Tinfoil Hat Time! A new Lens to Look at Healer Changes!

I kind of got a strange feeling about the Healer changes in 5.0. And this is admittedly a bit conspiratorial. So I'm going to put in a disclaimer that this is most likely not accurate or anything, and is just a curious observation. Now that we all have our tin foil hats on, let's discuss the idea!

It's commonly thought that the healer changes were made without even looking at or considering player feedback. To me, it seems that SE actually did look at player feedback when considering the changes made to 'fix' healers this expansion. However, they were looking at feedback from non-healer players. When looked at in this lens, a lot of the changes suddenly make sense. After all, consider the types of problems that they tried to fix with their changes.

"Ugg, it's annoying that I have to wait for the SCH to cast Aetherflow out of combat." Fixed! They can't do it outside of combat! Now you don't have to wait for that silly Scholar!

"Blugh. Why did that Scholar cast Energy Drain for MP Rather than heal me! They shouldn't be able to do that!" Fixed! Now they can't use them on anything but healing abilities!

"Ergh. Why did that AST give the tank a Bole rather than giving me a balance?" Fixed! Now all they can give out is balance!

"Healers should be healing not DPSing!" Fixed! We'll try to limit that as much as possible through making their rotations simpler!

Now, if this is compared to the problems that healers were generally looking for like more advanced healing mechanics, deeper DPS rotations, a bigger focus on support during downtime, or the myriad other changes, it becomes clear what were emphasized. If you take the idea that the 5.0 Healer changes were made for non-healers they suddenly make a lot more sense.

That being said, it doesn't make them any less boring or terrible. So what do you guys think? Is my tin foil hat simply ripping at the seams? Or is there some logic to the idea?

I don't think anyone would be surprised if the healer changes were made by people who don't play healers.

I think there may be some real merit to your idea but I think the bigger picture is that they wanted both Tanking and Healing to be more accessible to new players. The aggro changes definitely made Tanking far more simple and pushing Healers toward healing with increased damage output across the game and simpler DPS options definitely cements the "healing" aspect of the role. Scholar is boring but much much easier to grasp and crossing from Astro to Scholar to White Mage is simpler than ever as they homogenized the skill sets so much. This seems to tell me they were more concerned with adding to the small number of Tanks and Healers without considering that the ease of play might not have been the issue but the fact that Healing and Tanking just weren't as fun or flashy as most DPS jobs.

I could actually believe this since I have had multiple people ask me why I DPS in dungeons. Cause playing healer wack-a-mole isn't a full time gig and just sitting doing nothing is not enjoyable for me.

Hey, here is an idea, Tanks only need to hold aggro and defend vs damage. Why dont we change all their abilities to Aggro and defense only then give 4 of those abilities damage. I mean we have DPS classes that is their job to DPS so tanks and healers shouldn't have to. 1 Direct damage, 1 dot, 1 AE. that should be enough with all their tools to hold aggro and defend right.

Why don't we do this ? cause its a stupid idea! Then why are we doing this to healers? F.F.S.

Here’s the thing, I’m almost positive none of the dev team mains a healer. I remember them saying they talked to other players (I’m sure the “big” youtubers) and that they found the healer changes positive. Thing is I’m ALSO POSITIVE that none of them main healer either, mostly tanks and dps. I really hope they start listening more or find someone who actually does play healer because as much as I’ve stuck with the role since the time I joined in 2.0 this is the first expansion that I found myself not having fun with the role.

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Originally Posted by NobleWinter

I think there may be some real merit to your idea but I think the bigger picture is that they wanted both Tanking and Healing to be more accessible to new players. The aggro changes definitely made Tanking far more simple and pushing Healers toward healing with increased damage output across the game and simpler DPS options definitely cements the "healing" aspect of the role. Scholar is boring but much much easier to grasp and crossing from Astro to Scholar to White Mage is simpler than ever as they homogenized the skill sets so much. This seems to tell me they were more concerned with adding to the small number of Tanks and Healers without considering that the ease of play might not have been the issue but the fact that Healing and Tanking just weren't as fun or flashy as most DPS jobs.

