For those who main/semi-main a DPS (e.g. DNC, RDM) but like Healers...

[ty_taurus]

That's how much I read.

Please try again.

Oh yeah. I'm definitely the childish one in this exchange.

[Shurrikhan]

DoTs - Honestly, I don't terribly HATE them (I mean...I do, but...), there are cases where I find them engaging. The trick is they actually have to have a connection to the kit.

I get that.

But, in the same sense that I don't agree that not tracking one's DoT correctly wouldn't be a "mistake" (since even not noticing the DoT falling off, and therefore not being noticing that one has a decision to make, is a sum of previous errors in allocating their attention), I feel that DoTs offer more interaction than just at the point you reach an explicit synergy or point of decision. Granted, that usually takes a certain "critical mass" to see.

For instance, back in ARR, WHM tended to depend far more on Regen, actually casted the occasional Stoneskin when their party was at low ilvl, and had to manage their MP. That meant you had to be better able to predict what time you'd have to NOT use Cure II in order to instead reapply your DoTs when they fell off. At that point, those timers therefore had pretty decent impacts on the rewards for fight knowledge and well-paced healing.

Dia today, though? The only interesting thing about is that it's a soft-CD for mobility. Being a DoT, it has ton more potential... but the current context squanders almost all of that.

This is part of why I can't understand those who say that high GCD healing is innately boring compared to damage-dealing on healers (given expanded offensive kits); greater competing priorities and resource/opportunity conflicts makes damage-dealing far more entertaining. Imo, in a min ilvl Coils, Regen, Cure I, Cure II, Stone II, Aero, Aero II, and Stoneskin together formed a sense of 'rotation' that was far more variable and therefore interesting than any job short of MNK and BLM do now. And that only took 3 attacks, and far fewer oGCDs. ...And we've squandered that with overly lenient tuning and/or excessive ilvl ceilings, and just shittons of bloat. Why?

[Shurrikhan]

In fact, it's 'inspiration'/older brother, Holy Priest, does exactly this, with Holy Words lowering CDs on things so there's interplay. Akin to 'Casting Stone or Holy advances the CD on Assize by 1 second' in our terms.

I never really understood this Holy Priest <-> White Mage connection, at least since Stormblood. I wouldn't mind seeing a WHM that takes cues from Holy Priest, wherein it'd actually have some CDR-affected GCD nukes (that are proper nukes and not just free of MP, cast times, and offensive opportunity cost), but... the closest WHM ever got to anything like that was old Secret of the Lilies.

...Granted, I did prefer the fundamental concept of StB Lilies over ShB Lilies, and kind of prefer would prefer it even over Holy Words' CDR if only there were more reason to GCD heal.

If Stormblood Lilies could have just reduced the time until the next use of the chosen ability, instead of the next-next use, reduced that time by both % and flat seconds as not to only ever be spent on longer CDs, and was granular instead of capping at 3 stacks... it'd just be an outright more versatile and responsive version of Holy Words' CDR, especially if we'd added even a single purely offensive oGCD on which to spend it.

* No, the addition of Lilies in place of standard oGCD value per minute is not primarily designed to refund potency, since that potency would have been free anyways if it'd been included as the standard oGCDs. Using Lily heals for free-healing instead of oGCDs for free-healing simply links mobility CDs/capacity and free healing CDs/capacity in a more integral way while providing less APM and yet a lower portion of GCDs spent on filler spam.

DOTs can be cool design. But I don't think they're cool design when A: everyone has one, and B: everyone has one. SGE didn't really need one, if anything it feels like it was just thrown on there to try and justify Eukrasia being a button a bit more.

Agreed on the bolded part, but...

...If SGE were actually a job that deals damage to heal, rather than one that simply has flat minor healing bundled atop its attacks, that'd be precisely where a DoT would have innate synergy, since now one has to choose between greater immediate healing and greater total healing.

A DoT on a true damage-healer would naturally have not just the complexity of using a DoT (not much when they have equally low-cost mobility besides it and there's only a single enemy), but also the complexity of using HoTs.

I'd also consider removing Combust IF! and only if, said removal is what has to be done in order to focus the class more on it's buffing aspects. Like, if we're playing 'would you press the button' and it's 'unique card effects like SB, ...BUT... Combust is die', personally I'm slamming that button frame 1, and I'm not stopping to think. They removed all the Time Magic stuff so the chances of 'AST manipulates it's DOT with its abilities' is pretty dead, and that was the saving grace for Combust's continued existence IMO. Axe it and replace it with something more interesting, something to do with the cards like a Minor Arcana rework (cough).

I'm cool with virtually any and all changes to AST that would better let it focus on Time-Space Magics and its Cards.

I literally do not care about anything else. And while I'll agree with Ren that AST was already light on those Time-Space Magics pre-pruning, I honestly think a supportive Healer is the best place to situate those utilities. By far.

That said, the old flavor text for (pre-release?) Combust's (leaked?) tooltip was amazing. It was something like "Birth a theoretical star, growing in size and potency over time to deal damage to nearby enemies."

That? I would love that shit. Especially if you started to add explicit interactions atop it. Imagine if...

