Should healers be designed like tanks?

[SargeTheSeagull]

I haven't fully thought this out but I may as well think as I type. Tanks in 14 have an interesting feature. That is, their mitigations and aggro abilities like provoke and shirk are off globals, whereas all their GCD's are dedicated to dealing damage and minor passive effects like weak barriers (brutal shell) or self heals (storm's path). So their OGCD's are what makes them tanks while their GCD's are just their damage rotations with some tank flavored passives. Why aren't healers designed like this? Imagine if every GCD healers had was part of an actual rotation and if every healing ability was OGCD. Including things like succor or medica.

Side note, how would it feel if there were OGCD's with cast times? They'd obviously need to be short but i think it would be interesting albeit probably clunky. And healers rotations could contribute to their healing resources. Imagine sage. Cast dosis, it can proc duodosis which gives you a healing buff, it can proc tridosis which gives a gall. Everyone just took damage and you want to heal it but you don't want to consume a gall. Cast prognosis which has a 1.5 second cast time and is OGCD. This would largely solve the issue of heals being damage negative while making the game's design a little more consistent.

I'm sure not every heal would work as an ogcd as things like helios would blend with celestial opposition plus abilities like assize exist. It could also mess with WHM's lilies since their entire point is to refund you for GCD heals... And things like eukrasia would need to be reworked... Yeah this wouldn't work perfectly on jobs as they are now and would need a lot of work but I think it could be interesting at least to think about. Anyway, what do you all think?

[Jovakim]

Yes, they should. I mean, sage is almost there, very little GCD heals and most fights don't require them anyway. If we had even 2/3 of the damage rotation that tanks have, it would be great.
Also, not every GCD heal needs to go, they just need to function more or less like the WHM lilies. Again, sage almost has that. If Toxicon did double its potency and Adderstings were rewarded from Eukrasian Prognosis, then you'd be rewarded from using your shields. The other two healers would need something like that as well.

It's hard to imagine oGCDs with cast times. If they were as quick as Esuna (1s cast) and we had more instant cast damage, then I guess they could work (Esuna itself especially).

[Sebazy]

I think the idea has merit but it'd need a complete rethink of the kit rather than simply switching the existing spells to ogcds and calling it a day.

(Warhammer online comparisons intensify)

IMHO this is really what should have been tried with Sage:

A simple proc based rotation somewhat similar to DNC but with guaranteed gauge and 'feather' building rather than RNG chance for consistency. Your bread and butter basic 'medica' and 'cure' heals would still function as GCDs but be MP hungry and slow casting. Rather you'd have a modest number of oGCD instants with no cooldown but rather they would use gauge and 'feather' resources instead. Let's provisionally say gauge is your oGCD healing resource, whilst 'feathers' are for oGCD barriers with something like a 30 second cooldown to turn the oGCD barrier into a group succor alternative. Give the job full gauges and 'feathers' at the start of a Duty to give a new player a taste of what they should be aiming for with their GCD rotation.

TLDR:

Do GCD rotations to build resources, said resources allow for oGCD heals and barriers.
Standing back and mashing GCD heals is still possible but slow and punishing on MP.

[AmiableApkallu]

"Should healers be designed like tanks?"

I think this is the wrong question to ask. As I said elsewhere:

If you want to ponder the design philosophy of healers, start with the design philosophy of combat.

Damage comes in two forms: avoidable and unavoidable. Nominally, healers exist to mitigate incoming damage and restore HP after damage hits.

A party playing well reduces avoidable damage to zero. DPS playing well reduce the amount of time available for damage to go out (mobs and bosses die sooner rather than later). Tanks playing well make it more predictable who receives damage (the tanks) and reduce it (mitigations). In other words, a party playing well works to eliminate the reasons for having the healer role in the first place, a profound sort of anti-synergy that tanks and DPS do not suffer from.

Thus, healers and their kits are designed to accommodate some amount of mistakes and some minimal level of player skill, including that of the healers themselves. To arrive at a different design, you'd necessarily have to recalibrate how damage goes out in combat and recalibrate the minimal skill level required to clear content.

The game already has 15 jobs designed around DPS kit/rotation + oGCD abilities. That's not the problem with redesigning the healers. The problem is the wide variance in content and player skill that healers are expected to cover for.

To make this concrete: What does the redesign of Raise look like?

