Changing all or almost all heals to off-global cooldowns

[Punslinger]

As long as our tools are as plentiful as they are and as powerful as they are, in the face of the terribly basic challenges that entail the commonplace content, healers with any modicum of skill will gravitate towards dealing damage and oGCD healing.

I don't know why exactly, but Square seems to be hellbent on making healing the official "I want my non-gaming friend to play with me" role. DPSers get complex rotations, tanks have been turned into DPSers with defensive cooldowns, and then healers get Fisher-Price "Baby's First MMO."

They want healers to be "pure healers" and not DPS, to the point of actively removing most DPS skills from healers (making them incredibly, mind-numbingly boring to play the MSQ with), but they're terrified of deviating from perfectly-scripted fights or doing anything that even remotely stresses the healer (like The Vault or Aurum Vale did), seemingly out of a fear that healers are babies who will get scared and run away at the first sign of a challenge. That's the only explanation I can come up with that makes any sense: healers are the dumbed-down role by design. It would explain why they don't see anything wrong with the role, why they're so dismissive of healer complaints in the Live Letters, why nobody on the dev team plays a healer, why DPS and Tank jobs get all the interesting design and shiny toys, why there hasn't been a new healer job for two expansions in a row, etc. It also explains why healer design is in such a bad place, when the rest of Shadowbringers is positively bursting with quality, from the story, to the music, the tank/DPS class design, and the new trials and raids; this makes incompetence unlikely as an explanation, which suggests that healers are stupidly easy to play because Square wants them to be stupidly easy to play.

And short of Yoshi-P forcing the job design team to sit down and Malefic-spam all the way through the MSQ, from ARR to ShB, as healers, I don't see how this is going to change.

[Wawachume]

I recently got The Burn again on my WHM in a roulette. Mist Dragon was fun. That's the fight where you can't just throw a few regens and dps away. We definitely need more fights like that.

A couple of weeks ago I got a Burn run with some first-timers. On the mist dragon they all got hit by the AoEs, the DPS each died once, the tank died two or three times, and we still cleared it on the first try. It was my most fun dungeon run of Shadowbringers so far.

[Eisenhower]

That's the only explanation I can come up with that makes any sense: healers are the dumbed-down role by design. It would explain why they don't see anything wrong with the role, why they're so dismissive of healer complaints in the Live Letters, why nobody on the dev team plays a healer, why DPS and Tank jobs get all the interesting design and shiny toys, why there hasn't been a new healer job for two expansions in a row, etc. It also explains why healer design is in such a bad place, when the rest of Shadowbringers is positively bursting with quality, from the story, to the music, the tank/DPS class design, and the new trials and raids; this makes incompetence unlikely as an explanation, which suggests that healers are stupidly easy to play because Square wants them to be stupidly easy to play.

Pure conjecture on my part, but I strongly suspect that there's no dedicated developer for healers - it's just someone that works on the other roles that also happen to have the healer workload on their desk (because the alternative that there IS a dedicated dev for healers producing what we have now is terrifying). Adding to this, a PLL revealed that high level play testing was done with invulnerability a lot of the time. Only reasonable, seeing how you shouldn't have to stop testing when someone from the dev team messes up a mechanic. It's better to simply acknowledge that the event should have wiped the party and move on to the next phase to test. But the approach feels detrimental to testing healing stress and resource requirements.

SQEX are probably afraid to push (new or anxious) players away from the healer role considering the connotations to the role. At the end of the day, the entire role suffers the consequences.

[Wawachume]

Pure conjecture on my part, but I strongly suspect that there's no dedicated developer for healers - it's just someone that works on the other roles that also happen to have the healer workload on their desk (because the alternative that there IS a dedicated dev for healers producing what we have now is terrifying).

I always had the impression---not just for SE but for MMORPG developers generally---that they don't really break stuff up like that. Like, maybe developers don't have particular classes assigned to them; everybody just works on everything, mostly together. Instead of Bob being the healer developer, maybe Tuesday is healer day.

