The Problem with Healer Feedback, and requested changes

[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.

[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.

[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.

.

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).

.

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]

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.

Right but (I may have edited while you posted this), keep in mind that this is exactly how WHM functions now. You bank Misery for the buff window. But you can only bank ONE Misery. If you have a full Blood Lily now, you can't cast 3x Solace to get a second Misery. Each one you cast is costing you 1/3rd of a Misery until you cast the Misery you already have. That is, a player couldn't spend 30 sec or whatever before the buff window chain casting Cure 2 to bank 5 Miseries to unload in the buff window. There's no allowance for that unless you can stock several Miseries, and you can't. So you have to wait for the buff window to use the one you have.

In live, you have two options at that point. (1) is to refresh Dia and then chain cast Glare to fill out the rest of the buff window. (2) is to cast any GCD heals and have damage potency losses and see your DPS decline. Obviously, unless people are dying, this is the worse option and so not really an "option" at all. (2) is being wrong/bad.

If Cure/Medica spells generated 1/3rd Blood Lily, then you'd have the same situation. You could only stock one Misery going into the buff window. Once you use it, now you can Dia + Glarespam OR you can Dia + heal. If you heal, you can heal twice more to get in a second Misery. This would do the exact same damage as casting the 4 Glares, as all of this would occur in the buff window. But it would not do MORE damage, since you'd be sacrificing 4 Glares to do Cure 2/Medica x3 + Misery. Since they are damage neutral, the outcome would be the same. Glare x4 would be marginally safer on damage (more chances to get a crit) while the Misery would be "all or nothing" (if it crits vs doesn't crit), so the Dia + Glarespam would give more reliable damage, but the Cure x3 + Misery would be damage neutral on long fights. (They would be expected to give the same damage overall regardless of crit values or whatnot)

So there wouldn't be any "wasteful healing to prep damage". Well, no more than there is right now. That is, this change would make things no worse than they are in live with people burning Solace/Rapture to stock a Misery for the burst window.

The only real differences are (a) inside the burst window you'd have an option other than Glarespam, and casting a GCD heal (if you could do two more and a Misery after it still within the window) would not be a DPS loss, and (b) outside of the burst window, you would break up the Glarespam more frequently since you'd have other buttons to push and be getting Miseries more often by doing so. The best part is, if someone wanted to continue playing as they are today (never touching Cure/Medica), they could do so and their damage output would be (on average) identical.

I'm telling you, as a non-optimizing, not-hardcore, green-parser (rare blue on a good day, purple in 24 mans...no idea how that works, but I don't parse so just see my name captured on other people's runs from time to time), this would not make things worse for people like me.

It's strange to me you think this would widen the gap between low and high skilled players. I don't see how unless we made it where you could stock more than one Misery, which we'd be not doing... I'm a bit confused is all. I can only see it lowering the gap, not increasing it, as high end players would mostly play identically to how they do today.

I could have sworn sure 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).

I don't recall a lot of SCH/SCH comps back then, but I was paying far less attention to the meta. All of the ARR-era videos I've seen of Coils clears and Extreme clears had 1 WHM + 1 SCH. I'd have to see this Liveletter. I'm not saying I don't believe you, I just don't remember that being a thing back then.

I do remember WHM's hardcasting a lot of spells, since that's basically all the had. Including Stoneskin as a discount Divine Benison for tankbusters. Even now, WHM doesn't get a reliable oGCD heal until level 60, I think, with Tetra.

...

Oh, one thing I would like from your ideas. It'd be cool if WHM got "Water" as a spell early on. An oGCD centered around the WHM on a 40 sec CD that did let's say 200 Potency AOE damage? Big water ball that casts up into the air (the Holy animation, but instant cast, of course) then pops splashing all surrounding enemies and restoring 5% of maximum MP.

Assize would be an upgrade doubling the potency and adding the AOE heal. I think that would be a good thing since it would give WHM another lower level button but not a higher level one (since upgrade) and get leveling WHM players into the habit of watching for and using that spell when it was off CD. Would also go with the "base elements upgrading into Umbral higher forms" thing.

[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.

[ty_taurus]

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

If I may, let me expand on a few things that I think will help communicate my points a little clearer as I think I didn't communicate them that effectively.

