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

[TheDustyOne]

Honestly, while a complete separation of kits for both regular PvE and high-end PvE is very likely a disaster, there could be merit in having small traits for existing abilities that you can choose from and take into high-end content. That could potentially diversify the kits for people into high-end raiding. Sure, people will very quickly pick out the best possible build for the DPS jobs, but for healers in particular, there could be more interesting stuff to explore there.

Assuming it's balanced well enough, I think it'd be fair to just have those options be available in casual content as well, I still don't see a real need to keep the two separate. I just dislike the idea that someone will get used to how a job plays, but suddenly be told that playstyle isn't available in this content in particular. PvP is the only real exception for that because it is fundamentally different, while casual PvE is still using the same foundations as hardcore PvE, the dance is just more intricate.

[Lailani_Fey]

I'll be brutally honest; [...]

The idea would not be able to stand on its own, let's agree on that.
Exploring it further however there's a couple more points that have partially already been brought up and that would have synergy:
1. Reduce skill bloat. A lot of healer abiltities are redundant. Free up some buttons to make the role more accessible.
2. Leave the core of healer abilities that make FF feel like FF untouched. Keep Gcd heals without Cds generally. Allow for responsive gameplay with ogcds.
3. Leverage the syncing system to make old content stay relevant. By keeping job diversity per expansion, new and old players can (re-)experience their favourites together. I would personally love to go back to SB SCH or HW AST occasionally.

The goal is to have an everlasting staple of skills while different expansions shift focus in and explore different directions.

And usually the firsts of new raids per expansion are notoriously easy to get you accustomed to your skillset already (Alte Roite, Eden Prime, Eric).
I would of course keep roulette-reachable content out of this.

[BelegErkhten]

A lot of healer abiltities are redundant. Free up some buttons to make the role more accessible.

Redundancy is a GOOD thing when your job is to keep people alive, especially when the opportunity cost to use said skills is ZERO

[Lailani_Fey]

[...]there could be merit in having small traits for existing abilities that you can choose from and take into high-end content. That could potentially diversify the kits for people into high-end raiding. [...]

Yes, I would love to get away from that single truth that for example the Balance propagates.
Everything is about maxing out for highest dps. A thought that has influenced current fight design greatly. In old content where dps checks are lenient and the goal is to just beat the fight, it is much more freeform. For example I love playing healers with 2.1 GCD since that feels responsive.
But having tools like Synastry in let's say HW because those raids are full on double tank busters is definitely a possibility.

[Nizzi]

I don't understand

This is a common occurrence for you, isn't it?

[SargeTheSeagull]

I’ve never seen more obvious bait in my life

[Aravell]

I more or less agree that a lot of the heal abilities are redundant, I've asked for a lot of the oGCDs to be pruned personally

I don't think they actually have to go full-on pruning on OGCD stuff, I think they could be repurposed to bring resource management back as a healer system. If they add MP costs or limit them in other ways, most of the OGCD stuff can stay as they would feed into the mini-game of resource management. Of course, in an ideal world, the strongest OGCDs should have the heftiest costs so they would be actual last resorts.

[TheDustyOne]

I don't think they actually have to go full-on pruning on OGCD stuff, I think they could be repurposed to bring resource management back as a healer system. If they add MP costs or limit them in other ways, most of the OGCD stuff can stay as they would feed into the mini-game of resource management. Of course, in an ideal world, the strongest OGCDs should have the heftiest costs so they would be actual last resorts.

Fair, SCH has always had a large number of oGCDs, but it was always managed by Aetherflow, so it wasn't particularly egregious and had to be thought through in some way compared to simple cooldowns.

[ForsakenRoe]

Long one, lots to catch up on, sorry to all in advance there is no TLDR

Strange, where did I complain about 2%?
I complained about 10% and 20%.
Or did you mean when I was quoting someone pointing out that complaining about 2% is the equivalent of complaining about crit variance?

I'm assuming it was because of this:

ForsakenRoe has proposed a WHM to you in the past where the difference between using the full DPS kit and only casting Glare would've been about 3%, that's an abysmally small difference even compared to the Warrior logs, and yet you rejected that for being too complex and/or punishing. Despite the fact that it would be less punishing than CURRENT WHM if you didn't want to use Dia and Assize. Anyway, the point I'm getting at is that the discrepancy can be down to number tuning and job requirements rather than just skill differences, otherwise you may as well say that SMN is just as hard as NIN because they have a similar gap between least and best skilled.

