Is the "healing portion" of healers hitting a wall in EW?

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

There are way too many oGCD heals in this game and not enough of them do anything interesting to justify their existence; the change to some powerful DPS neutral heals (like pneuma and macrocosmos) has been kinda good from the perspective of how healing works but the actual healing they bring is completely unnecessary.

They 100% need to delete some oGCD healing or pump up damage numbers because the system just isn’t working, let’s take SGE for example, SGE does not need 2 potent regens on a short CD, plus a medium and large burst healing, a small heal plus an extra mitigation and a small shield plus large heal for AOE on top of kardia as it’s single target upkeep, a 10% single target mitigation and a pulsing shield.

I can’t remember the last time I cast eukrasian prognosis not in downtime

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I mean I use every action and ogcd on Sage because there's always a time and place and use for them. You can weave gcd heals with ogcd heals or dps with ogcd heals. I don't stand there like an NPC casting the same spell over and over.

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Originally Posted by seraf

I mean I use every action and ogcd on Sage because there's always a time and place and use for them. You can weave gcd heals with ogcd heals or dps with ogcd heals. I don't stand there like an NPC casting the same spell over and over.

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I think we'll see here in a few months what the AST and DRG reworks looks like. It will give a good indication as to which way the wind is blowing in regards to plans for not just healers, but all classes in the future.

One need only look at new summoner at 19 buttons, not counting role actions (NCRA for short from now on), or Monk (22 NCRA) and then compare it to things like WHM (25 NCRA) or AST (28 NCRA) or SCH (26 NCRA) or SGE (the lowest, probably because it's the newest) at 23 buttons NCRA. Of course some of these are morphing buttons and when one factors that into SMN it's probably like 40+ abilities (I'm not counting all of that stuff to get an exact number), but the distinct impression I am getting from people is they don't just want a 1-1-1-1-1 that turns into 1-(alt)-1-(alt)-1-(alt). That is still, as people have said many times, "just pressing one button."

If you are not pressing x to doubt the concept they are going to be adding yet more buttons to healers, you are not paying attention to how class reworks have been going. Post simplification yes, before that, no. And yes, I would put down $100 down on any table in Vegas right now with zero hesitation that AST comes out of it's rework vastly simplified, and they will be very irate about it.

* This is from doing a quick count against bars, I might have screwed up here or there and counted something like Esuna for one and not another, so these might be off but I doubt it's by more than one.

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Originally Posted by Atma

I think we'll see here in a few months what the AST and DRG reworks looks like. It will give a good indication as to which way the wind is blowing in regards to plans for not just healers, but all classes in the future.

One need only look at new summoner at 19 buttons, not counting role actions (NCRA for short from now on), or Monk (22 NCRA) and then compare it to things like WHM (25 NCRA) or AST (28 NCRA) or SCH (26 NCRA) or SGE (the lowest, probably because it's the newest) at 23 buttons NCRA. Of course some of these are morphing buttons and when one factors that into SMN it's probably like 40+ abilities (I'm not counting all of that stuff to get an exact number), but the distinct impression I am getting from people is they don't just want a 1-1-1-1-1 that turns into 1-(alt)-1-(alt)-1-(alt). That is still, as people have said many times, "just pressing one button."

If you are not pressing x to doubt the concept they are going to be adding yet more buttons to healers, you are not paying attention to how class reworks have been going. Post simplification yes, before that, no. And yes, I would put down $100 down on any table in Vegas right now with zero hesitation that AST comes out of it's rework vastly simplified, and they will be very irate about it.

* This is from doing a quick count against bars, I might have screwed up here or there and counted something like Esuna for one and not another, so these might be off but I doubt it's by more than one.

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My copium is that SE has been seeing the backlash to Samurai and healer changes on the forums and paused to reassess what they were planning instead of just simplifying the jobs and calling it good.

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Originally Posted by Amenara

My copium is that SE has been seeing the backlash to Samurai and healer changes on the forums and paused to reassess what they were planning instead of just simplifying the jobs and calling it good.

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NGL I wept for the loss of Kaiten, still feels weird playing SAM without it, but I do rarely play it these days anyway. After like 75 runs of Delibrum in a month back in the day to get hairstyle and relic parts, I burned out haaaard on that class.

So...

