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

[SargeTheSeagull]

Title. Would you rather...

1. Heal kits stay more of less as simple as they are but their damage kits/party buffs get put back to HW/SB levels of complexity/interaction (not copy/paste those expac's but roughly that many damage buttons/interactions). Stuff like a tiny AoE that buff's people's damage, SCH getting its dots back, AST cards going back to how they were in SB, Aero 3 coming back. etc

2. Damage kits stay as they are (30 sec dot, one button spam), but their healing abilities are made significantly more complex. No more "press one button to heal everyone to full". More unique interactions, passives, cooldowns etc. Stuff like a CD where everyone's HP in an area is averaged out, a debuff on the boss heals anyone when they attack the boss, AoE heals cost way more MP/are on a cooldown. etc.

And yes, a mix of 1 and 2 is absolutely allowed and frankly, that's my preference.

[Zeastria]

I dont want more complex healing, nor complex dps rota...or many buttons..
I want higher HEALING REQUIREMENTS such has:
1) Bosses deal more auto atk damage
2) Remove self healing from dps/tank
3) Raid-wide dmg happens more often
4) Random damage spikes.
5) Mech that evolve around dispelling
6) AOE DoT DMG!

[RitsukoSonoda]

I dont want more complex healing, nor complex dps rota...or many buttons..
I want higher HEALING REQUIREMENTS such has:
1) Bosses deal more auto atk damage
2) Remove self healing from dps/tank
3) Raid-wide dmg happens more often
4) Random damage spikes.
5) Mech that evolve around dispelling
6) AOE DoT DMG!

Yeah, I feel the kit's themselves aren't the issue and that the real problem is the battles/encounters/duties themselves with a small amount caused by additions to some non-healer job kits.

[ChrysOCE]

I dont want more complex healing, nor complex dps rota...or many buttons..
I want higher HEALING REQUIREMENTS such has:
1) Bosses deal more auto atk damage
2) Remove self healing from dps/tank
3) Raid-wide dmg happens more often
4) Random damage spikes.
5) Mech that evolve around dispelling
6) AOE DoT DMG!

Yes, please.

[Renathras]

I dont want more complex healing, nor complex dps rota...or many buttons..
I want higher HEALING REQUIREMENTS such has:
1) Bosses deal more auto atk damage
2) Remove self healing from dps/tank
3) Raid-wide dmg happens more often
4) Random damage spikes.
5) Mech that evolve around dispelling
6) AOE DoT DMG!

I'm more or less with this. I think our kits are actually fine, the encounter designs just don't use them and other Job kits make Healers redundant in many cases. If those issues are addressed, our kits themselves will be fine because we'd be healing a lot more and using more thinking and optimization on the kits we already have. And with more GCD healing in general, the damage rotation wouldn't feel as spammy since there'd be far fewer "dead" GCDs you have to use filler in anyway.

Zeastria's post...This is the Way.

EDIT:

Well, I would upvote this a few times if I could.

As would I (I did the one time.

As long as we never have to see the abomination that was SB WHM again with that janky Lily system.

[Absurdity]

I dont want more complex healing, nor complex dps rota...or many buttons..
I want higher HEALING REQUIREMENTS such has:
1) Bosses deal more auto atk damage
2) Remove self healing from dps/tank
3) Raid-wide dmg happens more often
4) Random damage spikes.
5) Mech that evolve around dispelling
6) AOE DoT DMG!

While I agree with the need for increased healing requirements I think the current healing kits are an absolute joke.
There is little to no synergy between healing skills as they are all just fire and forget "Heal target for X amount" on different cooldowns.

Let's take a look at a really basic ability in XIV and compare it to a really basic ability in WoW.
Since they roughly have the same baseline effect I'll be picking Aspected Benefic and Riptide.
Aspected Benefic: 250 cure potency initial healing + 1250 potency healing over 15 seconds, single target.
Riptide: (221% of spell power) initial heal + (132% of spell power) healing over 18 seconds, single target.

From a quick glance they look very similar but as a Restoration Shaman you will always pick up the Tidal Waves passive and suddenly
Riptide: (221% of spell power) initial heal + (132% of spell power) healing over 18 seconds. Grants 2 stacks of Tidal Waves, reducing the cast time of Healing Wave and Chain Heal by 20% or the critical healing chance of Healing Surge by 30% until all stacks are expended, single target.

Healing Wave is your MP efficient and strong single target heal but with a slow cast time, Chain Heal is your strong AoE healing with a slow cast time and Healing Surge is your weaker heal with a fast cast time and high MP cost.
Suddenly your weak single target HoT empowers your next 2 heals, making you think about which heal to cast next while also making you want to ideally always use Riptide before your stronger heals to make them more effective.

All that increasing the healing requirements in content is going to achieve with current XIV healing kits is that you replace some Glare/Broil/Dosis/Malefic casts with your equally bland AoE GCD heal. If you think that is really an improvement then fine I guess.

[KenZentra]

We need more synergy absolutely. We also need the boss encounters to allow use of stuff like this as currently most healers just use stuff that is weak on the surface, such as Cure 1, to be able to use much stronger heals like Cure 2. Of course, currently, there is really no reason to ever cast Cure 1 after you get Cure 2. MP issues usually only occur if a lot of raises are going out, and I think that needs to change, because as of right now, even someone who over-heals a ton in endgame, shouldnt have MP issues. Imo, right now healing is about how fast and how much damage you can reverse (which leads to having tons of time to DPS), when it should be how long/efficiently you can keep people alive before running out of MP (which would keep healers healing using large portions of their kits, and not much time to DPS)

[UkcsAlias]

While I agree with the need for increased healing requirements I think the current healing kits are an absolute joke.
There is little to no synergy between healing skills as they are all just fire and forget "Heal target for X amount" on different cooldowns.

