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

[LilimoLimomo]

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

My gut reaction was that there are DPS classes for that. But I think that was the myopic, reactionary response.

A more thoughtful reaction would be: why not? Just as DPS jobs offer both SMN (simple) and BLM (complex), maybe there should be a single healer job that adds that complexity for players who want something more involved to diddle with between heals.

[AmiableApkallu]

A more thoughtful reaction would be: why not? Just as DPS jobs offer both SMN (simple) and BLM (complex), maybe there should be a single healer job that adds that complexity for players who want something more involved to diddle with between heals.

Why not all of the healers? To quote from another thread:

So instead, a simple, yet focused 2 or 3 changes to each healer's damage rotation, balanced in such a way that ignoring the new additions is a smaller potency loss than something like 'ignoring your DOT' is right now, is what to look into, I think. If someone is skilled enough to use the new rotation, they can. If they are not, they can ignore parts of it until they get more comfortable with the job and start to throw in more and more of the rotation. Nobody is going to cause a wipe in Lapis Manalis because they could not work out how to effectively use their new Miasma DOT on SCH.

After all, if you're worried about keeping a healer "simple" or "accessible", what you need to worry about is the healing kit, not the DPS kit:

All it takes to keep WHM as the easy and accessible healer is to maintain its core healing skills as "restore 'lots' of HP after damage hits" and to make those skills available on demand. Which is to say, all it takes is to leave the Lv.50 healing kit (Cure, Medica, Regen) well enough alone. It's an intuitive model of healing that works well as long as single hits don't delete entire HP bars.

The DPS kit could be a tangled mess that'd give optimizers a run for their money, but so long as it's obvious how to do the "healer" part of a job that's called "healer," it'd be fair to say that the job is easy and accessible.

[Kacho_Nacho]

*snippity snip*

After all, if you're worried about keeping a healer "simple" or "accessible", what you need to worry about is the healing kit, not the DPS kit:

Exactly! Healers really don't want a complex damage kit. Dealing damage is not their primary function. Their role's focus should be upon the team, whether it be the team's survival or performance, with dealing damage to the enemy an important but secondary concern.

Hence, the healer toolkit should reflect that concept. Instead, they have redundant spells, with many important abilities which they should have, handed over to the other roles. This has weakened the healer's part in the triad, making healers less important to the success of a party.

Many experienced players feel this diminishment of their favorite role and have expressed frustration about their lessened impact on the party's success. Furthermore, because the other roles require less support, healers have to spend the majority of time using their limited damage spell selection. This has caused even more frustration.

[LilimoLimomo]

Why not all of the healers?

After all, if you're worried about keeping a healer "simple" or "accessible", what you need to worry about is the healing kit, not the DPS kit:

I don't know why you'd think that; a kit is the sum of its parts, and more DPS complexity means more complexity for the overall kit. And that's not something everyone wants. That being the case, it seems like it would make the most sense to only apply this adjustment to a single job; that way players who prefer a simpler DPS style for their healers still have access to that.

[IDontPetLalas]

I don't know why you'd think that; a kit is the sum of its parts, and more DPS complexity means more complexity for the overall kit. And that's not something everyone wants. That being the case, it seems like it would make the most sense to only apply this adjustment to a single job; that way players who prefer a simpler DPS style for their healers still have access to that.

Again there is a reference to the *complexity* boogeyman. Really, we are looking at a single dot and a nuke, I have honestly never played a healer in any game that has such a stripped-down DPS kit, even in heal spec. This game already employs multiple design options for DPS that don't introduce button bloat, don't break combos, allow a player to hold a skill. It isn't rocket science.

If we add an additional DPS option, (or more, just saying), I don't see why it would not be for all healers. Part of the reasoning is that in the content where it doesn't matter, no one can force i.e. harass) a healer to use their DPS skills, however a competent healer in that content currently has limited options.

So currently healers that don't want to DPS do not ( I have personally seen zero DPS healers and no one said a word), nothing would likely change. However for those who do want to and want to learn some habits for more difficult content- or have engagement- this could improve their experience.

I'm not even addressing the frustration of players in higher end content, I don't expect that they would like to not even have the option available for them either.

[AmiableApkallu]

I don't know why you'd think that; a kit is the sum of its parts, and more DPS complexity means more complexity for the overall kit. And that's not something everyone wants. That being the case, it seems like it would make the most sense to only apply this adjustment to a single job; that way players who prefer a simpler DPS style for their healers still have access to that.

Then you missed the point of the bit from ForsakenRoe that I quoted.

You can always carve out a simple DPS style from any kit. Indeed, even Black Mage, the hallowed "complex" caster, illustrates the point: "The standard rotation is more than sufficient to play at a high level of Black Mage." You want to play BLM but don't want to deal with transpose lines zaniness for a theoretical few percent more damage? Then don't. Focus on doing the basics well.

I fail to see how that same philosophy and approach can't be applied to healers. Allowing room for complexity takes nothing away from those who prefer something non-complex.

[LilimoLimomo]

Then you missed the point of the bit from ForsakenRoe that I quoted.

