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

[Renathras]

Opinion.

Did I say it wasn't? It's just as valid as "getting to do an engaging DPS rotation is rewarding" is.

To make it more explicit:

"Getting to do DPS isn't seen as rewarding by everyone; so what's the reward for everyone else?"

It has been answered before. Group content of any difficulty level should have enough damage that bringing a healer is required no matter your skill level

Great! We agree.

Generally speaking, that isn't the answer - most of the time, it's "We can't change encounter design/we'd have to change every encounter in the game/it would break the game/casuals couldn't clear MSQ/etc". That's why I say there generally isn't an answer, because people say we can't do any of those things you just proposed whenever I propose them. In fact, I'm pretty sure you've told me before that we can't do those very things when I proposed them...? o.O

1. Balance outgoing damage around what healing healers can provide. Easier content can still be forgiving, but if you're going to give jobs like White Mage and Sage free healing resources every 20 seconds, for example, give those healers reasons to use those.

Agreed. Indeed, I've proposed this before. And been told we can't do it.

2. Create opportunities for the healer to make decisions within their own toolkit. As a small example, rather than putting a cooldown on something, give it a steep MP cost with no cooldown. Make the player choose when to take advantage of whatever potent effect that spell has by managing their MP rather than just waiting for it to be ready again.

Agreed. I've also proposed THIS before and been told that we can't do it and that the game has drifted so far from MP management that it can't possibly be a solution. I'm glad to see you say it.

3. Reward optimal healing with fun and interesting gameplay. For most people, that means more interesting DPS rotations that allow you to shorten the duration of an encounter and increase the rest of your party's margin for error.

Among other things. For example, ASTs seem to want buffs, not more damage buttons.

I'm sorry that you're in a select minority of...

What's that thing you and others always say not to do? Tell people they're in the minority?

There is a subset of players who prefer to focus on support. If only there was a job that rewarded optimal healing by empowering their teammates instead of themselves. That would ideally be what is designed to appeal to players within your subset.

Sure. And per the idea that we can't have things on only one Job, it would need to be an option on every Healer Job. I'm fine with that. Honestly, this is probably what RDM should be (as a Healer, go fig)

Hell, I'd be fine with it being AST if they completely revamped it to get rid of its carpel tunnel burst and got rid of the occultist and tarot aesthetic. Problem is, both of those are things that current AST players like, and I don't want to steal their Job out from under them, do you?

.

It's unfortunate, AST could've evolved into such a job. AST was never a dps-focused healer even on release. It's a shame that they cut down what we can do with cards, greatly reducing the decision tree that cards had while also reducing the time we even spend being engaged with the cards, which leaves us nothing but the lackluster damage kit that they've had since HW (minus 1 DoT).

Agreed. The devs seem to want to go the opposite direction with the Healers.

In ShB, recall they did a number on BRD's party buffs when they added DNC. I remember it being so stupid the moment I heard it.

Devs: "We think Jobs that work by buffing other party members aren't good for the game, so we're removing BRD's party buffs."
Players: "Uh...okay, we'll give this a chance. So you're doing what with BRD?"
Devs: "Well, we're adding a new Job we think will be fun for players. Dancer. How it works is that it buffs other party members and we think this will be good for the game!"
Players: <visible confusion>

They have this weird "on again, off again" flirtation with whether or not they want a true Support role and how much or little they want to allow that.

...of course, then you have PvP, so what even the heck?

[ty_taurus]

Agreed. Indeed, I've proposed this before. And been told we can't do it.

No, that's not entirely true. What has been said before by myself, Roe, and several others is that we cannot do that to the point at which healing would substantiate the majority of even a skilled healer's gameplay instead of Glare spam. I've said multiple times that we can and should increase healing requirements to some degree, but that alone will not resolve the issues that are constantly brought up here on the healer forums. It cannot be the only action taken.

What's that thing you and others always say not to do? Tell people they're in the minority?

What are you referring to? Do you believe most people who play video games dislike doing damage and would rather support another player or NPC to defeat enemies for them? Because it's a fairly well-known metric that most gamers like doing damage. There are literal studies that show doing big damage and seeing big numbers releases dopamine in the brain. There is a limit to this of course. There's a point at which numbers become so big that they no longer mean anything to people. My point was that general answer to rewarding optimal healing is by providing a more interesting offensive gameplay loop, because there's not much of a point in rewarding good healing with more healing, because the damage as already been healed at that point.

