How DPS complexity can make healers more forgiving

[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.