Disheartened healer annoyed with Shadowbringers' difficulty

[Xelanar]

This goes to show how much previous expansions focused our healer mindset towards DPS. Shadowbringers is but a step towards making things 'right' again by having healers actually heal.

I can tell this much however: I had more trouble healing while still leveling than I have now on expert dungeons. People are not only geared better, they also know how dungeons flow, when to use mitigation cooldowns ect. It still is more demanding that stormblood was, but no longer to a point where I feel overwhelmed by all the incoming party damage, specially on tanks during big pulls.

So don't get discouraged by feeling underpowered in comparison to Stormblood. Also If you feel uncomfortable with tanks pulling too much - ask them to slow down.

[Duskane]

its like this every expansion
at the start everything rips through you and your kit is incomplete again

[RopeDrink]

Shadowbringers is but a step towards making things 'right' again by having healers actually heal.

Are we even playing the same expansion? Just did a run immediately after posting here and once again, with any remotely half-decent tank you will not be healing much at all as a WHM. Then there's the fact that fights such as EX Titania literally force-feed you the largest slice of downtime I have ever seen in a Trial of any difficulty. It's obscene how little a Healer actually needs to do for said fight compared to almost anything else. Either I'm the best WHM in the world, or individuality/skill/gear/playstyle is causing a huge gap between X Healer and Y Healer when it comes to discerning what is and isn't 'difficult'. I won't deny it's been (slightly) more challenging than previous expos, but not to a majorly noticeable degree.

This was the same for me when levelling as it is for me at max level, with the most freedom to do damage. The reality is that certain dungeons provide much more unavoidable damage and/or potential for more 'chaotic' moments where otherwise avoidable damage is just more likely to land a hit on some people - which are things that become less of a threat when a) People learn it properly and b) Gear progresses. Example being "The First Beast", where you have to contend with arena-travelling meteor patterns AFTER the normal unavoidable meteor drop THEN a 4x purple marker all at once before the 2nd Final Sky, which has plenty of AoE damage (unavoidable x2) with a constant risk of more damage due to positioning, and yet I see Dragoons tanking a fallen building down to 5% health in relatively standard gear.

In short, it is an illusion of 'harder healing' brought on by more frantic mechanics and moments scattered throughout dungeons with fancier mechanics than most are used to, at the EARLIEST point of a brand new expansion where gear is very just slightly above minimum IL (assuming you have got the full tome-set at the very least). A lesser (levelling) example would be 2nd Boss in Ravel which spews out constant AoE slams for unavoidable (and quite potent) damage for anyone in basic levelling gear. Without a single heal it will quite easily reduce most players to 20%'ish simultaneously over time, yet one Plane-MedII solves it.

When you see past these things, it is not all that different from Stormblood. Hell, even HSW, such as Tiamat or dungeons like the Aery... Basically any of the old bullet-hell dungeons that hit harder than wet tissue. I would be more fearful of HSW Vault or SB Mettle (before the class/stat rework) back when such dungeons provided a very high damage spike. Those could get nasty. ShB dungeons have been an absolute blast, yet also no major threat to me from start to finish regardless of the gear I had or level I approached the dungeon with. The only challenge has been mega-pulls by squish-tanks, which can be a test no matter what expansion you talk about.

[Schan]

Don't be disheartened. Don't forget that part of the difficulty in healing doesn't come from the content itself but from the players.

Healing is a bit more unforgiving nowadays because the game in general throws a bit more mechanics at other players. Even the thrash mobs do and people are not used to that. Pair it with new expansion which means we're not overgearing stuff now so you will notice a sharp difference.

With good tanks you barely heal though. They shine through even more now.

[Beelhi]

This goes to show how much previous expansions focused our healer mindset towards DPS. Shadowbringers is but a step towards making things 'right' again by having healers actually heal.

Tell that to the 90% dps uptime in extreme trials.
Even in leveling dungeons I spend most of my time dps'ing because there is so little healing requirements except for a few bosses that dish out some decent aoe damage but that's more of a "not outgearing content anymore" issue than them actually changing anything.

[RopeDrink]

the game in general throws a bit more mechanics at other players. Even the thrash mobs do and people are not used to that.

You're crazy if you believe what you just said. There has been a steady and noticeable climb in this aspect all the way from ARR to HSW to SB to the present. There's little threat from ARR dungeons or mobs which have the most basic of mechanics - only very few adds actually do anything beyond auto-attacks, and bosses themselves are not much better. Then you hit the 40 range where things spike up. Then you hit full-on HSW where mobs have more moves (some without any telegraph at all) and bosses slowly creep into bullet-hell territory, with (previously) a big damage spike at 57. Then you have SB which ramped this up a bit more, with an even scarier damage spike at 67. Now you have ShB that ramps it up a bit more, at least mechanically, just not damage wise.

If people 'aren't used to it' after 50-70 levels then I can only assume that they either suck at positioning or boosted themselves with a potion without any past experience. First-time boosters would be the only actual candidates eligible of being in ANY way surprised by ShB mob mechanics.

[Videra]

This goes to show how much previous expansions focused our healer mindset towards DPS. Shadowbringers is but a step towards making things 'right' again by having healers actually heal.

Shadowbringers hasn't done anything, it's just that the vast majority of the sudden influx of tanks are hot garbage. Healing is still the same 'Press Glare 98% of the time' role.