Pushing 111111111 is somehow more boring than pushing 123123123 how? Once you've got muscle memory there's no thinking. I can play drg while watching YouTube.

Ability interplay and smarter encounter design. More unpredictability. There, fixed it.

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Originally Posted by Imora

I can play drg while watching YouTube.

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And with the 6.3 changes incoming, it's likely going to stay that way from level 1 to level 100.
Please look forward to it with us, the ASTs. <3

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Originally Posted by Imora

So...

Pushing 111111111 is somehow more boring than pushing 123123123 how? Once you've got muscle memory there's no thinking. I can play drg while watching YouTube.

Ability interplay and smarter encounter design. More unpredictability. There, fixed it.

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You don't start with 1-2-3 by level 2. Your rotation changes as you level, with more skills to weave in as you go.
Healer's rotation doesn't change from the word go. It's always 1-1-1-1 as soon as you start the game. We don't get some fancy new attack every few levels that changes how we play, just another unnecessary heal that we have 20+ of already. Doesn't help when every Trust NPC has more DPS spells than Healers do. It's like SE thinks we're too stupid to handle them, despite being able to in the past. It's insulting honestly. I died a little inside every time I saw Aero 3 flaunted in my face whenever I got Tower of Zot for roulettes.

Suggesting that we are after simple 1-2-3 combos is misunderstanding things really. Personally if we get a combo I’d actually prefer it be a pvp style single key combo to avoid button bloat. The nuance can come from extras as you say, procs, resource generation, timers etc.

Psstt. Older contents exist too.

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Originally Posted by Amenara

My copium is that SE has been seeing the backlash to Samurai and healer changes on the forums and paused to reassess what they were planning instead of just simplifying the jobs and calling it good.

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I wouldn't even be surprised if they postpone those changes (or at least AST's since... healer) to 7.0.

Truth be told, these jobs right now are doing fine, is not like these changes are to save them from doom and rather (in the dev's discourse at least) to improve the experience.

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Originally Posted by Atma

As for your suggestion list etc, I know it wasn't written with myself or this conversation in mind. For the substance, I'll be completely forthcoming - you lost me at "add back Miasma" and you especially lost me at "make bane yet another dot on top of that." I've made my opinions on multi-dotting relatively clear. I most assuredly, 100%, am not playing a healer to play a miniature version of an affliction warlock, absolutely not. The class concept you have presented is something I wouldn't touch with a 11 foot pole. Again, it's nothing personal or intended as a slight against you in any way, just can't stress enough how much the idea of ever managing multiple dots again chafes at me the wrong way.

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Heavens to Betsy, anything but managing more than 1111111111111! Anything more complex than that would just make healers plain unplayable.

Healers were nerfed down into being the most boring jobs I've ever seen in an MMO because this game's Sylphie population bellyached and whined and moaned that doing more than casting one spell a gajillion times over and over again in content was "too haaaaaaaaaaard" and appearing incompetent made them feel bad, so they screamed to remove the ability to become competent rather than actually practicing and becoming competent; hence the healing part became easy, and the downtime kits became easy, because the people who refused to countenance more than easymode got their way. It wasn't because "evil DPS healers" argued to "become more powerful" and ended up shooting themselves in the foot or whatever. I've been complaining about the downward spiral in healer engagement since late Heavensward. Because my main job got handed over to its Sylphie population on a silver platter, and it's been moving in that direction ever since.

And being DPS mains who share that Sylphie opinion on how healers "should" play, the devs went along with it.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

Heavens to Betsy, anything but managing more than 1111111111111! Anything more complex than that would just make healers plain unplayable.

Healers were nerfed down into being the most boring jobs I've ever seen in an MMO because this game's Sylphie population bellyached and whined and moaned that doing more than casting one spell a gajillion times over and over again in content was "too haaaaaaaaaaard" and appearing incompetent made them feel bad, so they screamed to remove the ability to become competent rather than actually practicing and becoming competent; hence the healing part became easy, and the downtime kits became easy, because the people who refused to countenance more than easymode got their way. It wasn't because "evil DPS healers" argued to "become more powerful" and ended up shooting themselves in the foot or whatever. I've been complaining about the downward spiral in healer engagement since late Heavensward. Because my main job got handed over to its Sylphie population on a silver platter, and it's been moving in that direction ever since.

