Healing accessibility is misunderstood

I'm pretty sure people who couldn't handle harder content aren't gonna do hard content just because the dps rotation is easier. What makes it hard is the pressure of not pissing off your team relying on you to heal them while performing ALL the mechanics. If ANYTHING the solution was to reduce the number of healing buttons and the number of hard casts on heals, BUT NO we gotta play through casual content with 2 buttons and 80 heal buttons we barely use! "hEaLeRs ShOuLd HeAl" is a true statement but this game isn't an old school mmo where healers just spend the whole fight filling the tanks life bar. Outside of harder content heal checks are incredibly short and easy with a decent team and even in savage and extreme there is a lot of time where your expected to sit there dpsing. I just can't understand how the devs made such a backwards design decision in Shadowbringers when trying to increase healer accessibility. Let's be real, the community spends way more time doing dailies and casual content for healing to be this boring. I'm glad whoever works on sage is taking inspiration from Stormblood scholar. Back then you had multiple DOTs to manage along side an actual burst combo of Broil>Ruin2> Energy Drain during buffs and it was just so much fun compared to SPAMMING BROIL THE ENTIRE FIGHT and using a biolysis. I'm not saying healers need to play like ninja or gunbreaker but give us more than two gcd damage spell. At least white mage got Afflatus Misery after losing cleric stance and aero III

TLDR The healing part of our kits is what should be simplified not the dps portion. This will never be a game where we are a bot that is constantly healing somebody because the game is so purely built around passing damage checks and mitigation checks.

The only part I'll disagree with is that the solution includes reducing hard cast heals. Making the kit more compact but accepting healing is in fact a necessary DPS loss would probably make the role (if not game) more interesting for veterans and more accessible for newbies.

Hell, even I quietly went "for fuck sake" when I unlocked Sage and tried to figure out the hotbar setup, even though I had leveled every healer before it. Having two GCDs that can be either pure heal or shielding? Well that's easy enough, but memorizing 20 other mostly superfluous skills right off the bat is where it becomes a chore. It's no wonder average healers are so resistant to moving away from WHM.

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Originally Posted by ThorneDynasty

The only part I'll disagree with is that the solution includes reducing hard cast heals. Making the kit more compact but accepting healing is in fact a necessary DPS loss would probably make the role (if not game) more interesting for veterans and more accessible for newbies.

Hell, even I quietly went "for fuck sake" when I unlocked Sage and tried to figure out the hotbar setup, even though I had leveled every healer before it. Having two GCDs that can be either pure heal or shielding? Well that's easy enough, but memorizing 20 other mostly superfluous skills right off the bat is where it becomes a chore. It's no wonder average healers are so resistant to moving away from WHM.

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I'm pretty sure yoshida himself said that constantly looking at hp bars was not a way to play a game... They need to keep pushing forward ways for heals to interact with dps at this point. Like I've mentioned so many times in these forums, like pvp. And coincidentally, build on what was there to begin with (original scholar).

Also reduce the heal bloat that they keep adding even in DT...

And make it so that gcd heals are not a dps loss like they've already done, but push it further with interactions, and there's no need for complex rotations or whatever. Even a simple proc-based system -maybe with procs that you can store- would keep people more engaged and on their toes.

With it's Lillies, white mage is a great example of gcd heal that doesn't reduce your dps.

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Originally Posted by ThorneDynasty

The only part I'll disagree with is that the solution includes reducing hard cast heals. Making the kit more compact but accepting healing is in fact a necessary DPS loss would probably make the role (if not game) more interesting for veterans and more accessible for newbies.

Hell, even I quietly went "for fuck sake" when I unlocked Sage and tried to figure out the hotbar setup, even though I had leveled every healer before it. Having two GCDs that can be either pure heal or shielding? Well that's easy enough, but memorizing 20 other mostly superfluous skills right off the bat is where it becomes a chore. It's no wonder average healers are so resistant to moving away from WHM.

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I actually like how SGE offers a lot of skill expression with its bloat of heals/shields. It's messy and overwrought af but you're not going to get bored casting the same support spells on SGE. Just DPSing like every other healer.

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Originally Posted by SeverianLyonesse

I actually like how SGE offers a lot of skill expression with its bloat of heals/shields. It's messy and overwrought af but you're not going to get bored casting the same support spells on SGE. Just DPSing like every other healer.

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Genuinely what skill expression does SGE have

It’s just SCH with all its complexity ripped out

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Originally Posted by SeverianLyonesse

I actually like how SGE offers a lot of skill expression with its bloat of heals/shields. It's messy and overwrought af but you're not going to get bored casting the same support spells on SGE. Just DPSing like every other healer.

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You really need to elaborate on this one.

There needs to be actual interaction between skills and for there to be actual choices to be made within the toolkits. I don't care what button I'm pressing right now because they're all flat, standalone skills that don't interact with one another in the slightest. Give me a reason to hit Regen over Tetra, Succor over Indom, etc. I don't build up a gauge, proc any effects or anything that would even remotely be considered stimulating gameplay, just all the same oGCD bloat to minimize the loss of missing out on our singular filler spell. Give me DoTs to manage, give me traits like Quickened Aetherflow back, give me ways to manipulate my cards again, literally anything at all because I'm more interested in watching a video on my second screen than I am watching whatever content I'm currently running.

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Originally Posted by Teno

I'm pretty sure yoshida himself said that constantly looking at hp bars was not a way to play a game... They need to keep pushing forward ways for heals to interact with dps at this point. Like I've mentioned so many times in these forums, like pvp. And coincidentally, build on what was there to begin with (original scholar).

Also reduce the heal bloat that they keep adding even in DT...

And make it so that gcd heals are not a dps loss like they've already done, but push it further with interactions, and there's no need for complex rotations or whatever. Even a simple proc-based system -maybe with procs that you can store- would keep people more engaged and on their toes.

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Yoshida also thinks DoT-focused jobs are not a way to play a game, and pet management is not a way to play a game, and non-standard BLM lines are not a way to play a game, and being a caster in platemail is not a....

Yoshida's opinions shouldn't dictate the entire game design and his eagerness to make use of parrotable, thought-terminating cliches sucks. Checking the game state and deciding if healing is more productive than mindlessly continuing to nuke is interesting.