Making All Healing Spells DPS Neutral

[Blueyes]

I’m not a huge fan of feeling discouraged from interacting with a part of my job’s kit. Our baseline healing spells are something that many healers activity avoid using, often saving them as a last resort when survival would otherwise be impossible. Perhaps we can change that.

This is how it would work. Whenever a healer casts one of their healing spells during battle, they gain a stackable buff called Cleric Stance. This buff can stack up to five times (though it could be reduced to three if five is too much). Casting a damaging spell will then automatically consume a single stack of Cleric Stance, resulting in increased potency. The amount of potency gained is equal to the baseline potency of each healer’s single target or AoE damaging spell.

Here are some examples of what this would look like.

Benefic II
Restores target’s HP.
Cure Potency: 800
Additional Effect: Grants a stack of Cleric Stance when used in combat, up to a maximum of 5.

Fall Malefic
Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 250.
Potency increases to 500 when under the effect of Cleric Stance. Cleric Stance Cost: 1 stack

Combust III
Deals unaspected damage over time.
Potency: 55
Duration: 30s
Additional Effect: Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 250 when under the effect of Cleric Stance. Cleric Stance Cost: 1 stack

Gravity II
Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 130 to target and all enemies nearby it.
Potency increases to 260 when under the effect of Cleric Stance. Cleric Stance Cost: 1 stack

Note that not every healing spells needs to generate Cleric Stance and not every damaging spell needs to consume a stack. Lily spells, for example, could remain as a separate system.

Now it is worth noting that such a change would have a significant impact on the way healers play. Healers will be encouraged to repeatedly cast healing spells to build stacks during segments when a boss can’t be targeted, though that may not be a bad thing as it would be more engaging than doing nothing. This inclusion of Cleric Stance would introduce an avenue for skill expression as players could intentionally build stacks in preparation for burst phases. Adjusting the MP cost of certain spells may also be worth considering, though it may not be necessary in every case.

Some may be wondering, why even make this change? When reading the topic about what actions we wouldn’t mind being removed, there were those who expressed the opinion that some or even the majority of oGCD healing abilities should be removed. To a certain extent, I agree with that stance. When I look at healers like Scholar, I feel like the job was generally more interesting back when it was largely reliant on Aetherflow to fuel its oGCD healing and had to fall back on its healing spells more often once its oGCD options were spent. When people voice their opposition towards the removal of oGCD healing abilities, I get the impression that their stance is less to do with wanting to keep a plethora of emergency heals and much more to do with wanting plenty of tools to keep the party in good health while maintaining a steady stream of outgoing damage. But if our healing spells no longer compromised damage output, perhaps we could afford to cut back on the overabundance of healing abilities and have them replaced with utility or damage dealing actions that would make playing as a healer more varied and interesting.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

Few things came to my mind as I read these:

• Priority will remain the same: I will still try to avoid GCD heals because oGCDs do not cost MP & are instants.
• Under specific niche situation where there are needed health to be patched up right before raidbuff window, in theory at least, can be beneficial by stacking the buff to fire off 1-5 stronger Malefics while ensuring those GCD heals aren't entirely wasted. Thanks to how buffs are calculated, successfully pulling this off would result in dps gain. Though this does mean all 4 healers will try to achieve this & doesn't really increase their engagement at all, let alone make them feel any different.
• My guts telling me these will bait less experienced players to lean even more toward their GCDs than ever.

I do agree we could use some culling toward the superfluous healing actions to relieve the bloat and of course, to create more room for more buff, debuff, utility, and/or even damage actions.

[ty_taurus]

It wouldn't be baiting less experienced players, because it would effectively place all GCD heals on mostly even footing with OGCD heals. The only difference would be the MP costs, but that's negligible in the current way that MP is handled, for the most part.

