WHM: An idea to change the freecure trap and to encourage using damage spells

[Bsrking5]

Draining HP from the healer sounds like a very bad idea...

Yes but thats sounds like a funny boss mechanics. One player get marked or two. Boss does aoes set to 1 HP or just high damage. At the end of the mark the players HP goes to fill any missing party HP.
I dunno I think SE could just move it to cure II and benefit II and have it apply to the next healing spell.

[glamazon]

Draining HP from the healer sounds like a very bad idea...

Games are about choices. The more choices the better because it allows us to make decisions. Having another tool is not bad. If your spells are on cd and someone is about to die and you have a spell that would give a portion of your own hp to them giving you time for your cds to come up then that is a winner

[Seraphor]

Games are about choices. The more choices the better because it allows us to make decisions. Having another tool is not bad. If your spells are on cd and someone is about to die and you have a spell that would give a portion of your own hp to them giving you time for your cds to come up then that is a winner

Then the healer dies, and the party wipes.

Even Dark Knight doesn't use it's HP, and that's a series staple mechanic.

[Gemina]

It's an antiquated WHM mechanic. It actually needs to be scrapped. Cure I should be mastered into Cure 2 at the appropriate level and call it a day. If they wanted to give WHM something that procs in order to cause damage they could give normal regen ticks a %chance to use an updated Fluid Aura ability that can simply be an ogcd skill for free damage.

[Maltothoris]

Ya it would probably be better to just scrap it. It's just a remnant of how Whm used to have procs for their mp saving compared to the other healer classes, along with Overcure, free medica and free esuna (which failed because those chances were usually to low and the effects too little to actually make a difference, being 15 percent and 20 percent)

THat being said, it would hard to figure what they would want to do in its place should they get rid of the trait and are trying to figure out something for it.

[AnotherPerson]

If we’re thinking of new healer type abilities what about physicals upgrades to life line which ties the healers own health to the target draining the healer to heal? Or what about a spell called equilibrium which would balance the groups health so everyone had an equal amount?

Incoming Raidwide damage pretty much make that skill effectively useless and equilibrium already exists in the WAR kit, but it's just a flat potency self-heal instead of a balance HP spell. Honestly though, I can see the Balance HP spell being used even less since tanks have much higher amounts of HP at lv 80. if the total HP of the whole party was pooled together and then redistributed, the tanks would be losing a ridiculous amount of HP which makes them more even more vulnerable to tankbusters since the HP values in ShB skews the tank's HP by a ridiculous margin. That can easily cause wipes.

[glamazon]

The more I learn about this game the more it seems they have designed themselves into a corner.

[Gemina]

^
Not necessarily. That is an echoed misconception. What it actually is, is an unwillingness to rework healers to fit into their current encounter design.

If there is a corner they designed themselves into, it is due to bloated ilvls. Healers are designed to be able to deal with the healing requirements of high end duties. As a result of this, their kits become continuously underutilized as the healing requirement goes down. This happens both with ilv scaling, and lower requirements for all content under EX trials. EX trials are the first to become increasingly easier as better gear and the echo come into play.

The end result is spamming your ST/AoE skill to fill downtime, which increases as the healing requirement goes down. A lot of healers want/think that a little more complex DPS rotation is the answer if the healing requirement is to remain unchanged. The devs are seemingly against this, but they also don't want to attack the problem the healer community is griping about. It's not a corner. It's an elevated position where we are told how healers will be.

If they want to make healers more fun to play, I believe they need to start with their job gauges. Every job in this game except healers use this resource to deal more damage. There is zero reason for healers to be exempt from this. Until the devs hammer this into their brains, the healer woes will continue indefinitely. AST has the best example of a functioning job gauge; it's just very lackluster because it is selfless in design. The concept however, is a bullseye.

[Lyth]

I think that the main issues with healing are that there isn't enough outgoing single target damage to adequately threaten your tanks (and the squishies in your party when the tanks die), that fights don't adequately force resource attrition/management, and there isn't enough reactive/variable elements to healing to keep you on your toes. When you can write out the entire damage script for a fight in advance, healing becomes an exercise in spreadsheet creation.

DPS is a separate issue. Tanks and healer damage output are progressively dropping off relative to damage dealers. Exciting dps rotations are almost an academic point if your skilled gameplay only provides a marginal contribution/benefit to your team. There has to be other new ways that healers can provide value, or else that gap between damage dealers and tanks/healers has to be much more narrow.

If we’re thinking of new healer type abilities what about physicals upgrades to life line which ties the healers own health to the target draining the healer to heal? Or what about a spell called equilibrium which would balance the groups health so everyone had an equal amount?

The original Guild Wars had a really fun ability called "Transfuse Health". It took away half your present health, and healed the target for double the amount lost. With a 1/4s cast time, it was also about 8 times faster than your standard heals. Made for some really interesting PvP situations. You couldn't die from it because it just halves your health, but it still had an interesting risk/reward dynamic to it.

[Hysterior]

Agreed.

I recently leveled WHM on another character and it reminded me of these Cure I > Free Cure II procs
I do think it teaches the wrong way of healing (Use your lower tier heal until you get a free proc for better heal)

And the game never tells you that at some point, you should stop using Cure I altogether.
Hopefully they will get rid of that in the next expansion.

Honestly the WHM cures should be revamped
Cure I > single heal
Cure II > stronger single heal
Cure III > AoE heal (WHY?)

Medica I > AoE Heal
Medica 2 > AoE Heal + HOTs (WHY?)

Shouldnt Cure III be Medica II and Medica II be Regen II?