The state of healers is affecting everyone

QQ the amount of dramatic people on this game continues to impress me

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

Oh, so an extra DoT every 30 seconds is less mindless? No, it's the same mindless. Miasma, Bio II, spam Broil. Miasma, Bio II, spam Broil. You're still spamming Broil 8 times in a row.

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Not just a single dot, 3 more dots, miasma, miasma II, shadowflare. Keeping track of two dots with different timers in an optimized fashion isn’t simply “reapplying dots”, it demands significantly more focus to get right and keep uptime compared to a single dot. In addition to that shadowflare had a CD, needed to be placed and take boss movement into consideration to be delayed/placed accordingly. And miasma II gave us a weaving tool that we actually needed to keep track of because weaving too early was a dps loss, so we had to keep track of that timer too. Instead of the current ruin II shitshow that in many cases isn’t even worth using with single weaves so you end up clipping which feels horrible.
Miasma II also gave the class a unique melee healer flavor which was amazing and that I miss dearly.

People who act like things were as boring are either 99 percentile players with so much skill that the gap between the two is insignificant to them, or simply weren’t pushing the class properly.

It isn’t hard to get an idea, you can run the Sb dummy rotation and compare it to the shb one. You’ll realize that a third of our dps casts (30% ish) were deleted and replaced with more broil. A third!
It’s slightly mitigated in real conditions from the fact our fairy skills need to be weaves now but still.

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Originally Posted by AbelArchaniEA

QQ the amount of dramatic people on this game continues to impress me

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Personally, I'd love to "QQ" somewhere else, or more directly to the devs, just a shame the public forums is the only place they gave me to actively voice my complaints, so I'll continue to QQ until the problems are addressed.

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Originally Posted by TheForce

Nah. You're definitely over exaggerating. I've noticed Tanks being in need far more often than Healers.

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Indeed. This has been my experience as well. I've seen healer and dps pop up every so often in Alliance Raid roulette (dps in need seems to be a regular thing for Alliance Raid roulette) or Leveling, but for the most part it is tanks in need at almost all times in most roulettes.

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Originally Posted by Dogempire

B-but who needs something cool like bane that spreads your dot skills to all mobs and lets you damage as you heal when you can just slap the ground until your mp runs out?

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They don't think we needed it apparently.
I like how AoW sounds and is, but I also miss Bane and Shadowflare now.
I feel silly not caring about the DPS removals but we have so much
danged downtime in this game, I want more things to do.
5.0 has been a living snoozefest and I've shelved my heals after getting
SCH/AST to 80. It's sad because I love to heal, but if you don't give me much to
heal...I'm crying myself to sleep spamming 1 button with occasional 2, and risk my life
going smack dab in the middle of mobs to spam 3 lol.
At least WHM gets a stun when they run out there.
Try AST, might as well get in bed and fall asleep, it's much worse...

Edit: Oh we got ED on SCH back so there's my 4 SOMETIMES.

There's definitely a healer shortage. Making astro plain unfun to play with no new healer class since HW is the main reasons for it.

I called it before the expansion even came out honestly. Was really obvious this was going to happen, I don't know why square didn't forsee it.

I've stopped healing after getting them all to 80 myself. It's just kind of boring now somehow but really, one of my largest complaints is that Broil, Biolysis, Glare, Dia, Malefic and Combust all seem to use the same color palette now. They have different animations, sure, but their palettes are way too similar. It takes a bit of uniqueness away from them and just adds to the bore.

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Originally Posted by Jybril

They don't think we needed it apparently.
I like how AoW sounds and is, but I also miss Bane and Shadowflare now.
I feel silly not caring about the DPS removals but we have so much
danged downtime in this game, I want more things to do.
5.0 has been a living snoozefest and I've shelved my heals after getting
SCH/AST to 80. It's sad because I love to heal, but if you don't give me much to
heal...I'm crying myself to sleep spamming 1 button with occasional 2, and risk my life
going smack dab in the middle of mobs to spam 3 lol.
At least WHM gets a stun when they run out there.
Try AST, might as well get in bed and fall asleep, it's much worse...

Edit: Oh we got ED on SCH back so there's my 4 SOMETIMES.

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The only way I'd be okay with bane coming back is if they undid the stormblood nerf to it. It's been a pretty useless skill in most situations ever since that nerf was implemented, and is a big reason I don't miss it at all.

