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

[Shurrikhan]

Pls explain how WHM suffers from button bloat

I'm not sure I agree here with Ren that WHM has button bloat (outside of perhaps Lucid Dreaming, which exists only to add a sort of luck component to how badly one gets screwed over by a death), but it does, like all other jobs, at least have button inefficiency (where design could instead provide equally fine or better degrees of control and agency despite using fewer keys).

That said, whether it has a particularly bad case of bloat or not is irrelevant to whether it's better to leave Holy as dead a button as Repose in 98% of difficult content.

[Supersnow845]

I'm not sure I agree here with Ren that WHM has button bloat (outside of perhaps Lucid Dreaming, which exists only to add a sort of luck component to how badly one gets screwed over by a death), but it does, like all other jobs, at least have button inefficiency (where design could instead provide equally fine or better degrees of control and agency despite using fewer keys).

That said, whether it has a particularly bad case of bloat or not is irrelevant to whether it's better to leave Holy as dead a button as Repose in 98% of difficult content.

I mean I’m ambivalent to the overarching discussion here on whether holy should be integrated into a rotation or not to give it a use in single target situations because I’m not inherently opposed to having AOE buttons, if every damage ability just applied falloff so your single target and AOE rotations were the same then it would be even more boring but on the other hand I do like the ideas provided about holy sorta becoming another misery but more often- if only because I want more rotation complexity on healers, not specifically because I feel strongly about holy being useless in single target

I’m genuinely interested in how anyone could argue WHM of all classes has button bloat though

[Shurrikhan]

If every damage ability just applied falloff so your single target and AOE rotations were the same then it would be even more boring.

Tangent, but... would it, though?

If every AoE ability had bonus damage on the first target struck and a place in ST rotation and every ST ability had additional (reduced) damage dealt also to other enemies across an area of effect, you'd just have n many more abilities for each situation; rather than solely some 1-3 GCDs for AoE and some 2-7 GCDs for ST, you'd have all 3-10 GCDs for both situations.

Note that such also wouldn't have to prevent some skills from being advantaged at especially high or low mob counts in those AoE situations or when focus fire is more or less required (if it were ever required in XIV, that is).

I’m genuinely interested in how anyone could argue WHM of all classes has button bloat though

It's mostly the Lilies spells, honestly. For instance, if you just had it so that canceling any healing spell via movement would complete its cast automatically if you have a Lily available, that offers the same degree of mobility control while taking zero Lily Heal buttons. The two buttons exist to only make it more obvious that you got a fancy new capacity and to slow the rate at which you're allowed to tap into that capacity; in terms of functionality, they're utterly unneeded. They're fine, I guess, and I don't think they're an issue, but they are technically bloat.

And then there's the usual: Lucid Dreaming, Cure, Repose, and arguably Esuna (duller than just healing the DoT, since said healing has far more options than just "undo mechanic"), Surecast (if we axed the other "nah, I'm too lazy/late for this mechanic, bruh" buttons, too) or even Raise/Resurrection/etc. (instead allowing K.O.'ed people to be healed at some 20% of healing received and revive once reaching 20% HP, which would therefore have taken as much resource as healing 100% of their HP).

:: Honestly, Lucid Dreaming is dumb af but at least doesn't make processes less interesting than they otherwise would be for its existing, unlike Surecast, Esuna, and potentially the rez button. They actually make Cure and Repose look... the better, among those 6 keys.

[Renathras]

I’m genuinely interested in how anyone could argue WHM of all classes has button bloat though

The short-ish version:

1) The average number of buttons across all Jobs in the game (went over this in the Healer forum in this thread: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...for-discussion ) is 33.105 with the Mode (5 cases) being 32. WHM and SGE both have 33, putting them above the mode and in line with the average and with each other. So the "WHM of all classes" is kind of weird since it has more buttons than 8 Jobs, less than 8 Jobs, and is tied with 2 Jobs (SGE and RPR), making it right in the middle in terms of buttons. I'm guessing you've never run those numbers and missed that thread to say "WHM of all classes"? I made it in response to someone saying WHM had the fewest of any Job in the game, and I was genuinely curious. It actually is right in the middle - and tied with SGE.

