Quote Originally Posted by KageTokage View Post
You don't need "qualifications" understand that any manner of deviance from that formula whether by giving healers more DPS buttons and/or making them have to use their GCD heals more often will make their gameplay more varied.
And any additional button we get comes with an associated nerf to the buttons we already have. The developers want a ceiling on both the healing output and the DPS output each job has, so adding another DPS button means the DPS buttons we get lose half their potency. Careful what you wish for. Adding another GCD heal, would come with losing that potency from what we have. Adding another oGCD heal would nerf every oGCD heal. We've seen this multiple times with the Holy cast. Holy's original potency was 240, then 200, then 140. Holy 3 is 150. Aero/Aero2/Dia went from 25 to 30, 50 to 60, 120 to 60 to 65. Yes. Dia is barely more than Aero II was.

In a nutshell the healer should not have more than one "DPS" button. They are supposed to be healing. If you're doing 1-1-1, you aren't doing your job. MOST OF THAT, is the encounter design. If you are playing any healer your "gameplay loop" should look like this:

First 10 seconds of fight:
- DPS (either DoT or AOE)
- Cast Shields if you have them

Every cycle of the fight
- Party heal every time party-wide damage is taken, even if it overheals
- Renew shield or Regen
- Renew party buffs (AST *sigh*)

If someone is undergeared, or lagging:
- Spot heal them, because they will get KO'd in two hits

THEN, only then do you hit the DPS button. The reality is that green DPS players just 1-1-1-1 and then complain the job is boring because they aren't doing the job. It's not the healers fault the gear creep in the game and the tank/dps use their self heals because they expect healers not to do their job.

The days of "DPS enters wearing crafting gear" are long gone, as well as the "person entering with ilevel gear well below the dungeon requirement", so some of the extreme reasons for spot healing are gone.

The problem I often find, is that all the EW raid content has these "clipped AOE" elements, that trying to cast GCD heals gives you not enough time to move out of the AOE anyway unless you are standing right on top of the boss. Only instant cast oGCD's can be cast while moving.

So any suggestion to fold all heals into GCD's or OGCD's falls into the "tell me you don't know how to play healer without saying so". You should be using the GCD heals when you are safe from being AOE's or knockbacks, and oGCD's when you see a boss cast coming so you can heal up the party before the next cast comes.

Core healer design is GCD heal until something (eg tank buster) drops, then you use the oGCD. You can see this in many of the encounter designs. The encounter designs, once it's no longer new content, don't hit hard enough.

All the media tour really proved is that tanks and DPS should not be allowed to use their self heals in party content, and that encounter design needs to "send everyone not at full HP to 1 HP", cast doom, or cleansable petrify/stun/silence more often.

The reason I keep saying I don't want to see more DPS buttons comes down to what SE has done every time they have changed DPS on every role. Your attention should be on healing, NOT DPS. The reason green DPS keep wanting more DPS buttons is because they care about their high scores outside the game, not because it would make the job better.