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

[IDontPetLalas]

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.

While your second paragraph would be a positive change, I would hope that there is something that is more interactive or unique. I'm being very vague, and not very helpful, I am not just particularly thrilled by hitting *something* then waiting for the magic 2 minute window.

[Sebazy]

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.

Don't underestimate the power of delusion and a google search. But at least they represent the game's silent majority whilst also being the supreme decider of what's hyperbole, conjecture and whatever else they fancy today. No wonder everyone hates is jealous of them . But remember, it's not them, it's everyone else (Except don't forget they represent everyone else).

Oh and 1T1H2D is faster for dungeons than 1T3D and WHM totally had a horrible MP economy in Stormblood

Did I get everything?

[Sebazy]

No.

We're not talking "do a reasonable amount of damage" - healers DO THAT NOW.

We're talking "execute a DPSer rotation".

You can "tap" all you want, I'm contesting hyperbole. Also, don't make me tap (3) and (4).

No what? No DPS checks? 100% agree xoxo

What's the amount of damage being dealt got to do with this? Is that a Ren goalpost shuffle I see coming? It's about making dealing the damage more engaging. Not dealing more damage sir.

And yet I see response after response saying that people aren't trying to ask for a full blown DPS kit (Except mmaaaaaaybe on SGE since that was kind of what was suggested)?

The reality is that it isn't hyperbole if it comes from your mouth right? That's the truth of it here.

Also remember, it's not you, it's everyone else.

[Ayer2015]

Simply they just need to pair down the amount of redundant healing abilities and give us more damage ones, with some sort of optimization mechanic/rotation.
IMO they created an environment where access to AOE healing is too prevalent, which eliminates the need for planning and skill management.

[Raikai]

While your second paragraph would be a positive change, I would hope that there is something that is more interactive or unique. I'm being very vague, and not very helpful, I am not just particularly thrilled by hitting *something* then waiting for the magic 2 minute window.

Neither I am, but at this rate, I just contended with the fact that the 2min meta is staying as it is. What we could hope for, though, is that there is more to do outside of that, becasue in fact, some jobs like DNC have absolutely no room to have new things added to the burst window.

[Renathras]

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).

Yeah, I developed the idea specifically to address everyone's concerns. It gets pushback from people who want ALL the healers to be more complex. There are a number of reasons (some don't want people to have an easier option and want to gatekeep hard content, but this isn't everyone as other reasons include stuff like "I like the aesthetics of WHM/etc and don't want it to be the simple one", "I think it would be hard/impossible to balance", "I don't want to see the EW SMN/RDM thing with people feeling pressured to change to and play the simple healer because it's more reliable", etc)

But overall, it's 3/4ths of what the "want more DPS buttons" people want/say they want. In theory, getting 75% of what you want SHOULD be considered a pretty good compromise.

But more importantly, it's really the only solution that DOES appeal to every player group. No one is left out. And the downsides are still lesser than the other proposed options.

You have something for the people who want a slim DPS kit and more healing options, you have something for the people that want to be a "full time buffer", you get something for the people who want plate spinning DoTs and timers, and you get something for people who want to be a DPS support healer (where they are mainly focused on a DPS rotation, skillfully weaving heals within their rotation to support their party with healing).

What we have now only appeals to people that don't like damage rotations, and giving all the healers more damage only appeals to the people that like damage rotations. The 4 Healers Model appeals to both as well as support/buff minded players.

It's still an incomplete solution - ideally, we'd get an encounter design rework as well - but if only one thing was done, it's probably the one that would make healing, overall, appeal to the most people. Which...SHOULD be the goal, I think.

As healer...

I don't think it's necessarily true that they all have to be the same. For all the complaints, Tanks output is pretty well balanced and they don't all have the same rotations. For example, if SCH had a second DoT that averaged out to doing some amount of damage, this can be balanced by lowering Broil's potency by that same amount (normalized over 30 sec or whatever). It's entirely possible to balance DPS when it comes to flat abilities like that. Honestly, the stuff that's harder to balance is stuff like AST Cards and Chain Strategem, since those don't have a given potency effect but change based on your party.