2) I've noted before that 32 is a good number to shoot for, since that fits neatly on 2 crossbars (controller players) AND it's hard to argue that "3 tens worth of buttons", 30 unique abilities, is somehow not a lot, no matter the game. This is from 3 years ago, but WoW's classes are in the similar 30-40 range that FFXIV Jobs are: https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wo...assspec/659584 FFXIV's least is SMN at 27 and most is PLD at 36, which isn't drastically different from WoW's 18-23 (one of the Demon Hunter specs, Vengeance) to 36-43 (Restoration/healing Shaman). I'm not sure what it is now (that was the most recent search result I could find on the topic), but that's still pretty in line with what FFXIV has as well, with the low end actually being quite a bit lower even than SMN.

3) There are a lot of redundant or near-redundant buttons. Cure 1 is, in almost all situations (other than if you need a SLIGHTLY faster cast time, are OOM, or doing content less than level 30), outclassed and functionally replaced by Cure 2. Medica 2's base heal + first tick of the HoT = Medica 1's total healing and it has the same cast time and only 100 more MP cost. Solace/Rapture are Cure 2/Medica 1 with benefits (instant cast and damage neutral). Tetra and Assize are Cure 2/Medica 1 with benefits (oGCDs, instant cast, weavable, and Assize regenerates some MP and does a good amount of damage). There are also a number of abilities that probably don't need to be separate buttons on their own, or should have some effects tied into them. As I've said before, Plenary should have a damage mitigation effect (5%, I'd say) since WHM right now has less mitigation than BLACK MAGE does (Addle if the boss is targetable) vs magic damage, which many/most unavoidable raidwides are. Esuna is useless in 90% of content. Repose is useless in 99% of content. Rescue is HIGHLY situational. Lilybell due to the CD is often not ever up when you need it (cases in boss encounters that you need it tend to be somewhat less than 180 sec apart). Benison and Aquaveil exist as two different buttons to address essentially the same problem (tankbusters or single party members in danger of dying/with high vuln stacks). Assize, Presence of Mind, and Lucid dreaming are EFFECTIVELY "use on CD" buttons, meaning their effects could just be baked into the kit's baseline abilities via trait or something and it wouldn't change the gameplay at all (PoM is the only real exception to that rule since there are times you might hold it and it changes the cadence of your button presses; Lucid could just be a higher baked in MP auto regeneration rate, as could Assize's MP regen and the damage just thrown into using either of your Lily abilities or something).

...which is to say, there are a lot of things that could be made baseline, merged in some way, or even outright removed and no one would really bat an eye. PvP WHM's Cure 2 is basically Solace or Tetra (no MP cost, has charges and a CD), for example, and given how oGCD and Lilies are used for most healing right now, you could remove Cure 1, Cure 2, Cure 3 (how rarely that's used since you can Plenary Raptures), and Medica, and possibly Regen, as well as Repose, Rescue, Esuna, and remove Lucid while making its regeneration baseline, and still have essentially the same Job. That's a lot of bloat in the sense of "extra buttons that are there but are borderline and/or entirely unnecessary/unused". Despite having the same number of buttons, I feel SGE has slightly less bloat (though it does have some) considering more of its buttons are independently usable and not stepping on each other's toes or completely unused. Even abilities you might never use themselves, like Diagnosis, have an alteration to make them more usable.

Oh, and Glare/Holy are functionally equivalent depending on single or AOE situations. If you gave Glare 50% falloff AOE capability (and the Stun, I guess), it would COMPLETELY replace Holy and nothing about the kit would change otherwise. That's how useless Holy is in its current form. You'd replace "spam this 1 button in single-target, spam this 1 other button in AOE" with "spam this 1 button in single-target AND in AOE", which isn't really much of a change. You never use Holy in single-target (everything's immune to the Stun and the damage loss is roughly 50%) and you never use Glare in 3+ targets. Note that this is distinct from Dia, which you DO use in both, and its different in both. You use it while running/the Tank is collecting trash in AOE, and you can refresh it on stronger/higher health targets in a pack and it's a damage gain up to 4 targets (becoming a loss at 5+), meaning unlike Glare in AOE or Holy in single-target, Dia actually has a use in both and, at the same time, the use is different in both.

