gimme dots

[aveyond-dreams]

I would not support the re-addition of an Aero III equivalent in the form of a separate dot to manage.

I would however support an Aero III that applies my dot to all enemies for mass pulls.

Too many dots -> most of my damage coming from dots -> I consider it a dot class, not interested, especially when the job is allegedly supposed to be a healer.

I do not consider Afflatus Misery to be a "buildup" attack, and I agree that it should be fixed the sooner the better. I mean, do X combo X times, get to use X finisher after building up to it. Restart. To me that is more fun than managing dots, and is gameplay I would tolerate on a "healer" which SE refuses to give anything to heal. Dot gameplay leans on passive, I lean more towards active.

[HyoMinPark]

I would not support the re-addition of an Aero III equivalent in the form of a separate dot to manage.

I would however support an Aero III that applies my dot to all enemies for mass pulls.

Too many dots -> most of my damage coming from dots -> I consider it a dot class, not interested, especially when the job is allegedly supposed to be a healer.

Even when WHM had 2 DoTs and 1 nuke, Stone IV was still the majority of your damage. DoTs didn’t make up more than 50% of your average DPS unless you just straight up ignored your nuke for very extended periods of time. They weren’t negligible, but you’re implying they were worth more than they actually were.

As for the last remark here, basically just accept we are a healer in name only. At this point, the role itself has been relegated to “gimped damage dealer”.

I do not consider Afflatus Misery to be a "buildup" attack, and I agree that it should be fixed the sooner the better. I mean, do X combo X times, get to use X finisher after building up to it. Restart. To me that is more fun than managing dots, and is gameplay I would tolerate on a "healer" which SE refuses to give anything to heal. Dot gameplay leans on passive, I lean more towards active.

Misery is a build up, though: you have to build up 3 blood lilies to actively use it. Just because it’s not a combo finisher doesn’t mean it doesn’t require a similar type of preparation.

DoT gameplay isn’t passive when you have to actively watch them and reapply them, but this is my opinion. I’m not under any illusion the developer would ever give healers a full-blown combo, so I’ll stick to requests that seem far more likely to be added to the jobs. Even if it’s more likely they’ll just remove the one DoT we have “to make things less stressful on baby healers”.

[Anvaire]

I would not support the re-addition of an Aero III equivalent in the form of a separate dot to manage.

I would however support an Aero III that applies my dot to all enemies for mass pulls.

Too many dots -> most of my damage coming from dots -> I consider it a dot class, not interested, especially when the job is allegedly supposed to be a healer.

I do not consider Afflatus Misery to be a "buildup" attack, and I agree that it should be fixed the sooner the better. I mean, do X combo X times, get to use X finisher after building up to it. Restart. To me that is more fun than managing dots, and is gameplay I would tolerate on a "healer" which SE refuses to give anything to heal. Dot gameplay leans on passive, I lean more towards active.

You know... you dont have to enjoy every class in the game? Honestly i think divergence of playstyle is a good thing and a dot class would be a divergent class that feels completely different from anything else.

I also dont think adding an extra dot to whm would actually do any harm or make it a discount dot mage. It would however give another thing for healers to manage dps wise and lets face it, that is something all healers sorely need.

[aveyond-dreams]

You know... you dont have to enjoy every class in the game? Honestly i think divergence of playstyle is a good thing and a dot class would be a divergent class that feels completely different from anything else.

I also dont think adding an extra dot to whm would actually do any harm or make it a discount dot mage. It would however give another thing for healers to manage dps wise and lets face it, that is something all healers sorely need.

You are correct in that I do not have to enjoy every class in the game. However I do not believe this mechanic should usurp the core fundamental class fantasy of something like a healer, which are too boring to play nowadays.

Managing multiple dots yet having only one real casted damage spell is not gameplay that I would be willing to accept on White Mage, or any healer that is not Scholar-which should absolutely receive its spells back. At present I have no reason to play White Mage, adding another dot would do nothing to pull me away from Astrologian or Sage, which are the only healers I play these days.