• Combust would deal proximity AoE damage (a few expanding radial areas of effect, tapering off by 25% at a time, to a minimum of half damage in the outermost space).
• You could place Combust on allies, enemies, or the ground, though their maximum movement speed slows and may drop off allies and enemies after a certain mass, thereafter becoming stationary. (There is a 2-second warning in which the theoretical sun flickers.)
• Combust would grow from Mana spent near it (following the same ringed model, at similar efficiency), or even more from mana spent directly on it, which can be from attacks or heals.
• The larger Combust grows, the greater its effect (more damage, and the more it would forcibly draw in enemies and accelerate allies' movements towards it), but also the more Mana it needs to keep from bursting.
• Combusts show on and can be targeted via a unique UI component, from which one can also select whether Combust units show as enemies, friendlies, or both. This UI displays the Combust's current and maximum HP on a laterally growing bar, along with an increasingly opaque edge of said HP bar. If their HP hits zero, they sputter out, and that rate of drain increases with size. The maximum reached HP shows their current size, and the actual far edge of bar shows when they'll be forced to implode.
• If two or more Combusts of significantly different size meet, the larger absorbs the smaller. If two or more Combusts of roughly the same size meet, they collectively implode for greater than the sum of their individual implosions' damage.

Now that... would be some fun Time-Space Magics.

It'd siphon a lot of AST's power into that particular tool, especially if we don't do as Taurus spitball-ed earlier and give players control over their kits (say, you have n AP at this level, and can siphon that from active skills to additional minor traits for a lower ceiling to both effort and damage that'll still be a net gain for those who would really struggle with that skill's mechanic), but I like the idea of AST actually being a Time-Space Occult Diviner instead of just another 22 filler and 2 DoT GCDs per minute with some of that would-be potency siphoned over to a gimmick used twice per minute oGCD.

[Supersnow845]

Your point about how DOT management rewards fight knowledge because you don’t want to have to need to heal when the DOT falls off is an interesting point I think a lot of people miss in this world of pointless filler 30 seconds DOT’s that have weave windows to allow you to heal if damage happens to align anyway

As you know back when SCH had many DOT’s drifting one DOT could be a disaster because since the DOT’s generally had timers that aligned with each other in set cycles drifting one often drifted it into another one which pushed the second one back and so forth, but since we didn’t have ilvl and oGCD bloat then you were rewarded for not needing to cast succor when one of your DOT’s fell off by…..not drifting your DOT’s

I honestly don’t mind GCD heals because I agree with you, coils since it required mana management required knowing when to use your heals and what healing to use so the combo of healing and DPS formed a rotation because you were regularly casting a healing spell, I guess for people who never did coils imagine if every single oGCD we used now replaced the GCD damage you weaved it into, damage is still too infrequent to make it feel like coils but you still kinda feel that when you had to GCD heal and do it often you kinda formed a haphazard rotation with it, oh my dot is up for refresh, okay quick top up on the tank, now my nuke, oh my other dot is up, oh party wide damage can I afford a succor, okay tank needs another top up, okay nuke, DPS needs a single top up

It was flexible, it was fun and it was complex for the time, it also meant that WHM didn’t feel boring even in a time when SCH had 4x as many DPS skills

[Lyth]

I've spent a lot of time on healer/support jobs in other games, but I don't really enjoy how they have been implemented in FFXIV. I suppose part of it comes down to the fact that I never really enjoyed WHM or SCH's core design, and the only healers that they seem capable of making are spin-offs of these two jobs (now considered to be healer 'sub-categories'). What would make me consider giving the role another chance is if they did something that deviated from the current design in a drastic way.

A melee or physical-range themed healer would be interesting. I'd definitely try out a Chemist style healer that throws potions and mixes ground effects for various buffs. I had originally hoped that DNC would have been a MNK themed healer with aura effects. Anything that introduces an original resource system or new playstyle would be welcome.

Movement actions are definitely lacking, and I'm hoping that we see more alternatives to Icarus next expansion. Support actions are another majorly underutilized area, although Expedient is a step in the right direction. Imagine what you could do with an interactable teleporter with fixed charges that connects two parts of an arena. Imagine if you could give out a float buff that lets someone move and cast. Or even giving someone a 'save point' that snapshots their current position and resources, and rewinds them back to that point when they click off the buff. The healer role seems like the place where you have the most creative potential, but it never gets explored out of fear of breaking game mechanics.

I think you can try and make the healer experience feel more convincingly like pretend Caster DPS when you're not busy refilling health bars if you want, but that's really the lowest bar that you can set for yourselves. Just add in a couple of proper support actions on each job. I don't care if they break a few game mechanics on initial release, as long as they have impact. Because that's what's missing on healer at the moment. Impact.

[Renathras]

Ugh...I really don't wanna do this, but this won't stop if I don't, will it?

Sorry everyone else...I don't want you all caught up in this. The last time we talked about this, the conversation was that I can just walk away from things. And as I pointed out then, I would need you guys to have my back and help tamp down the snipping at my back when it was turned.

...no one has.

So this is the result. I am sorry, though. I really really REALLY don't want this:

.

Serous question, since you'd rather bicker than actually talk about the design discussion, why is it that you're allowed to do this to me and not get flack for it, but when I do it trying to defend my character, I'm the bad guy? I'm 100% serious here, you do this to me constantly. Like am I supposed to take it? Am I not allowed to defend myself when you attack me? I'm just trying to understand the double standard at play here.

