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

[Sighearth]

Hello all, everyone here already knows that we want more engaging content, either by increasing healing requirement or giving more things to do (specially dps things). But instead of reworking entire jobs or adding a lot of stuff, I've come with the purpose to increase the level of engagement in a simplistic way. Something that the devs could do easily on a patch. Also without increasing the number of buttons we currently have.

I think WHM is in a good spot right now in that regard so I would leave it as it is. For the rest I would do something like this

For SCH: Just make SCH get a proc of Energy Drain ready (that makes your next ED consume no AF stack) when you spend AF stacks in healing. Every time you use Dissipation (while the buff is active) you can use 1 strong gcd named meltdown or something (dissipation button becomes meltdown for the duration) so you can actually have a burst phase (which is your dissipation) you can pool 3 EDs from AF + 3 EDs from dissipation + that strong gcd would feel good.

For SGE: Every time you heal someone with Kardia you increase your kardia gauge, you can spend 50 of this gauge to use a strong GCD something like Eukrasia phlegma that does damage + leaves a short dot (like 10s or so). Soteria also give +50% the amount of gauge. Rhizomata would give +50 gauge as well. So you would try maximize eukrasia phlegma dot uptime and in raid buffs.

For AST: Every card gives damage as it is now + an extra effect (not related to damage) so bole is like 10% mit, spear is like increased range (single target) (so you could help melee with uptime), ewer is mana (aoe mana), balance is a potent regen (single target), spire is movement speed (single target) and arrow is increased max HP (or give it like an Warden's Paean). Also I think we could have astrodyne giving a buff ( called black hole or something) that your next gravity II will do increased damage (a gain in single target) and require no cast time I think that would be pretty neat.

[ty_taurus]

Healing needs an overhaul, but this is more like throwing some new paint on a house with crumbling walls.

WHM is not in a good place balance wise nor gameplay wise. The lily system is a nice change of pace, but the job needs to bring the lilies down to early levels and expand on the system to make your GCD usage more evenly balanced between a slightly more developed rotation and utilizing lilies that reward you with bursty DPS refunds. The job also needs to have an answer to mitigation. If we want the pure vs barrier healer dynamic to survive, then sure its mitigation can be limited or come at an opportunity cost, but it simply doesn't have an answer to how damage is foundationally being handled in higher levels of content.

SCH needs a rework. It's confusing for new players to go from ACN to SCH, and the kit is bloated and at war with itself. It also should return to having a DoT focused DPS rotation like it once did, restoring tools like Miasma and Shadowflare, and its resources need to be reworked. The Fey Gauge is a disgrace to gauge mechanics and why does a job need 2 different resources for healing? Why not make the Fey Gauge your healing gauge and turn Aetherflow into your offensive gauge?

SGE is not a DPS healer and it should have a massive expansion of offensive tools or merging supportive tools with new offensive ones. It should feel like the GNB of the healers otherwise what was the point of advertising it as the DPS healer if it's going to play identically to every other healer?

AST is already known to be receiving an overhaul, to whatever extent the devs have planned. I've said it before, but I'd like to see its cards become GCD, its casting focus transition to support, and have the cards additionally generate passive, Malefic-potency damage through a new gauge mechanic. This gives thou-shall-not-DPS healers a job that may still need to maintain Combust and throw a few DPS buttons out once in a while, but can redirect a lot of their focus to spreading buffs.

[Renathras]

This gives thou-shall-not-DPS healers a job that may still need to maintain Combust and throw a few DPS buttons out once in a while, but can redirect a lot of their focus to spreading buffs.

In other words, it gives them nothing, because "thou-shall-not-DPS" healers hate DoTs/maintaining them? Though I do think buffing instead of DPS would be fun, good god, I hate DoTs. DoTs are the worst invention in any videogame ever. I don't mind DoTs if a Job is built entirely around their use (e.g. Warlock in WoW or something), but as just a tacked on "upkeep thing", they are the most obnoxious and uninspired mechanic ever, and I abjectly hate them. No, I don't want to have to squint at the boss health bar to see when that tiny little number is less than 3 and remember to press it again.

I'd rather have buffs with a single direct damage spell like Glare, Malific, or Ruin 2. No DoTs, please. Hell, one of my issues with healers right now is THEY ALL HAVE DOTS. It's THE EXACT SAME (in terms of DPS gain and duration) DoT, too!