If you are going to add abilities, add something active and that doesn't lean towards busywork. You will never be able to convince me that watching a timer for 30 seconds is active. I like *doing* not *watching.* Adding dots for the sake of adding something will not fix the core issues with healers at the moment. The ideal solution is and always will be to give something to actually heal, but failing that I don't think watching dot timers is anymore fun than waiting for the predictable raid-wide to occur, rinse and repeat.

[Karni]

Every sch main I have talked to would love to have miasma, miasma2, shadowflare and/or bane back. I personally found healers across the board more interesting and enjoyable to play in previous expacs in Heavensward and Stormblood with more dots compared to Shb and EW

[HyoMinPark]

Adding DoTs wouldn’t disrupt any core fantasy. If anything, it would restore it. Since the healers in this game began with more than just a single DoT and a single nuke. WHM started with 2 DoTs in ARR (upgraded to 3 in HW), and SCH had 5 innate ones; not even counting that they could cross-class Aero back in the day. AST began with 2 as well. As it stands, the healers have no core class fantasy anymore (outside of maybe WHM in that the devs force it into being the GCD “burst” healer compared to the other 3 primarily using oGCDs).

The developers have made it abundantly clear that the only additional healing they will ever provide healers in this game is more button bloat in healing abilities that we never have to press in most content. They have outright told healers that if they want to be more engaged, go do Ultimate (which doesn’t require even 50% healing uptime).

The idea of giving healers another DoT to manage would be to not have it also be 30 seconds so the “rotation” is DoT I > DoT II > nuke > repeat when it’s time to refresh. Ideally you would make the timers different so that active management is required. Aero III was 24 seconds to Aero II’s 18 seconds in SB. Watching timers would be more engaging than doing 1-2-3, which would requires less watching. Even if you added a build-up finisher, since those are signaled usually by a job gauge sound telling you they’re ready.

The only healer that can really get away with the 1 DoT 1 nuke design is AST. And that’s only because it has something else to manage. I was fine with this design in SB while WHM and SCH had multiple DoTs to upkeep.

Adding dots for the sake of adding something will not fix the core issues with healers at the moment.

It would make them less boring to play, and make them more active. It wouldn’t fix the lack of healing uptime, but neither would adding in a 1-2-3 + healer Midare build-up attack.

[Anvaire]

Adding DoTs wouldn’t disrupt any core fantasy. If anything, it would restore it. Since the healers in this game began with more than just a single DoT and a single nuke. WHM started with 2 DoTs in ARR (upgraded to 3 in HW), and SCH had 5 innate ones; not even counting that they could cross-class Aero back in the day. AST began with 2 as well. As it stands, the healers have no core class fantasy anymore (outside of maybe WHM in that the devs force it into being the GCD “burst” healer compared to the other 3 primarily using oGCDs).

The developers have made it abundantly clear that the only additional healing they will ever provide healers in this game is more button bloat in healing abilities that we never have to press in most content. They have outright told healers that if they want to be more engaged, go do Ultimate (which doesn’t require even 50% healing uptime).

The idea of giving healers another DoT to manage would be to not have it also be 30 seconds so the “rotation” is DoT I > DoT II > nuke > repeat when it’s time to refresh. Ideally you would make the timers different so that active management is required. Aero III was 24 seconds to Aero II’s 18 seconds in SB. Watching timers would be more engaging than doing 1-2-3, which would requires less watching. Even if you added a build-up finisher, since those are signaled usually by a job gauge sound telling you they’re ready.

The only healer that can really get away with the 1 DoT 1 nuke design is AST. And that’s only because it has something else to manage. I was fine with this design in SB while WHM and SCH had multiple DoTs to upkeep.



It would make them less boring to play, and make them more active. It wouldn’t fix the lack of healing uptime, but neither would adding in a 1-2-3 + healer Midare build-up attack.

The biggets problem with healer is ultimately an unfixable role issue. Healing difficulty can only ever decrease week by week as players gain more gear and are able to mitigate to a greater degree. It makes sense to me why healing ceiling in terms of tools and kit has already been reached. The fundamental core of the issue is that the holy trinity of Tank, Healer and Dps will always result in the Healer getting the short end of the stick. Ultimately Pure healers need to be Heavy Support DPS with Healing to avoid it but designating them as such would make balancing DPS almost impossible.