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I really fail to understand why all classes should have the same level of accessibility. Look at casters, RDM is easy to learn, those that find it fun do so for their more relaxed gameplay style coupled with their support kit that allows for easier clearings. You want more challenge? BLM with its casting times and focus on positioning or SMN with its busy rotations and weaving. DNC is the more accessible Ranged, while BRD and MCH are harder. Don't know the state of tanks, but usually PLD is easier compared to the others and so. All of these classes are fun and offer different level of accessibility for players while retaining their unique game play styles. I cannot understand why the decided to change the dynamic of healers. Before WHM was the more straightforward healer while SCH and AST were more busy or complex. I think having different jobs with different complexities is good for the health of the game, and the healer changes just goes against it.

I've been saying this sense they announced the changes. Anytime I bring it up people act like I am kicking their cat or something. The way I see it the only people who are happy with the healer changes are non healers, and the people who like to play healer because they think it should simple, you know the kind of people who don't even cleanse because that's too much effort? Yeah those people. Also WHM's as honestly their changes where mostly just improvements.

yeah, truth be told, i started playing as white mage back at the beginning, and got really good with it, so i changed to scholar, once i was good with that one, i went Astrologian and that was the most exciting and challenging job i had played in a long time, the RNG of the cards, determining when best to use them, all of that made for an extremely fun job for me to sink my teeth into, now it's basically first 3 cards do tanks and melee dps, other 3 cards do healer and ranged dps, just feels bland and totally unexciting or challenging any more, and that is really sad, been giving some thought to main tanking now rather than main healing because of how bad it is atm

I think they're just dealing with higher expenses (servers) and deciding to spend their money in other areas of the game. They didn't make role quests instead of job quests to be user friendly, it was clearly to cut costs. They didn't solve the healer balance by thoroughly looking into the classes, they homogenized all of them instead. If you look around there are a lot of these little tidbits strewn around the place.
On the flip side the msq was super solid, thorough and had so many cutscenes. The zones are great, detailed and beautiful. The marketing was spot on and very present. The trailer was pretty crazy. Etc.
Just the woes of budgeting. Healers got the short end again, mostly because I suspect none of them play it in the first place. The absent are always wrong, and healer definitely weren't present during that meeting.

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Originally Posted by EaMett

I think they're just dealing with higher expenses (servers) and deciding to spend their money in other areas of the game. They didn't make role quests instead of job quests to be user friendly, it was clearly to cut costs. They didn't solve the healer balance by thoroughly looking into the classes, they homogenized all of them instead. If you look around there are a lot of these little tidbits strewn around the place.
On the flip side the msq was super solid, thorough and had so many cutscenes. The zones are great, detailed and beautiful. The marketing was spot on and very present. The trailer was pretty crazy. Etc.
Just the woes of budgeting. Healers got the short end again, mostly because I suspect none of them play it in the first place. The absent are always wrong, and healer definitely weren't present during that meeting.

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I desperately want someone on the development team to be a healer main. Or for them to elevate some of the top healer players as community advocates who can help brainstorm with the dev team if they want to just completely throw the problem at other people. Might be for the best at this rate honestly. The community knows this role better than the developer's do from the looks of it.

"Not enough people play tanks and healers, Dps Qs are too long because of it, let's make them more accessible!"
....
*people still mostly play dps anyway*
*tank and healers get bored and also play dps instead*

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Originally Posted by EaMett

I think they're just dealing with higher expenses (servers) and deciding to spend their money in other areas of the game. They didn't make role quests instead of job quests to be user friendly, it was clearly to cut costs. They didn't solve the healer balance by thoroughly looking into the classes, they homogenized all of them instead. If you look around there are a lot of these little tidbits strewn around the place.
On the flip side the msq was super solid, thorough and had so many cutscenes. The zones are great, detailed and beautiful. The marketing was spot on and very present. The trailer was pretty crazy. Etc.
Just the woes of budgeting. Healers got the short end again, mostly because I suspect none of them play it in the first place. The absent are always wrong, and healer definitely weren't present during that meeting.

