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

[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.

[Tigore]

It's been a long time since I played WoW, although the ratios of healing / damage varied even there depending on the expansion. From the 2nd expansion (Wrath of the Lich King) down to Classic, auto attack damage was very heavy with a decent amount of unavoidable AoE pulses. The ratio was probably 80 - 20 to 95 - 5. You could maybe throw a DoT every so often maybe every 15 - 30s, but the tank needed almost constant heals for the rest of the GCDs. I left at around the end of the Shadowlands expansion (8th?) when the ratio was somewhere around 50 - 50 to 60 - 40. The Priests Flash Heal, Paladin's Flash of Light, Shaman's Lesser Healing Wave and Druid's Rejuvenation, Lifebloom HoTs and Regrowth started more cheap at the Wrath expansion and were used so much. Eventually these fast version got super expensive and the devs wanted us to use the slower casts more often to save mana. The ones I remember are Heal, Holy Light, Healing Wave and Nourish with Lifebloom HoTs on the tank. Rejuvenation was still technically used, just it got too expensive to put it on everyone willy nilly and usually just became a tank HoT in most cases. Kind of like how we treat the WHM Regen. Everyone later on got cheaper AoE heals still with some being on cooldown. Circle of Healing with talents like Halo for quick burst heals, Beacon of Light (perma Synastry) with Light of Dawn cones later, Healing Stream Totem with Healing Rain placed on the ground, Wild Growth HoTs with the Efflorescence mushroom on the ground.

All of these 4 classes also had some major cooldowns when the whole raid is starting to drop to the 30 - 50% mark. Paladin and Discipline Priest are a bit different bearing more of a tank healer role. The rest I lists could do the raid healing role more easily. Holy Paladins also changed more frequently since they were trying to make them viable raid healers without stepping on their toes with strong singe target heals.

Holy Priest - Divine Hymn - Pulses AoE heal over 8 seconds. Each of the heals increases healing done by 4% per stack.
Paladins - It used to be Avenging Wrath that all Paladins had, but I am reading it to be a talent now for expansion 9. It was a flat increase to damage and healing done with some quirks depending on spec.
Shaman - Healing Tide Totem - Basically works like a much stronger version of Healing Stream Totem. Pulses heals over 10 seconds every 2 seconds
Druid - Tranquility - Another AOE healing pulse that works like Divine Hymn except the secondary effect is a stacking HoT over 8 second now.

In conclusion, Warcraft actually paid more attention to the healers over the course of expansions. I didn't mention Mistweaver Monk or Preservation Evokers since they came in during Mists of Pandaria (5) and Dragonflight (9). The healers over there have weaker heals to justify the existence of the major cooldowns I listed and enemies hit harder with more unavoidable AoE pulses. So basically something more along the lines of our 90 Trial Barby during her end phases even on normal mode.

I left WoW more because they have a raid or die model for gearing. Pretty much all of my friends left to take care of their life. It didn't help that we had to constantly deal with loot hoarders only staying until they can guild hop to the next boss without learning it through actual progression. They used to have Justice Points and Valor Points to get Normal Raid equivalent gear with Heroic and Mythic still being out of reach unless you do it. Funny thing is, the tome system was kind of modelled from this. Valor Points then got dropped and slightly lower gear rewards were put into random generating World Quests with random rewards. Running 5 man dungeons might of helped to catch up, but it was these world quests you still had to go to with praying you get the right slots and random ilvl / gem slot (materia slot) upgrades upon receiving the reward.

[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?

[ForsakenRoe]

Sorry if I spoke a bit too passively, Roe. The reason I was brainstorming on Medica 1 and Cure 3 is more so to design a spammable mana AoE heal while the Medica 2 HoT is present. Having both Cure 3 and Medica 1 is admittedly redundant with slight differences in healing power, mana usage and range. I was suggesting Cure 3 essentially become the new spammable AoE heal for casuals to use if Medica 1 will be replaced with Medica 2. Cure 3 might need to be to have around a 30 yalm radius for everyone getting the heals just like how Medica 1 works. If necessary, the range of the target you can select could be nerfed to compensate to about 10 yalms? This could mean that Cure 3 might need to be bumped to around level 30 or under to match with the same suggested time Medica upgrades to Medica 2.

