How to easily have healers dps engaged ( yet another thread)

[GrimGale]

Again, the intrinsic problem with healing is that experience and practice rewards you with an awful gameplay loop.

[T-Owl]

Again, the intrinsic problem with healing is that experience and practice rewards you with an awful gameplay loop.

I think it goes further. Healing itself is counter-intuitive, with GCD healing being undesirable in any situation outside of emergencies or having to survive big incoming damage as a shield healer, when its the opposite in pretty much any other game. And due to the way makros are shit in this game, healing is just clunky for Keyboard and Mouse.

[flowerfairy]

I think it goes further. Healing itself is counter-intuitive, with GCD healing being undesirable in any situation outside of emergencies or having to survive big incoming damage as a shield healer, when its the opposite in pretty much any other game. And due to the way makros are shit in this game, healing is just clunky for Keyboard and Mouse.

Too right. Healing would become 500x more engaging already if half of the oGCDS were purged and the other half put on a longer cooldown. I'm okay with macros in general being unwieldy, but mouseover actions is definitely something this game should improve.

[T-Owl]

Too right. Healing would become 500x more engaging already if half of the oGCDS were purged and the other half put on a longer cooldown. I'm okay with macros in general being unwieldy, but mouseover actions is definitely something this game should improve.

To be honest? I won't. With how low healing requirements are and how lacking the dps toolkits of all healers are, especially lacking much synergy with their toolkit for the most part, weaving most of my heals inbetween dps casts and having to manage my ogcd cooldowns is the one fun thing the game has going for in terms of healers. The GCD heal just are not exciting in this game.

[flowerfairy]

To be honest? I won't. With how low healing requirements are and how lacking the dps toolkits of all healers are, especially lacking much synergy with their toolkit for the most part, weaving most of my heals inbetween dps casts and having to manage my ogcd cooldowns is the one fun thing the game has going for in terms of healers. The GCD heal just are not exciting in this game.

I'll gladly sacrifice those oGCD heals for a better dps toolkit. Healing requirements will never be demanding so long as every instance of damage is predictable.

[Mortex]

Too right. Healing would become 500x more engaging already if half of the oGCDS were purged and the other half put on a longer cooldown. I'm okay with macros in general being unwieldy, but mouseover actions is definitely something this game should improve.

The Problem with ogcds heal pruning is that the entire situation would change from glare spam too a 3 gcd medica spam before you resume glare. It changes one button for another, for 2-3 gcds and that’s it. There is still tons of downtime and 1 button spam just because ff 14 has these fight like this.

[flowerfairy]

The Problem with ogcds heal pruning is that the entire situation would change from glare spam too a 3 gcd medica spam before you resume glare. It changes one button for another, for 2-3 gcds and that’s it. There is still tons of downtime and 1 button spam just because ff 14 has these fight like this.

Yeah of course. I think that pruning the oGCDS that add little to your gameplay makes space for buttons that make downtime less boring. That will be knocking down two birds with one stone.

[Renathras]

The Problem with ogcds heal pruning is that the entire situation would change from glare spam too a 3 gcd medica spam before you resume glare. It changes one button for another, for 2-3 gcds and that’s it. There is still tons of downtime and 1 button spam just because ff 14 has these fight like this.

Yeah, but isn't that ALREADY an improvement?

Healing would be more engaging if you were actually pressing more buttons, and that would be pressing more buttons.

Further, it would make things like efficiency and MP management actually important concepts. As it is, you blow oGCDs, everything is healed, you then spam Glare and keep Lucid on CD. There's no thought or nuance there.

Actively choosing between Medica or Cure 3, Cure 1 or Cure 2, Regen, or Cure 1/2, and when a situation DOES warrant using one of your more limited oGCD emergency tools already sounds more engaging. And it's not like things would necessarily be massively HARDER, per se (if that's a concern). Anything you heal with Afflatus Solace/Tetragrammaton or Afflatus Rapture can be directly substituted for Cure 2 and Medica 1, respectively, as they have the same potencies. It's not as direct, but a lot of the other healers have similar tool comparisons, like Lustrate/Excog to Physic/Adlo (ish) and so on. If the MP costs are somewhat reduced and healers actually have MP regen tools that are used for when MP is low and not on CD (imagine if Lucid had a weaker base potency but scaled higher the lower your MP was when you used it, rewarding waiting to use it until lower MP values instead of just keeping it rolling), then there'd still be no problems.

The fact is, healers press far more than 1/2 buttons NOW. Just the community has decided if they aren't GCDs, they don't count. So if healing was shifted to GCDs and oGCD heals were emergency/panic buttons (as they arguably should be), that would already fix the complaints...

...or reveal them as (some people) complaining because they want to DPS instead of heal and don't REALLY want to have to press more buttons if it means more healing buttons...

[Semirhage]

...or reveal them as (some people) complaining because they want to DPS instead of heal and don't REALLY want to have to press more buttons if it means more healing buttons...

HeALeRs shOULd HeAL oNLy, every time.

[Renathras]

HeALeRs shOULd HeAL oNLy, every time.

ExCePt lItErAlLy nO oNe sAiD ThAt aT AlL.

EDIT: Seriously, SHOW ME where someone - anyone, but especially me - said "healers should heal only". Show me this direct quote. Or admit you're using a strawman fallacy and STOP doing it. Either is fine by me.

My two cents: If you want healers to engage more meaningfully with the healing portion of their toolkits, the first thing that needs to change is encounter design, i.e., the reason healers have those buttons in the first place.

The best, most practical suggestions I've seen so far for increasing outgoing damage from mobs and bosses are:

• Let auto attacks crit again.
• Let auto attacks continue through casts.
• Randomize who gets hit by auto attacks.

I gather that some or all of these used to be aspects of game play before I started playing. Regardless, unpredictability would keep healers from falling asleep while waiting for the next scripted raid wide or tank buster.

Oh I don't disagree with that.

But the encounter design has fallen into the trap of making the oGCDs the common used healing spells and GCDs the rare use emergency tools when most games (and most healer design) does the opposite and to better effect. MOST of our oGCD direct heals/HoTs have a GCD counterpart. The only weird ones are we don't have cast mitigation spells now that Protect (for what it was) is gone.

The big thing is to mix-up damage (instead of 30 sec of nothing then spikes of damage (oGCD through), 30 seconds of nothing which heavily encourages oGCD plans and not using GCD heals. I feel that design is partly driven by the oGCDs, though, as fewer oGCDs that were up less often would mean more smooth damage patterns since the spike system wouldn't work so well anymore for encounter design.