General Community Resistant to Healer Damage?

[althenawhm]

While a support GCD isnt a terrible idea, it does nothing for solo quests and instances.

[Granyala]

While a support GCD isnt a terrible idea, it does nothing for solo quests and instances.

Nothing needs to be done for solo quests (I level as WHM, so yeah I do know what I am talking about) and why wouldn't group support work in 4 man groups?
AST Cards work there too and are a nice change of pace.

[Deceptus]

Nothing needs to be done for solo quests (I level as WHM, so yeah I do know what I am talking about) and why wouldn't group support work in 4 man groups?
AST Cards work there too and are a nice change of pace.

Agreed.

All of the buff / debuff abilities need to be taken from the DPS and given to healers.

Imagine if instead of trying to balance around regen / shield based healers they could balance around buff / debuff based healers. Next expansion: 2 buff based healers, 2 debuff based healers.

And the reason I can justify asking for the utility to be removed from DPS:

The amount of times I've actually seen them use it has been minimal. Look, if SE wants healers to focus less on DPS they HAVE to give us something to do during the downtime. And if it's not going to be DPS, as a healer I want to be support.

[JohnSpawnVFX]

And the reason I can justify asking for the utility to be removed from DPS:

The amount of times I've actually seen them use it has been minimal. Look, if SE wants healers to focus less on DPS they HAVE to give us something to do during the downtime. And if it's not going to be DPS, as a healer I want to be support.

Why do you think they took away most DPS tools from healers? The amount of times they've actually use it is minimal. They've squandered it, so SE took it away.

(this is how ridiculous taking support from DPS sounds. you don't balance classes having in mind the worst players. that's how they currently ruined healers).

[Sylve]

Look, if SE wants healers to focus less on DPS they HAVE to give us something to do during the downtime. And if it's not going to be DPS, as a healer I want to be support.

No, The answer is to remove the downtime. While i wont say no to a more support oriented Healer, I want Healing to be engaging throughout the fight rather than something that sometimes gets cast between the Malefic spams.

Constant damage pressure to the team is the answer. Give me damage to heal through the entire encounter, not just in blocks during specific mechanics.

[Granyala]

I'm also certain that this has been consistent though the game's lifecycle

Correct. They mainly use later dungeons and 24mans for catch-up purposes. Hence the low difficulty.

Imho, that is lame design. You should not cater the majority of the non raiding content to returning folks.

No, The answer is to remove the downtime. While i wont say no to a more support oriented Healer, I want Healing to be engaging throughout the fight rather than something that sometimes gets cast between the Malefic spams.

Constant damage pressure to the team is the answer. Give me damage to heal through the entire encounter, not just in blocks during specific mechanics.

To be perfectly frank: I don't think constant pressure would feel much different, I come from WoW, where healing is (was? been a few years) designed more as a full time occupation. It can be fun, it can be intense (esp at lower item level when every extra heal puts you in conflict with your mana) but in easier content it feels no different than damage spam. Whether I mash the Cure II button or the Glare button is pretty irrelevant to me.

Content needs to engage and that only works with mechanics that require you to think and react. You could design a boss with mad pulsing AoE, so the healer would be healing like there is no tomorrow to compensate for it but it would not be more engaging or fun than designing the boss w/o the pulse and let the healer DPS between the spikes.

[Sylve]

To be perfectly frank: I don't think constant pressure would feel much different, I come from WoW, where healing is (was? been a few years) designed more as a full time occupation. It can be fun, it can be intense (esp at lower item level when every extra heal puts you in conflict with your mana) but in easier content it feels no different than damage spam. Whether I mash the Cure II button or the Glare button is pretty irrelevant to me.

Content needs to engage and that only works with mechanics that require you to think and react. You could design a boss with mad pulsing AoE, so the healer would be healing like there is no tomorrow to compensate for it but it would not be more engaging or fun than designing the boss w/o the pulse and let the healer DPS between the spikes.

Current WoW is just spammy. If you played during BC as a Healer, Healing was about placing the right heal on the right person with an eye towards not overhealing (Massive threat gen you couldnt dump) and mana use, since MP restoration was very limited.

We have an incredibly diverse healing kit that would allow us to pretty dynamically react to incoming damage at a more constant rate. IMO, Lucid having a 2 - 3 minute cooldown would bring value back to cheaper heals like Cure and its attendant Trait along with putting more value in Regens on anything not called a Tank.

What does it matter if I'm pressing Cure vs Glare? It doesn't, except the former is the Role i signed up for and the latter is because I'm bloody bored waiting for the next polite request from the boss to press a Heal.
I want to feel like a Healer, not a Red Mage that forgot how to cast Black spells.

[Granyala]

Current WoW is just spammy. If you played during BC as a Healer, Healing was about placing the right heal on the right person with an eye towards not overhealing (Massive threat gen you couldnt dump) and mana use, since MP restoration was very limited.

