Paired Threads: What would it take to make Heaker kits "complex/interesting"?

[Rilifane]

Funny enough I tried WoW again fairly recently and decided to be a disc priest. Despite their heal on damage mechanic, I wound up letting my team die so many times because I didn't realize incoming damage was so frequent. Imagine that, I have to actually heal as a healer? Who would have thunk?

I underestimated the damage at first as well because I was used to snoozing away for 40s after a raidwide, knowing perfectly well that nothing can happen except people running into the death wall. It's not even high, it's just constant, unpredictable and more dynamic in general. It shows that FFXIV has babied us for so long, the mere thought of healing as a healer becomes almost foreign.
Although it was quite easy to get back into dealing with that kind of damage. And refreshing.
And once I'm back into being better at it in general, I have a more elaborate downtime kit to look forward to. The option is there, I just don't choose it for now.

A lot of the mechanics there would work beautifully over here as well.
The filler spell reducing dot duration by one tick for extra potency on hit.
A skill having the chance to instantly reset the cooldown of another skill on a short-ish cooldown.
A skill stacking a debuff that makes another skill into a dps gain after a certain amount of stacks.

All of these mechanics gradually take more effect the better you become at a fight, healing and downtime gameplay.
A beginner healer would probably simply try to keep their dot up that has a more forgiving duration, use their cooldown on cooldown and the other skill occasionally since they don't accumulate stacks as often.
An experienced healer will refresh their dot far more often, will have somewhat frequent cooldown resets and thus use the cooldown more often as well as the accumulating stacks faster that turns another skill into a dps gain. Even if all of it combined would only result in a relatively small dps gain, veterans would at least have something to look forward to. Something that doesn't reward them with less the better they become but rather with more - but a different kind of more. Instead of watching HP bars like a hawk you'll gradually shift to paying more attention to cooldown resets, procs, dot durations and stacks as an experienced healer since the party is safe enough to do so. And it doesn't even take a "complex full dps rotation" to implement it. It's still just a handful of buttons at the end of the day.

[Allegor]

FFXIV has babied us for so long, the mere thought of healing as a healer becomes almost foreign.

And I keep wanting to point out the double standards that healers doing more than standing there and look pretty, or pressing 11111111 is allegedly too hard and/or stressful for people, while the same doesn't apply to giving tanks, ranged dps, and RDM support skills on top of what their own roles demand of them.

Why is the babysitter role the one being babysat!

[ForsakenRoe]

I should clarify (or try to), when I say that 'I don't think 123 combos is the solution', I mean for a healer, and the healer design specifically. Since we're on the subject of WOW, I'll use an example from that. Disc Priest has, while doing it's 'damage to heal' bursting combo, Smite as it's filler, Schism to open the 'deal more damage' window, Mind Blast (2 charges), Penance (gives mobility, channeled, very short CD), MindGames (longer CD but very strong effect), ShadowWord: Pain (DOT), ShadowWord: Death (bursty hit but deals selfdamage), maybe I missed one idk I don't play Disc much. Point is, all of these are unlinked, they don't '123' into each other, and they all have different CDs. You'd ideally want to use them all in a certain order for 'the most optimized burst possible', sure, but sometimes one of them's not up when you need to do a round of healing. The game's not gonna go 'oh I see you don't have both charges of Mind Blast back yet, I'll let you chill till you're ready', so you have to do the burst, without that second charge, and adapt your burst window accordingly, filling that missing GCD with something else.

So back to FFXIV, we could have something like, SGE could have Dosis (filler), E-Dosis (DOT), Phlegma (Hard hit, 2 charges), Toxicon (gives mobility, very short CD, get rid of/rework addersting it sucks), Dyskrasia (some kind of proc that causes it to deal bonus damage so it's a gain on ST), maybe an E-Toxicon or E-Phlegma if we're feeling spicy. None of these have to be linked via a 123 combo, they can all be standalone moves, with their own separate CDs or charge timers or whatever. I wouldn't do this to SGE, as I've already made a post about what I'd do to it on the healing side of things, but the premise can be put onto other healers too. SCH having 2 DOTs, a ground effect, an AOE with a DOT component to discourage spamming, etc. to manage in SB for example.

[ty_taurus]

Combos in general are things that can be used effectively or poorly. MNK's single target GCDs are an example of a good combo system, because it's not a 1-2-3... It's a 1-2-3 4-5-6, and sometimes it's a 1-5-3 or a 4-2-6 or other possible orders. There's fluidity there, and you need to keep aware of things like when you need to reapply Demonlish or when Twin Snakes needs refreshing. Its AoE combo, on the other hand, is not the worst offender thanks to Perfect Balance, but is really just a 1-2-3 > 1-2-3 > 1-2-3 situation, and that makes me ask the question of "what's the point?" That's three buttons--three spots on the hotbar that have no value in most combat scenarios since AoE is just reserved for trash mobs anyway. It's the same with MCH's combo. There's no branching there--no choices. What's the point of eating up so much space for something that is highly repetitive?

RDM's single target combos work nicely because it's also very fluid. You have You can start your 1-2 combo with Jolt, or Verstone, or Verfire, and any can go into either Verthunder of Veraero depending on your needs. It's in constant motion. Its melee burst combo is just three buttons that always go in the same 1-2-3 order though.

It's really just about how its handled, and preferably that it feels unique and different from other job combos as well.

