Troubling sign for 6.0

[Gemina]

I think after contributing to the several hundred page thread complaining about lilies and the "pure healer" design saw the devs just double down on "pure healers", they don't really listen to us at all whether the threads are long or short. Post away. Shout into the void. It'll be cathartic, but it's not going to accomplish anything.

Exactamundo.

However, not listening and a non-compliancy are not the same thing. It's erroneous to think the devs don't listen as their respond to player demand is everywhere to be found in the game. Saying, "the devs don't listen" because they don't 180 the healing situation, or some other isolated gripe when they put a considerable amount of effort to make the game enjoyable by a wide audience is basically seen as privileged, self-entitled rants.

In short, they do listen but would be hard pressed to go through countless pages of what can be boiled down to, "We want to damage more, and heal less." By doubling down on the pure healer, what they are saying without actually saying it is, "Well go play a DPS job then." The devs can just as easily say that the playerbase doesn't care to listen to them, and they would be equally erroneous in doing so.

[ItMe]

^ Well put.

[Semirhage]

Exactamundo.

However, not listening and a non-compliancy are not the same thing. It's erroneous to think the devs don't listen as their respond to player demand is everywhere to be found in the game. Saying, "the devs don't listen" because they don't 180 the healing situation, or some other isolated gripe when they put a considerable amount of effort to make the game enjoyable by a wide audience is basically seen as privileged, self-entitled rants.

In short, they do listen but would be hard pressed to go through countless pages of what can be boiled down to, "We want to damage more, and heal less."

If that's what they're reading out of the threads here, then they're not great at comprehension. "Why do you think making DPS kits more and more boring will force us to spam overheals?" is hardly "I don't wanna heal", but good lord do the anti-DPS healers (and the devs) think "Practice eventually gives you a lot of downtime" means "I hate healing".

[Gemina]

If that's what they're reading out of the threads here, then they're not great at comprehension. "Why do you think making DPS kits more and more boring will force us to spam overheals?" is hardly "I don't wanna heal", but good lord do the anti-DPS healers (and the devs) think "Practice eventually gives you a lot of downtime" means "I hate healing".

It's not an constriction of comprehension. If there is a failure to comprehend, it's on the playerbase side as many just refuse to accept that this is how healers are. That's why I've been telling healer mains as of late to ship in or ship out. I don't have a crystal ball, but nothing is indicating to me that the winds of change are blowing in the green-DPS favor anytime soon, including 6.0.

The other part to this is a failure to acknowledge the dichotomy that is the healer community, as there is this whole other side that is perfectly content with how healing currently is. And it's not like these healers are inferior either, they still DPS because as we all know, there is no complex rotation to DPS. They just have to spam one of two buttons when they don't have to heal; the mentality is still seen as such though, and I personally don't find a justification for it.

AST is basically SEs answer to those who want a little more to do while healing, but their DPS is also one of two buttons. I do think the devs will give in a little bit, and give healers AoE variants to their DoTs. I also think there might be a chance they allow job gauges to be a resource for an offensive ability, but that's a far stretch.

[Liam_Harper]

It is troubling. 6.0 is definitely being worked on right now and they still have no Healer Designer and a mentality that blind healbotting is the way to go. Chances are the 4th healer is already partly made and follows this design pattern.

In short, they do listen but would be hard pressed to go through countless pages of what can be boiled down to, "We want to damage more, and heal less."

That's complete nonsense. The majority of posts boil down to "we want something more engaging to do during our downtime". No one wants to heal less, we have barely anything to heal as it is, but even if you significantly increased damage intake we'd still have downtime, especially with better gear, and dealing damage is a good way to fill that. We'd prefer if the devs acknowledged this was a thing and made dealing damage a little more interesting.

The only issue I see with feedback is that so much of it is conflicting. Everyone has these crazy "full healer rework" ideas, most of which aren't viable at whatsoever, would feel horrible to play, or would involve restructuring the entire combat design and all old encounters along with the role itself. Then you have a wide range of opinions from "delete oGCD's", "I want to heal 100% of the time", "I want to spam debuffs all fight", "I want 1, 2, 3 combos and 10 DoTs", "nerf all healing so I have to spam Medica 10 times to heal a raidwide" and so on, sometimes ending in arguments among ourselves. Which isn't surprising that the devs just look at the mess, feel we have no idea what we want and just continue with the current model since healer participation is still fine.

Healers definitely need change but I feel we should be making realistic tweaks and reworks to what we have and fixing flaws, adding a few dps tools and making gameplay smoother and flow better, rather than letting our imaginations run wild.

[Kabooa]

Healers definitely need change but I feel we should be making realistic tweaks and reworks to what we have and fixing flaws, adding a few dps tools and making gameplay smoother and flow better, rather than letting our imaginations run wild.

Can the DPS tools not just be "more dots"?

DoTs with nothing else going really are no better than spamming Glare. You just have Glare 2 on a 30 second cooldown.

[Gemina]

That's complete nonsense. The majority of posts boil down to "we want something more engaging to do during our downtime". No one wants to heal less, we have barely anything to heal as it is, but even if you significantly increased damage intake we'd still have downtime, especially with better gear, and dealing damage is a good way to fill that. We'd prefer if the devs acknowledged this was a thing and made dealing damage a little more interesting.

