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

[Renathras]

As we agree on one thing, I think one important difference to be pointed out is just how healing works technically. WoW always had a pretty good makro system that had to be reigned down quite alot in its past actually and was always open for addons, which it will occassionally adapt, which lead to mouse over healing becoming pretty much the norm for WoW. It should be a standart feature. Having to regularily switch targets manually is just not comfortable and the shorter gcd makes healing actually more flexible. Then there is stuff like Damage profiles, damage is far more frequent but individually usually smaller in WoW, which makes regen healing more valuable because it serves the purpose of overall smoothing out the parties health bars. And in modern WoW, healing is really a maintanance and management game, one important aspect of WoW Healing is maintaining your healing tools on the party, with healer dps, often synergizing with the way Healers heal or being enabled by their healing style.

Yeah, kind of agree with all of that overall. I wonder if part of it is due to WoW straddling the era of "old school" MMOs and modern thempark ones. When WoW came out, it was originally a semi-Everquest clone that was (irony) catered to casual players (what counted as casual at the time - how far we've come, eh?). When it launched, FFXI had been out about a year or so. There were no DF/PF type tools, no Wikis, theorycrafting didn't exist - even the Devs had no idea what was going on; look at the 1.0 talent trees sometime or how tank gear would have agility DPSer stats, etc. It was just a total mess.

And no one cared because it was this immersive world that they got into and had fun with the people they met in it. Sure, most of Molten Snore was braindead easy, a third of the raid DCing due to dial-up sucking and mom having to make a phone call, some classes (particularly Hunter) just auto-attacking entire fights (you think one BUTTON spam is bad, imagine NO button spam!) because bosses had limited debuff spots (so no Windbite type procs allowed, Hunters! Other classes had more important debuffs than you!), and don't forget the only healer that healed was Priest. Paladins were for buffing, Druids were for Innervating the Priest to make sure they didn't run out of mana, and Shaman were for Tremor Totem or something. And note I didn't mention spec - if you were a class with a healing spec, you were in the "healer" slot (for your class), you didn't do damage or tank. That would be absurd. Only Warriors tanked - and also did fantastic damage, go figure.

The whole thing was a mess, but it was a glorious mess when the general playerbase had either never played an MMO before or their "MMO" experience was text based MUDs or Runescape.

EDIT (for space):

But, because of that core, I think it was allowed to grow in different ways that FFXIV's Jobs have not. FFXIV was born once the themepark era had taken hold. While not EXCLUSIVELY, that's probably PARTIALLY the reason 1.0 failed so miserably. It wouldn't have been a great game with all its issues, but if it launched in 2002, it would probably have been a decently successful game because players - frankly - just put up with more back then. 2.0+ was built around being in that new era, and counteracting 1.0's attempt to be an updated FFXI. And this was iterated on in 3.0 and 4.0 to move further from that core and paradigm.

I can't be sure, but I feel like WoW kind of got lucky in that sense and I'm not sure FFXIV can repeat that luck IN THAT WAY because of the different era it exists in. WoW can get away with those legacy systems because it just kind of carried them on, though there were absolutely complaints when they did things like remove spell ranks on Holy Priest (and everyone, but I REMEMBER that one being a big deal) and talent trees, substituting in new systems that supposedly did the same thing (but Cata healing paradigm sucked, even if it was supposed to replace downranking, because the encounter designs didn't reflect that). FFXIV, on the other hand, has tried to get away from 1.0 and arguably 2.0.

Hence why WHM leveling design teaches "bad" healing - because it was designed in ARR, when that was actually GOOD healing because oGCD healing didn't exist as it does today. Level 50 WHM had, what, Benediction? Its other oGCDs were Presence of Mind and Divine Seal, neither of which is an oGCD heal.

SGE does that job of teaching better because it's designed entirely in the new paradigm.

Personally, I think DoTs are very good design for healers (since it allows them to still contribute DPS whilst GCD healing), especially for Scholar considering how it played in FFXI and the general class fantasy. They also provided a lot of depth to the class in a way that makes it accessible for casual players and gave more "professional" players more chances to optimise and generally provided an engaging gameplay experience for all different types of players.

I don't disagree that DoTs can allow healers to do other things while the damage is still going.

I DO disagree that it makes it "accessible for casual players". One of the biggest healer "mistakes" of casual players is their DoTs fall off. All the time. And since a good chunk of their damage is from their DoTs, when the DoTs fall off, that's a pretty big hit. It seems that, in practice, DoT upkeep is actually an advanced skill that casual players aren't good at. So if anything, they're bad, not good, for casual players. The only way to fix that would be to reduce their part of damage contribution, but if their potencies were too low relative to the nuke spells, then there'd be no reason to use them. So it's kind of a Catch 22 there. But at the least, I think it's safe to say DoTs are inaccessible for casual players. DoT uptime and snapshoting is something that experienced and high skilled players excel at, not lower skilled and casual ones.

I also think it's perfectly fine for some players to feel emotional at a class they enjoyed being changed for no real reason, considering that 3 years later in Endwalker healing requirements are still incredibly low (meaning that the removal of DPS tools was mostly pointless). Good for those players that somehow enjoy spamming broil/glare/dosis/malefic as well new players who play healer, but the current design is completely unsustainable for the longevity of the game.

It's understandable, but it's probably wrong to draw assumptions that weight that too heavily and apply them to the role and playerbase as a whole.

As for sustainability and longevity of the game, it's not unsustainable at all. It's not GREAT, though. I think this is another case of hyprbole. FFXIV could keep this healing model for 2,3,6 expansions and be fine. The question should be "Is 'fine' good enough?", and I think the answer is "If it can be better...why not make it better?"

The overstatement of the doom of the game is a problem, but arguing for changes to make it better is something entirely worthwhile, imo.