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

[Renathras]

It's frustrating that I can't articulate what I want out of a healer other than "feel good gameplay" based just off ideas I think are neat and would like to see, but I KNOW I'd like a healer (or even just a support dps caster) that focused less on stringent adherence to a rotation or 30s/60s/90s/120s, and more on something at least a bit more dynamic. That being, incoming and outgoing damage. Similar to how Sage's PvP versions of Kardia and Eukrasian Dosis III function, but fleshed out into an entire job and given more depth.

Maybe I'm naïve, maybe a concept like that wouldn't function well in 100% of content 100% of the time, but I bet it'd at least be pretty damn fun.

Agreed. I think it's a far better line of discussion.

That wasn't my argument, and you'd know that if you had actually read to the end of my comment.

"the absolute floor to be not quite so low"?

The proposals are all more complex than the SB healer damage kits, even what SCH was at the time, and I think Roe's WHM proposal is the only one that's not more complex than the SB SCH damage kit (though it is moreso than the SB WHM and AST kits were).

Here's my problem with the more DPS actions/complexity - it affects everyone, whether or not people insist it will, including the people that don't/won't like it. And if it ISN'T ultimately satisfying for the people that want more, then they'll just continue to ask for more. Moreover, it doesn't fix the underlying issues of the role and encounter design/kit mismatch, nor the issues of healer players that are currently dissatisfied but DON'T want more DPS as their solution.

Fair?

Ren has been saying nonstop that both DPS and Healing kits need to be reworked with both of those interacting with each other all the while that each healer be unique from each other so each plays differently. and that several aspects of the game need to be reworked anyways to fix the dull, mind numbing aspect of Healing as a role such as how damage is sent out and mitigated by several classes, massive healing potential and mit from most tanks, and how mechanics are handled by design. He hasnt said healing should be the ONLY change, but that you COULD let the healing kit be the only change TO healers.

While we both agree (i think) that there should be more consistent damage during encounters, I am the person who firmly believes that healing kits should be the only change to healing kits (aside from using DPS actions should interact your healing actions in some way).

Its just so bizarre to watch someone, advocate FOR having both, and people yell at him that we do not need a rework of healing kit or that the damage profile of encounters doesn't need to change, and people just saying he is wrong because of what healers have right now and what is expected of them right now.

Like, you guys know the first thing that goes into designing an encounter is how it interacts with healers, then Tanks, then DPS right?

Oh my god THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!

Ren, can you honestly say what you think most people want to see in each healers’ damage kits? Honestly. No “I guess”, no silly quips, no straw manning, just plain and simple. On average, what do you think people like myself, Ty, ForsakenRoe, Sebazy etc, want to see done to healers? Because at this point idk if you’re trying to be clever and exaggerate or if you actually don’t understand.

Most people? Hard to say, since we have little data about what the majority of the playerbase want.

However, specific to the common Healer Forum posters and people here wanting more DPS actions?

Collectively, they seem to want healers to have rotations somewhere in the ballpark of PLD/SMN/GNB/DNC/RDM (general ballpark) on the lower end, with some few examples being more complex. The feeling overall is that healing takes so few GCDs and cannot in their minds ever take up enough that they will still have a majority of downtime/not-healing GCDs, during which periods they are bored. They feel like they should be entertained by even the most braindead content, where they have even less healing to do, and so require more damage actions/complexity to consume mental space to keep them highly engaged.

There is a feeling that there's no amount of damage that could satisfy them, even in Ultimates or Savages, and thus they need a DPS rotation. SOME have also made comments about not wanting to be a "healbot" or "heal bitch" or "party cheerleader", indicating a kind of disdain for that playstyle or players that do. There seems to be an uncomfortable amount of disdain for players that like to play healers to heal in general (including a general rejection that people can actually enjoy filling health bars), coupled with a belief that such players are lazy and want to get clears or good pares (or both) with a minimal effort, despite the fact one of the most frequent questions people have is "what's the easiest DPS?" and that players that want no effort carries typically don't like playing healers or tanks because of the presumptive belief of more responsibility. There seems to be a strong desire to sort of put such players in their place by having them do lower damage and, in some cases (Semi has said this outright, and several others have said so roundaboutly though insisted that isn't what they meant when called on it...despite doing so over and over again) that such players should not be able to clear high end content, even midcore content like Extremes.

