The Problem with Healer Feedback, and requested changes

[ty_taurus]

The odd thing to me about that, though, is I feel if they were really worried about that, they'd make all GCD heals generate a damage neutral resource. GCDs are effectively a "resource" that we trade between healing and damage, too, but I guess the Devs don't see it that way. One could argue it's to make a higher skill ceiling, but the Devs have thus far shown they want the skill ceiling on healers to be lower, so it just seems odd they are unwilling or unable to grasp that GCDs and damage are part of that calculation with at least a good chunk of the most vocal components of the playerbase, and it's one change that wouldn't hurt the 70+% or so that are casual and never run high end content. If Jonny Casual generated more Misery stacks by casting Cure 1, it's not like that would hurt the game or his play experience.

It's true. There seems to be a resistance, an ignorance, and/or an outright rejection of how the healer role is played by the community. The way we view DPS as a resource and the GCD as a resource is something that has come up in discussion in live letters, and the response is always very lukewarm, but there's this sense of total disconnection in those responses. I really can't say how Yoshida actually feels about the topic as he obviously as to respond in a very PR friendly way, but I can't help but feel like he really wants to say something like "will you just stop worrying about that?" And I say that because there's always this really heavy dejected sigh whenever questions about healers come up.

The odd thing to me about that, though, is I feel if they were really worried about that, they'd make all GCD heals generate a damage neutral resource. GCDs are effectively a "resource" that we trade between healing and damage, too, but I guess the Devs don't see it that way. One could argue it's to make a higher skill ceiling, but the Devs have thus far shown they want the skill ceiling on healers to be lower, so it just seems odd they are unwilling or unable to grasp that GCDs and damage are part of that calculation with at least a good chunk of the most vocal components of the playerbase, and it's one change that wouldn't hurt the 70+% or so that are casual and never run high end content. If Jonny Casual generated more Misery stacks by casting Cure 1, it's not like that would hurt the game or his play experience.

When I mention the idea that healer optimization should become about generating DPS neutral healing, I don't necessarily mean locking the player out of healing, but rather, that the resources you gain allow your healing actions to refund lost DPS under specific conditions. Your healing is still available, but what Jonny Casual would lose by poor optimization is just uptime. Your ability to heal stays the same. And it also doesn't necessarily need to stem from specifically offensive tools either.
EDIT: Quick note, I read one of the above statements wrong so forgive me for thinking you took my statement as locking players out of healing. It's my early morning brain.

Here's an example of a lily system adjustment that's been floating around in my head lately. It's not something I'm entirely sold on quite yet, but it exemplifies what I'm talking about quite well. With this concept...

I'd propose changing the way the lilies work slightly. We do not have Afflatus Solace and Afflatus Rapture as we have them currently, and lilies are not generated passively over time. Instead, you have, let's call it that Budding Afflatus name I game in that same track WHM 90-100 skill example I posted earlier. This would have a cooldown of let's say 30 seconds with 2 charges on the GCD. When used, it generates 1 lily and nourishes the blood lily. While you have lilies, Cure II changes to Solace and Medica changes to Rapture, which makes them instant cast, but, while you have any amount of lilies, ALL GCD heals consume 1 lily and nourish the blood lily. If you have no lilies, they are used as normal.

Additionally, I've mentioned additional DPS actions I'd like to see on WHM, but let's actually keep it really simple and in line with current WHM for the sake of consistency. All we add is the Water spell, which later upgrades into Banish or something. Water/Banish is a GCD attack spell that's a little stronger than Stone/Glare and has a 30 second cooldown as well, but no charges. When used, it reduces the cooldown of Budding Afflatus by 10 seconds. Playing WHM optimally now means you want to make sure you're using Water/Banish on cooldown every 30 seconds, and probably trying to reserve an OGCD heal to weave after Water/Banish in case you do need healing at that 30 second window, and doing so gives you an inch more damage while also giving you more lilies throughout the fight to access DPS neutral healing more frequently. Jonny Casual can still access all of his healing actions, but if he learns to optimize his use of Water/Banish, he'll perhaps lose a little less DPS uptime throughout the fight.

Perhaps it doesn't function exactly as the way I put it, but if it were something in that train of thought, how would you feel about something like that?

As for SGE talk...

The issue with making Toxikon a flat DPS neutral on use of E. Diagnosis/E. Prognosis is it makes SGE absolutely broken. For 100 more MP, which is negligible, SGE essentially has access to a 1-2 combo that is not only as effective as 2 Glares/Broils/Malefics from the other healers, but also offers HP recovery and prominent barriers every other GCD. Even if we retain the barrier breaking mentality, in Savage, that barrier will absolutely break within a couple GCDs anytime the boss is using a tankbuster, auto attacks, or raidwides. SGE would destroy the other healers. I 150% want Toxikon to be changed into something that isn't just a glorified Ruin II, but we really need to rethink Addersting generation to make that happen. I definitely want SGE to feel like the GNB of healers--the healer that plays like a DPS, because that's clearly something at least a fair chunk of the healer community wants. I want more GCD DPS spells and some DPS weaving for good measure. And I agree that the Kardia system is a good concept, it's just not utilized at all when we could have different offensive spells offer different effects to your Kardia target. There are countless ways this could go, and I really hope we see that shift as we move into 7.0.

But that actually leads me to a question that I would like to ask specifically you...

I have a couple references videos that I'd like to bring up for this question: Alphinaud's Reveal in the Endwalker Trailer and the Red Mage Job Actions Trailer. (Any non-healer from the job actions trailer works really, but I just think RDM's is very smooth).

