Brainstorming DPS rotation changes for healers

[IDontPetLalas]

Please stop trying to turn healers in to a DPS. They do very little damage already, and just giving them more buttons to press just results in less DPS overall.

The corner stone problem, is that they (the developers) do not want healers to be spending time on DPS, and they have essentially capped healer DPS to not ever matter in any piece of content. You are there to heal, not to climb the DPS wall.

This problem is always two-fold
- Encounter design being based around sustained damage
- Giving Tanks and DPS self-healing options.

You solve the first problem by having add phases, movement phases, and (cleanable, but last long enough you can't heal through, like 2m) debuff phases. Basically you get more "DPS" out of the party by learning the mechanic than you get out of the healer contributing 0.5% DPS. If any DPS dies, then you've already lost any benefit to the healer doing DPS. So the healer should be healing. Always.

You solve the second problem by making self-healing ineffective unless the heal comes from the healer. If you self-heal, you maybe get a 100 potency, but if you are healed by a healer you get 800 potency. If you cast your self-heal subsequently to the healer heal, it becomes 1200 potency. That is how it's supposed to work. That's why the tank traditionally had buffs to amplify healing. If the tank fails to use their healing amplification buffs, then they become 50% harder to heal, like it's supposed to. That's why "Stance dancing" is such a poor gameplay practice, because healers or tanks trying to contribute their few DPS fractions, fail to cast the their buffs that make their job easier.

What Yoshi-P should have done, was disable the DPS actions of the healer, when there is a party, and disable self-healing of Tank and DPS players while in a party. The fact that the game has to tell you to do your job, makes the job feel constricting, but here we are again, with people who only care about endgame raiding damage trying to make everyone DPS in all content when that is NOT their job.

I wonder just how many people would just quit if this was ever implemented. "What Yoshi-P should have done, was disable the DPS actions of the healer, when there is a party, and disable self-healing of Tank and DPS players while in a party".

I would be willing to bet that it would be quite a few.

[NegativeS]

I suppose we're a little undecided what exactly constitutes a 'casual' gamer, because I'm imagining someone who thinks some solo duties are too difficult, and I can't imagine that sort of person asking to make a role more challenging.

I usually define casual as "Plays the game at their own pace, not at the pace of prog or a raid schedule". So, most people.

That might be a little liberal, though.

[Kozh]

Looking at several comments after yours, I'm convinced they don't bother to click the spoiler button XD

I was expecting you to make the healer have 123 combo + ogcds like gunbreaker does, but turns out it's way more subtle. I really like what you did with AST as it utilize the card system as well.

And yeah, it's clear that cbu3 don't want to make healing to difficult because casuals and how all fights are scripted. I mean, in ideal world, we can have something like WoW's more reactive healing and less scripted fight, but no chance ff14 can do that. So what's that leave us with? Make all attacks 300% hit harder? But then it still can be easily resolved by a couple of gcd healing, and this is assuming the devs are okay with trimming down healing kit so that we have less ogcd and weaker healing potency. And what about super casual content such as MSQ, FATES, solo duty, etc? Considering the state of ff14 casuals, they simply won't make them too hard and we will back again to pressing 1211111111 until we fall asleep.

So yeah, I'm all for more DPS option for healers. We're already green DPS anyway, the same as tank is blue DPS.

[Ayer2015]

Honestly... just adding a few oGCD damage abilities to weave in would go a long way. An actual rotation isn't really necessary.

[NegativeS]

Looking at several comments after yours, I'm convinced they don't bother to click the spoiler button XD

I was expecting you to make the healer have 123 combo + ogcds like gunbreaker does, but turns out it's way more subtle. I really like what you did with AST as it utilize the card system as well.

Well, I'm glad that somebody read them, considering the time I spent thinking them up...

I honestly despise the 123 combo bs that GNB has, it would be a supreme copout if that was all they added to healers to shut us up.

Honestly... just adding a few oGCD damage abilities to weave in would go a long way. An actual rotation isn't really necessary.

I mean, anything is better than nothing... but it would be cool if they went all out, yeah?

[TheDustyOne]

Well, I'm glad that somebody read them, considering the time I spent thinking them up...

I honestly despise the 123 combo bs that GNB has, it would be a supreme copout if that was all they added to healers to shut us up.