On the topic of the Alphinaud trailer and Red Mage, I wasn't trying to compare the two, just using them both as an example of the kind of feeling I want to have when I look at the actual animations my character is performing. Yes, the gameplay is very different to a cinematic trailer, but the trailer gives of an impression--a feeling of what Sage looks like. Alisaie does this as well briefly for the RDM, and I think the actual gameplay of RDM does visually showcase the type of feeling she elicits in the trailer effectively. I also like SGE's animation, but I want my character to be fluidly fighting enemies , not just using the bug zapper over and over. Think of it this way... What looks cooler in a fighting game like Street Fighter or Tekken, a character spamming their jab, or a character pulling off one of their signature combos? That's not to say it should be a literal combo in the sense of a 1-2-3. You mentioned something like a RDM lite or a SMN lite would be perfectly fine, and I'll add BLM as well who does like to press their buttons in 3s. I just don't want to bust out the bug zapper for like 70% of a fight in most of this game's content. Day one alliance day is definitely a break from the norm, and I did heal that, but of course that's the exception, not the rule.

As for the example of "Would you prefer Quake/Tornado/Flood/Glare," it didn't have to be that specifically. I just meant, would you specifically not feel it would look better while you play if instead of twirling and glaring and twirling and glaring and twirling and glaring... that your character would cycle through a few different casting animations and spell effects of whatever visual style so long as that stayed on the same filler button?

As for the WHM concept, there were two propositions in that post. The first one was just focusing on the lily system suggestion...

- Budding Afflatus would be a GCD spell every 30 seconds with 2 charges that generates you a lily and nourishes the blood lily. This replaces the automatic generation of lilies and cuts into your offensive spell usage since it replaces an instance of Glare. All healing spells will consume lilies while you have them to nourish the blood lily when used, but can still be used without nourishing the blood lily when you have no lilies. This would have you generating lilies every 30 seconds manually. Solace and Rapture are just instant cast upgrades to Cure II and Medica whenever you have lilies, but they revert when you have no lilies (not necessary, but the animations are nicer).
- Water/Banish would be a GCD spell every 30 seconds with no charges that deals a little more damage than Glare and decreases the cooldown on Budding Afflatus by 10 seconds.

The question is, would you personally feel comfortable with a change like that, where your DPS does not earn you more healing, it just increases how often your healing will refund your DPS?

The second suggestion at the bottom of the other post was about taking this concept and building out WHM's DPS rotation more while giving the player the option to simplify.

- In this example, the idea of Budding Afflatus stays the same.
- Water instead becomes the precursor to Assize (with the suggestion that you do the damage first and then reactivate to heal)
- Dia becomes AoE with falloff.
- Afflatus Misery is still there.
- Tempest is added as a new stronger spell than Glare. Every 4 casts of any spell enables 1 use of Tempest.
- Soul Drain is a new spell that is half as strong as Glare, but restores MP and makes your next spell instant cast. If used after Tempest, the damage is increased to be the same as Glare's.
- When Holy is used after Tempest, it decreases the cooldown on Budding Afflatus by 5 seconds and is also DPS neutral.

Now, as the player, you can set these skills individually on your hotbar, and you also have the option to assign a PVP style auto combo to your hotbar if you prefer instead. This defaults to Glare, changes to Tempest when Tempest is available, and then goes to Soul Drain after Tempest before returning to Glare. So if you were to set the auto combo to your hotbar, pressing 1 1 1 1 1 1 would result in your character performing Glare > Glare > Glare > Glare > Tempest > Soul Drain. You would still need to use Dia, Assize, and Afflatus Misery independently, and if you want to combo into Holy, you have to do so manually, but the auto combo gets you very far if you choose to use that instead of setting each action separately.

I can't, of course, speak to how likely these concepts are or how the developers would view this in contrast to their goals with healing, but regardless, I'm more curious if you feel these options would be a compromise you could get behind.

[ty_taurus]

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.

We technically have this dynamic now with DNC who's identity revolves around buffs and can also provide very mild sustain. I do play DNC now and enjoy it, but I would rather be playing SGE with the fantasy that it is entirely capable of delivering upon. So in short, I don't think anything would change. You'd get some players who'd accept the DNC identity, but you'd still have a lot of vocal backlash against the healer role for feeling stale in easier content. It would still probably be looked at as inherently flawed by many dedicated healing players. The game would also need to output damage constantly in order to justify the healer role and not have the meta kill it for a 2x support scenario you mentioned, and who knows how that would impact MSQ instance content. You'd probably just have a different game entirely at that point. Perhaps if the frequency of damage was high enough to actually justify healing rotations, it might not be as frowned upon, but it's too difficult to say because the environment would have to be entirely alien to the one we have now.

