Making 'GCD heals that are not damage neutral' feel slightly less bad to use maybe

Just a random idea. What if we change the GCD lockout (the 'recast') on some of the heal skills from 2.5 down to 1.5s? Or even 1.0s? If Regen was a 1sec mini-GCD, would it be more appealing to use, or at least, less opposition to the idea in raids when it's needed? I remember early P8S I'd use Regen on both Natural Alignment DOTs, and Medica2 as well, so I'd have felt the difference there.

This doesn't help the issue of 'well there's not exactly all that much to heal', but it'd at least maybe make 'lossy GCDs' feel a bit less punishing to use hopefully, instead of the hamfisted 'well make it damage neutral' solution that leads to weird stuff like Macrocosmos being a GCD, or Misery ending up being ridiculously swingy because of crit variance

I could definitely get behind instant cast GCDs having a fast recast like you suggest. It'd make inject a bit of pace into healer gameplay. As you say it would need to be coupled with more damage, but IMHO there's a mountain of room to up tank damage at the very least. This could be added in tandem with that to make a bump damage taken less problematic to keep up with making regens and such more appealing.

The only issue that comes to my mind is that WHM mobility might take a hit with this? For the most part I can't really see it being a problem, but fights like P7S might need another look.

I was thinking of like, Medica upgrade to Medica 2, as with the many people suggesting the same, and then having Medica and the later Medica 2 both also be instantcast, 1.5s GCD (or 1.0, whichever), since you wouldn't want to spam that skill usually anyway. If you needed to pump HPS then Cure3 would be there for that. And ideally you'd still be using Lilies before this shorter Medica 2 GCD anyway, right?

In fact you could do this for most of the healers I think. Having a 1s recast, instant casttime Adlo would be pretty nice for most people I'd think, though maybe some people like how it is now. The only one that's weird is Sage because it's heals already ARE 1.5s, due to the other 1.0 being Eukrasia

Because of how incredibly important damage is in this game, it feels very backwards how individual healing tools continue to be treated. Both Medica and Afflatus Rapture restores HP with a potency of 400 in an AoE around the user, but look at the other differences between them:

Medica
+ Can be used during any GCD
- Costs 900 MP
- Has a 2 second cast time
-- Comes at the lost of DPS

Afflatus Rapture
++ Is at worst DPS neutral and at best a DPS gain
+ Is Instant Cast
+ Costs 0 MP
+ No hard cooldown
- Requires a lily to use (20 second generation; can hold up to 3)

This feels so backwards to me. Since Rapture allows you to heal without dropping your DPS, it should be the one with an MP cost and a cast time. Medica, the tool that costs you DPS, should be the 0 MP cost instant cast heal. This would balance the two and make each usable in different situations.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

This feels so backwards to me. Since Rapture allows you to heal without dropping your DPS, it should be the one with an MP cost and a cast time. Medica, the tool that costs you DPS, should be the 0 MP cost instant cast heal. This would balance the two and make each usable in different situations.

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Agreed. Felt this way a while myself. The MP costing "spells of last resort" already have their cost in MP. The free stuff is what should cost damage or be extremely limited, but that's the stuff we're supposed to mainly use "when playing right" and that has no real downside because of how short the CDs are.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

This feels so backwards to me. Since Rapture allows you to heal without dropping your DPS, it should be the one with an MP cost and a cast time. Medica, the tool that costs you DPS, should be the 0 MP cost instant cast heal. This would balance the two and make each usable in different situations.

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They're not meant to be used in different situations; one is not meant to be used at all once you have the other. It remains in your action set as a high cost contingency for not using Afflatus charges effectively.

Our AOE HOT ability should be insta cast but with small cd(15s cd - same as the spell lasts)
The other aoe heal that dosnt add HOT should stay as it is (use as filler when nothing else is up)
It would make it easier to do more DMG during raidwide/groupwide dmg, also easier to HOT stack tanks during big dungeonpulls..

Also our singel target heal ability has way to long cast timer..make it 1.5!

It's not a bad idea. Hell, Eukrasia kind of already works like this in certain situations and is a step in this direction.

But, the other end of this is that the game is largely 'balanced' around the 2.5 GCD heal for incoming damage. It would make the game even easier to heal because you'd be able to heal more potency per second. Most fights wouldn't be affected, I grant you, but it'd certainly affect your "Final Floor boss spends the last minute of the fight spamming damage" mechanics and those are like the only times we actually have to cast heals.

Probably help your average expert dungeon healer on a large pull, I guess.