I think part of the problem may be something of a definition barrier; someone hears "healer DPS rotation" and thinks something like combos and an entire keyboards worth of skills, when in reality what someone who wants a more involved healer DPS rotation is asking for is like, a proc or 2, a gauge, and/or an extra DoT. Something to break up the 111 spam rather than going full DPS. At the very least that's what I want; 4 or 5 regularly used spells all casted in the span of about 20 to 30s.

Stormblood SCH pretty much is what I'd be happy with; 4 regularly used spells in single target (Broil, Bio, Miasma, Miasma II) with 2 oGCDs (Energy Drain and Shadowflare). AoE would swap out that Broil for Miasma II (so no extra button needed there) and Energy Drain for Bane. 7 abilities overall in a 30-something hotbar setup, yet that was more than enough to keep me happy with downtime back then.

About the only ones that would hate that would be those who don't like doing DPS as healer anyway, so if they were so inclined they can just ignore it. They're not going to clear anything above normal content with that mentality anyway.

[Aravell]

I want to just point out that the people who want damage options expanded on the healers aren't the ones that should play a different game, the gameplay they want is what FFXIV started with. In fact, it's the people who want us to heal all the time and barely have time to do damage that wants to turn this game into something it's not.

FFXIV has never been built for attrition healing, there's never been a single point in game where we heal so much that we barely have downtime. Attrition healing just will not work in this game, between the netcode, the long GCD, the heal propagation and the MP costs, gameplay that makes you spam heals will encounter a problem very very quickly. And if your answer to that is "Well, rework the game system to allow it then", then you can see very clearly that you're the ones trying to transform the game.

That said, OP's designs aren't bad. As someone who loved AST in SB though, I hate OP's AST ideas, but it's nothing personal.

[EusisLandale]

Sage already has a decently robust DPS rotation, especially with the use of Eukrasia. However, if I had to make one change...

Eukrasian Dosis III
Tick damage has a small chance to make the next "Toxicon II" cast not require Addersting.

Eukrasian Dyskrasia
Tick damage has a small chance to reset the cooldown on a charge of "Phlegma II".

Your E.Dosis idea only offers potential for improved mobility, as Toxikon and Dosis are potency matches.
E.Dyskrasia on the other hand would require a limitation on it, or it counterintuitively makes it better even on single target. E.Dyskrasia is a loss of 350 potency over E.Dosis as it is right now, but with your idea each time it triggers you gain 240 potency due to Phelgma's 600 potency instead of Dosis's 360. With just 2 triggers, a ~20% rate, E.Dyskrasia would overtake E.Dosis by 130 potency.

I would actually suggest a swap of your idea. E.Dosis giving Phlegma resets while E.Dyskrasia gives free Toxikons, allowing for an RNG dps increase and the opportunity to keep at a distance on trash for safety purposes.

[NegativeS]

IThat said, OP's designs aren't bad. As someone who loved AST in SB though, I hate OP's AST ideas, but it's nothing personal.

No offense taken, I'm only really familiar with semi-modern (non DT travesty) AST, but I know people were really fond of HW and SB era AST as well. I tried to look up how it worked back then, but couldn't find much, so I worked with what I had.

I would actually suggest a swap of your idea. E.Dosis giving Phlegma resets while E.Dyskrasia gives free Toxikons, allowing for an RNG dps increase and the opportunity to keep at a distance on trash for safety purposes.

I think that's what I intended, but I'm a moron and had it flipped turnways. I applied your suggestion, thank you

[Supersnow845]

Honestly of the current DPS who I would look to for ideas surrounding healers MCH and PCT both come to mind as they have semi regular but nukes that interrupt the flow of their filler spam without actually being too busy

For MCH if we think of them without their heat gauge so basically you get drill on a 20 second, air anchor on a 40 second and the 2 part chainsaw on a 60 second which builds towards queen and then wildfire is like your raid buff and FMF is your “baneful impaction”

Overlaying something like this on a healer I think would go quite well, SGE already kinda does this with phlegma and psyche but both have too long CD’s and AST’s AOE rotation also has shades of this with macro, star and lord but again too long CD

Otherwise the other way to look at a similar idea would be PCT’s muses, ignoring its 7 part filler and focusing on just the muses, a healer with basically 111111211111 plus something akin to a stripped down muse system I think would also work

Healers don’t work with static rotations which I think everyone accepts but something like this which also has shades of HW SCH dot’s I think would do wonders for the healers