How DPS complexity can make healers more forgiving

[ty_taurus]

In the past, it's been claimed that adding a wider variety of DPS spells on the healers would result in a more hostile environment for new, learning, or casual healers. I have countered that claim with the opposite: that more DPS options can actually make contributing damage more forgiving, not less. Using the Wayback Machine, I've done some number crunching to compare ARR Scholar to EW Scholar, and I want to share my findings.

The Data I'm about to share deals only with the Scholar's GCD attack spells and does not include Energy Drain or Auto Attacks. It will also be based on single target damage only.

A Realm Reborn

DPS Spells

• Ruin/Ruin II - 80 potency
• Bio - 40 potency DoT over 18 seconds (240 total potency)
• Bio II - 35 potency DoT over 30 seconds (350 total potency)
• Miasma - 20 potency + 35 potency DoT over 24 seconds (300 total potency)
• Shadowflare - 25 potency DoT over 30 seconds (250 total potency)
• Aero - 50 potency DoT over 18 seconds (300 total potency)

2 Minute Potency Potential

• Bio - 6.5~ casts = 1440 potency
• Bio II - 4 casts = 1400 potency
• Miasma - 5 casts = 1500 potency
• Shadowflare - 4 casts* = 1000 potency
• Aero - 6.5~ casts = 1950 potency

*Note: Bio and Aero can be cast 6.6666~ times in 2 minutes and Shadowflare has a cast time of 3 seconds. I simplified the casts of Bio and Aero to 6.5 to balance out the extra casting time of Shadowflare for the sake of simplicity in this exercise, so know that this is an approximate value.

Total Non-Ruin Potency Potential: 26~ casts = 7290 potency

Remaining Ruin Casts: 22 casts = 1760 potency

Total Possible Potency in 2 Minutes: 9050 potency
Non-Ruin Contribution: 80.6~%
Ruin Contribution: 19.4~%
Value per Ruin: 0.9~%

Endwalker

DPS Spells

• Broil IV - 295 potency
• Biolysis - 70 potency DoT over 30 seconds (700 total potency)

2 Minute Potency Potential

• Biolysis - 4 casts = 2800 potency
• Broil IV x22* - 22 casts = 6490 potency

*Note: I'll be directly comparing potency gained from EW Scholar in the same amount of casts as non-Ruin spells from ARR Scholar, which is the purpose of establishing potency of the 22 Broil IV casts in the above data.

Total Potency in 26 Casts: 26~ casts = 9290 potency

Remaining Broil IV Casts: 22 casts = 6490 potency

Total Possible Potency in 2 Minutes: 15780 potency
26 Cast Contribution: 58.9~%
Additional Broil IV Contribution: 41.1~%
Value per Broil IV: 1.9~%

Summary
The first thing I'd like to establish before we talk about this data is that cooldowns and timer-based actions like DoTs are always prioritized even by beginners over their filler spells. Take a look at any ARR or HW footage of a healer in a dungeon who engages with their DPS at all, and you'll see the first thing they do when switching into Cleric Stance is apply their DoTs. DoT application won't always be perfect, but you lose far less casts of each DoT over time than you do of each opportunity to cast your filler when idling or casting healing spells (be they necessary or unnecessary).

And that leads me to my second point. Every loss of your filler in EW counts for over double the weight that your filler had during ARR. In other words, every cast of Succor you didn't need... every panic-casted Physick a newbie burns... It hurts their DPS output twice as much as it would've during ARR regardless of how well or poorly they would handle ARR DoT uptime.

