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

[Aravell]

I personally see nothing wrong with WHM being an easy to pick up healer. My question is "Why do so many people who say that WHM should be the beginner healer also want to completely block off WHM from growing as a job? Why does WHM have to have a skill ceiling as low as the floor just because it's chosen as the beginner healer?". No one has ever been able to answer that without creating strange scenarios that set the WHM up to fail. WHM can both be easy to pick up and also have a nice bit of optimisation available, it's not mutually exclusive.

Actually, I'd say ShB WHM touched on this aspect a little bit. WHM was extremely easy to pick up in ShB, but there's movement/positioning optimisation to be done, since everytime you move is a dps loss.

[Rithy255]

Actually, I'd say ShB WHM touched on this aspect a little bit. WHM was extremely easy to pick up in ShB, but there's movement/positioning optimisation to be done, since everytime you move is a dps loss.

The fact they made the cast times 1.5 I'm still seething over, like it's so small on paper but it makes Whm just feel awful, I loved it being the "healer BLM"

[Wolf_Gang]

Complex rotations doesn't make combat more engaging. Muscle memory is just going to take over.



What we need is more job responsibilities and a more reactive play style.

[Rithy255]

Complex rotations doesn't make combat more engaging. Muscle memory is just going to take over.



What we need is more job responsibilities and a more reactive play style.

You said that pretty well, In particular Tanks & Healers aren't going to feel better if all they are, are more boring easy DPS.
I do think rotations, procs or whatever can enhance that gameplay, but Healers (and tanks) need more to do in general, which could be job responsibilities.

[Maltothoris]

It’s hard to compromise because of one thing, accessibility. The devs want all the classes on the same level so even if a class gets to a good kind of complex, their logic dictates that it can’t be too far ahead of its peers lest that causes those classes to be locked out of pf. I mean look at astro and whm now, astro is more complex but it offers little gain over the whm if any at all.

[Mortex]

i really feel like you took a paragraph worth of words and hyper focused entirely on some of the more irrelevant to the entire point ones in the entire post.

this is why no change happens, youre just replying for a gotcha, you have nothing to add, no real talking points to the conversation, you just want to "own the chuds"

its so easy to ask for change when your offering no paths to it yourself.

And back in another healer post I did offer a idea for whm and how too change it and make it a mix of elemental magic and fusion them like red mage has expect with 3 bars (wind,earth and water). The moment you come in a thread and write I like brain off glare mage what do you expect people will respond too you ?. I even replied and said “ok I don’t mind, but what would you lose if healer would get a dps rotation and can still just use 1 button as a dps tool and not the full kit, a decent number of player do that in general and it’s possible because 90 % of the content in ff 14 is not hard”.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

You don't even need to spam that 1 button. Just freecure spam cause that's the most basic necessity of bringing a healer in DF---keep people alive lmao and report whoever's offering unsolicited advices. But I'm sure one wouldn't want these healers in their parties 95% of time, eh?

More damage buttons doesn't affect these types of healers because they don't or can't even perceive it.

[Merrigan]

Healing as a concept is diametrically opposed to everyone and anyone doing well, the better your team is the less important you and your primary goal will be. While if you make healing too important such that healing HAS to be done, and it is one of those things that will be on a time line compounding issues if you messed up trying to catch back up the stream-- failure will be a lot easier and it'll primarily be one person's fault.

This. This is the main problem. Being good, and being in a good group, should be rewarding. The opposite is true for healers: in FFXIV, being a good healer in a good group means you're going to be bored. Of course, this is true up to a certain difficulty level; if you go ultimate or even sadistic, the strat' may prove interesting; but the role itself will remain as it is. I think we've all felt a pang of contentment when we realize that our co-healer in a raid is new, and say to ourselves: "AH! I'll be good for something!" Recently I dropped a line that I think is pretty representative, in an extreme that went horribly wrong:

"All the players who can rez are dead. Let's wipe" (was playing a SAM)

And that's what healers have become, for 90% of the content. Players who can rez, useful in the event of a huge catastrophe. We won't even mention the fact that AOE's heals have become so powerful that the presence of two healers is completely optional for 90% of the time. The two of them fight over the heal AOEs, and frankly I can't even be unhappy with the astromancer who destroy my regen effect in SCH: I understand, because they are bored and even if what they are doing is stupid because it's overheal and they just have to wait two seconds for my fairy to do the job, if they didn't they'd be spamming his miserable dps button.

