Healer feedback and thoughts

Given the call for feedback via the official forums I figured I would make a post with my thoughts on class balance being one of the crazy people with all 90s. I am not a professional at balance and these are just opinions from time with them leveling, running endgame content, and looking at the data available online for class performance in raids.

Healers: healers have been in a slightly strange position at the start of things, the splitting of shield vs pure healer is still something we need more time with but its been interesting to see how things fall into place. That being said similar to some of the DPS class design is showing its age in glaring detail when looking in relation to the more modern designs

WHM: White mage is showing its age. In ShB I felt like it was the big muscle healer, it had strong healing throughput, high personal dps, and enough mana to drag parties through content and cover many raises without issues. Given the balance changes and shift to “pure healer” it has lost the damage side along with a few knock-on effects as well as the thin air changes and lack of cooldowns for single target has become a real issue. Dungeon healing on WHM used to be easy compared to other healers but due to the changes it’s a struggle to keep tanks up at times, I had to use holy as mitigation to try and keep up as even with the potency buffs I spent most pulls worrying about the tanks hp and had to spam cure 2 in many different cases. The lilies which previously felt like a strong but slightly limited resource you would use to heal and get some of the lost damage back from has faded into being a hard DPS loss and watching the tanks HP plummet as wait for your GCD after the instant cast being unable to help is more stress than help. The blood lilly could use some help to compete with the increased potency GCDs along with potentially adding in more regens to allow for better tank sustain. AST excels at layering regens in dungeons to have windows of safety to manage class mechanics or do damage where currently WHM has to focus much more on GCD healing. While the aoe throughput is still impressive aqua veil and divine benison are not enough to catch up to the other healers on single target given their extended kits and options. Combined with the changes to thin air heavily clipping your sustain means that WHM now struggles with MP compared to the other healers. I would add in some form of additional regen(potentially on lilies or aqua veil), charges on tetra, or increase single target lilly healing and charge rate to compete. And finally, the 2 button DPS rotation is really showing its age when compared to SGE which gets flexible DPS cooldowns and has more to do. While tweaks can help a lot it almost feels like WHM would benefit most with a full rework at this point to have a more modern design, the other healers have gotten semi reworks a few times now but WHM has been the most static.

SCH: SCH is in a great place at the moment, you have a fair amount of healing throughput, strong options for rotating cooldowns, interesting utility in deploy and expedient. The only thing of note is while few blessing is now a much better cooldown its removal of fairy gauge means that there is only one use of the meter which feels a bit odd. While the community was very vocal about energy drain it still feels odd to tie damage to a healing resource as it makes it more optimal to avoid that healing option as you can convert it to more damage, as a solution to sitting on stacks of aetherflow when it comes back up I would love an option instead to consume the stack for some additional MP or fairy gauge and potentially adding in a cooldown to spend more of the gauge for a spike heal or shield. Overall SCH feels great and while I still want more DPS buttons the healing kit covers all the bases it needs to.

AST: For once the launch AST has not been struggling in some way. The healing cooldowns at your disposal are incredibly strong and have their different applications leading to a strong way to support the group and make meaningful decisions in healing which I really appreciate. The only thing of note is that redraw feels lackluster in its current form as the single reroll feels limiting given the previous options. One idea is to force a type change on the card when you use it (so melee to ranged or vice versa) as it feels bad to draw a ranged card when paired with 2 melee in a dungeon and redraw into another melee card. Astrodyne was a good compromise for the seal system and as a way to make divination timings more consistent. Given how AST scales I am not worried about its currently lower output, the additional scaling on party damage will let it catch up to the other healers dps wise later and its incredible healing kit helps your co healer increase their damage which is nice. Token request for additional dps options as 2 button damage rotations don’t feel great

SGE: SGE is the new hotness and has an incredible kit with a lot of great additions. The implementation of kardia and its ease of swapping is an awesome way to cover things. Combined with the toolkit to shield primarily and manipulate resources when things are going well on sage its incredible. The toolkit finally gives healers what they have been wanting for years, more interesting DPS rotations with things to manage on that front while also healing the party. The class feels very feast or famine in that when things are going well you can output incredible amounts of healing while dealing damage and throwing around mitigation and heals on a controlled manner, when things go bad however it struggles to catch up and is unable to spike heal effectively. This weakness is totally fine given how strong it is normally and how much it can bring to the table as a cohealer. The only change I want is some way to generate addersting without single target shields, potentially a cooldown to convert addersgall into a stack or two on a longer cooldown than Rhizomata as its DPS neutral but provides mobility on single target and can be difficult to replenish when you do not have time between pulls of a dungeon. Also, while Icarus is awesome the long CD of 45 seconds feels like a bit much, it would be interesting to see what kinds of applications people could have if it was on 2 charges or had a lower CD so you could rely on it more. Overall SGE feels great, has a good niche to fill, has its own limitations and shows that having a more interesting DPS rotation on a healer is both possible and a great thing to have to keep things interesting


Closing thoughts: The healer revamp is interesting and I am looking forward to more intense healing checks going forward given how strong our kits are. The comparison between WHM and SGE it shows a pretty stark contrast in kit design and options. I feel like we need more dps tools and a few tweaks but overall they are in a good place for the most part

Firstly: you can edit your post to bypass character limit

Second: no we are not getting more healing checks or the bar raised on how little healing we do. SE keep saying they're gonna raise it or not change it and its only getting to using less healing

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Preator

SGE: The toolkit finally gives healers what they have been wanting for years, more interesting DPS rotations with things to manage on that front while also healing the party.

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This is objectively incorrect and another confirmation that SE is not going to give healers what they have been wanting for years.