Now, a 100% valid criticism that we can make of this data is that to the new, learning, and casual players, managing all those DoTs with all those durations is not something we can realistically expect them to maintain with perfect uptime. Even if they could theoretically have 80+% efficacy by ignoring their filler spell, they'd likely lose more to poor DoT management. And that's fair, but adding more DPS variety does not have to equate to just a bunch of DoTs with different timers. There are alternatives to the kind of DPS tools we add to a healer to make it far easier for those lower skill healers to hit the maximum number of casts with far less effort. Phlegma is a clearer example of this, a GCD action with a cooldown and charges to create lots of forgiveness in what might otherwise equate to drifting if the spell did not feature charges. And there are other things too that could go into diversifying a healer's offensive library in a way that takes potency away from their filler and places that potency into those extra tools.

Now, I'm also not saying that more DPS options always equates to a more forgiving environment for healer DPS output. It entirely depends on how you assign value to each spell, and what kind of tools you design. Even though ARR Scholar would lose far less DPS potential from a lost Ruin, which is a forgiving trait, Cleric Stance's highly punishing nature severely outweighs that as it threatened to crush any novice healer who might forget to turn it off, or accidentally hit it twice while trying to turn it off.

But what we can take from this information is that having more DPS spells does not inherently make healer DPS contributions harder. It may make it more challenging to reach 100% total potential DPS output, but also has the potential to drastically increase the minimum effort contribution when designed correctly as well as decrease the weight of each individual filler spell lost due to idling, overhealing, or even just required healing.

[ty_taurus]

I'm going to add to this a soft theorycraft Scholar rework to showcase how we could recreate numbers similar to the ARR numbers while achieving the same total potential potency of modern-day Scholar.

Theorycraft Scholar

DPS Spells

• Broil IV - 150 potency
• Bio III - 70 potency DoT over 15 seconds (350 total potency). Applies 1 stack of Virus; only 1 Virus can be applied by Bio III at a time.
• Miasma III - 100 potency + 60 potency DoT over 24 seconds (580 total potency). Applies 1 stack of Virus; only 1 Virus can be applied by Miasma III at a time.
• Fester - 100 potency on targets with no virus stacks. 240 potency on targets with 1 virus stack. 510 potency on targets with 2 virus stacks.
• Shadowflare - 75 potency DoT over 30 seconds (750 total potency)

*Note: Fester detonates Virus stacks applied by Bio III and Miasma III. Each spell can only apply 1 Virus at a time. This will lead to some instances of single stack detonation when multiple Bio IIIs would be cast before the next refreshing of Miasma III.

2 Minute Potency Potential

• Bio III - 8 casts = 2800 potency
• Miasma III - 5 casts = 2900 potency
• Fester (1 Stack) - 3 casts = 720 potency
• Fester (2 Stacks) - 6 casts = 3060 potency
• Shadowflare - 4 casts = 3000 potency

Total Non-Broil IV Potency Potential: 26 casts = 12480 potency

Remaining Broil IV Casts: 22 casts = 3300 potency

Total Possible Potency in 2 Minutes: 15780 potency
Non-Broil IV Contribution: 79.1~%
Broil IV Contribution: 20.9~%
Value per Broil IV: 0.9~%

Summary
As you can see, this theorycraft offers the same exact total potential GCD potency in a 2 minute window as the current Scholar kit offers, yet by restoring some of its old toolkit elements, and adopting Fester as an extra burst button, we've recreated a very similar metric to what ARR Scholar used to have.

Now, this is still using DoTs with multiple durations which does feature precise timing--something I mentioned above that can be tricky to the less experienced healer. I do think there is a place for a more precise optimization type healer like this in FFXIV, but we can also accomplish this on another healer with more flexible and relaxed offensive spells, things that allow you to cast them at times that are more convenient to the healer. Spells that have charges, that are procced off other spells with charges like with Red Mage's Verflare/Verholy > Scorch > Resolution, or other types of attacks that have comfortable windows to be used rather than enforcing use at specific moments. And I firmly believe we should have at least 1 healer like that if not more. But that healer's additional attack spells can create an environment where it's easier for a novice to get much farther with their overall DPS output rather than restricting that healer to a single spell that has a doubly steep cost for every instance of that spell you lose.