This would largely solve the issue of heals being damage negative while making the game's design a little more consistent.

Imagine an honest-to-God heal check: the party wipes if the healer doesn't cast a heal, and lives and clears if they do cast. Calling that heal "damage negative" is absurd. Clearing means you dealt more total damage than when you wiped. A marginally higher DPS rate is irrelevant if the party wipes to HP bars hitting zero.

Necessary heals are indirect contributors to DPS rate and total damage delivered. In a game where all that matters is getting the enemies' HP down to zero before people give up (or the party hits an enrage mechanic), you wouldn't cast a heal if you didn't think it would contribute to that goal in some way, shape, or form.

[UkcsAlias]

Imagine an honest-to-God heal check: the party wipes if the healer doesn't cast a heal, and lives and clears if they do cast. Calling that heal "damage negative" is absurd. Clearing means you dealt more total damage than when you wiped. A marginally higher DPS rate is irrelevant if the party wipes to HP bars hitting zero.

Even if just 1 player dies, that already is a damage negative since even if the healer insta revives, the time gap is enough for several GCD cycles. And its amplified since the healer potency values are very low vs any dps or tank (and the icon of shame's debuff). Missing 1 cast in exchange for a heal is like missing 0.25 casts on a dps. A healer must prioritize on keeping the team alive, and in such state the members are not becoming afraid of taking risks. Since if they cannot take the risks due to low health, their DPS goes down as they will have to focus more on the survival part.

Also, most of the time when i can DPS, its because the tank can survive the encounter on his own. But there are also plenty of cases where the tank cant. Using my GCDs there is more efficient than having the tank slow down to allow me to dps. Take the double enemy count! Give the DPS aoes double the damage! I dont care about my weak fart attacks! Those are just for decoration purposes compared to any DPS attack. If i end up having some room i will use them, but if not given, it doesnt matter.

Even worse is those who complain in the lvl 50 alliance raids. Healers are completely obsolete there anyway. A healer doesnt have to do a single dps attack, and barely even any heals, and you can still win it with ease.

But still, i would like a bit more extensive DPS system, just because of slower tanks and older content. Even just 2 or 3 abilities with some synergies in them would be able to do a lot. As long as any other ability is not going to disrupt that system (to avoid the situation in which a healer is avoiding a combo loss, and therefor delays the heal to cause a teammate to die. As that is just toxic minmaxing and not your job as a healer, and never must be).

Idealy i would like it if they added a new DPS ability that scales its damage towards team health. And preferibly non linearly either, so for example a team at 100% vs a team at 80% will cause the 100% state to do well over 125% of the damage compared to the 80% state. For example: This DPS ability does 100% of its potency when the team is at max health. Dropping by 10% (multiplicative) for each missing 5%. At 80% this means only 65% of its damage is dealt, and at 50% its 35%. Or alternatively, a 1000 potency attack that charges based on teamhealth. If needed even with static tresholds to give players a clear target health value.

[Semirhage]

Imagine an honest-to-God heal check: the party wipes if the healer doesn't cast a heal, and lives and clears if they do cast. Calling that heal "damage negative" is absurd. Clearing means you dealt more total damage than when you wiped. A marginally higher DPS rate is irrelevant if the party wipes to HP bars hitting zero.

Necessary heals are indirect contributors to DPS rate and total damage delivered. In a game where all that matters is getting the enemies' HP down to zero before people give up (or the party hits an enrage mechanic), you wouldn't cast a heal if you didn't think it would contribute to that goal in some way, shape, or form.

I think a big part of this is the war of attrition between healer kits as the years have gone by. All my many, many issues with horrible FFXIV healer design aside, you're right in a practical sense- keeping everyone alive is the true DPS gain.

But when you have, say, Astrologian, who has a crapload of completely free cooldowns that don't cost DPS, are more than enough to cover any outgoing damage, and don't interrupt your damage in the slightest? Playing a job (*cough* WHM *cough*) that has to use personal DPS-negative heals (especially when said personal DPS is the only thing that your job brings to the table, and even more so before DPS-neutral lilies) while the other healer job gets to fart out lossless heals whenever they want, you start clamoring for something similar.

The gordian knot that keeps the discussion focused on personal DPS loss is just how many absurd instant and free heals the healer kits have, and the fact that the largest number of them are on the jobs that are theoretically designed to need them the least.

