Live letter expectations.

[NobleWinter]

"Casual content is tuned for casual players."

Dps dont have to do Ultimates to use their whole kit.
Tanks can enjoy their invluns and mitigation in dungeons.
But Healers need to do the absolute hardest content for similiar enjoyment? They need to solo heal cause two healers is redudant. They need minimum item level to truly feel engaged...

How in the world is healing the only dumpster fire role for full engagement with the kit in casual content. Like Repose is a role skill but where in the Savage and Ultimates are we using that again?

[Reiryuu]

Like Repose is a role skill but where in the Savage and Ultimates are we using that again?

*GASP* But we NEED that skill for our level.... 78? Role Quest! Because.... we used it so often between whenever the hell we get it now and 78 that it's such a core skill! And we use it so often after!
/sarcasm

[AnotherPerson]

"Casual content is tuned for casual players."

Dps dont have to do Ultimates to use their whole kit.
Tanks can enjoy their invluns and mitigation in dungeons.
But Healers need to do the absolute hardest content for similiar enjoyment? They need to solo heal cause two healers is redudant. They need minimum item level to truly feel engaged...

How in the world is healing the only dumpster fire role for full engagement with the kit in casual content. Like Repose is a role skill but where in the Savage and Ultimates are we using that again?

You're right, but you're forgetting the reverse is also true: DPS and tanks doesn't actually need to use their full toolkit to get through an encounter in casual content. The amount of healing required is inversely proportional to DPS and tanks. Tanks and DPS with poor mitigation usage & bad skill management means a lot more healing whereas tanks and DPS who can play better always mean less healing.

Besides, most players aren't playing optimally in their toolkit or trying their best to get through a daily dungeon/trial, they're casual players playing for fun - this includes most healers today as well. Most people aren't raiders who bothered to perfect their healing technique and minimize unnecessary healing. Heck, it's not like tanks can't use their mitigations correctly and use them all at once. Healers could do the same with their healing oGCDs when they panic. Obviously, that's not a good decision since they aren't managing their tools efficiently and will thus have to hardcast healing spells more, but that's still a way to clear casual content and still be using 'their whole kit'. Casual DPS players who don't keep track of their oGCD cooldowns will also fall into this trap, but they are still 'using their whole kit' when they realize the skill is up. Whether it's an effective means is another story entirely.

If healers want similar enjoyment without making the game extremely more difficult that it excludes casual players, then the role have to expand their DPS toolkit for rewarding downtime.

[Rilifane]

You're right, but you're forgetting the reverse is also true: DPS and tanks doesn't actually need to use their full toolkit to get through an encounter in casual content. The amount of healing required is inversely proportional to DPS and tanks. Tanks and DPS with poor mitigation usage & bad skill management means a lot more healing whereas tanks and DPS who can play better always mean less healing.

Besides, most players aren't playing optimally in their toolkit or trying their best to get through a daily dungeon/trial, they're casual players playing for fun - this includes most healers today as well. Most people aren't raiders who bothered to perfect their healing technique and minimize unnecessary healing. Heck, it's not like tanks can't use their mitigations correctly and use them all at once. Healers could do the same with their healing oGCDs when they panic. Obviously, that's not a good decision since they aren't managing their tools efficiently and will thus have to hardcast healing spells more, but that's still a way to clear casual content and still be using 'their whole kit'. Casual DPS players who don't keep track of their oGCD cooldowns will also fall into this trap, but they are still 'using their whole kit' when they realize the skill is up. Whether it's an effective means is another story entirely.

If healers want similar enjoyment without making the game extremely more difficult that it excludes casual players, then the role have to expand their DPS toolkit for rewarding downtime.

It's not the same, though.
A DPS can dps more and it's always a gain. Things die faster. DPS is never useless and so it's always rewarding to play your class even better.
A tank can mitigate more and it results in either being able to pull more in some extra spicy leveling dungeons or the healer having to heal less in everything else. Not nearly as rewarding as improving on DPS but it makes a difference and is a gain.
A healer just healing more is not contributing to anything. Overhealing isn't useful at best but in case of WHM and SCH it's even detrimental to dps, which is always useful, because it's mostly tied to a dps loss. Healing has a limit and once you've reached that, that's it. And with how quickly said limit is reached for casual players aswell (casual, not bad), especially in DF and Ex, there isn't much room to improve anything until you've hit the limit and spam 2111111111112.