This may blow your mind, but this is how I feel and what I feel you're doing to me.

To my perspective, I'm not doing this to you. When was the last time I posted a picture of a dictionary definition at you and smacked you around with the word for several days in a row, even when the word better fit me than you? I can't think of a time I have.

When was the last time I called you bad at the game, or wanting to be lazy and get clears by doing the bare minimum? I never have. I'm not even sure I've ever called you an elitist that wants to restrict clears from people (I've called Semi that because she's outright said that's what she wants, but I haven't called you that).

When was the last time I was unambiguously snarky to you - that is, not something that could be argued either way, but outright derisively snarky no question at all at you, like without pretext or prodding mocking your ideas or trying to relegate you to a second class citizen status or trying to cite myself as an expert that you needed to listen to because you were not one?

When was the last time I lied about your position outright? (Me saying "you go from complexity to different complexity" is a true statement. You saying I refuse to offer even one case of anything other than "no change" when not only have I said you could have three of the Jobs made more complex, I personally made two such suggestions/proposals MYSELF?) And no, I wasn't "self-defeating" them. If you read threads around that time, literally everything I was suggesting or proposing, you guys all attacked and not one person supported. Me saying that would probably happen again was reflecting the mood at the time, and as I noted, you guys COULD surprise me (each of those proposals are among my only posts in this sub-forum that actually got Likes, and had generally positive responses, even if people were saying they wanted more or wanted something else.)

I don't attack your CHARACTER without you attacking mine first. You're not supposed to defend your character, because the solution is just to NOT ATTACK MINE FIRST and I won't attack yours in retaliation. You don't have to "take it" if you don't start by dishing it out. You don't have to "defend yourself" if you don't attack me first. Moreover, you aren't defending yourself when you're attacking me. You're attacking me. You aren't saying "That's not a fair representative of my position" when you're saying "You've never done this thing (that I have done and even proved that I'd done)". That's an attack, not a defense.

.

Look at what started this latest fracas:

YOU insisting I was inflexible and ME defending my position as being not only flexible but far more flexible than your own AND ASKING YOU to stop calling me inflexible. RIGHT THEN you could have said "You know what, I'm sorry. You're right, you've been flexible. I just get frustrated because I wish you were more so, but in all fairness, you really have been. I'm sorry for calling you names instead of discussing the merits of your arguments."

But you didn't do that.

You chose to, instead, accuse me of being high and mighty ("god-given right", "something you own", "your graceful charity"), accuse me of false charity (the whole, if you're getting WHM the way you want it, of course you'd be fine giving the others up and you aren't suffering to do so), accuse me of being selfish (when a person gives ground on 75% of their position, they aren't being selfish), CONTINUE to accuse me of being inflexible (again, 75+% ground given is not inflexible, " you and are completely inflexible to any and all ideas") even after I clearly asked you not to do so, accused me of being lazy, bad, and trying to measure up to other people who are better than me (" The only difference is that you can't try to claim you're better than other players for just hitting one button"), lie about my positions ("you believe there's no humanly conceivable way a healer could ever be more enjoyable than they are right now"), insisted, at the end of a post of you deriding and insulting me (all those qoutes were from ONE SINGLE POST alone, btw, not me collecting you being mean to me over the course of many - which you also were, so I can get even more than this) that _I_ am the one preventing cordial conversation ("Are we allowed to talk about that yet and move onto a a productive conversation?"), and ended that post with an absolute dick move finisher ("Or are you still shoving your fingers in your ears and chanting "LA LA LA! I Can't hear you!"?")

Again, all the quotes in that paragraph are from ONE of your posts. JUST one. Where you're acting like I'm the bad guy preventing civil discourse. Read that post again and ask yourself is someone was saying that about you, even if THEY thought it was true, if you wouldn't feel insulted and incensed - AND MOREOVER - if you wouldn't feel the need to defend yourself instead of coming to them to shake hands and make nice?

YOU wouldn't accept that. One time I said "No! Bad Ty!" and you used that as an excuse for 3-4 pages of bicker and refusing to apologize for you lying about my argument for the prior 3-4 pages and admitting you weren't even reading my posts so that the misunderstanding and vitriol was entirely your own fault up until then.

You start these fights almost all the time with me, you escalate them, and you literally never apologize for it. You act like it was my fault, that you were entirely innocent, and that I'm the one preventing civil discourse, even as I'm able to have civil posts with most other people here.

You can't say it's just me, since I've never had a fight like this with ForeskaenRoe or Sabezy. Because they DON'T do that.

Do you need more? Do I need to refer to quotes from more of your posts? Here's another set of quotes from just one post:

"You can keep being wrong about what "inflexible" means ", "but the records actually show that you are wrong", "Listen to someone who actually works in the field" (a position you, yourself, pointed out wasn't fair since you won't say what you work on so I can even verify you work in the field, much less see what you're working on since I might find it enjoyable),"then you got pissy and told me you weren't speaking to me anymore", "you just were ignoring my answers time and time again" (which I wasn't, and this is also rich coming from the guy that literally admitted to not reading my posts AT ALL before...)

