I'm bored when I heal because I need more complex DPS rotations

[ForsakenRoe]

It's true though, healers can't have complex dps rotation because it isn't their role to do that... if healers are bored devs can remove the power-creep, which will require more healing to be done - which is a legit concern. Making healers be dps characters is against the role philosophy. Tanks aren't meant to have complex dps rotations either. This is partly why most players prefer dps characters - complex rotations, higher numbers. Support characters need to respond to situations with different tools and improvise, which is fun in its own way.

So if healers can't have complex dps rotation because 'it isnt their role', why can WAR cause enough selfhealing to get a team of 4 through EX roulette? Why does SMN get to have a huge regen effect on the party when Phoenix is summoned (plus enkindle)? Why does DNC have Curing Waltz, which, combined with the SMN stuff, allowed people to get zero-healer clears of the first two EW EX's, during the 'they are current' patch? Why do other roles get to infringe on the territory of 'the healer role' so hard, but healers can't have anything outside of their box? We already saw it's possible to 8 tank P2S because now tank damage is high enough to do that apparently, and they have enough healing across the tanks to just...not need healers. So why can't healers have 'a more complex dps rotation' if the other roles keep stepping over the line like this? Personally I'm not even asking for massive changes, the more solid ideas I have made would fit within the current (very tiny) design space the healers have been painted into. For example, just changing the duration of WHMs DOT down to 12sec, and adding a 15s cooldown GCD. One extra button, and a change to the frequency we re-DOT the enemy is all I'm asking for for that class, is even that too much to ask for? It's 'more complex dps rotation' after all. When us healer players ask for 'more dps rotation complexity' we mean small stuff like this, or SCH getting it's DOTs back, not RPR Double Communio or MNK 'lock your framerate to optimize your DPS' stuff

Also, 'require more healing to be done' is not the solution, and this tier proves it. A lot of healer mains couldn't keep up, and made their opinions on the extra healing required apparent. Meanwhile, the more skilled healer players COULD keep up, cleared, and are back to complaining that healer gameplay is boring, because surprise surprise, once you get gear, the amount of times we have to heal goes down, and the amount of GlareBroilDosis and the AST one we use goes up. If you mean 'remove power creep' as in 'make healer's gear not affect the boss's damage output/healing done ratios', or add more percentage based attacks like 'this raidwide does 60% of your max hp', well as Mithron said, you're removing the feeling of progression from the player, which is a big reason people actually do the raid. What's the point in farming out BIS if it doesn't change how strong you are?

Tanks aren't meant to have complex dps rotations either.

Is that why the meme is 'PLD GCD spreadsheet' and not [any other class] GCD spreadsheet? There's no way that PLD has 'less complex DPS rotation' in terms of optimization than something like SMN or DNC, or arguably RPR and SAM. If you instead mean 'tanks here CAN have more complex DPS rotations than DPS, but it is my personal belief that they shouldnt', why should they have to be consigned to boredom while playing? Who decided this design was THE design to follow, that tanks shouldn't do damage just keep aggro, and healers shouldnt do damage, just heal booboos? Cos I can name multiple games where the 'healer role', 'support role' or 'tank role' or whatever definitely does contribute to damage, and not doing so would be considered griefing.

But guys, if you want complex dps rotations why don't you play... dps classes? SMN and RDM have off-heals and rez, they would be ideal for what you want, no? Don't forget that a lot of people play healer for the simplicity of its dps rotation. I agree that it's very simple, but it works as intended. The complexity of the healer role comes from using the correct support skills at the right time and location, which I find pretty engaging tbh.

Also, the reasons you identify re healing pertain to all games that use the trinity. This is why newer games (e.g. BDO) have been moving away from the trinity and everyone is a tanky dps with self heals.

Lots of healers DID decide to play DPS classes this tier, partially because healing was harder, partially because they're tired of having one button to mash away mindlessly while they wait for Hegemone to get her finger out of her backside and actually use a raidwide. Others just quit the game entirely or are taking extended breaks. This 'why dont you play another role then' attitude is as dismissive as Yoshi's 'go try ultimate' quip, it does nothing to address the issues with the role, many take it literally and actually DO leave the role, causing the role to just grow stagnant, and frankly, it's bloody ignorant. The role USED to have 'complex DPS rotations' to the complexity we wish for, back in HW-SB. HW had Cleric Stance which was bad for accessibility to the role, and so it was removed for SB. Now a newer player could dip their toes into experimenting 'can I get this DOT out safely without getting my team killed' without fear of locking themselves out of healing for 5sec, this was a good change. If we had kept building off of SB, I'm pretty sure most healers who currently have problems with the lack of engaging rotation would be sated. Balance was an issue yes, but balance can be worked on without completely upending a role like they did.

