What Healer kit (not encounter) change would make GCD heals NOT bad gameplay?

[ForsakenRoe]

I just don't think it's feasible to increase healing requirements enough. There is absolutely room to increase the frequency of healing needed on some level, but consider that current savage and the last tier as well never ask for back-to-back healing like that outside of very specific mechanics that are usually designed for Lilturgy/Panhaima/Macrocosmos to resolve by themselves (Or Harrowing Hell). By a combination of increasing damage frequency, reducing healing output, or increasing max HP pools and the amount of damage taken, you'd need to exceed that standard of healing requirements even in more casual content to actually provide a use to a 1-2-3 healing combo, and that threshold of damage is one that has pushed our community to its limits.

That said, something I've been thinking about lately is a way the lily system could be different and not promote so much overhealing, and the idea goes like this: Instead of Solace and Rapture being flat heals, we have three lily actions. I'll use some blunt names for the sake of simplicity.

Afflatus Fast Cast - Makes your next spell instant cast. Costs 1 lily and nourishes the blood lily. Also grants 1 stack of Growth.
Afflatus MP - Causes your next spell to restore your MP by an amount equal to its MP Cost. Costs 1 lily and nourishes the blood . Also grants 1 stack of Growth.
Afflatus Healing - Increases the potency of your next healing spell by 30%. Costs 1 lily and nourishes the blood lily. Also grants 1 sack of Growth.
Growth effect: If your next spell cast is a healing spell, that spell also nourishes the blood lily.

In other words, it's a soft 1-2 heal combo where you augment a heal before activating it all while staying DPS neutral. How do you feel about something like that?

Afflatus Germination
Afflatus Conservation
Afflatus Propagation

Would you be able to go, for example, FastCast, into Healing, into Medica, and get 2 stacks of BL from it, or would Growth overwrite itself so you want to spread out Lily uses? (also this sounds like SGE augments but I'm not wholly opposed)

[ty_taurus]

Afflatus Germination
Afflatus Conservation
Afflatus Propagation

Would you be able to go, for example, FastCast, into Healing, into Medica, and get 2 stacks of BL from it, or would Growth overwrite itself so you want to spread out Lily uses? (also this sounds like SGE augments but I'm not wholly opposed)

Hmm, I think that interaction depends. Do we want you to be able to stack lily effects? Or should you only get one at a time? I'd be open to talking about those pros and cons. Healing after a lily augment would need to only consume 1 stack, otherwise we get into sticky DPS optimization tactics where 3 healing GCDs is worth 4 Glares. But there is the question of do we want you to be able to stack 2 Growths, then after you could get a fast, potent Medica followed by a normal Regen on the tank, for example, for a total of 4 BL nourishes. I think there merits to different approaches.

Also for the record, in this hypothetical I imagine you can store a second BL, but Misery has a 20 second cooldown.

What part is the Sage argument?

[LilimoLimomo]

I disagree with the premise that GCD heals are "bad gameplay", but if you wanted to guarantee that nobody could have the opinion that they were bad gameplay, the solution is simple: remove oGCD heals from the kit.

Alternatively, keep only cooldown-based oGCD's and remove damaging spells from the kit; now using oGCD heals actually becomes wasteful when used outside of urgent situations.

[ForsakenRoe]

What part is the Sage argument?

Figured they were still GCD cos Afflatus.

I mentioned SGE Augments (as in, augmentation ala Zoe, Krasis) because yeh, augmenting your GCD heal with an Afflatus Augmentation of some sort. Again, not opposed to the idea (Sects augmented your Aspected heals on AST once upon a time, Tactics augment your heals on SCH at times), it's just kinda funny to me that we end up at 'what if we make it so X system augments other skills' so often

[ty_taurus]

Figured they were still GCD cos Afflatus.

I mentioned SGE Augments (as in, augmentation ala Zoe, Krasis) because yeh, augmenting your GCD heal with an Afflatus Augmentation of some sort. Again, not opposed to the idea (Sects augmented your Aspected heals on AST once upon a time, Tactics augment your heals on SCH at times), it's just kinda funny to me that we end up at 'what if we make it so X system augments other skills' so often

I think because it makes sense. There's the flexibility to use those effects on offensive spells when you don't need to heal, but no punishment for when you do use them to heal, and again Misery can technically be a gain when used correctly and/or when getting a crit/DH. It also creates more ways to break away from damage by setting up heals to have alternative effects rather than just flat out restoring HP, and creates choices to make with how you spend your free heals.