First of all, I'll let it be known that I am an aesthetics snob. I desire games that look stylish. I want to look stylish in game and have stylish gameplay, and I am obsessed with SGE's design. Alphinaud's appearance in the trailer had me so excited to try out the job even knowing how unlikely it was that healer gameplay was going to improve. Even now, I keep trying to play it because I want that fantasy in as many environments as I can, but what frustrates me the most is that I do not feel like Alphinaud in that trailer. The job action trailer videos are not an accurate depiction of gameplay, but I like how stylish RDM looks in that trailer, and their gameplay does resemble that in the trailer. RDM isn't just standing their spamming Jolt, they're cycling through a variety of different, epic looking spell effects. But when I play SGE, almost all of my gameplay looks the same--me firing a bug zapper at the enemy over and over. That doesn't look stylish to me. I don't feel like I'm this amazing master of magic capable of multitasking 4 independent aether-controlled weapons firing off a rainbow laser light show while keeping my teammates healthy.

So my question is, do you feel this way about playing WHM and just seeing WHM casting the same exact spell over and over for major chunks of the gameplay? Even if that's not the part of healing that gives you dopamine, does it bore you at all that you'll spend large swaths of time in the same casting animation casting the same shiny light? Would you prefer if at the very least, your 1 filler DPS button cycled through Glare, Quake, Tornado, and Flood, or something just to give you something different to look at? Because even if SGE simply had like a 1-2 button combo that cycled through 4 or 6 animations like GNB's continuation, but was really just a glorified Cascade > Fountain without the Reverse Cascade or Fountainfall... I wouldn't be happy per say, and I would still want change, but I think I could at least tolerate playing as SGE long term and not feeling burnt out from the bug zapper after 1-2 dungeons and need to go back to DNC.

And that actually leads me into an idea of a compromise on WHM that may actually work for a change, assuming the idea I proposed before with Water/Banish was one you were okay with...

This is a slightly different rotation than the example above, but earlier in this thread I shared where my headspace is at on a WHM rotation that's similar but a little different. Basically, you have Glare as your filler, Dia becomes AoE with falloff damage (as the other healers would have more complex ways of applying AoE DoTs, like restoring SCH's Bane, WHM just innately has their DoT be AoE), Water is just a precursor to Assize, and Assize in animation is moved up to level 72. It starts off as damage only, but would gain that recast for the heal effect at level 56 and would just be in line with how it functions now. Soul Drain is a new, Aerith inspired DPS button that is half Glare's potency but restores MP and makes your next spell instant cast, and every 5 spell casts grant you Aerith's Tempest, which is a little stronger than Glare and both Soul Drain and Holy combo out of Tempest, where Soul Drain's potency is raised to be neutral, and Holy generates 1 lily when used as a combo (also DPS neutral). Also there was Aerith's Fleeting Familiar on a cooldown, which you press and will attack enemies for you over your next 5 casts of any spell dealing very small damage but nourishing the blood lily after all 5 stacks are consumed; this being a spell effect and not a pet.

But lets simplify just a little and hybridize these two suggestions for a moment and then I'll discuss the compromise solution. Let's go with Water being a precursor to Assize, WHM gains this take on Soul Drain and Tempest, with you getting 1 use of Tempest every 4 casts of any spell instead of 5, and rather than Tempest's combo into Holy being a free lily, it reduces the cooldown on Budding Afflatus by 5 seconds. And the concept of the Budding Afflatus and how lilies function is from the above suggestion. This would give you a DPS library of: Glare, Dia, Assize (OGCD), Tempest, Soul Drain, and Holy as your "rotation" as well as Fleeting Familiar potentially if we like that concept.

Now as for the compromise, how would you feel if you had the option to instead of setting Tempest and Soul Drain to your hotbar, you have the option to have a PVP style auto combo, which is to say, your filler button of Glare will automatically switch to Tempest whenever Tempest is available, and after Tempest will switch to Soul Drain. So pressing that 1 button will automatically send you through your basic "combo" of sorts leading you into the MP restoration and instant cast utility. You'd still need to maintain Dia on your own, and if you want to combo into Holy you need to get closer to the enemy and manually trigger that to get more lilies across the course of the fight, but the bulk of your damage contribution can optionally be on 1 button for you. Players who want to set Tempest and Soul Drain separately can still do so and have regular Glare that will not auto combo, and the auto combo only looses a small amount of optimization if you never combo into Holy.

Do you think something like that would feel like a healthier compromise? I can't speak for everyone else on if they feel that would be enough for WHM, but I'd certainly be a lot more content with something like that at least.

[ForsakenRoe]

First of all, I'll let it be known that I am an aesthetics snob. I desire games that look stylish. I want to look stylish in game and have stylish gameplay, and I am obsessed with SGE's design. Alphinaud's appearance in the trailer had me so excited to try out the job even knowing how unlikely it was that healer gameplay was going to improve. Even now, I keep trying to play it because I want that fantasy in as many environments as I can, but what frustrates me the most is that I do not feel like Alphinaud in that trailer. The job action trailer videos are not an accurate depiction of gameplay, but I like how stylish RDM looks in that trailer, and their gameplay does resemble that in the trailer. RDM isn't just standing their spamming Jolt, they're cycling through a variety of different, epic looking spell effects. But when I play SGE, almost all of my gameplay looks the same--me firing a bug zapper at the enemy over and over. That doesn't look stylish to me. I don't feel like I'm this amazing master of magic capable of multitasking 4 independent aether-controlled weapons firing off a rainbow laser light show while keeping my teammates healthy.