The reality is, that idea of healer is one that is dying because it was historically very unpopular in older MMOs where healers were HP batteries and little more. Most people don't want to just be a battery or a cheerleader. They want to engage with the gameplay, just from an angle of someone who prioritizes support and needs to make decisions based on the situation their in of when to attack, when to heal, when to support, etc.

Now I know the point of this was for the sake of argument, but I do want to point out that while many of the suggestions several of us have made over the years about the healer role may be a lot for the tepid constitutions the devs seem to have around healer design, that these are suggestions would work within the structure that this game provides. It doesn't require a ground-up rework of the game because we discuss changes that work based on how encounters are designed currently. We need to accept that DPS is a major party of healer gameplay in this game as it has been designed, whether intentional or no, but I also believe that this acceptance can also lead to creating a healer that is meant to appeal to the healer that doesn't like offense--a healer who disguises their DPS contributions through support.

[Renathras]

If I may, let me expand on a few things...

Hm...

I guess I don't consider healers like fighters, per se? Like Ryu from Street Fighter or even Sora from Smash aren't mages. When I think of a mage's duel, I think of something different. There are wizard duels and then there are mage duels. Wizard duels are things like Merlin from the Disney Sword in the Stone movie where he and she are swapping between different types of animals (and she cheats by using additional magic to go invisible) which he wins without killing her by becoming a germ and making her sick. Another example is Dumbledor vs Voldemort from I think it was the 4th Harry Potter movie. Wizard duels a contests of magic, but not in a direct contest of powerful spells. They also include a lot of trying to out-think the opponent and clever use of magics such as Dumbledor turning the flying shards of glass into more or less harmless sand.

On the other hand, when it comes to mages, I tend to think more an exchange of power. Which...would probably not be realistic (they'd just incinerate each other unless their spells contested somehow). I think more like this: https://youtu.be/OVXSWE7KE68?t=535 Or not as good of a "mage" example, but in Dragonball where the fighters contest with their energy projectiles in a more brute force contest of power.

In a very general sense, I consider mages more "crude but effective" magic users vs wizards "masters of the arcane arts" type magic users. A mage wouldn't have a spell to turn glass into sand, for example, or to turn into a germ. They would have Flare or Holy. Large, powerful, brute force spells that "do the job". And likewise, mages involved in healing are more combat medics whereas wizards that chose that route would be more akin to magically enhanced doctors or churgeons. (Which, contrary to the "does damage that heals; with lasers" SGE gameplay, is the actual LORE of SGE...a mix of doctor, wizard, and researcher.)

A Black Mage (non-FFXIV, more general fantasy) isn't cycling through hundreds of spells. They're probably casting the same powerful ones multiple times to batter enemy defenses and break them down. FF1 Black Mage/Wizard late game is mostly casting rank 3 Fire/Ice/Bolt spells (enemy weakness or just whichever you like the look of if there's no weakness to exploit). FFTactics, same story. Less wizard, more mage.

And I suppose that's the way I think of healers in games like this. Yeah, I'd think it silly if MNK just used Bootshine over and over again. Because MNK is a fighter. Combos and mixing up attacks is what I would expect. I might even expect more of a wizard style of combat from a SCH.

Conversely, I would expect more of a mage style of combat from a WHM or BLM or even to a point a RDM, though I'd expect RDM's to use slightly less "brute force" magics in favor of mixing the two schools they have access to together with some martial prowess. Likewise, I consider PLD's a type of mage (as opposed to wizard) in that they are much more focused on their martial skills, but their magic is straight and to the point - a brute force heal, a brute force attack spell, and a brute force area attack spell centered on their person, since a Paladin can be expected to be in the thick of battle and have plenty of foes immediately around them to strike with it.

So I guess in this sense...I don't get tired of the same spell mostly being cast over and over, with a build up to a bigger spell from time to time (Misery) since that more or less fits the class fantasy for me for WHM and to a point for SGE (since I tend to think combat doctors learn a few basic combat techniques, but don't spend a lot of time with it; sorta like a Jedi Consular with Form 6 or the Paladin case, just with their non-combat spell knowledge being focused on a breadth of healing magics rather than swordplay). SCH I feel should have a bit more branching from it, but I also really like Broil 4's cast animation and sound effect, so it doesn't bother me as much as it otherwise might. But again, I think of SCH more like a wizard than a mage in this paradigm/using these definitions.