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I really doubt budget had anything to do with healers. especially since all they really did was remove things that were fun and adjusted potencies. AST was the only class they really messed around with. it feels like they cut them down so the leveling field was the same in order to build them up again in the next xpac. I feel like I am playing 2.0 healers again.

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Originally Posted by Yawnie

Here’s the thing, I’m almost positive none of the dev team mains a healer. I remember them saying they talked to other players (I’m sure the “big” youtubers) and that they found the healer changes positive. Thing is I’m ALSO POSITIVE that none of them main healer either, mostly tanks and dps. I really hope they start listening more or find someone who actually does play healer because as much as I’ve stuck with the role since the time I joined in 2.0 this is the first expansion that I found myself not having fun with the role.

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The biggest youtubers I know of are Mr. Happy, MizzTech, Larryazur, Work2Game; and perhaps even Meoni, Grael Gaming, and ZeplaHQ. None of them main a healer. I am currently unaware of anyone being representative of the healer community on both west and eastern zones. I honestly believe we are at the bottom of the totem pole. Healer becoming the main adventurer in need was very accurately predicted.

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Originally Posted by CaesarCV

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Despite the tongue-in-cheek tone of your post, I don't think you're wrong. Even looking at changes before ShB-

For example, SE buffed the duration of confession from 10s to 30s. Technically, this was responding to feedback. But if you were here and reading the forums in depth... it was the wrong feedback. Most consensus was that changes that amounted to MOAR HEALING wouldn't help WHM's standing. And it didn't.

But if you're a dev just glancing over the forums for ideas, you'll see stuff like that. Then maybe go "oh yeah we can do that np". And so we end up with those odd, kind of useless buffs.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

The biggest youtubers I know of are Mr. Happy, MizzTech, Larryazur, Work2Game; and perhaps even Meoni, Grael Gaming, and ZeplaHQ. None of them main a healer. I am currently unaware of anyone being representative of the healer community on both west and eastern zones. I honestly believe we are at the bottom of the totem pole. Healer becoming the main adventurer in need was very accurately predicted.

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It's also telling how rarely healers get any kind of mention at all in interviews. On the very rare occasion they do, it's nothing in depth.

And of course, the devs don't engage with us here on the forums. Does feel a bit like we're praying into the void at times... or most of the time really.

I'm not saying drugs was involved in the healer changes but I'm thinking bath salts maybe magic mushrooms.

It seems like the idea might have been to clarify what they want the Healer to be. Focus on healing. The DPS are there for damage.

I'm not saying that's the right move, but it seems plausible to me. As a total non-pro player, but healer nonetheless, I've always tried to weave in as much DPS as the given tank's sturdiness would allow. Sometimes tanks are so solid that I can forget I'm a healer. But there have been a lot of times where I would be DPS'ing and then get yelled at by the tank to only heal. Or the opposite when people would say, "Healer, DPS more!"

There was always this uncertainty. The changes in Shadowbringers just might be the people at SE changing how healers play, with a more clear expectation.

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Originally Posted by Stol

It seems like the idea might have been to clarify what they want the Healer to be. Focus on healing. The DPS are there for damage.

I'm not saying that's the right move, but it seems plausible to me. As a total non-pro player, but healer nonetheless, I've always tried to weave in as much DPS as the given tank's sturdiness would allow. Sometimes tanks are so solid that I can forget I'm a healer. But there have been a lot of times where I would be DPS'ing and then get yelled at by the tank to only heal. Or the opposite when people would say, "Healer, DPS more!"

There was always this uncertainty. The changes in Shadowbringers just might be the people at SE changing how healers play, with a more clear expectation.

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Originally Posted by Stol

It seems like the idea might have been to clarify what they want the Healer to be. Focus on healing. The DPS are there for damage.

I'm not saying that's the right move, but it seems plausible to me.

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The problem being, as most people hypothesized, they did not achieve this. Now there is simply less to do between oGCD heals.