Funnily enough, while that was the situation at shadowbringers release, i can't say it is anymore. My roulettes are always asking for tanks.

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Originally Posted by Gaethan_Tessula

Sure, the mechanics were never as involved as in FF14, which is FF14's big draw, but there's only so far you can push "have people move and stand in the right places" as a metric of challenge. And that's not even getting into how braindead and devoid of engagement 95% of the content in this game is in the way most people play it (not min ilvl, unsync'ing old endgame content, every dungeon evoking the feel of FF13's "The Tube" etc.). When whether I put in 10% or 100% into a piece a content matters not to my success or failure, it makes me wonder "why am I even playing this?"

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I'm not sure the simplicity is a big draw for FF14. For me the big draw is the legacy of the series having been playing since Mystic Quest and FF4, and how virtually no one in the game industry can compete with how Square does boss design + soundtrack choreography for bosses (especially final bosses) or their JRPG stylized stories.

I think the game's mechanics are just tolerated by a vast majority of the community. They're very lacking, and they're here for other reasons. Doing savage this tier I told my friend this game has some of the worst raid design I've seen in a modern MMO. Where it's like flaming jump ropes where 8 people have to memorize and jump in succession with virtually no RPG elements to it other than arcade jump rope. It's horrid. And just due to the sheer law of large numbers, you throw jump rope at 8 people with a 13 minute list of mechanics and inevitably someone is going to desynchronize, and there's nothing RPG wise any other player can do to put the fight back on track. Especially with the enrage timers.

Healing is most likely just a subset of that same philosophy of making concessions and tolerating certain strange, unintuitive, and often unwanted design decisions because Final Fantasy has always brought so many other things to the table and the mechanics were never its strong point.

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Originally Posted by Crasherino

which in turn means if the instance I'm doing is something I've done god knows how many times, the games "combat" does not carry this game at all, which means players like my self are literally falling to sleep during the run, the only time this isn't an issue is during savage raids and ext runs, which is a major issue when they're not exactly something you run very often.

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That's the kicker.
They have well balanced classes etc but they refuse to make content actually engaging and not be brain dead easy outside of savage raids.

The culprit are the incompetent players. They need to be able to grind their tomes, so dungeons have to be super easy or they will ragequit -> less $$$ for SE -> bad.
Nobody cares about raiders being bored in dungeons.

It's this topic again. The people who said they were quitting were scholars and some astros but for completely different reasons. Scholar's offensive kit was destroyed but it was destroyed because it had to match other 2 healers. whm and astro lost nothing offensive wise except aero 3 but we also got new offensive spell. Somehow scholar mains switched the topic to "healers being destroyed" when in reality it was only scholar's offensive kit getting destroyed, whm and astro already pretty much were 111111112 jobs offensively. Some astros showed distaste for the new card system but overall I haven't seen that big of a shift in healer population, tank is still the wanted job most of the time, though healer does show up every now and then.

Healers are relatively balanced, but they are dull and boring to play. Balanced does not mean fun. That is why a lot of players are quitting healing or complaining about it.

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Originally Posted by Rockette

Making healer into a heals focused class like all the people crying on the forum wanted created a boring one note role. Who could have possibly seen this coming?

News at eleven.

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

To be fair, many people who preferred that style expected to actually have to, you know, heal. The devs made healing arguably easier while reducing the DPS aspect down to almost nothing. That's why people are so upset over it.

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This game has not changed battle formula for 6 years. Expecting an entire overhaul of the game so "healers can only be healers" was absolutely ludicrous and this was pointed out many times during the debates on this forum. Every veteran who has played this game at a high level absolutely saw this coming and it's a big fat "I told you so".

This game does not accommodate a pure healing role and to try brute force a shift in gameplay by nerfing all complexity of these roles into the dirt has done nothing but create monotony. This forum cries for things to be easier, less responsibility, less accountability. You get what you ask for and we all suffer for it.

Imagine removing all astro cards and turning each one into the same thing. Astrologian is a sad shadow of its former self. It's unbelievable.

Self-pity the topic.

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Originally Posted by Granyala

That's the kicker.
They have well balanced classes etc but they refuse to make content actually engaging and not be brain dead easy outside of savage raids.