...do you think that attitude and tone fosters civil conversation? Not to mention you were arguing in that post that it was easier to tune and balance 9 (effective) new Jobs vs just 1, something that was so far out that Roe joined my side on it pointing out just adding a new Job would be far easier - despite you speaking from a high and mighty position of "I'm a game designer, I know what I'm talking about, you don't, so listen to your better/the expert explain it to you." I noticed you dropped the argument after that - proving what I always say: If OTHER forumgoers would take my side now and again or reign in people out of line who AREN'T me, it actually does result in more productive discourse.

I wish people would do it more often.

It's almost refreshing that Sabezy and Roe have both done it recently. If only it was more common, we wouldn't have this toxic environment we now do. But that means there's hope...

In fact, it was that post that seemed to start our dispute here, and then your other post where you went ham on the insults. Though it wasn't the start. Notice I wasn't insulting you. The only thing _I_ had been doing was defending myself by saying I'm not inflexible and comparing our positions to show that you were the one being inflexible, if we were determined to use that insult, and further, asking you to stop using it. I wasn't even trying to just call you names over and over again. I was pointing out the name you were calling me more fits you and literally asking you to stop:

How could I be more flexible than that?

Meanwhile, your position has consistently been change must occur.

...

And what part of me changing my position seven (eight? I'd forgotten about the WHM proposal) times me being inflexible?

Especially when you say you supported one of the changes?

You need to stop with these petty insults. Especially when they're lies and you're describing what you do as an insult against me. I've shown far more change and flexibility on this issue than you have. I don't know how going from "change none of the healers" to "change all of the healers just leave one SOMEWHAT alone" is inflexible on my part.

Though it might come off as an attack, this was after several posts of you calling me (or things I said) stupid and insisting I was inflexible, among other things:

"This is like complaining that a room is too dark to be used as a guest room because the lights are off. Have you tried turning them on?", "The entire argument originally was to try find some way to compromise with you who is entirely unwilling to compromise an inch for the sake of conversation", "But saying that Conjurer or any other class "Cannot" be used is literally stupid", "and aren't trying to bargain with a forum white knight for some peace and quiet"(oh yes...I recall THAT comment particularly setting me off, mainly because it proved you were arguing in bad faith all this time and just trying to shut me up!).

So I didn't instigate the insult war such that you needed to defend yourself and were just an innocent bystander I attacked out of the blue. You actually started the attacks in the first place. First from wanting to shunt me to a second class citizen "Class" instead of a Job (even if you DID genuinely think it would be easier to implement, you have to realize how it seems classest - er, no pun intended - and that there would be a lot more ridicule to people playing a Class and not "a real Job"; you're a smart guy so you cannot be ignorant of the connotation there), but then just calling me stupid, inflexible, a white knight, and so on.

You literally started the fight, probably because you were still heated that I stopped responding to you in a separate thread, where you were being evasive and not answering directly a question asked, and then posted a condescending FLOW CHART after I cut off that line of communication and said I didn't care anymore because even _I_ could see it wasn't going to be a civil conversation and, unlike you, I tried to end it/retreat/back down, which you took as license to press the attack instead of come together in the semi-civility of "let's just both walk away". It's like picking a fight with someone who asked you an innocent question, and then when they try to be "the bigger man" and walk out, you call them names and then sucker punch them in the back of the head, and then chase them down the street into another building to call then names some more...and then when they call you out, act like you weren't the one being aggressive/offensive.

As the posts in this thread clearly show, you were taking shots at me with snide remarks and insults, and did so for several posts escalating in your rhetoric, well before I blew up at you. And then, when I tried to be the bigger man AGAIN by not biting your bait post, where in response to Roe asking for civility, you spent basically an entire post attacking me again (I'd provide quotes but I'll just link to the post since it's pretty much all a combination of lying about my position - which I proved by the two threads - and insulting me:

...

, you can click the little blue >> arrows there to load the whole post), what did you do?

You spent not one:

If you want to appear as the better person, maybe don't do what you're trying to accuse me of doing?

Not two:

Oh yeah. I'm definitely the childish one in this exchange.

But THREE:

Serous question, since you'd rather bicker than actually talk about the design discussion, why is it that you're allowed to do this to me and not get flack for it, but when I do it trying to defend my character, I'm the bad guy? I'm 100% serious here, you do this to me constantly. Like am I supposed to take it? Am I not allowed to defend myself when you attack me? I'm just trying to understand the double standard at play here.

...posts, with the first two egging me on MORE and the third one being a faux attempt at "I'm just defending myself". Keep in mind that these were in response to me saying "I'm going to try to walk away from his posts", "I do feel I must defend myself and set the record straight by pointing out these two links" (your response was to try justifying your lie, instead of apologizing for it, by insisting I wasn't being serious in those posts or was self-deriding them...instead of just admitting you were wrong to say I hadn't compromised; you needed this to be true to preserve your ability to continue to insult me as inflexible, and that was more important to you than apologizing for being wrong on the facts OR even just letting the argument go uncontested), "You started yet another post with an insult, please try again", and "Roe, I'll let you say something; maybe you can get some civility here where I cannot".

So after I blew up at you for being a dick to me, you spent a further three posts insulting and egging me on, and a fourth one acting like you were the innocent bystander to me being an abrasive jerk picking fights with you and insulting your honor.