I had an idea of a trailer shot where someone (WOL or Alphinaud) is walking through a warzone type area. People are dropping, people are getting shot at, etc. And this hero figure is walking, unflinching and undaunted, because his nouliths are semi-autonomously healing those who need healing, shielding those who need shields, and when a massive projectile is about to hit them, it hits, you see the smoke clear, and they're still walking without even reacting to the projectile, because the nouliths got it covered. I think it's cos of this particular heroic figure

To be fair, that's just Toxicon I having a better animation than Toxicon II. Because Alphinaud really doesn't do much in the trailer other than cast Toxicon I with a dramatic camera angle. Hitting level 82 has never been so disappointing, Hope level 92's Toxicon III is better.

True and real, which is why, in this idea I had to make SGE an actual 'do damage to cause healing' kind of healer, I put Tox 1's animation onto Phlegma, Phlegma's current animation onto Eukrasian Phlegma (applies DOT in AOE, gain in 2 targets or more), and Tox 2's animation, uhh, looks like I didn't specify. Maybe we could throw it on 'Dosis when it's empowered by Toxicon', call it Toxicosis or something.

Or, to put it another way, the only reason Lillies are flat DPS neutral is because Solace/Rapture takes the place of otherwise oGCD free sources of healing (such as Durochole and Ixochole) on similarly 20s CDs. That's it. To be an otherwise perfect 20s GCD CD mirror of others' 20s oGCD CDs, it needs to refund the lost potency.

's why I suggest 'free use of Phlegma' as the payout instead of Toxicon (that gets reworked), optimizers can bank it like Dark Arts for raidbuffs, casuals can just blow it whenever, it's a 60p loss compared to Toxicon's current 330. If someone were to spam E-Diag > PhlegmaProc over and over, they'd be losing 30p on average per GCD (60 per 2), and it'd be draining them of their MP kinda bad, because Phlegma costs 400 too. It'd be good-ish for keeping DPS up during, say, Terminal Relativity though, which would be cool.

[ty_taurus]

's why I suggest 'free use of Phlegma' as the payout instead of Toxicon (that gets reworked), optimizers can bank it like Dark Arts for raidbuffs, casuals can just blow it whenever, it's a 60p loss compared to Toxicon's current 330. If someone were to spam E-Diag > PhlegmaProc over and over, they'd be losing 30p on average per GCD (60 per 2), and it'd be draining them of their MP kinda bad, because Phlegma costs 400 too. It'd be good-ish for keeping DPS up during, say, Terminal Relativity though, which would be cool.

Ultimately, having Phlegma as a refund would accomplish a couple things. First, it makes SGE a very consistent healer in the savage fights that actually push you to GCD heal, as your losses would be minimal. Second, it would make SGE a very forgiving healer for less skilled players who overuse E. Diagnosis and E. Prognosis.

Having said that, it's important to remember that of all the healers, SGE avoids their GCD healing the most, and really doesn't need to use it ever in every piece of content under savage. This means for many SGE players, this feature may as well not exist in in probably 95+% of circumstances. Having niche back pocket tools on a job is not necessarily a bad thing, of course, but way too much of healer design fails to provide engagement for the highest level of play and those that fall somewhere along the road toward that highest level of play. We don't need more tools and features that have little to no functionality in the vast majority of the game.

But I think there's some light tweaking we can do to this concept that can address this concern.

Let's take it from Phlegma and go back to Toxikon as your Addersting spender. Toxikon II is no longer a direct upgrade of Toxikon I. Toxikon I's potency goes from being the same as Dosis to a potency of 400--still a loss; however, we create some type of proc that causes Toxikon I to Upgrade to Toxikon II for one use not unlike PVP Toxikon, and Toxikon II's potency is 800. Or instead, Toxikon I's animation becomes Toxikosis, and Toxikon II is just Toxikon. Instead of boosting the DPS to 800, this proc allows Toxikon to trigger 1 use of the OGCD Toxikosis for another 400 potency, which helps with crit variance.

A possible area to include this proc aspect would be perhaps Toxikon combos out of Eukrasian Dosis to have this potency increase. I think including a new way to generate 1 Addersting at some type of interval, maybe every 60 seconds or so, could help lessen the amount of free E. Diagnosis/E. Prognosis healing this system would generate, as it could still be a problem if you are using Toxikon every 30 seconds, but a system like this would accomplish some of what your Phlegma suggestion is trying to accomplish, but also makes it something that is consistently a part of SGE's gameplay rather than something that is exclusive to Savage when playing SGE adequately.

[Shurrikhan]

The odd thing to me about that, though, is I feel if they were really worried about that, they'd make all GCD heals generate a damage neutral resource. GCDs are effectively a "resource" that we trade between healing and damage, too, but I guess the Devs don't see it that way. One could argue it's to make a higher skill ceiling, but the Devs have thus far shown they want the skill ceiling on healers to be lower, so it just seems odd they are unwilling or unable to grasp that GCDs and damage are part of that calculation with at least a good chunk of the most vocal components of the playerbase, and it's one change that wouldn't hurt the 70+% or so that are casual and never run high end content. If Jonny Casual generated more Misery stacks by casting Cure 1, it's not like that would hurt the game or his play experience.

I don't think "dealing damage" should be tied to healing generated (except maybe on SGE, though this would also require a more extensive rework of the Job).

I think that'd actually be all the more harmful to, especially, the 70+%, as it'd be taking something at least somewhat intuitive (don't GCD heal if you don't need to) and replacing it with optimally wasting heals in cycles to be readied for Cards and, to their caps in preparation for sync with 2-minute damage buffs.