So, yes, it absolutely is bad design that healers spend most of their time pushing two buttons, even during early tier clears and that getting better means having less fun and less to do. The first two fights this and last tier didn't feel challenging in terms of healing when done early tier, it barely made a difference whether someone used COpp, CU, Asylum or something else to counter a raidwide. So that leaves 2 savage fights of a current tier and the most recent ultimate.
You barely have content where your toolkit matters and of that content, some of it gets out-dated in no time, leaving you only with the most recent ultimate.
Having to rely on either doing the hardest content right away and with as many handicaps as possible or a party being hilariously bad is bad design. It's putting the responsibility on healers with a "Well, you could just do even harder content. Or always at min ilvl even for farm. Or hope for a really bad party. Then you'll have fun. There's enough content to have fun on healer, you just need to do it properly!".
I don't see anything to defend there.

[Boizinho]

It's not the same, though.
A DPS can dps more and it's always a gain. Things die faster. DPS is never useless and so it's always rewarding to play your class even better.
A tank can mitigate more and it results in either being able to pull more in some extra spicy leveling dungeons or the healer having to heal less in everything else. Not nearly as rewarding as improving on DPS but it makes a difference and is a gain.
A healer just healing more is not contributing to anything. Overhealing isn't useful at best but in case of WHM and SCH it's even detrimental to dps, which is always useful, because it's mostly tied to a dps loss. Healing has a limit and once you've reached that, that's it. And with how quickly said limit is reached for casual players aswell (casual, not bad), especially in DF and Ex, there isn't much room to improve anything until you've hit the limit and spam 2111111111112.

So, yes, it absolutely is bad design that healers spend most of their time pushing two buttons, even during early tier clears and that getting better means having less fun and less to do. The first two fights this and last tier didn't feel challenging in terms of healing when done early tier, it barely made a difference whether someone used COpp, CU, Asylum or something else to counter a raidwide. So that leaves 2 savage fights of a current tier and the most recent ultimate.
You barely have content where your toolkit matters and of that content, some of it gets out-dated in no time, leaving you only with the most recent ultimate.
Having to rely on either doing the hardest content right away and with as many handicaps as possible or a party being hilariously bad is bad design. It's putting the responsibility on healers with a "Well, you could just do even harder content. Or always at min ilvl even for farm. Or hope for a really bad party. Then you'll have fun. There's enough content to have fun on healer, you just need to do it properly!".
I don't see anything to defend there.

It's extra boring to be playing the role that's meant to pick up the pieces during a group's serious failures when the content is designed to prevent such things from happening anyway. The content is there to prevent failure from happening, and the healer is there to prevent failure from actually meaning anything if it does happen.

Playing a healer in most roulette content legitimately feels like you're the fire extinguisher guy standing backstage during an EZ-Bake Oven infomercial. If the oven exploded it would be truly tragic and very unlikely, but I kind of hope it does so I'll have SOMETHING to do.

[Roeshel]

"Casual content is tuned for casual players."

Dps dont have to do Ultimates to use their whole kit.
Tanks can enjoy their invluns and mitigation in dungeons.
But Healers need to do the absolute hardest content for similiar enjoyment? They need to solo heal cause two healers is redudant. They need minimum item level to truly feel engaged...

How in the world is healing the only dumpster fire role for full engagement with the kit in casual content. Like Repose is a role skill but where in the Savage and Ultimates are we using that again?

Say what? For all I know you can overheal as much as you want, you don't need to do ultimates to use all of your healing kit. In fact, you don't need to use your healing kit at all because you still have physicks at level cap and a welcoming player base that encourages no progression.

Lucid Dreaming is a magical DPS role skill and where are they using it? It doesn't even work on BLM in astral fire state.

Also, that last statement displays the number one problem with the Healer role. If you have to play the absolute hardest content to justify using your entire kit, that is DESIGN FAILURE.

Is it though? Let's tune all content to savage and even ultimate so that it takes one million wipes to clear a normal trial in duty finder.

While I agree that we lack DPS abilities, the healer situation before Shb in terms of balance was beyond awful.

I'd happily take a hefty Broil nerf if it meant getting Miasma II, Bane, and (maybe) Fester so that I actually have something to do during the massive downtime.

I would trade my raising LB3 and all of my normal GCD heals to be able to cast Spiritual Ray as WHM but I wouldn't do that for another DoT.

[Imora]

*GASP* But we NEED that skill for our level.... 78? Role Quest! Because.... we used it so often between whenever the hell we get it now and 78 that it's such a core skill! And we use it so often after!
/sarcasm

Ngl, I clicked it out of my spellbook while healing with my controller. It isn't worth the slot.

[FoxCh40s]

Ngl, I clicked it out of my spellbook while healing with my controller. It isn't worth the slot.

I didn't even know we had it, until I was mid Quest. "Put something to sleep? I haven't done that since the original days of ARR? Do we even have that spell anymore? OH WOW, we do! Why =_=?"

[NobleWinter]

Say what? For all I know you can overheal as much as you want, you don't need to do ultimates to use all of your healing kit. In fact, you don't need to use your healing kit at all because you still have physicks at level cap and a welcoming player base that encourages no progression.

