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

[Aravell]

People love to bash nu-SMN for it's lack of complexity as compared to it's previous versions, but I'll take that on one of the healers if the DPS don't want that design, it's got three phases it can shift around to suit the fight's mobility requirements, and that's two phases more than the current healers have. Also, DNC is a good thing to bring up, as it's fulfilling the exact idea that I want to see from healers: easy to get into, fun to optimize and rewarding when you do so. Of course, healers don't need to have all those procs like DNC does, but as I've said before, I find it hilarious that DNC is better at AOE mit than WHM is

I've said before that current SMN is unacceptable for a DPS job, but it would be a pretty good playstyle for WHM. 3 stances that do different things, WHM also has 3 elements to use. The rotation is also simple enough that you can break to heal if needed. Something similar to DNC would probably fit AST. SCH can return to DoT mage.

[Colt47]

I've said before that current SMN is unacceptable for a DPS job, but it would be a pretty good playstyle for WHM. 3 stances that do different things, WHM also has 3 elements to use. The rotation is also simple enough that you can break to heal if needed. Something similar to DNC would probably fit AST. SCH can return to DoT mage.

Due to how healing works and the sheer number of uncontrolled variables, the better systems for damage dealing are going to always lean towards priority systems that do not require dealing with combinations. Summoners rotation is unplayable on a healer and would only work in savage or a very controlled environment, which doesn't exist the majority of the time.

The other problem is that SE is juggling between healers not needing to dps and healers needing to dps. If healers are required to DPS then they cease to be healers entirely and are just a version of dps that heal other people with OGCDs. They could literally copy paste the pvp rotation for whm into the game and call it a day with some modifications.

What I want is healer dps to be optional, and for high end content to basically let the healer be the safety measure for getting the group through a fight. But then we end up with what we got now where the fight is a massive series of body checks where the healer has to get pressed into a corner and people would demand them to dps if they had any modicum of optional time to work with.

I'd rather just have healers take on the affliction warlock stance, where they are doing something similar to BRD and have a lot of time to reapply the DoTs. It takes minimal buttons, no combinations necessary to get damage output, they keep the glare or whatever main attack they got, and it grants more time to do optional things since the base Dps is just keeping dots up (AOE or otherwise). However, I believe they'd have to increase the debuff limit on bosses to make that work in Raids which is why they limit the DoTs to one per job at the most.

[IDontPetLalas]

I was writing a rather lengthy reply, however in essence it boils down to no, I would disagree that there are a "sheer number of uncontrolled variables" in this game given that damage and mechanics are predictable, those "uncontrolled variables" are essentially your party members, which can to some extent be controlled for if you are in a static.

Having not played WoW (where I assume your reference comes from) I am not familiar with your reference in depth, however I am familiar with Bard, and I will say that I definitely would not want all healers maintaining multiple dots based upon your analysis. SCH used to have them, I would welcome their return on SCH, let each healer have their own identity.

[Colt47]

I was writing a rather lengthy reply, however in essence it boils down to no, I would disagree that there are a "sheer number of uncontrolled variables" in this game given that damage and mechanics are predictable, those "uncontrolled variables" are essentially your party members, which can to some extent be controlled for if you are in a static.

Having not played WoW (where I assume your reference comes from) I am not familiar with your reference in depth, however I am familiar with Bard, and I will say that I definitely would not want all healers maintaining multiple dots based upon your analysis. SCH used to have them, I would welcome their return on SCH, let each healer have their own identity.

The weakness of FFXIV is the very fact they aren't designing things to be organic in how they relate to one another. It isn't adding identity to a caster to add a mechanic that hits multiple times in a row to specific fights, and then have to waste an entire skill slot making a skill that counters it. Identity comes from the look and feel of the job, and to that extent it is just a skin over a specific role.

If someone wanted to make a regen healer and a big spells healer, those healers are going to be situationally better than one another. If I build a party system for four characters and a healer has to be included from either pool, the content has to work for both regen and big spells healers. If I make an 8 man dungeon that requires two healers, I have to make that 8 man dungeon function for all combination of healers.

If all the content has to work for both healers, what is the bloody point of having a regen healer and a big spells healer? Identity? So one is always going to be an enfeebled mess of a job while the other is the one everyone uses depending on the fight?

