The state of healers is affecting everyone

[Schan]

And thats the crux of the problem. You think it feels hollow because you are used to it being a damage dealer with a side of healing. Thats how many SCH approached the job - a damage dealer that has heals too. Its 'hollow' cause you dont deal damage like you used to. That to me is you preferring the big DEEPS with a side of healing, then you did healing with a side of deeps. Because if were gonna talk about it being an issue, most SCH wouldnt have quit healing; they wouldve migrated to WHM. Instead, the consensus is "I hate SCH now cause it sucks healing, so Imma go be a dps or tank. Healing is dead."

I agree with some things and disagree with others but I would like to talk about this paragraph. I think the crux of the problem is not the green dps players. It's the fact that there is too much healing downtime leaving people with only one option during said downtime and that is DPSing. Then the devs proceeded to turning said dpsing into a 1 button mash with an occasional 2nd button (the dot).

The reason why i'm playing AST despite its shortcomings is because i get to fiddle with the cards instead of just mashing that DPS button when i'm not healing (despite cards sometimes being management hell because i can't double weave the same way i can on DRG. Anyway moving on...)

Now there are several factors when it comes to healing. We can't forget that healing has 2 parts to it. The unavoidable stuff which means it's on the healers to top people up and the avoidable stuff which shifts the responsability to the DPS / Tank (aka mechanics) which basically tuns the healer into the person who fixes people's mistakes if they don't just outright die. As Billy mentioned people don't deal with the personal responsability bit properly.

This creates a problem. If you're in a team with incompetent people the stress put on you and your resources is massive. If you're on a team of competent people you basically don't have much to do and the only other thing you can do when not healing is... DPSing... except AST but even then the cards are oGDCs so there's no reason for you to spam that DPS button in between.

With that said SCH and AST were pretty busted and they needed to be either brought down a notch or WHM had to be brough up. However I disagree with how this was managed in Shadowbringers.

I totally agree that healing is pretty OP. In fact i would go further and say that oGCD healing is OP. I originally thought the oGCD healing was meant to be the oh s%£$ healing but we still have approx. 3 GCD heals (weak single target that buffs the big single target and then aoe, except SCH who has 2) and everything else was turned into an oGCD heal that is pretty strong with 0 mana cost, 0 cast time (except SCH that has the aetherflows but then again you have plenty of those going arond unless things go really really wrong)

I guess healers will have the MCH treatment because healing in itself needs a massive makeover and I doubt they will do it during the expansion so all we have left is complaining until it gets addressed next expansion, 2 years ish from now.

[Melichoir]

snip

I guess I shouldve given a TLDR for my wall of text, but the sum of Billy's argument was that it wasnt the class cant heal, or wasnt functional, it was that it didnt have its old DPS. All his points revolved around that factor, and hes not an outlier in that assessment. It was a big part of people's complaints when healer changes were revealed. They also misattributed the "Pure Healer" aspect, saying all SE wants players to do is heal. We all know that isnt true because you realistically cant clear Titan if healers do 0 DPS. Not to mention they literally gave WHM a nuke.

Now there is nuance to this. I would agree that if were talking about regular content, there isnt enough damage to justify spending a ton of time healing. That is an issue. One that can be rectified by SE making normal content a lot harder. That is something Im in favor of. And not just for healers, I mean for everything. tanks being forced to manage CDs, DPS being required to do functional rotations, etc etc. The skill floor needs to be raised IMO.

However, if were talking about current savage content (particularly E3S and E4S), Im struggling to get on board with theres not enough damage going out. You can push a WHM to 8k-ish doing basic skill spam with decent gear. DPSing isnt difficult as a healer because it is pretty simplified. I think no ones gonna contest that broadly. If its so easy to DPS and content isnt so hard that you dont spend time healing, why are averages for classes like WHM 4-5k? While there are people who sit there and dont do anything at times, or people making mistakes, from what Ive been observing (as in watching actual progs) is that there is a lot of out going healing relative to what it was before. A lot more of people taking damage they cant avoid. Not damage every second, but what Im noticing is that yeah, youre gonna be healing more, and have less time for full dps rotations. It feels like - Ruin, Ruin, oGCD Heal, Heal, Ruin, Heal, Move for mechanics, use some OGCDs, etc. Youre not sitting there spamming Ruin for 10-15 seconds (being hyperbolic here...) typically unless its a burst phase of somekind (or youre hitting enrage.) I will say I am not some pro SCH player. So I well understand I have personal blind spots on the issue. Thats why Im watching streams and watching people who are playing AST, SCH, and WHM and what they end up doing.

