Disheartened healer annoyed with Shadowbringers' difficulty

[MerlinCross]

So wait for all the people saying I should put more focus on using my OCDs; if using them is the focus of my kit and my GCDs are my emergency/damage buttons, how is healing harder? Cause I've seen people say that last expansion you could get away with doing the same thing to the point you didn't even need to cast a cure spell.

This is also seems built around the idea that nothing will go wrong with the other players. I'd rather hold onto something for 5 minutes and use it when it's helpful rather than throwing it out each time it's off CD and only getting a minor effect out of it.

[MadeOfMush]

So wait for all the people saying I should put more focus on using my OCDs; if using them is the focus of my kit and my GCDs are my emergency/damage buttons, how is healing harder? Cause I've seen people say that last expansion you could get away with doing the same thing to the point you didn't even need to cast a cure spell.

This is also seems built around the idea that nothing will go wrong with the other players. I'd rather hold onto something for 5 minutes and use it when it's helpful rather than throwing it out each time it's off CD and only getting a minor effect out of it.

Healing is "harder" in Shadowbringers because now you're required to use more oGCDs to get through content. I say "harder" because even in EX and the Eden raids, efficient healers (and teams) can get through content with minimal GCD healing. As a Scholar I can get through most of Shadowbringers' wall-to-wall dungeon pulls with only using 1/2 or 3/4s of my oGCDs and a few Adloquiums, in pre-Shadowbringers content I wouldn't even need to manage my oGCDs in dungeons, let alone in bosses or EX. Albeit, Scholar has a lot of strong oGCDs, White Mage is more geared for GCD healing (with a system in place to reward GCD healing) and will lean on that aspect more, while Astrologian has a lot of oGCDs but they're weak and will need to utilize close to their full kit for the same effect.

Your mileage with oGCD healing will vary; if the team is poorly coordinated or making mistakes you will need to rely on those GCD heals more often and should probably save oGCDs for mistakes. However, coordinated teams, especially between the co-healers, can minimize GCD healing and use those GCDs for damage.

[Urthdigger]

So wait for all the people saying I should put more focus on using my OCDs; if using them is the focus of my kit and my GCDs are my emergency/damage buttons, how is healing harder? Cause I've seen people say that last expansion you could get away with doing the same thing to the point you didn't even need to cast a cure spell.

This is also seems built around the idea that nothing will go wrong with the other players. I'd rather hold onto something for 5 minutes and use it when it's helpful rather than throwing it out each time it's off CD and only getting a minor effect out of it.

We're not saying to just fire it off on cooldown when the tank is barely missing any HP, sheesh. Nor are we saying that you'll never need to use a GCD on healing (Big pulls require GCD heals, as do emergencies). Rather, it's that you have your priorities backwards.

Let's say the tank has just dropped to a level where they could use some healing. Instead of spending MP and a GCD on Cure II, you could just use Tetragrammaton instead. "But what if there's an emergency?" you might ask? Well, that's when you use Cure II. The instant cast is nice, but it's rarely ever a life or death situation. If there's not enough time between the two hits for Cure, they likely A) Screwed up enough that they deserve to die and B) will likely die regardless of your intervention. You'll do far more to keep the party alive by saving your MP and GCDs for either making the fight end sooner.

Your oGCDs are your bread and butter. You use them FIRST. If you do not have an oGCD available for the situation, THEN you reach for your GCD heals. Not the other way around. This isn't even a DPS versus Pure Healer debate issue, even from a pure healing standpoint you want to do this because if the situation is truly dire enough that you need to spend all your focus on healing, this saves your MP for things your oGCDs cannot do, like mass healing over a short period of time or raising.