And being DPS mains who share that Sylphie opinion on how healers "should" play, the devs went along with it.

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Healers have more to manage than a single button though. We DPS most of the time but you still need to heal with oGCDs.

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Originally Posted by Katoar

Healers have more to manage than a single button though. We DPS most of the time but you still need to heal with oGCDs.

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That's literally no different to any other role using their oGCD skills between their rotations.
It's like saying that Tanks can't have more than 1 button because they need to manage their mitigation CDs.
If a WAR is able to manage their rotation and keep a party of 3 DPS alive with the small handful of oGCDs they have that heal/shield party members, there is literally no reason the same courtesy can't be extended to healers.

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Originally Posted by Silver-Strider

That's literally no different to any other role using their oGCD skills between their rotations.
It's like saying that Tanks can't have more than 1 button because they need to manage their mitigation CDs.
If a WAR is able to manage their rotation and keep a party of 3 DPS alive with the small handful of oGCDs they have that heal/shield party members, there is literally no reason the same courtesy can't be extended to healers.

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I am not saying that healers should have only one button for DPS. My point is that we have other things to manage besides our Nuke and DoT.

I wonder if making healers more complex would reduce the amount of healers. I know that if I suddenly had to start pressing more buttons to do the exact same thing, I would be rethinking if I enjoyed that thing. imo of course, I'm not a healer, so I can't judge.

Making healers more complex will attract people who like a sense of mastery and drive away people who cannot be bothered to learn anything about their role. I think that's a positive change. Of course, healers should be doing more damage if they get a real DPS rotation.

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Originally Posted by Katoar

I am not saying that healers should have only one button for DPS. My point is that we have other things to manage besides our Nuke and DoT.

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What healers have to manage is a shadow of the past

We had multiple DoTs
We had shields to apply or party members would die.
We had Virus/Disable to debuffs enemies
We had Fairies to swap between
We had cards to extend the duration of, spread to everyone, etc.
We had Aggro and MP to manage

What we have now is even less to manage than what we did in ARR, if you can even call it "managing". It feels more like SE pandering a child than actually respecting our intelligence.

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Originally Posted by Boblawblah

I wonder if making healers more complex would reduce the amount of healers. I know that if I suddenly had to start pressing more buttons to do the exact same thing, I would be rethinking if I enjoyed that thing. imo of course, I'm not a healer, so I can't judge.

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Can you walk and chew gum? A level 90 healer should be able to judge when to heal and dps. At this point no other job hits 1 skill for more than 70% of more of an encounter even at the highest level. I've never seen that in any game.

Speaking for myself, I don't want to do necessarily do exactly what i've been doing, although having more DPS options is a possibility and yes that would be more interesting that hitting "1" for 80% of my my DPS skills. If by the good grace of SE I am also given additional utility - whether buffs or other skills OR encounters are modified so that healers could be integral to them - maybe by requiring skills such as esuna- (btw having an aoe esuna like other games would be great) - then even better.

I don't even care if people start relating how many times they've met a healer who let them die because they don't know what esuma does. I don't. By level 90 a healer should know when to use esuna, and this is one way to keep dungeons interesting and not just an AOE dodge-fest or a straightforward tank and spank,

Healers are so boring nowadays!

I would give my entire soul to see even a modicum of nuance returned to healers instead of subjecting myself to mindless 1 spam every time I dare to glance at a healer symbol.

Come to think of it... I would love if the abundance of healing actions we have nowadays could be pushed to their full potential with a redesign of how damage happens in the fights. This means that fights would need to be less formulaic, and that is a big design decision that would certainly need to impact retroactively old content - that's a lot of work, but it would be worth.

I don't play WoW nowadays, but I remember that healers actually compete against themselves in the healing meters to see how well the party survived with the least amount of overhealing. Here in XIV all I hear is dps placement among healers... I don't ever think I saw the discussion about "healing meters" here, because it's treated like a subproduct of the dps performance.

Though I remember healers there being homogenized in how well they perform at certain aspects of a fight, I do know that they spend most of their time worried about healing numbers (sans Disc priest for obvious reasons).

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Originally Posted by Raikai

Come to think of it... I would love if the abundance of healing actions we have nowadays could be pushed to their full potential with a redesign of how damage happens in the fights. This means that fights would need to be less formulaic, and that is a big design decision that would certainly need to impact retroactively old content - that's a lot of work, but it would be worth.