I'm thinking more like 1%, not 3%.

Dusty might have been slightly off the mark in 'how you'd get that Roe 3% difference' due to not remembering the design fully (understandable since it's someone else's ramblings), but you took issue with the % number given without knowing that they were mistaken in the numbers too. You 'complained about a whole 2% DPS difference' like Chair tells us all not to. That reminds me, I have a video to watch. Also yeh, crit variance is probably higher than the damage swing of 2%, depending on what it hits. The extra damage you get if your Misery's all crit vs none crit is ridiculous, but that's an issue across all jobs because SE thought it'd be a good idea to load every job with 4digit potency values. Why does Communio need to be 1000? Why does Phantom Rush need to be 1150 or whatever it is now?

Aside: There's no "playing incorrectly to prove a point". It's "playing correctly under the current system" vs "playing that same way under your proposed changes". Imagine if every DPS was given Vermedica and expected to press it every 10 sec and some DPSer refused saying "I picked this role because I want to DPS and juggle a complex DPS rotation, not to be a healbot" and someone said "oh, you can play the same way, you'll just be playing incorrectly to prove a point". That obviously wouldn't be taken well.

3) I think my big thing with this is "Blessing of the Elements" could just be Presence of Mind. See PLD. One of the big complaints right now is "Why do we need two separate buttons for Fight or Flight and Requiescat?" I feel like BoE + PoM would largely end up in a similar boat. And I've already told you my thoughts on Water/Banish vs Assize.

5) I somewhat agree. Honestly, there are just a few things from your design I think changing would make it entirely palatable to me. /shrug Granted, I also think just readding Aero 3 to WHM would work, so...

1: The issue is the interpretation of the line 'playing that same way under your proposed changes'. You could argue 'that means doing 2 Dias and 22 Glares, which is what the current rotation is down to the GCD'. I could argue it means the philosophy behind how the rotation currently is pieced together, that is 'refresh Dia when it falls off, fill with Glares as needed'. They are both 'correct', but one of them specifies an exact number of Dia's to use, so if the 'expected Dia per minute' amount changes, then it breaks that interpretation. If SE made Dia 60s so we used only one per minute, the way you word it would mean refreshing Dia early, causing damage losses (because you want to play the same way as now). The way I word it is that 'you refresh when it falls off' regardless of it's duration, and so the interpretation is scaleable to the number of Dia's expected. If it were a 6s duration and we had to press 10 per minute my interpretation's wording would still hold up. Just a quirk of language I guess

The Vermedica example also relies on SE balancing content in such a way that said Vermedica is mandatory to use, in order to clear the content. It's been shown, with data/evidence/maths, that healer damage contributions are close to last on the list of 'we wiped cos we did not have enough damage, what can we improve'. Since SE does not balance content in such a way as to enforce optimal use of every button (as evidenced by me having 65ish% DOT uptime and 31 Succors in first clears of things), I would imagine that the healing of Vermedica would likewise not be required. I would also, unlike the extreme example, assume that SE would make such a Vermedica skill be something more like 'if you use Vermedica to save people, you're compensated by building a large amount of White Mana, to help you get your next melee phase faster (which helps offset the damage loss of the spell)', not 'you have to press it or your rotation stops working' or whatever you're suggesting. Also, this Vermedica would presumably be a GCD otherwise the whole comparison is just apples to oranges, but it kind of already is, because you're comparing 'lose a full GCD of damage' to 'lose 40p per 15sec (by casting Glare instead of Banish)'

3: It could just be POM, if we wanted it to be the absolute most bland stale bread possible. The reason FOF and Req get that question asked, is because they do the same thing: Activate a burst window. I agree, I don't think Req should exist in it's current form. I think it should be made a GCD, have one stack removed (so it gives 3 stacks) and deal big damage (cos it's now a GCD), gaining a trait to change it to AOE and get a small potency bump at 80 as it evolves into Confiteor. Thus, rather than Confiteor being a part of the burst combo, it's the starter for it, rather than weaving FOF>Req>Confiteor it'd just turn into FOF>Confiteor and everything would carry on as normal. But it'd allow for Req to feel good as a button, atm it does only 300p, I'd make it like 750-800, upgrading to whatever Conf is atm at 80 (900 iirc?).