SHB went too far in streamlining the role, to the point where it almost feels like the devs want to remove the 'wrong choices' from the role entirely, as it's the role that can most easily cause a wipe if they don't press the right buttons. Essentially, idiot-proofing the role, but SE seems to have forgotten that there will always be a bigger idiot. Never forget, there were players who failed the Hien RP fight, a fight that has been proven (with video evidence) to be completely AFKable, except the part where you're forced to take a line stack marker. You can give the MMO playerbase a DPS class that has a rotation that is literally just 'press 1, then 2, over and over' and there will still be a non-zero number of them that will fail to get that right, be that by standing out of range, not keeping the GCD rolling, etc. Which is fine, but the problem is that SE has a track record of seeing data like this, going 'damn we need to make this simpler, for accessibility', and deciding the best course of action is to remove the 2 entirely.

The 'correct use of support skills' only applies to prog, once you know the fight the opportunities to 'correctly use support skills' are all mapped out. I know when I'm going to Pneuma, I know when I'm going to Lilybell. I'm glad you find it engaging to play the role as it is. Some of us don't, so we have asked (for several years now) for the skill ceiling to be raised so we have more room for skill expression. Note, and this is a very big note, this does not require the skill floor be raised too. A WHM design I posted and did potency maths for and such found that, if the player were to play the 'new design' but ignore the new button entirely, and only refresh Dia when it fell off (so playing as we do now), their potency output would be about 98% of the current rotation's output. If I can come up with a design that doesn't exclude 'Jimmy who wants to just smash Glare over and over' then SE surely can. If they can't, they'd better hire someone who can, or outsource to a contracted company to do it for them, because this is not rocket science. I also advocate for the healing to stay as accessible as it is now, as I don't want the hypothetical new player to be forced through hoops to access basic healing skills. However, I advocate for DPS rotation complexity, as a fun minigame to keep reclearing fights we already know interesting. I also advocate a more linked interplay between our healing and damage kits, Lilies are a good start in one direction, but I've suggested ways for WHM and SGE to have optimal play cause their damage to help them with their healing. Our kit shouldn't feel like it's got a dividing line between the 'healing part' and the 'DPS part'.

[Nizzi]

Don't forget that a lot of people play healer for the simplicity of its dps rotation.

Those people didn't care when SCH lost its DPS complexity or AST lost its support complexity, so I'm not really inclined to care at all if the same happens to them. Heaven forbid at least half of the jobs in a role with 4 jobs have something that isn't mindless 1 DoT 1 Nuke ""engagement"".

[ForteNightshade]

Tanks aren't meant to have complex dps rotations either.

Tanks at least have more engagement in their secondary role than healers. By the way, how I "respond to situations" on a tank is press the 30% button alongside the 25s "short" CD when the boss casts x tank buster. It's quite difficult and mentally exhausting, I assure you. No, it's not at all like Dragoon weaving Life Surge; Reaper weaving Arcane Circle, and so forth.

Sarcasm aside. Tanks are quite literally DPS that can sponge hits. We could just as easily have any one of the DPS kits and still perform our role in the exact same manner. Case in point, Dark Knight has a much "busier" opener than most DPS. Paladin needs an entire spreadsheet to properly align its rotation. It's almost as though pressing CDs for tank busters isn't actually very difficult. Likewise, giving healers some measure of DPS like they had in Heavensward or Stormblood won't make them suddenly overwhelming when the 90% of their casts are on a single button.

[Mithron]

But guys, if you want complex dps rotations why don't you play... dps classes?

Because I don't believe DPS classes are the only role that's meant to have fun.

[ty_taurus]

Because I don't believe DPS classes are the only role that's meant to have fun.

This right here. I hate the arguemenr of “just play DPS instead.” Whether it’s intended or not, what that really means is “healers are supposed to be terrible and unfun.”

This is a video game—a V I D E O G A M E.

“Hey what are you doing Saturday night?”

“I’m going to play some FFXIV and play as a healer.”

“Oh is that fun?”

“No, it’s actually one of the most boring things you can do in FFXIV”

“Then why do you play it?”