The bigger issue is that it's a cureall solution not unlike conforming as many jobs as possible to the 2 minute burst meta. I believe the intention behind the suggestion is to make GCD healing not feel like a punishment and allow players to diversify their casting focus to support tools comfortably. On a certain level, this would work as using barriers as a barrier healer would now be something you actually do, but it creates far more issues. First, it creates a scenario where you feel obligated to build 5 stacks before each 2 minute burst window regardless of whether the healing is needed or not. Since it sounds like the suggestion is automated, and you can reserve stacks for later, this exacerbates this issue as you'd want to blast through 5 heals right before the buff window to turn those refund stacks into DPS gains. Outside of that, it otherwise eliminates skill expression as now you'll naturally hit mostly optimized DPS values without even trying. It almost doesn't matter what you cast at that point.

DPS refund is the way to make GCD healing more valuable and create more opportunities for healers to actively choose healing over DPS, but it should be executed with more thought in mind--that it's something you have to actively manage with resources, MP, cooldowns, or any combination of the like in order to perform successfully. Heals that fall out of that range--that do not refund your DPS, should be stronger and more effective panic buttons because that's essentially what they are. You can drop your optimization for safety, in other words.

[Mimilu]

What if they made some-or-all of the vanilla healing spells oGCD? (*´∀｀*).。o○ ?
Remove their cast times and increase their MP cost to compensate (and to help teach players to not only spam healing spells).
Maybe they could do it for WHM and AST's regen spells but I'm not sure about the shield spells.
o͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡╮(｡❛ᴗ❛｡)╭o͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡

[AmiableApkallu]

I’m not a huge fan of feeling discouraged from interacting with a part of my job’s kit. Our baseline healing spells are something that many healers activity avoid using, often saving them as a last resort when survival would otherwise be impossible.

If you feel bad about using a GCD heal when it is necessary to ensure survival, then you shouldn't be playing a healer.

If you're unwilling or unable to grapple with the question of whether a GCD heal is necessary, then you also shouldn't be playing a healer.

That basic question -- should I cast this heal now instead of dealing damage? -- is the only thing that makes healing interesting in the current combat design. There's no need to dumb it down by trivializing the question.

[ty_taurus]

If you feel bad about using a GCD heal when it is necessary to ensure survival, then you shouldn't be playing a healer.

If you're unwilling or unable to grapple with the question of whether a GCD heal is necessary, then you also shouldn't be playing a healer.

That basic question -- should I cast this heal now instead of dealing damage? -- is the only thing that makes healing interesting in the current combat design. There's no need to dumb it down by trivializing the question.

The issue is moreso that the shear volume of OGCD healing has rendered GCD healing almost never necessary for party survival. Back during ARR and HW particularly, OGCD healing was extremely limited. Even back then, the goal was to try and limit your need for GCD healing as much as possible, but because you never truly could even in casual content, it created a healthy balance where skill expression allowed you to push damage while still needing to rely on your heals on some level. This meant it felt good to use your necessary GCD heals thoughtfully and effectively to ensure you were getting the most out of every one, rather than bad that you had to use them at all. But since OGCD healing has gotten so plentiful, it's now incredibly easy to completely eliminate GCD healing from the equation in almost every piece of content, even some tiers of savage on SGE. SCH too, though the utility of a spread crit adlo does hold value that can be worth an occasional DPS drop for certain mechanics, especially in PF where your familiarity with your teammates is limited or nonexistent.

[Rithy255]

I think Healing GCDs should feel a bit punishing Playing healer for me is generally all about using your resources maximising your damage output while effectively healing the party, If healers can just spam GCD heals when they want it takes a lot of what makes healer "fun" I think.

I'd argue healers don't need to be anymore simple I'm more for making them slightly more complicated if anything by giving them more attacking spells (not to the extent of a tank/dps) would make them more fun for me I don't think we need to remove the balancing act of using your healing OGCDs well. I feel like this change would water down healer even more then they need to be.