Sure. And per the idea that we can't have things on only one Job, it would need to be an option on every Healer Job. I'm fine with that.

Hell, I'd be fine with it being AST if they completely revamped it to get rid of its carpel tunnel burst and got rid of the occultist and tarot aesthetic. Problem is, both of those are things that current AST players like, and I don't want to steal their Job out from under them, do you?

Actually, yes. I would steal Astrologian from them. It sucks, but as a designer, the healthiest way I can foresee I full healer rework appealing to the most amount of players is creating a healer designed to have its gameplay loop revolve around indirect damage while still creating a way for it to function and feel good while soloing, and that means making an engine building healing who sets up and detonates utility and healing effects while passively generate damage in order for it to stay competitive with the other 3 healers doing direct damage. Option A is to change an existing healer to provide that while making changes to the other 3 to offer different styles of direct damage gameplay, and of the 4 we have, Astrologian is undoubtedly the one that makes the most sense since it's already a support-oriented healer. Option B is we preserve Astrologian for its dedicated player base, and we instead wait 8 more years to introduce the 5th healer in 9.0 starting at level 100. Now, I'm not the lead job designer of this game, so it's not my call. But sometimes there's not a perfect answer, and as the designer, you have to decide who's taking the bullet.

Now, I will say the ideas I've proposed already on this forum are not exactly what I'd implement if I were the lead designer, because those are concepts done exclusively as one person on paper and without a prototyping build to test them in. I have no idea how those would actually feel and they include very experimental ideas that would absolutely need to go through testing to see how they feel and if they even work in a balanced manner. If I was the lead designer, I would also want to be transparent about those changes (if SE would let me) and try to communicate with Astrologian players to find a healthy compromise.

[ForsakenRoe]

"Getting to do DPS isn't seen as rewarding by everyone; so what's the reward for everyone else?"

They keep up with the heavy HPS check more effectively, allowing them to keep more of their MP to spend on other things. What other things, IDK, I can't claim to understand the mentality of a heal-only healer that well, but I would assume that they'd be happy with the result of 'the party was getting hammered by 25k hits over and over in Harrowing Hell, and I kept them alive through it because I am good at healing'. As said before, 'more healing' can't be the reward because the party is already full HP, the limit of how much effect the healing can have has hit it's maximum and any more is a waste. The only other thing is 'opening up space to deal damage' because the only limit of effectiveness on 'more damage' is 'the boss dies' and that's kinda the goal of the fight

1) That Healers aren't needed?
2) That Healing is boring?
3) That DPSing on Healers is boring?


And also: "getting to do DPS" isn't rewarding.

1: Healers not being needed is a symptom of a much larger problem: that offhealing, tank selfsustain, non-healer damage mitigation utility etc has gotten so plentiful, the requirements of the fight do not keep up. And yet, because not every class HAS that utility, the devs cannot adjust the fight design for it. They can design around the assumption of 2 Feints, 1 Addle, 1 Tactroubasamba, sure. But Minne vs Curing Waltz vs Dismantle, we don't know which P-Ranged is going to be present. So they can't make the fight 'expect' a 10% mit tool, because only MCH has that one. Thus, the weird paradox occurs where the tools are given to us, but not really 'needed' per se. Imagine the outcry if players went into a week 1 run of Savage, last floor, and got walled because their comp of NIN/DRG/BLM/DNC couldn't deal with the mit checks, because the fight expected them to be running RDM and MCH for Dismantle and Magic Barrier, the outcry would be massive. Make the utility stuff less mit-related for DPS, they can keep the 10% healing up from Mantra, Minne, Barrier, etc those are cool and interesting, and help boost the power of the shields from the healer. But Addle and Feint are a bit questionable to me, especially considering they, combined, were an ACN skill originally (meaning SCH had native access to them). Addle's effect was limited to only SMN/SCH because of the trait, and Feint was crossclassable to any caster/healer, but now it's throw to melee for some reason??? Guess they need to give the role something to think about, now that they don't have to think about keeping uptime, or positionals (at this rate they're gonna remove them in 7.0)

