCDs:

This gives us 12 casts of our DPS spell and 12 casts of our healing spell. But we haven't used our oGCD heals yet. Because every spell gives us a single weave window (based on our spells having 1.5 second cast times), we can effectively slot those oGCD heals in positions at their earliest convenience, right before the healing spell that would otherwise be cast. That will place us in the following situation:

Here, we have the same total number of actions dedicated to DPS and healing: 12 DPS attacks and 12 instances of healing. But as you can see, we've now freed up three different GCD opportunties, but since we don't need that extra healing, since our oGCDs cover that healing for us, the only other thing we can do to fill that space is DPS, giving us this outcome:

Now, that gives us a net value of 15 instances of DPS while still having the 12 required instances of healing. And now, knowing that logic, take into consideration how many different cooldowns and resources are available to each healer. The reason your YouTube guides are always talking about maximizing DPS is because that is the reward for learning your cooldowns and being a better healer. The reason why this doesn't seem as true for other MMOs that feature attrition style healing is because the reward for better healing is not dying. There, if you don't heal well enough, you fail the healing requirements, but FFXIV has almost no healing requirements across the majority of the game. I said before how needing to heal every other GCD is not an accurate representation of FFXIV's content, because using our hypothetical model, actual FFXIV content would looks something more like this for the healer who only uses GCD heals:

And becomes this the moment they start optimizing their healing:

[KenZentra]

snip

Yes, thanks for breaking down how healing in FFXIV works and that healers deal damage more often than heal, welcome to the thread. Obviously you would cast less heals when you heal more effectively. Looking at your last graph, yeah, and isnt that a problem? You cast 2 healing spells out of 24 casts of damage. You spend roughly 92% of your casts as a healer, dealing damage. The obvious outcome of spending (apparently) 100% of your time pressing 2 buttons is that you want more buttons to push. Naturally, you'd want to fill those with buttons your are going to push during healing down time, but at that point, you are not really a healer anymore. I mean looking at your final graph, what would the difference be between a healer and a DNC with extra curing waltzs (whom is filling in for a healer)?

As I've said before, giving all healers a DPS rotation to follow is just going to reinforce that they are DPS first and healers second, which the devs will apply to encounters going forward. When devs design encounters, the first thing they look at is how healers are going to deal with what it throws at them, and with how scripted and structured the game has becomes (especially for healers) the outcome being that all healers need to be able to deal with the exact same mechanics; get to max HP, with shields. Get hit, repeat. You get dropped to low HP (in savage) and then you do two oGCDs and continue dealing damage, just as you've shown.

Im not sure how its some radical idea that healers should probably be balanced around not spending 92% of casts (or 100% of GCDs) dealing damage. Maybe the devs should just buff DNC to have more curing waltz lol

[Shurrikhan]

I'm not sure how its some radical idea that healers should probably be balanced around not spending 92% of casts (or 100% of GCDs) dealing damage.

It isn't. It's also not an idea that anyone here has fought against -- only that the solution is not simply to flip the table into 92+% of casts spent on healing, as that leaves almost nothing left for recovery, and spamming Medica is not particularly any more interesting than spamming Glare.

And by the time you get the portion of GCDs heals down to an amount still remotely accessible, such as a "mere" three-quarters of casts, the downtime kits of jobs like SCH would still feel flat (ED wouldn't be worth using and that leaves them with just Bio per 30s and Broils between).

That is to say, rather than just the one, it requires at least a few steps:

1. Increase healing requirements to, MP being mostly a non-factor, what might makes fights feel threatening (even if not yet interesting) for healers but short of outright wipefest hellscapes.
   
   
2. Address the (im)balance of healing spells relative to each other through categorical (only this one player needs healing and/or they need it faster than Medica can produce) and/or shared-resource (e.g., MP, AF, AG) concerns and/or through just curtailing the most absurdly powerful spells among them. Ideally, take that opportunity, also, to make it so the spell kits aren't basically just the same basic copy-pasta across every healer. By the end of this, the healing itself should be pretty interesting.
   