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Does that answer your question?

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EDIT:

It's mostly the Lilies spells, honestly. For instance,...

While I agree with you overall, I disagree on this.

The Lily spells have specific use cases, and there are times you might want to save a Lily. I think the better option would be a Recitation-esque "Afflatus" ability that you can use before any GCD heal to make the next one (Cure 2, Cure 3, Medica 1, Medica 2, Regen, lolCure1) instant cast, cost no MP, and nourish the Blood Lily/DPS neutral. This would give the Job more flexibility, actually give reasons to use those buttons on our hotbars collecting cobwebs, and would make healing just as easy for low end players while adding a bit of variety and skill expression for higher end ones. Not to mention it's always nice when you're "allowed" to use all those buttons that are otherwise just collecting dust. Regen right now, despite being MP neutral (vs casting a Glare/Dia) and instant cast (for movement) is still undesirable to use since it's a damage loss. Medica 2, Cure 2, and Cure 3 all have clear use cases (Medica 1 is basically replaced entirely by Medica 2) and, along with Regen, would be interesting buttons to add to your healing plan...if doing so wasn't a loss/suboptimal vs everything else.

[Supersnow845]

I guess this comes to the point that when considering the number of buttons healers have are people genuinely counting rescue and repose, nobody uses repose outside of field content and rescue is a meme button

For that matter does anyone count cure 1 and medica here either, whether controller or PC you are going to throw those on a seperate hotbar titled “sub level 50 content hotbar” and otherwise ignore them

So WHM has 29 unique actions in a practical sense (all of its main actions minus cure 1 and medica but adding lucid dreaming esuna and surecast), of those the only actions I could truly see as redundant are tetra which has just been outclassed in usefulness ever since misery became a gain and lily’s became 20 seconds and cure 2 existing as an independent button when you have a lily up

POM, assize and lucid all have different CD’s even if you fire them all off CD, there isn’t really a functional way to combine them in a realistic sense unless you maybe put lucid’s mana regen on assize or deleted lucid and baked it’s regen into natural regen further removing the point of even having mana as a stat but that would still be kinda messy, I can see bension feeling useless after aquaveil but it is fair to say aquaveil is too strong to be put on bension CD’s but bension is too weak to be put on aquaveils CD so combining them is still messy

So if we put bension into aquaveil, cure 2 became solace when a lily was up and tetra got deleted it could bring useful actions down to 26, I mean it’s not terrible but it just kinda feels…….not needed so to speak, like I’m reaching for a reason to delete tetra and you can argue bension vs aquaveils merits depending on the situation

[Shurrikhan]

The Lily spells have specific use cases, and there are times you might want to save a Lily.

That allows for the saving of a Lily. Unless you cancel the casted heal via movement to instantly auto-complete it instead (e.g., but just hitting Cure II while still moving), it doesn't consume the Lily. Control is fully retained.

So WHM has 29 unique actions in a practical sense (all of its main actions minus cure 1 and medica but adding lucid dreaming esuna and surecast), of those the only actions I could truly see as redundant are tetra which has just been outclassed in usefulness ever since misery became a gain and lily’s became 20 seconds and cure 2 existing as an independent button when you have a lily up

POM, assize and lucid all have different CD’s even if you fire them all off CD, there isn’t really a functional way to combine them in a realistic sense unless you maybe put lucid’s mana regen on assize or deleted lucid and baked it’s regen into natural regen further removing the point of even having mana as a stat but that would still be kinda messy, I can see bension feeling useless after aquaveil but it is fair to say aquaveil is too strong to be put on bension CD’s but bension is too weak to be put on aquaveils CD so combining them is still messy

None of those would, imo, want consolidation, save Cure and Lucid. It's just Cure, Rapture and Solace (only in that you can provide precisely equal amounts of control without spending a single button on them), potentially Holy/Glare (if either were adjusted to allow for the other's utility/ST efficiency), maybe Misery (only if you had another way to bank and burst damage potential), maybe Raise, and most of the Role Actions. Tetra is not redundant; it stacks. Aquaveil and Benison often have different preferred uses and timings even if they were to share recast timers. Etc., etc.

