Please Nerf Shield Healer Pure Heals

[MintnHoney]

I just want healers to be fun and engaging again, and I'm personally willing to break the game for it. It's not like Dungeons are really that hard, it would just make them tune Savage up? Isnt that what everyone is after?

Sadly that isn't what everyone's after.
Squeen desperately wants the skill floor to basically start below ground-level for healers, while "we" need the skill ceiling to be high for our own satisfaction. The simplification of the role, as it occurred in the last expansion, makes it difficult to have one without dragging the other with it, unless they suddenly don't mind complicating things again (which I doubt, considering what little they've said and done over this expansion, and what's been talked about in the prior expansion and what's to come in the next, so far). This approach risks decreasing the successful turnover rate of new healers (which Squeen wants to see increase) and the ire of the Sylphies (whom it seems that Squeen wants to see more of, despite the reference).

[Saefinn]

Sadly that isn't what everyone's after.
Squeen desperately wants the skill floor to basically start below ground-level for healers, while "we" need the skill ceiling to be high for our own satisfaction. The simplification of the role, as it occurred in the last expansion, makes it difficult to have one without dragging the other with it, unless they suddenly don't mind complicating things again (which I doubt, considering what little they've said and done over this expansion, and what's been talked about in the prior expansion and what's to come in the next, so far). This approach risks decreasing the successful turnover rate of new healers (which Squeen wants to see increase) and the ire of the Sylphies (whom it seems that Squeen wants to see more of, despite the reference).

This is why I am in the "give us more DPS abilities or support abilities" camp. You can use these to raise the skill ceiling without touching the skill floor. To me it's the best compromise that respects how the game is designed too. I am hoping if balance suddenly becomes easier there's better room to add more of this kinda stuff.

Shield healing will increase the skill floor a little, but only in that it requires you to approach healing differently, but is not a difficult concept at the same time.

[hythrain]

Heyo, first post on the forum. Wanted to get involved in this since I've been reading what people want and I wanted to suggest an idea for how barriers could be made well without causing issues for things others have pointed out.

To me, the way to make "barrier" and "pure" work is to give multiple barriers with different strengths, some tied to heals and others not and make these spells interact different for each job. Ill use SCH and non-Aetherflow spells to explain with a possible idea for changing the kit.

First, Adloquium. Keep it as a barrier tied to a heal. Remove the critical strike function (No Catalyze, no basing its strength on the strength of the heal) and instead give the shield just a raw amount. Galvanize from Adloquium lasts 30 seconds.

Second, new spell: Catalyze. Instant cast spell that invokes a shorter GCD (say, 1 second vs. the base level) and has a short duration. It puts a strong barrier up. This barrier is stronger than Adloquium's barrier but weaker if you add in the healing. Give it a 15-20 second cooldown, so you can't just chain it and HAVE to use Adloquium. This barrier is also Galvanize, meaning it doesn't stack with Adoloquium.

This gives you two barrier spells to work with. They provide the same barrier but differ in use.

Now for Succor. Give it the crit treatment that Adloquium got. Next, change the barrier name so it's no longer Galvanize (Let's call it Bar-a for now), BUT you cannot have a target with it AND Galvanize. If you use Adloquium or Catalyze, you overwrite Bar-A since Galvanize should always be stronger.

Now take Emergency Tactics. Instead of it being a pre-cast to Succor or Adloquium, it's a post-cast to Succor only. AOE, it consumes Bar-A and heals based on how much of the barrier remains. THis way, it doesn't work as well when people are getting their barriers eaten up quickly but DOES work for those "the whole party dropped to 1 HP and needs to be healed or we die" situations. It heals more than the barrier is worth and can crit, but has a longer cooldown so you can't abuse it.

Finally: change barrier mechanics so that they are NOT affected by damage reduction buffs that the target has but they ARE affected by tenacity. Example: Tank takes a hit that, after tenacity, does 20k damage. They have a buff that reduces their damage by another 20%, making it 16k and a barrier that absorbs 8k. Instead of cutting the damage down to 8k total, you remove 8k from the 20k hit and THEN apply the 20% damage reduction. The damage after the barrier is now 9.6k and you've created a difference between barriers and heals, allowing for stronger barriers.

From here... balance the numbers. This set-up would give the tools for a low skill floor but a high skill ceiling without just throwing more DPS.

And you could probably work Aetherflow into this too. Maybe turn Excogitation into that instant-cast barrier, making you decide between if it's more valuable to use it or to wait and use Lustrate.

[EaMett]

This is why I am in the "give us more DPS abilities or support abilities" camp. You can use these to raise the skill ceiling without touching the skill floor.