(You know, I just picked that day at random, but maybe Tuesday is healer day, so they're always busy with maintenance or something. XD )

Adding to this, a PLL revealed that high level play testing was done with invulnerability a lot of the time. Only reasonable, seeing how you shouldn't have to stop testing when someone from the dev team messes up a mechanic. It's better to simply acknowledge that the event should have wiped the party and move on to the next phase to test. But the approach feels detrimental to testing healing stress and resource requirements.

I think it depends on whether it's like the invulnerability in classic TIE Fighter, where you can't take any damage, or like the one in the Halo custom edition, where you can be reduced to 1 HP.

[Shinkage]

As of 5.0, tanks only have a couple gcd actions that contribute to tanking. Defense and enmity actions, with a couple exceptions, are handled on ogcd weaving.

However, despite that not being quite accommodated for healers (the tanks have a decent portfolio of instant gcd offensive actions), healers basically play like that to the extent that they can. We avoid gcd heals as much as possible. So it seems like a natural convergence is in order there. So it makes sense to make healers just like tanks in that regard: have a good amount of instant gcd offensive actions, and then do most of the healing via ogcd weaving.

No, no, a thousand times no lol. They need to stop the trend of healers being DPS with healing abilities used as an after-thought; if anything they need to make DPS abilities be "second-class oGCD" and ramp up the incoming damage so that 75%-85% of non-movement keypresses are for healing related abilities.

Never going to happen but I can dream

[Shalan]

No, no, a thousand times no lol. They need to stop the trend of healers being DPS with healing abilities used as an after-thought; if anything they need to make DPS abilities be "second-class oGCD" and ramp up the incoming damage so that 75%-85% of non-movement keypresses are for healing related abilities.

Never going to happen but I can dream

My worry with going this route is you risk making the leveling & MSQ experience even more of a drag than it already is.
And given how little regard they've shown for our leveling experience in regards to others, I'm not very hopeful that it would turn out well.

[Sloprano]

A couple of weeks ago I got a Burn run with some first-timers. On the mist dragon they all got hit by the AoEs, the DPS each died once, the tank died two or three times, and we still cleared it on the first try. It was my most fun dungeon run of Shadowbringers so far.

Thank you very much for reminding me of Mist Dragon, the boss fight that toppled the Griffin as my favorite dungeon boss in the game. It had consecutive attacks, both avoidable and not, different things going on at the same time, hit like a truck filled with anvil-shaped bricks. But best of all? Someone could get hit by everything and you could still pull through. No super strict enrage timer (that I know of at least) and healing could be a challenge that I greatly welcomed with's massive aoes, required movement, dps-checks and ice puddles. Finding a safe spot and hoping you could stand still long enough to hardcast Ressurection is still pretty tense there.

To answer the OP, I don't think changing most heals to oGCD would help. On Scholar I already have a ton of healing at an instant cast. I would like some more close-shaves because I need to cast Adlo or just so I remember where Physick is. Also cast time on Embrace and Whispering Dawn again on a mortal Lily. Having to stand still, even for a second that was required for Sustain, can increase tension because you need to watch where it is you stand still. By doing this and the game keep throwing you aoe curveballs you start getting a feel of each cast and when you can start sliding. Which is why hardcasting ressurection in 24-man is still a hazard sport, and I love counting every second as I swear the boss can smell when Ress is being hardcasted.

Can't help but feel spoiled with all this healing potency. I was already powerful when working with Eos in tandem, but now I'm some divine being that instantly fills healthbars with a little flick of the wrist (Or Seraph's wrist). Back in ARR only instant oGCD was Lustrate, it's power was in trade for the Aetherflow cooldown and sharing resource for Energy Drawin, Bane and Sacred Soil. Things started getting weird when Indom came and suddenly quick AoE healing, my achilles heal, wasn't a problem anymore. I'd wish they'd instead of Indom had dwelved further into the possibilties presented with Deployment Tactics and Emergency Tactics. Maybe make ET increas MP cost of Succor, but also increase healing potency. Or a new offence ability: Sapper Tactics. Galvanize only shields for 50% healed, but explodes when shield is spent. If more Galvanize buffs are nearby they explode aswell in a chain!