Healer Rework 6.0 (Yet another healer thread :P)

First and foremost Id just like to say that I have been reading intensely all the posts from 5.0 to where we are now on diffrent ideas and changes ppl want and dont want to healers.

Most can agree that they want a change but not all can agree what type of change they want which must make this very hard for SE following the next expansion. But a change we most have! What I have seen so far that seems to be the most common discussions for changes is the following:

1. Give healers more dps/or a more complex dps rotation.
2. Make the content harder/diffrent so that healers will go from healing 40% to 100% healing and give us less "panic buttons/overheals".
3. Unhomogenize the three healers and give each a more distinct playstyle.

As always I can see the point in all arguments and I understand where it all comes from, I can understand players who want to be pure healer aswell as those who prefer dps healers.

Like many have said before, the current approach that SE did for most healers was to give us alot of more healing spells and less dps spells, while gameplay remained somewhat the same for shadowbringers. Now having 14+ healing spells to choose from but only really still needing half of them and the opposite goes for offensive spells.

I think the answer is there already from looking at what we have on other classes and already in small doses on healers. I think its neither make pure healers or dps healers but mix both, while still finding a way to make all 3 healers unique in both their heals and dps.

Squarie already tryid doing this with the lily system on WHM, although I think it was a nice try it failed and didnt really make me feel like I got dps from healing as much as I had to heal to get my dps.

I think a solution would be to look at RDM, I will start by taking WHM as an example for a rework as I am most acquainted with the class.

Imagine WHM had one MP for healing and another MP for DPSing, the lily system would be scrapped and instead it would be a meter in the gauge filling up your dps mp, lets call it "spirit/holy". Instead of certain spells unlocking certain dps abilities like WHM has now with afflatus rapture/solace and misery the new system would work in a way that all healing spells provide spirit.

Depening on the potency and mp cost of said healing spell you get a special amount of spirit to fill your bar, this bar would unlock dps abilities who cost spirit. Now to ensure you cant over heal in order to nuke up your spirit bar healing would once again have to be somewhat MP heavy and you would have to use resources wisely.

Over an ecounter you would slowly refill your spirit until you enter the dps stage of the boss encounter, here you would nuke out all your dps at once if possible lowering your spirit as much as possible. This way WHM could play abit like a BLM with keeping high potency spells in dps because your burst window is short but has high alpha dmg for its time when active.

Moving on to SCH instead it would be less of a "gather all spirit first then nuke it all at once" and more of a use abit of spirit at all times during the boss fight switching between healing and dps much quicker and more often then whm keeping a stable overall dps throughout the whole encounter.

AST being something in between both healers but with slightly less dps to make up for party buffs.

But all healers overall would have the same dmg contributed in the end of the boss fight/raid but just some in burst modes others in smaller more stable dpsing. Very much like how the current dps classes compete, without being homogenized.

My biggest issue with this idea is how do we complete solo content/leveling if all our dps comes from healing? Well my solution so far for it would be that we keep some skills that does not demand spirit in order to engage combat without first having to heal, spirit would then increase as you heal/shield yourself and the first mob might take sometime but then it would go faster and faster for each pack after that as your spirit increases.

Alternatively spirit scales with party, you gain more spirit being in no party and less spirit in 4 aswell as 8 players to make up for the extra healing. Any heals done to players outside your party would not give any spirit in order to not abuse the system of going solo scaled spirit on fate groups/hunts in the world.

I think that this solution would mean that healing is always needed and essential and your dps wouldnt be punished for doing so but rather increased, when you get more skilled you can make your own choice of "overhealing" wasting your MP to give more spirit in order to do more dps but risking running dry in mid fight instead.

Please give your opinions and help me see flaws of this system as there always is and one is blind to their own faults in ideas.

Thanks for suffering through this wall of text, you are a hero!

*edited to first post*

I think we more or less already came to the conclusion that they will not make healing any harder, simply because the...let's call them "lower end" players still struggle with actually keeping people alive, despite healing requirements being mostly a joke, and making harder healing requirements would make it impossible for them to complete content.

I'm of the opinion that at some point you just have to stop caring about the potential of some people failing or you're in a never ending spiral of dumbing things down. That said, it's very likely that SE does not share my opinion.


So that basically leaves us with only 1 option, to give healers a more interesting DPS kit to fill the downtime that is inevitably going to occur.

I wonder how long it will take for Square Enix to realize that their ideology of a "pure healer" doesn't work well in a enviroment that has most of its content way too easy in Difficulty. Either increase the overall difficulty in Content or give Healers a decent Dps Kit to fight back so that this Role at least doesn't stay boring.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

I think we more or less already came to the conclusion that they will not make healing any harder, simply because the...let's call them "lower end" players still struggle with actually keeping people alive, despite healing requirements being mostly a joke, and making harder healing requirements would make it impossible for them to complete content.

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while this is true for normal content, i see no resson why they can't up the healing requirements for savage and extremes. if healing isnt challenging even in high end content, it makes healers in general very disillusioned

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Originally Posted by QooEr

while this is true for normal content, i see no resson why they can't up the healing requirements for savage and extremes. if healing isnt challenging even in high end content, it makes healers in general very disillusioned

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It's too late for healers not being disillusioned. And sure, they could make savage and extremes require more healing but that wouldn't change anything for the majority of content you'll be doing. Even hardcore raiders do other things than just savage and an even remotely competent healer is still gonna be bored out of their mind in 90% of the content this game offers.

Quote:

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I think we more or less already came to the conclusion that they will not make healing any harder, simply because the...let's call them "lower end" players still struggle with actually keeping people alive, despite healing requirements being mostly a joke, and making harder healing requirements would make it impossible for them to complete content.

I'm of the opinion that at some point you just have to stop caring about the potential of some people failing or you're in a never ending spiral of dumbing things down. That said, it's very likely that SE does not share my opinion.


So that basically leaves us with only 1 option, to give healers a more interesting DPS kit to fill the downtime that is inevitably going to occur.

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I think SE is in the mindset that they dont want the community to ask healers to dps in dungeons unless they want to, as that might stress the "lower end" players as you call them.
Hence the removal/dumbing down of the healers dps kit, SE themselves stated that they dont plan content for healer to dps but rather that its purely a bonus and that healers should mainly only heal.

I dont agree with this mindset as I dps myself and always have as a healer, I loved the cleric stance dancing and all that.
But, I dont think SE will change their minds on this and therefore I wanted to present an idea that would allowe unexperianced players not to get punished for healing purely instead of learning a dps kit on the healer class.
Fusing both healing and dps instead of seperating them in order for healers to not get punished for not healing or the other way around lose dps when healing but simply fuse them both.

This would allowe a higher skill ceiling to the class but would still make the class easy to learn as you could experiment yourself how much "overhealing" you would want to waste in order to increase dps.