No part of healing has become easier, either. If you’re lazy or new you can physic/cure/benefic, same as you did before. Milking good damage out of a healer is harder without dot-reliant damage because it’s 100% how many GCDs you get off, which requires positional skills and cost-benefit understanding of weaving. Solo content is boring and wards of totally new people from the classes overall.

Another part I think was that maybe SE seemed to think that people weren't coming to the Healer Jobs because it was too hard. I have no idea where they got that idea precisely, but it was obviously wrong. The bigger issue for healers is that they're getting stale. Even if the healer changes had all been phenomenal, we'd still be on the downswing this expansion for certain. The fact of the matter is that class revamps don't bring people to a role. They can shift people around who are already interested in that role, but they won't bring in new people. New jobs on the other hand...they bring in people to a role, and some of them stick around. This hasn't happened for healers 2 expansions in a row. And perhaps the funniest thing is that SE seemed to have been gobsmacked by this, and were totally shocked as to why people might have expected a healer.

I agree with the sentiments here. It really does seem like the changes to healers were done to please non-healers, or people who solely believe healers should only heal. The problem with this is that FFXIV is not that kind of game. The mobs don't pose too much of an issue, boss fights are more like a scripted dance, and healers are really good at healing. This leads to extreme periods of downtime, which is spent using damage spells. The only healer that feels competent and somewhat fun to play is WHM, and that's because WHM was the simple, pure healer to begin with. Most of all WHM changes were straight up buffs.

When you get the SCH and AST, who had other things on their kit, a lot of changes are a bit puzzling and lack synergy. Pets aren't pets anymore, they're healing cooldowns! Selene? Who's that? Oh, that Eos reskin... Instesd on improving on Selene's identity (of which they neglected in SB), they just made her a meaningless glamour option. We also loose Fey Carees because AoE cleanse is too OP, I suppose. SCH gets more heals, I guess, but SCH didn't need more heals. And now Aether Stacks are only used for healing, but half the time, there's nothing to do, because SCHs are really efficient at what they do: preventing damage, negating the need for extra healing. Sitting on Aether stacks is a waste, so I expend Aether just to reflow again because I need MP and build the fairy gauge, for more healing I don't need....

Why is Aetherflow restricted to in battle? Why can't AST benefit from prebuffing, with their seals being restricted to in battle? When everyone is more or less invincible, the best course of action is to stand in the middle of mobs, like a Tank, and spam your expensive AoE spell? Sure. Let's be psuedo WHM, but without that added stun. Both Gravity and Art of War costs more because reasons, while WHM has infinit MP and more MP regen tools.

All AST cards are now Balance, but with arbitrary minor differences of: this card give bonus dps potency to Tank and Melee, or this card gets bonus dps potency to Healers. Why this change? Just a slight hoop to jump for an extra 3% boon? Just make them all the same, because they are. Now I have to remember stuff like: Ewer goes to Range dps to get that sweet 3% bonus potency boost, but it has that spiffy new Lunar Seal for my party-wide Balance buff, of which I need 3 different seal types for maximum boost, is on a 3 min cooldown because reasons, and can't be built out of combat. What reason is there for this tomfoolery? Just give me my Balance-Spire Royal Road back at this point.

The seals also seem tacked on and offer no real distinction outside of arbitrarily punishing you from using 3 of the same seal-aspected cards on your party-wide Balance buff. The Arcana differences are also effectively meaningless in anything but name. Lord goes to Melee, Lady goes to Range. 8% Balance for all!

No one is having fun as a healer, except WHM, of which they actually deserve from being shafted for so long. But, it's just the consolation prize of simply being the least awful. SE didn't change much of their core, just changed potencies and MP costs. Now, WHM are the kings of healer dps and healing throughput. You just spam Holy and use you oGCD healing spells, if/when the tank stops being invincible.

I used to be a healer main for 2.0 and HW. SB kind of made healing a bit meh for me. AST got a great buff, and SCH did needed to be knocked down peg; WHM was okay. However, I just went full tank with healing on the side, because I was spoiled on HW SCH. However, Shadows is really pushing it on whether I even bother with healing unless I decide to do WHM. And I can't even enjoy Tanking because it's even easier and everyone wants to be GNB now, clogging up the Tank queues.