This is part of the issue for the devs (and as a result, us). They don't want a bigger gap in DPS between skill floor and ceiling. That's why they simplified the dps in the first place. I'm hoping they decided against this design but part of me highly doubts it. t

[Feidam]

This is part of the issue for the devs (and as a result, us). They don't want a bigger gap in DPS between skill floor and ceiling. That's why they simplified the dps in the first place. I'm hoping they decided against this design but part of me highly doubts it. t

Could players have a hand in this issue too? In that if a class has a high ceiling players then, in my experience, expect to be rewarded with higher performance if theycan hit that ceiling. Which can in turn cause stigma towards another class and lower it’s representation as folks refuse to take that job. It’s a conundrum that I don’t envy any game developer. Just wondering if and how much this comes into their design philosophy.

To make the barrier heals work I feel they are going to have to change the strength of the barriers and how content is fundamentally run by players. I love the barrier heal idea. Loved scholar from day one, but I can see some issues that they need to tackle to make this work.

[EaMett]

Could players have a hand in this issue too? In that if a class has a high ceiling players then, in my experience, expect to be rewarded with higher performance if theycan hit that ceiling. Which can in turn cause stigma towards another class and lower it’s representation as folks refuse to take that job. It’s a conundrum that I don’t envy any game developer. Just wondering if and how much this comes into their design philosophy.

I think it goes deeper than just that. I think they want this so that healers towards the skill floor don't feel as pressured to DPS. Which highlights their "healer's main focus shouldn't be DPS" state of mind. And although I don't think that's a bad stance to have, they haven't once showed a desire to adapt the content to it. They want it both ways and it's just not possible.

This seems obvious to any career healers. But they seem to be lacking that within their team, and no influencers really match that role short of momo. Who, might I add, wasn't considered part of that demographic last expansion. Also, momo is just one person who has a very pragmatic approach to healing. So for example, and you guys can correct me if I'm wrong, AST card changes were a great improvement for him since they guarantee much more consistent results for speed runs compared to the previous system. That's absolutely valid but it's probably not the majority choice since there are many other opinions surrounding that change that are just as valid.

[Saefinn]

I think it goes deeper than just that. I think they want this so that healers towards the skill floor don't feel as pressured to DPS. Which highlights their "healer's main focus shouldn't be DPS" state of mind. And although I don't think that's a bad stance to have, they haven't once showed a desire to adapt the content to it. They want it both ways and it's just not possible.

It's the "want it both ways" mentality that worries me. I'd probably not complain about the lack of DPS if the healing requirement was higher. This is an issue that's one part toolkit another part content. What I found telling was me and my FC were doing farming runs of Titan Savage a couple of weeks ago & afterwards, because we keep meming about Cape Westwind we did a min iLevel synced run of it.

So you'd probably expect for normal content like Cape Westwind that my comparative experience was "lazy healing" and it wasn't. It wasn't difficult healing or challenging and whilst people ate AoE's, they weren't dying much, though they did take out big chunks.

It was tuned enough to keep my on my toes healing. This is perhaps because of two things, one, people would lose a chunk of their health frequently enough that I need to do something about it. And my toolkit at 50 isn't as near as extensive as it is as 80 where between me and a cohealer we can get people's health to 100% in almost an instant.

It wasn't a difficult experience, but had me on my toes healing-wise for any normal content for a while. And my heal:dps ratio was probably greater in favour of "heal" than Titan: Savage was. Yet the former for sure is simpler and more beginner friendly.

I think it goes back to some of my old arguments where our healing kit is too efficient to be engaging and the content doesn't push what do have enough. And I think in this anecdote, pushing people harder to heal doesn't mean that healing becomes difficult.

[Feidam]

I think it goes deeper than just that. I think they want this so that healers towards the skill floor don't feel as pressured to DPS. Which highlights their "healer's main focus shouldn't be DPS" state of mind. And although I don't think that's a bad stance to have, they haven't once showed a desire to adapt the content to it. They want it both ways and it's just not possible.

This seems obvious to any career healers. But they seem to be lacking that within their team, and no influencers really match that role short of momo. Who, might I add, wasn't considered part of that demographic last expansion. Also, momo is just one person who has a very pragmatic approach to healing. So for example, and you guys can correct me if I'm wrong, AST card changes were a great improvement for him since they guarantee much more consistent results for speed runs compared to the previous system. That's absolutely valid but it's probably not the majority choice since there are many other opinions surrounding that change that are just as valid.

Oh I agree that it goes much deeper than what I was asking about. Just wondering how much of it is in part players fault, in addition to the other reasons, with players tendency to eschew jobs for x reasons.

Right now the heal requirements are not that heavy with how powerful the heals are currently. Personally, I’m in favor of higher heal requirements or a return of the better dps rotations for those that want to min max.

[Rilifane]

Could players have a hand in this issue too? In that if a class has a high ceiling players then, in my experience, expect to be rewarded with higher performance if theycan hit that ceiling. Which can in turn cause stigma towards another class and lower it’s representation as folks refuse to take that job. It’s a conundrum that I don’t envy any game developer. Just wondering if and how much this comes into their design philosophy.