[Schan]

You're crazy if you believe what you just said. There has been a steady and noticeable climb in this aspect all the way from ARR to HSW to SB to the present. There's little threat from ARR dungeons or mobs which have the most basic of mechanics - only very few adds actually do anything beyond auto-attacks, and bosses themselves are not much better. Then you hit the 40 range where things spike up. Then you hit full-on HSW where mobs have more moves (some without any telegraph at all) and bosses slowly creep into bullet-hell territory, with (previously) a big damage spike at 57. Then you have SB which ramped this up a bit more, with an even scarier damage spike at 67. Now you have ShB that ramps it up a bit more, at least mechanically, just not damage wise.

If people 'aren't used to it' after 50-70 levels then I can only assume that they either suck at positioning or boosted themselves with a potion without any past experience. First-time boosters would be the only actual candidates eligible of being in ANY way surprised by ShB mob mechanics.

I never said there weren't any before.
I've always believed the game is somewhat good at teaching you without you noticing. how the aoes speed up over time and things like that.

HOWEVER, you could basically ignore the mechanics. they would tickle you. At best 1/4th of your hp would drop. Now, it could be because the expansion just hit and everyone is undergeared but if you get hit by a mechanic, it chunks more than half of your hp. You notice it. and I am ever so happy they're finally trying to take the kiddy wheels off right off the bat. I just wish they would do the same with EX.

Also you give the community way too much credit lol.

Tell that to the 90% dps uptime in extreme trials.
Even in leveling dungeons I spend most of my time dps'ing because there is so little healing requirements except for a few bosses that dish out some decent aoe damage but that's more of a "not outgearing content anymore" issue than them actually changing anything.

I agree. It's especially noticeable with Titania EX. you don't need a single GCD heal for her. It's both funny and sad at the same time.

[HyoMinPark]

This goes to show how much previous expansions focused our healer mindset towards DPS. Shadowbringers is but a step towards making things 'right' again by having healers actually heal.

I feel like this statement doesn’t apply to WHM at all—I spend more time casting Holy than I do using healing GCDs/oGCDs in dungeons. With AST, you’d maybe have a point, as they do have to work harder to heal trash packs in dungeons compared to the other two healers. But on single-targets, there’s still a lot of down time for healers to DPS, just as there has been the last two expansions. I don’t find the healing any more or less difficult, personally.

[Xelanar]

Are we even playing the same expansion? Just did a run immediately after posting here and once again, with any remotely half-decent tank you will not be healing much at all as a WHM. Then there's the fact that fights such as EX Titania literally force-feed you the largest slice of downtime I have ever seen in a Trial of any difficulty. It's obscene how little a Healer actually needs to do for said fight compared to almost anything else. Either I'm the best WHM in the world, or individuality/skill/gear/playstyle is causing a huge gap between X Healer and Y Healer when it comes to discerning what is and isn't 'difficult'. I won't deny it's been (slightly) more challenging than previous expos, but not to a majorly noticeable degree.

This was the same for me when levelling as it is for me at max level, with the most freedom to do damage. The reality is that certain dungeons provide much more unavoidable damage and/or potential for more 'chaotic' moments where otherwise avoidable damage is just more likely to land a hit on some people - which are things that become less of a threat when a) People learn it properly and b) Gear progresses. Example being "The First Beast", where you have to contend with arena-travelling meteor patterns AFTER the normal unavoidable meteor drop THEN a 4x purple marker all at once before the 2nd Final Sky, which has plenty of AoE damage (unavoidable x2) with a constant risk of more damage due to positioning, and yet I see Dragoons tanking a fallen building down to 5% health in relatively standard gear.

In short, it is an illusion of 'harder healing' brought on by more frantic mechanics and moments scattered throughout dungeons with fancier mechanics than most are used to, at the EARLIEST point of a brand new expansion where gear is very just slightly above minimum IL (assuming you have got the full tome-set at the very least). A lesser (levelling) example would be 2nd Boss in Ravel which spews out constant AoE slams for unavoidable (and quite potent) damage for anyone in basic levelling gear. Without a single heal it will quite easily reduce most players to 20%'ish simultaneously over time, yet one Plane-MedII solves it.

When you see past these things, it is not all that different from Stormblood. Hell, even HSW, such as Tiamat or dungeons like the Aery... Basically any of the old bullet-hell dungeons that hit harder than wet tissue. I would be more fearful of HSW Vault or SB Mettle (before the class/stat rework) back when such dungeons provided a very high damage spike. Those could get nasty. ShB dungeons have been an absolute blast, yet also no major threat to me from start to finish regardless of the gear I had or level I approached the dungeon with. The only challenge has been mega-pulls by squish-tanks, which can be a test no matter what expansion you talk about.

I feel like this statement doesn’t apply to WHM at all—I spend more time casting Holy than I do using healing GCDs/oGCDs in dungeons. With AST, you’d maybe have a point, as they do have to work harder to heal trash packs in dungeons compared to the other two healers. But on single-targets, there’s still a lot of down time for healers to DPS, just as there has been the last two expansions. I don’t find the healing any more or less difficult, personally.

I cannot speak for Whitemages, but Astrologians definitely have to do more healing than before. Maybe I should add that 'before' for an Astrologian was 'stack HoTs on tank and then DPS' for basically every boss or add group during dungeons. I'm not talking about savage content or Ex Primals, but simply dungeons(which is what our TE is refering to in the opening post), because for my experience in those, I had to actually heal instead of ignoring any type of damage to the party since it would never be lethal anyways.

If Whitemages can still ignore everything resembling a heal then I probably should not have generalized my experience as an AST during early access.