Another example is BLM. I felt BLM was much more a Black Mage in ARR. Now it's kind of a weird wizard hybrid since a lot of its spells are high power in game mechanics, but not really Black Mage spells. Other FF games, you don't see Black Mages with things like Xenoglossy as spells. Normally the ultimate Black Magic spell is either Flare or Ultima. Some games have more utility spells like Teleport/Warp (when not White Mage spells) or Frog, and stuff like Drain(HP)/Osmose(MP), but they tend to cast more the "big three" of Fire/Blizzard/Thunder 1-2-3-4, and they usually are the ones with Tornado/Break/etc as very high level spells.

.

Honestly, my only issue with WHM casting, aesthetically speaking, is that Holy is supposed to be the ultimate offensive White Magic...and it's weaker than Glare. And point blank AOE. Holy should be Misery, basically. And Holy-Misery should be a full cast SPELL, not an instant cast.

But I got over that a while back and just kind of roll with it, though it has bugged me in FFXIV I guess the whole time, lol

So no, I don't get bored with it, so I wouldn't really feel more engaged with WHM having multiple animations/don't specifically feel it would look better, since I think the way it looks right now is more or less in line with the class fantasy. /shrug It is kinda funny how different two people's perceptions of a thing can be.

[Renathras]

For the concepts:

First Concept: If I understand correctly, you're saying no Lilies are generated automatically. The player has to hit a Rhizomata-like button every 30 seconds. It's a GCD that does no damage or anything. It just generates a Lily and nothing else, so it's kind of an button to press just for the sake of pressing (that is, you're replacing something automatic with a forced manual upkeep...). When activated, Cure/Medica spells become instant cast and, when used, generate 1/3rd a Misery. you then introduce a second button that has no charges and must be used on CD or the player will be punished with reduced damage output. Pressing it on CD makes your Rhizomata spell 20 sec instead of 30 sec, and it's a second forced manual upkeep button you must press or your damage will tank as your Misery drifts away from buff windows causing the gap between those who do it and those who do not to widen considerably.

I'm...not sure that's a good idea. In effect (not trying to be blunt, just my take) you're removing two buttons to replace with two uncessary upkeep buttons that players need to set two dipping birds on their keyboard to press every 30 seconds or their performance suffers, but the buttons themselves don't do anything interesting other than one is an attack spell that exists just to prevent you from drifting outside of burst windows and the other exists just to be pressed every 30/20 seconds because...uh...........pressing a button that doesn't do anything that isn't already automatic now is...fun...? o.O That is (not trying to be a jerk about it), Lilies are automatically generated now with no input, but the input you suggest does that...and nothing more. It doesn't generate healing (directly), it doesn't generate damage (directly), it doesn't generate mitigation, it...just generates a resource. And while such abilities exist in game, they're all oGCDs, I think. Probably for the reason people don't feel pressing a GCD to just let them do other things is fun..?

Instead of one upkeep spell (Dia) and an upkeep self-buff oGCD (Presence of Mind) that I need to keep up with, you've doubled the number I need to manage here...

But I think the bigger problem is the rotation doesn't work out. You want to be able to use Budding every 20 seconds, which is the point of Banish, but they'll get stuck synced to each other during the fight, I believe. I'll walk you through it here to show you what I mean.

