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

[ForsakenRoe]

Alright, so I need to get around to answering all this:

1: It works for tanks, it works for DPS. Somehow it cannot work for healers. If a DRG can have things like 'delay Life to line up with buffs', or RPR and Double Communio, or MNK and whatever cursed tech they've discovered for that job this week, even in dungeons, something that is 100% not required in order to clear the dungeon, I don't see why healer cannot have at least 'something' more than they have. As I said before, tanks get to do their whole Confiteor/Primal Rend/Shadowbringer+Flood spam thing if they want, and if they don't want, they can hold aggro just fine by using their 1-2 AOE combo. Or just the 1 if they so choose, tankstance takes care of the rest

2: Not all content is for everyone, in terms of upwards movement on the 'skill required scale', as people hit their natural limits and don't have the skill/time commitment to advance further, that is how things are, yes. But the idea that 'some content that is lower level shouldn't be fun for the people more competent at the game, cos it's designed for the less skilled players' is strange. Like, am I banned from doing map runs with my FC cos I find the fights too simple? It's a good moneymaker, am I just not allowed to partake in that money because of my skill level, am I banned from trying to get the mounts and fashion accessories that drop there? Also, it would benefit me and people like me if each Savage raid gave, say, 100 tomes on reclear instead of the current 30, as we'd be 50 from cap with that. But then you have a new problem: all those raiders no longer need to do EX roulette to cap, and so the queue has less players in it

3: So now, rather than being 'more complex than SMN', my request for a 12s Dia has become 'braindead'. Additionally, 12s would make it every 5th GCD, not 4. Additionally additionally, as I linked in the 'receipts', I've said several times that I'd try your proposed rotation, but I have doubts on how long it'd stay 'fresh'

4: Yes, after using the big heal tool for 50 gauge, Dia becomes 'Dia with AOE falloff, and 110 more potency over it's full duration'. Pinnacle of complexity right there

character limit again, very annoying

5: As much as some of us find them a slog, dungeons are also content in this game, so AOE potential is an aspect of design to consider.

6: My suggestion was 12s Dia, 15s Banish, having your GCDs build gauge, using gauge on a cool feeling heal skill, having said skill be damage neutral via bringing back the elementalist aesthetic and it being a good way to implement the 'capstone' spells of the other elements, since BLM has Flare and Freeze, giving WHM it's respective 3 makes some degree of sense to me. Adding lower level versions of things like Divine Seal > Temperance, adding a Shield Lily spender so that we don't have to overheal to prep Misery (we can place a shield instead that might still get some use in the next 30s). However, most of that is 'additional changes'. The main thing, the change that is 'required to make the idea work' is Dia and Banish. If we got just those two changes, it'd help a bit with the current problem we face. Not as much, but a bit. Without them, the gauge idea doesn't make sense. Without the gauge, the heal spell gets consigned to a flat CD, or not implemented at all. Without the heal spell, there's no reason for Quake/Tornado/Flood to exist. Butterfly effect. It sounds like a lot all at once, but that is not because 'its a lot' so much as 'we have comparatively very little'. If I were to pitch 'you can spend your lilies on ST/AOE Stoneskin, there's a new 60s heal tool, Divine Seal is back as a lower version of Temperance and Protect is a 60s mit that upgrades to Plenary', that'd be fine and not confuse new players. Even though it's actually three new buttons. It's as soon as the damage buttons get messed with, that's when the debate starts

Also, NIN always had a job gauge. It's called Huton. It was just represented differently visually in ARR and HW because gauges had yet to exist as a UI element

7: I'd say that it's major changes that are how we got here. Look at AST, overnight it went from it's SB incarnation to it's SHB form. And when major changes occur, the devs say 'sorry, we can't do much to fix it because largescale changes like that can only be done at expansion times, wait 2 years teehee'. So, if we were to have minor changes (say, adding a skill to WHM and reducing it's DOT duration) in the expansion launch for people to get used to, then rather than waiting for 8.0 to revert the change if it's a complete mess and everyone hates it, it's not as daunting a task for the devs to just... change Dia back to 30s, remove Banish from the kit, and bump Glare by 5 potency to compensate. Smaller effort, at least, than going through and reverting all the healing potencies, cooldowns, the damage output of the enemies in content etc. They brought Bulwark back in a patch, and swapped the effect of Holy Sheltron from 'guaranteed block' to 'mitigate for X %'. They can work out how to remove a GCD from the kit if it turns out to be a design fail. But then again, I'd expect that, despite how much you insist, it would not actually be a fail, look how excited people got about Purgation in the 6.1 trailer, or Misery in the SHB JobAction trailer. Or Pneuma, or Macrocosmos, or Toxikon. Seems to me, people love the idea of damage buttons on healers, they just have to look suitably cool and/or pretty

