In Favor of DPS Kits

[Ramiee]

I made some outlines for healer DPS kits in another thread a few weeks ago. It got the reception you'd probably expect. (Not because the outlines were notably bad, but apparently people enjoy being Cure-bots...)

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...s-for-healers/

I love healing, but the role is so brain dead in DT. I'd rather farm Island Copper Ore for 12 hours than call myself a healer "main" these days.

Anyone who wants pure healing botting are playing the wrong game. ARR was designed from the ground up for healers to be damage dealers and for the healers to become pure healers the entire game design would have to change.
Telegraphed attacks you dodge would have to be lessened and constant damage output would have to go out which people can't handle.
Play M3N and you'll see how healers struggle in healbotting because without mitigation those raid wide combos hit hard.
Though they're right that healers need to heal more they can't just heal and therefore need damage mechanics.

[Carighan]

Anyone who wants pure healing botting are playing the wrong game. ARR was designed from the ground up for healers to be damage dealers and for the healers to become pure healers the entire game design would have to change.
Telegraphed attacks you dodge would have to be lessened and constant damage output would have to go out which people can't handle.
Play M3N and you'll see how healers struggle in healbotting because without mitigation those raid wide combos hit hard.
Though they're right that healers need to heal more they can't just heal and therefore need damage mechanics.

Well yeah, but there's a huge empty space between "pure healbotting, might as well not have any nukes" and what we currently have, which is more or less the opposite as oGCD heals are very rarely not enough to cover everything. How about, I dunno... some steady healing? Like every 3rd-5th GCD at least?

I mean, consider this: Damage dealers spend all their time, well, dealing damage. It's in the name of the role. So as is evident from that, what do healers do? That's right, they spend their GCDs dealing damage. And what do tanks do? Yeah, as evident by the role name, they use their GCDs to deal damage. It's simple, isn't it?

[UkcsAlias]

Scholar
Current fairy gauge and the union removed. Every GCD-heal and Aetherflow-using heal adds 1-20 to the new fairy gauge, based on actual healing done vs maximum possible healing (shields not counted, only healing). At any point, bar can be spent to turn Eos into Selene for 4 energy/second. Selene does not use Embrace, instead she casts a nuke on a target every time you cast either a nuke or a DoT on something, akin to summoner major summon assist nukes. Selene can be freely turned off/on as an oGCD.

Bad design. The better your team becomes, the less effective you become as you will lose this dps feature. And no directly conflicts with other healers as their heals weaken you now. Which makes it a balance hell.

Damage should be standalone from any healing, or purely rely on ogcd casts (making it a fixed time period with a free heal you can weave in the rotation). This gives an optimal damage target (100% dps uptime) possible to exist, to which you can balance. And by making the ogcd/other mechanic gracefull enough, also make less effective players get a decent 'bonus damage' effect. Their heals might get fully spent a lot more often. But outside of that still involve a very similar dps rotation in which you want to spend most time dealing damage.

If you want such feature, make it tied to the dps button itself, and optionaly also make a heal gcd charge it, but at least always include dps casts. This brings a static charge up time with it. And still involves a dps loss if too many gcd heals are used.

[Azurarok]

Sure hurts knowing we went from having both to having neither. I've heard healer dps wasn't expected back then, and my understanding is they then tried to account for it with the Stormblood adjustments, but what happened from there that got us the ShB kits?

Also I only just now noticed Raimee's topic on the matter from april, and it's interesting how we went from folks leaning to needing more DPS to suddenly Both after DT.

[Carighan]

If you want such feature, make it tied to the dps button itself, and optionaly also make a heal gcd charge it, but at least always include dps casts. This brings a static charge up time with it. And still involves a dps loss if too many gcd heals are used.