Fight starts:
T = 0.0 - Budding - generate 1 Lily (spend it whenever) (CD refresh at 30.0)
T = 2.5 - Banish (CD refresh at 32.5) (Budding CD refresh now at 20.0)
T = 5.0 - Dia (expires at 35.0)
T = 7.5 -17.5 - Glare (1x Cure/Medica somewhere in here: Misery 1/3) - 5 casts
T = 20.0 - Budding - generate 1 Lily (spend it whenever) (CD refresh at 50.0)
T = 22.5-30.0 - Glare (1x Cure/Medica somewhere in here: Misery 2/3) - 4 casts
T = 32.5 - Banish (CD refresh at 62.5) (Budding CD refresh now at 40.0)
T = 32.5 - Glare (22.5-30.0 Cure/Medica could go here instead: Misery 2/3) - 1 cast
T = 35.0 - Dia (expires at 65.0)
T = 37.5 - Glare (22.5-30.0 Cure/Medica could go here instead: Misery 2/3) - 1 cast
T = 40.0 - Budding - generate 1 Lily (spend it whenever) (CD refresh at 70.0)
T = 42.5-57.5 - Glare (1x Cure/Medica somewhere in here: Misery 3/3) (Misery may also be cast here) - 8 casts
T = 60.0 - Misery may be cast here if not already done so. If not...Glare. (Problem! Banish is not off CD until the next GCD. Budding has 10 sec of CD remaining, meaning it is now drifting and the Banish reduction will be partly wasted!)
T = 62.5 - Banish (CD refresh at 92.5) (Budding CD now off CD with 5.0 sec wasted Banish reduction by the time it can be cast next GCD)
T = 65.0 - Budding - generate 1 Lily (spend it whenever) (CD refresh at 95.0) (Problem! Dia has now expired and not been refreshed!)
T = 67.5 - Dia (expires at 97.5)
T = 70.0-92.5 - Glare (1x Cure/Medica somewhere in here: Misery 4/3!!) (Misery must also be cast here BEFORE the Cure/Medica to avoid overcapping) - 9 casts (Problem! Budding is not off CD and is drifting. Banish is not off CD to shorten Budding's CD. Misery is at risk of overcapping.)
T = 92.5 - Banish (CD refresh at 122.5) (Budding CD now off CD with 10.0 sec wasted Banish reduction by the time it can be cast next GCD; the two are now in sync)
T = 95.0 - Budding - generate 1 Lily (spend it whenever) (CD refresh at 125.0) (Problem! Budding will not be off CD again until into the burst window. While that Misery may be fit within, this drift will continue over the course of the fight until it is outside of the window.)
T = 97.5 - Dia (expires at 127.5)
T = 100-120 - Glare (1x Cure/Medica somewhere in here: Misery 2/3) - 5 casts
T = 122.5 [Burst window starts] - Banish (CD refresh at 152.5) (Budding CD now off CD with 10.0 sec wasted Banish reduction by the time it can be cast next GCD; the two remain in sync, and will for the remainder of the fight. Only 2 Buddings per minute now.)
T = 125.0 - Budding - generate 1 Lily (spend it whenever) (CD refresh at 155.0) (From here on, only two Lilies will be generated per 60 min of the fight for the remainder of the fight.)
T = 127.5 - Dia (expires at 157.5)
T = 130-140 - For the remainder of the burst window, the player will need to cast 1 Cure/Medica (whether or not needed) to get in a Misery, and then filler with Glare (~5 casts to do all of this in); Misery 3/3, 0/3 once cast.
T = 142.5-150.0 - Glare (Cure/Medica cannot be cast here without a DPS loss, as it needed to be cast in the 130-140 window to ensure Misery under party buffs)
T = 152.5 - Banish (CD refresh at 182.5) (Budding CD now off CD with 10.0 sec wasted Banish reduction by the time it can be cast next GCD; the two remain in sync, and will for the remainder of the fight. Only 2 Buddings per minute now.)
T = 155.0 - Budding - generate 1 Lily (spend it whenever) (CD refresh at 185.0) (From here on, only two Lilies will be generated per 60 min of the fight for the remainder of the fight.)
T = 157.5 - Dia (expires at 187.5) (On the plus side, Dia will not further drift as long as the player uses Banish and Budding on CD)
T = 160-180 - Glare (1x Cure/Medica somewhere in here: Misery 1/3) - 9 casts

...I think at this point, it actually settles into a static loop of Banish, Budding, Dia, Glarespam with a Cure/Medica in it (once per 30 seconds), Misery (once per 90 seconds), and any Cure/Medica cast outside of the 1 per 30 seconds is a DPS loss.

So basically, WHM as it is today, but worse, and with extra steps to achieve a weaker output result in both healing and damage...

My first thought was that, collectively, Banish knocks off 40 sec from all of Budding's CD's over 2 minutes (from 4 uses of Banish), which means instead of taking 3 minutes/180 seconds to generate 6 Lilies and 2 Miseries, you take 140 seconds, or 2 minutes and 20 seconds, making you drift off of burst windows. You'd either have to hold the first Misery 40 seconds or accept not using Misery in the 2 minute burst window. Even if we put in the 5th Banish at 2 min, that makes this 2 min 10 seconds. By the 4 minute window, we'd still be off (either 4 min 20 seconds then OR 4 min 30 seconds, I'd have to play this out all the way to be sure)...

...except as far as I worked it out, they actually fall in sync, and from then on for the rest of the fight will remain in sync, limiting you to 2 Lilies per minute and forcing Misery to drift out of burst.

