Has anyone quit healing?

[Lastelli]

There was a conversation in the game prior to the 5.0 Hell-changes that gutted the SCH and AST classes--and that conversation predicated around the assumption that 'green dps' is bad. Looking back, man I really resent those people. This is THEIR fault. Every healer class should have a dps kit that involves more than spamming "Broil" and cycling a single dot.

I disagree. Those people just said that they don't like the concept of a healer that does dps 99% of the time, they didn't ask SE to tune healing kits and content so that healers can literally heal all content in the game via oGCD only.
Think about an alternative universe where damage in savage content is more sustained and oGCDs do not directly heal but rather modify the effect/power of GCD healing spells and adjust them to deal with different situations, so that even in an optimized scenario healers will have to spend at least 50% of their time healing. In that case a 2-3 buttons dps "rotation" wouldn't be a huge issue. And that was actually what I was expecting for ShB. What we got instead is even more oGCD heals. They're too many, too powerful and too frequent. oGCD healing abilities is the real issue here. Either you almost delete them or completely redesign them to make sure they just modify/buff GCD spells (something similar to plenary indulgence, horoscope, emergency/deployment tactics), thus forcing healers to actually heal through GCD spells, or you keep them as they are and give healers an interesting dps rotation because in this case healers can completely neglect their gcd healing spells.

[Kalise]

oGCD healing abilities is the real issue here. Either you almost delete them or completely redesign them to make sure they just modify/buff GCD spells (something similar to plenary indulgence, horoscope, emergency/deployment tactics), thus forcing healers to actually heal through GCD spells, or you keep them as they are and give healers an interesting dps rotation because in this case healers can completely neglect their gcd healing spells.

That won't solve the problem though.

Since all you're doing is making it so instead of casting an oGCD on the Tank after a Tankbuster and having them at full life, you simply now just cast a GCD on the Tank after a Tankbuster and have them at full life.

THAT'S the main crux of healing. Damage is too infrequent and scripted that you simply don't need to use heals very often, hence why oGCD only healing is viable despite all of those skills having 40-60s CD's.

Just deleting oGCD's only increases GCD healing by the same number of oGCD usages in a fight, which isn't a whole lot. You'll still be spamming Broil 99% of the time.

It's simply hilarious that the only place outside of Ultimate where damage is high enough and frequent enough to warrant spending multiple GCD's on heals, is in dungeons when a Tank pulls like 5 packs of enemies in one go (Though, this is being limited more and more these days, with all of ShB's dungeons having hard road blocks preventing more than 2-3 packs at best and often only 1-2 packs)

In Trials and Raids it ends up being a case where you just cast 1 heal every time a Tankbuster or Raidbuster happens and throw a HoT/Shield on the tank every now and then and that covers all damage (Aside from when people make mistakes in normal on mechanics that don't one-shot). This encounter design will never get healers healing frequently, irregardless of the number of oGCD's they have.

[Lastelli]

That won't solve the problem though.

Since all you're doing is making it so instead of casting an oGCD on the Tank after a Tankbuster and having them at full life, you simply now just cast a GCD on the Tank after a Tankbuster and have them at full life.

I did mention making damage more sustained. You are right, just changing healing toolkits won't be enough. Ideally, damage on tanks should be higher and bosses should randomly do some aoe damage. aoe damage on party members is also an idea. Only one of the two things won't do. If you only increase damage frequency to the point experienced healers are forced to use their gcd heals, healing would become too tough for like 90% of the healers out there, because most healers don't correctly adjust to each fight in how they plan their cds.

[Volkaj]

I did mention making damage more sustained. You are right, just changing healing toolkits won't be enough. Ideally, damage on tanks should be higher and bosses should randomly do some aoe damage. aoe damage on party members is also an idea. Only one of the two things won't do. If you only increase damage frequency to the point experienced healers are forced to use their gcd heals, healing would become too tough for like 90% of the healers out there, because most healers don't correctly adjust to each fight in how they plan their cds.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Making damage more sustained without lowering the total healing load won't change how many healing skills (oGCD/GCD) are required, so you'll Broil 90% of the time.
Increasing the healing load will lead to wipes from lower skilled healers.

The crux of the issue is that unlike tank/DPS, good healing skills aren't transferable to easier content.
You can heal Ultimate? Good for you. Enjoy spamming your one-button DPS rotation in Normal/Savage until the next Ultimate comes out.

And in all solo content of course, which includes the entire MSQ (huge selling point of this game btw) and hilariously some healer job quests.

[Billythepancake]

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Making damage more sustained without lowering the total healing load won't change how many healing skills (oGCD/GCD) are required, so you'll Broil 90% of the time.
Increasing the healing load will lead to wipes from lower skilled healers.

The crux of the issue is that unlike tank/DPS, good healing skills aren't transferable to easier content.
You can heal Ultimate? Good for you. Enjoy spamming your one-button DPS rotation in Normal/Savage until the next Ultimate comes out.

And in all solo content of course, which includes the entire MSQ (huge selling point of this game btw) and hilariously some healer job quests.

This is why I say just embrace green DPS. Healer downtime will always be a thing, so long as there are casual people that play this game. Instead of licking them out, just give us something to do while there's no healing to be done. It doesn't necessarily have to be a DPS rotation, just SOMETHING, literally anything that isn't broil/glare for the 1000th time.

Having it tied to DPS just makes sense too. This way to less skilled players aren't missing out on the important part of their job, keeping people alive, they're only missing out on DPS, and outside of savage, that doesn't really matter. And the skilled players have something to do other than just spam broil and glare.