.

The standard is simple - if you're cordial and respectful to me, I'm pretty much always going to respond in kind. If I say something that seems sarcastic, just ask me to clarify what I mean and if it's fair and called for or not. I'll probably either realize what I said wasn't sarcastic but might have been misinterpreted as such, and walk the statement back, or I'll explain what I meant more carefully/clearly.

.

Does THAT explain the problem here?

You never apologize even when caught in a lie or at least being factually wrong (it's possible someone can just be wrong and not realize it; that's not a lie but when it's shown they're wrong, they shouldn't keep scrambling for ways to say "Well, no, actually, I'm still right...because I'm going to accuse you of bad faith to add yet another insult in my attempt to justify continuing to call you the insult I refuse to give up in THIS thread"). You always start fights with me in these threads. You're the first one to be snarky and sarcastic and insulting. You look down on me very clearly. In just this thread you've called me lazy and stupid while citing yourself as an expert (my better), even when other people point out your analysis is wrong, you don't even admit it, you just ignore it and move away from the argument quietly while leveraging new insults. You have a really bad habit of introducing an insult and then using it like a cudgel, bashing me with it over and over again, even when I point out it doesn't apply to me and/or more applies to you and even after I ask you to stop. And you will stretch yourself into a rhetorical argument version of a pretzel to justify still allowing yourself to use the insult, even using lies, and stretching yourself into a pretzel to insist they're true even after they've been debunked, so that you can keep using said insult.

...when you could have just let the insult go, or better yet, NOT USED IT IN THE FIRST PLACE.

.

/pant
/pant

Do you get it now?

You pick fights.

You're mean.

You're insulting.

You get really petty.

You refuse to give direct answers to questions if you feel the answer will weaken your argument, even when I assure you by my own personal admissions (weakening my own) that it won't and even when I have no record of using it as such.

You refuse to back off.

You attack me MORE when I back off.

And you never ever EVER admit you're wrong, doing anything you can to save face, and even using that TO FURTHER ATTACK ME, even after I HAVE WALKED AWAY FROM THE FIGHT.

And you never apologize, no matter how over the top you are in being a total dick to me, instead presenting your argument as totally fair and me as unhinged - as you might after this, though everyone can see the quotes above and see that it isn't true.

.

And the WORST part is, I wouldn't even be posting this massive post - a list of grievances - if you hadn't made 3 posts egging me on MORE after I indicated I wanted to walk away from the conversation, after Roe made a call to civility, and then a FOURTH post presenting yourself as a totally innocent bystander just defending yourself against ME being the one who would "rather bicker" and has a double standard of "allowed to do this", even though I clearly wouldn't "rather bicker", since I'm the one constantly LEAVING CONVERSATIONS to prevent further bickering, after YOU started the bickering in the first place with your insults and snide remarks and looking down your nose at me!

I wouldn't even have posted this rant IF YOU WOULD JUST HAVE LET IT GO LIKE I WAS TRYING TO DO.

.

The standard is simple:

Don't berate me, insult me, and look down your nose at me and I won't you. I'll engage in fair and rational and productive conversations. If I say something you feel is a slight, ask me if I meant it that way or if I can clarify what I meant, and I will - because as a rule, I don't want to slight or insult people when unmolested myself.

And if I'm trying to walk away because the situation seems to have clearly escalated and I'm trying to prevent it from devolving further, don't egg me on, insult me more, and hit me in the back; and certainly don't do it while calling yourself innocent! And don't call me genuinely trying to present a list of reasons that the situation got the way it was, due to your actions, as a rant or tirade.

This post has been raw and emotional, but is me trying to make things better because no one else seems to want to step up and do it and because this keeps happening and will keep happening if I don't or someone else doesn't. And no one's volunteering.

.

So, that said, I'm going to continue to not respond to you when you do this. Because I DON'T want this. I don't want the sniping. I don't want the dickishness. I DO want civil conversation and about topics we all can discuss together.

But you. Just. Won't. Stop. Doing. This...and everyone else seems neutral or on your side, at the very least unwilling to call you out.

MAYbe with all the quotes and what you've done to me (in just this ONE thread) collected, it will be too much to ignore.

[ty_taurus]

I really really REALLY don't want this:

Then don't.

Contrary to what you seem to believe, stating that your position is inflexible is not a personal attack. It was a statement of fact. "You smell" is a personal attack. "Your unwillingness to budge on your stance and find a compromise is inflexible" is not. You interpreted that as an attack and went on the offensive I defended my stance and tried to move the conversation forward. Five or six posts I tried to move the conversation forward and you refused because I gave back what you give me. You are always the one who starts swinging first, you just don't see it that way because you come from the perspective that you are inherently right and that's not up for debate, therefore when you swing, it's justified. When others swing, it's an attack on you. You don't seem to realize that.

When have you ever apologized to me? You don't think you need to, because you don't see being wrong as a possibility. That's why every other disagreement that occurs is cordial and respectful. I have no problem letting bygones be bygones, but I require the other person to have the same humility or there's no point. I have no problem apologizing if someone is offended regardless of whether or not I need to or whether or not I was wrong, but not if that person is going to treat that as an admission of guilt and publicly weaponize that in future discussion. Maybe you wouldn't do that, but I don't trust that you wouldn't, because I've never seen an example of humility from you.