I also do think that part of it is interactions. For example, even something as simple as "every 3 Broil IV casts makes your next Ruin 2 do double damage" would break up the monotonous spam while adding no new abilities or complex mechanics. Relatively minor changes can have noticeable effects.

Have you tried levelling with CNJ/WHM recently? It's awful. It has fewer unique abilities than any other ARR class/job (including SMN) and is stuck spamming Stone/Glare in every combat quest and solo instance. It would be completely unacceptable to leave it in this state whilst expanding the offensive options of every other healer.

More or less. I do solo PotD runs only on healers (WHM mostly - Holy's Stun is useful sometimes and Assize/PoM have some nice burst potential in emergencies), and I did EW's MSQ on SCH (I did Ultima Thul on GNB only because I hit 90 on SCH and I had been running daily roulettes on GNB so I wanted to get useful xp from it and have all three roles ready when I finished the MSQ) as well as WHM and SGE leveling by roulettes and FATEs. I do roulettes almost exclusively on healers (I'll do SMN only if trying to do my weekly 24 mans and the healer thing is "more than 15 minutes" since that usually means there is an overabundance of healers and DPS are the in need role), including leveling ones. My starting Job was CNJ (back when my DPS kit was "Stone 1, Aero 1, Aero 2 around level 30, and Fluid Aura somewhere in there, before completely replacing Stone 1 with Stone 2") and honestly, I miss Stoneskin way more than Aero 2/3 and annoyingly short DoT durations.

The only thing I think really needs changing is that I believe WHM should get Solace at a WAY earlier level, and at the same time, get an early version of Misery that upgrades later. This is really a different discussion entirely - changing levels where things happen - rather than adding more abilities, but I think one thing WAR does EXTREMELY well is that it has basically its entire kit by level 50 (56 if you include Raw Intuition as part of its kit). After that, what it gets aren't many new abilities/buttons, but rather upgrades. Inner Chaos is just Fell Cleave reskinned doing more damage. Inner Release is Berserk. SMN works this same way with Aethercharge -> Dreadwyrm Trance -> Summon Bahamut -> Summon Bahamut/Phoenix. It establishes this core early and just upgrades things over time, adding just a few things here and there.

If I was "Dev for a day", the changes I'd make to WHM is give them a low level oGCD version of Assize at level 15 (call it..."Fluid Aura"), and also in that same level range, give them a low level AOE spell (call it..."Water"), and have these later upgrade to Assize and Holy (Stone/Aero go to Glare/Dia, so why not Water to Holy?), then give them Afflatus Solace around there, boot Stone 2 into the 30s (don't need what's essentially just a visual upgrade that early anyway), and when you give it Solace, give it "Afflatus Rebuke" or something (name irrelevant) as a low level Misery. Oh, and lower PoM's CD to 60 sec.

Collectively, this means you get the level 74 kit (which is effectively "WHM complete") by level 20, and engage with your "miniburst" more frequently.

Now, you want a healer that SUCKS at low level?

AST.

Doing PotD on AST is an exercise in misery.

Indeed, WHM is probably the most fun to do PotD on because you have the most engaging kit - since Holy's actually a tactical weapon due to the Stun, something the other healers lack, and WHM has the strongest burst between PoM and Assize, which is really powerful and takes a good chunk of health off of anything it hits (SGE has Plegma but no access to a stun and no burst "phase" CD like PoM).

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.

That's fair, I just offer this as a way of compromise to try to appeal to the most people possible.