The culprit are the incompetent players. They need to be able to grind their tomes, so dungeons have to be super easy or they will ragequit -> less $$$ for SE -> bad.
Nobody cares about raiders being bored in dungeons.

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The crux is that everything that is scripted becomes brain dead easy once you memorized every single step of it. They could make encounter mechanics more random, but look at all the whining that went on when they did that with Rathalos. Once there is no guide to follow, 70% of players are lost and overwhelmed and start complaining lol.

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Originally Posted by Rockette

This game has not changed battle formula for 6 years. Expecting an entire overhaul of the game so "healers can only be healers" was absolutely ludicrous and this was pointed out many times during the debates on this forum. Every veteran who has played this game at a high level absolutely saw this coming and it's a big fat "I told you so".

This game does not accommodate a pure healing role and to try brute force a shift in gameplay by nerfing all complexity of these roles into the dirt has done nothing but create monotony. This forum cries for things to be easier, less responsibility, less accountability. You get what you ask for and we all suffer for it.

Imagine removing all astro cards and turning each one into the same thing. Astrologian is a sad shadow of its former self. It's unbelievable.

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I never said anything about being a pure healer. Please don't put words in my mouth. There in a middle ground between where we are and pure healing. A lot of people were hoping they found it since nothing actually changed from SB beyond losing many a couple Holys in an AoE pull.

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Originally Posted by RoyalBeef

The crux is that everything that is scripted becomes brain dead easy once you memorized every single step of it. They could make encounter mechanics more random, but look at all the whining that went on when they did that with Rathalos. Once there is no guide to follow, 70% of players are lost and overwhelmed and start complaining lol.

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Ratholas actually saw a lot of praise. What people criticised was how absurdly large his hit radius was. You could be very clearly away from his attacks yet you'll see get hit.

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Originally Posted by lulunami

Healers are relatively balanced, but they are dull and boring to play. Balanced does not mean fun. That is why a lot of players are quitting healing or complaining about it.

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I think healers quitting is more of a earnest desire than it is a reality. Truth is healer mains, like all other mains do things outside of their chosen role. They craft, gather, decorate their houses, level other jobs, go solo, etc. It's getting late into 5.0 now, and most are waiting for 5.1 content to continue their progression. The few healers you're seeing around now, are likely either catching up, are casual, or they are alts to those who normally main a DPS or tank.

The actual state of healers really isn't that bad. Not so bad that we're in the middle of some kind of healer revolt. Some healers are still sour because of changes to AST and SCH, but for the most they've adjusted and have taken their healers to max level and into the current raid tier. Once an expansion is out, a player can continue to cry about the changes, or find a way to adjust and provide constructive feedback. Or play something else. Either way, it won't be until next expansion that major changes happen to jobs.

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Originally Posted by RoyalBeef

The crux is that everything that is scripted becomes brain dead easy once you memorized every single step of it. They could make encounter mechanics more random, but look at all the whining that went on when they did that with Rathalos. Once there is no guide to follow, 70% of players are lost and overwhelmed and start complaining lol.

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Actually this is true. The earliest example is Cutter's Cry. Chimera's Voice attacks are random. And it can catch people off guard, since you really need to pay attention to the tells (or castbars) the boss does. People fail those quite often even after i or someone else explains how the fight works.
Hells, make Cutter's Cry a mandatory dungeon. It teaches so much. I mentioned Chimera, but take look at the worm boss. You need to Esuna the dot since it's so powerful. You need to watch out for Worm's movements. You need to stay at the edges or you'll get sucked in and die. And all that's as early as 38.

I was just thinking about AST cards in the shower. It would be cool if they could combine the new and old systems into something better. Keep the +dmg from the new system so that there are no 'useless' cards, but remove the bonus dmg for using them on specific roles and replace that condition with a secondary effect unique to each card: Bole (+def), Ewer (mp refresh), Spire (+determination), Spear (+crit), Balance (+directhit), Arrow (+atk spd). So they all do +3% dmg dealt in addition to those other effects. And as a quick fix to make dpsing slightly more interesting, bring back Break role action (light dmg and heavy) but turn it into an off-gcd ability with a fairly short CD for weaving in between malefic/broil/glare.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

I think healers quitting is more of a earnest desire than it is a reality. Truth is healer mains, like all other mains do things outside of their chosen role. They craft, gather, decorate their houses, level other jobs, go solo, etc. It's getting late into 5.0 now, and most are waiting for 5.1 content to continue their progression. The few healers you're seeing around now, are likely either catching up, are casual, or they are alts to those who normally main a DPS or tank.

