Would you rather healers get more complex healing kits or more complex DPS kits?

[VerdeLuck]

You are not going to rework the game into removing the damage gcds on healers and stop parsing culture 10 years into the life of an MMO, accept what is there and work with it.

[Renathras]

...

I don't entirely disagree.

The thing is, there is no consensus.

For everyone who wants more damage actions there's probably a person that doesn't, a person that wants more healing actions, a person that thinks we have too many healing actions, and some poor guy that likes things as they are and doesn't want any changes, and yet another person who's entirely ambivalent. "shared enough" is a difficult thing to establish. If 5% of healers wanted more DPS actions, would that be sufficient to add more? To one healer Job or all of them? What if it was 10%? 30%? 50%? But what if 5% did not? Or 10/30/50%? Do we have to make such changes to all the healer Jobs at the same time? If, for example, we decided to add two more healer actions or so, would we have to do so for all healer Jobs? Could one get 3 and another 1? Could one get 0? And what of people that don't want more actions but rather want more interactions, like wanting a Diacloud proc that, when used, refreshes the CD on Tetragrammaton?

My concern is more that what some people want isn't what everyone wants, so solutions that just do that while leaving aside the stuff that really needs changing aren't good ideas. At best, they make no improvement to the situation, and at worse, they make it worse than it already is. As I say, I don't like DPS rotations when I play a healer. Some people do, some people don't, so a solution should have something for both. If, for example, they just put another DoT on all healers that had to be refreshed every 4 GCDs, I think that would be a worse situation than what we have right now. To some, they'd like it better, others would think it worse. Which isn't to say doing so on a healer or two is bad, but it is to say that doing it on all of them is bad, especially if there's no actual work on any of the rest of the problem. That's the entire crux of my generally proffered idea, too.

But at the least, we aren't going to get universal agreement, and we don't really have a good way to get a general feel other than "people don't agree". If even not everyone agrees that healing is a problem, it's hard to rally around a solution. Especially one that only satisfies one subset of the whole.

Fair?

...

Yeah, I agree it is...odd. I get not wanting a single point of failure to be healers in casual content, but we have so many and such powerful GCDs, that shouldn't even be an issue to begin with, and if the other roles aren't treated that way themselves...well...

OGCD heals are what people asked for though,...

SOME people.

Though I don't even think the part about choosing healing or damage is true. It's a pitiful bit of optimization, but high end SCH players swear by Energy Drain working off just that kind of question.

The statement that you quoted seems to be a real fear/paranoia of his...

How is stating what seems to be true "fear/paranoia"? Around half a dozen people have said they don't think the healing side is the problem, but most everyone else seems to agree it is.

My problem with Ty's statement is what I said.

And if we're going to ask for incremental changes, why not ask for incremental changes to the HEALING side instead of the damage side? Especially since the damage side changes you suggest are NOT universally recognized as positive?

That's half the problem, isn't it? DPS loss should really be a consideration for DPS jobs?

Very much so. It's part of what led us here, and part of what is keeping us trapped here: Treating healers as "green DPS" instead of a distinct role with distinct objectives and mechanics.

Hence why you make the damage ogcds tied to the healing kit. Kind of like how sage builds part of their gauge by having shields break from damage. I'm sure they can figure out a way to make it unique for the other healers.

We need to change the parsing meta. Combat needs to change. Healers and tanks are boring at the minute because they are just glorified dps with some extra buttons.

100% agreed.

Lilies already work this way, and WHM is the most played healer in the game by all the data we have. Clearly it's doing something right.
(For those thinking it's iconic and starts at level 1 - sure...but Black Mage is also iconic and starts at level 1, but is the least played of the Casters by the playerbase overall, and even an often distant second behind SMN for raiders. WHM being most played DOES indicate it's doing something that appeals to a lot of people.)

You are not going to rework the game into removing the damage gcds on healers and stop parsing culture 10 years into the life of an MMO, accept what is there and work with it.

This kind of thinking is why we have the problems we have.

[ForsakenRoe]

I think it stems from a sort of "it's not fun to die because my healer can't heal" which I think has been the driving force behind tanks becoming so absurdly broken sustain wise this expac (how is WAR being able to heal a teammate every 25s with Nascent part of the job fantasy at all? Shouldn't they be 'too angry' to deal with someone else's booboos?) and casual content hitting like a wet fish but it really does make most content sort of "children's block shape sorter" for healing oGCDs. Put the circle block in the circle slot, put the triangle in the triangle, etc,.

Unless you're a WHM, in which case no matter what mechanic it is, it goes in the Rapture slot

"I'd rather them spend 2 years working on all of it and release it all at once then slap us with an awful DPS-lite rotation and we have to suffer with that forever."

