The Problem with Healer Feedback, and requested changes

[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.

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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)