I'd add another GCD spell that I've referenced before with the name "Germinate" which just nourishes the blood lily and costs no lilies, but has an elongated GCD timer a-la Six-Sided Star so it's a DPS loss to use in combat, but is useful for phase changes to discourage burning lilies for the sake of burning lilies.

[Renathras]

You didn't mention in your original post that any suggestions have to take into account people who don't use DoTs at all so I don't know why you made that a condition now.

Not "making it a condition", just asking the question. What I'm pointing out is, while it may be a solution, it won't fit all situations/players well.

Hello
My opinion on the problem as other have said is oGCD negating GCDS.

Thank you for your input. I said something similar once about stuff like PI being good oGCDs because they do nothing alone. They need a GCD to interact with them.

I think the a 5.3 storm’s eye style qol would be possible to help with uptime in the event that this was a chosen solution.

Honestly, that isn't a terrible idea, though I think the issue then becomes the BRD Iron Jaws thing. If the buff's potency is maintained at the applied level only, this means letting your raid buffed application fall off would be a mass damage loss and continuing a pre-raid buffed application within the raid buff window would be a damage loss. The second can be fixed some by making a higher potency version overwrite, so it would update to the raid buffed potency, but that would mean a playstyle of always refreshing a smidge early to keep the raid buff application up, which is even more punishing if it falls off in exchange for being more idiot proof at the bottom end. I do think allowing it to extend up to 60 seconds might be helpful, though if there's a way to address that.

As to the latter: Well, WHM's don't stock a ton of lilies for the 2 min burst now. You still use Misery at the 1 minute one. Because you can't stack to a second Blood Lily. So suppose WHM COULD generate Blood Lily from 3x Cure 1s.

You have used Cures/Lilies prior to your burst so you're sitting on a Misery ready to go. Burst starts and you cast Misery, Cure 1, Cure 1, Cure 1, Misery. This is damage neutral to you having just cast Misery, Glare, Glare, Glare, Glare. Moreover, you could TECHNICALLY do this right now. Go into your 2 min raid buffs with one Misery ready and 3 Lily Blooms (the third blooms just as you enter burst). Misery, Rapture, Rapture, Rapture, Misery. This is literally the same result (well, if we were using Medica instead of Cure 1). Misery, Solace, Solace, Solace, Misery would be the same as Misery, Cure 2, Cure 2, Cure 2, Misery, except the latter actually costs MP and requires you to stand still for the casts, making it more difficult to play/harder to optimize on movement vs the Solaces.

I'm not sure how this is extremely cursed, or, at least, any more cursed than WHM is right now...

Eh, people will play to the standard that the content expects of them,...

Maybe, it's hard to say.

I suspect my bias/hate of DoTs is at play in part, but I've noticed this does seem to be something high end players are very good at and low end ones are very bad at. People in the middle (which I probably am) are also not great at it. In general, DoTs falling off is the biggest mistake I consistently see of players.

I'm also not sure if people would adapt or not. Even back in HW there were WHMs that didn't cast any DoTs at all. I remember tanking for some sprouts in HW, Sohm Al, I think it was. SCH, BRD, and SMN. Literally none of them knew what a DoT was or how to use it. I didn't even go into Cleric stance with the SCH, I just explained to all of them how to use DoTs.
...how to USE DoTs.

Their uptime wasn't good, after, but I at least saw the debuffs. (And got three comms for my efforts.)

Point is, I don't think it's a silver bullet solution. I genuinely do think things like Misery are better.

They're all "Heal target for X potency" or "Heal entire party for X potency", there is no synergy, nothing but "Make HP bar go up by X" and the skills that break this mold are few and far between.

There aren't a ton, but there are some. Though I'm curious what you're thinking instead? What we have right now:

Direct refilling of health bars (most standard cures, a secondary effect of most healing oGCDs)
Refiling smaller amounts of health over time (GCDs like Regen, oGCDs like Physis, field effects like Asylum)
Both of the above, an initial cure then a trickle of additional healing (Medica 2)
Barrier overlapping health bar (Benison and Holos, with other things having barrier + healing)
Barrier and heal filling health bars (Adlo, etc)
Reactive healing/heal in reaction to damage (Lilybell, Excogitation)
Not heal itself but boost healing (Fey Illumination, Plenary Indulgence)
Percent reduction in incoming damage (Temperance, Soil, etc)
Health bar increasing effects (Protraction)

Those seem like a lot of different ways/effects to me. Do they not to you?

