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

[Eastwall]

It needs to be understood that there is no realistic way to make healers heal for 80% of their GCDs without gating out a lot of the healers that aren't as good. Even back in HW, when every healer had far fewer OGCD options, we still didn't spend 80% of our GCDs on healing. Now, if you don't care at all about the less experienced healers, then sure, boost healing requirements and watch the role die overnight as people can't handle it and leave the role.

Why are people so opposed to a balance of the healing and damage kit? It actually would benefit both sides, reducing the healing kit by expanding the damage kit also means the healing kit would have to become more creative as there are less buttons to just dump raw potency with no interactions on.

Is that why the insane auto attack damage from hw is no longer a thing? I got a9n in roulette recently. The door boss hits So hard. The tank constantly loses half of their health from a cleave attack that van happen at the same time as auto

[AmiableApkallu]

Only if it does the same amount of damage as performing the rotation. Otherwise you DO lose something if you're doing any content with Enrages or DPS checks. This argument is invalid unless people proposing it are suggesting the more complex DPS rotation do identical or negligibly different damage.

This is simply untrue, as anyone who's cleared an Endwalker extreme can tell you. They all have enrages. They're all clearable with multiple deaths, which is most definitely not "negligibly different damage" from optimal. Same for P4S. Extra ilvl goes a long way.

Now, perhaps the story is different for week 1 and min ilvl runs. But if someone doesn't want to give themselves the advantage of extra ilvl in content that has an enrage and tight DPS checks, then I'm fine with, "git gud." (And the only content where extra ilvl isn't really an option is, what, current Ultmates and the final savage floors?)

[Mecia]

if 80% of the time you were using gcds for healing.

Okay so what about SGE and SCH being straight up worse at GCD healing. Homogenize them to match WHM/AST? Buff their GCD healing making them potentially just better than WHM/AST?

Id love to see this 80% GCD healing world go through Bardams/Tower of Zot/Dead Ends as SGE/SCH with DRK as their tank.

[Remember_The_Name]

snip

I disagree with making healers gameplay 80% GCD healing. That's just not how the game works. Especially in high end duties.

But you brought up valid points about normal content though. Current normal content is an absolute slog as a healer.

Considering how loaded the healer's kit gets up to Endwalker, this is clearly a problem in making them engaged. The problem is that rampant Item Level bloat makes old content look like a joke. We can start by making the Ilvl sync a bit more strict. Anyone who will say that doing so will weaken the "power fantasy" feeling from getting better gear... I want to politely remind you that gear in that game matters only in difficulties starting from Extreme and higher, because there are actual hard hitting mechanics and time restrictions per encounter (aka hard enrage)

Gear progression would be of a greater deal for normal content if it was as following:

• Min/entry level ilvl - Medium difficulty, need to be careful, want to upgrade your gear
• Release patch max ilvl - Easy fight, wipes are rare, more equipped players help undergeared ones.
• Further gear upgrades - Very easy, wipe is possible if a lot of players are new/weak/undergeared

But what we currently have now:

• Min/entry Ilvl - Easy, but still interesting and functions as intended by devs
• Release patch max Ilvl - Very easy, some mechanics are skipped
• Futher gear upgrades - LOL, is that even a fight? (f.e. Endsinger before they put 570 Ilvl sync on it be like), there's echo for old content but it is pretty much redundant (it is so rare to see one pop)

See the problem? Gear doesn't matter this much. Instead it just crashes the difficulty of the fight through the floor to the point where mechanics are obsolete and entire phases are skipped (f.e. Nald'Thal scale mechanic, the biggest spectacle of the fight, by the way). And playing such duties as a healer is very boring.

rely on the echo

Good thing you remembered about echo. I am really surprised that the game is so allergic to wipe people, when there is a mechanic baked into it with the sole purpose of helping players who "hit the wall".

give more jobs a revive method

Just make Phoenix Down a pop-up Duty action for others if the healer kicked the bucket. Of course, it will deduct even more from healer "power fantasy" of being needed and dependent on, but at this point there are much more outstanding issues with them to care about it.