I found Ty's statement to be the most realistic way of working with the development team. It should be possible to ask for incremental changes that would introduce some positive changes, I would prefer that to some 'big bang" approach, first of all everyone suffers with the status quo with the wait, and secondly there is no guarantee whatsoever that the development accurately makes the changes that we want- then fixes take more time to implement, and with the scope of changes- all healer jobs, possibly encounter design? That's a big risk

Exactly, what if they take, say, the whole of 7.0 to get data and implement a change for 8.0, only for it to suck and be somehow worse than what we have now? I'd also rather have small, frequent steps towards a solution so that if one step is 'not good', it can be iterated on sooner to treat the problem before it gets compounded on.

Hence why you make the damage ogcds tied to the healing kit. Kind of like how sage builds part of their gauge by having shields break from damage. I'm sure they can figure out a way to make it unique for the other healers.

Well, I did post such an idea, but certain people really don't want to have any extra growth for WHM (unless it's yet another healing button that is surplus to requirements). Also it'd be a GCD healing tool, with a refund, like Misery, that way WHM would get an identity for once: compile all your 'damage refunds' and blow everything in raidbuffs

And if we're going to ask for incremental changes, why not ask for incremental changes to the HEALING side instead of the damage side? Especially since the damage side changes you suggest are NOT universally recognized as positive?

Additional healing changes will likely be very binary, just like healing itself: either it's enough to shake up the way we play, or it isn't and we carry on as normal. It will be very hard to 'notice' the change, leading to people potentially asking 'wasnt healing meant to be getting harder? When was that meant to happen'. Couple of extra buttons in the damage rotation is immediately noticeable as a change, as evidenced by the fact that the mere thought of it occurring causes such contention. And it would open up more design space for new interactions, than another healing skill would allow for, in followup patches (assuming SE actually did iterate, instead of 'rest on laurels'). For example, in one patch they add a new GCD to WHM with a 15s CD and reduce Dia to 12s, then next patch they say 'ok now people are used to that, here's a new system that plays around those previous changes: a healing tool that is charged by using those damage skills'. It wouldn't make sense to add the healing tool and it's associated gauge before the things that build said gauge, would it? Instead, it'd be made into another boring bland 60s CD, and we'd be back where we are now

Or for AST, changing Major Arcana to have the unique effects I mentioned, and if 'the cards all deal damage, but in different ways, and this allows them to have unique tertiary effects like mit or MP restore' goes down well with the players, then they can then move on to the bigger change of reworking Minor Arcana to be interesting in similar fashion

[Aexnidaral]

Given the state of the game, I feel like it's easier to have more complex DPS kits for Healers; but my personal preference would be to have more complex healing kits with more damage going out.

[ForsakenRoe]

Think so?
I thought the P5-8S changes were very noticeable.

Not to mention "couple extra buttons in the damage rotation" may be noticeable BUT NOT GOOD. And they also may not be impactful. As you're fond of saying, players that don't want to use them (should be able to) continue not using them, at which point, what was noticed? That we have extra buttons we don't use?

We already have design space for interactions. "Holy Might" and "Diacloud procs" are two extremely straightforward ones that require nothing new at all. We aren't using the design space we have, so what makes you think we'll get more than "Here are two more DoTs that do 10 potency over time. Have fun?" instead of something...useful?

Again, you know my position - change some, leave some - on the DPS side, but not only would just throwing more DPS buttons at all the healers alienate people (more than just me), it wouldn't fix the problems, and would make the situation worse. You MIGHT actually get more of a healer shortage, not less, as folks leave the role and wait 2 more years. "But they did that with SCH!" Which is why I shouldn't have to explain to anyone why doing it again would be bad...

[EDIT: Note here I'm not saying we CAN'T address DPS buttons on healers; but I AM saying we CANNOT have that be the only thing we do. That could make playing healers worse than now. If you slap me with some extra damage buttons but otherwise change NOTHING about healing, encounter design, etc, I just will not play healer for the expansion.

Yes, and you prove my point. Abyssos was so sudden and such a big jump in 'extra healing needed', albeit in the 'wrong way' design wise, that it was the 'enough to shake up the way we play' side of the binary. Unfortunately, the 'shake up' for an alarmingly sized portion of the healer base was that they would be doing the fights on a different role, or not at all in some cases. If we go by the assumption that SE would gradually increase healing required over time, so people can acclimatize, then there will be several patches of 'this is not enough, it still feels the same', followed by a sudden 'actually wait this is too much go back' when it turns out they overshot it

Having the buttons there that you don't use, might well prompt some players who think they wouldn't use them, to use them. Doubly so if SE attaches additional inter-connectivity to them. Holy Might has more potential than Diacloud, IMO. Diacloud, without a Sharpcast equivalent, runs the risk of people mistakenly believing they'll get a proc before the natural reset is demanded, and thus forget when the DOT will fall off, leading to much higher amounts of DOT downtime by accident. If people manage to have issues with checking to see if Dia needs refreshing when it has a static 30s duration (spoilers, I'm one of them sometimes), then it's going to be awful when the 'time until next refresh' keeps getting reset early, and doubly so if your reset is meant to be done naturally during a movement phase in current game. The same could be said of other designs, but this Diacloud one would lead to big big damage losses by comparison.