At their best, it seems that, collectively, the desire is to not be bored, a thinking that everyone else enjoys what they do (or will realize they do once forced to do it), and that changes to encounter design, healing kits, Job kits overall (healers and non-healers), and so on CANNOT work and will never satisfy them (or the rest of the playerbase they seem to believe think like them and enjoy what they do), so the only way to make everyone happy (despite many people telling them over and over it wouldn't make them happy) is to have Green DPS kits that are on par with the lower end of DPSers (SMN/DNC), including some variability in the rotation so it isn't the same every time (DNC procs and "Diacloud" are often mentioned). Note I say SMN/DNC here, the phrase "Tank-like" is often used, but let's be real, SMN is Tank-like at this point in terms of complexity and optimization. GNB (and probably DRK...and possibly WAR) arguably has more. But this isn't a nitpick so much as an attempt at a better descriptor. I think if you could take DNC's rotation (change ability names, of course) and replace/merge SGE with it (where you had all DNC's DPS rotation/abilities + SGE's oGCD heals and GCD heals), these people would find that a pretty acceptable Job and would like all the healer Jobs to be in that sort of vein.

At their worst, ...well, you know, I'm not going there. I really don't want to, believe it or not. I do get annoyed with the ad hominems and personal attacks and all that, but I'd rather us focus on actual discussion, not personal attacks.

In fact, I think I might even [hb] my other post for now (and may delete it) because I REALLY don't want to go there, I just want to point out that it's the people choosing to attack me that are disrupting these conversations, not me.

As KenZentra pointed out, I'm not the one trying to advocate for only some people getting what they want. I legitimately DO want everyone to get something they want.

.

But, I'd like too turn this question to you - and the others here:

Not a caricature or ad hominem: What do you think I want? Can you honestly say what it is that I want to see? No "I guess" or silly quips, no straw manning. What is it you think I want to see done to healers? AND to encounter design/overall game design regarding healing - since that's a big part of what I personally think needs to happen?

[IDontPetLalas]

Ren has been saying nonstop that both DPS and Healing kits need to be reworked with both of those interacting with each other all the while that each healer be unique from each other so each plays differently. and that several aspects of the game need to be reworked anyways to fix the dull, mind numbing aspect of Healing as a role such as how damage is sent out and mitigated by several classes, massive healing potential and mit from most tanks, and how mechanics are handled by design. He hasnt said healing should be the ONLY change, but that you COULD let the healing kit be the only change TO healers.

While we both agree (i think) that there should be more consistent damage during encounters, I am the person who firmly believes that healing kits should be the only change to healing kits (aside from using DPS actions should interact your healing actions in some way).

Its just so bizarre to watch someone, advocate FOR having both, and people yell at him that we do not need a rework of healing kit or that the damage profile of encounters doesn't need to change, and people just saying he is wrong because of what healers have right now and what is expected of them right now.

Like, you guys know the first thing that goes into designing an encounter is how it interacts with healers, then Tanks, then DPS right?

I'll summarize two points - (1) "He hasnt said healing should be the ONLY change, but that you COULD let the healing kit be the only change TO healers."- in principle, you could- but there's several pages of posts explaining why that's not the PREFERRED way of making changes. Further to this point, he's also advocated for waiting several years for getting ALL of the changes (i.e. not only healing changes) , and several of us have also explained why this wouldn't be a good idea.

(2) I do not *know* that encounter design at Square starts with examining the interaction with healers, then tanks , followed by DPS. I'm sure that they have process , personally I have no idea of their process, considering that some people would say that healer design doesn't have that good of a fit with encounter design, would you happen to have a source for that?

[Saraide]

I would love to see that...and I would especially love to see the reaction from all the "a healer's job is to heal, not deal damage" people, because they're usually the first to fail any kind of actual heal check.

They just hope that SE will never go through with it and they're probably on the point with that hope because SE doesnt want to gate them out of the job.

[Shurrikhan]

Ren has been saying nonstop that both DPS and Healing kits need to be reworked with both of those interacting with each other all the while that each healer be unique from each other so each plays differently. and that several aspects of the game need to be reworked anyways to fix the dull, mind numbing aspect of Healing as a role such as how damage is sent out and mitigated by several classes, massive healing potential and mit from most tanks, and how mechanics are handled by design. He hasnt said healing should be the ONLY change, but that you COULD let the healing kit be the only change TO healers.

While we both agree (i think) that there should be more consistent damage during encounters, I am the person who firmly believes that healing kits should be the only change to healing kits (aside from using DPS actions should interact your healing actions in some way).

Its just so bizarre to watch someone, advocate FOR having both, and people yell at him that we do not need a rework of healing kit or that the damage profile of encounters doesn't need to change, and people just saying he is wrong because of what healers have right now and what is expected of them right now.

Like, you guys know the first thing that goes into designing an encounter is how it interacts with healers, then Tanks, then DPS right?