I don't play WoW nowadays, but I remember that healers actually compete against themselves in the healing meters to see how well the party survived with the least amount of overhealing. Here in XIV all I hear is dps placement among healers... I don't ever think I saw the discussion about "healing meters" here, because it's treated like a subproduct of the dps performance.

Though I remember healers there being homogenized in how well they perform at certain aspects of a fight, I do know that they spend most of their time worried about healing numbers (sans Disc priest for obvious reasons).

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That's mostly because overhealing in this game is far too easy to do. Between the self healing capabilities of Tanks, the oversaturated Healer Toolkits consisting primarily of oGCD heals, any self heals utilized by DPS roles and the laughably low healing requirements the game has in all forms of content, there's simply no value in healing meters.

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Originally Posted by Katoar

I am not saying that healers should have only one button for DPS. My point is that we have other things to manage besides our Nuke and DoT.

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*In content that actually needs a credible amount of healing

You can fumble your way through a surprising amount of the game with medica II alone, no need to manage anything then! =(

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Originally Posted by Boblawblah

I wonder if making healers more complex would reduce the amount of healers. I know that if I suddenly had to start pressing more buttons to do the exact same thing, I would be rethinking if I enjoyed that thing. imo of course, I'm not a healer, so I can't judge.

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Note that healer queues for just about any roulette are generally instant these days and have been for a while now.

Now look back to Heavensward when healing was generally more challenging and actually had a proper skill ceiling to boot. Yet there were comparatively more healers queueing for roulettes because healer queues generally weren't instant.

Sure, healing is accessible, more so than it's ever been. But ffs please understand that once you have some kind of understanding of what's going on and your kit, mainstream content like Aglaia is just beyond boring especially if you don't get a complete clown shower for a raid. ~30 minutes of pressing the same button over and over and over again. I stopped going as healer because Nald scales wipes had me struggling to pick up the willpower to get up off the floor.

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Originally Posted by Raikai

Come to think of it... I would love if the abundance of healing actions we have nowadays could be pushed to their full potential with a redesign of how damage happens in the fights. This means that fights would need to be less formulaic, and that is a big design decision that would certainly need to impact retroactively old content - that's a lot of work, but it would be worth.

I don't play WoW nowadays, but I remember that healers actually compete against themselves in the healing meters to see how well the party survived with the least amount of overhealing. Here in XIV all I hear is dps placement among healers... I don't ever think I saw the discussion about "healing meters" here, because it's treated like a subproduct of the dps performance.

Though I remember healers there being homogenized in how well they perform at certain aspects of a fight, I do know that they spend most of their time worried about healing numbers (sans Disc priest for obvious reasons).

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The big difference between WoW and FF is that you could cut down healers in WoW.
And that makes all the difference - because suddenly healing as much as possible while overhealing as little as possible while also wasting as little mana as possible (either through overhealing/ inefficient healing or ending the fight with too much mana) becomes the ultimate goal and is a sign of a good healer. And the reward for having really strong healers was being able to have someone willing respec to dps.
Overhealing was bad because it wasted raw healing power and resources that could've been spent in a way that allowed the static to cut back on a healer but instead they were stuck with an overhealer. Best case they were deadweight and only kept you from cutting back on a healer but worst case it caused wipes because the healer ran out of resources and couldn't keep up anymore. Even Disc had to pay attention to overhealing from non-atonement sources.

And here?
Overhealing is meaningless because oGCDs are free and unless the raid died to lack of healing later because you blew them all at once, it doesn't matter and it's unavoidable anyway because SE actively discourages cutting back on healers with how they design fights so you're bound to run into too much healing power for the incoming damage sooner or later and then the sniping starts, intentionally or not. Healing more can't get rewarded because comps are rigid. If you heal more, you just overheal more. There is no reward for you or your static or anyone else.

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Originally Posted by Boblawblah

I wonder if making healers more complex would reduce the amount of healers. I know that if I suddenly had to start pressing more buttons to do the exact same thing, I would be rethinking if I enjoyed that thing. imo of course, I'm not a healer, so I can't judge.