No one wants to be a healer, because they got shafted again, and Tank and DPS (yet again) gets a new job. This rebalancing was definitely worth it. Healers in need for all.

Sorry, this turned into a full-blown rant, but I'm really frustrated at how they messed this up 2 times in a row. No new healer class, and somehow expect non-healers to pick up healing. You attract potential new healers with shiny toys, not bewildering the ones who have been playing the healing game for years. Not everyone will stick, but you may catch a few new potential healers because they are more incentivized on trying the newest trend and it might resonate with them. Homogenizing Healers and Tanks makes it boring for people already playing Healers and Tanks. Those who don't Heal/Tank won't all of a sudden Heal/Tank because of some class changes, especially changes that result in previously fun classes being gutted out. All this does is make no one wanting to play that role, this we are where we are now: people leaving a small population pool to join the default larger one. On the tank half, at least PLD and WAR aren't DRK..

I also feel like they don't check this forum at all. Just an impression. I've seen them react multiple times to stuff I originally saw posted on reddit but not here (like the whole Ascian mask theories from the trailer that YoshiP mentioned people were having). Maybe it's somewhere in the forums though.

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Originally Posted by Ruzha

I really doubt budget had anything to do with healers. especially since all they really did was remove things that were fun and adjusted potencies. AST was the only class they really messed around with. it feels like they cut them down so the leveling field was the same in order to build them up again in the next xpac. I feel like I am playing 2.0 healers again.

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I mean. It's part way in your answer. Balance through homogenization is a bad design move in general (baring some types of games). It most definitely wasn't the best move they could make so it's born either from a desire to fix things quickly (less work, cheaper costs) or is the result of not understanding healers / imposing for some meta concept.

In general they always seem to have taken the simplest, easiest route when it comes to 'balancing' the healers. They had trouble figuring out how to balance the cards so they just made them the same. They had trouble balancing Eos and Selene so they just made them the same. They had trouble balancing Healer DPS so they just made them the same. Despite supposedly not making a new Healer job so that they could spend more time on fixing and balancing the existing ones the team seems to have taken a great many shortcuts.

I think from the lens of healing needed so far in SHB, the minor healing buff across the board and expansion of healing kit was necessary. What is disturbing about the changes to me is that SE doesnt appear trust healers enough to give them a kit to defend themselves and then make MSQ and Job quest have us fight things with our stripped and gutted kit. Its unfortunate but hopefully they will remedy it for all healers in a near future patch now that everyones healing has been brought in line. Also WHM party damage increase when? Like all they had to do was make afflatus misery a debuff and bam all the healers have a similar kit and levels of usefulness.

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Originally Posted by ZaqueXIII

I think from the lens of healing needed so far in SHB, the minor healing buff across the board and expansion of healing kit was necessary.

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In my experience, the expanded healing kit is only necessary if you're interested in doing dps. That's the baffling bit.

In expert roulette, for example, with wall to wall pulls, I still spend ~60% of my time spamming Art of War when paired with the average tank. That's because I am utilizing our new abilities like Seraph and Recitation (and the busted new SS). But they're entirely unnecessary if my goal was to simply keep the tank alive.

It's why, SE, I am confusion. You give us all these admittedly nice healing abilities; you take away most of our damage kit; we take those new healing abilities and properly utilize them; proper utilization leads to healers DPSing for a large part of their time in group content. So we're still DPSing the same amount, healing a bit more, but are all the more bored for it because we spam 1 button. :confused:

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Originally Posted by Stamps

In my experience, the expanded healing kit is only necessary if you're interested in doing dps. That's the baffling bit.

In expert roulette, for example, with wall to wall pulls, I still spend ~60% of my time spamming Art of War when paired with the average tank. That's because I am utilizing our new abilities like Seraph and Recitation (and the busted new SS). But they're entirely unnecessary if my goal was to simply keep the tank alive.