The problem here is you're looking at additional baggage. Those who've been talking to Ren for multiple years now have already gone through the song and dance of suggesting concrete changes at adjust both in synergy after Ren finally permits at least the principle only to return to yet to "4 Healer Model" insistences that actually only one job should have DPS be anything worthy of engagement (and that only one healer should have meaningful buffs, only one healer should have... so one and so forth). Most agree with his desire for diversity. The repeated differences are in how -- whether that should be through restriction (making X mechanic or consideration beyond the barest bones of interaction exclusive to a particular job in order to make that job diverse) or in practical combination (how jobs may each differently make use of a deep kit), i.e., a difference in the total complexity available to players.

That in turn cycles into a disagreement on how things should be balanced (i.e., whether the game should be balanced only around the best of players, to whom differences in job difficulty would be largely irrelevant and so a job that puts out equal value despite lower risk, effort, or knowledge required wouldn't have a meaningful advantage and so jobs kept purposely to shin-high skill ceilings could have the same maximum value as jobs with far higher skill ceilings, or instead balanced around, say, a skilled but imperfect player for whom a tiny bit of extra oomph may be necessary for the hardest jobs to balance out the near-guaranteed loss in practice so that they aren't so badly outperformed in what content balance may actually matter by the jobs whose skill ceilings have been squished / kept low for Ren's "something for everyone").

That last bit is more important, still, though: To many, we don't need a job to be capped at a given skill ceilings for a given simpler play style to be viable and engaging for the kind of content a player who despises complexity in their own kit is likely to enjoy. Ah Hoc SAM exists even now. Standard Rotation Monk exists even now. Hell, Monk can take Demolish and True Strike off their bars and miss all their positional and they'd still be viable for most content in this game. As such, there seems little point in having a something for everyone by capping a job at ABC out of ABCDEFGH... when one could just use only part of the total kit anyways. Assuaging people's feelings by helping them pretend they're doing all they can, when they're already doing all they need for the content they do anyways, is not worth enforcing low ceilings.

Let the posts make their backs and forths for a few dozen more posts, and that's where we're almost certain to end up again: with the same broad goals but very different interpretations on how many opportunities should be precluded just to spare certain player's contradictory feelings ("I don't want to play something that requires much of me, but I want to max out all that is possible on the job I chose, and although I want to play whatever I want for fun I also want the throughput of those doing more than me") and on what constitutes job diversity (on paper, via differences in categorical capacity, on in practice, via differences in how they may put to use an unrestricted range of capacities befitting their themes).

Both 'sides' want both things changed, even if one (e.g., those who've also done more whack-a-mole style healing elsewhere) may be more wary of simply increasing healing requirements to get there. Neither 'side' seems fond of the glut of CDs, for how much they leave the kit disjointed and may continue to do so unless/until recontextualized and redesigned through encounter changes and small changes to those skills' bankability, both. The biggest question that have split the 'two' across the last handful of threads is how much cognitive load, in total should healers be allowed to engage with, how accessible the floor should be regardless, and therefore how large a gap for skill expression ought to exist between the two.

Given that Ren has often insisted that there should be strictly easier (lower ceiling, more so than just low floor) jobs for players who may want them, this has led others to assume that whatever "both" be may be okay with would afford less change overall than they may think fitting or necessary.

Sorry for all the doubtless typos, as I'm writing this from my phone, but I hope that may give some insight into why concurrence in goals isnt necessarily showing agreement.


As for design starting with healers... I don't think we've seen much, if any, evidence of that, but it would be smart if it did. I would agree that it's where things should start in kill-fights, as healers are the bottleneck for any fight won through damage (and tanks just more context-sensitive hybrids supplying sustain and slightly more direct means of damage through mob-positioning, etc., than healers).

[Lyth]

Is rotational complexity the real goal here? Healers' rotations have always been vastly simpler than their Caster DPS equivalents. If someone was actually after complexity, I'm sure they would have swapped roles long ago, had they the competence to make the jump. The healer role has tended to be a sort of safe sanctuary where you can be a big fish in a small pond regardless of skill, because most of the people you're being compared to aren't all that focused on dealing damage to begin with. What I suspect people are really looking for is a bigger performance differential. Cleric Stance used to do this quite nicely, as the simple act of leaving on a stance button and letting your co-healer manage all the healing for you let you show off a seemingly impressive performance compared to your peers.

I think the core problem with supports at the moment is that the checks are all pass/fail, and the actually interesting parts of the gameplay are in doing damage. So if you're a halfway decent player, you're much more valuable on DPS. If you want to change that, you need more opportunities in which a tactically minded player who understands their teammates needs is able to subtly enhance the group's performance outside of raw damage buffs. Expedient was a step in the right direction, but they need to just be more creative with this sort of thing and give healers tools to improve their teammates' uptime.