TL,DR: Spice up the damage/mechanics a bit for normal content to make healing said content more fun and interesting.
And expand healers DPS rotation to be more diverse and engaging to make ALL content more fun to do. (high end duties included)

[Teno]

WHM - stay the way it is.
SCH - get its SB kit back (DoTs mainly)
AST - get its SB kit back (Cards mainly; becomes more focused on buffing with Cards having a short CD like 10 or 15 sec so you're more often throwing them out and trying to keep higher support/buffing uptime instead of DoT uptime)
SGE - be a Disc Priest that actually heals by properly executing a damage rotation.

I've been told, by the "more DPS buttons" people in the Healer forum (which are many of the ones in this thread), that this is unacceptable.

I've read many of your takes and usually just dismiss them, but it's the first I read that of you, and it's pretty much what most "healers who want more dps buttons" want in 4 lines, except maybe WHM. SCH is that and SGE is that too (basically pvp gameplay).

[IDontPetLalas]

Right but how many ''i want to heal not DPS'' people do content outside of DF? How many people here dont realize more damage options wouldnt hurt them because they only do DF so theyre arguing over nothing.

And if you are for some reason going outside DF then you clearly disagree with SE regarding healers, because as you said healer DPS matters. Why should they then be condemned to only a few damage buttons.

Are you asking for SE to change their philosophy in higher content and increase healing requirements?

We're been going in circles with him for 2 years regarding this ^-^

[IDontPetLalas]

I've read many of your takes and usually just dismiss them, but it's the first I read that of you, and it's pretty much what most "healers who want more dps buttons" want in 4 lines, except maybe WHM. SCH is that and SGE is that too (basically pvp gameplay).

Except that is has several exceptions- WHM as you pointed out, SCH partial yes - that's in the right direction, not necessarily *exactly SB* , given the changes in the game since SB (see discussion in the healer forum, not going to re-hash), AST- that would be a partial fix- SGE- that refence is lost on me since I never played WOW, nor do I know what a *proper* damage rotation is defined as here, however I would say that it would be healing via damage - so likely some rework.

It's *unacceptable* because it's the same message that's been repeated for several years, it's rather amusing that those who disagree are dismissed out of hand as "more DPS buttons" people.

[Mimilu]

To stick with the OP, IF I were to only focus on making healer damage rotations more interesting I would focus on differentiating them:

WHM
I would bring back elemental spells, Stone for single-burst, Aero for single-DoT, and a new spell, Flood, for their AoE-Burst. Next, I would bring back Cleric-Stance but it would instead turn WHM's elemental spells into light-based spells that both do damage (but less then their elemental counterparts) and debuff. Cast times will be adjusted for having to turn-on Cleric Stance.

Stone > Glare: Damages a selected target and decreases damage they do by 10% for 5 seconds. Just an added form of mitigation. I think, with Cleric-Stance, it might work better as a lesser version of Misery, being a burst spell you can cast while moving when you don't have Blood Lilies.
Aero > Dia: Places a DoT on a selected target and all enemies with in 5 yalms of them. This essentially is bringing back Aero III and giving WHM a second DoT to manage.
Flood > Holy: Damage all enemies with in 5 yalms of the user and stuns them for 7 seconds. Essentially, functions as it currently does.

AST
I think AST's damage rotation is fine but the whole card system needs a cleaning up: Seals and Astrodyne are lackluster, Minor Arcana is too RNG to be dependable and Lord adds to the whole "min-max and RNGesus just to still be the lowest DPS in the game" vibes of the job, and cards don't take PUG groups into consideration (double ASTs and no-melee-or-ranged DPS in party).
How I would rework the card system:
- Undraw and Astrodyne are removed
- Draw and Play now share a button.
- Additionally, Draw is losing its charges.
- Redraw will have 3 charges and a 60 second cooldown.
- Seals are being replaced with “Court Cards”: Lady, Lord, and Knaves. Like Seals, the user can hold up to 3 Court Cards. These will be used by Minor Arcana and Divination.
- Like with Seals, Cards are paired based on the Court Card they give. Each pairing and their Court Card are associated with a buff:

• Balance and Spear grant the Lady Court Card. Playing them increases the target’s damage dealt by 5% for 15 seconds. Lady increases all party members’ damage dealt by 2% for 15 seconds.
• Bole and Spire grant the Lord Court Card. Playing them increases the target’s Critical Hit by 10% for 15 seconds. Lord increases all party members’ Critical Hit by 5% for 15 seconds.
• Ewer and Arrow grant the Knave Court Card. Playing them increases the target’s Direct Hit by 15% for 15 seconds. Knave increases the party members’ Direct Hit by 6% for 15 seconds.

