Brainstorming DPS rotation changes for healers

[KisaiTenshi]

If you've engaged in any FFXIV discourse recently, you'd know that healers are kind of in an odd spot. Most content is not challenging enough to warrant the use of the majority of their kit, but their DPS rotations are not robust enough to give them something to do during the downtime. The result is a role that feels anemic and boring to many.

In lieu of the difficulty of this game being cranked up to give healers something to do after mastering the content they're healing for, having more robust DPS rotations seems like a good addition so as not to alienate new players.

Please stop trying to turn healers in to a DPS. They do very little damage already, and just giving them more buttons to press just results in less DPS overall.

The corner stone problem, is that they (the developers) do not want healers to be spending time on DPS, and they have essentially capped healer DPS to not ever matter in any piece of content. You are there to heal, not to climb the DPS wall.

This problem is always two-fold
- Encounter design being based around sustained damage
- Giving Tanks and DPS self-healing options.

You solve the first problem by having add phases, movement phases, and (cleanable, but last long enough you can't heal through, like 2m) debuff phases. Basically you get more "DPS" out of the party by learning the mechanic than you get out of the healer contributing 0.5% DPS. If any DPS dies, then you've already lost any benefit to the healer doing DPS. So the healer should be healing. Always.

You solve the second problem by making self-healing ineffective unless the heal comes from the healer. If you self-heal, you maybe get a 100 potency, but if you are healed by a healer you get 800 potency. If you cast your self-heal subsequently to the healer heal, it becomes 1200 potency. That is how it's supposed to work. That's why the tank traditionally had buffs to amplify healing. If the tank fails to use their healing amplification buffs, then they become 50% harder to heal, like it's supposed to. That's why "Stance dancing" is such a poor gameplay practice, because healers or tanks trying to contribute their few DPS fractions, fail to cast the their buffs that make their job easier.

What Yoshi-P should have done, was disable the DPS actions of the healer, when there is a party, and disable self-healing of Tank and DPS players while in a party. The fact that the game has to tell you to do your job, makes the job feel constricting, but here we are again, with people who only care about endgame raiding damage trying to make everyone DPS in all content when that is NOT their job.

[Teno]

Please stop trying to turn healers in to a DPS. They do very little damage already, and just giving them more buttons to press just results in less DPS overall.

The corner stone problem, is that they (the developers) do not want healers to be spending time on DPS, and they have essentially capped healer DPS to not ever matter in any piece of content. You are there to heal, not to climb the DPS wall.

This problem is always two-fold
- Encounter design being based around sustained damage
- Giving Tanks and DPS self-healing options.

You solve the first problem by having add phases, movement phases, and (cleanable, but last long enough you can't heal through, like 2m) debuff phases. Basically you get more "DPS" out of the party by learning the mechanic than you get out of the healer contributing 0.5% DPS. If any DPS dies, then you've already lost any benefit to the healer doing DPS. So the healer should be healing. Always.

You solve the second problem by making self-healing ineffective unless the heal comes from the healer. If you self-heal, you maybe get a 100 potency, but if you are healed by a healer you get 800 potency. If you cast your self-heal subsequently to the healer heal, it becomes 1200 potency. That is how it's supposed to work. That's why the tank traditionally had buffs to amplify healing. If the tank fails to use their healing amplification buffs, then they become 50% harder to heal, like it's supposed to. That's why "Stance dancing" is such a poor gameplay practice, because healers or tanks trying to contribute their few DPS fractions, fail to cast the their buffs that make their job easier.

What Yoshi-P should have done, was disable the DPS actions of the healer, when there is a party, and disable self-healing of Tank and DPS players while in a party. The fact that the game has to tell you to do your job, makes the job feel constricting, but here we are again, with people who only care about endgame raiding damage trying to make everyone DPS in all content when that is NOT their job.

Damn, for once it's a good thing devs don't read international forums, because this is a terrible take if I've ever seen one. You're an ovni in this, and what you want is another game, one that released 20 years ago, well buried in the past.

This will never work, nor is this something people want, and AGAIN, it'd ONLY work in savage+. GG, you've deleted healers from the rest of the game.

[lolnotacat]

Who complained about healers wanting an engaging gameplay again ?

I don't find playing whack a mole to complete a rotation to be engaging.

[Teno]

I don't find playing whack a mole to complete a rotation to be engaging.

Me neither, this should be deleted from the game. Take a look at pvp sage, good thing it's well designed right. I'll reiterate since it has been mentioned so many times . You shield, shield breaks and grants you toxikon ogcd. Heal and dps interact, gameplay is nervous and it's an alternative to the 111 spam in a simple yet more engaging way.

Toxikon should have always been an ogcd.

[NegativeS]

just giving them more buttons to press just results in less DPS overall.

Forgive me, but I have no idea where you're coming from with this.

The issue is not healers doing DPS, but giving them something to do between damage spikes that isn't either spamming 1 or pumping overheal.

The corner stone problem, is that they (the developers) do not want healers to be spending time on DPS, and they have essentially capped healer DPS to not ever matter in any piece of content. You are there to heal, not to climb the DPS wall.

And I would love to heal, if content wasn't so undertuned and easy to commit to muscle memory that most content can be healed by setting and forgetting an AOE HoT.
Congrats! You've fulfilled your obligations to the party! Welcome back to your 1 button DPS rotation.

Sure, they could tune the numbers up, but then people would be complaining about healing being too hard. Again.