[AmiableApkallu]

Here's my problem with the more DPS actions/complexity - it affects everyone, whether or not people insist it will, including the people that don't/won't like it. And if it ISN'T ultimately satisfying for the people that want more, then they'll just continue to ask for more. Moreover, it doesn't fix the underlying issues of the role and encounter design/kit mismatch, nor the issues of healer players that are currently dissatisfied but DON'T want more DPS as their solution.

Fair?

No.

To the first bit I've put in bold: Be charitable and assume that when someone asks for more DPS actions/complexity — and when they make this ask with details including specific actions and procs and gauges and potencies – unless they themselves state otherwise, maybe that person would actually be satisfied with what they just asked for.

"If it isn't ultimately satisfying" is just as useless a retort to "people that want more required healing." The actual responses take a different tack and are more nuanced – mine being that there is room for more required healing (for example: continuing autos through cast bars; random, untelegraphed cleaves and mini tank busters), but you also need to leave time for recovering from mistakes.

To the second bit I've put in bold: I believe your "usual" conversational foils agree on that point, so I'm not entirely certain why you keep bringing it up as if it's a point of contention. (It's also true of "more required healing.")

[ForsakenRoe]

Another day, another post of Ren explaining that what we experienced in ARR was not actually how things were. Really is groundhog day here

It's frustrating that I can't articulate what I want out of a healer other than "feel good gameplay" based just off ideas I think are neat and would like to see, but I KNOW I'd like a healer (or even just a support dps caster) that focused less on stringent adherence to a rotation or 30s/60s/90s/120s, and more on something at least a bit more dynamic. That being, incoming and outgoing damage. Similar to how Sage's PvP versions of Kardia and Eukrasian Dosis III function, but fleshed out into an entire job and given more depth.

Maybe I'm naïve, maybe a concept like that wouldn't function well in 100% of content 100% of the time, but I bet it'd at least be pretty damn fun.

Pssst, got a black-market SGE design you might find interesting, probably fits what you're looking for re: dynamism

1: Dosis, Pneuma, Diagnosis, Prognosis, Dyskrasia and Phlegma, and any Eukrasian variants thereof (in other words, everything that currently has MP costs) now costs ZERO MP.

2: Soteria, Krasis, Zoe now have a 5 second cooldown, and an MP cost (maybe 1000 idk). Eukrasia now has an MP cost, albeit slightly lower (maybe 700, comparatively speaking)

3: E.Diagnosis, E.Prognosis and E.Dosis now have their base form's potency, with the additional effect being just that, additional, potencies adjusted to compensate. This means E.Diagnosis is 450p, with a shield equal to 120% of HP restored. E.Prognosis is 300p, shield equal to 100% of HP restored (yes it went down by 20p, it's not a big deal). E.Dosis now does 330p up-front damage, with a DOT effect of 35 for 30sec (same total, but half of it is now frontloaded). Currently, if you accidentally Eukrasia before a cast but don't need the Eukrasia, you have to either click it off (clunky) or suck up the loss of effectiveness. With this, all you lose is the MP cost. Which still sucks, just not as much.

4: Toxicon now has a 5sec cooldown, and an MP cost. Toxicon 2 is removed. Addersting is reworked as a resource into a 0-100 gauge. Addersgall is reworked into a 0-100 gauge. Addersgall is generated both passively at a rate of 1 per second, and actively via the class's skills. All previous costs of 'one Addersgall' now cost 25 Addersgall. Yes this means you can pool 4 Druocholes instead of 3.

5: A new button, Pankardia (MP cost 1000), is added as a level 68 skill. It's effect would be 'Applies 4 stacks of PanKardion to all nearby allies. When Kardion heals, every ally with PanKardion receives a heal of the same potency, consuming one stack per Kardion heal triggered.'

6: Soteria has it's effect changed to 'Applies 4 stacks of Soteria to self. Each Kardion heal is increased by 50% of the damage dealt by the attack that triggered the heal, consuming one stack. Area-Effect skills only count the primary target.'

7: Zoe has it's effect changed to 'Applies 4 stacks of Zoe to self. Causes Kardion and Pankardion to additionally apply a barrier, equal to 25% of the amount healed by the original effect, consuming one stack. Multiple applications of this barrier may overlap, strengthening the barrier's effectiveness. Does not stack with Eukrasian Prognosis.'

8: Krasis has it's effect changed to 'Applies 4 stacks of Krasis to self. Allows any non-instant spell to be cast with zero cast time, consuming one stack.'