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It might reduce the number of people playing healer jobs slightly, but it would drastically increase the amount of healers. What I mean by that is we'd lose most of the people using the job as a free ticket into endgame content, but we'd gain a lot of players who actually want to main, invest in and master healer as a job. The type of player who wants to be as useful to the group as possible and finds the idea of flawlessly keeping the group alive while simultaneously dishing out high damage exciting. Instead of the semi-afk curebot watching netflix.

As an example, let's say an expansion or two back they reworked all dps into mostly spamming one button and many hated it and came here to complain. You could apply your same question. In this scenario the dps population actually would have increased because it's so easy, but the quality of players would have nosedived. Yes, you'd probably lose dps players if you reverted that hypothetical situation, but the players you'd have after would be the ones who actually love dps, instead of the ones who like easy clears. The lazier players still have jobs like DNC, SMN and a ton of easy content and since they have no choice but to put the minimum effort in, they'd simply do that and get through the game fine.

It's important to remember population is not a metric that correlates to good design. If they gave BLM all instant casts in 6.2, the population would triple but it would be a disaster and cause uproar. For a start, you aren't increasing the population of the game itself, you're merely shifting players from one job to another. There are 20+ jobs, so even if some are complex and have a smaller fanbase, it's healthier for the game because the variety of playstyles on offer attracts a wider overall audience than a single playstyle of faceroll. Even if 1 button healers increase the amount of players using a healer, it might even decrease the number of players who stick with the game because they try it, feel it's boring and silently leave.

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Originally Posted by Raikai

I don't play WoW nowadays, but I remember that healers actually compete against themselves in the healing meters to see how well the party survived with the least amount of overhealing. Here in XIV all I hear is dps placement among healers... I don't ever think I saw the discussion about "healing meters" here, because it's treated like a subproduct of the dps performance.

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The difference in WoW is there is a some diversity between spec, class, gear, set bonuses, talent choice, trinkets, procs, boss mechanics, up time/down time, mana mangement etc.

There's definitely more to to consider as a healer in WoW.

Also WoW is constantly changing its healing hierarchy through nerfs and buffs and finding that sweet spot where your class and spec synergises at the right time and the right raid. For example Holy Priests have jumped from just about the bottom of the barrel last tier to power houses this in this one.

Healer DPS needs a complete rework which can prevent the wall from happening. It would still need to be braindead easy but more vibrant than it is now. A more OGCD damage skill and each to where casting a GCD heal can be towards a dps gain.

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

As an example, let's say an expansion or two back they reworked all dps into mostly spamming one button and many hated it and came here to complain. You could apply your same question. In this scenario the dps population actually would have increased because it's so easy, but the quality of players would have nosedived. Yes, you'd probably lose dps players if you reverted that hypothetical situation, but the players you'd have after would be the ones who actually love dps, instead of the ones who like easy clears. The lazier players still have jobs like DNC, SMN and a ton of easy content and since they have no choice but to put the minimum effort in, they'd simply do that and get through the game fine.

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No offense, but this is a terrible hypothetical. DPS have 20+ buttons for DPSing because DPSing is their main role. They generally have 1-2 buttons for healing or mitigation because that's not their main job.

Of course "well what if they neutered DPS's DPS into 1 button spam" would create uproar because that would literally reduce them to like 8 total abilities. You'd create the same for healers if you reduced healing to 1-2 buttons. It's just not even remotely comparable for even a hypothetical "what-if" situation.

As for the BLM situation you described, we actually *do* have somewhat of an example of them doing that just in reverse. Early HW bard, when they first added Wanderer's and it turned you into a cast-bar turret. Some people loved it (ok not many... but some... ok, I'm sure at least 1 person liked it...), some hated it, but eventually 'hate it' won out and it went away.

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Originally Posted by Atma

No offense, but this is a terrible hypothetical. DPS have 20+ buttons for DPSing because DPSing is their main role. They generally have 1-2 buttons for healing or mitigation because that's not their main job.

Of course "well what if they neutered DPS's DPS into 1 button spam" would create uproar because that would literally reduce them to like 8 total abilities. You'd create the same for healers if you reduced healing to 1-2 buttons. It's just not even remotely comparable for even a hypothetical "what-if" situation.

As for the BLM situation you described, we actually *do* have somewhat of an example of them doing that just in reverse. Early HW bard, when they first added Wanderer's and it turned you into a cast-bar turret. Some people loved it (ok not many... but some... ok, I'm sure at least 1 person liked it...), some hated it, but eventually 'hate it' won out and it went away.