MOST of this is talking about the filler rotation. SCH having another DoT or two and Bane, AST having weaker but shorter CD/more frequently applied Cards. The only big change here would be SGE shifting to doing more healing through its DPS rotation (via Kardia, so that wouldn't change) with the only real change being their oGCD heals would heal for less and their Kardia healing would heal for more, meaning they wouldn't be focused on oGCD heals for healing, they'd be focused on upkeeping their damage rotation (they'd still have stuff like Diagnosis/Prognosis for things like healing when the boss isn't targetable or emergencies where they screwed up their rotation, but those would be fallbacks, and the main focus of the kit would be neither GCD healing nor oGCD healing but rather managing Kardia, Kardia-related CDs like Soteria or a partywide Pankardia, and managing their damage rotation for active healing and maybe feeding into a healing gauge to "stock" for healing needs if the healing wasn't needed right that second).

And honestly, that's a lot closer to what SGE was billed at anyway. It would still do similar damage numbers to what it does now, so it wouldn't be imbalanced, it'd just be doing more work on the damage rotation but consequently less on the healing since it would be more passive.

I'm going to...

Right right, but what I'm saying is, some of the people asking for more DPS buttons HAVE staked out a position opposed to increasing healing requirements. Not all, but some.

To Ren,
You have doubtless been in a 20 minute expert dungeon...

I feel like I've said this before...

Are we talking about dungeons or Savages? No one is saying that dungeon bosses should be two/three-shotting party members left and right (ironically, this is closer to what we have - if players fail 2-3 mechanics in a row, they tend to die because of vuln stacks, it's just extremely easy to avoid this with current encounter design). I'm talking about Extremes and Savages, where Enrages exist.

The problem with upping damage is it makes high end content inaccessible to people that DON'T want to engage with the now larger damage kits. So it DOES affect those players who like the current kits since they have to change to do the content even if they're already clearing the content under the current paradigm. That's taking something away from them and not benign.

Conversely, trimming oGCD healing prevalence and increasing healing requirements (frequency, not potency, of incoming damage - this increases damage taken overall, but in a way most people want; Barbarecca Ex vs Rubicante Ex, Rubi does more actual damage, but it's spaced out and mostly in big hits that one-shot mistakes, while Barb's damage is more normalized across the fight) on the high end doesn't carry the same risks. "But people are still bored running dungeons!" Let's be real, "another button and maybe a timer" isn't going to make the people bored with 4 mans suddenly excited and engaged by them. I don't think that's a realistic argument. "Better than now" has a tendency of just being the thing people are complaining about instead in about 6 months.

I'm gonna stop you right there and point out the problems with the comparisons...

I did say it's not a perfect 1:1 comparison, did I not?

What I did point out is that there's already a near parity in terms of total abilities related to damage. The point is, the argument shouldn't be "we need more damage buttons" and should be something else, like interaction of abilities.

Suppose, for the sake of argument, the Lily gauge was changed a bit. Instead of the Blood Lily being just that pink flower, you get a Faerie Gauge. Spending Lilies gives you 10 gauge. Misery costs 30 gauge to cast. Glare gives 2 gauge per cast (10 per 5 casts or roughly every 15 seconds on average considering you use Dia/Solace/Rapture, or 40 per minute). Dia gives 1 gauge per tick (10 per 30 seconds of duration, 20 per minute). If you wanted to be frisky, you could do a few more things like PoM giving you a free Assize use without triggering the CD or reducing Misery's gauge cost by 10, or Thin Air doubling the gauge generated by the next 5 attacks or whatever.

No new damage buttons have been added, but now all your GCD abilities seem to be feeding into something, giving the kit cohesion. In practice, you can use Misery more often as a movement tool, but you can also save 90 gauge and 2 Lilies and try to offload 4 Misery in a PoM/burst window. It ups the skill ceiling a bit while changing basically nothing else.

(Also, do people actually track Infuriate? It's "don't overcap". People aren't actively thinking "If I use two Fell Cleaves here... <insert meme of woman with the chalkboard equations overlapping the image>" big brain stuff. It's "Infuriate is less than 10 sec before overcapping 2 charges, time to burn one" for most (all?) players. "It's more than WHM has" isn't really a valid criticism when it's not a thing at all.)

