Do healers actually want a more complex damage rotation?

[Azurarok]

Regarding the "if you want to dps go play a dps" argument, there's no dps job that actually plays like what these jobs could.
The closest one was SCH/SMN but we don't even have that anymore.

Then both WHM and SGE also have attacks tied to healing in ways that wouldn't be on a dps. There's job mechanics for dpsing that would only really make sense for a healer to have and personally I'd love to see them expand on that more.

I don't want to exclusively dps or heal. I want to maim and mend.

[GrimGale]

But I LIKE balancing healing and damaging. I LIKE doing BOTH. I want to support my team with heals and shields and regens, I want to debuff enemies, buff allies. I want to contribute in all aspects to my team and finding balance, chosing what GCD I am going to cast next is what I consider engaging, interesting in a game where gcds are 2.5 seconds long and damage goes and comes at very precise moments.

The biggest criticism here isn't that healers don't have a damage rotation. The biggest criticism is that our choices regarding "what to cast next" is allmost always "press the filler button". Do you want to optimize your heals? "Press the filler button." Do you want to contribute more? "Press the filler button." Nobody is in immediate danger? "Press the filler button."

There is a lot of design space to add a mechanic to healers that breaks the repetition and the monotony of the GCD filler button- This is what we don't like here.

Reminder that we USED to have more varied filler tools. Our filler GCD usage was spread around 2 or 3 skills. I'd argue we don't even need that many. We just need another layer of complexity around our GCD filler, something that makes us not default to "I press Glarebroil next."

That can be solved with some minimal mechanical interaction with passive abilities.

Dia proccing Glare V. Dosis proccing Toxikon III. Giving SCH 1 DoT to manage back. Giving AST some interaction with their cards back.

We do not demand some crazy DPS rotation. We just want something to break the repetition during the filler phases.

[bitofabother]

That can be solved with some minimal mechanical interaction with passive abilities.

Dia proccing Glare V. Dosis proccing Toxikon III. Giving SCH 1 DoT to manage back. Giving AST some interaction with their cards back.

this, honestly. Maybe we're just grasping for straws, but this very very short list would go a very long way.

[Silver-Strider]

I want a number of things, more DPS spells being just the easiest to implement.

[Zaytex]

Although I don't agree with the damage side cause we have 13 other jobs to choose from if we want complex DPS rotations and damage, I do think healing needs to be more difficult and actually be required for most content.

I don't understand this line of thinking at all, people will say this for healers and then in the same breath defend tanks when anybody asks to simplify their damage buttons sarcastically. Encounter design in FF14 is very scripted and fixed, the party is not taking damage at every second of an encounter. Some mechanics if done properly do not even damage the party as well, so inevitably, there is always going to be downtime for healing in this game for any piece of content. Yet, what do healers get to do during that downtime? You mash one button and refresh a DoT every 30 seconds, whipeee. Tanks get to have an entire DPS rotation for themselves when they have downtime in their tanking responsibilities, why are they different from healers?

This doesn't even consider how optimal healer gameplay is to use every GCD for your one damage spell, and to complete all healing requirements with OCD's - so even if the piece of content you're doing is healer intensive or engaging, it will still feel awful because you are repeatedly mashing one button and weaving in OGCD heals in-between. The only time this differs is during high-end prog when the healing requirements are intensive, but also new, so you have to actually think about your cooldowns and how they interact with the damage profiles. But once you've learned it, you go back to square one of boredom.

Lastly, healers are not just healers, just like how tanks are not just tanks. They are both casters and melee DPS, because every job in this game is expected to do damage at all times barring some responsibilities - you would never clear on patch high end content if your healers were not casting DPS, because the system has baked healer DPS into the algorithm when creating enrage/dps checks.

Which brings me to this: If healers have downtime in their healing responsibilities, and if all of their optimal healing is placed on the OGCD, and if they're expected to DPS at all times in order to beat DPS checks with their parties... then why is my DPS rotation just one button? You simply cannot excuse this unacceptable job design, and if you try, I can just circle it back to tanks. Which at that point, you'd have agree in the notion of gutting tanks to being the same one-button DPS rotation with the rest of their toolkit being exclusively for holding aggro or giving mitigations.

So yeah, the whole ''healers are supposed to heal, and not have complex DPS rotations'' is just people not understanding this game very well (no offense).

[Tunda]

I can't stop my self sleeping while playing healers.. that's why I stopped playing healer

[flowerkatie]

So yeah, the whole ''healers are supposed to heal, and not have complex DPS rotations'' is just people not understanding this game very well (no offense).

Just because you disagree with an opinion doesn't mean the opposing party doesn't understand the game. I've enjoyed a lot of casual content as well as week one savages, ultimates and a lot of other content. I've cleared a lot of this content without casting a single GCD heal so I'm completely aware of that fact. And * shock *, I still disagree.

For starters, the role of a tank is completely different to a healer. They inherently have a lot less abilities that are specifically related to tanking because there is only so much you can do in relation to pulling emenity, their role in hard content is primarily focused around a single enemy and their options to "not do DPS" are considerably less, unlike healers who could potentially heal their parties and manage 8 different members, tanks have limited options. The role is still difficult and rewarding but your whole point of "but tanks!!" is irrelevent, the same argument could be given to some of the very basic DPS. Why can't we give them more to do if tanks can tank and damage? The answer ... they're a different role.

