A summary of healer issues

[ForsakenRoe]

SE’s perspective of healers being so cartoonishly delicate that the “healer who heals by attacking” couldn’t possibly manage more than 3 core attack buttons.

"My Medica! I can't heal without my Medica-like skill!"

[Shurrikhan]

I assume it'd be a flowchart of simple yes/no checks to decide what is the next step to take. For example, lets take HW SCH, with it's extra DOTs and casted Shadowflare and what have you.

The problem with a system like Ty suggests is that there are certain decisions that must be made by the player, and cannot be interpreted by the auto-battle system. For example, if you were to add Chain Strat as a node on this flowchart so it automatically pops it, you lose the ability to make the decision to hold it for a few seconds, eg Pinax or Manifold Flames. That means that the autobattle system can never be 100% of the efficiency of a real player using their brain, and that's where certain people stop supporting it. Because it can't perform at the same level as actual brains.

I think that's fine. If anything, it just means that many people would opt out of certain inclusions (Miasma, if you won't be able to finish the cast but Bio is available to be refreshed anyways; Bio, if you're free to cast Broil this GCD but will be limited to just Bio anyways next GCD due to forced movement; Shadowflare, especially if it's on a CD, since you might want to hold for adds; etc.), leaving control increasingly in their own hands outside of filler.

I guess my bigger points though are just that...

1. if we're putting that 'token' down, it probably shouldn't just be this weird one-off thing for healers, but instead a smoothly integrated gamewide feature, and
   
   
2. it should consider whatever other ways may exist of improving apparent access despite increased offensive kit depth (even if that's just something targeting perception, like "Glare spam isn't really that big a loss, anyways, actually...") and the actual percentage gaps between performance by other means, too (e.g., game-wide under-mechanics like partial DoT duration roll-over so that the occasional early or slightly late refresh isn't such a bad thing).

[ty_taurus]

I think that's fine. If anything, it just means that many people would opt out of certain inclusions (Miasma, if you won't be able to finish the cast but Bio is available to be refreshed anyways; Bio, if you're free to cast Broil this GCD but will be limited to just Bio anyways next GCD due to forced movement; Shadowflare, especially if it's on a CD, since you might want to hold for adds; etc.), leaving control increasingly in their own hands outside of filler.

I guess my bigger points though are just that...

1. if we're putting that 'token' down, it probably shouldn't just be this weird one-off thing for healers, but instead a smoothly integrated gamewide feature, and
   
   
2. it should consider whatever other ways may exist of improving apparent access despite increased offensive kit depth (even if that's just something targeting perception, like "Glare spam isn't really that big a loss, anyways, actually...") and the actual percentage gaps between performance by other means, too (e.g., game-wide under-mechanics like partial DoT duration roll-over so that the occasional early or slightly late refresh isn't such a bad thing).

Another huge positive that this system could have if implemented would be the ability to share your gambits publicly or with friends, perhaps uploading them to a new menu where you can "download" upvoted gambits. Skilled players could upload "perfect" rotations to use on Stone, Sky, Sea which could be used as a training device where someone can use it to practice performing that rotation manually. As we've said, nuance certainly makes manual play better suited to adjust to various situations in real combat, but sometimes the hardest part of picking up a new job is learning where to start and figuring out what value your different actions have for your rotation.

[ForsakenRoe]

While the system may work, I'd rather just aim to mimic similar results via potency balancing, I think. It'd be faster to implement than a whole new system. For example, let's take SCH's DOT kit from HW, when it had the most. So we have (in single target) Bio, Miasma, 100%uptime Shadowflare as a GCD, and Broil as filler. Instead of what we have now, where Biolysis is 700p total and Broil is 295 (so the DOT is over 2x the potency-per-GCD of the spam nuke), Why not have something like:

Broil 5: 310p
Bio: Instant cast, 80p per tick, 12s duration (320 total)
Miasma: cast time, 50p on cast, 50p per tick, 18s duration (350 total)
Shadowflare: instantcast but GCD, 35p per tick, lasts 30s on the floor but since it's GCD it can easily be repositioned (350 total)

