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

[Renathras]

1. Then give us buffs and debuffs to manage. That isn't a cop out of Feint and Addle. They don't add a single thing to healers other than shutting up other players who think they know our job, but can't even do theirs (actually use said abilities).
   
2. Man up and give actual MP management. All oGCDs should have a cost.
   
3. Screw off with this 60s, 120s BS. My strong oGCDs should not properly line up with tank busters or raid wides.

All of which they refused to do over the course of 2 expansions by the way. Now answer your question.

Honestly, we have 1, the problem is they keep making them oGCDs (because if you use a GCD for something that isn't damage, you're a bad player). Think about it, say they give you a 30 sec Addle oGCD. Has that fixed the problem? Probably not. What if they give you a 15 sec duration, 15 sec CD Addle oGCD that you're trying to keep 100% uptime on. Does that fix your boredom? Probably not. The only way to get that to work would be to do something like FF13's Sabateur where the debuff spells do a set amount of baseline damage. Then you could turn it into a GCD, which is what it needs to be to break up your boring 111 spam. But if it does less damage than Glare, it's again a DPS loss and we get the SB "How much can you avoid Tank stance" situation where optimal party play is for players to be good enough (and geared enough) that you don't need to upkeep it, and the Healer is good enough at using their oGCDs that they don't need to upkeep it, so it would be the thing you remove until you're just spamming Glare again, same as now.

Now, if it's something that isn't a mitigation debuff, say something like a boss takes additional damage debuff you upkeep, then it's still just one button every X seconds, which is pretty boring, would still probably need to be an oGCD or damage neutral (or nearly so) GCD like how Storm's Eye and Armor Crush aren't crippling damage losses vs their competitors, and it would probably need to be a role action so that it doesn't screw with Healer balance, which would again make all the Healers feel the same. And if they each had a distinct one, it would suffer from complaints of homogenization AND from "well, SCH has +1% damage, and that's better than WHM's +1% direct hit, SGE's +1% crit, or AST's +1% haste which just makes people angry". So they would need to be basically the same, and you still likely have the risk of "It's boring, it's just second-Dia. BORING!"

Would it really be engaging to you to have a second basically Dia GCD that you simply press every 15 or 30 seconds (it can't be TOO often otherwise it could get in the way of healing for casual Timmy, remember), and how to balance that to prevent it either being dropped from the rotation as your party gets better (mainly debuffs versions) or people get kicked from the party for not using it (damage buff versions)? It would likely HAVE to be a different duration than your DoT, but would just having one extra button you press at a similar cadence be "engaging"? Really?

This goes to having a second 15 sec DoT. Right now you might say "That would be worlds better!", but if you got it, how long would it be, really before it felt just like you view Dia refreshes now? I think this is the reason there are a high number of the Survey results saying they want SITUATIONAL DPS buttons, not part of a rotation but things you use occasionally.

2 is an interesting case and mainly a problem because of how oGCDs work. But if oGCDs have MP costs, you may as well just make them GCDs at that point. In fact, if we made all oGCDs into GCDs, that would already solve the problem of the 111 spam.

Not sure 3 even makes sense. You want your oGCDs to never be available when needed?

"All of which they refused to do over the course of 2 expansions by the way", so, in other words the devs themselves refuse it? So by your definition, that means none of those three are answers, right?

Not trying to be snarky, but if we're in a case of the devs themselves refuse it, at this point, they've refused every solution that either of us have proposed.

...

If you back off of the hyperbole and appeal to ridicule, we can have a decent conversation.

Medica 2 has a 15 sec duration. That doesn't mean you'd have to have it up all the time, hence you wouldn't always need 4 in a minute. And even if you DID, it's one button vs several (for different DoTs with different durations), missing a tick would no more lead to a wipe than missing a DoT tick, and you can easily tell if it's still up or not and it's easy to get a feel for, unlike multiple DoTs with multiple durations.

Do you seriously thin using 3 abilities that have different 15, 18, and 21 sec durations is no harder than using a single ability with a consisting 15 sec duration would be?

These contrived points really aren't helping. You know as well as I do if you did that you'd get complaints. People notice, and people complain and harass because of it. That was my point, and why they won't do it. It's why I brought up Cleric. And no, Cleric didn't lead to wipes in dungeons unless people were incompetent. I even went part way through a dungeon in HW not realizing it was on (since I had been soloing stuff) and I got by (albeit sweating bullets) by using Divine Seal, Presence of Mind, Cure 2s, etc. And that was like a quarter of a dungeon, lol. Ah, the halcyon days...

I don't think I'm suggesting the level of healing you are, and that may be the sticking point.

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"There isn't one that's truly sensible" - agreed, and that's my point. There is no change that the devs have not said they will accept that does what you guys want. I disagree on the "how little damage actually matters below Savage". You know as well as I it doesn't matter, but PFs blacklist Jobs all the time because they aren't optimal in world first races. People are stupid about these things for some reason.

Well the devs are doing that already so...

Honestly I wasn't going to call out cleric stance but, wasn't the problem of cleric stance being the switching? If the stance was removed and the dps remained... wouldn't that have ALSO fixed the problem? Because if what I read about cleric stance was correct, when you switched it locked you out of switching back for a duration?

They... quite literally could have made it like current tank stance and still kept all the dps actions yeah?

5 seconds.

The lockout was 5 seconds, I believe. While that COULD be pivotal in Savage content, it generally wasn't elsewhere. Just if people were stupid about it or fat fingered it (when you hit it to cancel it, it didn't put the ability on CD, so you could accidentally double tap it which would drop the buff then instantly reapply it), it could cause problems. A bigger issue was Healers that thought they were better than they were playing too close to the line and getting people killed.

I feel like it is important to note that using or not using Cleric's stance could *easily* quadruple the amount of damage you were doing. It also came with the draw back of making inexperienced (be it in general, or just with any given encounter specifically) feel *very* unsafe because it also completely neutered your ability to fill up HP bars (which also used to drop faster more frequently!) while having a timer before you could turn it back off. And there is absolutely no way in hell any amount of added dps buttons are going to increase your maximum potential dps that much. So the toxicity potential is VASTLY lower than that memory/comparison would make it out to be.

One can hope. I'm just cautious about saying "It wouldn't happen now" when it happens literally all the time now. People will complain if Healers aren't casting their nuke consistently and people blacklist Jobs because of World First race issues. So I'm not really sure that it wouldn't happen again. FFXIV discussion forums are filled with people complaining about these things all the time, so it still happens even now when it should be completely irrelevant. People are just...well, it's the whole "this is why we can't have nice things" stuff.