I'd be perfectly happy if WHM got rid of Aero/Dia entirely and had a Ruin 2 movement/weave tool instead. That, a second party mitigation (I always feel like WHM needs a 60 sec or so partywide mitigation; make Asylum 60 sec and give it a damage reduction - blahblah stepping on Sacred Soil's toes, whatever, it would be true to the name Asylum and it needs SOMETHING for when Temperance is on CD), and I'd be happy with the Job. Maybe rework FreeCure into a 25% chance proc when you use Cure 1, Cure 2, or Glare to proc a free, boosted damage thing (like how old SMN had Ruin 2 proc Ruin 4 randomly, before they tied that to Egi Assaults) to kind of mix things up some so when you're casting Cure 1 or Cure 2 you have a chance to be refunded with a boosted instant cast damage spell, and every 3-6 Glare casts, the proc would give you a reason to hit that second dps button instead.

I'd MUCH rather have that than Dia as a DoT.

But yeah, a second party mitigation (either an existing spell or a new one), and removing the DoT but trading it in for an instant cast movement tool that can also be proc'd into a more powerful version for a dps gain over Glare/a partial damage refund for having to cast Cures would basically fix WHM entirely for me.

[ty_taurus]

In other words, it gives them nothing, because "thou-shall-not-DPS" healers hate DoTs/maintaining them? Though I do think buffing instead of DPS would be fun, good god, I hate DoTs. DoTs are the worst invention in any videogame ever. I don't mind DoTs if a Job is built entirely around their use (e.g. Warlock in WoW or something), but as just a tacked on "upkeep thing", they are the most obnoxious and uninspired mechanic ever, and I abjectly hate them. No, I don't want to have to squint at the boss health bar to see when that tiny little number is less than 3 and remember to press it again.

I'd rather have buffs with a single direct damage spell like Glare, Malific, or Ruin 2. No DoTs, please. Hell, one of my issues with healers right now is THEY ALL HAVE DOTS. It's THE EXACT SAME (in terms of DPS gain and duration) DoT, too!

I'd be perfectly happy if WHM got rid of Aero/Dia entirely and had a Ruin 2 movement/weave tool instead. That, a second party mitigation (I always feel like WHM needs a 60 sec or so partywide mitigation; make Asylum 60 sec and give it a damage reduction - blahblah stepping on Sacred Soil's toes, whatever, it would be true to the name Asylum and it needs SOMETHING for when Temperance is on CD), and I'd be happy with the Job. Maybe rework FreeCure into a 25% chance proc when you use Cure 1, Cure 2, or Glare to proc a free, boosted damage thing (like how old SMN had Ruin 2 proc Ruin 4 randomly, before they tied that to Egi Assaults) to kind of mix things up some so when you're casting Cure 1 or Cure 2 you have a chance to be refunded with a boosted instant cast damage spell, and every 3-6 Glare casts, the proc would give you a reason to hit that second dps button instead.

I'd MUCH rather have that than Dia as a DoT.

But yeah, a second party mitigation (either an existing spell or a new one), and removing the DoT but trading it in for an instant cast movement tool that can also be proc'd into a more powerful version for a dps gain over Glare/a partial damage refund for having to cast Cures would basically fix WHM entirely for me.

I mean you just won't be able to eliminate direct DPS entirely. The combat system just doesn't allow it. I've expressed my specific take on what I'd do with AST before. Basically you'd have two Draw actions, one for offensive buffs and the other for defensive. Both the Draw and the Play would be separate GCD actions with 30 second cooldowns and 2 charges.That's 4 GCDs per 30 seconds. Additionally, I'd make it so that the buff effects don't immediately occur, but rather, the card is sitting on your target until activated. You activate all offensive cards with one AoE heal GCD spell, and you have another that activates all defensive cards. All of these actions would yield the DPS refund that you can pass on to someone else to trigger for you with an OGCD action.

That said, I'd be fine exchanging the DoT with something like a delayed attack--a premonition of sorts where all the damage occurs as the effect expires, though that could get tricky since the spell gets entirely wasted if it expires while a target goes through a phase change which could be annoying, and overwriting the effect could completely invalidate a previous cast which seems punishing. It would be more thematic though.

Although AST needs some tweaks, this would be far more painful that the current state. AST is interesting since it can buff , heal, and DPS with some mobility. Not be a buff-bot that is there solely to support others, and maybe once or twice, throw out a DPS skill.

How I'd handle it is you'd still be doing DPS, it's just that the DPS would generate as you place buffs on allies and is a resource you'd need to manage. You could either pass off stacks of that damage for someone else to use, though that damage would still technically come from you and be treated as your own selfish DPS, or you could grant yourself the effect that detonates those stacks and manually trigger them with Malefic.