- Minor Arcana will now use the user’s currently held card, granting all party members within 30 yalms of the user that card’s Court Card buff. It has a cooldown of 1 second.
- Divination now uses up all the seals the user is holding (but does not require any to be used), increasing the damage dealt of all party members within 30 yalms of the user by 5% for 15 seconds. Additionally, it will grant the buffs of the Court Cards used.
- A target can have up to 3 Court Card buffs at a time with any newly applied buffs replacing the oldest. The same Court Card Buff will stack, with the stacks still counting towards the Court Card buff total.
- When starting/restarting an instance, the user will start out with a randomly drawn Card and three random Court Cards.

Also, unrelated to the card system, I would give Lightspeed a 60 second cooldown and it will now grant the user 3 stacks. Whenever the user casts a spell with a cast time, its cast time is reduced by 2.5 seconds and a stack will be used up upon cast completion.

SGE
I feel SGE could be the healer that gets an actual DPS combo. Naturally, using other spells will not cancel the combo.

Button 1 > Button 2 > Button 3: Basic, burst combo
Button 1 > Button 2 > Button 4: Does less damage then 123 but causes the user's Kardion effect to heal all allies with-in 15 yalms of their Kardia target. This gives us another interaction with Kardia.

SCH
SCH is the healer I know the least about but from my understanding it's kind of a grab bag of mechanics that either don't interact with each other or conflict with each other without any actual reward.
(I was going to write more but then I started reworking the whole job, healing included, and that seemed like too much, especially for someone who doesn't regularly play the job. Just know my idea involved removing Aetherflow, renaming the Faerie gauge to the Stratagem Gauge, making Energy Drain the only way of gaining gauge, bringing back two separate faeries, one healing and one support, making Faerie abilities change depending on which one you're using, and an abilities to switch between the two, and bringing back Miasma, Bane, and Shadow Flare. It was getting out of hand.)

[Mecia]

We're been going in circles with him for 2 years regarding this ^-^

Either wilfully ignorant or asking with a straight face for changes so big they dont even understand.

Unless he would rather they stay as they are in which case agree to disagree.

[Raikai]

I've proposed this for years and the people arguing for more DPS buttons have shot it down again and again. They PARTICULARLY hate that last one - one healer staying the same for a simpler option.

My own proposal for about two years has been this:

WHM - stay the way it is.
SCH - get its SB kit back (DoTs mainly)
AST - get its SB kit back (Cards mainly; becomes more focused on buffing with Cards having a short CD like 10 or 15 sec so you're more often throwing them out and trying to keep higher support/buffing uptime instead of DoT uptime)
SGE - be a Disc Priest that actually heals by properly executing a damage rotation.

I've been told, by the "more DPS buttons" people in the Healer forum (which are many of the ones in this thread), that this is unacceptable.

But I call it "The 4 Healers Model". Specifically, we have 4 healer Jobs and we CLEARLY have more than 1 type of Healer player. So outside of introducing specs and other stuff that FFXIV isn't going to do at this point, the best solution is to have one healer tack to each of those categories like you listed. That way, people who like a specific type of thing can jump on that healer Job, and we can enjoy this shared space together without stepping on each other's toes.

At this point, I don't think there is another solution that does address everyone's needs. It's not perfect - nothing is - but it's closer than most. Glad we can agree on it, more or less.

I don't think they'll really expand the complexity of the healer rotation, or at least nothing indicates that way. At best we might see something like Afflatus Misery that is an extra action that builds up off something and probably saved for the 2min burst.

My want, though, is that the filler rotations could be unique to each healer, while still keeping things fairly simple, and I feel that's completely in the realm of possibility - the idea that needs to be brewed is what exactly equals a "nuke + dot" model in terms of business and simplicity while offering a different feel to the job.