[IDontPetLalas]

Hah, I would say that Forsaken finished with an excellent point "Seems to me, people love the idea of damage buttons on healers, they just have to look suitably cool and/or pretty" how many people got hyperexcited over Sage just because of LaZers even though the basic job fundamentals weren't such a radical change

[ForsakenRoe]

Hah, I would say that Forsaken finished with an excellent point "Seems to me, people love the idea of damage buttons on healers, they just have to look suitably cool and/or pretty" how many people got hyperexcited over Sage just because of LaZers even though the basic job fundamentals weren't such a radical change

And while we're on the topic, how absolutely whelmed people were by how Expedient looked, by contrast to SGE's... everything it showed in the job action trailer, to Macrocosmos, and to Lilybell. Because Expedient, unlike the others, had a very subtle, muted VFX attached. A gust of wind with butterflies swirling in it, not really much to go on, and not really much impact compared to something like Pneuma

I've been thinking about what animations the player would do for a theoretical Quake, Tornado and Flood to make them 'feel powerful', and what would get people excited if they saw them in a job action trailer. So far my thinking is something like:

Quake: Raise left hand to sky during cast time, earth energy/aether swirling around fist. Upon cast completion, jump, punch floor, rocks/faultlines shoot out toward enemy, giant spikes of earth erupt from the ground and then explode into fragments. An example of what I'm imagining is the first attack of everyone's favorite fictional member of the US political system, Senator Armstrong. The big final 'spike' at the end can reuse the Dominion spikes in P8S, though I wouldn't object to a 'Blade of Valor' style one where many small ones appear first, then one massive one

Tornado: There's plenty of wind attack animations to reuse throughout the game, pick any that look like they are powerful enough to be worthy of the mantle of 'the most powerful of Wind Magicks'. Or recolor Tail Screw, or Charybdis. For player animation, just reuse Aero 3 (the cane spin), since Aero 3 was also a wind attack it stands to reason

Flood: Hand outstretched as if offering something to another, with water aether in palm. Massive sphere of water lands on enemy. Draw hand towards chest, crushing water aether in hand. At the same time as the 'crush', the big water droplet on the enemy condenses in under the pressure, then explodes violently in several directions because the pressure within got so high. Example of the player's movement would be, again an MGR reference, when you 'absorb electrolytes' (specifically the version at the timestamp, not the midair variants etc)

I reckon if those were shown in a job action trailer people'd be losing their mind like it's a Super Smash Bros character reveal. Well, some people at least

[AmiableApkallu]

It's something YOU don't care about, but other people DO care about.

That quite literaly means <whatever it is we allegedly care about in this game> is optional. The fact that people can choose to care or not care makes it optional.

If we take a REALLY wide view, we could just say everything in the game is optional, but that isn't useful to have discussions.

Indeed. Nothing in my list is generally considered a baseline expectation for playing in a party or playing a particular job. For example, I specifically and intentionally did not not include bullet points for zero-DPS healers, or Blizzard-only BLMs, or DPS that refuse to hit their basic, listed-on-SE's-official-job-guide-website 1-2-[3-...] combos.

So, I ask: Is anything in my previously posted list required?

This is also true of the 4 Healers Model opposition. And the irony is, if people would give on that, they'd likely get most of what they want otherwise.

I asked for what I wanted, and your response was literally, "Are you proposing we add a new healer?"

Your "4 Healers Model" does not give me what I want, by your own admission.

[ty_taurus]

Good game design would be ensuring that the majority of each healer's toolkit felt useful and necessary in all forms of content for every type of player. The problem is power creep.

In A Realm Reborn, each healer had a limited, yet effective selection of healing tools. With that toolkit, they had everything they needed to meet the healing requirements asked of them with some level of comfort, and the majority of their tools felt like they served a purpose from the dungeons to the coils. If you're going to continue keeping the general level of required healing the same, then you have to ask whether or not new healing resources are necessary or if they're superfluous. Heavensward provided a handful of OGCD tools that did not power creep the existing healing GCD spells available to each healer, while creating more freedom and flexibility with healing. You can now heal on the move more effectively, conserve MP, and have more possible buttons to press in a pinch. The MP benefits were especially helpful for White Mage, and the AoE healing was especially helpful for Scholar. But the thing is, everything that came after really only served the value of power creeping existing tools and pushing things like Cure II and Medica out of circulation. And then there's the considerable amount of sustain that the tanks have gotten which have, in many forms of content, power crept the healers themselves.

