Why healing is broken and terrible, and how to fix it...

[Quoyan]

3. Make damage come out more consistently and give healers rotations like those of DPS...

idk about rotations, since those are a huge turnoff in classes for me (I'd rather have a priority system and have to think on my feet a little), but I would like to see healers being forced to heal more.
It's not gonna happen without a buttload of work for the dev team, though, and that's effort that could be better spent elsewhere. Due to the nature of how fights work, once you're familiar with them you're always gonna know when the downtime is and when it's safe to DPS vs when you need to conserve mana. Even in savage. In order for this to work they'd have to either make it so that there is no downtime, which would be extremely punishing to healers (and widen the gap between the skill ceiling and the skill floor; the opposite of what SE is trying to do) or make all damage and boss attacks genuinely random so that healers can't learn the boss' rotations.

It's just not realistic, really.

There are a ton of folks who love the way healing works in this game. There are others that don't. You can't please all of the people all of the time.

[RaizeGraymalkin]

I mean it's not just healing. It's the whole meta. Tanks not using tank stance and Healers just tossing some Regens on everybody. I personally am not a fan of it and it sucks for people who go into those jobs, with the mindsets you would expect. That's just how things are though.

[loreleidiangelo]

I mean it's not just healing. It's the whole meta. Tanks not using tank stance and Healers just tossing some Regens on everybody. I personally am not a fan of it and it sucks for people who go into those jobs, with the mindsets you would expect. That's just how things are though.

Kinda unrelated to the discussion at hand, but I feel like adding tank stances as a core concept of tanking design to this game was a mistake. The button basically makes enmity a non-factor and is a built-in 20% damage reduction (or 30% extra health for WAR) that requires no thought or upkeep to it whatsoever. It feels like an idea created solely for tanks that just aren't good at tanking, and all the weird gauge consumption and "stance-dancing" penalties and stuff we're seeing is the devs trying to solve a problem that they really should have had the foresight to predict.

I've already said my piece on healing in this game ad nauseum, so I'll just leave it at that.

[Estelle9lives]

...Offensive spells for healers cost very low amounts of MP. Even in Savage, you can easily go around the whole fight DPSing and healing and you're never going to run out of mana unless you die or have to raise a ton of people - I won't even talk about other content since the incoming damage there is so low that you can literally afk over half the encounter.

I think you could make DPS spells cost 0 MP and you still would have the "I am a healer my job is to heal" kind of player. These people get shunned for refusing to use their kit and not contributing. I can't grasp the logic of not wanting to DPS, it makes playing a healer completely boring for me. And why would you want to contribute less? Why would you want to make your runs longer? Why would you want to spend half the time you're there doing nothing when you could be actually playing the game?

So no, the issue isn't on how healing is designed in this game. It's entirely on the playerbase and their mentality.

[Coratanni]

I liked healing in SW:TOR much more, small free heals, heal ability's that were fun to use proper, and medium large heals.

Here its just like you said, 50% of HP bar, back to pewpew, it feels like waiting more then healing, that's why I play a DPS role main here, even though i'm a Healer main ever-were else.

Also should note, this is the 1st MMO i'v played that allowed unlimited combat resurrection, most games limit it to a set # per fight or have death penalty on the resurrected target till the fights over, makes the DPS more responsible for their own self and not playing Blame the healer.

P.S Yes I loved SW:TOR but it sucks now FTP kills games booooo.

I miss SW:TOR from years ago. I lived and breathed it. The game has changed too much though. I log onto my old 60 sage/sorc and scoundrel/operative healers out of nostalgia but never play again.

[Oohlalaheals]

No. I completely disagree OP. Here's what I do, and I know this is going to sound totally wild so just bear with me....I learn the dungeons/raids to know when my party members will likely take damage. I hold off going full throttle dps until I can judge how my fellow party members are doing with mechanics, with speed of dps, with damage mitigation, and then I adjust myself accordingly. And I never dps myself completely out of MP. I add as much as I can, and then when I'm getting too low I stop so that I can still throw out a heal or two if necessary. I have never, in thousands of runs playing this same way, had anyone tell me I am DPSing too much or too little, I have never had a complaint that I wasn't healing enough, and never Dps'd myself out of MP and then needed it. Every run on a healer is different, its not cookie cutter, you have to be ready for chaos on a whim, I don't want a rotation, I don't want predictable. and that's why I play a healer in the first place.

[JisKing98]

Or we could just nerf the potency on their dmg skills. so that if they do want to dps, they better actually think about using them.

Or do what i always wanted SE to do but i know they wont ( incoming heat...), disable all dmg spells in dungeons, raids, trials, guildhests, fates. Only enable them during solo content such as msq scenarios or outside 1v1 combat with mobs. If you participate in fates they get enabled until another person joins in the fate.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Or we could just nerf the potency on their dmg skills. so that if they do want to dps, they better actually think about using them.

Or do what i always wanted SE to do but i know they wont ( incoming heat...), disable all dmg spells in dungeons, raids, trials, guildhests, fates. Only enable them during solo content such as msq scenarios or outside 1v1 combat with mobs. If you participate in fates they get enabled until another person joins in the fate.

The day they disable damage spells on healers is the day I retire my Cane, Globe and Spell book. Pure healing in this game is laughably easy, to the point of boredom. You do this and I guarantee queue times for dungeons would be abysmal. Worse, you'd see a vast increase of PFs allowing only one healer. Come to think of it, such a change would make Red Mage all but mandatory. White Mage + Red Mage is far better than two dedicated healers if they're locked out of DPSing since the Red Mage can DPS.

Likewise, nerfing potencies accomplishes nothing. Healers will still be expected to DPS, and will. They'll just put up less numbers.

[Naunet]

Or we could just nerf the potency on their dmg skills. so that if they do want to dps, they better actually think about using them.

We need to be able to do some damage, or we wouldn't be able to level on our own or complete MSQ instances. Nerfing potency also wouldn't make us "think" about our spells, because there would still just be two (maybe three) buttons to spam.

No, the fix comes from a combination of nerfing HEALING potency alongside changes in how damage goes out in dungeon/raid/trial encounters so that we spend more time actually healing.

[Jatoi]

This seems more like a PUG problem than healing problem. I understand where you're coming from and your intentions are good! I've played a WHM for years and have seen many, many. . . many things.

The events in the game are scripted, you can use Focus Target to know what will happen next on a boss and act accordingly ( this is why I lose my mind when I am asked to do a new instance blind ). Healing is predictive but with some "OH SHIT!" buttons juuust in case.

What you can't predict is who you're playing with if you're going to be set up with randoms. Those randoms will be the defining choice on whether or not you will be able to DPS at all. Will the tank use his CDs properly? Will the DPS avoid damage and put out enough damage to not make the fights last forever?

If the rest of your party is actually good and pays attention, a healer will have the time to DPS. If no one is taking damage and you know what the boss does, go for it! A healer shouldn't strain themselves to DPS if the group is terrible though. A healer's job first and foremost is to heal.