Lucid Dreaming is a magical DPS role skill and where are they using it? It doesn't even work on BLM in astral fire state.

The outlier BLM's who do insane damage use Lucid Dreaming during Umbral so it's applicable to BLM and way more fun to optimize than what you're proposing with randomly spamming overhealing for no reason just to use our kits. Im not even sure how that even came about as a valid suggestion when we all seem to want to be gainfully employed doing something meaningful within our role. Spamming pretty abilities is fun I guess, but not when it can mean failing dps checks or wasting resources prematurely that could be necessary soon after.

[AnotherPerson]

It's not the same, though.
A DPS can dps more and it's always a gain. Things die faster. DPS is never useless and so it's always rewarding to play your class even better.
A tank can mitigate more and it results in either being able to pull more in some extra spicy leveling dungeons or the healer having to heal less in everything else. Not nearly as rewarding as improving on DPS but it makes a difference and is a gain.
A healer just healing more is not contributing to anything. Overhealing isn't useful at best but in case of WHM and SCH it's even detrimental to dps, which is always useful, because it's mostly tied to a dps loss. Healing has a limit and once you've reached that, that's it. And with how quickly said limit is reached for casual players aswell (casual, not bad), especially in DF and Ex, there isn't much room to improve anything until you've hit the limit and spam 2111111111112.

It is the same though. From what you're telling me, it's good that a DPS has a straightforward way to improve their DPS by improving their DPS rotation, but healers are bad because they have to work on mitigating DPS loss by playing better? That sounds more of a mindset thing on how you look at the healing mechanic because you focused on personal DPS instead of group DPS. Half empty vs. Half full.

Healers manage their healing output to make sure the party is alive without wasting excessive GCD casts for healing and be efficient in their weaves to increase DPS. To me, managing my healing output to strike a balance for more DPS is a fun mechanic because it gives the combat medic feel. Rather than looking at healing as a DPS loss, I look at preventing death as the worst DPS loss since a party member dying results in 25% to 50% stat reduction, and that's greater than any DPS cost on healing. Part of the fun is where you draw the line from more healing for survival to more DPS. The other part is mainly me deriving BLM mechanics of positioning ahead of time for casters and apply it to healer gameplay with slidecasting/instant casts. Kinda silly, but I have fun doing both things at the same time.

The method to getting more DPS is just different because healer DPS is contingent on party's performance. A healer overhealing is the same as saying a tank overmitigating & using all their cooldowns immediately instead of spreading them apart for later. Healer DPS is still going to be taxed if a tank has no defenses later since the healer is going to have to hardcast heals to compensate for the larger duration of time where they take more damage. In the end, the group DPS still suffers if the tank plays poorly. The same goes with a healer if they can't utilize their healing abilities to reduce the amount of GCDs required for more DPS. It's rewarding to use your skills better to increase downtime. That's not bad 'healing' mechanics a healer has to handle. The lack of weave windows, however, is another story.

So, yes, it absolutely is bad design that healers spend most of their time pushing two buttons, even during early tier clears and that getting better means having less fun and less to do. The first two fights this and last tier didn't feel challenging in terms of healing when done early tier, it barely made a difference whether someone used COpp, CU, Asylum or something else to counter a raidwide. So that leaves 2 savage fights of a current tier and the most recent ultimate.
You barely have content where your toolkit matters and of that content, some of it gets out-dated in no time, leaving you only with the most recent ultimate.
Having to rely on either doing the hardest content right away and with as many handicaps as possible or a party being hilariously bad is bad design. It's putting the responsibility on healers with a "Well, you could just do even harder content. Or always at min ilvl even for farm. Or hope for a really bad party. Then you'll have fun. There's enough content to have fun on healer, you just need to do it properly!".
I don't see anything to defend there.

I never disagreed with you that it's bad design healers spend most of their time pushing two buttons - the DPS toolkit needs to be fleshed out to make up for all the downtime we create. That's bad healer DPS toolkit design.

For the healing aspect, I do see more usage healing in dungeons than in savage fights because of the low frequency of unavoidable damage in savage, but that's because these fights are more mechanic-heavy than heal-heavy. That complaint sounds more like bad content design in savage instead of bad healing toolkit design. However, isn't using the first two fights of a tier in bad faith as the first two fights of every tier supposed to be easier? The last fight of a tier is supposed to be the most challenging, thus it would make sense it would be more challenging on the healing side as well.

.. But yes, old content gets outdated with better gear with higher item level sync since a larger portion of players cannot clear it with their skill level without the additional gear to make it easier. That's a normal thing to experience when outgearing content, and saying you can't enjoy content without a handicap at min ILV ... I'm sorry. It sounds a bit elitist when you put it like that because there's still people struggling with the content you can easily clear.