Please Nerf Shield Healer Pure Heals

[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.

[hythrain]

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.

This isn't hard to fix, though. When you start as a healer, yes, it should be super easy and you'll find yourself DPSing more. However, as time goes on those periods of allowing you to DPS should lower. It doesn't need to outright be erased so you're either healing or people die, but it SHOULD be where the average healer will spend more time healing than they will DPSing. To put it in numbers, I would say that a brand new healer should be DPSing about 75% of the time as a new healer but by the time they're max level it should be no more than 30% of the time in end game casual content. In that way, they're still healing more but you're maintaining a lower skill floor because there's still a decent chunk of empty time to allow for mistakes. This way, when you get into Savage and Extreme you can reasonably drop it to as low as 10% of the time.

Edit: The only real issue with the above is when someone plays a DPS to, say, HW content or even to level 70, then pick up AST or Sage. This person is jumping in the deep end. There needs to be a system to make these people learn the basics before getting into the more advanced stuff.

The idea of DPS tools for healers should be for solo content and for the small window they get to DPS, not as something they're doing most of the time. It makes it boring when you're only using three spells to DPS and have all of these tools to heal that basically are there to make you heal very quickly then return to DPS with your boring spells. This is something SE seems to be struggling with.

[Saefinn]

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.

I don't think it'd be that steep I for sure think there needs to be maybe some kind of training log because they could hand pick content based on its difficulty for people who're learning to practice against. I think once your healing starts becoming second nature the DPS aspect is simple to work in. Healers have never had a complicated DPS rotation but was enough to stop it from being too monotonous. But the DPS requirement of Extremes I think is low enough for a healer to learn their DPS balance before touching Savage. Good DPS or any DPS is technically not needed for a vast majority of the game's content, so I think it gives loads of room for people to learn to heal without that burden and to build on it so they can get used to the healing and DPS balance. This is why I view it as a low skill floor with room and a higher skill ceiling if we add more in the way of DPS abilities. By the time you're doing Savage, you're not a beginner level healer anymore.

I also don't get how it's viewed as all overly complicated or difficult. Because much of what people are asking for we've already had. It's not anything new or radical. Many of us learned to heal back when we had all this. I feel healers shouldn't be dumbed down and easier to make them more accessible because I'd argue they're accessible, but instead it'd be better for people to have better tools to learn instead.

One of the things I praised about the game back in ARR was how the content was balanced to favour you learning the job. Because they were steady difficulty increases, which was nice as a new player. I viewed Guildleves as "mini dungeon practices" when I wasn't as confident it was a quick shot run of something where I could test the water before I entered dungeons. Satasha has always been tuned so that people can make mistakes and screw up. The heal requirement is so low that it doesn't matter who is tanking the mobs. This I always viewed as intentional because you're gonna have newbie tanks and newbie healers running it and it's going to be their first experience of running dungeons in the game. The dungeon difficulties throughout were gradual with the odd DPS, tanking and healing checks to test you. You also gradually pick up your abilities at a pace where you've got space to learn to integrate them into your skill set up.

It meant by the time I was at level 50 I knew how to play my job. And then at level 50 I had further progression to hone my skills before I got to attempt Extreme Trials and Coils. For the record, I rarely DPS'd in those early days too. I have my Titan EX clear on YouTube and rewatching it I cringe because I think "I could have DPS'd there, I could have DPS'd there and there". But it was fine, my mind was more focused on keeping people alive and getting a clear than it was to play optimally.

But I don't think the game can quite work like that any more, with some jobs starting at a higher level, some people using jump potions, some just grinding their jobs I think for many they don't get a journey like that. I think what they should have is a training log as part of the Hall of the Novice. It'd be a sequential log that have you queue for content to give you that journey. Maybe lessons at Hall of the Novice to go with it. Heck with a Hall of the Novice accompaniment, it could be a space for people to learn how Shield healing works and erase any perception (if the changes I think at needed happen) that they're weak.

I feel this would help making healing (and other roles) approachable without watering them down. Because it gives people a path to learn rather than maybe throwing them in the deep end and ultimately, I think that would be more rewarding if anything. Imagine the feeling of accomplishment of doing something because you improved vs because they made healing easier.

[hythrain]

One of the things I praised about the game back in ARR was how the content was balanced to favour you learning the job. Because they were steady difficulty increases, which was nice as a new player. I viewed Guildleves as "mini dungeon practices" when I wasn't as confident it was a quick shot run of something where I could test the water before I entered dungeons. Satasha has always been tuned so that people can make mistakes and screw up. The heal requirement is so low that it doesn't matter who is tanking the mobs. This I always viewed as intentional because you're gonna have newbie tanks and newbie healers running it and it's going to be their first experience of running dungeons in the game. The dungeon difficulties throughout were gradual with the odd DPS, tanking and healing checks to test you. You also gradually pick up your abilities at a pace where you've got space to learn to integrate them into your skill set up.

I don't think it's as hard to learn as you think. The majority of my experience with the game has been with Shadowbringers, yet starting late has never hindered my ability to learn. There can be an issue when Sage comes along and people are starting at level 70, but an easy fix could be to require anyone who wants to heal as Sage to first have a minimum amount of content and levels played as something like Conjurer. It's not even that slow to level a Conjurer to, say, level 50 before you're allowed to touch Sage. At least this way, you ensure some level of understanding in playing.

I feel it's problem in that the devs want it two opposing ways.
They want healing to be easier for accessibility. But they also want healers to be focused on their healing. But by making it easier they reduce the healing requirement and increase the space for DPS.

Either:
They accept that down time is a thing and give us more to do during that time.
Or
They rebalance the healing requirement and the tools for dealing with it to significantly reduce downtime.

Or possible both. Because they could still balance new content to increase the requirement without touching old content and have a little more in the way of our down time. For me this would be the best option.

I got into healing because I enjoy healing and I like have to balance DPS with it, But, 70% DPS 30% heals is a really bad ratio, which feels like the average.

What, to you, would be a good balance? How much time would you think should be spent DPSing? To that end, should end-game content be balanced with healer DPS in mind or should it be a bonus? These are the questions that need to be started with first, because ultimately they determine what should be done. I'm personally in the realm of "I want to heal more than 75% of the time" group, which would put healer DPS as more of a bonus.