For that reason, though, I 100% agree with that second part. Or at least, I think healing shouldn't prep damage, even though --as a job-unique tool (e.g., Sage, as you said)-- I'd be okay with damage conveying healing so long as it's sufficiently leveragable™.


Going to make the obvious comparison real quick, between a theoretically more damage-based and WoW's damage-based-healer, the Discipline Priest. I cannot stand Disc, mostly because it just doesn't have enough control over its rate of damage for its healing not to feel like a predominantly passive trickle. Imo, if Sage were to go that route, it'd need to be hugely bankable / have really strong control over its rates of damage (and thereby healing).

Ideally, though, I'd also like it to have control over that rate of conversion, too, preferably such that there may --if, say, there were ever content that could offer very threatening but lowish HP mobs to burn down-- a damage-to-healing Sage might have to decide between reducing damage intake by helping to kill the threat that much faster vs. chugging out counter-healing.

(In a lot of ways, if ignoring the constraints of animation for a pipedream-y moment, those 4 nouliths feel like they should be perfect for finding ways to create gradations of healing (many) vs. focusing on damage / resource generation / etc., especially for something like, say, challenging 4-man content.)

The issue with making Toxikon a flat DPS neutral on use of E. Diagnosis/E. Prognosis is it makes SGE absolutely broken. For 100 more MP, which is negligible, SGE essentially has access to a 1-2 combo that is not only as effective as 2 Glares/Broils/Malefics from the other healers, but also offers HP recovery and prominent barriers every other GCD. Even if we retain the barrier breaking mentality, in Savage, that barrier will absolutely break within a couple GCDs anytime the boss is using a tankbuster, auto attacks, or raidwides. SGE would destroy the other healers.

This.

Or, to put it another way, the only reason Lillies are flat DPS neutral is because Solace/Rapture takes the place of otherwise oGCD free sources of healing (such as Durochole and Ixochole) on similarly 20s CDs. That's it. To be an otherwise perfect 20s GCD CD mirror of others' 20s oGCD CDs, it needs to refund the lost potency.

Eukrasia-Diagnosis, on the other hand, has no CD. Toxicon is just a copy-pasta EuD-equivalent to Adloquiem's crit bonus additional effect, but through situational AoE potency gains instead of further value awarding more offensive uptime (more generally useful, as long as there's sufficient damage intake to not leave other healing tools on the backburner). It's not meant to be a zero-cost... because it's not a CD.

[RinaShinomiya]

*wakes up from the 10 months of slumber*
Lurking around this thread has been interesting to say the least. Went to work at 5AM local time and came back at 1PM to 3 new pages of "essays on who is actually the poopy one".

To give my 2 cents to the whole conversation the idea to improve all the healer DPS kits while leaving WHM unchanged sounds like absolute lunacy to me.
What makes WHM simple is it doesn't need to pay attention to what the enemy is doing as much as the other healers. It can almost completely heal off of the party list alone because it has the least amounts of barriers or spells you need to prep in advance out of most of the healers. Giving it more DPS buttons or DPS buttons interacting with each other (if we added some diet-BLM traits for example) would do absolutely nothing to make it as complex of a healer as AST, SCH or SGE (and even calling these 3 complex is an overstatement in my humble opinion).

First of all, I'll let it be known that I am an aesthetics snob. I desire games that look stylish. I want to look stylish in game and have stylish gameplay, and I am obsessed with SGE's design. Alphinaud's appearance in the trailer had me so excited to try out the job even knowing how unlikely it was that healer gameplay was going to improve. Even now, I keep trying to play it because I want that fantasy in as many environments as I can, but what frustrates me the most is that I do not feel like Alphinaud in that trailer. The job action trailer videos are not an accurate depiction of gameplay, but I like how stylish RDM looks in that trailer, and their gameplay does resemble that in the trailer. RDM isn't just standing their spamming Jolt, they're cycling through a variety of different, epic looking spell effects. But when I play SGE, almost all of my gameplay looks the same--me firing a bug zapper at the enemy over and over. That doesn't look stylish to me. I don't feel like I'm this amazing master of magic capable of multitasking 4 independent aether-controlled weapons firing off a rainbow laser light show while keeping my teammates healthy.

To be fair, that's just Toxicon I having a better animation than Toxicon II. Because Alphinaud really doesn't do much in the trailer other than cast Toxicon I with a dramatic camera angle. Hitting level 82 has never been so disappointing, Hope level 92's Toxicon III is better.

---

A more jokey comment:
I dunno what this healer negativity is all about! It took Square 3 major patches to make E.Prog provide Toxicons. We're eating GOOD! *faint screams of pepsis in the distance*

[ty_taurus]

To be fair, that's just Toxicon I having a better animation than Toxicon II. Because Alphinaud really doesn't do much in the trailer other than cast Toxicon I with a dramatic camera angle. Hitting level 82 has never been so disappointing, Hope level 92's Toxicon III is better.

With the Alphinaud reference, I wasn’t really trying to say that what I want is that particular animation, which we technically have a very sped up version of prior to level 82. Rather, I want my gameplay and rotation to create an experience that feels like how that very cinematic Toxikon I looks.

Like I said, I don’t want to just zap my enemy with a bug zapper over and over, I want a combination of actions that look like I’m bombarding enemies with a laser light show.

[RinaShinomiya]

With the Alphinaud reference, I wasn’t really trying to say that was I want is that particular animation, which we technically have a very sped up version of prior to level 82. Rather, I want my gameplay and rotation to create an experience that feels like how that very cinematic Toxikon I looks.