^this is why I don’t actually dislike the way SCH has 4 phases and they all interrupt each other, you should be punished for using your healing options at the wrong time, heals should have a purpose and if you use them at the wrong time there should be consequences

The consequence used to be related to MP management or being more taxed/stressed later (e.g. if you blow all your oGCDs at once and have to scramble with GCD heals later).

As this game is fully dps driven, thats why GCD heals are considered bad, in most cases these arent needed, so using one means losing dps. dps dps dps, thats all the game cares about. If the game would dish out damage values that force healers into using the GCD's, that wouldnt be an issue at all, as then instead of the dps focus, it truly becomes a game of keeping people alive (and their mistakes then will result in deaths faster rather than having a vuln stack that usualy expires without problems). It would make those abilities usefull, and add towards the healer experience. We are called healers, force us into healing!

But more damage has 1 side effect: if the healer dies and you dont have revives, the healer is going to be blamed for the wipe, where in plenty of cases if the tank dies, while it might cause the team to take heavy hits, a delayed revive can still save a lot. A safeguard a healer only has when a dps also can revive. Thats another issue they would then need to resolve.

Hm. I think I pretty much agree with all of this. The encounter design is kind of a problem.

To this day, l still can't get the why healer needs to contribute to dps check.

I get why healers doing damage isn't bad - can speed kills - but I agree that healer damage shouldn't be how DPS checks are calculated. I think the fear is that for it NOT to be counted, healers need to do very little personal damage (right now, they do around 50-60% of a DPS). If not, a really good DPSing healer could make up for your team having bad DPS players if said Healer is able to optimize and output enough damage to help them clear the encounter that was tuned for 0 healer DPS. That is, the encounter expected none, so if your 1-2 healers are doing 1.2 or so DPSers worth of damage, it could make the encounter trivial (if your DPS are good) or clearable with really poor DPS players (if they are not).

You COULD fix that by just making healer Jobs do really small damage, like only 10-20% of a DPSers, but now you have healers trying to do those MSQ solo instance fights and not being able to clear the DPS checks (like at the end of SB where Elidibus as Zenos summons the swords and you have to kill them all before the gauge fills), meaning they either have to give healers a special buff in those instances or program special alternatives like NPC helpers to do the fighting for you, which can change some story beats (like when you're supposed to be all alone, such as the 5.3 fight gauntlet in Amaurot). Not to mention stuff like Deep Dungeons. There's not an elegant way to really fix this outside of something like that BLU ability that buffs them when solo (Primal Instinct?) doing instances alone, but even that has a bunch of conditions and caveats (like it has to be an instance "designed for more than one player").

But the other extreme is what we have now, where it's destroyed healing as a role and stretched the trinity to its breaking point.

Another alternative would be if healing was actually taxing, so we had to use GCD heals, and damage spells and GCD heals were comparable in MP consumption to the point casting too many damage ones means you don't have enough MP for healing. But that runs a lot of other risks. While that might still be preferable to what we have now - and would make healers focused on healing again and GCD heals viable uses of a GCD - it has its own risks such as bad situations snowaballing, and as healers get more gear, they can still shift into more damage, so it leads to the same problem in some ways, depending on how it's implemented.

I dunno, there are reasons behind both sides.

Would spamming GCD heals with OGCD damage spells be more engaging than spamming GCD damage spells with OGCD healing though? It sounds like the same thing, just reversed. I'd rather see kit diversification to make both GCD heals and GCD damage spells interplay with each other so you have a more or less equal time on both, encounter design would also need to change to necessitate GCD heals.

I'm not sure about "more engaging" but "feel more like a healer/less like a DPSer" would be one difference.

[Sebazy]

Maybe, it's hard to say.

I suspect my bias/hate of DoTs is at play in part, but I've noticed this does seem to be something high end players are very good at and low end ones are very bad at. People in the middle (which I probably am) are also not great at it. In general, DoTs falling off is the biggest mistake I consistently see of players.