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DPSing is everyone's responsible and considering that every role besides healers reflects that, there's still no reason for the role to be completely opposite of what the game more or less expects from players. Content is designed in a way where people can clear it at minimum ilvl but that is only possible if the healers are also DPSing. Healers don't need 20+ healing abilities, I'd argue anything more than 10 is overkill, but that's literally all healers have been getting since this whole fiasco started and it's bottlenecked the role into being boring as a result. What do you have to look forward to? 10 extra potency and some graphic fluff to justify it? Another heal that will copy/paste on all healers? An old skill that was removed just to be given back?

It's a joke that healers have been reduced to a job for nitwits and neanderthals that can't handle something as simple as WAR, DNC or SMN rotations and yet are trusted with keeping 7 other people alive.

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Originally Posted by Atma

No offense, but this is a terrible hypothetical. DPS have 20+ buttons for DPSing because DPSing is their main role. They generally have 1-2 buttons for healing or mitigation because that's not their main job.

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Look at an average log for any content, literally anything, it doesn't matter what you pick. Now compare the amount of GCDs spent DPSing vs the amount spent healing. Now add the oGCDs into that.

Do with this info as you will.

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Originally Posted by Silver-Strider

DPSing is everyone's responsible and considering that every role besides healers reflects that, there's still no reason for the role to be completely opposite of what the game more or less expects from players. Content is designed in a way where people can clear it at minimum ilvl but that is only possible if the healers are also DPSing. Healers don't need 20+ healing abilities, I'd argue anything more than 10 is overkill, but that's literally all healers have been getting since this whole fiasco started and it's bottlenecked the role into being boring as a result. What do you have to look forward to? 10 extra potency and some graphic fluff to justify it? Another heal that will copy/paste on all healers? An old skill that was removed just to be given back?

It's a joke that healers have been reduced to a job for nitwits and neanderthals that can't handle something as simple as WAR, DNC or SMN rotations and yet are trusted with keeping 7 other people alive.

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The problem is that SE doesn't trust them one bit with keeping people alive and that is reflected in their design choices for the role and content. If they had any trust they wouldn't design content so that it's completable without a healer unless everything goes pear-shaped.

And that a healer has nothing to look forward to is what keeps people from staying. It's all well and good that they managed to reel new players in but if they can't make them stay it was not only worthless but also damaging in the long run. It was a short-term investment and the queue times have noticeably decreased compared to ARR-SB. A healer that only plays it occasionally for a quick ticket into content and isn't really interested in a role but picked it up because it's now easy enough to do doesn't fill nearly as many queues as a dedicated healer main that plays it in as much content as possible.
A quick increase in healer player numbers was the focus and it backfired.

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Originally Posted by Atma

DPS have 20+ buttons for DPSing because DPSing is their main role.

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The problem with Healers having to have most of their buttons for healing originates from the lack of sufficient outgoing damage anywhere in the game including ultimate. Healing kits are filled with redundant healing buttons. For example, AST has countless ways to heal a raid-wide

Collective Unconscious
Celestian Opposition
Aspected Helios
Neutral Sect + Aspected Helios
Helios Spam
Horoscope
Macrocosmos
Earthly Star
Lady of Crowns

All of these basically do the same thing: heal raid-wide damage. All of them except for Neutral Sect and Horoscope have no connection with one another. They are random buttons that can be pressed whenever the player feels like it. The healing design is counter-intuitive because the game forces healers to always prioritizes DPS neutral heals over GCD healing spells through boss enrages. The strife to be better at what your job is supposed to do materializes in the well-known Nuke spam. It is inevitably going to be there even if the healers had to heal all the damage with GCDs.

All in all, healing design is bad. Healing abilities exist only to replace what something else already does but with DPS loss and to enable further Nuke spam. If each nuke is removed from every healer, the role will break apart, completely rendering every oGCD meaningless as there is no DPS to be gained from using it. No other button is so integral to the healers' kits as their nuke spell. That's something that needs to change.