Like I said, I don’t want to just zap my enemy with a bug zapper over and over, I want a combination of actions that look like I’m bombarding enemies with a laser light show.

I fully agree and i understand everyone's viewpoint with SGE having a lot of wasted potential. This was the best opportunity we've had since SHB so get a healer with a more fancy DPS rotation and scratch that StB itch but honestly unless YoshiP wakes up one day and has a come to Jesus moment i don't hold my breath for this potential to ever be realized. The current dev team is just not interested and i have 0 faith they will ever put enough R&D into healers to evaluate a correct course of action with the role.
in 5.0 AST wasn't working and had a lot of "well, duh!" issues
in 6.0 WHM wasn't working and had a lot of "well, duh!" issues
and arguably all of the healers have problems that are being swept under the rug like why did it take 3 major patches to get E.Prog feeding into toxicon? This should've been here in 6.0! Why is Pepsis still bad, why is Bene still so delayed and on such long cooldown! Meanwhile Tanks get their Tank stance buttons overhauled to make them slightly more visible when you have/dont have tank stance activated, which im not sure that many people really asked for. I certainly havent in all the instances i played as DRK. Why are the devs so laser focused on any tiny issue the community might have with Tanks and DPS but completely ignore the healer side unless we're too loud to ignore? I only Resubbed this month to make sure my Private house timer doesn't bug out and start too early, I'm not even playing the game. Otherwise i wouldn't even be able to post in these forums and would've continued to lurk and see that nothing is changing since me and my GF took a break in 6.1. It's beyond frustrating.

[Renathras]

I really can't say how Yoshida actually feels about the topic as he obviously as to respond in a very PR friendly way, but I can't help but feel like he really wants to say something like "will you just stop worrying about that?" And I say that because there's always this really heavy dejected sigh whenever questions about healers come up.

I could be wrong, but I feel it's very likely he thinks of healers like old school MMO player would. Remember Yoshida was playing MMOs when they were just starting out. As well as single player RPGs, where in most of those, the healer was fairly limited on offensive options. In much of the Final Fantasy series original run (discounting the remakes made since Y2K), WHM often had only the offensive spell of Holy or a low damage offensive spell on-par with Fire/Ice/Bolt 1 in damage. Even in FFX-2, the WHM dressphere didn't even have the "Attack" command, instead having Pray. And in Everquest, Clerics (the main healers) never cast offensive spells in most major content, they would literally sit /meditate in battle to regain mana for more heals to cast, and there would be things like Cleric chains where they took turns in a set order sustaining the main tank while others rested to regenerate mana.

I'm not saying Yoshi P wants that, but he's just a bit older than I am and both of us experienced the evolution of healers in videogames in a similar way, so it may be how he kind of thinks of healers as primarily for healing. That would explain his HW era "We balance around healers doing no damage" and even "If you want to be challenged, play Ultimate" and the most recent (not exact quote) "Honestly, what do you guys want? We've tried making changes, but we don't get what it is you want..." statement. He likely thinks that the healing role appeals to players who want to actively heal, seems confused that people who want to DPS would play the role much, but also is worried he can't make healing too stressful or there won't be enough healers.

Part of the problem is like I said in my original post here - that there are a lot of different mentalities of healers asking for conflicting things (some are asking for more damage, some are asking for more healing, some are asking things be left the same, some want a change but aren't exactly sure what) - and so he's getting a lot of conflicting inputs that aren't compatible with each other (outside of a more complex version of my own idea, something like - leave one healer alone, make one do more damage, make one do more healing...and then make bosses sometimes need more healing but the more healing healer be able to handle it so the others don't have to, I guess?) It's a complicated problem to appeal to everyone.

In the simple days of ARR, this is kind of how it worked. WHM was mainly casting heals while SCH was more onto the DPS side of things in Cleric. WHM could use Cleric, but until late ARR and into HW, many didn't. WHM handled the heavy lifting for the healing while SCH supported.

And because of this, both types of healers were happy.

SCH's were able to work in support heals and buffs (Selene, Soil, etc) while mainly being focused on their damage output, shifting to healing dynamically if the needs of the fight demanded it. WHM's mostly stayed out of Cleric and focused on things like keeping HoTs rolling on those needing it and GCD healing the tank and party as necessary. Everyone was happy, because we had a healer that appealed to each of the two types of healer players, and they were both needed for the content so everyone had a spot and a role to play in the group dynamic. Most ARR era SCH's had a blast playing the Job. Likewise, most ARR era WHM's had a blast being healing powerhouses that could heal their team to success. A modern incarnation of that is what I think the game needs.

Post Gordias, as the shift was more towards healers should damage, it started to alienate the healers that liked healing. Over time, enough left that it caused issues with the healing requirements frightening off the more damage/support focused healers who didn't like having to deal with it, leading to the simplification of healing needs to de-stress the role. At the same time, they de-focused on damage. So basically they made everyone angry.

ARR was basically like if instead of a Pure/Barrier split, healers had a Heal/Support split. And honestly, I think that might be _A_ solution. Though I'm not sure these Devs have the knack for making it work in a compelling way.

I don't know for sure, of course, but that's my guess.

I'm not generally opposed to healing leading to DPS. I am generally opposed to DPS leading to healing.

