The state of healers is affecting everyone

[IttyBitty]

There is never going to be more "healing stuff" to do without a major overhaul of battle content and class design across the board. Some people struggle to heal what we have right now, and it doesn't matter much whether the cause is lack of skill or lack of gear or a combination thereof (largely through not caring because the game doesn't push you anywhere near insistently enough to learn your role or care about your gear when levelling). It's not as though increasing the healing burden would actually make healing more "fun" or "engaging" because healing is just as one-dimensional as healer DPSing is.

SE needs to lean into the game design they have constructed, because right now, neither the healing side nor the DPS side of healer kits are very compelling. As it currently stands, the gameplay flow for healers largely revolves around ~6 skills in their kit, with 2 of them being massively over represented in overall casts.

It's called an incentive. Something for people to work towards. Something to reward them for doing end game content as a healer. Tanks get two mounts each. Why can't healers? Would people still do the level 80 roulette if it didn't reward a tomestone bonus?

If you want to incentivise healers, make them engaging to play first.

[Samsta]

If you think healers are not fun to play now the only healer that was fun to play in the past in your opinion was the scholar. WHM and AST rotation have not changed significantly.

[Billythepancake]

If you think healers are not fun to play now the only healer that was fun to play in the past in your opinion was the scholar. WHM and AST rotation have not changed significantly.

WHM wasn't great in SB imo, yeah.

AST didn't need a complex DPS rotation because it had a card system to play around with, one that got butchered and a lot of people despise. Does the DPS itself need to be mega Galaxy brain interesting? No, but there needs to be something to do when not healing that isn't spamming 1 button over and over again, because the majority of the time, we're not healing.

[Granyala]

There is never going to be more "healing stuff" to do without a major overhaul of battle content and class design across the board.

There is still plenty of headroom to add more incoming damage in the current design.
SE just needs to move away from burst healing to sustained healing (and adjust the classes mana accordingly, because right now healers can't push sustained AoE heals for very long).

I give you that it wouldn't necessarily make the healing game more interesting though. A slightly more elaborate DPS rotation would probably be more fun in the long run because high sustained healing output can be extremely stressful, esp if one missed GCD can result in a death. That was the design of WoW back in Sunwell (Burning Crusade) and Blizzard moved away from that because it was too intense / ended up not being fun for the healers.

I'm not asking for some convoluted and difficult DPS rotation (we couldn't keep that up anyway) but a wee bit more complexity than massaging the glare button until it breaks in our downtime would be fun.

WHM wasn't great in SB imo, yeah.

ShB basically replaced Stone with Glare.
You mostly massaged one button in SB too.

[Billythepancake]

ShB basically replaced Stone with Glare.
You mostly massaged one button in SB too.

I didn't say WHM was great now either. I think it needs work too, and I detest people that say it's fine because it's strong. Only stating that back in SB WHM was really the only healer that wasn't great to play if you wanted engagement.

[Granyala]

I didn't say WHM was great now either. I think it needs work too, and I detest people that say it's fine because it's strong. Only stating that back in SB WHM was really the only healer that wasn't great to play if you wanted engagement.

I found savages plenty engaging, non savage content: not so much.

Be advised: I have the opinion that engagement should consist of 80% encounter 20% class.
One of the reasons why I dislike DPS in this game: classes are so convoluted and overloaded that I feel as if I am fighting my class AND the boss.

That being said: having only 2 spells during downtime is pushing the pendulum too far into the other direction, even for s/o like me.

[Billythepancake]

I found savages plenty engaging, non savage content: not so much.

Be advised: I have the opinion that engagement should consist of 80% encounter 20% class.
One of the reasons why I dislike DPS in this game: classes are so convoluted and overloaded that I feel as if I am fighting my class AND the boss.

That being said: having only 2 spells during downtime is pushing the pendulum too far into the other direction, even for s/o like me.

Even in Savage content I don't think WHM was great in terms of engagement. Maybe when you were learning the fight and healing way more than you needed, but just like with healers now, once that phase is done it's played just like any normal content.

[Granyala]

Even in Savage content I don't think WHM was great in terms of engagement. Maybe when you were learning the fight and healing way more than you needed, but just like with healers now, once that phase is done it's played just like any normal content.

Well, my group never gets to the stage where healing savages is boring. There are always butts to save (we typically don't clear the whole content either).

[Samsta]

WHM wasn't great in SB imo, yeah.

Whm has always been what is is now though, at most we had 3 dots in heavensward but you only used aero 1 if you needed to weave since it's overall potency was less than stone 3. So we basically lost 1 dot and gained afflatus misery. I can undestand astro, but whm is what is has always been, so if you don't like whm now you never did.

[hynaku]

There is big healer shortage. Healers queues are instant and tanks have about same as a dps.