If healers had a 3 Button GCD Combo like Tanks?

[Supersnow845]

My ideal to give healers more attacks is more "you did it, you used your healing tools!" rewards like Afflatus Misery and Toxikon. I don't want a complicated damage rotation; I would far prefer "sometimes when you heal you get to do more damage".

The problem with that design is that it often causes useless overheal for DPS gains

Misery is always a gain if you keep it aligned to the 2 and 1 minute burst window so 3 lilys every minute is always a gain, this doesn’t care if you actually need to spend 3 lilys per minute or not. This is the same problem star runs into, though at least Star has a 10 second window you can optimise its healing around. Assize also has this problem

If a healing tool is a gain on damage then it’s a damage tool with sometimes incidentally useful healing, if it’s a loss (like toxicon) then at best it’s a wonky partial refund, at worst it’s a vestigial noob trap

[Carighan]

Man there was a time healers had more attacks but eh the player base cried about it here we are :clowns:

To be fair I was behind that, but the assumption I erroneously made was that we'd get more damage to heal. As in, doing the actual job I play the actual role for in the first place.

But in particular in Savage fights, FFXIV loves to deal very little damage to the raid. Big raid AoEs happen rather infrequently, and hence can be handled with just our oGCDs and mitigations. This is in contrast to other MMORPGs that throw out a constant barrage of both all-raid and random-target hits into the raid, often with unreliable damage numbers, quickly depleting any timers you might have available and then making the healers use their actual casted heals to heal both individual people and the whole group.

The problem with that design is that it often causes useless overheal for DPS gains

Then let's fix the ACTUAL problem you already mention here, the lack of damage to heal in the first place. That'd fix all the issues we're decrying in this thread. It'd handily solve the "lack of damage buttons" because frankly we'd have better stuff to do.

[wildvenonat]

The problem with that design is that it often causes useless overheal for DPS gains

Misery is always a gain if you keep it aligned to the 2 and 1 minute burst window so 3 lilys every minute is always a gain, this doesn’t care if you actually need to spend 3 lilys per minute or not. This is the same problem star runs into, though at least Star has a 10 second window you can optimise its healing around. Assize also has this problem

If a healing tool is a gain on damage then it’s a damage tool with sometimes incidentally useful healing, if it’s a loss (like toxicon) then at best it’s a wonky partial refund, at worst it’s a vestigial noob trap

Burning 3 lilies per minute is the fun of white mage to me, though. Yes, sometimes it's useless overheal. It feels good to have something to heal, though, and it keeps me engaged and watching my lily generation.

I would far prefer damage tools with sometimes incidentally useful healing to a three button damage combo.

[NobleWinter]

I think oGCD's could be used to make the rotation much more fun for White Mage. Here’s my idea for a more engaging damage system that draws upon the Conjurer Roots. It would use these skills:

Commune Earth
Ability: 1 Sec Recast
Call upon the aid of Earth Elementals. Elementals will accompany you indefinitely until directed to act on your behalf.
First Call: Beckon nearby minor Elementals
Second Call: Beseech a Greater Elemental
[Action changes to Commune Air upon Execution]


Commune Wind
Ability: 1 Sec Recast
Call upon the aid of Wind Elementals. Elementals will accompany you until directed to act on your behalf.
First Call: Beckon nearby minor Elementals
Second Call: Beseech a Greater Elemental
[Action Changes to Commune Earth upon Execution]


Commune Water
Ability: 1 Sec Recast
Call upon the aid of Water Elementals. Elementals will accompany you until directed to act on your behalf.
First Call: Beckon nearby minor Elementals
Second Call: Beseech a Greater Elemental


Force of Nature
Spell
Instant Cast / 2.5 Sec Recast Time
Direct your Summoned Elementals to unleash their power.

• Minor Earth Elementals: deal Earth damage to target.
• Greater Earth Elemental: deal Earth damage to all nearby enemies around your target.
• Minor Wind Elemental: deal damage over time to target.
• Greater Wind Elemental: deal Wind damage over time to all nearby enemies around your target.
• Minor Water Elemental: increase the range of your next Cure, Cure II, or Cure III by 10 yalms and the radius of Medica, Medica II, and Medica III by 5 yalms
• Greater Water Elemental: reduce the cast time of all healing spells by 3 seconds. (Raise is included in healing spells affected.)

Visually I imagine that Minor Elementals will be about half the size of Scholar’s Pixie circling around the WHM in a ring of color. A diagonal brown ring going over the left shoulder for Earth. A diagonal green ring going over the right shoulder for Wind and a horizontal blue ring around the waist for Water. The Greater Elementals would be slightly smaller versions of Sprites at about half the size of a SMN egi that hover haphazardly around the player character.