You solve the first problem by having add phases, movement phases, and (cleanable, but last long enough you can't heal through, like 2m) debuff phases. Basically you get more "DPS" out of the party by learning the mechanic than you get out of the healer contributing 0.5% DPS. If any DPS dies, then you've already lost any benefit to the healer doing DPS. So the healer should be healing. Always.

You solve the second problem by making self-healing ineffective unless the heal comes from the healer. If you self-heal, you maybe get a 100 potency, but if you are healed by a healer you get 800 potency. If you cast your self-heal subsequently to the healer heal, it becomes 1200 potency. That is how it's supposed to work. That's why the tank traditionally had buffs to amplify healing. If the tank fails to use their healing amplification buffs, then they become 50% harder to heal, like it's supposed to.

Again, more reason to heal is fine. The issue is that there is no reason to heal most of the time. Everyone is topped off except for the tank taking chip autoattack damage that is either instantly healed by a HoT/Eos or is absorbed by a barrier.

If SE wants to make healing more dynamic, that's perfect! But it also takes effort. And it takes less effort to give us a couple spells.

And SE has already said their stance on making healing more difficult is "Go play Ultimate." Which I will not, because I value my sanity. Which leaves the 1 button spam in pretty much every other piece of content in the game.

What Yoshi-P should have done, was disable the DPS actions of the healer, when there is a party, and disable self-healing of Tank and DPS players while in a party. The fact that the game has to tell you to do your job, makes the job feel constricting, but here we are again, with people who only care about endgame raiding damage trying to make everyone DPS in all content when that is NOT their job.

Sorry for saying this, but this is hands down the worst take I have ever seen on this forum.

[lolnotacat]

Take a look at pvp sage.

No thanks, I don't wanna play Overwatch with bad netcode.

[Teno]

No thanks, I don't wanna play Overwatch with bad netcode.

I'm sure you can well understand from reading the tooltips right.

Also don't expect people to take you seriously with that.

[Chiru_Kai]

The thing about healing, even in harder content, is that once things go well, there is nothing to heal. It's all planned out and you're just cruising through.

You get so much healing power in order to correct mistakes. That's all it really is.
But if nobody makes mistakes, you don't have to use your massive healing output. And that feels "boring".


BUT, that is a catch 22: you CAN force healers to heal more just by default. But it also means that it reduces the room for error significantly and it will hurt a lot (and I mean A LOT) of groups in prog. Maybe you need a bit of a red pill but most groups, especially PF, and plenty of casual/midcore statics, do not have absolute mastery over their jobs and full understanding of all mechanics.

This means that if there is more damage than anticipated, you simply do not have the healing resources to deal with it, as it's already taken up by predictable mechanics, and any mistake means death, and probably a party wipe in less than 2 mechanics after.
This is stuff I would expect in ultimates, and I'd love it if they can make sure all ultimates get 0 room for error and a 100% demand for healing output even if there are no mistakes, because that's kinda what made healers mad.
But I don't think you need this kind of 'strictness' in extreme or savage content. As someone who has done ultimates: you think you want it, but you don't *really* want that.


The proposal to add more damage buttons is... cute but you have to realize that this will contribute to healer hotbar bloat. Will actually be a significant issue. This will also mean increasing the base HP of bosses with the assumption that good healers can keep up a damage rotation.


How I would solve it?
Counter-intuitively, by adding in extra damage if people play well. It's an "if nobody took extra damage last mechanic, then next raidwide does 10-20% extra damage" kind of mentality. Sounds mean, but it is kinda what is necessary to always have healers in demand.

I would also add in a LOT more healer-centric mechanics like:
- Doom / Doom DOT: if not full health by the end of debuff, player dies, or gets a heavy DOT that needs babysitting from healers.
- 1HP raidwides: reduces the HP of ALL party members to 1, regardless of mits on them. (think Kefka)
- Healing reduction debuff: sometimes, just add in a little heal reduction debuff on players, means healers have to expend more resources, or *gasp* use GCD heals, to get through the following mechanic.
- More "akh morn" type of stack damage. Even if 'normal stacks' just hit 1-2 extra times Where healers just HAVE to mitigate and heal.

[hydralus]

Maybe give some of the healers a DPS rotation, but keep it simple for others. I really don't want to tack on a rotation to worry about on top of keeping an eye on people's HP while watching out for mechanics. I'm sure it's boring for people in competent groups but half the time I queue for something I'm busy using my whole kit to keep the DPS alive after they eat avoidable damage.

That said I'm sure there's no danger of them making healing any more complex considering their game design fro the last 8 years.

[NegativeS]

The proposal to add more damage buttons is... cute but you have to realize that this will contribute to healer hotbar bloat. Will actually be a significant issue. This will also mean increasing the base HP of bosses with the assumption that good healers can keep up a damage rotation.

Perhaps they could tone down the amount of useless buttons we have, or use their existing combo mechanics. Healing in this game is as easy as setting and forgetting a HoT in the majority of content.

You can not tell me with a straight face that...



...is a vital component of the SGE toolkit.

In fact, hell, since I gave most changes to SCH: Fey Blessing is a worse Indomitability (or ET + Concitation), with a cooldown twice as long, that can't even be used with Seraph. SCH does pretty well when it comes to abilities being useful, but Fey Blessing is next to useless in most situations.

How I would solve it?
Counter-intuitively, by adding in extra damage if people play well. It's an "if nobody took extra damage last mechanic, then next raidwide does 10-20% extra damage" kind of mentality. Sounds mean, but it is kinda what is necessary to always have healers in demand.

While I know where you're coming from, punishing players for playing well is never a good idea, and will inevitably lead to the unfun process of people trying to optimize out the punishment.