[vetch]

Great ideas. Makes me wish there weren't legal issues to just lifting an idea off the forums.

... we can also accomplish this on another healer with more flexible and relaxed offensive spells, things that allow you to cast them at times that are more convenient to the healer. Spells that have charges, that are procced off other spells with charges like with Red Mage's Verflare/Verholy > Scorch > Resolution, or other types of attacks that have comfortable windows to be used rather than enforcing use at specific moments.

Especially this part. It's annoying that every job's rotation gets stricter and stricter thanks to the dev team's obsession with cramming in oGCDs and bursting in unison under raid buff alignment.

[Shurrikhan]

Now, this is still using DoTs with multiple durations which does feature precise timing--something I mentioned above that can be tricky to the less experienced healer.

One small thing to consider are intuitive flows. For instance, in ARR, using Shadowflare, Bio2, Miasma, Bio, Aero would mean that you'd then have a similarly consecutive flow 18s after the first of Bio, Aero, Miasma, Shadowflare, Bio2. From there, things would get messier, but still in pretty intuitive ways.

It's kind of like modern MCH, where you have ABC, A, AB, AxC, AB, A, ABC between Drill, Air Anchor, and Chainsaw. If you just remember the AxC gap and that every other Drill will have an Air Anchor, you don't actually need to look down at all.

[ty_taurus]

So I did a little more math. This time, I wanted to compare the percentage results of the ARR Scholar and EW Scholar data with actual modern day savage clear data. Now, I will preface this by saying these numbers aren't super clean, because all I did was locate an example of a 99% parsing Scholar, take their DPS, which was recorded at 7655.8 damage per second, and figure out what 80.6% of that was for the ARR Scholar data and what 58.9% of that was for the EW Scholar data. The idea is to imagine how well the ARR kit (if scaled up to have the same total damage output as modern day scholar) would do using only their DoTs and not their ruin spell, vs the current EW Scholar who used their Biolysis and 22 Broil IVs to match. This means we have to assume both these kits would be using the same amount of Energy Drains, Auto Attacks, and most notably would reap the same benefits from raid buffs. So take this information with a grain of salt.

ARR Scholar would achieve: 6,170.6 damage per second managing just their DoTs and never casting Ruin.
EW Scholar would achieve: 4,509.3 damage per second in the same amount of casts between proper Biolysis management and Broil IV.

By searching through other recorded clears, the ARR Scholar would have a blue parse somewhere between 65% and 70% which is fairly decent. The EW Scholar would have a grey parse somewhere between a 3% and a 6%. Now, at the end of the day, a clear is a clear. I'm not going to rain on someone's victory, nor will I rag on the grey parser's performance. But if there's a question of who's more likely to cause a wipe, it would be the EW Scholar in this exercise.

Again, these numbers are rough and should be taken with a grain of salt. But what I think we can say is that despite only having 2 DPS GCD actions, the EW Scholar needs to DPS considerably more often than the ARR to perform as effectively as the ARR Scholar if the ARR Scholar can manage their DoTs effectively. Though consider that if the ARR Scholar were able to properly benefit from raid buffs, they'd actually perform even better dumping all those DoTs into each buff window, meaning they could get even farther without ever touching their filler DPS button.

[Renathras]

Not a critique, just more a curiosity on my part:

Can you generate a Healer damage idea that has no DoTs?

I mean as kind of a general exercise. You know I hate DoTs, so I'm curious what you might be able to come up with. Bonus points if it can be done in a way that has context button swaps (like RDM) for hotbar economy, but I'm just curious what you can come up with.

EDIT:

Oh, doesn't have to be SCH, btw. WHM or SGE is fine, etc. I'm just curious what non-DoT options exist.

[Shurrikhan]

Not a critique, just more a curiosity on my part:

Can you generate a Healer damage idea that has no DoTs?

