#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[ForsakenRoe]

It doesn't necessarily have to be a fancy new DPS rotation, at least not instantly, but the damage output should be brought up to the same level as Tanks at a very minimum.

Bringing this back just to say: I believe that the 'variety' in what DPS buttons we press is the issue, not the amount of damage we deal, and we should not get the two conflated. You could bring Healer DPS output up to the level of the tanks by simply boosting Glare's potency to 400, sure, but that doesn't fix the issues with the role. It's still going to be bland as heck. It's still going to be one button for the majority of your GCD gameplay. And it's still going to be Healer that gets replaced by DPS to try and pull off nonstandard runs (because trying to do a fight with no Tanks is much rougher due to AA damage, tankswaps etc).

If we get the two confused, SE will have the 'get out of jail free card' to say 'well they wanted more damage, so we boosted their output' and keep the current gameplay. Let's not give them the 'out'. Instead, I think the solution is simple: giving us a more intricate rotation, that is effectively 'optional' due to sensible potency balancing. For example, if we say that SCH has 3 DOTs instead of 1, Biolysis (350p), Miasmalysis (340p) and Shadowflare (320p), if the player ignores all three and just uses Broil (310p) they'll still clear any content in the game. Savage week 1 DPS checks are tuned around giving healers the leniency to drop a lot of GCDs to use healing GCDs instead (doubly so this tier, because the DPS check this tier was weirdly low). The player could choose to spam Broil as we do now, or interact with this 'optional' complexity, rewarding them with an effectively 'cosmetic' boost to damage that has almost zero effect on the group's chance at hitting enrage. But for those who want to optimize, it provides a much more deep gameplay experience, because ANY amount of extra damage is going to be welcomed as part of the optimization (see Energy Drain, even as weak as it now is).

I think the problem with this is already shown by Eukrasian Dyskrasia being made unable to stack with Eukrasian Dosis: some players feel the need to be 'optimal', even when they're not actually skilled enough to BE 'optimal', and the thought of 'I have to put in more work' isn't appealing to said players. And unfortunately there's nothing that can really be done with this, because to me, that mindset is anathema to 'common sense game design principles'. It's possible to make a design that allows a player to play sub-optimally and still clear (even I can make one (or more accurately, four)). 90% of the content in the game doesn't care how sub-optimal you play because there's no enrage timers. And in the 10% that DOES have enrage timers, you can drop GCDs to heal (eg I cleared P11S week 1 with over 30 Succor casts) So as an example, I make a design that gives SCH 3 DOTs instead of 1. Someone says 'I don't like this idea, I don't want to juggle 3 DOTs', I would say 'that's fine, you don't need to', because I tuned the potencies to be such a small gain (as shown above) that it will not make or break a clear. I make a design for SGE wherein Kardia is a much more interactive system than 'targeted fairy heal', being temporarily augmentable with effects like 'stronger', '50% as strong but AOE', 'also applies shields', etc, and someone says 'I don't want to have to mess with all that stuff I prefer healing on SGE as it is now', I'd say 'ok that's fine, the design keeps all the other OGCDs so you can still heal just as you did before if you want, the Kardia stuff is just another tool in your kit that you're free to ignore (it's not like we don't already ignore Pepsis 95% of the time)'

I think the key thing here is that it needs to be clarified that the gameplay of healers shouldn't be 'replaced', instead it should be 'added to'. EG Instead of replacing WHM's focus on GCD heals (that are damage neutral) such as Lily heals, with a more OGCD centric gameplay like the other healers, do the opposite! Go MORE into damage neutral GCD healing, have another system that works alongside the Lilies that allows for damage neutral GCD healing. That way, not only do those who enjoy current WHM have the current WHM still, but they have extra options to avail themselves of if they so choose. And for the optimization minded players, having multiple 'refund' skills like Misery, means that there's a new minigame of trying to line up your healing GCD order in such a way that all of those 'refunds' can all go into the 2min burst, turning WHM into the 'ADPS big burst' healer (which means it'd actually have an identity beyond 'Cure3 bot')

[AnotherPerson]

Bringing this back just to say: I believe that the 'variety' in what DPS buttons we press is the issue, not the amount of damage we deal, and we should not get the two conflated. You could bring Healer DPS output up to the level of the tanks by simply boosting Glare's potency to 400, sure, but that doesn't fix the issues with the role. It's still going to be bland as heck. It's still going to be one button for the majority of your GCD gameplay. And it's still going to be Healer that gets replaced by DPS to try and pull off nonstandard runs (because trying to do a fight with no Tanks is much rougher due to AA damage, tankswaps etc).