From a gameplay standpoint this set-up of skills makes your single target nuke two buttons to execute. First you summon Minor Earth Elementals and then cast ‘Force of Nature' to attack. The combination of Ability and Instant Cast Spell means this can all be done while moving. This setup also allows for double weaving two Elementals so your Wind aspected DoT can be applied simultaneously while casting this new ‘stone’. Since Commune Earth will become Commune Wind after the first use, you will press the same button twice to apply both single target Earth and Wind effects. Since Commune Earth and Wind will both change simultaneously you will alternate these buttons to create AoE effects.

‘Force of Nature’ is a spell that can be prepared in advance which makes it very versatile and also interesting during downtime. Between Dungeon Mobs you can prepare an AoE attack and DoT to be launched at the first enemy sighted and prepare Water Elementals to make chasing a sprinting Tank simple with increased range and instant cast Cures available.

This spell system also allows you to seamlessly alternate between healing and DPS by calling forth the appropriate Elemental before your next GCD. You can prepare to heal by summoning two Water Elementals and since this will make the healing spell Instant Cast you can summon two more Elementals to return to DPS or continue to heal during the Recast time.

The Lily system gained after level 50 will feel like a safety net to allow weaving room for summoning your desired Elemental.

Of course this system would need to accommodate abilities like Holy, Glare III and Glare IV as well. For Holy I would give it a 4 second Recast to encourage switching between it and AOE versions of Earth and Wind attacks. At level 72 when Glare is acquired I would upgrade ‘Force of Nature’ via trait. Every three casts of ‘Force of Nature’ would allow a single cast of Glare III. These casts of Glare III would be allowed to stack up to five so that you could potentially build a burst phase with ‘Presence of Mind’ and the multiple Glare IV’s it unlocked and Afflatus Misery.

All in all I think this could give WHM it’s true niche as the mobile healer with the furthest range for healing spells. This would feel like an appropriate trade for the lack of oGCD’s it has compared to the other healers being able to continuously dance thru mechanics.

[Ramiee]

snip

Yeah it's a problem that will always arise, it's why if people want something like this you need it to be equivalent to Penuma where it just refunds the GCD. Shield swipe and repelling shot reminds me everyday that even a slight DPS gain will always be disregarded for safety or utility.

[Ayan_Calvesse]

What would you have them be melee or ranged?
What would you have them do?

Whitemage...give them Ruse; Stone, Quake
Sage..probably really hard to pronounce
Scholar..likewise
Astrologian...Star, Comet, Meteor.

Honestly - I'd love to see each healer given some short duration buff to maintain to benefit the party throughout the fight.

[wildvenonat]

Yeah it's a problem that will always arise, it's why if people want something like this you need it to be equivalent to Penuma where it just refunds the GCD. Shield swipe and repelling shot reminds me everyday that even a slight DPS gain will always be disregarded for safety or utility.

Lilies already are a dps gain but you're given enough freedom on when to spend them and when to use the dps part that useless overheal doesn't come at the expense of not having healing resources later.

[Ramiee]

Lilies already are a dps gain but you're given enough freedom on when to spend them and when to use the dps part that useless overheal doesn't come at the expense of not having healing resources later.

It's a gain by chance though, it's only guaranteed to refund the damage from what I understand. It's an good system because the rng factor or raid buffs alignment isn't guaranteed so it's more of a bonus, something like a heal procing something that gives a DPS gain guaranteed is the problem because players would overheal for that.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

The caveat of turning blood lily into a gain is to build said misery outside raidbuff window, then dump at least one misery every 2 minutes into raidbuff window. You'll be shoving 1 GCD that packs the punch of 4 Glare IIIs but gaining the benefit from said raidbuff (technically forcing 3 extra Glare IIIs by doing that).

[wildvenonat]

It's a gain by chance though, it's only guaranteed to refund the damage from what I understand. It's an good system because the rng factor or raid buffs alignment isn't guaranteed so it's more of a bonus, something like a heal procing something that gives a DPS gain guaranteed is the problem because players would overheal for that.

What is the problem with overheal, exactly? If you're not losing damage from healing more than you need to, what does it matter if you heal something that they could have survived without?

"After using resources, you get access to a nuke" is a fun design and a lot of why lilies are good is that you've got a ton of flexibility on when you use them and when you use your spender. It is not a gain to use Afflatus Solace on cooldown. I would like using healing actions to be able to improve my dps, but not in a strict manner where you're having to use a healing action on cooldown. Thankfully, many things have charges.

I think Scholar in particular would need a rework in order to change more actions to charges, but I also think Fey Blessing, Fey Union, Dissipation, and Protraction are not well designed. Dissipation is at least strong, unlike the other three, but it's a far worse offender on "all actions become DPS actions if they are capable of being used for DPS" than using the design philosophy of lilies more broadly and on more healers.

Busy work like 1-2-3 combos instead of a one button combo is not satisfying to me; looking for good uses of lilies so that I can store a Misery for the next set of raid buffs is fun, though.