How would you solve the boring "damage rotation" of the healers?

[fulminating]

To those who believe that the issue with healer design can be completely resolved by increasing the healing requirements only, I have a challenge for you:

Design for me 1 minute of a fight against an unnamed dungeon boss that showcases the increased healing requirements you believe will solve the problem with healer design, and show me how you will force a Sage to spend more GCDs on healing than on Dosis spam. You have 24 GCD casts in 1 minute, and you'll need to force them to burn through all of their OGCDs in order to get a Sage to start relying on GCD heals, or you need intense enough back-to-back healing that a heal weave > heal GCD > heal weave will be necessary to resolve the mechanic successfully. Show me the breakdown of where that Sage uses each cooldown, taking into account cooldowns that are shorter than 60 seconds (Ixochole and Kerachole). You can use approximates, such as "mechanic A will bring the party down to around 30% remaining HP" or something like that.

A reminder of Sage's cooldowns:
- Physis II
- Soteria
- Druochole (limited by Addersgall, 1 per 20 seconds)
- Keracholex2 (limited by Addersgall, 1 per 20 seconds)
- Ixocholex2 (limited by Addersgall, 1 per 20 seconds)
- Taurochole (limited by Addersgall, 1 per 20 seconds)
- Haima
- Panhaima
- Rhizomata
- Holos
- Zoe
- Krasis
- Pneuma
Prove to me that you can make 1 minute of a dungeon level fight that will make the healing side outweigh the DPS. Show me each GCD in that 1 minute and how more of them will go to healing instead of Dosis spam. I know it's a tall order, but I'm only asking for 1 minute.

I had a crack at it, but may have overcorrected in the other direction significantly. I'm a bit unfamiliar with sage and even if I've underestimated sage healing output, this would probably still be more of a roadblock than the steps of faith ever were.

Boss does autos, floor may be made of lava.

TGC doom (8s doom)
spicy dot (30% hp damage per tick, esunable) (could be throttle instead)
TGC doom (10s doom)
akh morn (8 hits, 20 damage per hit spread over 8 seconds.)
enum tankbuster. 450 damage before mits or 100 to two players (p8s natural alignment style). With a shield on a dps it should be fine.
I think it's time for a break from aoe healing, so someone is getting a debuff that turns heals into damage and vice versa. If they die, the damage they received is distributed to the entire party.
It's TGC doom time again. (12s doom)
Spitty tankbuster - 20 damage 5 times, entirely coincidentally tailor made for haima, which will reduce it to 5 by 5

1 eukrasia > dosis (cid doom cast bar)
2 eukrasia > prognosis (bar completes)(preshield to prevent humourous wipes to bad server tick alignment)
3 Soteria > ixchole > pneuma > physis 2
4 pognosis
5 esuna (2) >
6 esuna (1) > druchole (4) (just needs to do >20% for them to live
7 esuna (3) >
8 esuna (4) > kerachole?
9 dosis > panhaima + krasis (tank) (doom 2 cast)
10 eukrasian prognosis > pepsis
11 prognosis > holos? +shake it off
12 I may have killed everyone even without the temptation to refresh the dot
13
14 eukrasian diagnosis > taru (dps)
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23 haima
24

[mallleable]

Not a healer main, but I feel like healers could use more semi-spammable dual-purpose spells that both deal damage, and heal to break up the pace of spamming the same damage spell over and over again.

[ty_taurus]

Not a healer main, but I feel like healers could use more semi-spammable dual-purpose spells that both deal damage, and heal to break up the pace of spamming the same damage spall over and over again.

Idk how spells that deal damage and heal at the same time would break up single button spam. If the damage is higher than your filler spell, then why is the healing attached? If the damage is less, it'll be avoided as much as possible. If the damage is the same, then you have Pneuma, which rarely gets used anyway because Sage already can't burn Addersgall fast enough on actual healing needs.

[mallleable]

Idk how spells that deal damage and heal at the same time would break up single button spam. If the damage is higher than your filler spell, then why is the healing attached? If the damage is less, it'll be avoided as much as possible. If the damage is the same, then you have Pneuma, which rarely gets used anyway because Sage already can't burn Addersgall fast enough on actual healing needs.

