I hate to, but I think I put down healing for now. Please make it engaging again, SE.

[ForteNightshade]

OP if you're just pressing one button while playing a healer, you're doing it wrong. All healers have a number of skills to use that are more than just "heal skill". As AST, I can be clicking 7-10 times on different things in a string of skills in a single burst. And I know SCH has more than just Succor or something. Maybe take some time to learn your skills more and take an active role in the duty you're in instead of just using Physick or spamming Ruin/Broil.

People complaining about spamming Broil/Malefic/Glare don't mean that's literally all they do. They mean it's where the overwhelming majority of their casts will come from. And they aren't wrong. For example sake, I'll reference a Copied Factory run I had this week. Despite having to cast 35 raises between us over the course of five fights (we wiped to the third boss), my BFF and I spent roughly a quarter of our casts on healing; GCD and oGCD combined. On a non-chaotic run, our combined healing would be even less.

So when people say they're only pressing one button. It's the above they're referring to. Content in this game simply doesn't hit remotely hard enough to warrant the toolkits healers have at their disposal.

[EwokAssassini]

OP if you're just pressing one button while playing a healer, you're doing it wrong. All healers have a number of skills to use that are more than just "heal skill". As AST, I can be clicking 7-10 times on different things in a string of skills in a single burst. And I know SCH has more than just Succor or something. Maybe take some time to learn your skills more and take an active role in the duty you're in instead of just using Physick or spamming Ruin/Broil.

I think you misunderstand me. I'm referring to the fact most healing is not done through GCDs in the first place. You spend most of your GCDs on Scholar spamming Broil, refreshing Biolysis, or using Ruin II to weave your abundance of oGCD heals.

However, if you happen to get the displeasure of being put in some old content. You likely will only be pressing one of the aforementioned buttons.

Also, if you could enlighten me of these "number of skills" that are not "heal skills," I would be very interested. Scholar has Chain Strategem and Energy Drain? Okay. White Mage has Assize and PoM? I see. Astrologians have cards and Divination, but funnily enough, they all do the same thing. There's also Earthly Star and its laughable 150 potency. Please let me know if I missed anything.

Out of all the healers, Astrologian is likely the one with the most "not heal skill" abilities.

If you want to talk GCDs, every healer has a filler, a single 30 second DoT, and an AoE. You could include Afflatus Misery if you so please and Ruin II if you're inclined to.

My point is, there is a large disparity in what competent healers actually use, and what they have. In higher-end content, of course you'd utilize your abilities. However, that doesn't change the fact that you still spend a large chunk of your time contributing to your party's DPS with your filler spell.

And if you think using "succor or something" is how you take an active role in your duty as a Scholar (which appears like you don't know about), I don't know what to tell you.

[BerryCharlotte]

I joined this game to be a tiny lalafell White Mage. I've healed since like 2.1/2.2, and I always loved what I did.

I've seen them systematically gut WHM over each expansion, then this time they made each one practically the same and at the same time simply stopped healing being interesting.

I only realised how little I was enjoying it when I started running my MCH alt through the MSQ and realised I was having a blast.

Since then I find it tedious to heal and need a lot of convincing to do so.

I honestly don't think there's a single person responsible for Job balance that plays a healer.

[Sloprano]

Except with one major caveat. Only when there is significant healing pressure.

Therein lies the rub. The gambit SE doesn't seem to get, or is getting and just not telling us. There are very few fights in this game I've felt the pressure on my healing capabilities, good old Mist Dragon and T.G., and was actually designed to require more than a oGCD between pauses. I can queue up to the Nier raid and practice my triage all day, but it feels wrong I should queue up for something and hope things go titsup just so I have something to do besides Broil III.

Even with all the downtime I don't see this as an issue. Pressing 1 a lot while adding a 2 every 30 seconds is no different when you add pressing 3 from time to time.

OP if you're just pressing one button while playing a healer, you're doing it wrong. All healers have a number of skills to use that are more than just "heal skill".

I think we need to go deeper for that. If memory serves, in HW on Scholar I had 35 skills i regurarly used divided between 7 healing, 9 damaging and 18 support skills. In contrats in ShB I have 24: Between 12 healing, 5 damaging and 7 support. I might get a number wrong, but our offensive and support capabilites definitly feels like they were cut in half and then some closer to the stump.

Actually even more so losing access to Aetherflow ooc and the pet hotbar along with Selene, in return we got new healing cds off the global cooldown. So we're down to only five offensive skills when no healing is needed. Number is not important if it flows well, but remains are just paradigm shifts of each other: One for standing still, one for moving, one for three or more mobs, one oGCD and one is a 30s dot. They flow as well as a brick in a washing machine.