9: Toxicon has it's effect changed to 'Drains the Addersting Gauge to 0, and applies 4 stacks of Toxicon to self. Offensive spells have increased potency, scaling based on how much Addersting was consumed. Consumes one stack per offensive spell used.' (at the moment, I'm thinking a 1:1 rate, so 100 gauge is 100p boost for 4 hits, but this can be spent earlier if needed, to reset the gauge to 0 and re-jig when you hit 100 to line up with raidbuffs better, for optimization gamers to play with)

10: Triggering a Kardion heal in any way generates 1 Addersting. Spending Soteria, Zoe and Krasis stacks have the additional effect of 'Increases Addersting gauge by 4.' (All 4 stacks total up to 16 gauge, 20 in total due to the Kardion triggering) Eukrasia grants 8 gauge on use. Spending Toxicon charges causes the Addersgall gauge to increase by 4 each. Addersgall spenders still retain their MP restoration effects, but the MP restoration potency might be rebalanced.

11: Phlegma has a 'Eukrasian' variant, which is a target-based circle AOE (like Phlegma currently is), does 50% of your current Phlegma's damage to the target and all enemies near it (and consumes a charge of Phlegma), but additionally applies Eukrasian Dosis to all targets hit for 15 seconds (this would mean a total potency of 475 per target in an AOE, over 15 sec), and uses Phlegma's current animation. Main Phlegma now uses Toxicon 1's animation, because it's our hardest hit and that animation is in the trailer for the game so it deserves to be front and center.

12: Rhizomata has it's effect changed to 'Adds 25 Addersgall. Causes the next MP cost to be reduced to 0. Duration: 10sec.'

13: Eukrasian Diagnosis' shield break effect changed from 'Grants one Addersting' to 'Grants Phlegmatic, allowing the cast of Phlegma without spending a charge'. This would not be a 100% refund (600 vs 660 of 2x Dosis), but it's better than what we have now. Also, going into a burst window with a E.Diagnosis, then spending your Phlegmatic charge, followed by the natural 2 Phlegma charges is probably a DPS gain for those optimization types, and would be a bit like DRK banking it's Dark Arts charge for raidbuffs

14: Pepsis now costs 500mp, has a very low CD (maybe 5sec), and generates 8 Addersting on use (even if it doesn't do anything you get the gauge). When Eukrasian Diagnosis or Eukrasian Prognosis break, they leave a buff on that player called Second Opinion for about 5 seconds. When Pepsis is used, it consumes Second Opinion to heal that player for the amount of HP the barrier protected for. Essentially, if you ever played a Character Action game like Viewtiful Joe, Wonderful 101, whatever, and used the Ukemi (jump button right as you land, instantly heal back the damage you took), it's that with a bit more leniency. And it gives Pepsis a much more interesting use case.

With something like this, I don't think having a damage kit of just 'Dosis, E.Dosis, Phlegma' is necessarily that bad. Like AST, the 'fun gameplay' doesn't necessarily come from the actual attacking, but how your kit interacts with your attacking, and in this case, with your healing too. Augments would resolve in a set order-of-operations, being Krasis, Toxicon, Soteria, Pankardia, Zoe. In other words, the game would check, in order, if you can instantcast via Krasis (Swiftcast would still be prioritized), then do the damage/heal calculation stuff. As an example, lets take a Dosis cast, at 330 potency, and the Kardia heal of 170 that it triggers, and follow it. We Toxicon that damage (my Dosis currently hits for about 10k before crit/DHit) and increase the potency of that hit, so this Dosis we're looking at is now 430p (becasue we spent 100 gauge to boost it). Next, we take 50% of the damage it deals (it's now dealing 13000ish, so 6500) and add that to the Kardia heal (for me, that's about 4500). So now our total heal is 11000. Next, we spread it to everyone at a 1:1 ratio via Pankardia. Lastly, we apply a shield of 2750 on top of the heal, to everyone.

Chances are you'd get 2-3 GCDs in while a boss casts the castbar for it's big raidwide, so that'd be a roughly 8250 shield due to it stacking on itself. And remember, it can't be applied alongside E.Prognosis, so if a boss has some way to chip away at shields before a raidwide (eg, the bleed from Aionagonia that ticks right up until Dominion is cast in P8S, or the whole of Firestorms of Asphodelos in general back in P3S with it's fire rain), that's gonna mess with your 'setup window'. Also, my Prognosis heals me for about 7.3k before crit, so the above rework would mean that, to equal E.Prognosis, this shield would have to have 2.5 untouched applications stacked up. No bleeds or raidwides or anything messing with it.