In my mind they would do the same damage as regular dps spells so that would replace dps spells during times of high incoming damage. They would probably require other healing ogcds to be rebalanced.

[ty_taurus]

In my mind they would do the same damage as regular dps spells so that would replace dps spells during times of high incoming damage. They would probably require other healing ogcds to be rebalanced.

I'm not opposed to having more tools like that, but I think there needs to be more interesting costs to using them other than just something like a long cooldown, and I don't think that will have that much of an impact on filler DPS spam on its own, but reworking more OGCDs into GCDs with different costs to manage can, if done correctly, be a good thing.

[Aravell]

I've seen a fairly large amount of people say that upping healing requirements is all that's needed to completely fix healer boredom, please explain how casting Cure/Physick/Benefic/Diagnosis 150 times is more engaging than casting Glare/Broil/Malefic/Dosis 150 times? Because it looks equally boring to me.

[Niroken]

I've seen a fairly large amount of people say that upping healing requirements is all that's needed to completely fix healer boredom, please explain how casting Cure/Physick/Benefic/Diagnosis 150 times is more engaging than casting Glare/Broil/Malefic/Dosis 150 times? Because it looks equally boring to me.

I honestly don't understand. Upping healing requirements also increase the responsibilities to the same or higher degree as people place on healers who are expected to do damage, so it's not people being lazy trying to keep Netflix dungeon healing. Must be some kind of superficial aversion to attacking monsters maybe? Maybe they only get a tingly feeling when health bar goes up. No idea.

[Aravell]

I honestly don't understand. Upping healing requirements also increase the responsibilities to the same or higher degree as people place on healers who are expected to do damage, so it's not people being lazy trying to keep Netflix dungeon healing. Must be some kind of superficial aversion to attacking monsters maybe? Maybe they only get a tingly feeling when health bar goes up. No idea.

I would say upping healing requirements would increase healer responsibilities to a higher degree, because while a healer that's doing damage in regular content is nice to have, it's not strictly necessary to clear in the first place. But healing requirements must strictly be met or people will start dying, and when people die through no fault of their own and can no longer press their buttons, they justifiably get big mad.

There also remains the inevitable fact that you can never increase healing requirements enough to engage a veteran healer while not completely (or at least partially) walling off inexperienced healers. Some argued that healing requirements should be boosted sky high then (but only for savage+), but that doesn't solve the root cause of healers being boring in 90% of content. I can't fathom why people think only the healer role should be boring for 90% of all content while the other roles get to have fun at all levels.

[RitsukoSonoda]

I honestly don't understand. Upping healing requirements also increase the responsibilities to the same or higher degree as people place on healers who are expected to do damage, so it's not people being lazy trying to keep Netflix dungeon healing. Must be some kind of superficial aversion to attacking monsters maybe? Maybe they only get a tingly feeling when health bar goes up. No idea.

It has to do with the overwhelming majority of the game content being dumbed down to the point it nearly makes the role itself irrelevant.

Tanks were given spammable AoE enmity generation making it extremely easy to hold aggro on large groups of enemies. Therefore non-tank party members aren't taking damage unless they stupidly stand in AoE markers or you fight a boss that does a room wide AoE that cannot be dodged.
All tanks were given self HP recovery via forms of sustain on top of their mitigation reducing the need for external healing.
Healers were loaded with 0 cast time healing CD's because apparently cast bars were hard for some people.

Stances were pretty much deleted because managing them was deemed "too difficult" This resulted in cleric stance getting nuked completely as a job action and tank stances just becoming a generic enmity on/off button. This may have also been around the time they removed the defense penalty to blood for blood because ppl kept either using it right before a hard hitting room wide AoE or standing in AoE markers afterwards resulting in them instantly kissing floor.

IMO the ideal healer gameplay would have the healer frequently shifting back and forth between assisting with damage output and healing/supporting the party. However overall job design choices not just limited to healers on top of encounter design choices has resulted in this Red DPS, Blue DPS, Green DPS situation we have now which honestly doesn't feel sustainable for the longevity they've hinted at wanting this game to have content wise.