Healers in 5.0

[GrimGale]

Everyone seems to think the answer to making gameplay for healers better is to just have more damage going out and I don't think that is the real solution. If everyone is mad about having DPS reduced to one or two buttons why would spamming one or two heal buttons make the gameplay any more engaging. There needs to be something different for healers sure and I am not quite sure what it is, but making auto attack damage high enough to eat through half a tanks hp is not going to make healing fun or more interesting, its going to just make them spam heals.

There needs to be more interaction with their respective gimmicks in my opinion.

SCH needs to be a purely shield caster, blocking and mitigating damage while the fairy would do all the healing- Meanwhile the Scholar would use its remaining time to build up aetherflow by debuffing enemies.

WHM weaves healing over time with damage over time, building lilies from both to finish with a big burst of damage.

AST needs to have its healing linked with its buffs, weaving heals and card buffs together somehow.

[Melichoir]

My real big problem with the whole gutting dps skills for healing is, no matter what ShB content is like i very highly doubt they will change ARR, HW and SB content to be balanced around these changes for healers so even if ShB changes design on how much healing is required a new player who wants to play healer would have to get up to lv 70/71 to do ShB with 1 DoT 1 dmg skill and a boatload of unnecessary healing skills.

Low level roulettes will be way more boring for hlrs , ARR made pld the 1,2,3 meme this is worse by far, sometimes more buttons can be good there should always be a reasonable skill gap so that it is rewarding to push oneself if you wished

Welcome to SMN when SB dropped, along with other classes. I admit this is a problem, but this isnt a new problem and its not one that is unique to sch.

snip.

Im not seeing where youre disagreeing with me. They literally just buffed WHM dmg, gave them a bit more flexibility in healing, and now mana is capped so how mana is gonna play out is a whole new ball game. They ended up Rounding out some of WHMs kit. So yay? More great stuff for WHMs? As for 24 mans...well thas a design and gearing issue. Bosses wont be hitting so phenomenally hard that it would require a lot of coordination between groups to be beaten cause...well...average player isnt great at it. The bar for skill goes down with 24 mans, not up. Mechanics are simpler and more straight foward. And if youre a good healer or overly geared, it's gonna be a breeze typically. I kinda wouldnt use a 24 man as a measuring stick for balance. Hell, 8 man trials and 4 man dungeons are probably better for that.

Furthermore, youre arguing context. Bosses dont hit like wet noodles in Savage. How the game handles damage and boss mechanics in ShB is also gonna determine whether or not you have time to be dpsing. And dont remember if I mentioned it when, but if you want to show concern, fine. That's reasonable. The knickers ina twist crowd are teh doomsayers, screaming how everything is terrible. The "How dare they do 'x'! I nkow for a fact (even though the game isnt live yet, nor do we have 100% of all the skills, or how fight mechanics will play out) that this will be ultra boring and terrible! Game/class ruined! Thanks obama!" is utter nonsense.

Lastly, regarding that final sentence or yours, would you care to elaborate why you're fine with healers having shield and healing and less DPS capabilities yet every other job now gets to dip their toes in healing?
DPSers can heal and support, Tank can heal and DPS but god forbid if Healers dip their toes into DPSing. They should just stick to just healing! It feels like a slap on their face. Why was support moved from healing and shoved even more into DPS? Why?

Rounding out and giving two rotations is two different htings. Giving a DPS a utility where they can pop a heal or res isnt the same thing as giving SCH the ability to be a full healer and a full DPS. Itd be like saying that while you play NIN, you also get to cast Regens, shields, heavy heals, and Damage buffs as oGCD that are just as or nearly as powerful as healers. This is the problem with the SCH point: Some are mad theyre losing some of their DPS kit in return for getting improvements to be better healers - you know, the roll that they are. Of the healers, SCH gets hit the hardest in trimming hte DPS kit compared to the other two. But thats because its kit was pretty dps heavy comparatively. Meanwhile, WHM is getting buffs to its nearly non-existent DPS kit to have some DPS. And based on what Im reading, it still feels like SCH will be the highest damage dealing Healer in a fight, with WHM being the lowest but best healer and AST being in the middle.