'Wait a second, 10k regen per hit, and building up to a 'potentially 11k shield on the whole party? That doesn't sound right, that sounds OP! Pure healers would be dead on arrival, etc' Well, yes and no. See, while it's 'theoretically possible', the factors that go into it would be ridiculous and never actually play out in practice. To put up that healing would require using all four augments at once, and with their 4 stack limit, you'd either have to quadweave them to get them all lined up (which noone would want to do) or have their durations staggered. You could Krasis and doubleweave effects together, getting you 3 stacks of 'everything is lined up', but then you have the other issue of pulling this off: MP costs. Applying 4 of these augments, plus the Krasis for swiftcasting to get them lined up better, would run you 4000 MP. Almost half your entire bar! Yes it's theoretically possible to do it, but you'd probably not need this amount of healing, and would rather juggle your Addersgall tools to reduce the amount of different augments you're applying, because you'd rather use the MP in a more rationed out way, to keep your other tools being used effectively and not letting them overcap, etc. I'm fairly sure some other stuff would need to be changed about too, such as removing the regen trait from Kerachole (or changing it to a barrier, cos, y'know, we're a barrier healer) to incentivize actually using these augments.

By having Toxicon and the new Addersting gauge be a damage increasing effect granted by Augment Stack consumption, Addersgall being refreshed faster by Toxicon consumption, and MP being restored by Addersgall consumption, we create a cycle of 'Spend A to get more B, spend B to get more C, spend C to get more A'. Ideally I'd want a 4th resource in the cycle to really lean into the identity of 'everything is 4' I seem to have made, but that might just be bloat for the sake of it. Either way, this I think would create a very different playstyle to the current healers, being as we're spending MP not on our healing, but on how we augment that healing. This has additional side effects too, for the more casual side of the playerbase. First and foremost is the fact that, if the base healing kit is MP-Free, we can spam it as much as we want. There's no need for anyone to say 'oh but what about the new healers this will be overwhelming' because if there's a panic situation, we can spam Prognosis and it is completely free. Eukrasian Prognosis, that still costs though.

Secondly, and this is purely by accident I swear, but this actually makes Piety be more than just 'OK I have enough now it's a dead stat'! See, if you generate more MP than you need, you can't really do anything with it in the current game, it's just...there. With this however, in the same way that we dump spare Addersgalls on Druochole just for the MP restore, we can dump spare mana on Krasis or Soteria or whatever. Why? Because spending those stacks gets us Addersting gauge, which gets us to Toxicon, and Toxicon gets us more damage! By getting more Toxicon uses in the fight, it would help to offset the 'less damage' that comes from having more Piety on your gear. Of course, careful balancing would need to be done to make sure 'stack Piety on purpose for more uptime on Toxicon' is not the prevalent strategy. Or maybe it wouldn't? Maybe 'Crit isnt the best stat by a country mile' would actually be a great breath of fresh air for the game?

Overall though, I think this would allow for a completely different mindset on how we heal, vs how we do damage. Everything feeds into each other in a cycle, incentivizing intelligent rotation of resources to overcap as little as possible, and clever use of which augment skill and when would allow for a real 'damage done = more healing done' aesthetic via Pankardia and Soteria. I didn't even need to remove any buttons from the class (not even Pepsis!), instead only needing to add one, Pankardia. If we do need to remove a button to make room though, I'd nominate Pepsis though. Nothing suggested is the 'be all end all', but I think it's fairly telling that people all have ideas for the class, and seem to have gone in completely different directions on it. It really shows, to me at least, how much room there is for growth for the class, beyond it's current form as 'SCH without fairy jank'.

Outside the very old classic Ragnarok Online, I don't think I remember playing any other MMO with "heal ~80% of the time" and I was quite one of the trashiest healer due to lack of experience & likely having biased view myself from that alone.

I remember having to be solo healer in OSRS's Barbarian Assault. There, 'healing' was 'on the GCD' (that is, it was one action per 0.6s. Healing yourself, healing ally, attacking has a various speed based on weapon that is a multiple of 0.6, etc). I could heal 5 HP per 'heal action', could do one heal per 0.6s, had only four charges of the heal before I had to go to a pool to refill my heal bottle, and the boss hit everyone in the team (5 players) for anything between a 0 and a 12, every 3.6ish seconds. And despite all of that, I STILL had extra responsibilities to do. Poisoning the enemy 'healer' mobs with poisoned food, helping prepare the superweapon for the last boss, firing the cannons to stunlock certain enemies/help kill them with damage/poison shots

In that last phase, I probably did reach 80% healing uptime. It was 'fun', sure, as a one off thing. Doing that constantly is going to shorten people's lifespans irl from the stress

When what feels like the conversational equivalent to shoving your head into a food processor is more entertaining than actually playing as a healer, you know there's a problem.