Aye, I suspect your dislike of dots is making you over estimate their difficulty in use. In the other thread I went down the most recent runs of P9N looking for high average and below logs and perhaps surprisingly, the lower percentile WHMs were actually failing much more heavily at getting value out of their Lilies, for the most part the dot uptime was reasonable for the standard of play whereas the Misery usage most certainly wasn't.

At the end of the day, saying that their were healers that weren't using dots in ARR and HW and using that as justification that dots are bad is a bit moot. There were a very significant portion of healers that wouldn't use barely much of anything offensive at all. Not dotting is the least of their problems when they won't Stone and potentially can't even keep Assize on cooldown.

Keep in mind though that dots aren't the only solution here, it's just one of many and IMO it's the solution that fits in best with SCH's history and aesthetic so here I am suggesting it (Along with Fester and Bane for that real throwback ofc!). Dumping a pile of dots on AST wouldn't make any sense to me at least, thus on this angle I'm still sticking to my guns with GCD cards.

[Shurrikhan]

On Toxicon:

So, I'm confused about something:

SGE: Toxicon is bad because you shouldn't use GCD shields because they're GCDs, but if you do, Toxicon is still bad because it's a DPS loss. So using Toxicon or using GCD shields are bad and that needs to be changed.

This is more a 'conflicting frames of reference' issue.

Having to use Eukrasian Diagnosis is bad, if you could have avoided it, because it's a DPS loss.
That you have Toxicon (unless we could prove somehow that you lost more valuable utility to make room for it... which we can't), is good, because it reduces the penalty of having to use Eukrasian Diagnosis, which is further worth some small offensive ppm increase regardless of would-be mistakes if one finds themself in a fight where EuD's use was truly unavoidable AND you later truly need that extra mobility.

I.e., it's a good thing to have, but not a good thing to (have to) use (unnecessarily).

How would you make using GCD heals NOT bad gameplay, if not them being damage neutral?

Simple. If by "GCD heals" we also mean "at-cost" heals, then just give them a place.

Which... requires changes to encounter design. If you bar that, you bar any meaningful solution.

If they're redundant bullshit, they'll be as punishing as wasted time, because they are. If they're not, you'll use them when you have to, because you have to.

That's literally it.

If you have excess or even sufficient "free" healing tools, then of course you will not touch the "at-cost" healing tools.
________________

Your best solution, then, is a combination of reduced healing value relative to players' maximum HP, increased incoming damage (around and mindful of existing spikes so that there is sufficient time compensatory time) relative to free healing output available, and/or revamping oGCD healing itself to be less sustainable but perhaps more flexible (such as by shifting much of our MP costs to those oGCDs instead*).

* For this, we'd be mindful that each oGCD takes as little as a half second (+roundtrip ping)'s worth of mobile uptime ("animation lock") to produce its healing and should be charged in rough proportion to that efficiency/responsiveness. Of course, some may be left cheaper or free as to be used more rotationally while nerfing that kit's GCD output per that free curative ppm if that better fits the feel of the kit, and using only GCD heals would, after this shuffle of MP costs, still give you space for some degree of oGCD healing before actually losing MP over time, to similar effect.

Heck, we could even allow certain oGCDs to be used even while on cooldown, instantly completing that recast time for additional MP cost. For instance, maybe Benison normally costs just 400 MP, but as soon as you use it, it can be used again for 1200 MP fading back to 400 over its cooldown. The 400 is pretty darn efficient, but the 1200 is not worth spamming outside of emergencies.

_____________________________

There's nothing you can do to reduce the cost of at-cost tools without reducing that kit's peak damage or peak healing (by muddling the two together Disc Priest / Sage style) or overpowering a job (since you'd literally be increasing their simultaneous rDPS+HPS [a la SGE up until a pretty high HPS requirement]... which you'd then just tune them down for, ultimately resulting in the exact same thing). All you can do is change how they seem to fit within the larger kit (as redundant BS, or not).

Attaching damage refunds to heals or bonus healing to attacks doesn't reduce the costs of decision-making; it just offers you less agency over, and dynamism within, those decisions. I'd recommend focusing instead on just balancing the kit's tuning in a way that nothing feels like an afterthought, interactions are maximized, and the buttonflow simply feels 'good' to most players.

And if the purpose is just to try to remove the possibility of playing badly by removing the cost from any at-cost options... then you're effectively aiming to simply remove any meaningful choice and skill expression from gameplay. So... don't.