How so? This statement is basically what gives that impression. When processing thoughts on how to fill downtime, you immediately default to causing damage. Of course, the argument of content design being the reason for this will be the rebuttal towards that, but this is a deadend. It does not solve the puzzle on how to make healing enjoyable for everyone. And when this dev team consistently comes out with content that takes us by surprise such as G-warrior back in 5.3, and new mechanics each patch that give players something to think about for a few days until the knowledge becomes widespread, I know they can do better. They just have to give healers the time and resources they deserve.

Increasing the healing requirement is also not the answer, and I've covered that. Each of these possible solutions only serve to loop the problem. The dev team is going to have to come up with something different to circumvent a perpetual and very difficult issue.

[ForteNightshade]

Increasing the healing requirement is also not the answer, and I've covered that. Each of these possible solutions only serve to loop the problem. The dev team is going to have to come up with something different to circumvent a perpetual and very difficult issue.

I disagree. At least to an extent. While upping the healing requirements to essentially trade spamming Glare for Cure II accomplishes nothing. Healing requirements are embarrassingly low in most content, including savage. When you have bosses like E7S where two full minutes go by and all the healers do is weave an oGCD between their DoT weave, it's poorly designed. That's two minutes where you're a gimped DPS with a single button "rotation." It isn't like the fight suddenly ramps up in healing intensity later. When you look at the normal modes though, it's downright ridiculous how little healing you actually do. Case in point, I healed E9N with a friend and literally did nothing but spam Glare for 95% of the fight. Now this wasn't me greeding while she healbotted. We were both spamming our nukes. There's simply so little healing her kit on Astro managed everything with barely any GCDs used.

This is why you're seeing even people outside raiders complaining at how boring healers have become. It's hard to play into the healer fantasy when content simply doesn't require two healers actually doing their primary job. Abilities like Temperance, Seraph and Neutral Sect may as well be Savage exclusive because they're way too overpowered for anything below.

The usual rebuttal to this is they can't increase the healing intensity or demand because inexperienced players wouldn't be able to keep up. Whether you agree or disagree, this is what shifts the argument towards improving healer DPS tools. They need to do better because we're two expansions in where the healing has become nowhere near demanding enough to keep up with the tools at their disposal.

[Semirhage]

I disagree. At least to an extent. While upping the healing requirements to essentially trade spamming Glare for Cure II accomplishes nothing. Healing requirements are embarrassingly low in most content, including savage. When you have bosses like E7S where two full minutes go by and all the healers do is weave an oGCD between their DoT weave, it's poorly designed. That's two minutes where you're a gimped DPS with a single button "rotation." It isn't like the fight suddenly ramps up in healing intensity later. When you look at the normal modes though, it's downright ridiculous how little healing you actually do. Case in point, I healed E9N with a friend and literally did nothing but spam Glare for 95% of the fight. Now this wasn't me greeding while she healbotted. We were both spamming our nukes. There's simply so little healing her kit on Astro managed everything with barely any GCDs used.

Increasing healing requirements is part of a solution, but not the whole solution. It can't be. Downtime is a thing. It always will be. That's just how it works. If you make healing in most content so time-consuming that there's very little room for downtime, healing is now only the purview of the best-in-role players. If healing is to be accessible for a range of player skill levels, you leave enough room for mistakes that the more experienced players have downtime. How that downtime gets filled is up to design consideration; damage has worked reasonably well in the past. As long as it's a satisfying reward I'm working toward. That's two of the big red flags that got me to drop the role for DPS this expansion; the skill floor for "enough" healing got so low that you can hit it very quickly, and the reward for slimming down your performance there is...casting one spell a thousand times. Which is boring. Don't get me wrong, I'm not opposed to the idea of higher healing requirements (abysmal skill floor be damned, there comes a point where you should at least expect a minimum level of healing skill). I'm not an elite best-in-role Ultimate raider, but I'm also no slouch at playing healers. Even if you increase healing requirements, I'm not going to be wowed by getting to cast Glare more as my crowing achievement for improving my gameplay.

[Liam_Harper]

How so? This statement is basically what gives that impression. When processing thoughts on how to fill downtime, you immediately default to causing damage.

Because there will always be downtime, even if they make the healing we have to do enjoyable and require us to do more. Downtime needs to be filled, or we just sit there twiddling our thumbs. I agree with Kabooa that adding another DoT is not the magical fix, nor am I in the "buffs and debuffs will make everything great!" crowd (although it fits for AST's identity). Buffs, debuffs and DoTs generally have a duration, you press them once and reapply when they drop off. Damage is by far the easiest downtime filler to design into a constant flowing activity, is always valuable to the team and is not reliant on the performance of your team.

Increasing healing requirements is part of a solution, but not the whole solution. It can't be. Downtime is a thing. It always will be.

I agree. I do think increasing healing requirements is a good thing, but it wouldn't be the entire solution. Both healing required and our downtime abilities need addressing.

The usual rebuttal to this is they can't increase the healing intensity or demand because inexperienced players wouldn't be able to keep up.

This one really baffles me. It was also their argument for not adding Mythic+ dungeons, because it would be too much pressure on the inexperienced healers. I understand if they want Normal to be tourist mode and even EX to be casual mode, but I don't get what they really want Savage or concepts like Mythic+ to be. Why does the harder endgame content also have to be designed so a healer with 50% uptime spamming their main aoe heal GCD and little else can beat it with a little gear? Savage should be the content that tests healers.