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Originally Posted by Katoar

The problem with Healers having to have most of their buttons for healing originates from the lack of sufficient outgoing damage anywhere in the game including ultimate. Healing kits are filled with redundant healing buttons. For example, AST has countless ways to heal a raid-wide

Collective Unconscious
Celestian Opposition
Aspected Helios
Neutral Sect + Aspected Helios
Helios Spam
Horoscope
Macrocosmos
Earthly Star
Lady of Crowns

All of these basically do the same thing: heal raid-wide damage. All of them except for Neutral Sect and Horoscope have no connection with one another. They are random buttons that can be pressed whenever the player feels like it.

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To build onto this, the toolkits of healers reflect the damage profiles of bosses. 99% of outgoing dmg is raid wide bursts of damage, and 99% of outgoing healing is raid bursts of healing. Healing is also too strong, needing only 2-3 spells total to negate a burst of damage. They need to make more interesting types of damage, like (un-esunable) dots, multi target dmg that only hits a few raid members, etc. That they they can reflect in healers kits by making some aoe heals not raid wide. WoW has things like Chain Heal (targeted 4 man heal with reduced healing down the chain), Prayer of Mending (mini excog, which bounces to another target when proc'ed), Binding Heal (heals the caster and the target), and Wild Growth (5 man regen).

Now, I imagine they don't do this for a number of reasons, some already previously stated:

1. Healer accessibility. I know people who are intimidated by healing as it is now, increasing the skill floor wouldn't help them.

2. Healers being blamed for deaths. As it is now, dying is 95% of the time obviously your own fault. If someone died to unavoidable damage that was put in the game to entertain healers, they wouldn't be happy about it.

3. I dont know how it is for ASTs to throw out cards on console, but I imagine spot healing on console is kind of a pain.

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Originally Posted by Frodnoxx

To build onto this, the toolkits of healers reflect the damage profiles of bosses. 99% of outgoing dmg is raid wide bursts of damage, and 99% of outgoing healing is raid bursts of healing. Healing is also too strong, needing only 2-3 spells total to negate a burst of damage. They need to make more interesting types of damage, like (un-esunable) dots, multi target dmg that only hits a few raid members, etc. That they they can reflect in healers kits by making some aoe heals not raid wide. WoW has things like Chain Heal (targeted 4 man heal with reduced healing down the chain), Prayer of Mending (mini excog, which bounces to another target when proc'ed), Binding Heal (heals the caster and the target), and Wild Growth (5 man regen).

Now, I imagine they don't do this for a number of reasons, some already previously stated:

1. Healer accessibility. I know people who are intimidated by healing as it is now, increasing the skill floor wouldn't help them.

2. Healers being blamed for deaths. As it is now, dying is 95% of the time obviously your own fault. If someone died to unavoidable damage that was put in the game to entertain healers, they wouldn't be happy about it.

3. I dont know how it is for ASTs to throw out cards on console, but I imagine spot healing on console is kind of a pain.

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If you're going to start down the road with a comparison to another game, I seriously doubt that healers in WOW have such a pitiful selection of DPS skills. I won't comment because I lasted only 2 weeks in WOW.

Regarding 1- there could be multiple reasons, there has been discussion of updating the hall of the novice - I would recommend that. Or, those people could start out with trusts. Otherwise healing in this game shouldn't intimidate anyone. for some of those people it's just not the right fit for them - so - do something else? There are 16 other jobs- pick one..

Regarding 2 - I don't see SE has making dramatic changes to damage, however I really do think that various debuffs and some occasional heal check should be put in. If player do die then so what? Unlike some other games, the bosses here don't vanish. You raise someone and then keep going. If the whole party wipes, you lose a few minutes (again, more difficult content is an exception to this). I want to get away from a role being so utterly superfluous that people start to think that it's fine to leave them out, or leave half the party dead on the floor to finish a boss. It's not.

Regarding 3- from what I've heard, there are ways to get around this so that it's manageable.

The kind of healing intensity we see at the end of E12S and P4S should be the norm, not exception if SE ever want healers to go back to their root. It's doubtful though.

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Originally Posted by Silver-Strider

DPSing is everyone's responsible

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

Look at an average log for any content,

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You both know damn well I meant 'that is the role that all of their class abilities are structured around' and also that I'm even being generous giving a number like 8 for how many active abilities that would leave them with. We can have this discussion without resorting to silly things like "what if they reduced all DPS classes to one button, imagine the uproar!"