2: Healing, in a vacuum, is boring to me, yes. If I press Glare over and over, that gets old fast. Changing that to 'press Cure 2 over and over', does not really fix that issue. It's still one button being mashed. It's the dancing between the two sides, of healing and dealing damage, of triage, of quickly reacting to issues that might arise, that make healing 'fun' to me, and this game has a distinct lack of 'thing has gone wrong, quick fix it' moments outside of progression. Why can't bosses occasionally throw out a random autoattack (albeit a lower potency) at a random non-tank player? If the tank takes 80% of the autoattacks, but the other 20% get flung randomly at the other party members, it at least asks the healer player to 'hey heal this guy up, because if the boss chooses to AA him a second time, he's probably gonna die to it'. You'd solve it in an EX roulette-level boss with like, one Solace, Essential Dignity, Lustrate or Druochole, but the point is that it helps to eat away at the resources of the healer. For a comparison, think of two bosses in WOW. One is Patchwerk. He stands and he hits hard, you rotate CDs, and eventually the DPS deal enough damage to kill him. Alternatively, take a fight like Broodkeeper Diurna (dragonflight S1). The boss has to be kited near eggs so DPS can use her own spear to destroy them, and adds keep funneling into the arena which have to be kept 50y away from the boss or they become superpowered. Despite having less 'tank' things to do (there's no tankswaps, for example), it's a much more engaging fight for tanks, because they're constantly having to react to things. Move the boss, move the adds, oh no an egg was missed and now a Nascent add has spawned, ok but the add tank has taunted it, took it out of the 50y range and now it's killable, we salvaged the pull. My least favorite fights in that raid were Terros and Sennarth, because they're 'stand and hit' and the tanks have no agency over the boss's positioning. Dathea is on thin ice, cos she's locked at the middle of the arena, but scrapes by because the TB being 'you get launched further per stack of debuff' is funny to watch at 4 stacks. Conversely, my favorites were Kurog and Broodkeeper, because the tanks have to keep moving the boss around the arena as the fight progresses.

3: It's a complex question, but as it stands, yes to me it kind of is. Pressing one button over and over, as said before, gets old fast. What keeps it interesting is the reacting to things, I don't know the fights 100% yet, etc. But that will fade away over time as I get more practice. The problem is not just 'DPSing is boring' though. It's that, where other roles get rewarded for getting better at their class with being able to do their job better (ie tanks do a better job of mitigating damage = they make the healer's life easier), our reward for getting better at healing, rationing out CDs etc, is that we get to press our one button more often. Additionally, when our 'one button, more' is the reward, it starts to have a more pronounced effect on damage variance, which leads to potential issues with balance re: enrage timers. If someone casts 100 Glares, but couldn't hit enrage, the only thing they can do to improve that is either check their DOT uptime is good, cast more Glares (sometimes not possible due to encounter and mechanics), or just 'crit more lmao'. In fact, a friend of mine showed me a log comparison between their WHM, and the 'current best (at the time) WHM run' of P1 for TOP. Both players had the same Glares, Dias, Assizes and Misery casts. Every 'number of casts' count was the same. But the 'current best' WHM had 100k more damage in that phase, because they crit more. There was zero skill difference at play, my friend's WHM just 'got unlucky' and there's nothing that can be done in that situation except 'go again'

Lastly, 'getting to do DPS isn't rewarding' is one of those things. Like if we flip it, 'being forced to heal a player who keeps standing in orange circles isn't rewarding' is also pretty true, you're not getting anything from it except higher blood pressure. But we do it anyway, because it's part of the job we signed up for when we queued. Additionally, I could say the same for say, Tank. 'Getting to do damage as Tank isn't rewarding', except... It is. When you deal damage on tank, you generate aggro (not that it matters much now), you get selfsustain via your 123 combo, you build resources that lead to stronger hits with additional effects, and you get cool looking CDs to use, that also do damage or have additional effects such as generating other resources. So the problem with 'doing DPS as healer isn't rewarding' might not be because 'its not part of the role's duties', but because the devs have designed it in a non-rewarding way.