Clearly the strat is to 'weave' writing a couple of words for a reply to Ren's latest 'actually you are wrong and I am right because I said so' at a time, between each Glare cast. It's a 2.5s GCD after all

Its just so bizarre to watch someone, advocate FOR having both, and people yell at him that we do not need a rework of healing kit or that the damage profile of encounters doesn't need to change, and people just saying he is wrong because of what healers have right now and what is expected of them right now.

The issue most of us have with his stance is that one healer must remain 'as is' on damage buttons, for the sake of 'people who like the current gameplay'. Effectively, he asks for healing and damage kit reworks for 3 healers, and healing kit rework only for one of them, usually WHM. When anyone says 'well what if we don't leave one healer in the dust to suffer the fate of SB WHM (exclusion from PF, etc)' that is when it gets heated.

You've seen what I'd do to WHM, he has said 'no, don't want that' with several reasons, ranging from 'what if it means people do less damage and hit enrage', 'what if people want to heal and cant access the new gauge cos it's damage only (I addressed that one cos I did actually agree that the change made sense)', 'this adds too many new buttons, why don't we <change that sacrifices a piece of current gameplay, replacing it with piece of pitched gameplay instead of adding to it>' or 'I and others like me don't like DOTs, so why are you making us press Dia more times per minute'. And each time a 'reason it wouldn't work' is disproven with maths, or previous examples of such a thing from older versions of the game, or just sheer common sense, another bizarre reason pops up. It's like fighting a hydra. I quite literally suggested a way for WHM to get both a damage and healing kit adjustment, so if he is advocating for 'both sides to get adjusted', then there'd be no arguments to the level we get to on the regular, right? But no, it's the damage half he takes issue with, every time, because it's 'making WHM have more buttons for damage'. I did as much as I could to that design to make it 'casual friendly', to reduce punishment for misplays without making it auto-play itself, and it's still not enough. Because it never will be. We apparently MUST preserve current WHM gameplay at all costs, and it just goes completely against everything I ever learned about this stuff (game design principles). Can you imagine SE announcing 'hey SCH AST SGE, you get all cool new attacks and stuff. And WHM, you get to stay the same damagewise, but now you can press Asylum a second time to activate Salt and Light to instantly heal for 400p!' WHMs would be pissed. Nobody wants their class to be the 'one that got left out'.

I do take a little bit of umbrage with his characterization of my idea as just 'a second CD but this one is a GCD (true) and a 3step combo once every 40ish seconds'. I'd say there's a lot more to it than just that, but of course, arguing against the addition of things like Divine Seal > Temperance, Tragedy > Misery, Rapture at 70, the shield Lily spenders or Protect > Plenary would make him look more ridiculous than he usually does. Doubly so for the last of those, given that it's one of his suggestions that I thought 'wow, this is a Ren post that actually makes sense for once, I'll add it to the pitch'. If I had pitched just the healing stuff, and had the gauge only build from GCD heals, he'd probably be all for it. It feels like the main point of contention, every time, is Dia being made 12s duration, and it sucks cos there's loads of stuff there that he'd probably really enjoy, but he just keeps getting hung up on the bloody DOT duration

[Shurrikhan]

Is rotational complexity the real goal here? Healers' rotations have always been vastly simpler than their Caster DPS equivalents.

I'm not sure we quite have a concensus on "rotation" as applicable to healers specifically, but we at least have a many-times-liked post here, from 8 pages back:

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.

===

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.

For my part, I want more decision-making (i.e., rewards for awareness and foresight and, short of perfect foreknowledge, precise gambles) more so than just a many-step loop or the like (which seems to lose novelty far faster, imo), but I'm fine with a large portion of the decision-making regarding damage-dealing coming from working around the CDs or soft-CDs of healing spells and vice versa.

Such may not make striking dummy combat exciting yet, but... if it manages even 80% of what WAR/PLD striking dummy manages, I'm not about to complain. More would be better, but that much is fine to me.

[ForsakenRoe]

No.

To the first bit I've put in bold: Be charitable and assume that when someone asks for more DPS actions/complexity — and when they make this ask with details including specific actions and procs and gauges and potencies – unless they themselves state otherwise, maybe that person would actually be satisfied with what they just asked for.

"If it isn't ultimately satisfying" is just as useless a retort to "people that want more required healing." The actual responses take a different tack and are more nuanced – mine being that there is room for more required healing (for example: continuing autos through cast bars; random, untelegraphed cleaves and mini tank busters), but you also need to leave time for recovering from mistakes.