The actual state of healers really isn't that bad. Not so bad that we're in the middle of some kind of healer revolt. Some healers are still sour because of changes to AST and SCH, but for the most they've adjusted and have taken their healers to max level and into the current raid tier. Once an expansion is out, a player can continue to cry about the changes, or find a way to adjust and provide constructive feedback. Or play something else. Either way, it won't be until next expansion that major changes happen to jobs.

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tl;dr Suck it up cupcakes!

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Originally Posted by Rufalus

I was just thinking about AST cards in the shower. It would be cool if they could combine the new and old systems into something better. Keep the +dmg from the new system so that there are no 'useless' cards, but remove the bonus dmg for using them on specific roles and replace that condition with a secondary effect unique to each card: Bole (+def), Ewer (mp refresh), Spire (+determination), Spear (+crit), Balance (+directhit), Arrow (+atk spd). So they all do +3% dmg dealt in addition to those other effects. And as a quick fix to make dpsing slightly more interesting, bring back Break role action (light dmg and heavy) but turn it into an off-gcd ability with a fairly short CD for weaving in between malefic/broil/glare.

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The problem if you did that though, people would just go back to fishing for balance/spear because those would be bigger damage increases than any other card. What I would do instead,if the goal was to have the best of both card systems, would be to completely eliminate any damage gains from the base cards,make every single one utility including spear and balance. I woul keep minor arcana as is though, change divination to just be 6 percent increase of damage every 2 miniutes and completely gut that seal nonsense.

Is it the perfect system? No, but I think it's an okay compromise for the people who like the old AST and the people who like the new one (as few as they are)

Have no FEAR!! Sylvi is here! While I can't change the entire state of healers for the game, I will tell you as someone who has avoided healing, I have now leveled WHM, SCH and now AST and I am loving it.

I shall heal! I shall help the queues. Trust in me! It's in the cards!

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Originally Posted by RoyalBeef

The crux is that everything that is scripted becomes brain dead easy once you memorized every single step of it. They could make encounter mechanics more random, but look at all the whining that went on when they did that with Rathalos.

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I never managed to kill Rathalos ex.
The encounter wasn't hard to execute but server lag + instagib + 3 deaths = wipe made it ridiculously frustrating.
Also, playing a dispel bot in phase 2 wasn't my idea of having a good time, so I never bothered to search for more groups.

If Rathalos is what they'd do with non scripted stuff, I'll take scripted any day.
You are right though: most MMO players would be completely lost if encounters started to behave in a more unforseeable manner. Most players, even most raiders have to learn the patterns the hard way and have very, very little situational awareness and subsequently it is super hard for them to adapt on the fly.

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Originally Posted by Granyala

I never managed to kill Rathalos ex.
The encounter wasn't hard to execute but server lag + instagib + 3 deaths = wipe made it ridiculously frustrating.
Also, playing a dispel bot in phase 2 wasn't my idea of having a good time, so I never bothered to search for more groups.

If Rathalos is what they'd do with non scripted stuff, I'll take scripted any day.
You are right though: most MMO players would be completely lost if encounters started to behave in a more unforseeable manner. Most players, even most raiders have to learn the patterns the hard way and have very, very little situational awareness and subsequently it is super hard for them to adapt on the fly.

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Yeah, you already see that when 3 people argue about who is R1 :D Vary slightly from what they are used to and it dissolves into chaos ^^

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Originally Posted by Rufalus

I was just thinking about AST cards in the shower. It would be cool if they could combine the new and old systems into something better. Keep the +dmg from the new system so that there are no 'useless' cards, but remove the bonus dmg for using them on specific roles and replace that condition with a secondary effect unique to each card: Bole (+def), Ewer (mp refresh), Spire (+determination), Spear (+crit), Balance (+directhit), Arrow (+atk spd). So they all do +3% dmg dealt in addition to those other effects. And as a quick fix to make dpsing slightly more interesting, bring back Break role action (light dmg and heavy) but turn it into an off-gcd ability with a fairly short CD for weaving in between malefic/broil/glare.