Healer never had just one problem. Tanks and DPS getting buffed upwards while leaving healer in the dust doesn't make healer better or shift the problem to something else. In fact it just means healer gameplay gets powercrept further the moment tank and dps starts getting more healing actions to the point no-healer clears are done on same patch - as shown in Dawntrail.

Healer falling behind tanks in DPS is one problem.
The engagement of gameplay being monotone is another problem.

Healers did not have much of an issue with healer DPS because engagement was important, but the moment tanks start being able to replace healers in such a significant degree, it only highlights a new problem of healers -- the point that the role imbalance is causing issues with even keeping a healer on a party because they offer far too little in a general overview of the gameplay. Just making 'more to heal' will never be a proper solution because of ilvl. ILVL will eventually reduce the burden or even need of healers from 2 to 1. Except we're already at the point on patch release before BiS where we can go from 2 to 0 healers on the current hardest available content difficulty.

At this point I don't see any solution with people not wanting healers to be good at anything other than healing but never making the healing part ever required in anything other than maybe at best 3-4 pieces of content before it gets invalidated again. Even asking for parity is too much of an ask now.

[ForsakenRoe]

At this point I don't see any solution with people not wanting healers to be good at anything other than healing but never making the healing part ever required in anything other than maybe at best 3-4 pieces of content before it gets invalidated again. Even asking for parity is too much of an ask now.

If SE wants to boost healers to be roughly inline with tanks in terms of damage output, that's up to them. My point is that if we as a playerbase aren't specific with our requests and say 'we want more damage' instead of 'we want more variety in how we deal our damage', it gives SE a very easy out to just boost some potencies and leave our gameplay loop to rot as it currently does. Additionally, we had a small amount of time in SHB where WHM was doing more damage than some of the tanks and they (tanks) were pissed

I'd rather have a fun damage rotation than deal the same damage as tanks. I'd rather take a 25% damage NERF if it means getting a more fun damage rotation, in fact

[Somnolence]

If SE wants to boost healers to be roughly inline with tanks in terms of damage output, that's up to them.

This would just result in toxicity, because healers are the only role that loses dps due to party making mistakes or co-healer not putting adequate amount of work.

Healer DPS has biggest variance between lower and higher skilled players already - bottom ones do 8K dps, top ones 14k. That is whopping 40% difference.

Now imagine if healer DPS was buffed, then the glare would just be higher potency loss if you had to replace it with medica II or w/e.

The current healer design is dead end.

If the encounter design team considers a healer doing 225 broil casts in M4S and 5 healing GCDs to be intended optimal way of playing them, then the job design team must suck it up and change healers to match that.

[Supersnow845]

This would just result in toxicity, because healers are the only role that loses dps due to party making mistakes or co-healer not putting adequate amount of work.

Healer DPS has biggest variance between lower and higher skilled players already - bottom ones do 8K dps, top ones 14k. That is whopping 40% difference.

Now imagine if healer DPS was buffed, then the glare would just be higher potency loss if you had to replace it with medica II or w/e.

The current healer design is dead end.

If the encounter design team considers a healer doing 225 broil casts in M4S and 5 healing GCDs to be intended optimal way of playing them, then the job design team must suck it up and change healers to match that.

It’s almost like healers should be designed in such a way that doesn’t punish them so heavily for casting a GCD heal.

Maybe……..DOT’s, oh my god it’s almost like they figured this out 5 expansions ago

[Aravell]

This would just result in toxicity, because healers are the only role that loses dps due to party making mistakes or co-healer not putting adequate amount of work.

Healer DPS has biggest variance between lower and higher skilled players already - bottom ones do 8K dps, top ones 14k. That is whopping 40% difference.

Now imagine if healer DPS was buffed, then the glare would just be higher potency loss if you had to replace it with medica II or w/e.

And the reason things function this way is because the dev team redesigned it this way. They claim that they don't expect healers to do damage in their design while also making it much harder to do good damage from ShB onwards.

On paper, it looks very easy. Spam your filler, keep your DoT up, use OGCDs to heal. But in practice, the moment something goes wrong and you have to use your GCD for anything other than your filler, you've already lost a chunk of damage.

That's what happens when they delete every other damage spell and shove all the potency into the filler spell, it makes it that much more punishing to drop a cast. The one creating this environment to be toxic in is the one that created this healer design in the first place.