[Insertcoins]

I don't know about healing as i don't have any higher then 52.. but leveling my breako on two characters I noticed a decent percent of things nearly killing me almost all the time. I use my CDs and don't stand in aoes but they hit HARD. I've seen more wipes then I ever seen before. I think shadows is a tiny bit harder but it could be gear.. but I noticed.. I noticed HARD. There is a difference.. if you don't feel it... I feel like you're only running with your awesome friends. And I'm jealous... -Hyo can you heal for me T.T - -- joking but yeah--.

[Misutoraru]

I mean the fight is the same yes, Raid Wide Damage at 30 seconds into the fight. But I can't predict both my fellow players and ping, so I tend hold my panic buttons close and use more usual cures and heals so I can quickly fall back on the oGCDs if things go south. Now to people that know the fight or fully trust their groups to NOT mess up, yeah you can probably get away with it. Don't expect every healer to fall into that category though or end up calling them a bad player if they can't. Not saying you are but I've seen people pull that card a few times here and elsewhere over some really general stuff.

That said, I'm in the camp of at least throwing out a Dot or two if you have them. Yes providing DPS can help the fight go faster and cause less healing but at the same time didn't the devs say they aren't accounting for Healer damage anymore or is that old info/rumor?

This is what I do
I run DF 99%of time, I just have to be caution and have emergency button available 100% of time throughout the fight. Especially my AST healing potency have been chop to lowest ground. There are far too many situations either someone in my party suddenly screw up or love to be a lone wolf staying away from the group. In some more low level content when everyone is clearly over gear I can understand the utilised oGCD heal. However, in those raid which everyone are wearing minimum ilv required. The higher potency no cast oGCD heal safe me a lot of time in emergency

[Azeriel]

Um, hi everyone! I'm very apprehensively posting this. I kind of expect to get verbally mauled for it.

Hi there,

I feel you here, I really do. I play my healing class mainly for the roulette bonuses it gives out and don't really heal Savage contents with her. I manage all SB contents just fine including all the chain pulls the tanks could think of.

One thing I do notice with the increasing amount of new tanks this expansion is that majority of them somehow forgot that their Defensive CDs exist. They either save it for the bosses, or just expect you to blow your CD to keep them alive.

Honestly, every time I encounter these types of tanks in dungeons now, I just leave and eat the 30 minutes penalty. Our queue is instant enough that no bad tanks are worth the headache.

Hang in there. I think once the WoW refugees leave and everyone is geared up again, it should be normalized. In the mean time, it might be worthwhile just to hang up your cane for now and take a break from healing.

[Hawklaser]

I don't, but I can go make one - which might not be fair as I'm no longer levelling up. Having said that, Ravel was still a case of triple-pulling up to 1st boss, triple pulling the bat-groups before second boss, and double-pulling everything else (which has unavoidable breaks). You most certainly will be spamming Holy all day, but bear in mind that both the Tank & DPS determine how much you can do this before heals are required. Given it's a levelling dungeon with a lot of people likely just wearing shreds of gear from the previous dungeon, you will often get relatively squishy tanks and/or DPS being lower than usual, which means you can only spam Holy so much before your weaving is expended and you are potentially forced into CureII spam. In short, if a mega-pull is not dead by the time Asylum, Temperance, Tetra, Benedict, and all your lilies have been used, you're left with good ole Cure spam. All of which is determined by the Tank/DPS more than the Healer.

Once you reach the higher dungeons (with less frequency of such situations and with players often on a more even gear-keel), you then realize just how much freedom you truly have. I could head to Amaurot right now and use the 2nd boss as an example seeing as it's a glorified trash-fight with an abundance of player-target mobs that can't be tanked and adds that can't be stunned, yet it doesn't matter. Holy for days with the odd Rapture in between, possibly a MedII if you want to be lazy. Failing that, the big triple-pack at the very start of Akademia.

Honestly, no dungeon in SHB provided me with any kind of issue, other than those provided by paper tanks or by DPS trying to slap mobs with a wet fish. Even then, Holy is still the most pressed button. As Urth said, it has a lot to do with understanding the dungeon as well as a few niche playstyle factors and understanding limits.

