Healing is not hard

[Raikai]

I've decided to try Thordan Unreal these days as a healer and the healing checks were much more intense than Zeromus. I know everything was just as scripted, but it has less gaps between the heals. Just shows how the healing design changed from HW.

[ty_taurus]

I have a question for Ren.

What are your thoughts on the dragon kick monk rotation? Or paradox spam black mage? Or yukikaze spam samurai?

[Renathras]

I have a question for Ren.

What are your thoughts on the dragon kick monk rotation? Or paradox spam black mage? Or yukikaze spam samurai?

Wasn't Paradox a ridiculously high skill, very precise rotation that basically gave BLM 100% free movement/instant casts (or near to it)?

Dragon Kick rotation was funny, though I'm not sure it was good design. And it was almost certainly not intended. That said, I do thin it's kinda neat it worked, though here's a thread of people complaining about it: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...t-s-disgusting

Also, a far as I can tell, using the numbers from this thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/ShitpostXIV...monk_rotation/
...the DPS difference is 1.3-1.7% (e.g. less than 2%) from the optimal rotation. Though from the comments "Edit2 : TheBalance MNK is salty lol"

If it was designed to intentionally work this way, not just a fluke or something they'd nerf? I honestly think more variation in how people can play Jobs is good. It's an extension of the 4 Healers Model to specific Job design, so yeah, all for it. It's generally hard to INTENTIONALLY do, and so tends to happen (when it happens) by accident more than intent (didn't they nerf Paradox or something? Not sure if they've nerfed Dragon Kick), and apparently the DK rotation wasn't just DK and nothing else, it was DK, True Strike, Demolish, Bootsine, DK until TS refresh?

No idea what Yukikaze spam is, so you'll have to fill me in on that one.

[ty_taurus]

Snip

Yukikaze Spam Samurai was a "meme" rotation shared in this video. Although the description says "THIS IS A MEME DON'T DO THIS" the author's comment also says: "DON'T TAKE THIS ROTATION SERIOUSLY, IT IS A MEME.
(EDIT: You can, apparently it is only 1 % less dps than loop on 2.14, lol)" Basically, outside of your opener, your rotation is just Hakaze > Yukikaze, weaving Hagakure after each Yukikaze and burning Shinten when your gauge fills.

To my knowledge, the infinite paradox rotation is supposed to be a braindead strat to maximize mobility at the cost of 3% in DPS.

Here's the question though, why does it matter if something is intentional or not? Pretty much all metas from all games that have some competitive aspect are about doing things that are not intentional. In League of Legends, the entire meta shifted multiple times due to a character not intended for a role being suddenly played in that role and gaining popularity. I've not played League in several years, so I can't speak to any more modern examples, but Morgana is a classic example: a character originally designed to be a mid laning DPS mage was rebranded as a support specifically because that's what the community chose to play her as. I recall a time where Ezreal, a fragile basic attack champion with almost no utilty at all became a menace in the jungle in Korea, at some point. No clue if he's still played like that since, again, that was several years ago, but you get the point.

If the FFXIV community comes up with alternative rotations for a job, I don't think that devalues the rotation. These are described as "meme" rotations, and people did get upset, but I love these. I think it's great to see that there isn't just one correct way to play some jobs, and while these rotations do have a lower potential max DPS, something we fail to do as a community is recognize the value of safety over risk. These rotations are supposed to be easier, meaning the average player is more likely to perform that rotation more successfully than the standard rotation, so that ease-of-play may result in them doing more damage than they might otherwise lose on the standard rotation. Additionally, it could allow said player to focus on boss mechanics in harder fights more easily and still perform as effectively with their rotation.

Performing the standard rotation should still have a higher damage threshold, but that doesn't mean it's objectively superior, because that also comes with a greater risk of failure to consider. I disagree that having a 'shortcut' rotation like those three is bad or unhealthy for the game, and perhaps playing into that more can allow jobs to have more complexity while still creating a path of lesser resistance for the players who are intimidated by that complexity or who just aren't interest in rotation mechanics.

[Zeastria]

I've decided to try Thordan Unreal these days as a healer and the healing checks were much more intense than Zeromus. I know everything was just as scripted, but it has less gaps between the heals. Just shows how the healing design changed from HW.

I experienced the opposite.
I barly had anything to heal when i did Thordan Unreal. <.<
But it depends on your team too, if u gonna heal a lot or not.

[TheDustyOne]

I like it as well when people discover alternate rotations, as long as the harder/riskier rotation has an adequately higher reward compared to the easier ones, I think it's worth keeping them around.

I do think DK Monk should be nerfed, the execution requirement compared to a standard rotation I think shouldn't be a loss of only 1-2%, same deal with Yukikaze. I like that they exist, but the loss should be greater as the risk of learning the "proper" rotation is made up for just in crit luck.

TK Monk back in SB went in the other direction; harder to execute than the standard rotation, but the reward for pulling it off felt good proportionate to the standard rotation. BLM has also historically done this a lot, even now we have advanced rotations that cut out uses of Fire III and Blizz III as they're the weakest parts of the BLM kit, instead relying on Transpose for swapping.

If the non-standard rotation is harder than standard, I think it should be up to a 3% or so gain, it'll depend on how hard it is to execute compared to standard, but 3% sounds right without it being massively imbalanced from what Square likely balanced around. It's a little trickier to decide on how big a loss it should be if non-standard is easier, since that comes down I think to how hard it is to execute or how much less risk is involved. DK Monk I think needs a bigger loss than 1.7%, probably closer to 5-7%. Enough to still be viable, but should still encourage using standard.

Skill output I think should be balanced logarithmically; twice the input/thought shouldn't be 100% extra output, but more like 20%. Going from an already difficult standard BLM to learning Transpose lines, it sounds fair to only gain about an extra percentage or 3.

Also, how much of a gain was it to use TK Monk back in SB? I can't remember, I just remember being bummed that it was removed in ShB.

[ForsakenRoe]

Also, how much of a gain was it to use TK Monk back in SB? I can't remember, I just remember being bummed that it was removed in ShB.

Low enough that a guy I used to raid with back then, who refused to learn the TK rotation for a while, got oranges using the 'regular' rotation. This was likely because most people were also using the regular rotation still, as TK was quite demanding by comparison. The gain was noticeable to optimizers, but not make-or-break for casuals trying to meet enrage on their first clears, aka 'exactly where it needed to be'