Now, you can do some gigabrain stuff to try and address this. For example, you can delay the 122.5 Banish until after Budding. That's at least 2 GCDs, though, and that would drift Dia, so you'd need to wait until after the Dia, having Banish sit off CD for 7.5 seconds (3 GCDs), a DPS loss. You'd need to periodically do this, kind of like Leap Year having an extra day every 4 years to reset. You would also have a weird loss of healing flexibility in the burst window trying to fit Misery there and then not having the instant cast/damage neutral heal as an option after that point. This would make DPS neutral healing far more rigid than it is today during parts of the rotation. I'm also not sure if Budding would be a DPS loss or not. You're using a GCD that does no damage to have another GCD that does no damage and generates 1/4th of a Glare. Or...something like that, anyway. If all the ability potencies were what they are today, this would be a very clear DPS loss. You could backload some of that potency into Banish to make up for it, but it would have to be significant as you also have to remember Banish is drifting over the course of the fight having to sit on CD at various points.

You can't really include time 0 and time 120 because you have the extra use at time 0 when everything's off CD at the start of the fight. It may be me being half-asleep and about to go to bed, but I don't think this would consistently line up with the 2 minute meta even with optimal play. It'd drift either 10 or 20 seconds each 2 mins. And, at least at present, we're all slaves to the 2 min meta. Ask PLD...

The gigabrain maneuver is also highly unintuitive. THAT could be fixed (maybe) by giving Banish charges (something you explicitly avoided), but that may have further knock-on effects.

Hm...yeah, I'm half-asleep at this point, but I THINK this wouldn't actually work very well. I get what you're going for, but Banish's CD would have to be 20 sec for that to work since no matter how you play, either Banish is going to Sync to Budding at some point (or Budding to Banish) OR you'll have to drift Banish and possibly Dia and Misery. Charges might fix this, but I think that will not entirely fix it and will generate additional problems.

Something else to note is how...rigid...this rotation is. The burst window requires 3 DPS GCDs cast in a row to avoid drifting (even if we assume 20 second Buddings), meaning any healing in that time would have to be done with oGCDs to avoid losing damage. Additionally, the 4-5 other GCDs in the burst window HAVE to include one Cure/Medica (whether or not any healing is needed) to generate and fit Misery in the window. On the one hand, this is no worse than the game right now, but on the other hand, the game right now allows flexible Solace/Rapture use to address healing needs with 79 seconds before overcapping (you have up until the 4th Lily is generated at 80 seconds before you HAVE to spend a Lily before you overcap). This makes the rotation far less flexible to deliver on-demand healing if the party needs it, and parts of the rotation have the RDM melee combo problem of "Sorry, I can't heal/raise right now" outside of oGCD uses without tanking your damage. While the live game has this problem, it also has it with a far simpler rotation. If you have to heal someone with a GCD at 122.5, now what spell do you use at 125.0? Banish and Budding are both off CD and Dia needs to be refreshed in the next GCD.

It's both far more rigid in healing allowed GCDs and far more rigid in the damage GCDs, especially going into the burst window. The exact opposite of what healers are designed to be, even with oGCDs. WHM doesn't have enough oGCDs to cover that much necessary healing if it comes up at a bad time, causing them to either drift/miss burst losing more damage than in live, or to not heal and risk losing a DPS player just as they're in the middle of their burst phase, costing the party far more damage.

.

Second Concept:

Again, not trying to be blunt, just offering you my honest appraisal:

Budding Afflatus is PROBABLY still going to have thee same problem. I'd have to walk this one out as I did the above one to be sure, but I don't think that's a salvageable concept unless you make it a 20 sec GCD that can hold charges (prevent immediate overcap if not used on CD). I get what you're going for of the "static Lily generation is slower but can be sped up", but keep in mind, this is KIND of what SB Lilies were, and that was not well received. I know, it wasn't the same, but it was the same KIND of thing - we have spells with CDs, and those CDs can be shortened by pressing a different button (back then it was casting Cure 1/2 on a target) so you can use them faster. Sounds great on paper, does not work well at all in practice. And that was BEFORE the 2 min meta.

At best, Budding will be an extra button to juggle for no reason other than busywork. And if it's not an attack spell, it doesn't really fix the problem of "twirl your staff". But ignoring that, the only way for it to work is for it to have a base 20 sec CD and allow 2 charges, and at that point, it's REALLY just an extra button to juggle for the sake of having an extra button to juggle.

