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

[Mithron]

Literally no one is, which is why it baffles me every time someone breaks the damn door down and sprays spit yelling at everyone how DPS rotations that are as complex as DPS jobs will ruin healers.

And yeah, if you casted your DPS spells outside of Cleric Stance, the damage was so low that it wouldn't be worth the MP you spent. Hop on Summoner and heal with Physick. Those are the kind of numbers you'd be seeing with healer DPS outside of Cleric Stance back then. Inversely, when you were in Cleric Stance, that's the kind of healing you'd put out if you were healing in that stance. It was an OGCD action in an era with very little weaving windows. Like I think the only way White Mage could weave it without clipping was through casting Regen first, but it didn't actually take a weave slot to drop the stance. You just had to not be casting and it would fall off without animation. That said, once you entered Cleric Stance, it had a cooldown of about 10 or 15 seconds I think (I don't remember exactly) before you could remove it, locking you into DPS for that period, but there was no cooldown after you ended the stance. You could very easily double-cast it, dropping the stance and then immediately restart it without meaning to, if you clicked it more than once, which given how much laggier the game used to be was also quite scary.

This is why it was ultimately removed and healer DPS was changed to scale off Mind instead. Which was the only change they really needed to make to end the conflict. Even with the healers having almost as many DPS spells as they had in Heavensward, suddenly there were far less arguments about healer DPS.

Cleric Stance would lock you in for 4 seconds, so it was a commitment to DPS during that time. That was largely what made it so dang fun; you had to think about when to use it, and it came with the risk of you using it at the exact same time some party members made mistakes. You could still Raise just fine with it on, and Benediction. Certain other actions like Aquaveil would've been great to use as well since they just use damage reduction % independent of your own stats, but it was gone well before then.

I really enjoyed Cleric Stance (and tank stance) stance dancing, it was some of the most fun I've ever had in any video game ever. Instead of removing it, they should've just made it less clunky. That 4 seconds of commitment isn't much different than you doing RDM sword combos currently; there's a large time window between you doing damage and being able to use Verraise viably, doubly moreso now that the sword combo is a lot longer and you do 3 of them at a time sometimes. It makes for very interesting and fun decisions that are dynamic per fight based on your party members, which is even more variable in DF/PF.

I play a healer precisely because I suck at complex dps rotations. I can perform at a mediocre level as dancer or red mage, but beyond that, no, I'm bad at dps. If healer dps rotations became more complex, and I was expected to perform at a certain dps level as a healer, I could no longer play FFXIV. I don't want my healer dps rotation to become more complex. If anything has to change, I'd prefer healing itself become slightly more challenging (emphasis on the slightly). If you want complex dps rotations, there's a plethora of dps jobs that can provide that. Healer's may be capable and expected to provide dps, but that's not their primary role, and complicating their dps will just reinforce the idea that healers are just green dps. That's not a notion I think should be reinforced.

If you can clear content as a healer, you can most definitely clear content as any other job in the game. Healers are harder than PLD/DNC/RDM/SMN. In the end, all DPS rotations are just understanding concepts, building muscle memory, and slight variations on a per fight basis. It's not as difficult as healing. If you perceive it as easier, it's due to an illogical belief that DPS is scary for some reason. Which I mean is your thing, but that doesn't mean healers shouldn't have more complex DPS rotations anyway. Your illogical trauma or whatever it is shouldn't define how everyone else is forced to play the game.

[Aravell]

Today? See those “Why do you cast Medica II???”-meme. See those 1 2 1 1 1 ‘rotation’. It’s so easy that we went toward “How do you even mess up a 1 button rotation???”. Unsurprisingly, we’re also seeing similar phenomenon on today: BLM & SMN. BLM messing up and making mistake? ”That’s fine, they will learn, they had it hard”, etc. SMN make mistake? “How do you mess up with 89% mobility per minute? How can you even miss casting Addle with that many weaving space/instants/not much to weave? Etc.”

It's always funny to me that people who dislike doing damage will always oppose more damage options even though having a more in-depth damage kit would make it so less people will expect you to be perfect at it. It's easy to be perfect at current healer damage kits, it was not at all easy to be perfect back in HW.