Now as I have to keep saying, this doesnt mean Healing is Perfect. AST was a mess on launch, and its been buffed so it feels better. Is it still set? No. I could see it getting a minor rework in something like 5.2 or 5.3. Of the healers, its obviously the weakest. But comparing SCH and WHM, WHM is on top but not by a huge margin. And IMO thats fine. Could they update SCH a little bit? Sure. But I think people need to be real here and understand that this is probably the first time we can say the healers are actually relatively balanced (with AST having a huge caveat.)

[GrimGale]

If you look at Savage meters for all healers in Savage content you will see how many GCDs are used for damaging and how many are used for healing.

And I can assure you most of those GCDs are spent on Damage spells.

Is it because healers have too many oGCD heals? Well it certainly helps, but the key imo, is that constant healing is simply not required when global damage comes at this pace.

[Schan]

snip

I'm so sorry I meant Liam_Harper not Billy. This is what I get for posting when I wake up.


With that said I think we should separate Savage from Normal. If things weren't healing intensive in Savage I would be really upset and even then that's... debatable. You have parts of a fight that is healing intensive but it's not the norm throughout the whole encounter.

As much as I would love for the game to bump the difficulty a notch you need to realize that you and me are a minority. Most people want to sail through content while watching netflix on the side and if anything asks for a sliver of their attention you will see the threads popping up complaining that X, Y or Z is too difficult. It happened with Steps of Faith, It happened with Shinryu, it happened with the Burn and the latest is E2S apparently. Not to mention Alliance Raids. We even have a thread ongoing about people cheating the system to get easier Alliance Raids (but that's another discussion). Most people want easy stuff and if a game is to be successful they need to cater to the majority.

Everytime SE tries to give people more personal responsability when it comes to not getting wrecked people complain.

My biggest disappointment this expansion is the 1st Quitana's ravel boss. They had this golden chance to teach Tanks about proper boss positioning in a somewhat safe environment. Did they do do that? No. The boss turns itself and you just need to not stand in the bad regardless of role.

[Dreamsoap]

Nah. You're definitely over exaggerating. I've noticed Tanks being in need far more often than Healers.

I was gunna say. I Q as a healer for roulettes and have to wait on the tank slots to fill.

[Mistyregions]

I got it, savage mode healing where the tank buster is now a party member buster, 2 of them, at random that induces an effect that one healer needs to esuna OR overheal or both who knows then the other healer has to top them off a second time if it's a top off mechanic because they go down to 1 hp again ,while simultaneously getting ready for two tank busters exactly 2.5 seconds before a raid aoe. Now make it random and 2.5 seconds apart. See it's almost physically inhuman to be able to do that! I call this healing renaissance, healing the sweaty's.

Edit : you have to ALSO rescue someone onto a platform to prevent death or another platform that does ANOTHER healing top off mechanic. Only rescue works.

[Rasikko]

Big giganticus walls of epically long essay-eqsue text. Cannot read. Eyes have fallen out.

It
is
not
rocket science

DPS when you can, heal when necessary.

[Billythepancake]

Big giganticus walls of epically long essay-eqsue text. Cannot read. Eyes have fallen out.

It
is
not
rocket science

DPS when you can, heal when necessary.

And to TL;DR most people here who are against the current design of healers, moreso scholar and some white mages in this case, is that you're DPSing the majority of the time, and that DPS is spam 1 button ad nauseam. (ASTs are much more concerned about their butchered card system and being overall weaker then the other two healers)

[EaMett]

snip

E3S healing requirements are actually really low imo. You don’t need to use any GCDs (not really counting afflatus as a gcd heals)

Also most of the time lower dps is because of a lack of communication among healers and resulting overheal. Not high healing requirements.

[Rockette]

The problem is SE will not make content harder. Yoshi P has recently said, Savage is no longer for the hardcore. They want the clear rates.

If healers don't have to heal then just let them dps. God.