[ForsakenRoe]

Guys don't do the 'what if tanks had 111111' thing, I tried that one in the past and certain parties said they'd 'actually quite like that, ship it' (or something to that effect). Whatever ridiculous example of 'what if the other roles were as vacuous as healers design wise' you can come up with, it seems there's gonna be at least one person who will come up and say 'yeh I do want that and sod the rest of the people who play the class who wanted to have a skill ceiling of any kind'

Also iirc you could hold aggro in SB with just Provoke and Shirk, without even attacking. If you could do it THEN, you definitely can do it NOW

But what if the tank gets distracted by DPSing and forgets to mitigate!?

Literally had tanks say this in P8S parties. 6min window comes up during a TB and they say 'I ain't mitigating that shit during my pot, I'm pressing LD for it' and then proceed to die because no actual mit on the TB = bleed ticking for like 40k per tick. But they get to keep getting new stuff like Shadowbringer, Primal Rend, Confiteor, and we don't get to have eg Purgation, Meltdown, idk PK Starstorm for AST and [greek sounding word] for SGE?

[ty_taurus]

Guys don't do the 'what if tanks had 111111' thing, I tried that one in the past and certain parties said they'd 'actually quite like that, ship it' (or something to that effect). Whatever ridiculous example of 'what if the other roles were as vacuous as healers design wise' you can come up with, it seems there's gonna be at least one person who will come up and say 'yeh I do want that and sod the rest of the people who play the class who wanted to have a skill ceiling of any kind'

Also iirc you could hold aggro in SB with just Provoke and Shirk, without even attacking. If you could do it THEN, you definitely can do it NOW



Literally had tanks say this in P8S parties. 6min window comes up during a TB and they say 'I ain't mitigating that shit during my pot, I'm pressing LD for it' and then proceed to die because no actual mit on the TB = bleed ticking for like 40k per tick. But they get to keep getting new stuff like Shadowbringer, Primal Rend, Confiteor, and we don't get to have eg Purgation, Meltdown, idk PK Starstorm for AST and [greek sounding word] for SGE?

I genuinely believe that move would kill the game actually. There are too many big players that main tank and would rip the game a new one for doing that to tanks, probably leave and create a chain reaction of content viewers also leaving in their wake. I don't know to what extent, but it would damage the game's reputation far more than ruining healers ever could.

[Semirhage]

I genuinely believe that move would kill the game actually. There are too many big players that main tank and would rip the game a new one for doing that to tanks, probably leave and create a chain reaction of content viewers also leaving in their wake. I don't know to what extent, but it would damage the game's reputation far more than ruining healers ever could.

Yeah, MMO healer communities tend to have this dichotomy where people view them as either 1. Princess Teaparty, the one with the quiet voice on VC who's generally pleasant, hardly ever complains, and is just here to heal and glam or 2. Snarly Saltqueen, always complaining about everything and telling everyone to shut up and stop taking damage.

Problem is, neither of these stereotypes is conducive to being taken seriously. If the population sees you as the first, they just kind of...gloss over whatever you were complaining about because it was an anomaly. Or if you do it too much, they recategorize you as #2, and pfffffff 2 just complains about everything there's no reason to take them seriously.

I genuinely believe healer is the hardest role in an MMO to get momentum on just because most people don't care about them, so their mains' complaints get distorted by such perceptions.

[ForsakenRoe]

Yeah, MMO healer communities tend to have this dichotomy where people view them as either 1. Princess Teaparty, the one with the quiet voice on VC who's generally pleasant, hardly ever complains, and is just here to heal and glam or 2. Snarly Saltqueen, always complaining about everything and telling everyone to shut up and stop taking damage.

Problem is, neither of these stereotypes is conducive to being taken seriously. If the population sees you as the first, they just kind of...gloss over whatever you were complaining about because it was an anomaly. Or if you do it too much, they recategorize you as #2, and pfffffff 2 just complains about everything there's no reason to take them seriously.

I genuinely believe healer is the hardest role in an MMO to get momentum on just because most people don't care about them, so their mains' complaints get distorted by such perceptions.

Funny, cos after enough people who aren't actually a 2, get labelled as a 2 and ignored, and they leave the role because they're ignored so much, THEN people decide to pay attention. When it starts affecting THEM and THEIR fill times for stuff in PF.

I really hope something gets asked about it at PAX, we're still far enough out from the expansion for some solid design direction changes (if they don't yet realize the scale of the changes needed, somehow). And if a question is asked about it and the response is a meek middling 'we will look at the data' or any variation of 'we think this design we are doing now will work so we will continue with it' I hope to several gods that people in the crowd will boo the hell out of them and cause a PR nightmare about it to force their hand on the matter

[Allegor]

Funny, cos after enough people who aren't actually a 2, get labelled as a 2 and ignored, and they leave the role because they're ignored so much, THEN people decide to pay attention. When it starts affecting THEM and THEIR fill times for stuff in PF.

And that's exactly the problem. The healer role, from casual to endgame level, isn't currently designed for people who like to play healer/support roles, they're designed for people who don't want to play one but are either "taking one for the team" or just want faster queues/to be carried.

[Osmond]

As I’ve read these posts. Those abilities never ever coming back as much I want to as a healer. Sure, I would love for shadowflare to come back. I might want SCH’s DoTs to return. There’s no way in hell I want that back. To keep up with multiple durations and mitigate and heal? Screw that noise. I like the current version of SCH. Give less button bloat, merge effects in 1 button. Want cleric stance back? Just put it in their 2mins. that buffs their healing potency. Want protect/stone skin back? Here, we buffed the % on the shields.

The more I think about solutions, the more dumb it gets because it ends up getting worse. I believe the team knows something is wrong, yet so late in the expansion to do anything. Band-aid maybe. Can’t see them doing anything until 7.0.