I obviously haven't read the whole thread, but apart from this famous "1 button to rule them all" concern, a few other aspects are very deleterious (again: sorry for the potential repetition... But honestly this whole post is also a personal rant on my part, so fine).

- The mechanics as they exist don't allow for intelligent use of healers, and the concern seems to go a little beyond job design. Take the regen effects: while they can be effective in some cases, there are also too many situations where not maximizing the player's health becomes dangerous for them because of the damage caused by the mechanics. This effectively destroys a whole part of the healer's gameplay, especially for astro and WHM. Don't get me wrong: an equivalent amount of damage should be inflicted, but instead of making a technique that takes 50% of everyone's PV, it would be smarter to distribute this damage differently. And please, less scripted dmg. I swear I can do some raids while sleeping at this point. "5 minutes dmg, 1 heal AOE, 5 minuntes, 2 AOE heal (bis repetita)".

[Merrigan]

- Rez are too permissive. I don't know if I'll win any friends for this aspect, but it's improbable that I'll be able to raise a whole group. It's also improbable that as long as a rez is available, the wipe can still be avoided. The rez should be put under cooldown, or limited by combat, whatever. OR much more costly in mana. Rez someone should be a sacrifice. We should think about who's going to be able to get back on their feet. "Not this player, they will die again in a minute. DRG seems fine, they know their stuff and deals good dmg".

- Our heal need to be less powerfull. Specially the AOE part. No, it's not funny to resolve an AOE attack with one spell only. And this makes certain skills obsolete (those which are intended to increase the effectiveness of heal skills).

- There is a major flaw in the game design: no consideration of buffs and debuffs. This could be a way to renew the healers. Give us the ability to manage enrages, dispels, put dots on us that are not resolved by simply slapping a little regen heal. There is much room for renewal by focusing on this aspect, which is currently non-existent.

- And finally: a synergy between dps and healing? Let's be crazy: I don't just want the possibility of clicking a second button which is under cooldown (spoiler: the sage is just as annoying as the others). I would like the windows that I create for dps to be valued during my healing phases. Maybe stupid idea: when I dps, I fill a gauge which allows me to perform a rez.

TDLR : I'm not even sure the "1 button" is really the problem. Sure it's boring as hell, and I second everyone who is asking for more. We should at least have 3 dps button + 2 dots on every healer, and not only 1 button + 1 dots + 1 superdpsbutton you can use once in a blue moon. But this would be little more than a cover-up for a problem that is much more structural.

[Lyth]

DPS has always been a priority in this game above everything else. The biggest change that we've witnessed was the deliberate design shift after Stormblood onwards away from letting support roles actually offer competitive DPS. You will never have a rotation remotely comparable to DPS jobs, simply because your action budget is split between defensive and offensive moves. The only reason why people still put up with playing supports is because there's just not much competitive drive within those roles, letting you be a big fish in a small pond. We've known this for many years now.

Seeing as some of you have been 'career healers' for many, many years now, have you not given any thought to simply swapping over to the dark side? Tanks have historically been better off than healers, but as a former 'career tank', I don't think I would still be playing this game if I stayed on the role. I swapped over to melee DPS this expansion and found the experience to be vastly more satisfying, both in terms of value for effort and raw carry potential. Nobody will value you for martyring yourself over a video game role, least of all over one that everyone knows provides lesser value than the rest. If you're good enough to make the swap, I highly encourage you to do it. (Also, the queue times are negligible on a high population server.)