However you spin it, we have multiple different jobs under one role. Why aren't they taking different approaches to achieving the same thing? If someone wants to play a direct DPS healer, we can have a direct DPS healer, but not everyone wants that. So why don't we create an indirect DPS healer? We do ultimately need to have every healer contribute to DPS because if one just doesn't, then that healer's going to be thrown out of the meta entirely. But if you can generate DPS indirectly, you can have a healer who focuses on support while still having contribution.

One thing we have to accept is that things need to change if we want the healing role to not be the disaster it currently is. Jobs need to change. Excessive healing buttons should be cut even if they feel good to use and are great tools because we have way too much free healing and its sapping all the value out of our GCD heals. If we want the healing role to change and get fixed, but don't want anything to change or get removed, then it's no wonder healers are in the state they are.

[Renathras]

Honestly, at this point, I'd just like to see a healer that has something other than "Nuke + 30 sec DoT + once a min or so third DPS button". And I say this as a healer that doesn't find DPS enjoyable and is thus perfectly content to have 1 button DPS. Even I find the "111111111112111111111123; repeat" to be stupid. We have 4 healers, why do they all have essentially an identical heal kit? If one is 11111111111111111 while another is 123123123 and another is 1112111311121114, this would be better to me than them all being essentially identical. Glare, Dia, Misery. Dosis, Eukrasia Dosis, Plegma. Malific, Combust, Earthly Star (I guess? Don't ever play AST because I don't care much for it). SCH is the only one that's at all different because it has Ruin 2 for a spamable (but you don't WANT to spam it) movement tool (useful for things like Wraith donuts in Delubrium) and that Energy Drain isn't a 45/60 sec GCD but rather a semi-spamable (limited by resource) oGCD. But even that is, for most purposes, 11111111111211111111112 between Broil and Byolysis, just with "3" weaves for Energy Drain (if not using the AF for healing; 6 under Dissipation) and Ruin 2 as an option.

As much as I'd be happy for WHM to just lose Dia and ONLY have Glare (and Misery), I'd also love to see some other design space across the healers. One having a simple 1-2-3 rotation like MCH does (which is just 1-2-3 with oGCD weaves and the 1-2-3 doesn't break when they use their other GCDs, so the hypothetical healer's wouldn't either, allowing them to freely cast cure GCDs if needed without gimping themselves) and one having something more proc or context based would not go amiss, imo.

That we have 4 healers but they all have MORE OR LESS identical rotations is just stupid. We have 4 tanks and they aren't TERRIBLY complicated, but each of them still feels like I'm playing a different thing when I swap between them because they all have different rotations, even their core rotations. WAR has an occasional upkeep buff finisher, PLD swaps between two finishers, a 3 hit stinger on Royal, and then the caster phase, GNB has a 1-2-3 like WAR but without the upkeep buff, instead playing with its GCD continuation abilities to prevent overcap, and DRK...well, I don't play DRK, but I'm guessing it's a bit different as well. There's no reason for healers to not be AT LEAST a bit more diverse given that.

[ty_taurus]

Honestly, at this point, I'd just like to see a healer that has something other than "Nuke + 30 sec DoT + once a min or so third DPS button". And I say this as a healer that doesn't find DPS enjoyable and is thus perfectly content to have 1 button DPS. Even I find the "111111111112111111111123; repeat" to be stupid. We have 4 healers, why do they all have essentially an identical heal kit? If one is 11111111111111111 while another is 123123123 and another is 1112111311121114, this would be better to me than them all being essentially identical. Glare, Dia, Misery. Dosis, Eukrasia Dosis, Plegma. Malific, Combust, Earthly Star (I guess? Don't ever play AST because I don't care much for it). SCH is the only one that's at all different because it has Ruin 2 for a spamable (but you don't WANT to spam it) movement tool (useful for things like Wraith donuts in Delubrium) and that Energy Drain isn't a 45/60 sec GCD but rather a semi-spamable (limited by resource) oGCD. But even that is, for most purposes, 11111111111211111111112 between Broil and Byolysis, just with "3" weaves for Energy Drain (if not using the AF for healing; 6 under Dissipation) and Ruin 2 as an option.

As much as I'd be happy for WHM to just lose Dia and ONLY have Glare (and Misery), I'd also love to see some other design space across the healers. One having a simple 1-2-3 rotation like MCH does (which is just 1-2-3 with oGCD weaves and the 1-2-3 doesn't break when they use their other GCDs, so the hypothetical healer's wouldn't either, allowing them to freely cast cure GCDs if needed without gimping themselves) and one having something more proc or context based would not go amiss, imo.