Note that I say "generally". If a specific Job was designed that way, I'm okay with it. But it shouldn't be the role. For example, as I've said before, SGE having a rotation like SMN or even RDM minus the melee component would not be a negative in my mind. As long as the Job can still meet fundamental healing requirements even if they mess it up. For example, suppose (for simplicity, I'll use RDM names) SGE had Fire/Stone, Aero/Thunder, Holy/Flare, and Scorch. Just that. 4 Hotbar spaces (Scorch would replace Fire/Stone, Holy and Flare Aero and Thunder, respectively). If they all did the same Kardia 170 healing, this means if you flub your rotation, you're still generating the same healing, thus meeting "the requirement". On the other hand, suppose Fire/Stone generated 100, Aero/Thunder generated 150, Holy/Flare generated 200, and Scorch generated 300. Now if you mess up your rotation, you might not be meeting the minimum healing requirements.

The reason I think this is important is twofold. The first is that whole "scaring off healers" thing that I think we've both acknowledged is a Dev concern. The second is that the pro-DPS healer player should be accommodated (keep in mind I've held to this position, just not for ALL healers) with a Job that isn't punishing them for doing what they want to do. If it was the increasing model and you flubbed your rotation, you'd have to break out the Diagnosis spam or whatever, which would disrupt the SGE player from what they actually enjoy, the damage dealing. Granted, you might have to do this some otherwise, but generally you'd supplement your Kardia healing with oGCDs instead and only fall back on your GCD heals in cases of emergencies. And by that I mean "24 man opening day" not "I messed up my rotation".

...then again, I'm not a DPS minded player and maybe those who are WANT to be punished with their tank dying if they flub their rotation or them being forced into chain hardcast heals if they flub their rotation? But I would think not. I would think they'd want the tank to stay alive so they can try to reset and get their DPS rotation back on track without having to expend a bunch of GCDs on heals.

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Alphinaud vs Red Mage: Let's be fair, anything compared to RDM is going to look less stylish. And I'm not sure comparing a character cinematic to a Job Actions trailer is a good apples-to-apples. For example, contrast the GNB Job actions trailer to Thancred using the Job. RDM is particularly stylish because of backflipping and some flashy cast animations mixed with melee. It's probably one of the most dynamic feeling Jobs in the game to watch played. Alesaie doing RDM just before him doesn't look nearly as dynamic as the RDM Job actions trailer, either.

That said: A lot of this is personal taste, I'd wager. To me, SGE's normal attack is fun to watch. I love the animation and the lasers make me think of the Ghostbusters Proton Packs because of the way there's that little plasma swirl around the axis of the lasers. They're laser pointers for Dosis 1, sure, but Dosis 3 looks amazing to me. The big red X from Toxicon makes me think of Double Down. I think Plegma's the only one I'm not super amazed by, but it's also the one ability in SGE's roster I'd really change (make it 15 or 25y, 6y just feels too short). Holos has a lovely animation, as do Eukrasian Diagnosis and Hamia.

I dunno, I guess we disagree, but I love SGE's animations.

On WHM...not really? Of WHM, SCH, and SGE (the three I play), WHM's main cast is probably the least "umph-y" of the three. SGE's is super cool lasers that have thickness and feel like they have some heft to them. SCH's makes me think of the red plasma turrets from Halo, and the sound effect feels like some "impact" when it hits. WHM's feels a little more like...you know in Dragonball Z how sometimes a fighter will fire off a slew of weak attacks and they always do nothing? Lampshaded in DBZ Abridged when Vegita does it to Perfect Cell who replies "Oh, Prince...when has that EVER worked?" WHM's feels more like that. But it also is the only one that kinda floats in the air as it charges the cast (also Holy), which just looks cool to me. So it evens out. I don't really get tired of any of them, no. It's the same to me as the 1-2-3 rotations on Melee/Tanks/MCH. It's the filler thing you do and it looks cool enough for what it is - your basic attack.

I guess that's my take on it, anyway.

I've never really cared for WHM as a CNJ/Druid. I get it's lore accurate, but it's kind of meh to me. So Quake/Tornado/Flood probably wouldn't inherently have me like them better. Besides which, I feel like those are more AOE spells than single target ones. I'm not saying I would hate it, but I'm more saying I'd probably not like it any better, per se. I'd feel pretty neutral towards it. I think WHM spells should be more Light focused. As we learned in ShB, Umbral is kind of like the "higher order" form of those spells. So Earth, Ice (not Wind), and Stone upgrading to Light makes sense in the same way Fire, Thunder, and Aero (not Blizzard) upgrading to Darkness would make sense. It would honestly feel a bit weird if WHM were to go back to more "base" elemental magics after touching the higher magic Umbral spells. Though if it WERE to do so, the high order ones (Quake, Tornado, Flood) would make more sense than just more Stone/Aero.

I'm not entirely sure I understand your proposals, but having Cure 2 and Medica just become instant cast once every 20 seconds (Lilies - I don't think the Devs want to move that back to 30 because that means 90 sec for 3 instead of 60 sec for 3, which breaks the written by thee hand of God on tablets of stone 2 min burst window system... <_< ) Just ignore Solace and Rapture, unless we're just doing that for the animations, I guess. If it's the same button, it's not like it matters to me either way. But in practice...this would be the same as WHM today, just with a little better button economy, I suppose. In theory, it would be a nerf (someone thinking they'll need to use two Cure 2s might have time to cast one but need the second to be instant for a movement mechanic and this system would nerf that...but I think that's a super edge case we don't really need to worry about.)

I was trying to think of more frequently cast buttons, though, to break up the Glarespam - since I think we've identified the unbroken spam as the thing that people most dislike. This proposed change wouldn't alter that, as you'd just be casting Solace and Rapture as you do now, and Misery at the same frequency. You'd be freeing up two buttons, but...