Hrm, fair point, although I specifically would not want a static type of charge - say, every 14 GCDs you charge the fairy for DPS mode. The thing about that is, that takes player agency and skill expression along, as at that point it might as well just be automated. Too static and hence too dependable in nature. At the very least it'd need to be something like a random 1-20 charge on each GCD spent so the charge time is unreliable and hence as a player you have to be able to handle that unreliable charge time vs what is currently happening in the fight.

[Calysto]

I'd add that just like tank dps kip include self healing, healer dps kit could/should include a layer of aoe healing or some kind kit interactivity
ex :
-123 dps combo with branching path for heal/shield/gauge
-auto-combo with 3rd step heal/shield/gauge
-gauge usage for "continuation" heal/shield action

Theses effects could be applied around self/target/pet/kardia_target

The potencies should of course not be enough to make healing actions ore useless ; more of a HoT padding

Just mixing these around would open a bit of playstyles diversity and alleviate a bit of the "healers let people die for dps" argument

[Ramiee]

Also I only just now noticed Raimee's topic on the matter from april, and it's interesting how we went from folks leaning to needing more DPS to suddenly Both after DT.

Well most healer mains even back then believed both should be overhauled but most healer mains back then were thinking about what realistically could be done in DT. DPS getting overhauled was the basic fix so they could work on getting better healing systems and encounter design over the next few expansions.
It's funny because they technically did this but locked it behind 2min bursts which was completely stupid.

[Carighan]

I'd add that just like tank dps kip include self healing, healer dps kit could/should include a layer of aoe healing or some kind kit interactivity
ex :
-123 dps combo with branching path for heal/shield/gauge
-auto-combo with 3rd step heal/shield/gauge
-gauge usage for "continuation" heal/shield action

Theses effects could be applied around self/target/pet/kardia_target

The potencies should of course not be enough to make healing actions ore useless ; more of a HoT padding

Just mixing these around would open a bit of playstyles diversity and alleviate a bit of the "healers let people die for dps" argument

I mean... that's kinda what Sage and their Kardia is, isn't it?

[Azurarok]

Well most healer mains even back then believed both should be overhauled but most healer mains back then were thinking about what realistically could be done in DT. DPS getting overhauled was the basic fix so they could work on getting better healing systems and encounter design over the next few expansions.
It's funny because they technically did this but locked it behind 2min bursts which was completely stupid.

I mean they did add more self-sustain/mitigation for dps and tanks that made the lack of healing worse.

But yeah the lv92 skills just don't do anything with the role's empty filler phases.

Healers more or less have 2 kinds of bursts, a dps burst like all other roles, and a healing burst, which either come at scripted moments, or when mistakes are made by party members, and these bursts themselves feel fine to do. There's nothing to do inbetween and there's so much of that.

[Carighan]

Healers more or less have 2 kinds of bursts, a dps burst like all other roles, and a healing burst, which either come at scripted moments, or when mistakes are made by party members, and these bursts themselves feel fine to do. There's nothing to do inbetween and there's so much of that.

Yeah and the worst part is, whenever a fight even hints at not sticking to this rigid pattern, it becomes incredibly fun as a healer. When everyone first did it in 690 gear, Valigarmanda EX's DoT was too weak, but still interesting, in particular as a shield healer since you could not pre-shield 20 seconds before the next damage hit, the DoT would eat the shield by then. M3S has actual healing needs later in the fight. The odd extended-healing-blasts phase such as Rotten Heart or the end of P4S phase 2 are amazing as a healer. You get to actually heal.

And I'm not even saying that every fight should be like this all the time, but c'mon Square, there has got to be a middle ground between 10 minutes of Rotten Heart non-stop (though I'd take that over what we have now, tbh) vs the current Warriors-can-trivially-cover-the-entire-raid-healing.

So IMO, give us just 1-2 more damage kit elements, but also stop designing raid fights to need ~0 healing outside of these sparse single bursts. And then if needed remove 1-2 current oGCD timers to free up hot bar space. We got way more tools than damage to heal, and even with a lot more damage we'd not nearly need this much healing kit in this game's fight design. Might as well make hotbar space for more damage!