Whereas before I managed five dots, orderd the fairy while casting, had debuffs at my disposal, placed a damage field whenever and whereever and could assume a high-risk/reward stance. Amount of skills to healing has gone up, healing requirements have stayed the same and the empty spaces inbetween healing feels even longer because I can only fill it with Broil.

The whole gist of the problem I think can be summed up with that Ruin/Broil went from my least used filler spell to the cornerstone of my playstyle. We're talking about having excess of 10 buttons to manage when I wanted to help damage or going solo, more if something needed mitigating and healing. In contrast to just three now: Either you're Broil/Ruin II/AoW while managing one 30 second dot and ED if you can spare stacks.

[Saefinn]

Even with all the downtime I don't see this as an issue. Pressing 1 a lot while adding a 2 every 30 seconds is no different when you add pressing 3 from time to time.

Then I a propose we replace all tank DPS moves with 1 single target, 1 AoE and 1 DoT and watch all the tanks thank SE for streamlining their job.

[LariaKirin]

Then I a propose we replace all tank DPS moves with 1 single target, 1 AoE and 1 DoT and watch all the tanks thank SE for streamlining their job.

There's a big difference between tanks and healers that requires tanks to have a more complex rotation. Are you saying that SCH losing Miasma and SF has the same impact as the change you propose?

[Saefinn]

There's a big difference between tanks and healers that requires tanks to have a more complex rotation. Are you saying that SCH losing Miasma and SF has the same impact as the change you propose?

Technically speaking tanks don't -need- a more complex rotation, all they -need- to do is survive damage and keep aggro. They can have an extremely dull and uninspiration DPS rotation and still do that, but people would find it boring.

That said, no, I don't think it is exactly the same, in an older post in another thread I did write how PLD would play if it got the healer treatment and I was fairer and gave it more to do than the above.

The above was a response to the suggestion extra buttons doesn't make a difference, so whilst employing a little sarcasm I was pointing out that yes, it makes a difference to how something feels to play.

[Saefinn]

If anything a fairer comparison would be if SE took away more tank DPS skills to add more defensive mechanics, which when used can be fun and engaging but they don't adjust the game's mechanics to accommodate all these extra defence mechanics, which could be really well designed. And because you're not utilising them and the DPS is bare bones the tanks (maybe just a 1,2,3 rotation, like 2.0 PLD), then they feel homogenised and uninteresting, despite how varied and great these new defence abilities are.

[Risvertasashi]

Technically speaking tanks don't -need- a more complex rotation, all they -need- to do is survive damage and keep aggro. They can have an extremely dull and uninspiration DPS rotation and still do that, but people would find it boring.

That said, no, I don't think it is exactly the same, in an older post in another thread I did write how PLD would play if it got the healer treatment and I was fairer and gave it more to do than the above.

The above was a response to the suggestion extra buttons doesn't make a difference, so whilst employing a little sarcasm I was pointing out that yes, it makes a difference to how something feels to play.

It is kind of interesting that you two bring this up. Currently, on the tank forums, there is a very heated discussion where a lot of tanks are rather angry that healers have comparable DPS to them. That their DPS rotations are 9~12 buttons is sometimes cited as a reason why tank DPS should be significantly higher than healers'.

For my part. I don't disagree that healer rotations are simple and a bit boring. But we already have a lot of buttons. SE could give us rotations as complex as tanks', but the button bloat would be horrible to deal with. I'd rather have reason to use our existing buttons more. And not give SE reason to slash the heal buttons, because I do think the variety of healer abilities we have is pretty cool.

[Saefinn]

It is kind of interesting that you two bring this up. Currently, on the tank forums, there is a very heated discussion where a lot of tanks are rather angry that healers have comparable DPS to them. That their DPS rotations are 9~12 buttons is sometimes cited as a reason why tank DPS should be significantly higher than healers'.

For my part. I don't disagree that healer rotations are simple and a bit boring. But we already have a lot of buttons. SE could give us rotations as complex as tanks', but the button bloat would be horrible to deal with. I'd rather have reason to use our existing buttons more. And not give SE reason to slash the heal buttons, because I do think the variety of healer abilities we have is pretty cool.

I prefer the idea of this approach because the healer kit is good IMO, I just don't think it is appropriate and therefore not properly utilised. Button bloat would only be horrible because they've kept adding new healing skills and took away DPS spots, that said, my controller setup would handle a more complex DPS rotation and what we had never felt too bloated IMO.

The only problem I see with this approach is that it'd mean adjusting existing encounters and mechanics and for any meaningful changes I expect would be a lot of work to get such a thing implemented, as much as I would be for it.

To me the simplest solution would be them accepting downtime is a thing and make that downtime interesting, I don't mind if it's more support skills, debuff mechanics, a better DPS rotation, I just don't want it to be dull.