I get you're thinking use Water/Banish to get it back to 60 seconds, but that still seems to go against the Dev intention. I'm not sure of any other Job that has its burst only line up only by doing something specific like that (that is, their burst BUFFs), though rotation gets into some gray area, I suppose. The problem, though, you note - having to save an oGCD to use if you need to heal then. I think the Devs' intention with healers is that they never have to do that. That is, that your DPS spells don't push healing. It's why they didn't give healers a combo before (when spells were all hard-coded to break combos) because they didn't want someone getting "locked in" and not healing because of it. For example, how if I'm on RDM and you die during my melee combo...you're just gonna have to wait until my melee combo's done before you get a raise outside of some extremely extraordinary situation (e.g. 6 people are dead but me and the tank but healer LB3 is ready).

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Though I am a bit curious how "heals generate Misery would be hard for casuals because they'd need to (needlessly?) cast heals to fit more Misery into burst windows) would be too difficult, but stack and charge mechanics on spells wouldn't be?

In a strict sense, it would be little different than today (casuals not saving Misery for buff windows), it would just be less punishing to use GCD heals, which may break up the monotony of casting nukespam. Not to mention some other animations are nice to see. I outright love Eukrasian Diagnosis' animation. Would love to cast it more and it not be so detrimental to optimal play. Honestly, they should probably just remove Solace and Rapture in this scenario to encourage Cure 2 and Medica use, but at the end of the day, the result would be the same. Well, except you could use Misery more often, I suppose. I suppose you could flip the script and make Misery like Toxicon where it only needs one stack and only needs to do 2x Glare's worth of damage since that wouldn't put as much pressure on getting it into a buff window, but honestly, no idea.

I think that'd actually be all the more harmful to, especially, the 70+%, as it'd be taking something at least somewhat intuitive (don't GCD heal if you don't need to) and replacing it with optimally wasting heals in cycles to be readied for Cards and, to their caps in preparation for sync with 2-minute damage buffs.

Would it?

Consider you'd still be getting 1 Misery per 60 sec natively from Lilies, and that's literally how Lilies are used now. I'm not sure this would really change anything in that sense. If anything, it would make it more casual friendly since the people using more hardcast heals would refund that damage with Miseries. Super-casuals aren't thinking in terms of optimal, so they wouldn't be thinking "I should heal now when it's not needed so I can Misery in the buff window". So it wouldn't change their gameplay at all. This is actually a change that would MARGINALLY allow for a SLIGHTLY increased skill ceiling under very specific situations (a non-casual doing high end content where Misery drifted getting it back on-track) while not harming casuals and being such a niche case for optimization that the mid-core wouldn't be disadvantaged. I think it's one of those "more dps buttons/rotation" changes that doesn't cause a problem.

That is, optimizing players wouldn't cast Cure2/Medica when not needed for Misery during burst windows, since you can't stack Misery. If you have a full bloom on the Blood Lily right now and cast Solace/Rapture, it's wasted (as far as generating Misery goes). And if you're in the buff window, casting Misery (that you've built up before the window) then Cure 2 3x then Misery would be identical in DPS to casting Misery + Glare x4. So there'd be no optimization there other than if you need to heal during the buff window, you could do so and (if you did so 3x) have enough time in the buff window to refund that damage as opposed to now if you had to do it, you'd be missing out on one Glare's worth of damage.

But, again, this is something only very high end players would even play around with, and it would be damage neutral vs just playing exactly as you play today. It just would allow you more flexibility with healing. So I think it would be a good change as it doesn't hurt the casuals or mid-core, and it gives the high end something to REALLY wring out just that little bit more optimization if they genuinely want to, but that is damage neutral vs the more midcore player.

Honestly, it'd work better with WHM since it's designed more for GCD healing. SGE with Toxicon would be nice (not sure broken or not...), but you guys are correct in that it has oGCD healing and WHM is kind of just mimicking that with Lilies + Misery.

I think the problem is the Devs, as we all seem to agree, don't see "lost damage GCD" in the way the playerbase does. They don't see GCDs as a resource/meta-resource. Misery just turned out to be a happy accident, it seems. Does explain why it took them so long to make it damage neutral. They didn't get that was the calculation players were actively making.

They STILL seem not to, exactly.

What makes WHM simple is it doesn't need to pay attention to what the enemy is doing as much as the other healers.

We're mostly discussing their damage rotations. I think there's at least implicit acknowledgement that their healing kits are at least marginally different (other than maybe SCH/SGE). The questions are more specifically about the damage kits and trying to nail down what exactly makes "fun" and what can be done there without major impacts on the downstream playerbase that may disagree.

Why are the devs so laser focused on any tiny issue the community might have with Tanks and DPS but completely ignore the healer side unless we're too loud to ignore?

I honestly and genuinely think it's because they don't know what to do for sure with healers. Everything they do pisses people off, so they're trying to ride the line of "What seems to minorly piss everyone off but majorly piss off as few people as possible". More damage upsets people. More healing requirements upsets people. Fewer buttons upsets people. More buttons upsets people.

They know that making healing too stressful crashes the number of healers. They know that making healers to damage focused crashes the number of healers. But they know that not making them damage enough also crashes the number of healers. So they're trying to ride that line and thread the needle between. And as much as people say they aren't doing a good job...they kind of are for what they're working with. The question is if they should continue to try and maintain this paradigm or not. It's the entire reason for my suggestion, since if they favor one or the other camp, the number of healers will crash (again). So for any major change, it would need to favor both at the same time, I think. We either have the current "split the difference" model or we can genuinely split into two types of healers.