But yeah, the point being, the difference between WAR and WHM isn't really in number of abilities, it's in interactions of those abilities. Though I do think it'd be nice to cut PoM's CD to 60 sec. I'm with you on that.

Right but how many ''i want to heal not DPS'' people do content outside of DF?

And how many do?

Sides, again, my position is the 4 Healers Model. Then people that want a complex DPS rotation on a healer have access to it (SGE, for example) while those who do not want it have access to that instead (WHM, for example), leading to both groups being happy at the same time, yeah?

In order for White Mage to be on Warrior’s level...

I like my idea better. Everything costing 50 gauge is boring. Ironically, SCH had the right idea with ShB Fey Blessing...so of course they removed that.

For all healers...

And parties can always slow down to doing single pack pulls if a pull is too much. That option always exists if things are too rough. Until we became overpowered due to sync and abilities, there were a lot of dungeons in this game where parties DIDN'T do wall to wall pulls unless they had VERY good tanks and healers, as well as solid DPSers to burn the mobs before the tank/healer ran out of CDs. That was considered entirely normal. And when they did bigger pulls, the healer would be devoting far more GCDs to outright healing the tank.

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.

People not wanting damage rotations aren't opposed to balancing healing and damage - we do that right now. If the party needs healing, I need to throw a Medica/Cure 3 instead of a Glare. Indeed, many of us are fine with this and actually prefer this BECAUSE the damage rotations are simplistic. I hated Cleric dancing in HW. When they simplified the damage kits in ShB, I felt far better throwing Glares and Dia upkeep than the HW incarnation. This was, in fact, what Yoshi P said their goal was. It succeeded. People who didn't feel good with swapping/filling with damage in HW and SB felt good doing so in ShB (and EW). Mission accomplished successfully. There were FAR more "Cure/Medica spammers" in HW and SB than in ShB and EW since in the latter, transitioning between healing and damage is seamless. When healing is needed, I can cast heals, then I can go back to casting Glare when healing isn't needed. No wind-ups, no broken combos, no dropped doublecast mechanic. It feels good and it's smooth, so people do it. People that, before, were worried about their tank dropping so would keep them targeted and cast Cure over and over feel they can cast Glare and apply Dias BECAUSE the damage kit is simple.

If the damage kit becomes complex, that mental calculus shifts. You have the people that get locked on their damage rotation not healing enough (sort of the "I'll raise you when my melee combo is over!" effect that RDM has), and on the other side of things, people worried they'll get too focused on their damage rotation. I remember one night probably being a BIT too sleepy to do a 4 man but doing one anyway and apologizing to the tank (who thought it was hilarious) that I got a BIT too lost in the moment of Holy spam under PoM trying to burn a pack down. More involved damage rotations make that risk higher all the time. So the result is (what I did then, too) stepping back and focusing more on healing and doing less damage.

In this sense, players balance healing and damage BETTER when the damage kit is slim. The more involved the damage kit becomes, the less people will throw rocks between heals. The people who want more DPS will do more of it and love it, but you'll start to see a lot more "curespam" healers in DF if you make the damage kits more complex, counterintuitive as that may seem to you.

This is, again, why I think the 4 Healers Model is the answer, btw.

Then you DO get some healer Jobs where you have more damage and less healing buttons for folks like you, and some that have more healing and slim damage kits like now for folks like me. Everyone wins.

To date, there's only been one good argument against this - what if people like aesthetics of the Job that doesn't have their preferred playstyle - but (a) this would be an acceptable sacrifice compared to the alternatives and (b) more importantly, this is already true for other roles and for all MMOs; suppose someone likes melee combos but likes BLM's aesthetic, they're SOL since BLM isn't ever going to get a 1-2-3 combo. No other role is held to that aesthetic argument, so holding healers to it makes no sense and it stifles design anyway since, taken to the logical conclusion, it would require that all four healers always have exactly the same rotation.

The 4 Healers Model honestly is the best way to address the overall problem - especially if we are dead set against changes to encounter design being possible, but also if we do both.