While I can't make a video, I can second this from a Sch's perspective. Once I got familiar with the Shadowbringers changes and got appropriately geared up I can pretty much spam Art of War on any pull, using mainly my oGCD's and fairy to cover the heals with a pre or mid pull Adlo. If I have to back off the Art of War's early its usually because the tank is either drastically under geared and/or not using their cool downs causing their hp to yo-yo, or the pull is dragging on too long due to poor dps output. I might back off towards the end of the fight to try and get an aetherflow refresh off prior to the next fight, thanks to no longer being able to use it out of combat, but that is a different unrelated issue.

[Selova]

I don't know, this is like every trash pull was designed based on running to the wall on the first pull of Bardam's. I think this is definitely worse than it's ever been.

I had zero issue keeping tanks that were doing wall to wall pulls in every dungeon from 70-80 on scholar.

WHM definitely has the easiest time keeping groups alive through large consistent damage. This honestly sounds more like someone being inexperienced. Nothing about healing dungeons from 70-80 has been any harder than how it always is at the beginning of a expansion.

[Granyala]

Healing since Shadowbringer is just so difficult!
But now, it just feels so grueling! There's this sense of difficulty that makes encountering a single group of enemies rather painstaking; Divine Benison and regen on the tank, drop assylum and then I try to Aero the four enemies. After 2 Aero cast, my tank is at half-health and I go "whoa" and try to double-time my heals on him. That's... 6 seconds and suddenly we're in trouble. Then I heal him - and I do have the tools to heal him - but the urgency of it is startling.

Regarding the bold:
Working as intended. This is how healing should be.
Frankly put: esp as a WHM, healing did not change in difficulty compared to SB or HW. Leveling dungeons always hit harder than experts in the end. Most people forget that over the course of an expansion, esp if they only see the experts in a totally overgeared state wearing tome gear of the previous patch, essentially being +30 ilv above the recommended requirement (and subsequently tuning target of the content).

It is quite normal to only get 3-4 DPS casts out before the tank needs healing unless you are in your 6s Holy stun window.

I healed every dungeon comfortably in ilv 400 Stormblood gear, except foe the last one, since I already had the 430 class gear.

Hang in there. I think once the WoW refugees leave and everyone is geared up again, it should be normalized. In the mean time, it might be worthwhile just to hang up your cane for now and take a break from healing.

Or just learn how to heal. Yeah incompetent "IMMA DO WALL TO WALL ... CD what's that, can I eat it?!" tanks are a bit annoying, I grant you that.
But there is nothing out there in dungeons that a WHM cannot manage.

[Insertcoins]

Regarding the bold:
Working as intended. This is how healing should be.
Frankly put: esp as a WHM, healing did not change in difficulty compared to SB or HW. Leveling dungeons always hit harder than experts in the end. Most people forget that over the course of an expansion, esp if they only see the experts in a totally overgeared state wearing tome gear of the previous patch, essentially being +30 ilv above the recommended requirement (and subsequently tuning target of the content).

It is quite normal to only get 3-4 DPS casts out before the tank needs healing unless you are in your 6s Holy stun window.

I healed every dungeon comfortably in ilv 400 Stormblood gear, except foe the last one, since I already had the 430 class gear.

Or just learn how to heal. Yeah incompetent "IMMA DO WALL TO WALL ... CD what's that, can I eat it?!" tanks are a bit annoying, I grant you that.
But there is nothing out there in dungeons that a WHM cannot manage.

I disagree but it's only based on my encounters with healers in the leveling dungeons. 9 times out of 10 I'm the last one alive and I'm a monk. I seriously think the dungeons actually DO hit harder. I've seen it so many times since the start. Tanks going down so fast, hell MY tank gets hit hard and I use my CDs, upgrade my gear etc etc and I STILL damn well almost die. Heals are weaker and it shows. I might just have ran with nothing but shitty healers too.. but that's ALOT of shitty healers then.