And, honestly, if we had "healing focused" and "support damage focused" healers, that would probably actually MAKE SENSE in the game where the Pure/Barrier split did not...

Indeed, as I described above, this is largely the way ARR played, in both casual and more hardcore settings, but especially 8/24 man settings where the WHM's often did the bulk of healing while the SCH's were support and damage focused, able to dynamically swap to healing when the WHM's needed more help and then back to damage as the situation allowed.

Tanks and DPS the only real (global, not Job specific) issues are that people don't really like the 2 min window, but it has some proponents and is more an expansion level rework anyway. Though even there, they don't make everyone happy. SMN's rework, Kaiten's removal, MCH going 3 major patches without any really needed changes, and the PLD rework are all examples. But they seem to have a clearer vision there. With healers, it's like they want the "healers are for healing" model, but the encounter design and Job design doesn't really make sense for that. So it's this awkward place with "Do you want us to do what you say or what us to do what your tools and encounters implicitly say we should?"

[Shurrikhan]

The odd thing to me about that, though, is I feel if they were really worried about that, they'd make all GCD heals generate a damage neutral resource.

Consider you'd still be getting 1 Misery per 60 sec natively from Lilies, and that's literally how Lilies are used now. I'm not sure this would really change anything in that sense. If anything, it would make it more casual friendly since the people using more hardcast heals would refund that damage with Miseries. Super-casuals aren't thinking in terms of optimal, so they wouldn't be thinking "I should heal now when it's not needed so I can Misery in the buff window". So it wouldn't change their gameplay at all. This is actually a change that would MARGINALLY allow for a SLIGHTLY increased skill ceiling under very specific situations (a non-casual doing high end content where Misery drifted getting it back on-track) while not harming casuals and being such a niche case for optimization that the mid-core wouldn't be disadvantaged. I think it's one of those "more dps buttons/rotation" changes that doesn't cause a problem.

Honestly, it'd work better with WHM since it's designed more for GCD healing. SGE with Toxicon would be nice (not sure broken or not...), but you are correct in that it has oGCD healing.[/hb][/hb]

Sure, they might not know why more veteran players are yeeting heals into the overhealth abyss, and might not therefore copy that well/sensibly/directly, but it's still going to be confusing for them if every GCD heal is DPS-neutral but through bankable refunds that then get spent during damage amp windows and therefore creates this really twisted up optimal play that they'd have to figure out at some point to progress deeper into mastery.

And in the meantime, precisely because wasteful healing to prep damage is unintuitive as all heck (especially when it's not simply an exact analog of any other source of [already bloated] free healing), it's only widening the gap (and suspension of otherwise more reasonable instincts) between new and veteran players.

I don't think true DPS-neutral heals outside of CDs are a good thing.

Some refunding? Sure. But not outright lossless casts.

:: And ideally (to me), incoming non-burst damage would be higher and oGCDs and Lilly spells (unless we wanted specifically to give WHM an MP advantage for "prog champ" status) both would have MP cost enough that there wouldn't be any wholly "free" healing anyways that WHM would need to match up again skill-per-skill.

I think the problem is the Devs, as we all seem to agree, don't see "lost damage GCD" in the way the playerbase does. They don't see GCDs as a resource/meta-resource. Misery just turned out to be a happy accident, it seems. Does explain why it took them so long to make it damage neutral. They didn't get that was the calculation players were actively making.

They STILL seem not to, exactly.

I could have sworn they (Yoshida and Starfox, in one of the first LLs) noted exactly that factor in explaining why we were seeing double-SCH so often even in T1-4 (rather than only as a fix to Infirmity in T5, since Lustrate at the time healed for 25% HP regardless of anti-healing debuffs). Since SCH had effectively auto-regen and a much less wasteful 3/4s of a Bene every minute, instead of 1 per 5 minutes... yeah, SCH was kicking WHM's butt overall simply because WHM had to drop significant damage (and mana) to do any healing while SCH didn't -- i.e., a gap in oGCD output. It wasn't particularly unknown or undiscussed even back then. It was ostensibly part of their reasoning behind adding Tetra and Asylum (or simply, a greater increase in oGCD throughput to WHM than to SCH).

And, because nontraditional compositions were also more common back then, it seemed like, if anything, people were more aware of this idea that the point of healers, and even healing itself, was ultimately clear speed (via cheese, permissible uptime, etc.) instead of solely reliability.

[Renathras]

Random aside: Suppose for the sake of argument it was possible to do something like ARR where we split healing as a role into two parts that were...actually functional (unlike the Pure/Barrier split which seems to basically be meaningless outside of WHM/WHM comps since everyone else has barriers anyway...)

Where we had one that was a healing focused set of healers, and the other a support/damage focused set.

The former are designed to have powerful and efficient heals with a slimmed down damage kit while the latter are designed to have a more expansive damage suite and dynamic gameplay shifting between support healing and buffing the party vs optimizing their damage potential.

If there was a way to do this where it wouldn't devolve into a meta of 2x supports (let's pretend this is possible), would that not be an interesting and possibly useful change to satisfy everyone?

I get there are a lot of "That's impossible..." what-ifs. But for the sake of argument, let's pretend. As I noted above, on at least some level, this was how healing in ARR worked, and players were (at the time) largely satisfied with this, with many loving both healers despite their individual focuses. Set aside the "impossible" and "ARR wasn't REALLY like that by 2.4 and on..." and so on, just a thought experiment.