Do you want healers to be reworked from the ground up?

[Deceptus]

WHM: YES.

Currently they have SIX versions of AOE heals. Six. . . That is completely unnecessary. Medica 2 or Cure 3 needs to go, or upgrade medica into one of them.

Same with Cure and Cure 2. At some point, it needs to be upgraded into Cure 2 removing Cure 1 because at a high enough level, Cure 1 is simply useless.

I think I'm counting 6 Aoes Heals on SCH as well unless I miss one. (Succor, Indom, Fey Blessing, Whispering Dawn, Consolation and Sacred Soil)

Ast has 6: Helios, Asp Helios, Celestial Opp, Earthly Star, Horoscope, Collective Unconscious.

I don't have all the answers, but so many skills can be consolidated.

[glamazon]

Upgrading cure one into cure two makes since but the rest are different enough from each other. Medics is a direct heal aoe medics two adds a regen. That’s meaningfully different.

I want more variety. How about a spell retakes that puts a timer on a player so that if they die after being raised they will come back again but this time with 25 % more hp but the weakness lasts 25% longer?

How about a tether spell the healer could put on another player to share his own health?

[Deceptus]

Upgrading cure one into cure two makes since but the rest are different enough from each other. Medics is a direct heal aoe medics two adds a regen. That’s meaningfully different.

Healing is healing regardless. Whether it's direct or regen. And the problem with having so much aoe healing is there's not enough aoe damage to warrant 6 different healing spells, especially when there's 2 healers.

Medica (300 pot) should upgrade to Cure 3 (550 pot) keeping the 15y range. There's not many situations where Medica is used because of it's terrible 300 potency heal, it's literally the same trap spell as Cure 1 at high level.

[AmurT]

There's not many situations where Medica is used because of it's terrible 300 potency heal, it's literally the same trap spell as Cure 1 at high level.

While true that Medica is niche, I think it still serves a purpose in the kit as healers should be equipped to deal with niche situations. If Medica 2 regen is already applied, but more AoE GCD healing is required, Medica fills that niche, I think it's fine for Healers to have skills this way. Similarly, Cure 3 is unique to WHM and fills the niche of being a huge AoE heal with tiny range and large MP cost, great for certain situations, but not something that can just replace Medica. Cure 1 is probably the only thing that's TOO niche to be useful, along with the Freecure trait that's entirely useless.

That said, I wont deny that healers are a bit too well equipped. The last thing AST needed was more heals, but they decided to copy/paste A.Helios onto Celestial Opposition, so maybe things will always be like this going forward and this is just how healing in the game is designed. In that case, it might be more important to start focusing on tackling job satisfaction, as a good chunk of AST and SCH are clearly unhappy with what 5.0 brought on, the changes in question being everything except healing.

[GrimGale]

Indeed. In terms of spells Healers have as much redundancy as possible. Each healer has a GCD single target healing spell, a GCD AoE healing spell, a oGCD single target heal and an oGCD AoE heal spell.

Sometimes even two of those, variant being instant cast.

Clearly healers have enough healing spells. What healers don't have is varied, interesting damaging spells. (Which is weird since healers will spend most of their casts on damage, in most content.)

[Recon1o6]

for whm specifically i could see afflatus rapture being merged with medica and cure 1 upgrade to cure 2 or 3. Hell cure 3 in its current state is barely used outside of select spots in savage/ultimate. Outgoing damage is so low in extremes and below, most of the time a WHM can cast medica 2 or cure 2 and get back to glaring. Plenary is in a similar position, outside of niche spots in savage/ultimate its never used.

ast had sufficient healing pre shb aside from useless cure benefic 1 to cure 2 benefic 2. Celestial opposition healed a little, but its usage was damage, stun and buff extension. Personally I'd have removed the healing from CO

cure 1, cure 2, cure 3, plenary, solace, rapture, tetra, bene, regen, medica, medica 2, assize. WHM has 12 healing buttons with 8 being gcd. Thats more healing options than there is in the entirety of FFX! (if you exclude potions)

[Liam_Harper]

While true that Medica is niche, I think it still serves a purpose in the kit as healers should be equipped to deal with niche situations.

Medica is too niche at 80. I don't even have it on my bars and I haven't missed it.

For Medica to be the optimal cast you need: Medica II to be active. The group to be spread out (but not very spread out, remember Medica is only 15y and Medica II is 20y) and all damaged. Out of lilies. Asylum/Temperance were used up or weren't enough. Your co-healer is asleep or you don't have one. A raidwide is incoming within the next few seconds and the 100 potency Medica has over Medica II is the difference between a wipe and living.

Damage so rarely works that way in ff14, mechanics are spread out except the occasional chain of heavy hitters at endgame where you should have a far better plan than Medica's measly 300 potency.

Cure III and Medica II I feel are fine. Cure III is extra potency if your party is stacked and you need high burst healing. Medica II is 700 potency raidwide when you know there won't be high damage in the next 15 sec. Both involve some decision making. But Medica is just worthless once you get II.

[Deceptus]

Medica is too niche at 80. I don't even have it on my bars and I haven't missed it.

For Medica to be the optimal cast you need: Medica II to be active. The group to be spread out (but not very spread out, remember Medica is only 15y and Medica II is 20y) and all damaged. Out of lilies. Asylum/Temperance were used up or weren't enough. Your co-healer is asleep or you don't have one. A raidwide is incoming within the next few seconds and the 100 potency Medica has over Medica II is the difference between a wipe and living.

Damage so rarely works that way in ff14, mechanics are spread out except the occasional chain of heavy hitters at endgame where you should have a far better plan than Medica's measly 300 potency.

Cure III and Medica II I feel are fine. Cure III is extra potency if your party is stacked and you need high burst healing. Medica II is 700 potency raidwide when you know there won't be high damage in the next 15 sec. Both involve some decision making. But Medica is just worthless once you get II.

This is exactly what I was thinking when I referred to Medica as a "trap skill".

[Thoosa]

The slant should be, more incoming damage to handle and dps when there’s downtime. Otherwise just play a dps? There’s nothing more boring than pressing one dps skill constantly and the occasional dot. It doesn’t encourage people to become good healers.

[Thoosa]

Forgot to say, the current healer situation just encourages the tunnel vision glare spamming healer who mashes glare even when half the party is dead, because their logs are more important than keeping people alive and clearing the fight.