Ah I see, yes, I also believe similar (Cure3 should be the 'spam once you've got the Medica HOT ticking' skill). To that end, I actually have a potential solution for that too, a trait which makes Cure 3's MP cost halved to 750 when you are under the effect of Medica 2's HOT. If you need the range, Medica2 spam is 20y and would have the upfront healing power of current Medica1. If you can stack a bit closer together, however, and the hits are harder (Harrowing Hell etc), then Cure3 is 50% stronger, and actually costs less if you have the HOT ticking

As an aside, I will never not be irked by the use of “Medica” as WHM’s AOE instead of Cure II being your AOE, like how it generally works for your caster DPS (Fire II, Veraero/Verthunder II, Miasma II…) It would look and feel so much cleaner if Cure was your single target, Cure II your AOE, with Cure III and Cure IV being your single target and AOE (respectively) for heals with some sort of additional element, be that regens atop your heals or maybe even something else.

It almost feels like a quiet insult. “DPS players will be able to recognize the difference between spells with the same name but different ranks and effects, but healers aren’t skilled enough to recognize the difference.”

IDK why they didn't do it FF11 style (especially given how they stuck so rigidly to the FF11 style of BLU), where the number denotes the strength (Stone 1 2 3 4), and the suffix of -aga denotes it's AOE instead of single target (thus, Curaga 1 is a weak AOE heal, Curaga 3 is a strong AOE heal, Cure 3 is a strong ST heal). This would have also solved their problem with having to come up with 'High Fire/Blizzard' on BLM, because they could have had Fire 1 as Fire 1, Fire 2 as Firaga, Fire 3 as Fire 2, Fire 4 as Fire 3, and High Fire as Firaga 2. They would never have to come up with new suffixes, as numbers are the scaling factor in the naming, and they can go as far as they like. FF2 had spells go up to 16 after all

Oh well

[ty_taurus]

IDK why they didn't do it FF11 style (especially given how they stuck so rigidly to the FF11 style of BLU), where the number denotes the strength (Stone 1 2 3 4), and the suffix of -aga denotes it's AOE instead of single target (thus, Curaga 1 is a weak AOE heal, Curaga 3 is a strong AOE heal, Cure 3 is a strong ST heal). This would have also solved their problem with having to come up with 'High Fire/Blizzard' on BLM, because they could have had Fire 1 as Fire 1, Fire 2 as Firaga, Fire 3 as Fire 2, Fire 4 as Fire 3, and High Fire as Firaga 2. They would never have to come up with new suffixes, as numbers are the scaling factor in the naming, and they can go as far as they like. FF2 had spells go up to 16 after all

Oh well

I'm actually not sure how FFXI named their spells in the Japanese version, but I know a part of the reason as to why they didn't use -aga for AOE in FFXIV is because the suffixes and numbers are interchanged between languages. What I mean is, we have Fire, Fire II, Fire III, and Fire IV as an example, but Japan has Fire, Fira, Firaga, and Firaja. They don't use the numbers. Personally I would've preferred that even more since it's what the rest of the series does. I don't get why XI and XIV feel like the English-speaking audience wouldn't handle that when it's handled perfectly fine in every other modern Final Fantasy, but whatever I guess.

I just hate the name "Medica." It sounds so gross.

[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]

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.

[Mortex]

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 tanks 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 stops most attacks anyway, an experienced DRK usually just lets me cast my blinding confetti, then uses TBN when the 3 stuns are up.

I argue it’s more the opposite. Casual content is not designed for massive consistent dmg spikes the party takes so reducing the dmg and even having a good amount of regen tools makes shield healer in my eyes in casual content way stronger. And if a fight is a mitigation fiesta with ok downtime sgn + sch just becomes way too good (looking at top)

[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.