Of course people ask for a higher reward if they play a class with a more difficult rotation and more punishing mechanics if failed and SE supports this to a degree.
That's one of the reason why we still have this noticable gap between casters/ melees and physical ranged to the point of BRD barely getting played, MCH being a so-so and DNC mostly being sought after in parties that go for high performance. Without bringing the 1% buff, most parties wouldn't bat an eye at dropping physical ranged entirely.
I think there is nothing wrong with higher risk = higher reward as long as they don't overshoot the mark. A high risk class should be ahead if played well and fall behind if played poorly, not miles ahead if played well and still ahead if played poorly.

The biggest reason for the healer change seemed to be accessibility, though. They acknowledge the dps meta although they still seem to fight it in regards to healers, as proven by several changes made to SCH and even some of the AST changes in ShB. It seems they feared that the dps meta put too much pressure on potential healers.
They wanted to bring more healers into the fold so they made dpsing as simple as it can get, making many veterans quit in the process, resulting in an overall loss for the long time and only now we slowly start to see a slight increase again in all types of content.

I think the devs fear that reintroducing a higher dps skill ceiling will drive healers away again. Despite the prevelant dps meta, healer dps is for the most part still optional and although annoyed by healbots, players generally accept that. So it's not a binary case of "top-tier dps or gtfo".
People didn't have to go for max cleric stance uptime. People didn't have to use old SD optimally and aligned. People didn't have to spent every AF on ED. If someone managed that, it was great but not mandatory. It all came down to "their loss, not mine" because the difference it made was neglectable for anything but their own parse or ranked speedrun attempts.
A messed up SD didn't make or break the dps check. Letting someone die did. Eating damage downs did.
So raising the dps skill ceiling for healers while keeping the overall skill floor low wouldn't raise the stakes for them as much as it would for a dps, whose only purpose is dpsing and whose performance (or lack of) has a big impact on wether you pass the dps check or not.
But it would bring many veterans back without scaring rookies away.

I think it goes deeper than just that. I think they want this so that healers towards the skill floor don't feel as pressured to DPS. Which highlights their "healer's main focus shouldn't be DPS" state of mind. And although I don't think that's a bad stance to have, they haven't once showed a desire to adapt the content to it. They want it both ways and it's just not possible.

It's possible but it would mean a huge gap between casual content and endgame content. Because with their focus on accesibility, they will never design casual content that requires constant attention from the healer or the party dies.
And if endgame content requires just that, the learning curve would be incredibly steep and I don't want to imagine the reaction of the average healer. Even some career healers might be put off. Imagine going from lenient DF content to raids that suddenly have WL2s all over.

Also, momo is just one person who has a very pragmatic approach to healing. So for example, and you guys can correct me if I'm wrong, AST card changes were a great improvement for him since they guarantee much more consistent results for speed runs compared to the previous system. That's absolutely valid but it's probably not the majority choice since there are many other opinions surrounding that change that are just as valid.

And I absolutely agree with Momo that basically anything that isn't reliable is often bordering on worthless as a healer. Mitigation, healing and to a degree, rDPS support, needs to be always there or not at all because otherwise you can't plan around it. We all had those moments where we got a 1 seal Divination in our opener and just wanted to jump off the platform because we were already done with this try.
What I don't agree with is they way SE went about ensuring less RNG with SD because they could've also changed it in a way that you still got 3 cards but severely limiting the amount of RNG by e.g. either making SD be a "3 out of 6" selection of cards (meaning max.2 identical seals) with Redraw staying within these bounds or SD always giving you all 3 seals but in random order with random type (melee/ ranged).
It's a rare case of when you could've appeased to more than one side of the argument to a point.

[EaMett]

And I absolutely agree with Momo that basically anything that isn't reliable is often bordering on worthless as a healer. Mitigation, healing and to a degree, rDPS support, needs to be always there or not at all because otherwise you can't plan around it. We all had those moments where we got a 1 seal Divination in our opener and just wanted to jump off the platform because we were already done with this try.
What I don't agree with is they way SE went about ensuring less RNG with SD because they could've also changed it in a way that you still got 3 cards but severely limiting the amount of RNG by e.g. either making SD be a "3 out of 6" selection of cards (meaning max.2 identical seals) with Redraw staying within these bounds or SD always giving you all 3 seals but in random order with random type (melee/ ranged).
It's a rare case of when you could've appeased to more than one side of the argument to a point.

The thing is, consistency is not a requirement for gameplay. And it isn't one for fun. You don't need everything to be something you can plan around for it to be engaging, useful, etc. It might -seem- that way when you're being fed fully predictable content, but even with content like that RNG designs can provide value.

So although some people might feel this way (ie: change was good) this does not mean it was the correct approach. There are multitudes of other designs they could have picked from, spanning the entire spectrum. The one you suggest is one of them. And the reason I brought this up was just to illustrate that although Momo absolutely knows his stuff, and should finally count as a voice for healers (provided he's invited to the media tour / is listened to), it's still only going to be a subset of community feedback.