It is fine you don't understand my point, it just seems bizarre to me that people will acknowledge that even in the hardest content not a single GCD heal is required anymore and that healing is in a terrible state, they'll acknowledge that all healing can be done via oGCD simply by the fact that it is so easy; and that one healer can ignore healing completely during hard content and still easily clear. But then for some reason, the solution is "make DPS more engaging". I also don't understand your thinking, why is the solution to do something that you have 13 other jobs to go ahead and do? Why not take the unique role of a healer and look into resolving the issue by making the actual role useful and engaging without having to make the "filler" fun?

How fun it'll be when Square Enix implement complex DPS rotations and all healer abilities remain as oGCD only and you've become a DPS who simply weaves in heals, and yes; that's the state its in currently anyway. But your solution of doubling-down on that by working on the damage side of it rather than fixing the healing side is just (in my opinion) very silly. Fix healers and make them more engaging properly. And stop thinking people who have different opinions don't understand the game, lmao.

[HyoMinPark]

I also don't understand your thinking, why is the solution to do something that you have 13 other jobs to go ahead and do? Why not take the unique role of a healer and look into resolving the issue by making the actual role useful and engaging without having to make the "filler" fun?

To respond to this:

I don’t know how long you’ve been playing this game, nor do I know how long you’ve frequented discussion zones like this forum or maybe some of the FFXIV-related subreddits. So I don’t know if you might be aware of these discussions or not—but healers used to ask for this all the time. We begged and pleaded for more incoming damage to heal. For more reasons to actually BE a healer. The developers refused, and simply told us that, if we wanted to heal more, then go do Ultimate. They were not increasing the amount of incoming damage to allow healers to actually perform their role in content, and if we wanted to “be a healer”, go do Ultimate. This was early Endwalker when this was said. Healers on the forums started asking for more interesting DPS options a bit prior to that—but mostly because we had been asking for more ways to actually be a healer and were simply ignored.

[KisaiTenshi]

Of course I did, my criticism is that the argument you're making is that we're being given no reason to heal so we should have engaging damage rotations instead. There are literally 13 jobs built around engaging damaging rotations so if thats what you want, go play them.

If we want to fix healers then we should advocate for exactly that, fix healers. Make healing more engaging, make it more required and give us more difficult encounters to justify it.

The focus MUST be on healing. Not damage rotations. The minute you have a "damage rotation" it's no longer a healer, and someone tasked with healing will neglect the healing job because "but muh DPS!"

Like I would be completely happy with the entire GCD DPS kit disappearing under party play. But I don't want to be stuck with nothing to do. Spamming healing uselessly just leads to the problem we already have where the developers think we're pressing medica/M2/M3 every 2 seconds to keep the party alive, when by the time the gear creep catches up, the party doesn't take enough damage to justify that. There is quite literately "too much healing kit, not enough reason to use it."

Two things remain true in DT, that have been true ever since the introduction of the NPC squad.
- You as the healer can tell the NPC's to run into battle, and then you can sit back and drink your tea while they don't need you at all.
- The NPC's combat scripts are "too perfect", so when you get to a boss fight all you have to do is follow one of the DPS. Forget doing anything at all. The only way you can KO Y'shtola or Alisae in a boss fight is by intentionally running a "meteor" marker on top of them instead of spreading out. Something I will add, Krile keeps doing.

Now, not EVERY fight you can get away with it, but you can pretty much pick any NPC trust enabled fight and just use the DPS kit and likely the tank will survive anyway. That's genuinely concerning because it means the developers made the SAME assumption that everyone is just using the healer role as a green DPS.

[Tunda]

The focus MUST be on healing. Not damage rotations. The minute you have a "damage rotation" it's no longer a healer, and someone tasked with healing will neglect the healing job because "but muh DPS!"

Like I would be completely happy with the entire GCD DPS kit disappearing under party play. But I don't want to be stuck with nothing to do. Spamming healing uselessly just leads to the problem we already have where the developers think we're pressing medica/M2/M3 every 2 seconds to keep the party alive, when by the time the gear creep catches up, the party doesn't take enough damage to justify that. There is quite literately "too much healing kit, not enough reason to use it."

Two things remain true in DT, that have been true ever since the introduction of the NPC squad.
- You as the healer can tell the NPC's to run into battle, and then you can sit back and drink your tea while they don't need you at all.
- The NPC's combat scripts are "too perfect", so when you get to a boss fight all you have to do is follow one of the DPS. Forget doing anything at all. The only way you can KO Y'shtola or Alisae in a boss fight is by intentionally running a "meteor" marker on top of them instead of spreading out. Something I will add, Krile keeps doing.

Now, not EVERY fight you can get away with it, but you can pretty much pick any NPC trust enabled fight and just use the DPS kit and likely the tank will survive anyway. That's genuinely concerning because it means the developers made the SAME assumption that everyone is just using the healer role as a green DPS.

Why not both? Look at Sage the most successful healer at the moment..
It has damage and heal I do not say all healers should be like this but should have different kit that sage