"There wasn't much we could really do with SCH"

[Boizinho]

I want a healer that gives me a gold star and a smiley face sticker with "good job!" and "well done!" on my screen every time I fill a health bar within 5 seconds c:

Whoa whoa, hold the phone. Tying a time limit to the gold star? That's pretty damn elitist, don't you think? What if I just want to relax and not be a sweaty try-hard? I have 19 jobs and 32 children, I should be allowed to be skill-capped at my job without actually knowing what's currently happening in the game. What, I don't deserve a gold star just because my monitor is off? I'll just unsubscribe then.

If you want to speedrun your gold stars, go play Savage and Ultimate. The true player base just wants to chill. It's already bad enough that Duty Finder content requires me to put things other than emotes and dances on my hotbar. Miss me with that hardcore gamer time limit.

[Garnix]

To be fair, while I agree that the DPS kits for all healers are really bad, I have to agree with the "troll" here. I don't think DoTs are an interesting mechanic for healers currently and even in the past...
There is no proc tied to them, no gauge tied to them, no other abilities tied to them...just a debuff icon on the boss that basically does nothing. The only good thing about it is that every few GCD you get the opportunity to press a different button, which could be achieved by a non-DoT GCD too...

[Shurrikhan]

To be fair, while I agree that the DPS kits for all healers are really bad, I have to agree with the "troll" here. I don't think DoTs are an interesting mechanic for healers currently and even in the past...
There is no proc tied to them, no gauge tied to them, no other abilities tied to them...just a debuff icon on the boss that basically does nothing. The only good thing about it is that every few GCD you get the opportunity to press a different button, which could be achieved by a non-DoT GCD too...

A damage-over-time effect does not prevent the skill it's attached to from having a proc.

A damage-over-time effect does not prevent the skill it's attached to from being tied to a guage.

It is literally (1) just a soft cooldown that also (2) varies one's gameplay opportunities across the target-count space between single-target and AoE spam.

If you really hate part (2), slap a couple charges of a cooldown onto a GCD skill and call it a day. If you really hate part (1), just make it truly spammable (no DoT).

DoTs are merely a simple package that offers easy foundation for added nuances. At no point does it prevent other mechanics, though.

[Garnix]

Oh with that I fully agree. I personally think DoTs should stay, but I think they should definitely add some more nuances to them. (which is what they said they did for AoE spells, and about which I want to learn more as well)
One of the problems with healers DPS is not only the 1-1-1 spam, it is also that all healers have the exact same 1-1-1 spam.

[ItMe]

You say that, but then...


...say things like this....

IDK man, I've also had to set a timer to remind me to look at my DoT.
When I'm playing NIN I can think "ok, I'm about here in my rotation, so my DoT should be coming back up soon. Gotta get ready so I can hit it about here..."
But Healers don't have a rotation... so a push and forget button that doesn't interact with any of your kit is easy to forget about, especially when you can
get caught up watching / looking at so many other things as a healer.

[AFuzzyMu11in]

IDK man, I've also had to set a timer to remind me to look at my DoT.
When I'm playing NIN I can think "ok, I'm about here in my rotation, so my DoT should be coming back up soon. Gotta get ready so I can hit it about here..."
But Healers don't have a rotation... so a push and forget button that doesn't interact with any of your kit is easy to forget about, especially when you can
get caught up watching / looking at so many other things as a healer.

This glad someone finally gets it.

[Sunhwapark]

But Healers don't have a rotation... so a push and forget button that doesn't interact with any of your kit is easy to forget about

You are right, there is no strict damage rotation for healers but the dots can be easier to maintain if you associate the 're application' period with skills that have a similar cooldown.

AST's Draw recast time lines up with Combust II/III.
WHM's Dia lines up with a Lily being accumulated as well as Divine Benison's(I think?) recast time.
SCH is a bit of a special case in this regard with how players utilize their Aetherflow & Dissipation stacks.

I would guess that a 'healing encounter timeline' is a more prominent thought to healers initially... at least in a raid setting similar to how tanks can map out their cooldowns throughout fights to deal with busters and tank swaps etc, but try to make do with what they can when mishaps occur.

[ItMe]

You are right, there is no strict damage rotation for healers but the dots can be easier to maintain if you associate the 're application' period with skills that have a similar cooldown.

Yo that's a great trick!
Thanks, I'll give that a shot <3

[Sebazy]

I filter debuffs on my target bar to be my own alone, between that and focus target it makes it much easier to keep a track on your dot duration++

[Rilifane]

You can also unlink the HP bar of your target with its debuff bar and can seperately place the debuff bar somewhere else on your UI.
I have my own buffs, debuffs and target debuffs, filtered to only show my own, clustered above my hotbar where they're easy to see for me.
Focus target is for tracking other debuffs like Reprisal, Addle, Trick Attack etc.

Keeping track of a dot is not rocket science, it's just a matter of costumizing the UI appropriately. Same with cooldowns. Some people have an extra hotbar, scaled to 160% or bigger with their most important cooldowns somewhere in the middle of the screen so they don't lose track of them.
Any form of transition will misalign dots and cooldowns so while it's a nice crutch for dummy fights, it doesn't always work.