I have and if you healed raids like Black Temple and Sunwell, you will have noticed that the majority were not happy with the healing design. It was extremely stressful. That's why the changed a lot of it in Wrath to make it less spammy and went to a design I very much disliked in Cataclysm and beyond: spending tiny weak ass heals as a filler and then having large CDs that make the HP bar move, barely being able to correct player errors etc.
Ugh, I felt so weak and powerless. Frustrating.

I think they could up the regular damage a bit in XIV.
Savage could be pimped by 30% (not the spike damage, mind you), lower end content I'd say by 200% + implementing more mechanics on trash, maybe even necessitating Crowd Control and deviating from these Wall to wall pulls ... (ok ok I'll show myself out now).
Seriously, non savage mobs hit like wet noodles with self esteem issues.

Not necessarily. Healing has always had that inherent flaw. If incoming damage necessitates spamming the Tier 1 Cure to keep the tank alive, then there isn't enough incoming damage to warrant spending GCDs using it. Regen and oGCDs handles that way more efficiently and with fewer button presses. If incoming damage necessitates both healers spamming AoE heals to keep the party alive, then you have TEA's Judgement Formation with both healers bottoming their MP within 45 seconds. Healing in this game just isn't built for sustained constant healing.

What if it necessitated regen AND Cure II spam?
You know, if autohits were actually a threat to the tank?

Some leveling dungeons feel that way, undergeared tanks in there are more interesting to heal than tanks in savage raids. Mobs hit like 40t trucks!

Why can't we have that in expert dungeons? Why do they have to be so easy, just so a few returnees can catch up?

As for the mana thing: you do realize that is just a balancing numbers game. Easy to fix. Very easy.

I really don't get it either. The fights in this game isn't exactly designed for healers to constantly keep on healing. The devs said they're making healing much harder now or make healing more of the focus, but the exact opposite happened

The DEVs are simply put: too chicken to do major changes abruptly.
I can understand their PoV. If the goal is to make healing more difficult and get a more centered place, they need to change the concept gradually.
If you go from 20H/80D to sth like 80H/20D too abruptly, your players won't be able to cope. I'm not talking about you or me. We as (ex, in my case) raiders would adapt quickly because we have the skills and the experience to do so. Judging by what floats around in the duty finder, 95% of the regular players do not.
They would be alienated, overtaxed, frustrated.

The DEVs must guide these players. Give them time to adapt. Agreed, so far, their approach didn't work at all.
Non savage encounters do not hit hard enough, do not hit often enough and they seem to push gimmicky mechanics you need to adhere to above core gameplay, diverting a lot of the players focus (only so much of that to go around in non coordinated groups).

[Gemina]

To be perfectly frank: I don't think constant pressure would feel much different, I come from WoW, where healing is (was? been a few years) designed more as a full time occupation. It can be fun, it can be intense (esp at lower item level when every extra heal puts you in conflict with your mana) but in easier content it feels no different than damage spam. Whether I mash the Cure II button or the Glare button is pretty irrelevant to me.

Content needs to engage and that only works with mechanics that require you to think and react. You could design a boss with mad pulsing AoE, so the healer would be healing like there is no tomorrow to compensate for it but it would not be more engaging or fun than designing the boss w/o the pulse and let the healer DPS between the spikes.

Closest experience I can use is FFXI around the time that ToAU was released and TP burn parties became more commonplace. I remember being in exp parties and literally doing nothing but spamming Cure spells. It's experiences like those that has me try to let healers know that they don't have it that bad, and you're right; it really isn't any more engaging.

However, I will say that I do feel engaged when my heals are pushed. And by pushed, I mean I have to use my GCDs on them. This alone brings several more factors into play. An example of this is when a player is at critical HP with an incoming attack that will finish them off if they are not healed, and you have no ogcds in the chamber. That attack is going to go off in 3.24 seconds, which means your window to start casting is extremely small. Basically, if you focused on DPSing at all, that player is dead and the penalty is a cost to the group's MP whether the raise comes from a healer or DPS job capable of raising. Not to mention the insane drop off of rDPS every second they are down.

It's easy to say that healing is akin to a game of whack-a-mole with all the ogcd heals healers have at their disposal. Someone needs a heal, push a button and done. That is not engaging in even the slightest. "Increasing mobility" is an adjustment that directly affects DPS output, and this mindset is indicative of where it is placed with the devs: Damage. The way I see it is the healer role design is in direct contrast with encounter design; placing them in a limbo that is not deserved.

It is just crazy to me that everything and anything that has allowed healers to feel engaged in encounters continues to be stripped from them. I don't even know what else they could take away other than give tanks and DPS the ability to sustain themselves, which we are not far off from.

[GucciSan]

To be perfectly frank: I don't think constant pressure would feel much different, I come from WoW, where healing is (was? been a few years) designed more as a full time occupation. It can be fun, it can be intense (esp at lower item level when every extra heal puts you in conflict with your mana) but in easier content it feels no different than damage spam. Whether I mash the Cure II button or the Glare button is pretty irrelevant to me.

I'd argue that since 95% of our kits now revolve around healing CD's it would feel more rewarding than one or two extra damage buttons.