Medica II just needs its relative MP efficiency toned way down to make Medica non-redundant and a similar common sense pass over other spells' MP costs would likewise do WHM some good.

Lucid Dreaming would not be consolidated, but simply made passive. We get 40% MP per minute passively, and like 37.5% per minute from Lucid Dreaming. Just double the in-combat MP regen and axe Lucid.

Tl;dr: If there's a reason for the tool to stand apart and it just lacks the relative tuning to do so at present, you just fix its relative tuning (by adjusting it and/or what makes it redundant). If the agency/choice provided by the button could be identically or better provided without that button, though... lose the button while keeping the agency/choice by other, cost-less means. And if the capacity the button provides literally reduces the kit's available nuance or depth, then axe its button and don't provide it through button-less means either.

[Renathras]

I guess this comes to the point that when considering the number of buttons healers have are people genuinely counting rescue and repose, nobody uses repose outside of field content and rescue is a meme button

For that does anyone count cure 1 and medica here either, whether controller or PC you are going to throw those on a seperate hotbar titled “sub level 50 content hotbar” and otherwise ignore them

So WHM has 29 unique actions in a practical sense...

Please don't.

Why not? Well...

...because we could make this argument about LITERALLY EVERY JOB IN THE GAME, and would have to do that before we could compare. "Oh, WHM has only 29", yeah, but now we have to adjust all the other Jobs to calculate the new average and modes. How often do BLM, RDM, and SMN use Sleep? Lucid has the same argument for them as it does the Healers. When was the last time you saw a PLD using Shield Bash and it not being a meme? Does MCH really need Reassemble when you could just baseline buff Drill and Chainsaw to automatically have that? SGE has the same "nobody uses" buttons that WHM does other than its Cure 1 and Medica 1 buttons getting double duty as Adlo and Succor.

Once you open that Pandora's Box, we have to go through every single Job making the same arguments.

Moreover, 29 is still functionally identical to 30 under the "3 tens is a lot of buttons" argument. So this changes nothing and is really not a good argument. Someone made it in that thread and a I pointed this out there, too.

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Some of this DOES come down to what you consider bloat, though. For example, Lucid.

The Devs could just increase healer (and caster, why not) baseline MP generation to equal using Lucid OR reduce spell MP costs to equal it. "But you can press Lucid if you were just Raised"; sure, that could be an argument...if you weren't more or less using it on CD already, in which case that's only an argument if you happened to die and be raised just before it comes off CD. If you used it and then died and were raised? Now it's useless. Note I didn't call out Thin Air, as Thin Air (partly due to having 2 charges) IS something you can hold on to for death recovery needs, which Lucid generally is not. Lucid is more akin to Aetherflow; something you don't generally hold on to.

There are always arguments to be made as to what is and isn't useful. But that wasn't the question you asked.

You asked:

Pls explain how WHM suffers from button bloat

And I think between me and Shurrikhan, you have the answer to that question. Fair?

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EDIT:

That allows for the saving of a Lily. Unless you cancel the casted heal via movement to instantly auto-complete it instead (e.g., but just hitting Cure II while still moving), it doesn't consume the Lily. Control is fully retained.

The issue is if someone has to move, accidentally moves, or uses movement (instead of the jump button; controller player here) to chancel casts.

In those cases, you've taken control away because they might not have WANTED to get the Cure 2 cast off IF it was going to consume a Lily in those cases. On the other hand, having a Recitation-like button retains control, saves one button over what we have now, and has the same effect just more in the player's control. It also keeps the Misery interaction, which the movement thing doesn't as well, imo. Under your system, you have to move-cancel casts intentionally to prevent loss of Misery casts, which just seems...clunky to me, somehow.