[ForsakenRoe]

Thinking about the question posed in the OP a bit while eating, and I've come up with this thought:

Don't.

Let's think about it, people enjoy parsing in this game. Not me personally, but some do. If we were to make GCD heals damage neutral in some way, (ie make Toxicon do double damage so it refunds the Dosis), this means that a huge aspect of that side of the game (parsing) is removed. Many more people would reach the point of 'zero lossy GCDs used', by dint of the fact that their heals are refunding themselves. This means the issue we currently have, of 'the difference between a 74 and a 99 is whether your DoubleDowns all crit', would become pretty much the only factor in expression of skill. That might be the point to some, but I think that is pretty bad design. I guess it's kinda like how the further back in Mario Kart you are, the better items you get, and I remember when I raced my brother, we'd often start hitting the brakes right before item boxes, so that we'd be 'the one in second' and get the better items. That's not good gameplay but it's what the system caused, and I imagine a change like this would result in similar, causing parses to be almost entirely about 'did you crit super lots', purposely keeping your Miserys outside of buffs in case they crit naturally, and going for specific kill times that benefit you. Well, they already are about all that, but y'know, even more so

I think 'healing GCDs that cost damage' are just a fact of life in this game. They see use in prog, and as we get more geared/learn fights, we start to remove them from our timeline. They cost us damage, yes, but not using that Succor and wiping to the raidwide costs us more time. I think certain elements of the playerbase need to reconsider what's important in doing raids, high number means nothing if you let a wipe occur when you could have saved it.

As an aside, even making 'every GCD heal give blood lily' as previously talked about, doesn't fully solve the problem. In Harrowing Hell for P10S week 1, you'd cap on Misery, spend it, and in that one GCD where you try to spend it, the damage would likely kill you. So... you'd still be 'suboptimal' there. I blame the obsession with the funny colored number, because it doesn't tell you jack about the skill of the healer, only how good they are at hitting Glare. EG: if a healer has to LB3 to save a P10S run because Bonds 3 kills like 5 people, their parse gets lowered (animation locked for 8 sec), but the people who died are ressed with no weakness, and can get right back into their rotation, the only thing they lose is their Gauges. Happened to me in reclears this week actually, the NIN assassinated themselves and the DNC, the DNC got a res from my coheal just before I hit LB, the NIN got ressed by the LB and had no weakness. NIN got a 89, DNC got a 55. The DNC did everything correctly, and it was the 'assassin' that got the better score this week (not that we minded, it was funny and we oneshot it). But it goes to show that making plays and saving runs, eg LBing, or taking a hit someone else should have and sacrificing yourself to save the run, is not worth it in the eyes of FFlogs

Yes I'm mad, FFlogs always makes me mad

Heck, we could even allow certain oGCDs to be used even while on cooldown, instantly completing that recast time for additional MP cost. For instance, maybe Benison normally costs just 400 MP, but as soon as you use it, it can be used again for 1200 MP fading back to 600 over its cooldown. The 400 is pretty darn efficient, but the 1200 is not worth spamming outside of emergencies.

This is an interesting idea, because we could have the timer by which the MP cost returns to it's base value be affected by Piety, making that stat... not less dead, maybe, but at least slightly more interesting. Though I suppose that idea, and 'restore MP faster', both would have the same net result. It'd be interesting for specific cases though, like rushing Deployment Tactics for more uses of Spreadlo, or rushing Pneuma for more throughput in something like Harrowing Hell

[AmiableApkallu]

I think 'healing GCDs that cost damage' are just a fact of life in this game.

...

But it goes to show that making plays and saving runs, eg LBing, or taking a hit someone else should have and sacrificing yourself to save the run, is not worth it in the eyes of FFlogs

Yes I'm mad, FFlogs always makes me mad

I wish "people" would be clear that healing GCDs cost personal damage. If you're playing "thoughtfully," you hit those healing GCDs because you think the party's total damage will be better off for it, or is more likely than not to be better off for it -- in practice, meaning you think the party will actually clear versus wipe.

And, if the party's total damage is actually better off because you hit that healing GCD instead of your personal nuke, why is it that the spreadsheet aggregator du jour fails to recognize that as a positive rDPS contribution?

Unless "people" decide that heals actually can have a positive rDPS contribution, the conversation is always going to be about damage neutrality and pushing everything into oGCDs (a la tank kits).

/end abbreviated rant