[Eastwall]

I play a healer precisely because I suck at complex dps rotations. I can perform at a mediocre level as dancer or red mage, but beyond that, no, I'm bad at dps. If healer dps rotations became more complex, and I was expected to perform at a certain dps level as a healer, I could no longer play FFXIV. I don't want my healer dps rotation to become more complex. If anything has to change, I'd prefer healing itself become slightly more challenging (emphasis on the slightly). If you want complex dps rotations, there's a plethora of dps jobs that can provide that. Healer's may be capable and expected to provide dps, but that's not their primary role, and complicating their dps will just reinforce the idea that healers are just green dps. That's not a notion I think should be reinforced.

Just don't use it man, And hold the loot so you can't get kicked out for "play style difference".

[OdinelStarrei]

I play a healer precisely because I suck at complex dps rotations. I can perform at a mediocre level as dancer or red mage, but beyond that, no, I'm bad at dps. If healer dps rotations became more complex, and I was expected to perform at a certain dps level as a healer, I could no longer play FFXIV. I don't want my healer dps rotation to become more complex. If anything has to change, I'd prefer healing itself become slightly more challenging (emphasis on the slightly). If you want complex dps rotations, there's a plethora of dps jobs that can provide that. Healer's may be capable and expected to provide dps, but that's not their primary role, and complicating their dps will just reinforce the idea that healers are just green dps. That's not a notion I think should be reinforced.

Oh man, could you imagine if this mentality was taken to it's absolute, but inevitable conclusion?

How is any job, never mind healers, supposed to actually evolve overtime if the developers are being hamstrung by players who can't be "expected to perform."

It doesn't even fundamentally matter if you are bad, the content, nor the wide playerbase even cares. You could be dead on the floor for the entire fight, and no one would bat an eye, because it's irrelevant in sub-extreme. But that is no reason to limit both the players and the developers by forcing a low-skill ceiling unilaterality, because some players aren't content with being mediocre or more importantly, with a complete lack of engagement in the core gameplay loop when merely standing up slams their head into the roof of their job's skill expression.

If you suck, okay, whatever. I don't have to play with you. But if you suck, why do other people have to have restricted future job development and worse gameplay experiences in general because of it? Haven't you guys taken enough away from the combat as it is?

This is kind of selfish, honestly.

[ForsakenRoe]

I play a healer precisely because I suck at complex dps rotations. I can perform at a mediocre level as dancer or red mage, but beyond that, no, I'm bad at dps. If healer dps rotations became more complex, and I was expected to perform at a certain dps level as a healer, I could no longer play FFXIV. I don't want my healer dps rotation to become more complex. If anything has to change, I'd prefer healing itself become slightly more challenging (emphasis on the slightly). If you want complex dps rotations, there's a plethora of dps jobs that can provide that. Healer's may be capable and expected to provide dps, but that's not their primary role, and complicating their dps will just reinforce the idea that healers are just green dps. That's not a notion I think should be reinforced.

I think the best part about this stance is that I (and others like me who have done theorycrafting of how to add more damage buttons) have actually considered this POV, and implemented countermeasures to my theorycraft to reduce this issue, yet it would still likely get naysayed by a player such as this, just because of the principle of 'no dont add more damage buttons to a healer, they're meant to heal'. With the WHM idea I theorycrafted for example, and the potency values I came up with, you could play either 'optimally' or 'like you do now' (aka, refresh DOT when it falls off, spam Glare), and the difference in damage between the two would be 2%. You'd also have more ways to preserve your damage, given that you would use the DOT more often, and the new damage button (Water/Banish) would be an instantcast too. This means losing less damage to interrupting Glare casts due to movement. Additionally, you'd have access to another healing tool which is damage neutral, meaning you would preserve even more damage in the situations where you have to heal

Bad news for you, if you can't keep up with a slightly more involved damage rotation, you are not going to keep up with a more stressful healing paradigm. Difference is, messing up at the damage rotation would cost you a variable amount of damage (again, could be as low as 2%). Messing up due to not being able to keep up on healing required means potential deaths or even a teamwipe. You're not going to be forced to 'quit the game' if we went back to SB's level of complexity, where WHM has a shorter DOT duration and one extra damage button (back then it was another DOT to track the timer of too, Aero3) please don't be so melodramatic

[ty_taurus]

Oops, I accidentally bumped.