[IllyaPrisma]

But when you have, say, Astrologian, who has a crapload of completely free cooldowns that don't cost DPS, are more than enough to cover any outgoing damage, and don't interrupt your damage in the slightest? Playing a job (*cough* WHM *cough*) that has to use personal DPS-negative heals (especially when said personal DPS is the only thing that your job brings to the table, and even more so before DPS-neutral lilies) while the other healer job gets to fart out lossless heals whenever they want, you start clamoring for something similar.

This seems a bit out of touch. WHM is actually the only healer that can use GCDs (excluding Macro and Pneuma) on healing without it being a DPS loss.

[AnotherPerson]

This seems a bit out of touch. WHM is actually the only healer that can use GCDs (excluding Macro and Pneuma) on healing without it being a DPS loss.

You may want to re-read that in full. They said "even more so before DPS-neutral lilies", which is true. DPS-neutral lilies were only introduced in 6.1. Before 6.1, using lilies was a DPS loss as it took 4 GCDs to give the output of 3 glares.

[GoatOfWar]

I think this is the wrong question to ask. As I said elsewhere:



The game already has 15 jobs designed around DPS kit/rotation + oGCD abilities. That's not the problem with redesigning the healers. The problem is the wide variance in content and player skill that healers are expected to cover for.

To make this concrete: What does the redesign of Raise look like?



Imagine an honest-to-God heal check: the party wipes if the healer doesn't cast a heal, and lives and clears if they do cast. Calling that heal "damage negative" is absurd. Clearing means you dealt more total damage than when you wiped. A marginally higher DPS rate is irrelevant if the party wipes to HP bars hitting zero.

Necessary heals are indirect contributors to DPS rate and total damage delivered. In a game where all that matters is getting the enemies' HP down to zero before people give up (or the party hits an enrage mechanic), you wouldn't cast a heal if you didn't think it would contribute to that goal in some way, shape, or form.

The game doesn't need pacifists or oongaboonga role either. A basic damage rotation won't hurt anyone.

[Jovakim]

All healers can basically ignore their GCD heals and heal most content with just oGCDs already.

Aaaand that makes them more similar to what? To tanks, of course. The only thing that's different at this point is the lack of dps buttons and too many superfluous GCD heals.

The few times that you do need GCD heals, it gives you an opportunity to optimize.

W-what? I really don't understand what you meant by that.
Damage is king in this game. It doesn't matter what you do, if you're stopping your dps to do anything else, you're throwing optimization out in the trash. Sure, letting people die avoidable deaths is less then optimal, but as long as you can do it while not losing dps, you're optimizing.

Healers would need so many powerful oGCDs to be able to heal in prog and world first. It would make the role that is already easy even easier.

As I said in my previous comment, it's not necessary to throw away every GCD heal. They'll be there as long as there are mechanics that let you keep some of them dps neutral.

Just look at PLD. They have Clemency, and most (decent) players try to avoid using it if they can help it. When things are going smoothly, they don't need to use it at all, but when things go badly they have that one tool that can save a run. The exact same goes for healers.
Do we need more proof that tanks and healers aren't (and shouldn't be) that different?
Edit: Disregard this bit, I didn't explain what I wanted to say, at all.

Imagine an honest-to-God heal check: the party wipes if the healer doesn't cast a heal, and lives and clears if they do cast. Calling that heal "damage negative" is absurd. Clearing means you dealt more total damage than when you wiped.

You might not like it, but that's just what it is. Also, clearing =/= optimizing a clear. Keeping an optimized run is saving everyone from said heal check only using your oGCDs or one of the very few dps neutral CGD heals that exists.

Necessary heals are indirect contributors to DPS rate and total damage delivered.

Yes, of course. But wouldn't it be doubly better if you could get rewarded for that time you spent healing, by doing more damage afterward? Or to just keep dpsing and healing at the same time (oGCDs)?

You honestly act like we want to throw away all healing skills from the game. That's not it chief.

To arrive at a different design, you'd necessarily have to recalibrate how damage goes out in combat and recalibrate the minimal skill level required to clear content.

Not at all. Big overhauls to encounters are not necessary. The blueprint for dps neutral heals (Lillies) is already there. And oGCD heals are already plentiful.
After dps neutral heals are done, all the devs need to do is add more damage skills to fill the massive void that healing downtime is.