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Assuming that there are classes with mana issues, every card was a dps gain in some way (except probably spire). Bole meant you could spare a few healing gcds and get in an extra Malefic or two. Ewer on a job that had some mana heavy but powerful spells available would let them churn out a few extra of them. The “problem” has never been “useless cards” (except maybe spire, but at least that was still useful for royal road). The “problem” was cards that were less useful than others.

I say “problem” in quotes because getting upset that every card you draw isn’t balance is kind of like getting upset that every one of your hits isn’t a crit. Yes, sometimes the rng gives you better results than others. The fact that some cards are more useful than others is only a problem if the difference is stark enough that you would always throw away whatever you have if it’s not a balance on the 1/5 chance that you’ll redraw a balance, thus making optimal play something that is un-fun and clunky (much like current AST optimal play). However, we could have ensured that the old system didn’t fall into that trap, rather than turning AST into a balance-bot.

The old system could have been improved by a) nerfing balance such that it was mathematically better to make the most out of your hand than to balance fish, b) bag randomise the cards so that you don’t get long strings of the same card you don’t want, and c) include some mechanism for mitigating it randomness, like a cooldown that would let you draw a card of your choice (it could use the same mechanism as dancer steps, changing basic moves into cards that you could select).

The new system is just boring. It requires a lot of mechanical fiddlyness but not much thought. I don’t think this new card system really has a hope of becoming something fun. AST either needs a reversion or another overhaul.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

I think healers quitting is more of a earnest desire than it is a reality. Truth is healer mains, like all other mains do things outside of their chosen role. They craft, gather, decorate their houses, level other jobs, go solo, etc. It's getting late into 5.0 now, and most are waiting for 5.1 content to continue their progression. The few healers you're seeing around now, are likely either catching up, are casual, or they are alts to those who normally main a DPS or tank.

The actual state of healers really isn't that bad. Not so bad that we're in the middle of some kind of healer revolt. Some healers are still sour because of changes to AST and SCH, but for the most they've adjusted and have taken their healers to max level and into the current raid tier. Once an expansion is out, a player can continue to cry about the changes, or find a way to adjust and provide constructive feedback. Or play something else. Either way, it won't be until next expansion that major changes happen to jobs.

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I mean, this thread is full of healers that have stopped playing that role. Also the state of static recruitment has been going through a dry spell of healers ever since slightly before the expansion (short of whm which there seem to be a decent amount of atm). And the healers you do find generally don't have logs past the current tier (aka weren't healers or even around during SB raids) so usually have limited raiding experience.
A lot of us who stuck around don't enjoy the changes but did so because the role suits us or we already had a static. All in all considering these past 4 years they've made changes that consistently go against what we've been wanting, we surely are going to whine until something is done. Even if that's in 2 years. Though I'm sure in 2 years they'll find another way of going against what people have been asking.. again.

Edit: also the changes aren't so bad if you're new or not really optimizing your class. As soon as you start optimizing it's a big slap in the face compared to what we had before. Went from managing many aspects on sch, from weave window timers (miasma II), multiple dots (significantly diff from handling a single dot), micromanaging a fairy, melee placement for miasma II, shadowflare you had to time/place correctly. It's a lot we lost (thank god they gave us ED back, dunno what on earth they were thinking)

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Originally Posted by Granyala

I never managed to kill Rathalos ex.
The encounter wasn't hard to execute but server lag + instagib + 3 deaths = wipe made it ridiculously frustrating.
Also, playing a dispel bot in phase 2 wasn't my idea of having a good time, so I never bothered to search for more groups.

If Rathalos is what they'd do with non scripted stuff, I'll take scripted any day.
You are right though: most MMO players would be completely lost if encounters started to behave in a more unforseeable manner. Most players, even most raiders have to learn the patterns the hard way and have very, very little situational awareness and subsequently it is super hard for them to adapt on the fly.