This feels by design and for a good reason. It motivates people to avoid spamming them and preserve GCDs for more damage. This way you never will interupt damage, and damage wont interupt healing potential.

That to me is an aspect of healers they should preserve. Combos risk the issue in which someone who saves GCDs suddenly will lack potency because he didnt just randomly spam cure2 to get some other boost ready.

Any combo system to me should work more with things like charges and not be a strict chain. The lack of chains is why healers can be versatile and adapt. The only issue is that there rarely is any motivation to do so, the only one we have is saving ogcds for bursts.

[KenZentra]

Oh no I completely disagree. You dont spam heals needlessly just to get a potency increase, you are structuring your healing to get the most out of your kit, almost like a rotation. Just like how for DRG you wouldnt use Lifesurge (or whatever the guarenteed crit ability is called) just whenever it comes up, you try to make sure it is on your hardest hitting GCD to get the most out of it.

The lack of synergy with other abilities results in huge waves of damage being met with near instant recovery of that damage in about 2-3 seconds, so about 1 GCD and 1 oGCD. Healers in this aspect are less about healing and more about meeting HP checks, then continuing the brain dead nature of their dps kit, which again, the simplicity of which is a problem because healers have an extreme excess of downtime from healing.
In short, right now, Healers spend more time (GCDs) dealing damage than healing, and because of this players want more in-depth DPS kits for healers because essentially they are DPS, that just happen to heal to meet these HP checks thrown at them.

So, do you want to play a DPS that heals, or a Healer that can DPS?


I play healer sometimes in FFXIV, but I main Healer in WoW as a Holy Priest. As a Holy Priest, in terms of what i can do when I DPS, I have:
Smite - Deals Single Target Damage
Holy Fire - Deals Single Target Damage and applies a short DoT
Shadow Word: Pain - DoT Damage.

Thats it.

On a Normal mode Raid, I spend 90% of my time healing constantly, when I dont need to heal, I reapply SW:Pain and Holy Fire. I find it really fun and rewarding.

In FFXIV, I spend 90% of my time spamming Broil and Bio and when Huge raid damage comes out, I use 2 heals and poff! The damage is gone! I get to spam Broil and Bio again.

You're kinda asking for a DPS that has to stop their rotation (even if it isnt invasive to whatever combo they have going on aside from straight up stopping dealing damage for a while) to heal. Which if SE wants to do that, all power to them. But you will see every DPS turn into a little mini healer and Tanks self-sustain even harder to cover the loss of an actual healer, cause... well, you wouldnt want to interrupt their DPS right?

[Shurrikhan]

I play healer sometimes in FFXIV, but I main Healer in WoW as a Holy Priest. As a Holy Priest, in terms of what i can do when I DPS, I have:
Smite - Deals Single Target Damage
Holy Fire - Deals Single Target Damage and applies a short DoT
Shadow Word: Pain - DoT Damage.

Obligatory note that this is not how even the most basic healer, the aforementioned Holy Priest, played just 1 expansion ago, wherein even the still-almost-solely-healing-focused meta builds included...

• A (suppressive) nuke attack on a Haste-scaled short CD
• A 1-minute-CD nuke with incap (upgradable to stun)
• A 20s linear AoE CD (fires a skillshot that goes out and then comes back, damaging in both directions - healing and damage)
• Or, 40s radial AoE CD (slowly growing massive explosion - healing and damage)
• Means of generating, through your attacks, additional charges of Holy Fire, which could stack even on the same target
• The ability to cause an enemy's attacks to instead heal their victims up to some (very high) total amount converted
• Or, a super-saiyen mode that allowed you to float around at greatly increased speed, converting your attacks to make them more powerful, instant-cast, and therefore (since they'd normally take up more than a GCD's time) take less uptime each
• Or, another 1-minute-CD AoE 15s-DoT that also caused enemies who attack the victims to be healed
• Or, the ability to distribute three buffs among your allies (MP from attacking, mitigation, and core cooldown recharge rate) per 90s
• Your rushable (each ST heal reduces ST CD's CD; each attack reduces your attack CD's CD) CDs would cause your next heal or attack to deal far greater potency
• An execute skill that can be used earlier at HP cost and on CD
• Buff from damaging enemies in execute range, potentially augmentable for further benefits when killing an enemy with your execute

And among other non-healing actions that were nonetheless important to your value...

• Lifegrip (Rescue)
• Movement buffs (via 3 charges of ground-placed buff-on-pickup or from shielding an ally)
• Purging enemy buffs (spammable ST and AoE on CD)
• Cleansing debuffs on allies (short-CD ST and AoE on CD)
• AoE fear (enhancible, or replacible with an at-range version or a draw-in)
• Incap on undead and demons
• Dominate Mind (controls mob instead of self)
• Soothe Mind (greatly reduces aggro range, allowing party to sneak past)
• Give ally +20% attack speed
• Give ally cooldown reduction on their defensive (think Riddle of Earth, Manaward)
• Give party/raid MP
• Teleporting past enemies in your soulshape (increased movement speed) form would slow them

And that's for your most "vanilla" healer.