That we have 4 healers but they all have MORE OR LESS identical rotations is just stupid. We have 4 tanks and they aren't TERRIBLY complicated, but each of them still feels like I'm playing a different thing when I swap between them because they all have different rotations, even their core rotations. WAR has an occasional upkeep buff finisher, PLD swaps between two finishers, a 3 hit stinger on Royal, and then the caster phase, GNB has a 1-2-3 like WAR but without the upkeep buff, instead playing with its GCD continuation abilities to prevent overcap, and DRK...well, I don't play DRK, but I'm guessing it's a bit different as well. There's no reason for healers to not be AT LEAST a bit more diverse given that.

I mean if you don't really want to engage with a healer's rotation, if all the healers get a more developed rotation, why not just ignore the rotation and spam whatever button you want? It's not like it matters at all outside of savage anyway. You can always just not use Dia if you hate it that much.

[IDontPetLalas]

snip


How I'd handle it is you'd still be doing DPS, it's just that the DPS would generate as you place buffs on allies and is a resource you'd need to manage. You could either pass off stacks of that damage for someone else to use, though that damage would still technically come from you and be treated as your own selfish DPS, or you could grant yourself the effect that detonates those stacks and manually trigger them with Malefic.

However you spin it, we have multiple different jobs under one role. Why aren't they taking different approaches to achieving the same thing? If someone wants to play a direct DPS healer, we can have a direct DPS healer, but not everyone wants that. So why don't we create an indirect DPS healer? We do ultimately need to have every healer contribute to DPS because if one just doesn't, then that healer's going to be thrown out of the meta entirely. But if you can generate DPS indirectly, you can have a healer who focuses on support while still having contribution.

One thing we have to accept is that things need to change if we want the healing role to not be the disaster it currently is. Jobs need to change. Excessive healing buttons should be cut even if they feel good to use and are great tools because we have way too much free healing and its sapping all the value out of our GCD heals. If we want the healing role to change and get fixed, but don't want anything to change or get removed, then it's no wonder healers are in the state they are.

I appreciate your additional comments, once again, I may be mistaken, however it sounds a lot like AST would become a lot like a bard- which doesn't appeal to me.

By comparison- - I did very much enjoy a support job in another game which had a lot of utility, heals and DPS.
In that job design, it had a number of buffs to pick from that were basically toggles that could be set at any time. That was more effective and enjoyable than tracking and managing when a buff was going to run out. I could concentrate instead on heals and DPS, depending upon the circumstances.

[ty_taurus]

I appreciate your additional comments, once again, I may be mistaken, however it sounds a lot like AST would become a lot like a bard- which doesn't appeal to me.

By comparison- - I did very much enjoy a support job in another game which had a lot of utility, heals and DPS.
In that job design, it had a number of buffs to pick from that were basically toggles that could be set at any time. That was more effective and enjoyable than tracking and managing when a buff was going to run out. I could concentrate instead on heals and DPS, depending upon the circumstances.

I've explained this build before on these forums, which I mainly say because I don't really mean to sound like a broken record or present this as the "only" or "right" way to build AST or a new support-focused healer, but I think it outlines a really healthy way to create a more support-focused healer who is allowed to forego a lot of their DPS focus. So here's a simple overview of the just the card system in my own personal take on an AST rework:

1. Draw is split into 2 GCD actions: Solar Draw and Lunar Draw. Both have 30 second cooldowns with 2 charges and are independent of one another.
- Solar Draw will randomly pull either The Balance, The Arrow, or The Spear, all offensive buffs.
- Lunar Draw will randomly pull either The Bole, The Ewer, or The Spire, all defensive buffs.
- Only 1 Solar Arcanum and 1 Lunar Arcanum can exist at any given time on a party member. The effects do not activate immediately, but sit on the target until activated with another action.
- Both the act of drawing and playing a card summons 1 Lodestar that orbits around the AST. Up to 6 Lodestars can orbit the AST at a given time.

2. Celestial Opposition and Celestial Intersection are moved to the GCD along with a new action: Celestial River. Each of these has a 60 second cooldown with 2 charges.
- Celestial Opposition is a GCD AoE heal of 200 potency. It additionally generates 1 Lodestar. All allies healed that have Lunar Arcanum on them have the Lunar Arcanum activated. Example: The Bole adds a 10% damage reduction buff on top of the 200 potency heal.
- Celestial River is the same as Celestial Opposition, but triggers all Solar Arcanum. Example: The Balance adds a 5% increased damage dealt buff on top of the 200 potency heal.
- Celestial Intersection is a 400 potency single target heal that activates both Lunar and Solar Arcanum on 1 target and generates a Lodestar.