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Originally Posted by Katoar

The problem with Healers having to have most of their buttons for healing originates from the lack of sufficient outgoing damage

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I know, I was making this argument for about 6 pages of the thread. I fully understand why and how healing is broken in this game, (next to) all of the damage is scripted beats that you press an OGCD to deal with. It's crap design. My position is that them changing the situation regarding DPS will result in them never addressing the fundamental problems with the design and thus, the situation will never improve. It's just kicking the can down the road.

It's just easier for people to assume I'm a simpleton that can only handle a single button for DPS (despite clearly having multiple DPS classes levelled to cap) than accept the fact that I'm on their side but I want the core problem fixed first and not to give them and easy out to hang up a "mission accomplished" banner in the office and call it a day for another two xpacs.

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Originally Posted by Frodnoxx

1. Healer accessibility. I know people who are intimidated by healing as it is now, increasing the skill floor wouldn't help them.

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But it would be worse than the status quo? Healing literally can't get more easy as it is. I feel that the easiest way to appeal to both audiences is to just increase dps actions or side activities (like the role cards have for AST) for healers and leave healing as it is, because this way the skill ceiling rises, while the skill floor - which is the healer not letting the party die - remains.

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Originally Posted by IDontPetLalas

snip

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Don't get me wrong, I completely agree healers are in a sorry state in this game (although other reasons make me prefer it over WoW nowadays) and the reasons I listed are not me justifying the design decisions. I'm just try to point out what reasonings SE might have, poor as they might be.

Yes, WoW healers not only have more interesting healing kits, they also have more interesting dps skills.

I agree that novice healers shouldn't be intimidated. Playing whack-a-mole with cure can be as easy as 1,2,3... like the 1,2,3 that novice dps do.

I also agree that added responsibility for healers would be a great thing, but SE has been steering away from jobs (tanks and healers) being responsible for others since SB.

Maybe unpopular take, but imo the excessive Tank healing I think should go.
You basically never have to heal tanks outside of Tank Busters and even then you don't really need to heal them either.
It's just silly, only time you really need to heal in Savage is for big AoE.

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Originally Posted by Katoar

The problem with Healers having to have most of their buttons for healing originates from the lack of sufficient outgoing damage anywhere in the game including ultimate. Healing kits are filled with redundant healing buttons. For example, AST has countless ways to heal a raid-wide

Collective Unconscious
Celestian Opposition
Aspected Helios
Neutral Sect + Aspected Helios
Helios Spam
Horoscope
Macrocosmos
Earthly Star
Lady of Crowns

All of these basically do the same thing: heal raid-wide damage. All of them except for Neutral Sect and Horoscope have no connection with one another. They are random buttons that can be pressed whenever the player feels like it. The healing design is counter-intuitive because the game forces healers to always prioritizes DPS neutral heals over GCD healing spells through boss enrages. The strife to be better at what your job is supposed to do materializes in the well-known Nuke spam. It is inevitably going to be there even if the healers had to heal all the damage with GCDs.

All in all, healing design is bad. Healing abilities exist only to replace what something else already does but with DPS loss and to enable further Nuke spam. If each nuke is removed from every healer, the role will break apart, completely rendering every oGCD meaningless as there is no DPS to be gained from using it. No other button is so integral to the healers' kits as their nuke spell. That's something that needs to change.

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More to the point, all of those spells heal raidwide damage like you said and raidwide damage comes out every minute or so? Do we really need 9 abilities that might only need one used every minute or so?

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Originally Posted by Frodnoxx

1. Healer accessibility. I know people who are intimidated by healing as it is now, increasing the skill floor wouldn't help them.

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As has been stated numerous times before. People who only want to heal aren't looking to play better if they're being honest with themselves. The role is being held back by people who aren't interested in any sort of optimization. The people who are saying "I don't want to DPS" aren't ever going to touch the DPS buttons so adding more doesn't affect them. At all.

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Originally Posted by Frodnoxx

2. Healers being blamed for deaths. As it is now, dying is 95% of the time obviously your own fault. If someone died to unavoidable damage that was put in the game to entertain healers, they wouldn't be happy about it.

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And those people are wrong. Deaths are usually a combination of factors. DPS took too many stacks being greedy? Death via one shot. DPS didn't use their own mitigations to possibly help themselves? Tough to feel sorry for that. Tanks that didn't mitigate a tank buster at all? Don't be surprised if you have to be picked up off the floor.