Back to WHM though, the problem I have with your amendment of having BOTE and POM be 'one upgrades to the other' is that they just don't fulfill the same function. BOTE is a heal with a refund attached. POM is a self-haste buff to make 2min windows have more damage. The two are just not comparable to each other. BOTE/Quake and friends, if anything, is more like Rapture/Misery. If BOTE were an upgrade of POM, we'd use it at 2min, never deviating from it, and it would not have a heal attached (or if it did, it'd be incidental like Assize's). I find that to be very sterile and bland, and I can guarantee that it wouldn't solve anything about why people are having issues with healers at the moment. Part of the reason I designed it that way is because I enjoy the flexibility of moving 'when to build to a Misery' based on damage in the fight, I can bank Lilies for hard hitting sections, or spend them roughly once per 15-20s to keep them generating. There's very little optimization to be done with POM, because it's so set in stone. There's a lot more in Rapture/Misery use timings, because of how they're designed, allowing movement openings, being MP cost free (so it helps MP economy), etc. As for Assize/Water, I view it like when we lost a dungeon per patch. Sure, we got something cool in it's place (Ultimates), but let's be real, we'd rather have the Ultimates AND the dungeon, if devtime weren't a limited resource. Shifting from 'we have Assize' to 'we have Water, and it upgrades to Assize' doesn't hold as much excitement as 'we have Water and it's new, and we also still have Assize as it was before'. Also, Water/Assize would work differently in terms of targetting, Water's like Glare (or Gravity when it upgrades to Flood), Assize is around yourself. One of the things that angers me more than any other in this game is SAM's AOE changing from a Cone to a Circle based on level, because going back to old content suddenly changes the way it targets, I wouldn't want that on WHM. Unless you're suggesting that Water work like Assize too which... IDK I've seen some wipes caused by 'oops my very large AOE radius hit your Doll in TEA' (had to hold my Assize there too)

5: It's probably a case of 'if we could see it in action, we'd be able to make a much better judgement of how good/bad it is', because atm we are arguing over something that neither of us fully understand the gameplay of. I can sort of picture it, because I came up with it, but there might well be some issue that I didn't foresee with it, that a playtest would reveal. Just readding Aero3 would be better than nothing, sure, but I think we should be aiming higher. After all, as others have said, it'd be tantamount to admitting that 'we spend 4 years going in a circle, only to end up at where we were in SB damage kit wise'. I think it's better to go bigger, so that the announcement will have much more hype. Remember 'we didn't know what to do with SCH'? SO imagine at the job action trailer reveal, option A:

"We received feedback that healer players often felt like they needed more to do in their downtime, so we readded Aero 3."

versus option B:

"We received feedback that healer players often felt like they needed more to do in their downtime. Because of this, we have added Water, which upgrades to Banish, since many of our players who enjoy the lore noted that WHM does not have Water spells in their repertoire now, but used to in the past. We also decided to add a new gauge element to WHM, built by using damage or healing spells. This gauge can then be spent on a powerful healing tool, and using this tool allows you to unleash the elements with Quake, Flood and Tornado, the pinnacle spells of the Earth, Water and Wind elements. Additionally, we have added Afflatus Sanctuary and Afflatus Bastion, allowing you to convert Lilies into Shielding instead of pure healing power, allowing the WHM versatility in how to sustain their party's health."

Both would be cheered, I'm sure. But while the cheers for Aero 3's animation appearing on the screen would be loud, SE would rake that amount of cheering in, three times, by having an Earth and a Water equivalent animation too, I'd bet. And for the healers who prefer the healing side of the healer role, well, that's three whole healing tools announced right there, which have synergy with your other healing tools (eg Plenary would cause Afflatus Sanctuary, the AOE shield, to also heal for 200, turning it into something more akin to Succor where it heals and applies a shield)

[TheDustyOne]

I’ve never seen more obvious bait in my life

In my defence, it's 3am for me and I'm sleepy.

Also I've seen some people with healing takes about as hot as this and meant it.