Boring design

[Aravell]

After hearing this same issue for months. I conclude…this new style is fine for healers. Would rather have healers pre-plan on their healing tools than rely on multiple ways to DPS.

While pre-planning sounds engaging, you can only make a plan once. After that, you just follow that script you made for yourself endlessly until the rest of your team stop making mistakes and you clear the fight.

I find making the plan fun, but following the script endlessly for reclears is incredibly boring. Healers are the only role that gets punished with actively worse gameplay when optimised, that's not a good design.

[ty_taurus]

I've seen many state that healing can be really fun in the very specific instance where you are blind progging new savage fights and need to figure out how to plan our your cooldowns in the most effective manner. But of course, that is one tiny spec of circumstantial gameplay that cannot carry the entire rest of the healer experience. I would find it insulting were anyone to try and sell that to me to justify healers being an atrocity of game design in literally every other aspect of PVE healing.

[Valence]

Pre-planning.

Hot take: make the boss randomly use certain attacks (good old prey attacks) on random targets members. Can happen at any time. Could even consider it with specific kinds of party wides. And random mini bursts/crits on the tank. Hell in savage you could even make those bursts being insta kill on other party members and make them target them too with long casts and markers, and make the tanks actually tank and cover people.

[Aravell]

Pre-planning.

Hot take: make the boss randomly use certain attacks (good old prey attacks) on random targets members. Can happen at any time. Could even consider it with specific kinds of party wides. And random mini bursts/crits on the tank. Hell in savage you could even make those bursts being insta kill on other party members and make them target them too with long casts and markers, and make the tanks actually tank and cover people.

I like the idea of the boss resetting aggro and long-casting a homing projectile tankbuster on a random target that the tank can intercept (or a PLD can just cover).

But yes, bring back uncasted mini-busters and boss crits so damage can be unpredictable again.

[Rozeee]

You can't pre-plan for Duty Finder (or rather, you can't assume that you'll be able to stick to whatever you pre-plan) or solo encounters that you only run once.

Other people pointed out the issue that planning only happen once, but the other issue is that the better you get at healing the faster you'll plan. It's not as if damage profile is unique enough that you'll have a unique plan for every encounter. I could copy my P8P2 heal plan macro, change the cast names around and now it works for P4P2 finale.

You mentioned not being able to stick to healing plan because of DF. This isn't accurate. I PF a lot and i still use the same healing plan for every group. A good healing plan will always include margin of error. With how large our healing kit is and how little damage normal content deals, you don't even need a plan to be 90% optimal.

The larger our healing kit is, the less relevant this kind of planning becomes. Adding more free heals makes both healing and damaging less interesting.

[rawker]

Quite honestly, the best I could think off is to have adaptive difficulty in the game where it takes the damage the party deals/takes and it will have a move break the pattern

[HappyHubris]

Quite honestly, the best I could think off is to have adaptive difficulty in the game where it takes the damage the party deals/takes and it will have a move break the pattern

The easiest answer is to scrap the "planned damage" model and give bosses things like heavy unchoreographed hits on the tanks, random attacks at the raid, etc. Basically bake in a lot of damage that isn't pass/fail based on standing in the fire. In other MMOs healers are busy keeping the tank and party up, not spamming the 1 key in between set piece mechanics.

[Osmond]

While pre-planning sounds engaging, you can only make a plan once. After that, you just follow that script you made for yourself endlessly until the rest of your team stop making mistakes and you clear the fight.

I find making the plan fun, but following the script endlessly for reclears is incredibly boring. Healers are the only role that gets punished with actively worse gameplay when optimised, that's not a good design.

Then the same logic has the apply to DPS. From bursting to rotations. If this type of planning ends up boring, then the later also has to become boring as well. I do thought of this for some time. Reading feedback of others….with the lack of a consistent consensus. I don’t see this type of pattern changing anytime soon so I can see the devs applying occam’s razor in their decision making and why I replied that statement.

[Aravell]

Then the same logic has the apply to DPS. From bursting to rotations. If this type of planning ends up boring, then the later also has to become boring as well. I do thought of this for some time. Reading feedback of others….with the lack of a consistent consensus. I don’t see this type of pattern changing anytime soon so I can see the devs applying occam’s razor in their decision making and why I replied that statement.

The difference is in the application during the fights itself. Even the more rigid DPS jobs (DRG/MCH) have things to work around like hitting positionals (DRG) and avoiding drift (MCH). Achieving optimisation on a DPS job is often more than just following a script.

Healers, on the other hand, is just all about resource planning. Every resource you have is on a 30s+ CD, optimising healers tends to be just spreadsheeting and then counting your filler spells until the next CD you have to press. I think the only other job that involves spreadsheeting was old PLD, but they at least had the benefit of needing a different plan on every fight. If you take a look at the damage profiles of the fights in savage, the damage profile is roughly the same, meaning as a healer, you only plan once and then can transplant that same plan onto every fight.

Put simply, while you do follow one "optimal rotation" as a DPS, the way the tank pulls the boss and how often your procs happen does change your play from pull to pull. Healers don't have the luxury of secondary systems to engage them, it's all just flat cooldowns and resource requirements, all the while you're mashing the filler key and refreshing your DoT every 30s like clockwork.

People aren't joking when they said they count their Broils to know where they are in the fight.

[Osmond]

The difference is in the application during the fights itself. Even the more rigid DPS jobs (DRG/MCH) have things to work around like hitting positionals (DRG) and avoiding drift (MCH). Achieving optimisation on a DPS job is often more than just following a script.

Healers, on the other hand, is just all about resource planning. Every resource you have is on a 30s+ CD, optimising healers tends to be just spreadsheeting and then counting your filler spells until the next CD you have to press. I think the only other job that involves spreadsheeting was old PLD, but they at least had the benefit of needing a different plan on every fight. If you take a look at the damage profiles of the fights in savage, the damage profile is roughly the same, meaning as a healer, you only plan once and then can transplant that same plan onto every fight.

Put simply, while you do follow one "optimal rotation" as a DPS, the way the tank pulls the boss and how often your procs happen does change your play from pull to pull. Healers don't have the luxury of secondary systems to engage them, it's all just flat cooldowns and resource requirements, all the while you're mashing the filler key and refreshing your DoT every 30s like clockwork.

People aren't joking when they said they count their Broils to know where they are in the fight.

Both routes doesn’t sound bad, between optimization and planning. Both leads to the same end goal in the end. Achieving the least amount of effort to achieve success. Even if healers do only broil or glare, is it really necessary to add more steps, more routes..abilities to make the job “fun” to a smaller number of people who plays healer?