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yeah Rathalos isnt very hard
but sooo many people do mess it up
sure its janky
but seriously in the final phase if you stay behind his tail always he cant get you outside of the stack mechanic

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Originally Posted by EaMett

I mean, this thread is full of healers that have stopped playing that role. Also the state of static recruitment has been going through a dry spell of healers ever since slightly before the expansion (short of whm which there seem to be a decent amount of atm). And the healers you do find generally don't have logs past the current tier (aka weren't healers or even around during SB raids) so usually have limited raiding experience.
A lot of us who stuck around don't enjoy the changes but did so because the role suits us or we already had a static. All in all considering these past 4 years they've made changes that consistently go against what we've been wanting, we surely are going to whine until something is done. Even if that's in 2 years. Though I'm sure in 2 years they'll find another way of going against what people have been asking.. again.

Edit: also the changes aren't so bad if you're new or not really optimizing your class. As soon as you start optimizing it's a big slap in the face compared to what we had before. Went from managing many aspects on sch, from weave window timers (miasma II), multiple dots (significantly diff from handling a single dot), micromanaging a fairy, melee placement for miasma II, shadowflare you had to time/place correctly. It's a lot we lost (thank god they gave us ED back, dunno what on earth they were thinking)

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The healers here on the forums represent a small portion of the community as a whole, and when you start tossing words like "optimization" and fflogs out there, you basically severe the silent majority who either don't/can't/won't use the tools that monitor the stats. I'm not saying all these players are content with the changes, but the difference lies within any player's enjoyment and/or willingness to play any given job and max it out.

You can talk about how SCH was gutted all day long, and while I don't disagree, mentioning its former DPS rotation as a focal point of the job is exactly why it's gone. It was the epitome of a green DPS, and we either have to face the fact that this is not how the devs and a lot of players want our healers to be, or look the other direction.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

You can talk about how SCH was gutted all day long, and while I don't disagree, mentioning its former DPS rotation as a focal point of the job is exactly why it's gone. It was the epitome of a green DPS, and we either have to face the fact that this is not how the devs and a lot of players want our healers to be, or look the other direction.

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Except they're still green DPS, which is part of the problem. People wouldn't be complaining if they added new and interesting healing mechanics alongside more intense healing to keep people both busy and engaged. They did neither. Instead, they neutered the DPS aspect, kept heal scaling as though it were still Stormblood and called it a day. Scholar does only a few hundred rDPS less than all four tanks now. And with the little amount of healing required outside Titan Savage, nothing changed. You'll just be spamming Broil instead of more dot management.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

The healers here on the forums represent a small portion of the community as a whole, and when you start tossing words like "optimization" and fflogs out there, you basically severe the silent majority who either don't/can't/won't use the tools that monitor the stats. I'm not saying all these players are content with the changes, but the difference lies within any player's enjoyment and/or willingness to play any given job and max it out.

You can talk about how SCH was gutted all day long, and while I don't disagree, mentioning its former DPS rotation as a focal point of the job is exactly why it's gone. It was the epitome of a green DPS, and we either have to face the fact that this is not how the devs and a lot of players want our healers to be, or look the other direction.

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Shame every healer is still just a green DPS, despite them removing a ton of abilities. Every healer still presses their dps buttons more than any other button. Outside of an ARR level rework, that's not going to change. Imo, they're better of embracing green DPS and just giving healers fun and engaging things to do in downtime.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

The healers here on the forums represent a small portion of the community as a whole, and when you start tossing words like "optimization" and fflogs out there, you basically severe the silent majority who either don't/can't/won't use the tools that monitor the stats. I'm not saying all these players are content with the changes, but the difference lies within any player's enjoyment and/or willingness to play any given job and max it out.

You can talk about how SCH was gutted all day long, and while I don't disagree, mentioning its former DPS rotation as a focal point of the job is exactly why it's gone. It was the epitome of a green DPS, and we either have to face the fact that this is not how the devs and a lot of players want our healers to be, or look the other direction.

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The problem is, the dps abilities were a big focus of the job because that was the way encounter design made it. Once the healing is done, there is nothing to do except dps or spam emotes. I know there are some healers who would rather sit there and do nothing than dps, but I can’t imagine that’s the “average” healer.

Now, as a SCH you press broil more than every other button put together. By removing SCH’s other dps moves, they haven’t taken SCH’s focus off DPS because a good SCH will dps the same amount no matter what their dps tools are - that being as much as they can without letting the healing slip. It’s just that now doing your job well means risking repetitive strain injury.