To the second bit I've put in bold: I believe your "usual" conversational foils agree on that point, so I'm not entirely certain why you keep bringing it up as if it's a point of contention. (It's also true of "more required healing.")

Ah yes, the reason I pitched 'just Dia at 12s and a new button at 15s' is because I wouldn't be satisfied with just that, it's actually the first step in my master plan to get SE onto the slippery slope of turning us into NIN opener. Never mind the fact that I am on record saying 'if we have only one chance to get SE to try changing things up, I'd want that one chance to be a solid try of it, not a halfarsed attempt'. Does anyone (except Ren) really think I'd say that, and then suggest something that I considered 'half arsed'? And additionally, I'm on record saying that 'by adding Shielding Lily spenders to WHM (and a more accessible way for AST to get shields than Neutral, eg bringing back Sect swapping or something), we can add healing complexity in ways that are not just 'heal more/faster/harder', such as 'Shield Checks', ala Vulcan Burst, Photon from A11S, etc, where you want a shield to either fully neutralize a mechanic, or mitigate an aspect of it, eg blocking a nasty debuff from applying to you?

I'm not sure we quite have a concensus on "rotation" as applicable to healers specifically, but we at least have a many-times-liked post here, from 8 pages back:

Maybe I should draw out my proposed rotation (and the current one) on xivrotation, so we have a visual reference of the difference in Glare-Per-Minute (as if the pie charts weren't good enough at making that point)

[ty_taurus]

Not a caricature or ad hominem: What do you think I want? Can you honestly say what it is that I want to see? No "I guess" or silly quips, no straw manning. What is it you think I want to see done to healers? AND to encounter design/overall game design regarding healing - since that's a big part of what I personally think needs to happen?

I can only speak for myself. That being said... What you've described of what I want and what I think about other players above, is absolutely, 100% a caricature of my perspective. Things like "no amount of damage could satisfy me," that I have a distain for players who want to heal, or that I cannot believe that there are people who enjoy healing (It's almost like I've suggested there be a healer specifically designed for players who do not like DPSing on healers countless times at this point.)

The reason it becomes infuriating is that I have explained my perspective multiple times over the years, and still I am grouped into a caricature of the big bad DPS wanabee healers that you are effectively describing. That is why things break down, because after the cordial discussions and calm back and forths, it always ends up coming back to this cartoon villain description sooner or later. And surprise pikachu face, people stomp their foot down.

What you are correct about is that I don't want to be a healbot. That's the entire reason why I fell in love with FFXIV healing in ARR, because I wasn't just a healing turret. That balance of going back and forth between healing and attacking is what FFXIV did right in the beginning. If FFXIV's healers were healing turrets from the start, which they never were, I wouldn't be here today. I wouldn't have kept up with the game probably past 2.0 even. I wouldn't have returned to future patches. I would've just finished the story, played a little of the post game, and I wouldn't have been incentivized to come back, but loving the feeling of playing Scholar brought me back and is ultimately why I'm here now.

As for what I believe you want... You want White Mage as it is now. You'd tolerate a tiny bit of wiggle room overall, like returning Aero III, or giving Holy a single target conditional effect, but there's very little flexibility in what you find acceptable for White Mage. You've talked before about getting nothing from using DPS abilities enjoyment wise, but are also against a healer that buffs instead of attacks, at least for your own personal take. You want to heal more, but also have described content like Barb EX as overtuned on damage, so truthfully I can't make sense of what actual levels of incoming damage you'd like to see because I have no idea what would encourage more healing but also not be overtuned. You would like to see healing emphasis taken away from OGCD healing and redirected to GCD healing, which is something commonly agreed upon in this space, but you also want every GCD heal to be DPS neutral, or at least, conditionally with lilies on White Mage, so DPS neutral with a 20 second cooldown effectively. DPS performance does seemingly matter significantly to you. It's not enough that in anyone's suggestion, simply Glare spamming gets you very close to maximal performance. Or when I suggested including an auto-battle system, your response was something to the effect of "If using Auto-battle is just as optimal or more optimal than playing manually, then sure." You've argued with people over a 1%-3% difference in total potential DPS output.

So from all that, you basically want current White Mage with minimal changes over the rest of FFXIV's lifespan, that's as competitive or the most competitive healer in terms of DPS performance, but you also want that DPS performance to be able to come from healing spells that are more GCD focused and considerably weaker in an environment that has far more frequent outgoing, constant damage, so that you can have optimal DPS through healing, but also that outgoing damage shouldn't be stronger than Barb EX in Extreme and below, somehow.