You can't just keep adding more healing abilities and not create a reason to use them. Otherwise it just creates bloat and invalidates existing tools. I also question whether the shear volume of healing cooldowns we have is overwhelming for newer or learning healers to keep track of.

it's like this: A car needs 4 tires. What is the point of adding more and more tires to your car? At what point do you just have tires all over the vehicle in a nonsensical fashion?

[Shurrikhan]

it's like this: A car needs 4 tires. What is the point of adding more and more tires to your car? At what point do you just have tires all over the vehicle in a nonsensical fashion?

Small note: Technically, if XIV were okay with making MP an actual mechanic in this game, new healing skills could have involved greater efficient vs. bursty-ness instead of necessarily needing to be introduced as oGCDs.



Consider also:

If off-GCD heals were specifically needed, that'd mean that there were mechanics that force their use to specific moments (to possibly heal X up in time, you MUST have an oGCD ready to weave between or as a buff to your healing spells) or specific spans of time (within the next X GCDs, you need to do X+Y GCDs' worth of healing).

Which can be fun, but... especially in the prior, stricter case, can also make us feel like we have, on the whole, less agency, since the tool has dedicated/required moments of use and we need only identify those mechanics and hit those buttons on cue.


It's kind of like the difference between having only Cure III, Regen, Asylum, and Assize to deal with intense repeated damage that comes up every few minutes... vs. having a Liturgy of the Bell to drop. Liturgy is one more tool, which we'd normally expect therefore to add complexity, but since it has such an obvious use case, there's little agency, and no real decision-making, beyond that first instance of "Oh, here's the mechanic that wants Lilybell."

Oftentimes, fewer and less tailored tools can produce more complexity in practice than a slew of tailored tools.

[ForsakenRoe]

It's kind of like the difference between having only Cure III, Regen, Asylum, and Assize to deal with intense repeated damage that comes up every few minutes... vs. having a Liturgy of the Bell to drop. Liturgy is one more tool, which we'd normally expect therefore to add complexity, but since it has such an obvious use case, there's little agency, and no real decision-making, beyond that first instance of "Oh, here's the mechanic that wants Lilybell."

Doesn't help that Liturgy has a 3min CD. Most times I use it, it doesn't even get to burn all 5 stacks. Which is why I would like to see it get changed to 3 stacks, 90s CD, and have it's damage penalty for early detonation removed. That way, it's a 1200p OGCD heal if you need it, 3 blasts of 400p if you would rather have the healing staggered (to avoid overheal for example), and it being up twice as often gives it an interesting use case vs Macrocosmos, it's direct competitor skill. That being, 'its up twice as often'. Of course, that would run counter to SE's design of 'WHM has to be mainly reliant on GCDs to heal with'. But it would fit well with WHM's supposed aesthetic of 'big healing, on demand, simple and powerful and easy to access'

[Shurrikhan]

Doesn't help that Liturgy has a 3min CD. Most times I use it, it doesn't even get to burn all 5 stacks. Which is why I would like to see it get changed to 3 stacks, 90s CD, and have it's damage penalty for early detonation removed. That way, it's a 1200p OGCD heal if you need it, 3 blasts of 400p if you would rather have the healing staggered (to avoid overheal for example), and it being up twice as often gives it an interesting use case vs Macrocosmos, it's direct competitor skill. That being, 'its up twice as often'. Of course, that would run counter to SE's design of 'WHM has to be mainly reliant on GCDs to heal with'. But it would fit well with WHM's supposed aesthetic of 'big healing, on demand, simple and powerful and easy to access'

Wouldn't mind that. Would also be fine with the early detonation heals still being penalized, though, as to be more in character with the skill itself (even if that doesn't necessarily fit with the "instant, bursty healing" theme of WHM... which is likely as much fanon than canon, let alone a necessity, anyways).

I feel like new skills shouldn't be neither nigh un-interchangeable but not too interchangeable either. There's definitely a sweet spot, even if it gets increasingly narrow as the toolchest gets more and more (over)stuffed.