I’m not a hardcore raider. I don’t use a parser. I try to optimise, but I do that for my own enjoyment. Maybe you’re right and there are a lot of healers out there who don’t mind the broil spam. Or maybe there are a lot of healers out there who don’t like it but either don’t realise that the forums exist or who don’t think posting here will make any difference. I was one of the latter in StB. I was very unhappy with the changes to SCH in 4.0. But I didn’t say anything.

None of us can just assume that the silent majority agrees with them. However, the increase in unhappy healers on the forums suggests that at the very least there are more healers who dislike this iteration of healers than who disliked the previous one, so it would be nice if there was some way to get decent data on what the majority actually think.

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You can talk about how SCH was gutted all day long, and while I don't disagree, mentioning its former DPS rotation as a focal point of the job is exactly why it's gone. It was the epitome of a green DPS, and we either have to face the fact that this is not how the devs and a lot of players want our healers to be, or look the other direction.

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Well maybe the devs should do a better job designing their encounters to necessitate more healing if they don't want healers so focused on DPS then.

This was posted on the healing section a few days ago:

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Originally Posted by Ayesafaile

Average SCH dungeon gameplay at 80:

https://i.imgur.com/mxKnAmu.jpg

This job is so boring to play I loathe running my experts each week.

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Spamming the whole of two abilities for more than half of your dungeon encounter is mind-numbingly boring, and it's something that every healer is having to deal with right now. This isn't fun, it's not engaging. You can argue that this isn't how the devs want healers to be played as much as you want, but it's in stark contrast with the state of combat in this game. This current kind of gameplay is why a lot of us healers are looking for greener pastures elsewhere.

They embraced the DPS nature of tanks by adjusting aggro mechanics and removing the damage penalty for tank stance, why is it such a sin for healers to want some love in this regard as well?


And on a side note, for those saying AST is fine on account of them receiving buffs and having the ability to solo heal things again...
Take a look at the number of parses coming in for the current raids. We're on, what? Week 7 or 8 now? And AST counts for a grand total of 9.6% of parses at the moment (16,733 of 162,261 Eden Savage parses). I don't think even WHM was this bad in SB. The class may be "balanced" but it's sure as hell not very fun to play. Especially that opener, Jesus.

Healers just aren't fun to play. Everything but WHM feels weak. There's no incentives either other than a quick que.

I also think healers should get mounts. As someone who plays Tank/Healer/DPS I personally feel like healers can be more stressful to play. Especially with undergeared party members. AoE eaters, and tanks that refuse to pop buffs.

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

Except they're still green DPS, which is part of the problem. People wouldn't be complaining if they added new and interesting healing mechanics alongside more intense healing to keep people both busy and engaged.

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Agreed, I hoped for more healing stuff to do but that just isn't the case.
It's not so much of an issue in savage, imho there is a good mix of mechanic dodging, healing and DPSing, that's cool.
But dungeons with a good tank consist of OGCDs and mashing one button. Ugh.

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Originally Posted by Rufalus

I was just thinking about AST cards in the shower. It would be cool if they could combine the new and old systems into something better. Keep the +dmg from the new system so that there are no 'useless' cards, but remove the bonus dmg for using them on specific roles and replace that condition with a secondary effect unique to each card: Bole (+def), Ewer (mp refresh), Spire (+determination), Spear (+crit), Balance (+directhit), Arrow (+atk spd). So they all do +3% dmg dealt in addition to those other effects. And as a quick fix to make dpsing slightly more interesting, bring back Break role action (light dmg and heavy) but turn it into an off-gcd ability with a fairly short CD for weaving in between malefic/broil/glare.

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This results in a dumbed down version of how ast operated previously. More viability overall in the cards but itll still end up min/maxing. Bole becomes useless or OP for the defense increase unless they design around it in encounters, and hten it becomes an issue of it becoming an ideal to bring an ast no matter what. Det and ASPD have a lot lower priority on stats, and can be a negative to certain classes (put to much aspd on a monk, for example, and they start clipping oGCDs and arent able to double weave). Crit and DH are progress dependant. DH is strong right now because we cant hit the Crit thresh hold effectively. Once gear gets there, Crit overtakes DH. And as stats go overall, DH and Crit are almost universally desired. So youll have a system of fishing for those stat cards instead. Then you have to balance against these things to ensure that Ast isnt a must pick.