You want things to be peaceful? Stop accusing me of lying every 3 seconds. It pisses me off because I'm not lying. I'm telling you my perspective or what I know of yours from what you've said. If there are inconsistencies it's probably because it's impossible for any one person to keep track of everything you say when you write walls and walls of text constantly, shift ideas regularly, and abandon other ideas, like the two examples you gave before that have never been mentioned in the last four months.

probably because you were still heated that I stopped responding to you in a separate thread, where you were being evasive and not answering directly a question asked, and then posted a condescending FLOW CHART after I cut off that line of communication and said I didn't care anymore because even _I_ could see it wasn't going to be a civil conversation

It wasn't evasive. You asked if I would play a support role, but you never gave any context as to what they would look like, how they would play, and how the other roles would function with the support role added. I have no idea if I would play them because I have no idea what they look like or what the game even looks like with them. You refused to read or acknowledge my answer over and over and wrote it off as some sort of "gotcha!" moment as if I was secretly afraid of saying "yes." But your conspiracy theory wouldn't have been needed if you just asked for clarification or expanded on the scenario instead of immediately writing me off as trying to subvert your question. Making a flow chart wasn't condescending; it was me trying to get you to understand what I was saying because simply describing it clearly wasn't working.

If you really wanted to move the conversation along, why not just respond to the actual design conversation I had, or the Paladin White Mage update that I spent an hour redefining specifically for you?

[Renathras]

God that sucked...

/sigh

Okay, palate cleanser:

Your point about how DOT management rewards fight knowledge because you don’t want to have to need to heal when the DOT falls off is an interesting point

I do agree with this. It's one thing the "stacks up to 60 seconds" would make work. Right now, if there's a mechanic you need a heal for at 30 sec, your options are to clip your DoT early or let it fall off for a few seconds. While neither is a terrible DPS loss, it doesn't reward fight knowledge. If you could extend it to 60 seconds, you might refresh it early (since it's not a dps loss to go from 3 second duration to 33 sec duration), and thus this rewards fight knowledge.

Also agree that MP management (or lack thereof) is an issue.

...

This is also a MP issue. When MP was an issue, it makes alternate healing resources not work. TP for example, or MP-less/free healing would generally be prized over MP costing cast time heals (e.g. in ARR healing). But the thing is...we haven't had that for years. Most healing now is done MP-free with oGCDs.

So something like DNC or SWTOR's Imperial Agent/Scoundrel healer kits (which worked on Rogue-Energy instead of mana, I think?) could entirely work in the present system since the difference is kind of irrelevant other than for Raise, and since most healing is done with either CD abilities or resource consumers (Lilies, Aetherflow, Addersgall), the difference between that and a DNC using CDs is...well...not a difference. Again, Raising is the only issue, but I'm pretty sure there's a way to fix that problem, either with the Raise just having a CD instead or consuming their Job gauge resource.

I get that.

Not saying this to be snippy, but I think we have to agree to disagree. As I say, I think of mistakes as "based on the knowledge you had at the time" not "based on what a skilled player would assume is the knowledge you should have had at the time".

That aside, something I would enjoy exploring more with you:

I remember the Regen days. As a person that loved Resto Druids in WoW, I always saw ARR WHM as more of a Resto Druid than as a Holy Priest. Granted, it was more of a hybrid of the two (Resto Druids didn't have very efficient direct heals where WHM had both direct heals and HoTs), but I still like HoTs. I remember playing Resto back in an era where the Druid's job during raids was not to deal damage, but to keep near-100% uptime on Rejuvination (their mana efficient instant cast single target HoT), along with that one three stack HoT. Don't remember the name, but could only be on one target, stacked to three, and refreshing it before falloff would refresh all three stacks; letting it fall off would grant a big heal at the end. The goal of that one was interesting to me as you kept it up on the tank, but if you needed a big heal, you could let it expire. You'd have to manually 3x refresh it after, but it would give you some big healing. That and that one spell that consumes all your HoTs on the target to give them a really big heal. Use that on a tank which has Rejuvination, Regrowth (the short duration AOE HoT), Regrowth (the Dia-like "initial heal + HoT"), and the three stack one, and you could make some big healing with that little CD in a pinch.

This is also why I talk up making GCD heals acceptable; ARR WHM didn't chain cast Stone unless you were bad. The things today you use Rapture/Solace/Asylum/Lilybell/Divine Benison/Tetragrammaton to heal? You didn't have ANY of those tools, and Benediction was largely considered for emergency use only. You used Medica, Cure 2, Medica 2, Cure 3, Regen, even Stoneskin (which was a cast time GCD unlike Benison), or even Cure 1 (if somewhat low on MP). If you raised someone, you used Protect in battle so they wouldn't get plastered by the next raidwides due to their Weakness debuff. For every WHM "dancing" in Cleric to DPS, there were plenty more than busy doing GCD healing, which was both accepted (not ridiculed like today as a "Sylphie" or "Cure 1 spammer" or "healbot") and was the norm.