It's why, SE, I am confusion. You give us all these admittedly nice healing abilities; you take away most of our damage kit; we take those new healing abilities and properly utilize them; proper utilization leads to healers DPSing for a large part of their time in group content. So we're still DPSing the same amount, healing a bit more, but are all the more bored for it because we spam 1 button. :confused:

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So is the solution to nerf tank so healers spend more time healing and less dpsing ?

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Originally Posted by fogboundturtle

So is the solution to nerf tank so healers spend more time healing and less dpsing ?

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It's better than what we have now. If they want us to heal, then they should adjust content to reflect that. The main issue as always is twofold: Healing is extremely powerful and incoming damage is almost always a non-issue. The only time healers are stuck in a pure healing role is when progressing through Raids for the first few times. All the other times, healers have been and still are Green dps classes, with healing utility on the side.

Throw up your regens and shields, combined with the Tank defensive cooldowns and healers have nothing to do for the next 5-10 (sometimes 30) seconds. So, to fill the lull, you dps; the game encourages this. We have so many oGCDs, Cure, Physick, and unaspected Benefic spells aren't used 99% of the time, unless you are new to healing - and I mean new as in early leveling, because you don't have your oGCDs yet. Except for Free Cure and Critical Benefic, all the healers job-oriented mechanics revolve around our oGCDs.

The last thing we needed was more healing if the general content difficulty was going to remain the same. And because we now have less buttons to push during our downtime, things get boring pretty fast. If you're a WHM, you don't even have to worry about the tradeoff of MP management between healing and dps spam. If you're SCH and AST, you have to be slightly more restrictive with your AoE spam; not that it matters too much.

So, we're stuck between worlds here. Does FFXIV want us to focus solely on healing, when the mechanics actively discourages using actual healing spells, but instead wants us to use our myriad oGCD heals? Or do we dps with our 2 button spam, if we're lucky to have 2 buttons to push?

I'd be fine with being solo heals, and perhaps having dps skills restricted to solo play, but the group content needs to reflect that. I originally went into healing because I like healing and support roles, but Healer mains have always been given conflicting signals due to the inherent design philosophy of FFXIV and expectations of their role. Are we heal bots? Or are we dps in disguise? FFXIV wants range as support, so we can't be that.

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Originally Posted by RegularJoe

So, we're stuck between worlds here. Does FFXIV want us to focus solely on healing, when the mechanics actively discourages using actual healing spells, but instead wants us to use our myriad oGCD heals? Or do we dps with our 2 button spam, if we're lucky to have 2 buttons to push?

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Let me answer this question. There's a Healer role quest chain in Shadowbringers. The very first thing it asks you to do is DPS down a bear that hits like a soft, wet noodle.

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Originally Posted by fogboundturtle

So is the solution to nerf tank so healers spend more time healing and less dpsing ?

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The solution is to look at the situation in a more productive way. Healers being combatants when not healing is a good thing. It creates a beneficial incentive to the rest of the party to do mechanics, use cooldowns, and otherwise avoid damage: healer(s) being able to add damage and clear faster (or at all, if you're up against an enrage timer). A great many players have enjoyed this mechanic. Several hundred hours of FFXIV content can (sometimes, must) be played solo, which means Healer classes doing damage. The desire of a small minority of Sylphies to have FFXIV copy other MMOs shitty whack-a-mole healing should not be pandered to.

From that axiom, one can then examine ways to make playing healer classes fun. That can include things such as adding interaction between healer damage and heal abilities (ex: WHM Lilies and afflatus spells), re-adding things that used to work (SCH damage rotation), adding ways for a healer to buff party damage on GCD in place of spamming damage spells, and a whole lot of other ideas.

The appropriate goal is to convince employees at SE with decision-making authority that they have erred in their current direction for healers. It's that's simple. Their current direction reflects genuine incompetence: they have failed to improve two out of three healer classes in the eyes of a preponderance of those classes' players, they have failed to make healers "focus more on healing", it appears they have failed to balance healers for raids (though the jury is still out), and they have failed to admit these failures and begin course correction. What must happen is for them to admit their error and correct their actions.

Though, we should probably leave out words like 'incompetent' when addressing them directly.

Everytime I go to bed and think about healers as a role being like they are in 5.0 I fall sleep in tears.

