Please Nerf Shield Healer Pure Heals

[Ekesack]

I think there are a lot of great ideas in this thread. However, I have a sinking feeling that they will keep things pretty simple. My guess would be that there will be a single target vs aoe heal/shield dichotomy in play. Meaning all 4 healers can do pretty much everything for single target but, for aoe'ing the pure healers can heal the entire party a lot and the shield healers protect them. They possibly wouldn't have much, if any, options for aoe'ing the opposite side of the shield/heal spectrum outside of maybe a weak heal or a % based protection skill like temperance. This would keep all of them able to heal dungeons just fine whilst "requiring" harder content to bring one of each because of the generally more raid-wide dmg taken there. I dunno hopefully I'm wrong and it gets more interesting than this.

[Payadopa]

Dear Zodiark, let at least be pure and barrier healers be different to one another. :/ I would like to have two healers as opposed to one with 4 different variations of [particle effects].

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[Danelo]

As someone who runs DRK and uses Living Dead... please don't.

It’s a perfect opportunity to fix living dead - One of the most reasonably complained about abilities for multiple expansions.... please se.

[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.

[elioaiko]

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.

I agree that they need more input from career healers who have a better idea of how healing works rather than those who reinforce the stereotype that healers are there to mainly heal. SE can't have healers mostly healing. For as long as the content is scripted, less GCD heals being used will always be optimal. There's really no way around it. At the end of the day, you'll be trying to squeeze out another dps spell than figuring out how to heal this and that. Raising raidwide dmg is not the way to go tbh, we saw that in E12S and honestly, it's more frustrating than anything else. Because it's not about how much you heal, it becomes how fast you can everyone up so they don't die from the next one.

Also your last point about Momo, while he knows his stuff and is a great healer, he's very much in the mindset of optimization is fun so it's doesn't really matter how different the healers are. Not that this is a bad thing, but it definitely doesn't reflect what the majority of the community wants. And the card changes did not sit well at all with the majority. I expect a return of sorts to the old cards, though not all of it.