(I get some people might feel the same about a Recitation thing, but I feel it retains more of the current system while opening it up to more options, granting/retaining more control, and probably being more intuitive.)

It's one thing I dislike about the "Cure 2/Medica consume a Lily when Lily is up, function normally otherwise" which I dislike because it removes that layer of control. A Recitation button would not, and could either be an oGCD (every WHM spell now other than Holy has a weave window) or a Eukrasia-like thing (1 sec GCD into a 1.5 sec GCD), but either one would be more interesting than what we have now and actually be one button less bloaty.
...but...different topic for another time?

[Shurrikhan]

@Renathras.
Ultimately the best solution there is a [moving] conditional available to macros and to un-neuter macros, but in either case, it was just a spitball means of pointing out how you could retain full control over the timing of those Lily heals without having to spend even a single button on them. Yes, it could "punish" unintended movement-based cancels in that spitball form... but no more so than too-early movement or hitting the wrong buttons would be already. Between using a Lily earlier than intended because you messed up your controls (which you could as easily do by hitting Solace instead of your intended button already) and altogether wasting a GCD... the latter is usually the worse.

On the whole, you've already heard my spiel: have healing GCDs grant gauge that can be used to rush cooldowns, with a couple new non-curative cooldowns being added to WHM. No Misery, just indirect potency recovery, perhaps with returns that increasingly diminish over use and then recover over time. Let summoning a Tornado to wreck and CC enemies while hastening nearby allies' movement speeds or a Quake to again damage and CC while providing cover to allies, at greater frequency as healing intensity increases, be sufficient.

I don’t really see the validity in the idea that people are unhappy with how few damage options healers have then go “glare with 50% falloff and delete holy” is a good thing

No one has been asking for that. Thus far the requests have only been to give Holy a place also in ST rotation (and perhaps Glare, too, a place in AoE rotation, even if indirectly / only a bit more in that Dia is "included" in AoE during the dungeon gather), thereby increasing the number of actions available both in ST and AoE... but just without adding needlessly to button count.

It simply comes down to...

• "If spending a button on X offers zero additional complexity, QoL, or control... why spend a button on it?", and
  
  
• "If you already have dead buttons that can be easily repurposed to the effect desired, why instead leave those buttons dead and add a new one atop them?"

That's it. That's the extent of the logic being questioned here.

[Supersnow845]

I’m totally happy to go through the jobs and individually exclude meme actions and ones you put on baby’s first hotbar to get a more wholistic view of how cluttered an average user of the jobs hotbars actually are, saying jobs are bloated on actions then including actions like repose, rescue, leg sweep etc just muddies the waters of the actual discussion, especially like in the case of you wanting a baseline of 32 actions (despite controller realistically having access to 48) a realistic WHM hotbar containing 29 means the job has spare space if anything, not too many actions

I mean I have gotten your opinions on WHM actions but I don’t really agree with them, almost every example except the lucid rezz roulette feels like real reaching for an excuse to remove a particular button, I don’t see “the playstyle literally wouldn’t change if these two buttons became one” as an excuse to remove buttons because in your own words that would open Pandora’s box, does DRG need 7 buttons for its core rotation, does DNC need dance buttons when they could just press standard step 3 times to get the same effect, does plenary need to exist when they could just bake the 200 potency into rapture since that’s the only time you ever use it anyway, why even have shinten just have you automatically do a 400 potency attack when your kenki gauge hits 20

I don’t really see the validity in the idea that people are unhappy with how few damage options healers have then go “glare with 50% falloff and delete holy” is a good thing

[Renathras]

I’m totally happy to go through the jobs and individually...

You asked:

Pls explain how WHM suffers from button bloat

And I think between me and Shurrikhan, you have the answer to that question. Fair?

Yeah, we could do that, but that's a different question. Not the one you asked. And it's kinda moving the goalposts.

And if you're going to automatically disagree with someone, you really shouldn't ask them questions since it's bad faith to ask a question you've already decided you're going to reject the answer to.