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Originally Posted by BahamutxD

Everytime I go to bed and think about healers as a role being like they are in 5.0 I fall sleep in tears.

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Likewise. They're all so bad now. I mean, AST is amazing in terms of healing in general, but it BORES me to tears. I want to have to actually think while I'm healing.

I've said this before but I'll say it again: If I wanted to play a class where I just turned off my brain I'd just play my RDM. Actually, if the RDM got an AOE heal it would be almost as effective as the SCH post-nerf.

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Originally Posted by fogboundturtle

So is the solution to nerf tank so healers spend more time healing and less dpsing ?

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Why would you nerf the tanks when you can make the mobs hit harder? That seems like the quickest adjustment to make. Nerfing the tanks would be asinine.

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Originally Posted by BahamutxD

Everytime I go to bed and think about healers as a role being like they are in 5.0 I fall sleep in tears.

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Im soo sorry. As a scholar main I had high hopes for the healer balance and truly wanted to see whm & Astro raised to be more fun.

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Originally Posted by Naychan

Why would you nerf the tanks when you can make the mobs hit harder? That seems like the quickest adjustment to make. Nerfing the tanks would be asinine.

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Less dramatic change; nerf regens and oGCDs appropriately so that they supplement direct GCD healing rather than outright replacing it. For largely being instant cast and insanely mana-friendly (if not free), these abilities do far too much with little thought required behind their use.

As an healer main in any MMO I played, it’s the first time I dislike healing. I am trying to level both SCH and WHM but it’s just so boring that if it wasn’t for the story or friends, I’d be either looking for another game or level DNC which is really fun.

the fun thing is when healing and damage are linked so damaging mobs makes healing stronger and vice versa.

like whm lillies. or u could have made AST DPS boost their party members through healing when using horoscope and so on. so it makes a fun gameplay and also creat e some kind of dps rotation for healers. smaller one and still doing less overall dps but to keep us occupied when we don't need to heal.

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Originally Posted by loreleidiangelo

Less dramatic change; nerf regens and oGCDs appropriately so that they supplement direct GCD healing rather than outright replacing it. For largely being instant cast and insanely mana-friendly (if not free), these abilities do far too much with little thought required behind their use.

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mana free but for WHM or SCH they usually use other type of ressource (lilly or AF) so they aren't free. Or have CD so u cannot spam them. Well I like those abilities coz then u can dps on the side.

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Originally Posted by CoffeeBuns

As an healer main in any MMO I played, it’s the first time I dislike healing. I am trying to level both SCH and WHM but it’s just so boring that if it wasn’t for the story or friends, I’d be either looking for another game or level DNC which is really fun.

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I completely agree.

For me WHM is overall a better and more interesting class than in 4.x.
I can understand complaints about the SCH, but WHM has always been straight forward with both damage and healing.
That is just how the job was designed from the start.

The biggest gameplay change WHM got to its dps abilities is the removal of the AoE DoT and it gained a big AoE spike damage.
If anything that makes dps options more interesting.

And as for healing, WHM just gained some instant heal spells with their own resource.
That is a huge improvement over the old pointless lilies system, and gives us some nice panic heal options.

If they wanted healing to be accessible to new healers... we already have WHM. What's the point of having WHM with cards and WHM with a fairy when we already have WHM...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ShinShimon

If they wanted healing to be accessible to new healers... we already have WHM. What's the point of having WHM with cards and WHM with a fairy when we already have WHM...

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I cant argue for ast but sch doesn't feel like whm with a fairy. SCH has a more vast ogcd pool of heals and only 3 gcd heals. All of sch's regens are either cooldowns or an uncontrollable turret, not to mention sch actually has raid utility and whm only has one shield spell on a 30 second cooldown with on demand regens.

The only thing remotely similar is the dps toolkit and even then theres some differences, whm has higher single target potencies and upfront damage on their dot, their aoe is a cast time that stuns. Whereas SCH has no upfront damage on its dot but an option they can use to weave in single target that doesn't clip their dot, their aoe doesn't stun but it is instant cast.