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?)

If you have a static of good players, sure. If you're doing stuff in PF, that damage is relevant. And if it's not relevant, then why do you need to do more for doing the "git gud" rotation?"

Also, I reject the idea of changing a Job to be different then calling people who opposed the change "bad" when you robbed them of what they had before. It's like the reverse of SB-ShB SCH and ShB-EW SMN. Changing Jobs out from under people is bad. Changing an entire role out from under people without giving them recourse is worse. We've already seen every major Job change other than MNK's latest one (which WAS disliked in the initial stage of 5.4) leads to people being angry, not happier. The only exceptions are MNK after the second stage (people hated the initial transition) and debatably SMN which is way more loved now by more people, but also ABJECTLY hated by a lot, and the change was making it simpler (not more complex) to make it more popular. All the other changes, both making more complex and making more simple, have led to alienation and middling to bad receptions.

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.

Not sure I understand.

My personal idea is for ONE healer Job to stay as it is now (probably WHM since there are a lot of reasons for it - it's already the most straightforward healer, it already has Lilies/Misery, starting at level 1 makes sense for it to be the most straightforward for new healers, etc etc; the main thing as I said above would be changing the levels you learn some things) while changing the other three so they aren't "WHM with different visuals" and each have a different rotational focus. Then, players can pick the one that resonates with them best.

...

Petty as ever. Don't ever change. <3

Also, if it somehow eluded you to this point: There are other people that think like I do. And I've never claimed to be a silent majority. What I do claim is to not be the ONLY person saying/thinking what I'm saying. It's you guys insisting no one disagrees with you, or if anyone does, they're ignorant and shouldn't be talking anyway.

What's the amount of damage being dealt got to do with this? Is that a Ren goalpost shuffle I see coming? It's about making dealing the damage more engaging. Not dealing more damage sir.

My god, the bad faith with you. I will just say this:

If you make a more complex rotation such that DOING WHAT WE DO NOW (Dia once per 30 sec, Glare filler) DOES NOT DO THAT SAME DAMAGE, then that means DOING WHAT WE DO NOW does less damage, yes? That means doing the change DOES MORE DAMAGE vs someone, after the change, continuing to play AS THEY DO NOW.

You're smart, Sebazy, smarter than that, anyway. So I can only assume you're heckling unless you're just that willfully obtuse...

The rest I won't dignify with a response. I'd ask you to be better, but I fear at this point you lack the capability.

EDIT:

Damn I knew I forgot a Ren buzzword

Thank you for proving the point.

[Sebazy]

My god, the bad faith with you.

Damn I knew I forgot a Ren buzzword

[Mecia]

Oh okay so any additions to damage kits just means rocket science immediately. We had some 300 IQ geniuses playing healers back in HW i guess.

[ty_taurus]

Everything costing 50 gauge is boring.

You're not wrong. I was just saying what White Mage is missing to be on Warrior's level of complexity; just having a fell cleave gauge isn't exactly the most exciting or interesting thing you could do. It's better than nothing, I'd say, but that's about it.

That's true for Warrior as well, though. While plenty of people seem fine with Warrior being a simple job, even people who are fine with its simplicity are still asking for a little something extra, particularly in regards to having something else to use the beast gauge on so its not just the fell cleave gauge. At least, that's according to the feedback for Warrior from the wishlist data.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

WHM vs WAR comparison will never cease to amuse me. The only comparable between the two are the fact that both job's initial starts with 'W' and both are dubbed as 'the braindead' of the role they occupies by the community.

Peel a centimeter deeper and anybody's capable to rub a pair of braincell together could immediately tell they're not even comparable in complexity... unless y'know, reaching for a hyperbole. Wait... lmao.

[...]Oh and 1T1H2D is faster for dungeons than 1T3D and WHM totally had a horrible MP economy in Stormblood

Did I get everything?

Slidecast.

6.0. WHM MP Economy was 'fine'.