I don't remember timeS, plural, when they added more damage buttons to a healer, and people quit because of it. I only remember times when one damage tool was replaced by another (eg your comparison of Aero3 and Misery), and times when tools were removed. In fact, the one time I remember when a tool WAS added to a healer, it was immediately after it's removal (Energy Drain) and it was the removal, not the readdition of the skill, that caused the exodus. I do also remember great reception to Misery, even in it's 'not damage neutral' form in SHB, to Purgation in 6.1's trailer, and to SGE's entire reveal, both the sneak preview video (the one in Gubal Library) and the job actions trailer, where they used 6 different 'attack skills'.

Last point, probably true, but then again, that's why I did not just suggest damage buttons for WHM. If everything I asked for got implemented, it'd get a new heal, two new shield buttons (one ST for the TBs, one AOE for raidwides), a 1min mitigation to compete vs AST's bubble, multiple changes to lower levels to make gameplay there feel better like making Rapture level 70 (so it can be used in ultimates, the mobility diff of WHM vs AST in UCOB is disgusting), making Medica 2 cause Cure 3 to have halved MP costs for it's duration, removal of Cure and Medica1 once they've outlived their usefulness in levelling, a lower level version of Misery to get people into the swing of the Misery gameplay earlier, and Divine Seal as a healing throughput CD from level 40 onwards (evolving into Temperance at 80). That's a lot more stuff than just 'more damage buttons', it's asking for a more well rounded kit that has room to breathe and grow going forward

[HappyHubris]

Neither, just a s**t-ton more incoming damage. It's boring because you're not healing much.

[Shurrikhan]

Neither, just a s**t-ton more incoming damage. It's boring because you're not healing much.

As someone who's healed in MMOs where MP concerns and incoming damage mean that you're spending 70+% of your time spamming a certain healing button, spam doesn't inherently feel better from its moving bars up instead of down. Filler/fallback spam is spam, regardless of it's putting out damage or healing. Interrelated decision-making tends to be the key to letting even a small kit feel engaging, but XIV heals are just not set up to be capable of that no matter how high you crank up healing requirements, especially without the competing offensive soft-CDs and MP concerns we used to have (which were themselves useful mechanics only because we still had MP enough and low enough damage intake to actually allow for those trade-offs and variety in button presses).

[HappyHubris]

As someone who's healed in MMOs where MP concerns and incoming damage mean that you're spending 70+% of your time spamming a certain healing button, spam doesn't inherently feel better from its moving bars up instead of down. Filler/fallback spam is spam, regardless of it's putting out damage or healing. Interrelated decision-making tends to be the key to letting even a small kit feel engaging, but XIV heals are just not set up to be capable of that no matter how high you crank up healing requirements, especially without the competing offensive soft-CDs and MP concerns we used to have (which were themselves useful mechanics only because we still had MP enough and low enough damage intake to actually allow for those trade-offs and variety in button presses).

Strong disagree on "70% of of your time spamming a certain healing button," because a lot of incoming damage often requires switching up tools and making decisions on throughput vs efficiency, using procs, using mitigation, deploying cooldowns, building resource layers, etc.

And it's way, way better than spamming glare or broil or whatever for more than 70% of casts. People who play this game like to pooh pooh actual MMO healing, then go back to hitting that glare key like a woodpecker.

[IDontPetLalas]

Strong disagree on "70% of of your time spamming a certain healing button," because a lot of incoming damage often requires switching up tools and making decisions on throughput vs efficiency, using procs, using mitigation, deploying cooldowns, building resource layers, etc.

And it's way, way better than spamming glare or broil or whatever for more than 70% of casts. People who play this game like to pooh pooh actual MMO healing, then go back to hitting that glare key like a woodpecker.

There are a considerable number of options in some other games, such as skill trees or similar features, that do not exist in this games, which support multiple choices and styles of "MMO healing" so if I'm likely to "poo poo " anything, it's healer design decisions such as the skills that were removed in this game, so now you see how the designer's changes to healing job design interact with encounter design, and healers making use of one of 2 skills in downtime isn't their fault.

Agree by the way that constantly spending 70% of your time healing is not really interesting, it's more interesting when it's thrown in for intense periods.

[HappyHubris]

There are a considerable number of options in some other games, such as skill trees or similar features, that do not exist in this games, which support multiple choices and styles of "MMO healing" so if I'm likely to "poo poo " anything, it's healer design decisions such as the skills that were removed in this game, so now you see how the designer's changes to healing job design interact with encounter design, and healers making use of one of 2 skills in downtime isn't their fault.

Agree by the way that constantly spending 70% of your time healing is not really interesting, it's more interesting when it's thrown in for intense periods.

You don't need skill trees if execution is challenging. The choices are on what tool to use when, not on how your character is built.

Again, I'm floored that people think that adapting their healing to different stimuli is "not really interesting," but glare spam is "super fun yeahyeahyeah." It's like healers in this game have Stockholm syndrome. If DPS spent 70% of their time spamming a buff button because the bosses could only absorb X damage per minute, would players similarly be placid?