Every 10 seconds (4 casts) you get 1 cast of Tempest. Since it's any spell, not just Glare, that would include Dia, Misery, Solace, Rapture, or any Cure/Medica spell. Problem here is every 4 instead of every 3. The reason is 3 casts + 1 = 10 seconds (standard spell speed). But 4 + 1 = 12.5 seconds. So the fight time use will be casting your first spell at T = 0, 2.5/5.0/7.0 Tempest at T = 10, 12.5/15.0/17.5/20.0 Tempest at 22.5, 25.0/27.5/30.0/32.5 Tempest at 35.0 ...I may be wrong, but I don't think this will line up well with 60 sec OR 120 sec.

Soul Drain seems...odd for a WHM spell. I guess you could argue Stasis or something, but it seems rather more like a Necromancer or at least Black Magic. Name aside: It making your next cast instant doesn't help with you're still using 2 GCDs. So it just allows for a movement tool. Which would be nice...except it's on a rigid timetable. Tempest is cast every 5 GCDs. This means Soul Dran must be cast on the 6th immediately after it. The instant cast spell comes out on the 7th (and half-way to the next Tempest). While this allows a lot of free movement over the course of a fight, it's only free movement at very specific times. And unlike, say RDM or SGE, there's no flexibility as to where it can fall, meaning it could be completely wasted. Of course, Soul Drain may be pushed to the right 1 or 2 GCDs, but doing so comes at the cost of half a Glare's worth of lost DPS.

Using Holy in this case...is Holy now a targeted spell? An AOE around the caster? Does it still do a bit less than half a Glare's damage? It decreases the CD of Budding Afflatus, but it can't be spammed to decrease Budding's CD as that reduction only applies if used after Tempest. Also it seems from reading this that you're now competing between Soul Drain for Glare damage + MP vs Holy for 1/2 Glare damage + slightly faster Lily generation. You can use Holy instead and delay Soul Drain, but then you're losing another 1/2 Glare damage to gain MP and get an instant cast spell that may or may not be worthless free movement.

I'm...going to have to not be asleep when I look at this again. But on the surface, I imagine there would be...problems. XD

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I get what you're trying to do, I think, but I don't think either of these would work mechanically.

In terms of compromise/feel...I don't think they would work. The first one makes for a rigid damage rotation and highly constrained GCD healing without tanking your damage, with both becoming VERY tight into the burst window. Even if we ignore the mechanical issues of drift and stuff, the rigidity is going to be a problem. This has a lot more of a GNB feel to it, which some Tank players already have issue with (in their case, it's hard to weave oGCD defensive CDs in Continuation combos) where your damage rotation is surprisingly rigid (though in bursts, not the entire time; the long CDs MUST be used on CD, though, and due to no charges, there's no wiggle room in the matter, and likewise Dia), and in the case of a Healer, this could lead to wipes if people get greedy and try to maintain their DPS uptime.

The healing side of things (without large DPS losses) is also much more rigid. On paper it should be more flexible, but now you HAVE to spend healing only in certain windows to keep from overcapping Misery or drifting it out of burst. This creates a second layer of rigidity, and worse, one that can result in dead party members.

One of the things people like about healer rotations in general and WHM in specific is how flexible they are and NOT on a rigid rotation like a DPS. As I've said before SGE could be an exception (because Kardia; if this was SAGE'S rotation, it would be generating healing and could weave Kardia in oGCDs to move the spot healing around while maintaining its DPS rotation provided the player's good at playing AST and moving between targeting the boss and targeting party members), but WHM not really. Making the damage rotation rigid would make it feel constraining and less fun and more stressful to more casual players. Making the healing more rigid is even worse, though.

...the Second Concept doesn't seem to have quite this problem. In theory, one could drop Holy, but you still have Budding Afflatus as an unnecessarily rigid CD that must be maintained, and if you need a heal just after Tempest, you're losing Glare potency because you're having to delay Soul Drain.

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I think you have to drop the manual Lily generation. You could have a Lil generating long CD oGCD like Rhizo, but I don't think a GCD Lily generator that removes automatic generation is a good idea. Water is fine (being able to delay Assize healing is actually a good idea). Dia being Aoe is also fine. Misery being as it is today, also fine.

I wouldn't mind every N Glare casts, Glare becomes something more powerful with a neater animation (I said before High Glare, but whatever is fine), and this just taking the Glare button spot is fine. It can't be a separate thing you use instead of Glare, though, since then you're doing that weird "do you hold it for burst or not" strangeness. One thing I do like about it is that it triggers from any spell cast, making it a mini-Misery and allowing use of normally not used GCD healing spells like Regen. Depending on what Tempest's Potency is, this could allow for healing at a minimal or zero damage loss. Though that's also the PROBLEM with any spell; since it's any spell and not just healing spells, we still run into "if you miss a Glare, it's a loss". The reason DPS neutral Misery generated by heals works is that it doesn't create an optimal Glarespam to get optimal damage. It allows you to SWAP Glare FOR heals.