[Merrigan]

I play a healer precisely because I suck at complex dps rotations. I can perform at a mediocre level as dancer or red mage, but beyond that, no, I'm bad at dps. If healer dps rotations became more complex, and I was expected to perform at a certain dps level as a healer, I could no longer play FFXIV. I don't want my healer dps rotation to become more complex. If anything has to change, I'd prefer healing itself become slightly more challenging (emphasis on the slightly). If you want complex dps rotations, there's a plethora of dps jobs that can provide that. Healer's may be capable and expected to provide dps, but that's not their primary role, and complicating their dps will just reinforce the idea that healers are just green dps. That's not a notion I think should be reinforced.

I'm going to be a bit dry, so I apologize in advance. But three things:

- If you can't manage any of the dps rotations in this game, then there's definitely a bit of training involved (barring special cases, like a serious physical handicap). The majority of jobs can be played at a decent level with simple repetition. Here, rather than declaring that you're no good: go to a pole, take a guide, and repeat the rotation until it becomes almost automatic.

- What you're really asking is that healers be used as a niche to mask your real level as a player. If you really know you're a very bad player, for whatever reason, not taking advantage of a healer's dps rotation... will make you a bad healer. And it will be "fair" in relation to your overall level as a player. It doesn't matter btw. In casual content, everyone is welcome in my opinion, as long as the effort is made. I played last time with someone who was a retiree. He had the reflexes that went with it, but nobody minded because in the content we were doing, he had his place.


- It's quite possible to imagine a rather "easy" healer (WHM?), while the others would be more complex. No one would mind. What's much more questionable is asking everyone to get bored in order to adapt to your level. Is a player who finds raids too complicated, when the majority find them just fine as they are, allowed to ask for all strats to be simplified?

[mallleable]

Gonna post this here as well.

Could dual cast or some other mechanic like it work for WHM? Like, WHM gets dual cast, and it also gets chunky stone, and aero spells to use it on -- they could even give them cleave to be hotbar space efficient. Or casting Glare grants stacks of Tranquil Hearts or something which reduce the cast/recast time of specified spells like the previously mentioned aero, and stone spells as well as healing spells. I've mentioned this in an other 'boring healer DPS' thread, but I feel like if there were any jobs that WHM could take inspiration from to create a potential DPS rotation they would be either RDM or BLM.

[IDontPetLalas]

Gonna post this here as well.

Could dual cast or some other mechanic like it work for WHM? Like, WHM gets dual cast, and it also gets chunky stone, and aero spells to use it on -- they could even give them cleave to be hotbar space efficient. Or casting Glare grants stacks of Tranquil Hearts or something which reduce the cast/recast time of specified spells like the previously mentioned aero, and stone spells as well as healing spells. I've mentioned this in an other 'boring healer DPS' thread, but I feel like if there were any jobs that WHM could take inspiration from to create a potential DPS rotation they would be either RDM or BLM.

Nice idea, and it's always good to get a new perspective (even though, personally I would find a skill name like "tranquil hearts" somewhat too sweet for words, could just imagine like little hearts floating up over a lala) .

However, just pointing out, it's not exclusive to WHM, all healers are affected by this.

[Sebazy]

Gonna post this here as well.

I've always been a big fan of WHM getting Thundercloud style procs on a dot, IMO your dual cast idea with a tweak could play quite nicely into that as well...

Don't just make make a plain dual cast effect, make the second fast cast an actual fast GCD. Like DNC step speed GCD.

I think the kit would need filling out a little to provide depth to this effect (Eg give us back Aero 3 but it has a super long cast and we want to Dual Cast it, then give us a bonus if we can combine that with a thundercloud proc) and IMO it would need to have some kind of cooldown on the dual cast effect, like 1 dual cast for every 3 Glares or something to stop it getting monotonous. IMO a sporadic shift in pace to the GCD would do *WONDERS* for breaking up how mind numbing WHM currently feels if you're not being pressured.

On a mildly related note, SE really really should look into enabling hold versions of abilities. I've mentioned Genshin before, but Io in Granblue Relink so far is supremely fun as a caster and brings a lot of depth to the table despite basically playing around 4 buttons and a modifier. A big chunk of that is how button holds form such a key part of her gameplay.