You can always carve out a simple DPS style from any kit. Indeed, even Black Mage, the hallowed "complex" caster, illustrates the point: "The standard rotation is more than sufficient to play at a high level of Black Mage." You want to play BLM but don't want to deal with transpose lines zaniness for a theoretical few percent more damage? Then don't. Focus on doing the basics well.

I fail to see how that same philosophy and approach can't be applied to healers. Allowing room for complexity takes nothing away from those who prefer something non-complex.

I see what you're saying, and if this were a single-player game, I'd agree with you 100%. Unfortunately, it's an MMO where plenty of players feel entitled to expect other players to not just do good enough, but to excel (or at least be trying to excel). Which is to say, if you aren't using all of your DPS buttons, you can expect a certain kind of player to get on your case. As a designer, you can largely mitigate this kind of conflict by providing options to players that align with their play preferences; because if you only have one DPS button, nobody can reasonably to criticize you for not using two DPS buttons.

[Renathras]

A more thoughtful reaction would be: why not? Just as DPS jobs offer both SMN (simple) and BLM (complex), maybe there should be a single healer job that adds that complexity for players who want something more involved to diddle with between heals.

If you ever visit the healer forums, I pitch this argument all the time. I call it the "4 Healers Model", which in a nutshell is "We have 4 healer Jobs, so why not make them play differently so they can appeal to different types? Leave one as it is, change 3 to variations so that people who want more complexity have options?" The typical way I pitch this is "Leave WHM as it is today, give SCH its SB damage kit back, give AST it's SB/HW Cards and extra effects (Time Dilation, etc) back and more party buffs to make it a buffer support, and give SGE a Caster-esque rotation like SMN or RDM have where Kardia procs for more and their gameplay is about efficiently using Kardia while properly performing its damage rotation. This way, every type of player would have a healer Job they can main and enjoy."

I get called LOTS of names in there and am the subject of near constant dogpiles - to the point the common Healer forum posters will dogpile on me in any other part of the forum now, such as General or the Tank or DPS forums - since they don't like the idea of a compromise that has even one healer Job still appealing to people that like healing as it is today.

They're inflexible and uncompromising and don't realize it, but I genuinely think that would be the best solution. And yeah, I use both Caster and Ranged and Tanks as examples - SMN vs RDM vs BLM, DNC vs BRD vs MCH, WAR vs PLD vs DRK vs GNB. They insist that ALL healers must be more complex or no deal. And when I point out "no deal" means the status quo and we stay with what we have now, they go ballistic.

They also like insisting that their complexity won't affect people that don't like complexity...but we all know that isn't true, as you said well here:

I see what you're saying, and if this were a single-player game, I'd agree with you 100%. Unfortunately, it's an MMO where plenty of players feel entitled to expect other players to not just do good enough, but to excel (or at least be trying to excel). Which is to say, if you aren't using all of your DPS buttons, you can expect a certain kind of player to get on your case. As a designer, you can largely mitigate this kind of conflict by providing options to players that align with their play preferences; because if you only have one DPS button, nobody can reasonably to criticize you for not using two DPS buttons.

In short - I agree with you. Why not? Why not have a healer Job (or even two or three) that add complexity for those players that want it? As long as at least one is still enjoyable to the people that like current healing, this shouldn't' be a problem and everyone wins. (Except the people that want ALL healers to be more complex and won't be satisfied until people that don't like complex DPS on a HEALER class are out in the cold.)

[LilimoLimomo]

I get called LOTS of names in there and am the subject of near constant dogpiles - to the point the common Healer forum posters will dogpile on me in any other part of the forum now, such as General or the Tank or DPS forums - since they don't like the idea of a compromise that has even one healer Job still appealing to people that like healing as it is today.

For what it's worth, even when I don't agree with you I like reading what you write here, as you tend to be one of the more reasonable users here. I appreciate that you provide your reasoning, tend to acknowledge and value a diversity of perspectives, and try to stimulate genuine good faith discussion. ^^

[IDontPetLalas]

I see what you're saying, and if this were a single-player game, I'd agree with you 100%. Unfortunately, it's an MMO where plenty of players feel entitled to expect other players to not just do good enough, but to excel (or at least be trying to excel). Which is to say, if you aren't using all of your DPS buttons, you can expect a certain kind of player to get on your case. As a designer, you can largely mitigate this kind of conflict by providing options to players that align with their play preferences; because if you only have one DPS button, nobody can reasonably to criticize you for not using two DPS buttons.

First of all, that's a scenario that could be applied to any job. Tank isn't using their mitigation? Sure, we can "get on their case" so that the tank remembers to rotate/use their CDs. Tank forgets to turn the boss so the party isn't cleaved- similar story when half of them drop to the floor. What if the DPS isn't using any AOE skills in a W2W - similar story.

We don't take the approach of saying "take out all the DPS skills for tanks except one AOE and a single target, give them plenty of mitigation, self heals and mob controls so they don't get stressed over exceling at their rotation"

As I said previously and have seen for myself, in "normal" content a healer can literally do no - zero- DPS and no one will say anything- first of all because the content is still completed, and secondly because people likely are aware that the TOS constrains how this type of request can be made. So they don't say anything. So one button, two button, a proc, a combo- that wouldn't change unless it is in the content where it matters- and those healers already hit their DPS buttons and heal.