[Atmaweapon510]

For everyone considering difficulty in healing being dumbed down... That's kind of necessary to making healers get better dps kits. Let me put it this way:

-We know the balance team balances around average skill level.
-We also know that they want heals to be easy. Currently the main factor of difficulty in healing is when to cast GCD heals vs. waiting for ogcd heals which comes entirely down to knowing every mechanic in a fight.
-They don't want a huge gap between people that throw heals after every raidwide and those that coordinate and perfectly map out their ogcd heals, so they dumb down healer damage to two buttons and minimize healer impact on dps when possible.
-By vastly closing this gap between unskilled healers and skilled healers, this enables the devs to create more interesting dps kits for healers to re-widen that gap.

Don't ever tell me you haven't played with a shield healer that doesn't bother to cast shields which lets some minimum ilvl guy die to the next hard hitting mechanic. Or maybe the regen healer clearly can't keep up with the DoT tankbusters, but still refuses to cast regen to stabilize tanks because damage. This pisses me off. This also pisses 7 other people off when they see a healer barsing over trying to ensure a smooth run. Eventually the groups outgear this content and said healers don't reflect, they feel validated that people weren't doing things correctly and repeat the mistakes for the next tier.

Dumbing down healing in this way makes 8 people in the party happy because the healers can't read each-others minds and are basically going "ugh why isn't the other guy casting a heal so I can dps." We already have this problem where it's super obvious when barsing SCH never puts down Sacred Soil for more energy drains and their co-healer has to make up for it because they actually want to clear and the barser isn't punished because lack of healing is easily made up by either healer casting gcd heals.

[T-Owl]

For everyone considering difficulty in healing being dumbed down... That's kind of necessary to making healers get better dps kits. Let me put it this way:

-We know the balance team balances around average skill level.
-We also know that they want heals to be easy. Currently the main factor of difficulty in healing is when to cast GCD heals vs. waiting for ogcd heals which comes entirely down to knowing every mechanic in a fight.
-They don't want a huge gap between people that throw heals after every raidwide and those that coordinate and perfectly map out their ogcd heals, so they dumb down healer damage to two buttons and minimize healer impact on dps when possible.
-By vastly closing this gap between unskilled healers and skilled healers, this enables the devs to create more interesting dps kits for healers to re-widen that gap.

Don't ever tell me you haven't played with a shield healer that doesn't bother to cast shields which lets some minimum ilvl guy die to the next hard hitting mechanic. Or maybe the regen healer clearly can't keep up with the DoT tankbusters, but still refuses to cast regen to stabilize tanks because damage. This pisses me off. This also pisses 7 other people off when they see a healer barsing over trying to ensure a smooth run. Eventually the groups outgear this content and said healers don't reflect, they feel validated that people weren't doing things correctly and repeat the mistakes for the next tier.

Dumbing down healing in this way makes 8 people in the party happy because the healers can't read each-others minds and are basically going "ugh why isn't the other guy casting a heal so I can dps." We already have this problem where it's super obvious when barsing SCH never puts down Sacred Soil for more energy drains and their co-healer has to make up for it because they actually want to clear and the barser isn't punished because lack of healing is easily made up by either healer casting gcd heals.

Only that SE had the opportunity to creating more interesting DPS kits for healers the last two expansions, they decided not to.

And your scenarios really depend, who many vulnerability stacks did the minimum ilvl guy have and did the shield healers already placed their mitigation regen spell which is an OGCD on the tanks during poison busters.

[Atmaweapon510]

In this tier right now, casters and healers will die 100-0% from a poison puddle on p8s snakes without mitigation on minimum ilvl. This is the most relevant because the only thing that *can* help here are raidwide mitigations, but the timing on anything but shields is super strict to get both puddles. Even before this, things like Proto-carb can 100%-0% with stuff like double dash, but enemy targeted mitigation works on that.

Edit: Now that I think about it, are there any actual vulnerability stacks this tier? I think I only see damage down for failed mechanics.