Another Yoshi interview: Healer DPS, Sage, Scholar, etc (MTQ)

[AFuzzyMu11in]

It's completely relevant to your question, but your argument is flawed on a fundamental level. You divide the raiding community into two groups, but you actually need three groups:

- the top tier healers;
- the good healers (the majority);
- the mediocre healers.

The mediocre healers can only clear Savage if they are carried (by their co-healer, by better gear, by echo etc.). The good healers are your average healers, they are good enough to clear Savage. They are (should be) the target group for healer design and balance.

Good healers know that damage comes in bursts, so they are left spamming one button for long periods of time. If there is a 30s window with no damage and if you find Glare spamming manageable but suddenly Glare1+Glare2+Glare3 is too hard, then sorry, you don't belong in hard content and an entire role shouldn't be balanced around you. You can, though, try to get better and try again once you are comfortable. That's the purpose of harder (and optional) content.

It's completely fair to compare healers to tanks and DPS. Healing is not as hard as the community thinks (mostly non-healers). For example, you talked about having to fix other people's mistakes, but in raids, usually, mistakes mean death, multiple deaths or a direct wipe. You very rarely fix mistakes. You wipe, you take note of the fact that "Supermegaiper bonebreaker of the doom" is a tankbuster so you go -> Broil, Broil, Broil, Broil, Ruin II+ Excog, Broil, Broil, Broil, Broil and you take note of the fact that "Gigantic flood of gigantic darkness of the death" is a raidwide, so you go -> Broil, Broil, Broil, Broil, Broil, Ruin II + Recitation +Indom, Broil, Broil, Broil, Broil.

It's boring and trivial.

Then you notice that after that raidwide there are 30 seconds of nothing. Why shouldn't healers get more buttons to use in that window? What makes standing still and do 11111 fundamentally harder than 123123? And mind you, healers shouldn't be design around Savage. Healers need to be fun from level 1 to max level. If they don't want to pressure casual healers, then don't. Keep normal content braindead so a Cure II bot that ignores Glare can clear content even when that Glare becomes Glare1+Glare2+Glare3.

What you are ignoring is what happens when glare 1/2/3 becomes optimized, when healers are expected to keep up that rotation constantly, while dealing with party mistakes, when people start screeching even harder about healer dps checks etc

[Risvertasashi]

The burden of healing has been so exorbitantly mitigated that, if played right, you're spending more than half of your time as a Healer DPSing because you simply don't have to heal. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised to see more videos like the E4S clear with no healers become common place in EW after everything is said and done.

This is vastly understating the time spent DPSing on healers.

I just checked an old log of mine. In Shiva (the last savage I played as healer), I spent around 20 GCDs healing and over 200 DPSing. And that was with a fairly weak cohealer - much more optimization should be possible.

And even if you look up ultimate logs, it's much more than 50% of GCDs DPSing...

[rewd]

What you are ignoring is what happens when glare 1/2/3 becomes optimized, when healers are expected to keep up that rotation constantly, while dealing with party mistakes, when people start screeching even harder about healer dps checks etc

If you need to GCD heal, you are not DPSing, so 111 or 123 doesn't matter.

If you don't need to heal, 123123 is not harder than 111111 (or hard enough that it is not manageable).

If there are party mistakes (that actually don't kill you), then you are either in prog (and a healer dropping a Glare2 doesn't matter) or you are farming/doing whatever and if you hit enrage, the problem is that you made a mistake, not that the healer had to stop DPSing for a couple of seconds.

Raids are very rigid and choreographed dances. In those rare moments when you actually get the chance to fix a mistake, you'll fix it by doing Glare, Glare, Glare, oGCD, Glare, Glare. With more DPS buttons, it'd be Glare 1, Glare2, oGCD, Glare 3, Glare 1 etc. or something like that.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

If you need to GCD heal, you are not DPSing, so 111 or 123 doesn't matter.

If you don't need to heal, 123123 is not harder than 111111 (or hard enough that it is not manageable).

If there are party mistakes (that actually don't kill you), then you are either in prog (and a healer dropping a Glare2 doesn't matter) or you are farming/doing whatever and if you hit enrage, the problem is that you made a mistake, not that the healer had to stop DPSing for a couple of seconds.

Raids are very rigid and choreographed dances. In those rare moments when you actually get the chance to fix a mistake, you'll fix it by doing Glare, Glare, Glare, oGCD, Glare, Glare. With more DPS buttons, it'd be Glare 1, Glare2, oGCD, Glare 3, Glare 1 etc. or something like that.

The more they dumb down the 1 button spam ad nauseam style, the more people will screech over healer's dps because it takes almost 0 effort to spam just that one button. I mean it's easy right? What could've possibly prevented them to keep mindlessly press 1 button?!

....Fun aside, to think that they are somebody who had once claimed to have touched Extreme & Savage contents. Now it all make sense why people are screeching for their healer DPS.

Dumb it down further and the world will only try to find ways to out-idiot things.

[Silver-Strider]

This is vastly understating the time spent DPSing on healers.

I just checked an old log of mine. In Shiva (the last savage I played as healer), I spent around 20 GCDs healing and over 200 DPSing. And that was with a fairly weak cohealer - much more optimization should be possible.

And even if you look up ultimate logs, it's much more than 50% of GCDs DPSing...