DoTs are just two things:

1. Soft CDs (you can, for near-proportionately reduced value, reuse them before their "ideal" timer; being late to use them also does not therefore cascade increasingly towards some punishing level of desync, as they can be easily corrected)
   
   
2. per target (meaning that more targets = more [simultaneously-recharging] charges of that soft CD = more available exploitation up to the point where they're overtaken by AoE spammables anyways) that therefore appear on your Target's Status Effects instead of your Status Effects (which makes them easier to track for some, harder to track for others).

Take off the latter portion, and voila, you've got a similar effect, just with a slightly lower skill ceiling in what few contexts have lie between purely single-target and AoE-spam-is-optimal.

Adjusted Sample:

DPS Spells

• Broil IV - Deals 150 potency.
• Bio III - Deals 350 potency. 3-second recast time. Damage is reduced to 70 potency after use, increasing back to 350 potency over 12 seconds after completing its recast time. Applies 1 stack of Virus; only 1 Virus can be applied by Bio III at a time.
• Miasma III - Deals 580 potency. Damage is reduced to 100 potency after use, increasing back to 580 potency over 24 seconds. Applies 1 stack of Virus; only 1 Virus can be applied by Miasma III at a time.
• Fester - 100 potency on targets with no virus stacks. 240 potency on targets with 1 virus stack. 510 potency on targets with 2 virus stacks.
• Shadowflare - Deals 750 potency. Damage is reduced to 75 potency after use, increasing back to 750 potency over 30 seconds.

The problem, of course, is that you then make SCH an exceedingly bursty assassin whose 750*1.3 relative-potency Shadowflare would deal over 333% of the AoE damage of an actual Flare (even when using AF3 and the highest value of Enochian), since TTK no longer acts at all as a limiting factor.

[ForsakenRoe]

The problem, of course, is that you then make SCH an exceedingly bursty assassin whose 750*1.3 relative-potency Shadowflare would deal over 333% of the AoE damage of an actual Flare (even when using AF3 and the highest value of Enochian), since TTK no longer acts at all as a limiting factor.

Finally, a healer design that would be good at Deep Dungeon solo runs, instead of being a fight against the timer due to low damage output

[Shurrikhan]

Finally, a healer design that would be good at Deep Dungeon solo runs, instead of being a fight against the timer due to low damage output

Aye, but even in that approach, you'd likely see at least some 10% each of the ppm from the non-fillers go to the filler instead in order to level it out (i.e., to not deal almost a tenth of its potency per minute in a single GCD of Shadowflare).

Though, if not for that ultimate fight against the timer, wouldn't WHM be similarly "bursty" already, between Assize and Misery? Which would still be the bottleneck here that SCH faces, even if it manages to frontload its ppm enough to further spare a few healing GCDs per minute, as SCH's ppm would still be just as low as ever.

[ty_taurus]

But yeah, however it'll take me a bit of time to re-math things for a different job.

Okay, so I have something for White Mage. One thing I'd like to mention first, though, is that unlike Scholar which I could largely just build off the tools it used to have, the other healers never had anything other than just less DoTs than Scholar (which is why I'm not really a fan of the 'just bring back Aero 3' argument. I don't want the healers to just be a handful of DoTs and that's it). So I built something from scratch, and in the effort of saving time, I just kinda rolled with the first ideas that came to mind, so it's definitely unrefined, but it's a decent starting point for discussion. Oh and I'll use hidden boards this time since this one is longer.

Let me start by establishing what current White Mage looks like in terms of values. I'm still using the 26 cast reference point just because it's been what I was using previously, and like before this is only counting single target and doesn't include Assize as this is just the GCD.

Endwalker

DPS Spells

• Glare III - 310 potency
• Dia - 65 potency + 65 DoT over 30 seconds (715 total potency)
• Afflatus Misery - 1240 potency

2 Minute Potential

• Dia - 4 casts = 2860 potency
• Glare IIIx22 - 6820 potency

*Note: I'm not including Afflatus Misery since it's equal to glare use, but naturally you can sub Glare casts for Afflatus heals and Misery here or anywhere really.