3. Stargazer is a new OGCD action on a 5 second cooldown that applies 2 stacks of a unique buff to either yourself or another party member. When using a spell or weaponskill, 1 stack is consumed, which causes 1 of the AST's existing Lodestars to attack the first enemy attacked by the buffed party member's action, dealing your current Malefic potency to the first enemy and dealing 50% less damage to nearby enemies.

The main point I'm trying to convey with this concept is that we can potentially create a healer who spends much of their GCD time targeting allies with buffs and healing in place of DPSing. Because the buffs are also not immediate, you aren't creating a healer that's necessarily keeping up lots of buffs constantly, but rather setting up buff windows to activate later. This is just the core of the concept and other tools can be added around it as well, for example, I imagine Horoscope could possibly be reworked to apply a 1 random Lunar Arcanum to the party to set you up for upcoming mechanics in savage. The numbers in this example could also change of course, but again it's really just about communicating the idea of something that allows players who want a healer that can break away from being green DPS.

[Cheremia]

(I always feel like WHM needs a 60 sec or so partywide mitigation; make Asylum 60 sec and give it a damage reduction - blahblah stepping on Sacred Soil's toes, whatever, it would be true to the name Asylum and it needs SOMETHING for when Temperance is on CD)

Sacred Soil stepped on asylums toes first with getting a regen on it
It's too late for Asylum to step on Sacred's toes if Sacred is stomping all over it already

Glad to see I'm not the only one who doesn't find Dots engaging. I Liked Aero 3s animation but that was it.
It was ALWAYS: Use Aero 3 then Aero 2, it was never an option to do anything else. It was just hit button 1, then your instant button 2, done. Repeat when Button 1 is about to fall off.
Sch's dot management was the same and that one short ranged 5 second one wasn't anything fun either, felt pointless to use on single bosses.
I did not feel anything by basically having 2 buttons that do the same thing that always get used at the same time, basically could have been 1 button from the start.

I liked Fluid aura when it did damage AND pushed. Pushing Caster mobs that don't run in felt SO good, i did it a lot until they took it from me (Like Paglth'an has a bunch of them, shoving them around would feel so good)

Give me something, anything to do in downtime, i already use benison and aquaveil in between because whm doesn't have much to weave with and if i feel like weaving, i do that.
Dunno what but buffing sounds more fun than using a dot because I personally don't see where they are engaging at all. I don't interact with them once they are on the target, so...

[Supersnow845]

Sacred Soil stepped on asylums toes first with getting a regen on it
It's too late for Asylum to step on Sacred's toes if Sacred is stomping all over it already

Glad to see I'm not the only one who doesn't find Dots engaging. I Liked Aero 3s animation but that was it.
It was ALWAYS: Use Aero 3 then Aero 2, it was never an option to do anything else. It was just hit button 1, then your instant button 2, done. Repeat when Button 1 is about to fall off.
Sch's dot management was the same and that one short ranged 5 second one wasn't anything fun either, felt pointless to use on single bosses.
I did not feel anything by basically having 2 buttons that do the same thing that always get used at the same time, basically could have been 1 button from the start.

I liked Fluid aura when it did damage AND pushed. Pushing Caster mobs that don't run in felt SO good, i did it a lot until they took it from me (Like Paglth'an has a bunch of them, shoving them around would feel so good)

Give me something, anything to do in downtime, i already use benison and aquaveil in between because whm doesn't have much to weave with and if i feel like weaving, i do that.
Dunno what but buffing sounds more fun than using a dot because I personally don't see where they are engaging at all. I don't interact with them once they are on the target, so...

The idea of DOT’s on healers is you can’t have rigid rotations on classes that may have to triage at any moment

I know you aren’t suggesting this but it’s not like you can just stick SAM’s rotation on a healer because one succor and you mess up the tsubame loop, delaying a DOT by one GCD doesn’t lose you much and that’s only if you had to heal in the exact GCD you were supposed to refresh your DOT, something like DNC might work if you just took the 1 proc 3 - 2 proc 4 3/4 proc 5 idea and made it so healing wouldn’t break that combo and that is certainly a possibility

DOT’s are just the easiest way to have a somewhat varied rotation without forcing rigid restrictions required by always needing to be free to heal if necessary