To me, it's reminiscent of persistence, storms weathered, etc., rather than a healing nuke, and that much should remain, but some part of its usability should likely be expanded. For instance, maybe once placed, it can reassign For Whom the Bell Tolls, so that it can instead go off whenever the target ally takes damage, rather than the WHM who placed it, exploiting a DoT for AoE healing. Maybe it can use a resource-CD, where it has 6 charges each with a recast of 30 seconds and can remain for as many chimes as it had charges (maybe minus 1 further charge, consumed upon just summoning it) when placed but can also be de-summoned early. Something that allows it to be woven into more situations without it being usable in virtually all of them.

Just my $0.02 / gut feelings on such skills.

[Renathras]

Your "4 Healers Model" does not give me what I want, by your own admission.

"most of"
not
"all of"

There's no situation where we all will get ALL of what we want. That's impossible considering both sides want things that cannot simultaneously be true.

So 100% healing uptime already happened? lmao

How do you go from "hasn't happened yet" to "so it's happened already?! lmao"? That's like the opposite. But, again, this is a side issue that isn't relevant.

Good game design would be ensuring that the majority of each healer's toolkit felt useful and necessary in all forms of content for every type of player. The problem is power creep.

I want to agree with this, but I don't think it's true OTHER THAN the last five words. I think that's true.

Consider a player that likes melee and tanks. They like being right up next to the boss engaging with them, and they hate combat with casting. They won't be happy with RDM because it can't just melee all the time, it has to use cast bars. They also won't like SAM for the cast bars. Should we make every Job in the game have melee combos to appeal to this type of player who doesn't enjoy non-melee combat or caster gameplay?

At some level, we have to accept the basic premise that no Job will appeal to everyone at the same time. We accept this across Jobs and across roles, but for some reason, people insist it's not allowed for healers, despite it being true of every other role and Job in the game, and in general, true of classes and specs in other MMOs as well. There's no game ever invented that had different classes where every class was appealing to every player or type of player. Maybe someone likes using shields and barriers, so they pick SCH or SGE...but then a lot of SCH/SGE healing is through oGCD regens and direct heals. That player doesn't find Indom or Physis enjoyable, they want to use more Adlo/Succor/EuProg/Diag. But the game doesn't shift to accommodate them.

Small note: Technically, if XIV were okay with making MP an actual mechanic in this game, new healing skills could have involved greater efficient vs. bursty-ness instead of necessarily needing to be introduced as oGCDs.

Mhm. It's kind of a mess where we are with the oGCDs at this point.

.

Also seconding Roe's comment on Liturgy's CD being too honkin' long.

EDIT:

I'm just saying, there were people who struggled with Storm's Crown EX because it did more frequent raidwides than usual, and that's nowhere near even 60% healing uptime.

You're conflating two issues here, I think. Storm's Crown also had heavy movement during the damage phases, meaning players trying to use hardcast spells weren't able to. You can have that level of damage with less movement and resolve that issue, which is what we had more of back in ARR fights, so it's not like the game hasn't done it before.

As for "Sylphies"; they realistically don't exist. In the literal sense, Sylphie in the CNJ quest wasn't "I don't wanna dps, I just wanna HEAL!" that people caricature. She was "I don't want to take power from the Elementals because my mother said it hurts them, I'm going to heal from my own life force and I think I learned the BLU Transfusion spell that will kill me when I raise someone, let's go try it out!". Never was it mentioned that she "didn't want to dps". That's an invention of the pro-damage community so they have a convenient insult to poison conversations with.

[ty_taurus]

I want to agree with this, but I don't think it's true OTHER THAN the last five words. I think that's true.

Consider a player that likes melee and tanks. They like being right up next to the boss engaging with them, and they hate combat with casting. They won't be happy with RDM because it can't just melee all the time, it has to use cast bars. They also won't like SAM for the cast bars. Should we make every Job in the game have melee combos to appeal to this type of player who doesn't enjoy non-melee combat or caster gameplay?

At some level, we have to accept the basic premise that no Job will appeal to everyone at the same time. We accept this across Jobs and across roles, but for some reason, people insist it's not allowed for healers, despite it being true of every other role and Job in the game, and in general, true of classes and specs in other MMOs as well. There's no game ever invented that had different classes where every class was appealing to every player or type of player. Maybe someone likes using shields and barriers, so they pick SCH or SGE...but then a lot of SCH/SGE healing is through oGCD regens and direct heals. That player doesn't find Indom or Physis enjoyable, they want to use more Adlo/Succor/EuProg/Diag. But the game doesn't shift to accommodate them.

Your example doesn't really match though. You're talking about a playstyle: melee vs magic. Not wanting actions is not a playstyle. If someone does not want to have more than 5 or 6 actions in PVE, that's not something that should be supported, because that's now how this game is structured.