In FFXIV shield healers and pure healers are the same. The only difference is that one is absolutely worse in every way to the other and is only playable because the encounters hit harder than the total HP of the people running the high end content. But since they can't adhere to this in all content, the pure healers still prove superior all the time because shields =/= healing. Why is DRK so bad in leveling roulette and okay in end game? Because the bugger can't self heal to make up for the deficit of healing power the shield healers have compared to the pure healers. The only way to avoid the weakness is to make the content easy enough that this isn't a problem.

And FYI I am asking people to think about what the point would be to have a strictly worse option in healing in a game if it were put intentionally in the game. Despite the fact that people might think this is some mistake on the designers part, there is a reason originally to do this.

[IDontPetLalas]

@Colt47 First of all, regarding this "If all the content has to work for both healers, what is the bloody point of having a regen healer and a big spells healer? Identity? So one is always going to be an enfeebled mess of a job while the other is the one everyone uses depending on the fight?" - I don't see this as quite pertinent to the thread, which relates more to healer QOL during downtime, however I would still like to speak to it. Perhaps your comment has more to do with your experience in other games, however aside from relatively brief briefs , which were reverted - I don't believe than any of the healers was ever in a state that they could not function. Now, that does NOT mean that some parties had the perception that another healer was weaker- if for example, an AST could hit macrocosmos and heal up a party , and a WHM could do so as well, but required more skills - but a party was under the belief that only an AST could heal?

You also seem to have contradicted yourself somewhat in the pure/shield healers. There had been quite a bit of discussion regarding where the split was worth it, I would agree that the the pure/shield healers are not very distinct. I would disagree that "one is worse in every way to the other" , that definitely should be placed in context first of all, then I would say that there are arguments to make for stating that the best combo is 2 shield healers > one pure and one shield > 2 pure.

Finally, I'm not sure, in the context of this thread, of what you're trying to state by "what the point would be to have a strictly worse option in healing in a game if it were put intentionally in the game. Despite the fact that people might think this is some mistake on the designers part, there is a reason originally to do this."

What "worse option" in healer job design, when we are discussing what we see as improvements? Secondly, while I would credit that game developers would have a reason for job changes, do you believe that game developers are incapable of making mistakes?

[Colt47]

@Colt47 First of all, regarding this "If all the content has to work for both healers, what is the bloody point of having a regen healer and a big spells healer? Identity? So one is always going to be an enfeebled mess of a job while the other is the one everyone uses depending on the fight?" - I don't see this as quite pertinent to the thread, which relates more to healer QOL during downtime, however I would still like to speak to it. Perhaps your comment has more to do with your experience in other games, however aside from relatively brief briefs , which were reverted - I don't believe than any of the healers was ever in a state that they could not function. Now, that does NOT mean that some parties had the perception that another healer was weaker- if for example, an AST could hit macrocosmos and heal up a party , and a WHM could do so as well, but required more skills - but a party was under the belief that only an AST could heal?

You also seem to have contradicted yourself somewhat in the pure/shield healers. There had been quite a bit of discussion regarding where the split was worth it, I would agree that the the pure/shield healers are not very distinct. I would disagree that "one is worse in every way to the other" , that definitely should be placed in context first of all, then I would say that there are arguments to make for stating that the best combo is 2 shield healers > one pure and one shield > 2 pure.

Finally, I'm not sure, in the context of this thread, of what you're trying to state by "what the point would be to have a strictly worse option in healing in a game if it were put intentionally in the game. Despite the fact that people might think this is some mistake on the designers part, there is a reason originally to do this."

What "worse option" in healer job design, when we are discussing what we see as improvements? Secondly, while I would credit that game developers would have a reason for job changes, do you believe that game developers are incapable of making mistakes?

The reason shield healers are worse than pure healers is that this starts going into the direction of the lily bell problem where they have to design content to justify having super shields. And then because they justify the super shields, it forces problems on pure healers that then require their job to have shield spells to some degree. So now buttons start showing up on these jobs that were not related to their original designation (Beni on WHM for example), because they have to at least have a minimal amount of shields support in case two pure healers are chosen.

And now what happens if they want to design it so that they want to enforce one shield healer and one pure healer? They weaken the healing on the shield healers, but then there still is a need for everyone to keep themselves alive in normal content and they can't put more healing on the shield healers, so they move more healing to the other jobs in the group.