[Crushnight]

Low level roulettes are already extremely boring for healers. At least for white mage, I am literally barely seeing much of a difference in the simplicity of it's "rotation". The changes haven't changed much, unless you think that aero was somehow a huge game changer. I don't necessarily agree with the healer changes, and I don't play the other two, at all - so I can't really give my opinion on it. I am not advocating that reduction of DPS skills is a good thing, but there was no complexity to begin with!

Also, for that matter white mage right now high level damage is just as boring as low level you just have one more skill to use every 20 seconds or so.

Yea my post should be most in regards to sch but basis is still there for them all, 1 dot 1 gcd is less complex than 2 dots 1 gcd barely but that 1 extra dot does increase the skill ceiling a little which is not a bad thing and something developers need to understand skill gaps are good to an extent too close or too far will just alienate people too much and ShB in terms of healers seems to be leaning on the too close side atm.

Ast has cards to try and keep it occupied during downtime along with it dps, sch and whm will have 1 dot 1 gcd and that is for all of ARR,HW and SB where healing requirements are most likely going to be lower than ShB so all that extra healing for believe it or not majority of content within the game (relevant ie ShB we have yet to determine) is pointless since every healer now can do all content with less >_>

[Urthdigger]

I think a lot of the people saying "Lol why do you care about DPS, you're a healer. Worry about healing!" don't get WHY we care about DPS. It's about doing what's best for the party, and excelling at what we do.

See, the issue with healing is that it's reactive: Something happens, and you react to it. This mean's there's an upper limit to how effective our healing can be, it's based on how much damage the party took. Once we heal that much, healing any more doesn't help anyone. Once you hit that point, it's like... why research what more you can do with your skills? Why gear up more? Why use food and potions? Why really do anything? You literally can't put in any more effort at that point to be a better healer than you already are.

The answer to this comes in the form of DPS. First off, DPS is something that always needs a constant amount from the moment the fight begins, there's always a point in doing it. More damage means the fight is over faster, which can even make a fight easier by reducing the amount of time people need to be executing mechanics for. And because of the vast amount of damage required from folks, there's always room to be pushing your DPS higher and feel like you're still contributing to the fight.

Even better, a healer pushing their DPS has an incentive to be an even better healer as well. We now have an incentive to make good use of our toolkit and push our stats higher: Topping folks off sooner and allowing shields/regen to do more on their own gives us more time to DPS before we need to spend a GCD healing again. What could have been handled with spamming Cure over and over now becomes as engaging as any other role. BUT, it's only engaging because we have something to do during the downtime that skillful play gives us, namely DPSing.

[Kyohei]

The thing is that dps and tanks have a real rotation to keep them busy all the time, and they are also flavoured with things that aren't dps abilities.
Healers don't have a rotation per se, they adjust. That's why something is needed to fill the gap between two adjustments. Something more than pushing one or two buttons, and that adds an identity to each healers. Something fun, rewarding, and that makes the player feel like what they are doing is useful.

[Crushnight]

Welcome to SMN when SB dropped, along with other classes. I admit this is a problem, but this isnt a new problem and its not one that is unique to sch.

Yep i was there >_> its been a problem but i am finding it hard to encourage new healers with these changes because these changes very much seem like they are aimed at ShB content rather than general content which because the way the game is designed new players will either have to go through the 1-70 msq(which i usually recommend) or pay for skip and their experience from a gameplay level will have barely changed because everything in this game atm is designed around less healing needed than what these changes are going to do which means they are button bloat, no matter how you look at things pre ShB content is going to be worse off than it is currently for healers and i dread saying this but i may actually want very undergeared tanks in leveling roulette just so i don't get bored >_>

[Kyohei]

Rounding out and giving two rotations is two different htings. Giving a DPS a utility where they can pop a heal or res isnt the same thing as giving SCH the ability to be a full healer and a full DPS. Itd be like saying that while you play NIN, you also get to cast Regens, shields, heavy heals, and Damage buffs as oGCD that are just as or nearly as powerful as healers. This is the problem with the SCH point: Some are mad theyre losing some of their DPS kit in return for getting improvements to be better healers - you know, the roll that they are. Of the healers, SCH gets hit the hardest in trimming hte DPS kit compared to the other two. But thats because its kit was pretty dps heavy comparatively. Meanwhile, WHM is getting buffs to its nearly non-existent DPS kit to have some DPS. And based on what Im reading, it still feels like SCH will be the highest damage dealing Healer in a fight, with WHM being the lowest but best healer and AST being in the middle.