So if someone wants to ignore ALL of the DOTs entirely for...whatever reason, they don't lose all that much damage. By my maths, swapping every DOT refresh to another Broil would add up to a total potency loss of 790 over three minutes. The effective loss of damage from a Hyosho that didn't crit and DHit vs one that does both crit and DHit is bigger than that, and potentially happens once a minute. By contrast, currently ignoring the DOT entirely and just using an extra Broil in it's place would add up to a potency loss of 2430 per 3 minutes. Also with bringing back Shadowflare like this, I just thought: We can steal Salt and Darkness and convert Energy Drain into a skill that works like 'Shadowflare ruptures for X damage to all enemies within it' which would feel cooler than the piddly needle VFX it has now

Don't get me wrong, I'm not against the idea of 'autobattle' if that's the compromise that needs to be made. I just feel like since it's an entire new system, SE would never bother with making it. So making the 'difference in potency output between full optimal and one button bob' be slimmer via potency tweaking would yield similar results (one button users would deal good damage regardless, filthy optimizers can still optimize), without the devtime of the new system. And we've seen from Energy Drain and it's existence (and complaints when it's existence is threatened) that it doesn't matter how little a gain something is for optimization, people like to have it as an option. Like, you 'can' dump Lilies by overhealing and put Misery in raidbuffs. But how many players, out of the entire playerbase, actually do that? Even in Savages and such, I reckon it's not actually a majority. Even I don't bother sometimes, I don't like the idea of wasting healing specific resources like that

Again, looking at the graphs of 'what GCDs are used per minute' I made here. You can see our current rotation on the top graph, and my pitched rotation on the bottom one. But that bottom one is the 'fully optimal, putting both Misery AND the Quake/Flood/Tornado empowerments into the raidbuffs'. If there's no damage for an entire minute or longer (completely possible in the current state of the game, lets be real), it's not actually necessary to prep and fire a Misery, or use my hypothetical new heal and get Quake etc. from it. You could just use more Glares. So how many people are going to bother with all the extra optimization of doing that even when healing isn't actually needed? I doubt some massive amount of players are going to specifically hold the new healing tool, just so they can get one extra Glare worth of damage (all three empowerments add up to only one Glare worth of damage) while ALSO dumping Lilies on healing in such a way they can get Misery into the raidbuffs as well. It's there as 'potential', as 'maybe the epic gamers could pull this off' but I expect that over 90% of players would just use the heal as, well, a heal, and the refund damage is just that, a refund, the thought of 'oh if I do XYZ I can move this inside the raidbuff window' wouldn't even enter most player's brains. Look how many people in Savage, across the whole raiding playerbase, actually do the Dissipation/6 ED dump opener on SCH.

[Semirhage]

Lol I see they're keeping the giga hitboxes and just buffing healer AOEs to hit everyone in Meracydia instead. Let's make everything even more simplistic, skill expression be damned. :rock on:

[ForsakenRoe]

Healers are now different, the game is fixed

They all do different potencies per tick with their DOTs now, we can stop complaining now

Also, did they actually make Collective's damage mit portion 30y and leave the regen at 8y because it doesn't mention the regen part at all, and if so, that's the most jank thing I can imagine. Two seperate radii to think about would be SUPER casual-friendly /s

[Semirhage]

Healers are now different, the game is fixed

They all do different potencies per tick with their DOTs now, we can stop complaining now

Also, did they actually make Collective's damage mit portion 30y and leave the regen at 8y because it doesn't mention the regen part at all, and if so, that's the most jank thing I can imagine. Two seperate radii to think about would be SUPER casual-friendly /s

Correct me if I misread, but I believe they blew up all of the mits and left the regens alone.

Let's keep the boring mitigation meta going kids, but make it even easier this time around. Best healer design ever, I'd laugh if I weren't annoyed that RDM is still dog dookie this far into the expansion.

[ForsakenRoe]

Correct me if I misread, but I believe they blew up all of the mits and left the regens alone.

Physis 2 is a regen and that got adjusted, unless they're only increasing the '10% additional healing effectiveness' part

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

Lmao what even are those radius buffs and lol DoT tick potency tweak. Can they do any worse?

[WaxSw]

Lmao what even are those radius buffs

To be fair with the increase of the hitbox of bosses, bigger arenas and mechanics that may randomly ask people to go pick flowers in Narnia, there were already some fights where the difficulty wasn't the mechanic or the healing but reaching people and it was clear that was not the dev intention so its not a negative change.

Did they overdo it? Very likely but we have to see the mechanics of Savage

There were more ellegant solutions? Absolutely but a blunt solution is better than none imo.