“Because that’s how it’s supposed to be. Healers aren’t allowed to be fun.”

[fulminating]

But guys, if you want complex dps rotations why don't you play... dps classes? SMN and RDM have off-heals and rez, they would be ideal for what you want, no? Don't forget that a lot of people play healer for the simplicity of its dps rotation. I agree that it's very simple, but it works as intended. The complexity of the healer role comes from using the correct support skills at the right time and location, which I find pretty engaging tbh.

Also, the reasons you identify re healing pertain to all games that use the trinity. This is why newer games (e.g. BDO) have been moving away from the trinity and everyone is a tanky dps with self heals.

Could you please find some higher quality bait? Even that red mage guy put in more effort.

If you want some critique, mentioning summoner and complex dps rotation in the same sentence completely gave it away, but the trinity line was also a bit obvious particularly with the pair of elephants in the room (wow and ffxiv prior to 5.0).

[Liam_Harper]

Can we stop using the word "complex" when it comes to more dps buttons?

Trimming away the niche and useless oGCD's, merging things like Cure and Cure II and then adding a small handful of interesting dps buttons into the empty slots is not complex. New players brains will not explode. Raids will not become impossible to clear.

But guys, if you want complex dps rotations why don't you play... dps classes?

No. If you want a one-track job with a single responsibility to focus on, why don't you go play dps classes and stop trying to ruin our adaptable support role?

[flowerfairy]

The complexity of the healer role comes from using the correct support skills at the right time and location, which I find pretty engaging tbh.

It doesn't achieve that right now. It devolved to "press one of the million heal abilities you have for the raidwide while spamming Glare." If the tier is new, maybe we'll get to press FIVE heal GCDs out of the 100 Glare casts before everyone gets the current IL gear and that completely disappears, how fun!

Healing was much more intensive and complex in past iterations of the game, and they still had engaging DPS rotations. AST lost their unique kit that had much more supportive cards and SCH lost pretty much everything, even the fairy got homogenized to oGCDs for reasons no one understands. The only one who didn't suffer as much is WHM since that job was already in the gutter. Having more to heal is not engaging in this current system and it never will. Choosing one ability over another needs to have more weight than "one heal over another heal" because they all do the same exact thing.

[ForsakenRoe]

It doesn't achieve that right now. It devolved to "press one of the million heal abilities you have for the raidwide while spamming Glare." If the tier is new, maybe we'll get to press FIVE heal GCDs out of the 100 Glare casts before everyone gets the current IL gear and that completely disappears, how fun!

Week 3 I got my first P8S clear as WHM and it was inefficient as hell, full of overhealing and stuff as any first clear probably is. Week 4 I could not find a party that didn't already have a WHM so i thought 'sod it I will grief as SGE, I dont know any mit plans but how hard could it be?' We cleared doorboss in one pull, and Phase 2 in 3 pulls, with me entirely winging it for mit. The idea that there's 'correct support skills at correct time' is kinda just, nonexistent when so many do the same thing. Also SGE apparently can zero-GCD heal through Doorboss, so yeh, gear scaling triumphs once again.

“Because that’s how it’s supposed to be. Healers aren’t allowed to be fun.”

Didn't you know Taurus, the real reason people play Mercy in OW isn't because it's fun, it's because they want to be a player controlled healbot for the REAL heroes like Genji or Tracer. People don't play Crystal Maiden in DOTA, or Soraka in League because it's fun, they play those characters because they want to AFK in the lane next to the carry, the REAL hero of the match who everyone pins their hopes and dreams on.

Maybe SE should rework the game so that Healer is an AI role filled by Trusts in all content (including raids) that is a literal healbot, and change the raid format to 2 Tanks, 6 DPS, 2 HealBot AIs, and rescale the enrage requirements accordingly. Because that seems to be what SE believes healers to be, nothing more than robots who are there to play second-fiddle to the REAL classes, and keep those REAL classes alive so they get to have fun. Healer happens to be having fun? Coincidental side effect, but not necessary it seems.

[Succor]

What I see is that some people don't enjoy playing healer because they find it boring or unfun. I don't understand why anyone would force themselves to play something they find boring or unfun. This isn't dismissive or baiting, it's a simple solution to a problem. Players picking a class they find more fun is certainly more attainable than the devs redesigning an entire role, especially after reworks. On that note, I personally love how simple the healer rotation is, it's the main reason I like healing, because I don't like optimising dps.