[Seraphor]

Thing is, healers have to be viable for when everyone is executing mechanics perfectly, and therefore only taking bare minimum damage, but also viable for when people are failing mechanics and getting hit. You're there to hold the party together through mistakes, not just a piece of a perfectly tuned machine. So this ideal healer scenario where the damage is enough to warrant full time healing is never going to happen, because you can't expect 100% performance from any party, not even for Ultimates, and therefore can't tune the fight to this unattainable standard without leaving room for additional damage, so it necessitates healing downtime.

[Saefinn]

This is why I say just embrace green DPS. Healer downtime will always be a thing, so long as there are casual people that play this game. Instead of licking them out, just give us something to do while there's no healing to be done. It doesn't necessarily have to be a DPS rotation, just SOMETHING, literally anything that isn't broil/glare for the 1000th time.

Having it tied to DPS just makes sense too. This way to less skilled players aren't missing out on the important part of their job, keeping people alive, they're only missing out on DPS, and outside of savage, that doesn't really matter. And the skilled players have something to do other than just spam broil and glare.

Very much this. This is the simplest middle ground that doesn't really step on anybody's toes. Not my ideal solution, but I think out of the available ones it's the most doable.

And in fairness if a DPS rotation is too hard to juggle for some people with their heals, honestly, I don't think many are going to notice or care if their rotation is sub optimal, I very rarely see DPS get pick up on for their suboptimal DPS. It's only going to start to matter in high end content where arguably you'll be at least where you can offer better optimised DPS.

The green DPS debate will go on forever, but the game's design has settled on green DPS being a thing. Despite it being dumbed down, green DPS is still what takes up the biggest chunk of what we do. My principle is just "always be doing something". And will always have leniance towards people who are cautious because they're not confident as confidence is built and is not innate.

[edit]
Billy, you're no longer a Viera, what are you doing man?

[Rilifane]

Thing is, healers have to be viable for when everyone is executing mechanics perfectly, and therefore only taking bare minimum damage, but also viable for when people are failing mechanics and getting hit. You're there to hold the party together through mistakes, not just a piece of a perfectly tuned machine. So this ideal healer scenario where the damage is enough to warrant full time healing is never going to happen, because you can't expect 100% performance from any party, not even for Ultimates, and therefore can't tune the fight to this unattainable standard without leaving room for additional damage, so it necessitates healing downtime.

While I'm not for full time healing as a solution, just one correction: full time healing does not equal full time maximum output.
In other games where healing was a full time job you did not have to use your most expensive heals and opted for more efficient ways to conserve resources so you always had ways to heal through unexpectedly high dmg. It was just possible that if the party continued to screw up you may find yourself out of resources. The higher healing requirement of fails was always managable just not for an unlimited amount of time.
Your hardcast toolkit offered enough options and synergies to nicely deal with consistent, average damage and some damage spikes while cooldowns were either used if things got out of hand (with randoms/ in casual content) or strictly planned to meet healing checks (in endgame).

But you'd have to fundamentally redesign the toolkits and encounters to make such a thing possible and FFXIV went the green DPS route.
Might aswell improve on that concept and keep the current healing skill floor while raising the healing + optimized dps skill ceiling through more interesting dps options.

[Seraphor]

Very much this. This is the simplest middle ground that doesn't really step on anybody's toes. Not my ideal solution, but I think out of the available ones it's the most doable.

And in fairness if a DPS rotation is too hard to juggle for some people with their heals, honestly, I don't think many are going to notice or care if their rotation is sub optimal, I very rarely see DPS get pick up on for their suboptimal DPS. It's only going to start to matter in high end content where arguably you'll be at least where you can offer better optimised DPS.

The green DPS debate will go on forever, but the game's design has settled on green DPS being a thing. Despite it being dumbed down, green DPS is still what takes up the biggest chunk of what we do. My principle is just "always be doing something". And will always have leniance towards people who are cautious because they're not confident as confidence is built and is not innate.

Simple solution, give healer DPS rotations a high floor and low ceiling.
Even if it's a two button combo with an occasional oGCD, have perfect execution be about 10-20% more damage than merely spamming the base dps skill.
Those who want to optimise and challenge themselves can do so, just like a DPS, but failure to do so is not punished as much as a DPS, because you're not a DPS.

[Irenia]

While I'm not for full time healing as a solution, just one correction: full time healing does not equal full time maximum output.
In other games where healing was a full time job you did not have to use your most expensive heals and opted for more efficient ways to conserve resources so you always had ways to heal through unexpectedly high dmg. It was just possible that if the party continued to screw up you may find yourself out of resources. The higher healing requirement of fails was always managable just not for an unlimited amount of time.
Your hardcast toolkit offered enough options and synergies to nicely deal with consistent, average damage and some damage spikes while cooldowns were either used if things got out of hand (with randoms/ in casual content) or strictly planned to meet healing checks (in endgame).

But you'd have to fundamentally redesign the toolkits and encounters to make such a thing possible and FFXIV went the green DPS route.
Might aswell improve on that concept and keep the current healing skill floor while raising the healing + optimized dps skill ceiling through more interesting dps options.

The only problem with this is what does it mean to overgear and overskill content. That is, take a healer that is not ready to take on Savage, but is able to get through an expert dungeon with zero deaths with a party that makes no mistakes in regards to mechanics. Replace that healer with one that clears Ultimate content.

How does the run change?
Do the party feel that the run is improved?
Does the Savage healer feel that their skill makes a difference in this easier content?

I might have missed something, but it seems like there might be a hard skill cieling, where for a given piece of content, better skill and gear only allows you to carry worse players through content, if you were able to get through it before.