Yes, I know its a gross misrepresentation of how much Healer Downtime there is but its just so frustrating that we're keeping that same amount of downtime with just more tools to heal with instead of something to kill the monotony of pressing a single button for another 10 minutes in each encounter, possibly forever. Why is it that every role has at least a 1-2-3 rotation minimal while healers are regulated to 1 button push? The excuse is "we don't want healers to feel pressured to DPS" and yet they reduced the GCD of our attacks to 1.5, they state the reason WHM doesn't have raid utility is because they're the most damaging healer, they align PoM to work within DPS raid windows and they gave AST a new skill that will solely be used to try and maximize DPS because if it was intended to be only a healing tool, it wouldn't have the damage increase portion of it included.

Their actions do not follow their words and it just upsets me to no end.

[Aword3213]

Good healers know that damage comes in bursts, so they are left spamming one button for long periods of time. If there is a 30s window with no damage and if you find Glare spamming manageable but suddenly Glare1+Glare2+Glare3 is too hard, then sorry, you don't belong in hard content and an entire role shouldn't be balanced around you. You can, though, try to get better and try again once you are comfortable. That's the purpose of harder (and optional) content.

It's boring and trivial.

It may be boring, but definitely not as trivial as you make it out to be. If dealing damage as a healer is that easy, then all those "good healers" in your example should have the same parsing, but in truth, they don't. As for the difficulty of healing, please bear in mind this game is designed to be controller friendly. What you decribed about raiding scenes are precise, but healers still have to do plenty of target switching. I know it's fairly easy to most of you, but iirc developers did emphasize on healing difficulties using controllers somewhere during LL. Healing in this game may be by no means difficult to most of you, but it may not be the case the some people. Aside from that, let's not pretend healing checks don't exist. Take Diamond Dust from E12S for example. Healers will often be the result of wipe due to bad healing plans even when other teammates performs flawlessly. That why I said it's unfair to compare them.

Healers need to be fun from level 1 to max level. If they don't want to pressure casual healers, then don't. Keep normal content braindead so a Cure II bot that ignores Glare can clear content even when that Glare becomes Glare1+Glare2+Glare3.

All jobs are boring in level 1. All contents are boring in early levels. Is BLM fun during Haukke Manor? Is DRG fun in Keeper of the Lake? What do you even mean by healers need to be fun from level 1?

Besides, your reply still haven't solved the dilemma of raising skill ceiling by adding more dps options. Please note I'm not the one denying this kind of suggestions, but the developers. As stated during media tour, adding more dps options is certainly not the path devs are willing to take. In my opinion, developers would rather raise the skill ceiling in terms of healing than in terms of dpsing. They may consider adding rotations some day, but not today. They can definitely throw contents hard enough for players to complain, such as Second Coil Savage, Gordias Savage, and Orbonne Monastry. I'm pretty sure they can design a healer as complex as possible. They are capable of it, but they won't do it. They said they are building the healers on ShB iteration. Perhaps when they finally approve the capability of the majority of healers, they will take your suggestions to heart. The problem is, many claimed adding more dps options wouldn't affect skill ceiling. But in truth, who knows?

[Nizzi]

What you are ignoring is what happens when glare 1/2/3 becomes optimized, when healers are expected to keep up that rotation constantly, while dealing with party mistakes, when people start screeching even harder about healer dps checks etc

What you're doing right now is called "fearmongering". I've done Extreme and Savage on healers. I've had to stop Broilbotting to deal with situations. Nobody has gotten on to me because I didn't optimally use Energy Drain for maximum DPS, even though for "optimal play" it's what you're supposed to, nor have they gotten onto me for dropping my DoT or doing poor DPS, or even causing wipes.
I don't necessarily want a rotation like tanks/DPS in a traditional "1-2-3" combo, but lets say for example we had that. They've made the change in Endwalker that doing your ranged attack on melee/tanks won't break your combo anymore, right? Why couldn't this be the case for healers?

[Aword3213]

If you need to GCD heal, you are not DPSing, so 111 or 123 doesn't matter.

If you don't need to heal, 123123 is not harder than 111111 (or hard enough that it is not manageable).

If there are party mistakes (that actually don't kill you), then you are either in prog (and a healer dropping a Glare2 doesn't matter) or you are farming/doing whatever and if you hit enrage, the problem is that you made a mistake, not that the healer had to stop DPSing for a couple of seconds.

Raids are very rigid and choreographed dances. In those rare moments when you actually get the chance to fix a mistake, you'll fix it by doing Glare, Glare, Glare, oGCD, Glare, Glare. With more DPS buttons, it'd be Glare 1, Glare2, oGCD, Glare 3, Glare 1 etc. or something like that.

I doubt giving healers 123 rotations solves the problem. People will still complain healers being boring. Just look at DRK threads.

[Semirhage]

I agree. The problems healer jobs have are endemic. They're not solvable with the addition of a skill or three. WHM and SCH in particular need overhauls. Their design issues aren't a small rotation away from perfection.

[rewd]

I doubt giving healers 123 rotations solves the problem. People will still complain healers being boring. Just look at DRK threads.

I'm not saying a 123 combo would fix healers, that would be silly. I'm replying to those, including Yoshida, who think that adding a single DPS button would mean the end of the world (which is silly too).

As for me, I don't necessarily even want more DPS skills. I'd like more emphasis on buffs and debuffs, a more balanced healing kit (less oGCDs) and more interesting interactions within kits instead of the "press this to win" model which is what current AST is built on. Then we might add some DPS skills, if needed.