[Shurrikhan]

I do agree with this. It's one thing the "stacks up to 60 seconds" would make work. Right now, if there's a mechanic you need a heal for at 30 sec, your options are to clip your DoT early or let it fall off for a few seconds. While neither is a terrible DPS loss, it doesn't reward fight knowledge.

??? No. That's completely reversed.

The priority conflict is the point. The whole reason DoTs made GCD heals more interesting back then and GCD heals --especially with a degree of actual MP management-- made DoTs more interesting in turn was that you wanted to have put out enough healing by that exact GCD that you use it on reapplying the DoT at the right time. And it's only around then that it actually rewards fight knowledge.

You conserved MP via Cure/Regen despite needing to get HP up quicky before this tankbuster, thinking you'd nonetheless have time to refresh your per-12s DoT... and you were wrong, and therefore punished. Or, you correctly gauged that you'd need to be less efficient here in order to make that time, because you remembered when the next burst would hit, and so you did replace it on time, rewarding you for that fight knowledge and good gamble.

Even a fixed 60-second DoT like Higan would do far more than that "durations stack to <2/3/5x their original duration>", though. Under your approach, you have no point of decision; you just mindlessly throw out DoTs until it nears cap, and then have 40-59 seconds to remember again that the button exists to repeat that process. It'd have near-zero difficulty or reward, and would act only as the shallowest of maintenance, rather than any sort of decision-making that plays synergetically with your other decisions to be made.

If you remove the priority conflict that adds that extra layer of pacing checks to one's heals by making it so you can add the full value of the DoT at any time so long as the total duration wouldn't go over 60 seconds (literally 5 applications of old Aero II), you've removed the whole point of those DoTs. You've made it harder to fail, but also made them add nothing of interest to gameplay.

I don't know how anyone would be fond of that kind of approach. When you make everything increasingly fail-proof and thereby leave mechanics with only some tenth of their former nuance or complexity, that shit is boring.

Also agree that MP management (or lack thereof) is an issue.

Likewise agreed. Though it really confuses me that you could want actual gameplay from the one aspect... all while seeming downright eager to consign other forms to a shallow pretense.

Yes, DoTs back then had more frequent pace-setting, but DoTs and their pace-setting is what allowed for the player to engage with gambling compromises between Cure's efficiency and Cure II's burst more frequently and with greater reward. They were all part of the same system, worked together, were synergetic. Why fix only the longest-term and thereby least-felt aspect of that system and neglect or degrade its other, more frequent and more palpable parts?

Not saying this to be snippy, but I think we have to agree to disagree. As I say, I think of mistakes as "based on the knowledge you had at the time" not "based on what a skilled player would assume is the knowledge you should have had at the time".

At that point you make idiots, the intoxicated, and the concussed, etc. basically incapable of mistakes, since, by your definition, as long as they can't recall any information pertinent to the would-be decision, acting to one's disbenefit can't be considered a "mistake".

Which partly gets into the rest of your reply; you seem to be overestimating the (fundamental) differences between then and now in what was optimal in Healer (or any Role's) gameplay:

ARR WHM didn't chain cast Stone unless you were bad.

ARR WHM absolutely did often cast consecutive Stone IIs, usually unless the player was bad. The rules were the exactly the same as now: maximize uncapped output (e.g., by minimizing wasteful short-term output).

Healer kits just had less of their total output locked into healing back then. That's all that's fundamentally changed.

Assize locks in 600 damage and 600 healing potency per minute. Every pure healing oGCD that doesn't share a resource cost with an offensive ability locks in its curative ppm, preventing you from improving your total output if/when healing requirements are already met.

For every WHM "dancing" in Cleric to DPS, there were plenty more than busy doing GCD healing, which was both accepted (not ridiculed like today as a "Sylphie" or "Cure 1 spammer" or "healbot") and was the norm.

Healers who didn't properly stance-dance were scolded for wasting 70+% of their value in each mismatched GCD... because they were. Those who refused to use any attacks were scolded as Syphies and thereby wasting much of their would-be value... because they were.

If you raised someone, you used Protect in battle so they wouldn't get plastered by the next raidwides due to their Weakness debuff.

While yes, people did sometimes cast Protect on raised allies, it was worth less than 4% mitigation even on a tank, and was therefore basically never actually worth casting in combat; one would be better off saving that GCD for a Stoneskin before the next otherwise assuredly fatal raidwide (since Weakness and Brink of Death increasingly reduced max HP).

But I suppose that was the benefit of obfuscating what stats and actions actually do? That people got to pretend it mattered?

On the other hand, put that same kit into the hands of XIV players today and they are unlikely to simply assume that a tooltip as vague as "Increases Defense" (with the effect of Defense itself being hidden from players) or even "Reduces damage taken from physical attacks" will actually be worth casting and will instead look it up online and promptly use it only as a before-combat chore, which was all it was actually good for.

Why? Because the average player has gotten better and, perhaps more importantly, less naive.

I remember playing Resto back in an era where the Druid's job during raids was not to deal damage, but to keep near-100% uptime on Rejuvenation (their mana efficient instant cast single target HoT)

If you were at all overhealing, you would have been better served by casting the occasional Moonfire instead of focusing only on maximizing HoT uptime; the goal should be increasing the reliability and later speed of clears, by preventing deaths (including those that would occur to Enrage, if you have the room to make that difference in offense), not uptime of a frequently bottlenecked effect like a ST HoT.