   
3. Provide a sufficiently engaging downtime kit to handle at least what flexible space remains in group content among skilled players. This may not be enough to solve healers being dull in solo-content, but solo content is not exactly the point of an MMO. Ideally, find ways for this kit to interact, even if indirectly or just coincidentally (such as through priority conflicts in spending refreshing two status effects, one offensive and one defensive), with the healing kit so that each is made more interesting through the other's presence. By the end of this, healing in group content should be thoroughly engaging (even if not solely do to the healing actions themselves).

[KenZentra]

It isn't. It's also not an idea that anyone here has fought against -- only that it the solution is not simply to flip the table into 92+% of casts spent on healing, as that leaves almost nothing left for recovery, and spamming Medica is not particularly any more interesting than spamming Glare.

And by the time you get the portion of GCDs heals down to an amount still remotely accessible, such as a "mere" three-quarters of casts, the downtime kits of jobs like SCH would still feel flat (ED wouldn't be worth using and that leaves them with just Bio per 30s and Broils between).

I dont think healers should be spamming 1 button ever and never have, just like any other class or role. But I do think they need to spend more than 8% of casts healing. I would reckon reworking healers to using their whole kits and more interaction between their spells would promote that. Right now, healers have next to no interaction between abilities in their kits, whether thats their DPS or Healing. As well, more unique healing spells that arent just "heal/shield for X" or "Heal/shield everyone for X", but the structure of the game right now will not allow anything else, which is part of the problem.

[IDontPetLalas]

It isn't. It's also not an idea that anyone here has fought against -- only that the solution is not simply to flip the table into 92+% of casts spent on healing, as that leaves almost nothing left for recovery, and spamming Medica is not particularly any more interesting than spamming Glare.

And by the time you get the portion of GCDs heals down to an amount still remotely accessible, such as a "mere" three-quarters of casts, the downtime kits of jobs like SCH would still feel flat (ED wouldn't be worth using and that leaves them with just Bio per 30s and Broils between).

That is to say, rather than just the one, it requires at least a few steps:

1. Increase healing requirements to, MP being mostly a non-factor, what might makes fights feel threatening (even if not yet interesting) for healers but short of outright wipefest hellscapes.
   
   
2. Address the (im)balance of healing spells relative to each other through categorical (only this one player needs healing and/or they need it faster than Medica can produce) and/or shared-resource (e.g., MP, AF, AG) concerns or through just curtailing the most absurdly powerful spells among them. Ideally, take that opportunity, also, to make it so the spell kits aren't basically just the same basic copy-pasta across every healer. By the end of this, the healing itself should be pretty interesting.
   
   
3. Provide a sufficiently engaging downtime kit to handle at least what flexible space remains in group content among skilled players. This may not be enough to solve healers being dull in solo-content, but solo content is not exactly the point of an MMO. Ideally, find ways for this kit to interact, even if indirectly or just coincidentally (such as through priority conflicts in spending refreshing two status effects, one offensive and one defensive), with the healing kit so that each is made more interesting through the other's presence. By the end of this, healing in group content should be thoroughly engaging (even if not solely do to the healing actions themselves).

Regarding the last point? Two issues with that 1- exactly what level of skill? and 2- "solo content is not exactly the point of an MMO"- that's the view of some, but not all players, and looking at the amount of solo content in this game (such as deep dungeons) I wouldn't say that this is true of this game. That is definitely true of some MMOs, even to the point that no content can be completed solo- but that's becoming less common from what I've seen.

[Shurrikhan]

I dont think healers should be spamming 1 button ever and never have, just like any other class or role. But I do think they need to spend more than 8% of casts healing.

Then that's you and every 'DPS in disguise' on here.

Stop strawmanning those asking for a 'mere' 35-65% of a skill healers' casts being spent on healing as solely wanting "DPS rotations" and less than 8% of casts spent on healing and you'd find common ground real quick.

Again, the sticking point is very simple: To many here the existing downtime kits --especially on jobs like SCH (or, more broadly, non-SGEs)-- wouldn't be sufficient at any amount of healing requirements that would still be reasonably accessible. That's why they're asking not JUST for healing requirements to be increased (nor, for that matter, just for downtime kit to be improved), but for BOTH to see revisions.