They should've reduce the potencies instead of removing it all, then it wouldn't have been full healer and dps as you say. Even though i'm sure it's not actually doing as much damage as an actual dps, so we can't talk about it being both a full healer and dps.

But again, it's all about having something to do aside from healing because healing is an adjusting job, not one with a rotation to be kept busy all the time.
I believe it's not much of a dps loss that's the issue but an entertainment loss, for getting less things to do.

[Melichoir]

They should've reduce the potencies instead of removing it all, then it wouldn't have been full healer and dps as you say. Even though i'm sure it's not actually doing as much damage as an actual dps, so we can't talk about it being both a full healer and dps.

But again, it's all about having something to do aside from healing because healing is an adjusting job, not one with a rotation to be kept busy all the time.

Admittedly, SCH obviously isnt a full DPS. But in comparison to how DPS/TANK handle some off role utility as well as how the other healer's manage dps, SCH was a particularly DPS heavy class. Trimming back Potencies couldve been a solution, but then its buton bloat and people saying "How dare they remove our DPS! Its gonna be WHM now. Thanks alot! >"

I mean consider it this way. DPS have a DPS rotation that can throw in a support utility every now and then. The equivalent of this among healers is to have a Healer Rotation (or management) that can throw in a DPS attack every now and then. This will all be dependent on how content is handled in ShB. For better or worse, I give the devs enough credit to know that if healing is fairly easy, that the classes would be boring as well if theyre just spamming 1 attack and healing every 10 GCDs. I personally think ShB will be more healing intensive than the last two xpacs and youll have a lot less time to sit back adn pop out tons of DPS (for a healer).

[SturmChurro]

I personally think ShB will be more healing intensive than the last two xpacs and youll have a lot less time to sit back adn pop out tons of DPS (for a healer).

I'd personally rather have it this way, so you have to think on when you are going to time the cast on this heal, or try to get a little extra dps in, rather than just spamming stone all day long with the occasional heal popped off.

[hours]

I am not sure about what the proposed upcoming changes are supposedly a solution to? Needless to say, as a SCH/SMN main, I am deeply unsatisfied with the state SCH will soon be in.

It has been explicitly mentioned that they would like to lessen the disparity between "pure" healers and "barrier" healers but I find that distinction irrelevant. It is blatantly obvious that it not a case of pure healing vs barrier healing that determines each healer's place in the meta, but rather their individual abilities to increase the DPS of their party members. It does not seem like WHM will be receiving any utility that actively contributes to others' pDPS - which is the primary reason it has been viewed unfavorably by the raiding community - while both AST and SCH still have it in the forms of Divination and Chain Strategem. And with both SCH and AST's kits being supplemented with additional healing power, it is more than likely that, once again, AST/SCH will be heralded as the optimal duo.

But raid synergy aside, my primary concern with the SCH rework is how it will function outside of raids. Miasma and Miasma 2 are gone. Bane is gone. Shadowflare is gone. These are all tools that greatly impacted the quality of life and efficacy of dungeon runs. For example, if I were to queue for expert roulette right now, I would be confident that the run would be completed relatively quickly regardless of my party's performance because I am able to contribute with the aforementioned skills. With the culling of those skills, I would be more dependent on my party's overall execution. Imagine being matched with a low-end DPS group. Resources are finite; prolonged spamming of Art of War is not feasible. Nor is it fun. It may be trivial, but the idea of dungeons potentially becoming more time-consuming does not sit well with me.

TLDR - for the love of Hydaelyn, PLEASE reconsider giving SCH its arcanist identity back. Kit diversity is a good thing.