Could we do without healing Potency?

[WaxSw]

From a design perpective and given the official stance on parsers, any content changes that would mess up a parse are a none issue. the devs wouldnt even consider parsers in any potential design changes.
As for the green DPS i can't see them ever going down that path because there's a pretty large crowd of people who play healers to heal. if they want to dps they'll play dps jobs... making healer dps more mandatory would effectively alienate a significant chunk of the playerbase.

Not saying that they would do that just for parses, I was just adding another reason (with other 2 more) about why it would be a bad idea that could frustrate a good amount of people (once again, every healer who doesnt like people to die to avoidable damage woudnt like this) and woudnt really solve the issue, what they mustn't do is design the game around people who dont know how/want to play the role properly because then we end in the situation we are right now. Healers must dps, from high end duties to hall of the novice and all the solo quests, all the healers are told to dps so those who dont want to do it imo shoudnt be listened when it comes to design the job as they lack the proper knowledge/experience on how really the role works, would be like balancing football rules around those who want to play using the hands instead of the feet.

In the way I see it the devs basically caged themselves, if they dont want to touch the dps and want healers to have a proper design then instead of giving random spikes of damage they should change all the GCD heals so they are no longer the heal version of the 2-1-1-1-1 and increase the hps requirements for every kind of content in the game, requiring a lot of work as it should be a retroactive process to not make the content from lv1 to 80 dull and boring and furthering from their goal of having an accesible normal mode. Thats why I think dps/support should be the most reasonable paths devs could follow for healer change (and the one modern mmos tend to follow) as mastery of those shoudnt be critical to do casual stuff (newbie friendly), ideally would reward players that have experience and play properly (higher skill ceiling) and no matter the challenge of the content it would work as its an interaction that doesnt depend on external factors, while healing depends on the upcoming damage.

[Dzian]

Sure, except the game is designed with healers DPSing in mind and specifically tells healers that they should be DPSing whenever they aren't healing. Healers that don't DPS because "they play healers to heal" ultimately aren't playing the game the way its intended and quite frankly are being toxic if they're refusing to even try.

yes and no.... i think the issue there is the lack of dev clarity, the game does indeed tell you hey do some damage when ya not healing but until recently healer dps wasnt even accounted for when tuning encounters. and one of the reasons healer dps got so dumbed down is because they didnt want healers to feel pressured into doing dps.. with the general attitude of press this button if you can. if you can't do worry about it..

but either way. changing or buffing healers dps doesnt solve the problem with the actual healing and that is the overall lack of things to actually heal....

The whole role is a mess honestly.. personally i'd kill toget my dots andbane back but i'd also kill to actually have uses for my healing skills.

the real issue imo is the devs clearly have this vision of what they want healers to be... but at the same time theyre so afraid of even a hint of challenge that there vision just falls apart everysingle time they try and do something about it.

[Canadane]

yes and no.... i think the issue there is the lack of dev clarity, the game does indeed tell you hey do some damage when ya not healing but until recently healer dps wasnt even accounted for when tuning encounters. and one of the reasons healer dps got so dumbed down is because they didnt want healers to feel pressured into doing dps.. with the general attitude of press this button if you can. if you can't do worry about it..

If anything it's the opposite. With how dumbed down healing has become it's encouraged more than ever to press your dps buttons.
The general idea of "Always be casting" has never gone away. It's just less to think about for fledgling healers now that there's less buttons involved in the process.

[Ultimatecalibur]

the real issue imo is the devs clearly have this vision of what they want healers to be... but at the same time theyre so afraid of even a hint of challenge that there vision just falls apart everysingle time they try and do something about it.

I'd say the really issue is more a disconnect between job design team and fight design team. Both Tanks and Healers have more tools to do their jobs with but fights have few mechanics that require those tools to survive even at min-ilevel.

[Manuka]

but either way. changing or buffing healers dps doesnt solve the problem with the actual healing and that is the overall lack of things to actually heal....

But focusing on improving dps is probably the only way they can realistically solve this problem with how they've built this game. As much as its the norm to point out how little healing we actually do now, the healing burden really hasn't changed much at all in this games lifespan. Going back and looking at some of my old runs, my best Alex Prime had me spend 51% of my gcds on damage while my sch cohealer spent 92% of their gcds on damage. Keep in mind this is back with OG clerics and a fraction of the oGCDs we have now. If I performed better (lot of overhealing and a death by the looks of it) we would have spent roughly the same amount of time on damage versus healing as we do now, despite the lack of oGCDs.

The reason nobody complained about the lack of healing back then is because we were too busy juggling 3+ dot timers and utility CDs on top of stance dancing. Compared to now where you spend all that time pressing the same key waiting for mechanics to happen and hope you don't forget your dot because you zoned out.

[Rongway]

Percentage based healing would only work if it were based on the caster's HP, not the target. Making it target based would be OP on tanks for obvious reasons, and would make super undergeared healers heal the same as max geared healers in all cases.

But the calculations would have to be adjusted so that the base healing values are set by percentage first, then debuffs are applied. The big problem with classic Lustrate was that it ignored debuffs all together and just healed a percentage of the target's HP outright, so a WAR could just eat all the -healingReceived debuffs and still get healed for obscene amounts three times per minute per SCH present.

And if all heals were adjusted to be based on the caster's HP, then it's really not fundamentally different from potency-based healing because potency-based healing scales with IL and maxHP-based healing scales with IL, so why bother changing it in the first place?

[Tint]

Percentage based healing would only work if it were based on the caster's HP, not the target. Making it target based would be OP on tanks for obvious reasons, and would make super undergeared healers heal the same as max geared healers in all cases.

And an undergeared tank, who takes more damage, is getting less heal o.@

I don't like the whole idea anyway. Better gear should affect all your skills, not just the 2 dps spells. Doesn't sound very satisfying.

[Raminax]

Honestly, the issue is more that our baseline healing is absurdly powerful. They could probably slash all our healing potencies in half, and we would still be able to get away with DPSing the majority of our time in most encounters.

It's a bit sad, because as Ultimatecalibur mentioned, it doesn't really give us the chance to utilize the full suite of healing spells. Though I'll admit, most of the actual GCD kits aren't terribly interesting to begin with, so it's not as if I'd like having to turn to them in their current iterations.

[SpiralMask]

personally i find it's less a matter of potency and more a matter of redundancy (as long as skills like bolide and walking dead exist, we'll NEED that potency as tank hp continues to scale so freaking high). too much of all three healers' kits was pruned off to double- and triple-down on the exact same healing effects so that an 'answer' is always available at all times to incoming damage, and it cost them anything that they could consider doing when healing isn't required.

[ASkellington]

Sure, except the game is designed with healers DPSing in mind and specifically tells healers that they should be DPSing whenever they aren't healing. Healers that don't DPS because "they play healers to heal" ultimately aren't playing the game the way its intended and quite frankly are being toxic if they're refusing to even try.

No, I agree with Dzian's stance. If I wanted to play a dps I'd play a dps not a healer. Does that mean I won't dps at all in a fight? absolutely not. What I want as a healer is not to fill my 90% down time doing dps with more dps buttons!!! I don't want more dps buttons. I want less down time.

I get it that SE for some Twelvesforsaken reason doesn't want to address this issue, and thus more dps buttons to press would "fix" said issue. My thing is, no. I don't want to settle. And I shouldn't have to either.