And then we get to the point now where if a fight doesn't have any kind of attack that does damage to everyone all the time, people can literally go through some fights with no healers at all, and the only reason healers exist is to fill requirements on a duty finder list.

It's like a domino effect that just keeps going to justify a design decision that started as a simple want for diversity. Healers can be different in some ways in terms of cast speed or which spells do more healing, but fundamentally if someone removes the capacity to heal from a specific kind of healer it still has to go somewhere and that somewhere has to work in a format with 4 man teams.

Edit: Now that I'm thinking on it, because everyone has self healing they got forced into making lethal attacks where having some kind of supplemental healing doesn't make fights too easy at the high end. So in reality, the Mits matters is a design choice because everyone got self healing to make up for the lack of healing power on shield healers, which was brought about by trying to differentiate shield healers from pure healers, which forced pure healers to adopt having shields, because the newer fight design requires shields to survive... and also everyone had to have a lily bell equivalent because multi-hit attacks that only exist in newer designed content.

... you know I really wish they would stop trying to invent reasons to add more buttons to jobs and just have an end goal. No one is getting a better DPS rotation if they have to keep adding stuff to fights that need new unique healing buttons (and arguably, the multi hit thing didn't need lily bell they just forced it on us). Like it isn't just having more attack buttons on healers, they could have more scalable fights if the shields were just something DPS and tanks had, and healing was specifically a healer thing so the developers have a much easier time controlling difficulty. This whole mit matters thing feels like them trying to flatline and cover up all the mistakes.

[Tigore]

As for the new Cure 3 idea from Roe to halve MP cost when the WHM's own Medica 2 HoTs are present, this presents an interesting scenario. Even if it's only the melee DPS getting it for a 4 man or 8 man, it might actually be worth using still for casuals due to the half mana cost. New melee players tend to have a higher chance to take damage than new ranged players anyhow. If the BLM is still all the way to Narnia and refuses to teleport into melee range, I will still have to consider using Regen on them if they get hit. If they wanted to join in the half cost Cure 3 party, they should have teleported in, lol.

[IDontPetLalas]

snip
... you know I really wish they would stop trying to invent reasons to add more buttons to jobs and just have an end goal. No one is getting a better DPS rotation if they have to keep adding stuff to fights that need new unique healing buttons (and arguably, the multi hit thing didn't need lily bell they just forced it on us). Like it isn't just having more attack buttons on healers, they could have more scalable fights if the shields were just something DPS and tanks had, and healing was specifically a healer thing so the developers have a much easier time controlling difficulty. This whole mit matters thing feels like them trying to flatline and cover up all the mistakes.

I'd rather not get into the merits of the pure vs shield healers split, as we have at least one other thread specifically on that.

However, where you get into "No one is getting a better DPS rotation if they have to keep adding stuff to fights that need new unique healing buttons" - I don't recall any fight since the split that any of the healers could not handle, so I don't see why there is an assumption that this would occur in the future.

Now, if you wanted to say "I would like some changes to DPS skills, and look at the heals that tanks have,", I would suggest scrolling up a bit as there are probably a few better posts than mine that a number of people have made suggesting this.

Final point- the scope of this (for me) isn't limited to "4 man teams". It's 8 person raids, it's alliances, it's solo content, it's all levels of difficulty. I would want healers to be engaging in all types of content.

[Tigore]

I'm ... puzzled with this debate with shield healers being worse than pure healers. Don't SCHs have fairy pets casting Embrace on the party with SGE placing Kardion on the tanks with Kardia? Granted they are more restricted versions of simply placing Regen, but they are free sources of healing provided to make up for the loss of Regens. I do somewhat agree that I don't often meet with a DRK tank that feels like they barely take damage, but that is also because I am using WHM most of the time. The Holy stuns and Aquaveil damage reduction don't mix well with DRK wanting their TBN shields to break within 6 seconds. So I accidentally incur either a DPS loss on them (no mana free Dark Arts proc if the shield doesn't break) or a squishiness effect on them until my stuns are done. Since the stuns stop most attacks anyway, an experienced DRK usually just lets me cast my blinding confetti, then uses TBN when the 3 stuns are up.