The current system, for what it is, pretty much makes it less important what card you get for buffs. It's the compromise.

Beyond that, I think the complaints for healer are often misplaced. People want to talk about "Oh, Healers are boring to play!" but generally I hear this particular criticism from healers who dont do savage or healers who want to play like a DPS. The non-savage thing is an issue, in that content isnt difficult enough in that regards. There needs to be harder mechanics (not just more damage, though that is part of it) and more RNG mechanics in non savage content. This is an issue of pushing the skill floor up overall and then pushing Savage even harder. Way I see it though, if you dont like the role, then dont play it. If you want to be a healer, and do healing, then the current iterations of healers accomplish this. This doesnt mean there isnt room for improvement and regular content needs to up its difficulty, but if the crux of the complaint is "I only have 3 or 4 DPS skills as a healer and thats boring" while ignoring a robust support kit as part of the play, then it seems like people are more keen on playing a DPS wiht support skills than playing a healer with support DPS abilities.

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Originally Posted by TwiibieTwuu

I also think healers should get mounts. As someone who plays Tank/Healer/DPS I personally feel like healers can be more stressful to play. Especially with undergeared party members. AoE eaters, and tanks that refuse to pop buffs.

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Unless casting your mount becomes a part of your combat rotation what exactly would that solve?
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The current design works great when you undergear content. You will be spamming heals and shields and rezzes until you run out of mana and barely getting by.

The problem is faced in every MMO with vertical progression; eventually you outgear it and healing becomes less needed. Maybe that happens early or later - but in the long run this is an unsolvable problem built into vertical progression games.

That’s why we have green dps. It’s why we have them in WoW. It’s why I personally first saw green DPS in City of Heroes almost 14 years ago... the MMO that I believe gave healers the label of “green” for their role as all healing was colored green on screen...

In WoW they originally prevented this not by stopping you from ever outgearing content... they just gave healers no viable DPS toolkit... that’s mostly gone now. And green DPS is the rule in WoW.

It’s not that green DPS are going to be parsing good DPS numbers unless the game engine is broken... but it’s about something to do...
WoW’s classic through Wrath era community solved this very differently than here. They just had healers AFK between heals - my old cohealer sometimes DC’d from the AFK timer in mid boss fight back in Burning Crusade/2007. Healer was seen as the role that you have your friend or sig-other that actually hates MMOs play... It was low engagement and easy very early on in gearing...

Many healers have already hit that point in Shadowbringers...

They can AFK or they can green DPS...

Yes many healer quit WoW healing when it started trying to fix this. First they tried what SE is trying right now. They made healing dramatically harder in Cataclysm. But within just a patch or two longer than before healers had outgeared the new standard and were back to AFKing...

And then you started seeing the counter spec, the discipline healer, rapidly become the most popular healer with a whole new set of players because it was a green DPS. Ever since every WoW healers has had a DPSing toolkit. Some of them just a few buttons, some a complex martial arts rotation...

Only in a horizontal progression game like Guild Wars 2 or Elder Scroll will you ever be able to stop people from outgearing the need for healing... and yet green DPS is actually more solidly built into the engine in those games than in any others...

Which highly implies that a good green dps toolkit is the only viable long term solution...

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Originally Posted by Makeda

Unless casting your mount becomes a part of your combat rotation what exactly would that solve?

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Nothing, it's just the WoW/Blizzard mindset: if sth. isn't readily adopted don't ask why it isn't fun, just reward-bomb people into oblivion and call it a success. >.<

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Originally Posted by Makeda

Unless casting your mount becomes a part of your combat rotation what exactly would that solve?

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It's called an incentive. Something for people to work towards. Something to reward them for doing end game content as a healer. Tanks get two mounts each. Why can't healers? Would people still do the level 80 roulette if it didn't reward a tomestone bonus?

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Originally Posted by TwiibieTwuu

It's called an incentive. Something for people to work towards. Something to reward them for doing end game content as a healer. Tanks get two mounts each. Why can't healers? Would people still do the level 80 roulette if it didn't reward a tomestone bonus?

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It would be a bandaid at best, not an actual solution. Just like with tank mounts, people would play until they got it,then go right back to playing whatever. It wouldn't make anyone want to continue to heal.