Total 26 Cast Potency Potential: 26 casts = 9680 potency

Remaining Glare III Casts: 22 casts = 6820 potency

Total Possible Potency in 2 Minutes = 16500 potency
26 Cast Contribution: 58.7~%
Remaining Glare Contribution: 41.3~%
Value per Glare III: 1.9~%

Theorycraft White Mage
Now that we have a reference of what the current White Mage looks like, this is the concept. It'll need a small amount of explanation since it's a more original concept than with the Scholar examples.

On the Healing Gauge, every 60 seconds, a White Lily blooms, which an be spent on Afflatus Purgation. This works like Polyglots on Black Mage (i.e. after one generates, the cooldown for the next has already begun even before you cast Afflatus Purgation)

New Gauge: The Retribution Gauge. Each casts of Banish or Ablution raises Retribution by 1 level. At level 4, enhances the Holy III spell.

Spells

• Glare III - 165 potency
• Afflatus Misery - 660 potency
• Afflatus Purgation - 480 potency.
• Dia - 120 potency. Inflicts 4 stacks of "Dia" as a debuff on the target (no duration). When casting Banish or Ablution on the target, consumes 1 stack to deal an additional 200 potency damage. (920 total potency)
• Banish - 300 potency. No MP cost. Has a 20 second cooldown on the GCD with 2 charges. Shares a recast with Ablution. When Banish is cast, you can immediately cast a free Banish or Ablution again regardless of the cooldown (think Ogi Namikiri from Samurai).
• Ablution - 300 potency. Heals self and nearby party members with a potency of 250. 800 MP cost. Has a 20 second cooldown on the GCD with 2 charges. Shares a recast with Banish. When Ablution is cast, you can immediately cast a free Banish or Ablution again regardless of the cooldown.
• Holy III - 120 potency + 4 second stun. When at level 4 Retribution, increases to 360 potency, is instant cast, and turns Glare III into a 2 action combo of Ruach into Eschaton (Think Verflare/Verholy > Scorch). This "Combo" cannot be interrupted by casting other spells.
• Ruach - 180 potency + 180 potency DoT over 15 seconds (1080 total potency)(Although this is a DoT, it's not an uptime DoT. Think Circle of Scorn from Paladin).
• Eschaton - 480 potency.

2 Minute Potential

• Dia - 3 casts = 2760 potency
• Banish/Ablution - 12 casts = 3600 potency
• Holy III - 3 casts = 1080 potency
• Ruach - 3 casts = 3240 potency
• Eschaton - 3 casts = 1230 potency
• Afflatus Purgation - 2 casts = 960 potency

Total Non-Glare Potency Potential: 26 casts = 12870 potency

Remaining Glare III Casts: 22 casts = 3630 potency

Total Possible Potency in 2 Minutes = 16500 potency
Non-Glare Contribution: 78%
Remaining Glare Contribution: 22%
Value per Glare III: 1%

Theorycraft Summary
I know it's a lot more information because it's very new, but it's a lot more simple than it seems. Basically, Banish and Ablution share a cooldown and both do light burst damage in two casts. One costs no MP, the other heals. They have a 20 second cooldown with 2 charges, and you just want to apply Dia before you cast those. When you do so is quite flexible.

Every 40ish seconds (once you've cast 4 Banishes/Ablutions) you'll hit Retribution level 4, cast Holy III, followed by a double up of Ruach/Eschaton, which are just bonus actions that replace Glare after Holy III. This cannot be interrupted unlike with Red Mage, though, so if you need to heal around that time, you can. Lastly, you can toss in an Afflatus Purgation once a minute. It's probably not perfect. As I said, I really just tried to roll with what came to mind at first just to establish this as quickly as possible, but maybe it could be a starting point for a more well-fleshed out idea.