Soul Drain (name aside) is...probably not a great idea. I get where you're trying to have a 1-2 combo with Tempest that rewards you with free movement, but if this is part of your MP generation (to maintain MP), then that's bad because it forces use and makes it non-optional. And requiring it after Tempest means potentially delaying healing, which creates a rigidity there, which as I said above should be avoided on any Healer Job that can't generate passive healing (SCH/SGE). The instant cast next spell is nice, but either comes at the cost of 1/2 Glare OR at the cost of rotational rigidity in when it comes out.

If this was a DPS Job, not a Healing Job, you could have some CDs (think stuff like True North/Perfect Balance) to manipulate that - like get a Tempest whenever you want using one CD which could let you plan out a Soul Drain just before movement and shift your Tempest to there. But for a Healing Job, dancing around damage mechanics like that while addressing healing needs might be problematic.

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I think what you're ultimately going for is "something to consolidate a few existing buttons so there's room to add new buttons with the same total number of hotbar spaces used; some way to HAVE to press buttons other than Glare, some way to see more spell animations, some way to do this without overly changing the existing rotation, some way to encourage/reward damage with either healing, more damage buttons, or both, some way to refund some healing so it's not always a damage loss, and some way to require consistently optimal use of the new abilities in order to avoid drift/dps losses (in other words, to make it where people don't just outright ignore them because they don't produce any difference in performance/output)"

I THINK that's more or less the bird's eye of what you're attempting, anyway.

I just think both your proposals generate too much rigidity, make the DPS rotation too rigid at moderate to high levels of correct play, and make the healing much too rigid for a Job that isn't passively healing when it's locked into its serious damage rotation phases. Remember WHM also has the fewest oGCDs (only two that directly heal, Tetra and Assize, with the latter being on CD use, and the only other ones being Bene which has a weird delay and should be used more smartly and Asylum which provides slow healing that might not meet emergency needs), and they don't generate passive healing like SGE does while DPSing or SCH does anytime it's not using Dissipation. So this also would create a far bigger gulf between optimal and non-optimal play.

Having all healing spells generate 1/3rd a Misery wouldn't do...well, any of that. It would make healing more flexible while providing the same overall damage output, and wouldn't create weird optimization schema other than if you DID cast a GCD heal during the burst window, you'd be obliged to cast two more. But that's far less counterintuitive or rigid play than either of the above proposals, I think...

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I don't mean to rag on your ideas, just analyzing them. And it's actually an interesting thought experiment.

It's already got me thinking of how passive healing (Eos/Kardia) generation allows for those Jobs to be FAR more flexible in their potential damage kits and rotations, for one thing. It's kind of a no brainer to think about it, but the implications for damage rotations are significant. Thanks to Eos, SCH can have short "RDM melee combo" phases where it needs to press several damage abilities together (even if out of oGCDs) because Eos will somewhat make up the gap. (Also SCH has way more healing oGCDs than WHM...). And likewise, Kardia allows for SGE to have a full on damage rotation if desired because each of those buttons also applies healing, and the SGE can even manually target it while keeping up its burst. Imagine if RDM could freely Vercure (without interrupting combos) as an oGCD action weave between every part of its melee combo, the 1-2-3-Holy/Flare-Scorch-Resolution (basically, if each attack gave a passive heal)? That would or a Verraise, if you will. This would allow it to do its damage combo while also providing its utility.

SGE can do this as well because of Kardia. There wouldn't be a "sorry, I'm in my burst window" because damaging in its burst window is actively providing the healing needed by the party. If it had an AOE Kardia for 4 GCDs on a 60 or 120 sec CD, the rotation would be 100% feasible without issue. (Oh, and it also has as many oGCDs as SCH, more or less...)

...but, this does have me thinking more than ever that a dps rotation for WHM is a bad idea - no passive healing, only 3 healing oGCDs not tied to rigid CD usage (Tetra on a shortish CD, Asylum on a moderate one, Benediction on a long one). Benison has 2 charges and 30 sec CD, but doesn't heal (and the barrier's the size of a Cure 1; not exactly "save the day" material)