_______

I'm guessing all that summary below my quote was written for others, rather than for me? Else, you're already aware that I've raided on each healer in WoW and XIV both, since Vanilla and ARR respectively, so I'm not sure why you're giving me this historical summary... I'm already aware. I experienced it. Probably more extensively than you have.

If your main point beneath this was more related to Lyth's, in that we could have more far varied Healers, then I agree. But no matter what kind of Healer --heck, no matter what role you're playing-- the ultimate goal is the same: to increase the reliability of clears while it'd be uncertain, and the speed of clears thereafter. Anything that doesn't add to that goal is merely a rough and incomplete guideline -- a training wheels idea of one's job to be contextualized and thereby replaced with additional understanding.

Given any particular balancing point in Healers' total contribution, you are never going to make unnecessary costs (be they GCDs or oGCDs that could have been spent instead on attacks) more appealing.

You'd have had a choice between outputting an uncapped Resource A and a Resource B that is frequently more vital but is currently already capped, and chose B, wrongly. Or you chose B when B was necessary to keep some alive --thereby actually producing, across your party, less of Resource A-- rightly. Etc., etc. The more we layer that choice into knowledge-dependence and the occasional gamble, the more interesting its points of interaction will be, but it still comes down to ultimately better or ultimately worse.

All you can change is how many actions one has prior to tapping into their 'last resort' / 'at cost' actions as to make them seem less or more redundant, and the portion of Healers' total contribution that is locked into Resource A vs. Resource B.

Anything else doesn't shift previously bad choices nearer to good ones... so much as to simply have nerfed all content, thereby making decisions less important for everyone (by nature of having overbuffed a Role with whom they can party... or just be outright replaced by, as per when tanks get horribly overbuffed).

[Renathras]

...

RE chain casting stone: I meant without casting any heals in the mix. Right now you can chain cast Glare and use oGCD heals here and there without devoting a GCD to a heal. Granted, you get Solace and Rapture, but you get the point. In ARR, if you only cast Stone II, refreshed DoTs, and didn't touch a GCD heal, your entire "healing" kit (of oGCDs you could weave) was...Benediction. Divine Seal and Presence of Mind did not heal, and WHM had no other oGCD healing abilities.

RE DoT to 60 seconds: The current situation is you have several bad options. That's not choice. All the options are a DPS loss, and...the same DPS loss of one tick's worth of DoT damage. It doesn't matter if you refresh the DoT 3 seconds early or 3 seconds after it fell off. Either way you lost/overwrote a DoT tick. That's not an interesting choice. That's two things that are equally wrong and feel bad. The only thing that's wrong-er is not casting the heal and having people die. And so the current design encourages a choice between "wrong, wrong, and worse". That doesn't reward fight knowledge and it doesn't provide meaningful choice. A "priority conflict" that leads to only wrong answers isn't a good system. It's like a multiple choice question where all the answers are wrong.

RE Mistakes: The problem is, judging it based on "If an (good) AI was playing the game" isn't something normal people will know. Likewise, doing it based on the worst player in the game makes everyone else over-performers with their cheeks plastered to the low skill ceiling in the room. Doing it based on the best or even just highly skilled players has the reverse problem. Doing it based on "what the average person would know" also doesn't work because there really isn't any "average person", and even within the range of "average", you get different forms - some people are amazing at tracking DoTs but suck at tracking procs. Some people are the opposite. Some people are both. Some people have a sixth sense when their DoT is falling off but routinely let party members die because they aren't good at tracking health bars. The true "average" is the average of all of that together, which probably means NOT noticing when your DoTs fall off all the time, or even somewhat often.

RE Protect: Wasn't Pro-Shell something like 10% damage reduction? 10% > 4%. But I guess it also let people pretend it didn't matter...

RE WoW Druid: Depended on the era. There were periods of WoW where Moonfire was a mana hog and produced very little needed damage, making it "overdamage" that wasn't useful because of how little it altered the time to kill. The nuke spells for Healers were made MP free in...I think it was Cata or Mists. Shaman's Lightning Bolt was actually a gain (I think it somehow regened Shaman mana, but I didn't play one, just had a friend that did, so don't remember the details). Wrath (Druid) became 0 mana cost, so when everyone was healthy and your HoTs were all up on the Tank (something you DID want to keep uptime on because of how WoW's bosses would often do big spikes of damage on Tanks, so "overhealing" was less of an issue and keeping HoTs on the MT was a given as insurance policy in most content), you could then spam out the Wraths. Prior to that expansion (I think it was Cata), healers were encouraged not to use damage spells and instead to just Wand (autoattack) in most situations so they wouldn't OOM and not be able to cast needed heals.

RE Summary: I don't know your history, so no idea. The other healer I played was Holy Paladin in Wrath and Cata. In Wrath, Holy Paladin's cookie cutter build was literally the max crit (because of the MP refund thing), Beacon the OT, target the MT, press Holy Light. Keep pressing Holy Light for the next 10 minutes until the boss died. Outside of the weird fights like the one where you heal the wounded dragon, Wrath's Healadin was just stupid. But it had to be because the boss damage against the tanks was out of control.