Asking for just the one over the other is merely running with the premise of the thread (IF you had to pick ONE) and/or a note on the state of the devs' willingness to actually do squat, in which case solely improving the downtime kit would work for all situations without potentially excessive decreases to accessibility (some decrease is fine; losing all but your very best healers is not), while solely increasing uptime can satisfy only in harder group content and requires a much larger host of accordant changes to make feasible. If you must, blame the OP for the false ultimatum, but the sheer number of people quickly saying "NEITHER should stay the same" or "BOTH should change" should already have clued you in to this.

Regarding the last point? Two issues with that 1- exactly what level of skill? and 2- "solo content is not exactly the point of an MMO"- that's the view of some, but not all players, and looking at the amount of solo content in this game (such as deep dungeons) I wouldn't say that this is true of this game. That is definitely true of some MMOs, even to the point that no content can be completed solo- but that's becoming less common from what I've seen.

Let's say... skilled enough to clear a Savage tier Week 1 without guides and within 12 hours worth of pulls, provided they have a pretty a consistent party (not resetting progress due to PuGing). Or an Ultimate raider. Whatever tf you like that sets a fairly high bar, since we want to appeal EVEN to their amount of downtime, as they will have the most downtime.

And note the "at least". If even an Ultimate raider is able to feel pretty engaged even in Extremes and Savage, then I'm happy. I don't need them to feel super engaged by MSQ solo fights. But if that were possible, then great.

[IDontPetLalas]

"If even an Ultimate raider is able to feel pretty engaged even in Extremes and Savage, then I'm happy. I don't need them to feel super engaged by MSQ solo fights."

I would think it a safe assumption that someone who capable of completing an Ultimate isn't going to be stressed if they're not challenged by an MSQ solo.

So let's consider the other, let's say - 80 % of the player population (a least) who doesn't typically complete an Ultimate. I would hope that even in normal content, it is not dull, and that it is not left out considering that that is a large part of the content where many people spend there time, it is after much more than just MSQ solo fights.

[Nizzi]

[*]Provide a sufficiently engaging downtime kit to handle at least what flexible space remains in group content among skilled players. This may not be enough to solve healers being dull in solo-content, but solo content is not exactly the point of an MMO. Ideally, find ways for this kit to interact, even if indirectly or just coincidentally (such as through priority conflicts in spending refreshing two status effects, one offensive and one defensive), with the healing kit so that each is made more interesting through the other's presence. By the end of this, healing in group content should be thoroughly engaging (even if not solely do to the healing actions themselves).[/LIST]

I don't disagree with the idea that solo content isn't the point of an MMO, but given the developers have shifted focus on making content for solo players especially with things like EO or Variant, just doing a fix that only applies in raid content isn't enough. I obviously want to be spamming Broil in Savage/Ult less but I do not want the majority of this game's content to be fundamentally unfun to the role/job I want to play. It's why I know the "uhh give us buffs and make us Esuna more " suggestions will do literally nothing in the grand scheme of things because it's not only high end raids where the role is monotonous and boring. Healer kits are already ridiculously lopsided to have full usage only in Savage/Ultimate, and while I understand the healing portion of the kits won't ever be able to be stressed in casual content, it's even more of a reason to make these jobs fun in that content.

Like even if we go back to 2013 Coils era where most people were standing still and spamming Adlo, Physick and Succor and waiting around to recover MP, there's a whole other portion of the game that isn't serviced by that and I also want to be able to have fun in that too. I don't see how what a level 50 Scholar had in 2013 is too much for a potential level 100 Scholar player to deal with in 2024.

"If you want to have fun just go play a DPS job" is not an appealing option for me personally. I don't like how fun is an afterthought for the role.

[chaotix69]

I suppose if you have the reading comprehension skills of a ring-tailed lemur with a concussion, then yes, I could see how one could interpret what “the community” has been saying as that.

Lmao! What?! I can’t even feel insulted by this its so weird

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

[...]because overhealing is bad.

Fixed that for you.