I think Healers need to have a core and engaging DPS rotation that is supplemented by healing toolkit over a predemoninately healing toolkit with sprinkles of DPS abilities. But even if they added a more complex dps rotation i think healers will feel underwhelming, personally, because of the natural nerf to damage as gear and player skill improve.

[tearagion]

The biggets problem with healer is ultimately an unfixable role issue. Healing difficulty can only ever decrease week by week as players gain more gear and are able to mitigate to a greater degree. It makes sense to me why healing ceiling in terms of tools and kit has already been reached. The fundamental core of the issue is that the holy trinity of Tank, Healer and Dps will always result in the Healer getting the short end of the stick. Ultimately Pure healers need to be Heavy Support DPS with Healing to avoid it but designating them as such would make balancing DPS almost impossible.

I think Healers need to have a core and engaging DPS rotation that is supplemented by healing toolkit over a predemoninately healing toolkit with sprinkles of DPS abilities. But even if they added a more complex dps rotation i think healers will feel underwhelming, personally, because of the natural nerf to damage as gear and player skill improve.

It's only a problem because their dps toolkit is so extremely lackluster and to a lesser extent the oGCD healing options being bloated, and it certainly isn't 'unfixable'. Cleric stance (as clunky as it was) theoretically solved the macro of healing and mitigation optimization, and multiple DPS skills that weren't spammable (DoTs most serviceable) solved the moment to moment gameplay of healing optimization. Things like Phlegma are a very small step in the right direction, though has problems of its own related to being a CD stacking nuke. Just making healers the shitty DPS with bandaids to hand out is a stupid solution and unnecessarily undermines the player fantasy of picking a healer job.

[HyoMinPark]

It's only a problem because their dps toolkit is so extremely lackluster and to a lesser extent the oGCD healing options being bloated, and it certainly isn't 'unfixable'. Cleric stance (as clunky as it was) theoretically solved the macro of healing and mitigation optimization, and multiple DPS skills that weren't spammable (DoTs most serviceable) solved the moment to moment gameplay of healing optimization. Things like Phlegma are a very small step in the right direction, though has problems of its own related to being a CD stacking nuke. Just making healers the shitty DPS with bandaids to hand out is a stupid solution and unnecessarily undermines the player fantasy of picking a healer job.

To be honest, I really miss old Cleric Stance. It required you to really consider “Is it safe to deal damage now”, “Will I need to execute a heal within the next few seconds”. It felt purposeful to optimize Cleric usage, and I really wish that we could have kept that design. With the scripted nature of encounters, yeah it wouldn’t have an unpredictable usage timeline—but it would require healers to do a bit more thinking in terms of what needs to be done versus “nuke nuke nuke nuke—oh, tank took a hit > oGCD heal—nuke nuke nuke nuke”.

Crit autos helped a little bit with sort of forcing healers to actually pay attention to tank health, and I really wish they hadn’t been removed in ShB onwards content. But ultimately, I would also prefer more instances where I need to be healing. However, this won’t happen. The developers have outright expressed their hesitancy in upping the amount of damage a party takes…so we are just relegated to gimped damage dealer. There is nothing else for us to really be at this point. We’re healers in name only.

I think the requests for damage rotations come from the developers basically walling us on asking to be more of a healer.

[Anvaire]

It's only a problem because their dps toolkit is so extremely lackluster and to a lesser extent the oGCD healing options being bloated, and it certainly isn't 'unfixable'. Cleric stance (as clunky as it was) theoretically solved the macro of healing and mitigation optimization, and multiple DPS skills that weren't spammable (DoTs most serviceable) solved the moment to moment gameplay of healing optimization. Things like Phlegma are a very small step in the right direction, though has problems of its own related to being a CD stacking nuke. Just making healers the shitty DPS with bandaids to hand out is a stupid solution and unnecessarily undermines the player fantasy of picking a healer job.

The unfixable part is that healing checks will only get easier from patch launch week by week as ilevel rises. The dps side can be fixed, but ultimately, the role is always going to have the "boring" side / forced to dps aspect because healing will always become easier over time, at a far more impactful rate than DPS or Tank roles.
If you want to be challenged as a healer in the long term. It simply won't happen due to gear and mitigation creep.