Healers - Before we complain we should learn the game.

[Insertusernamehere]

My personal opinion.. I prefer more engaging aggressive healer I hoped SAGE will be next thing.. with aggressive game play but it turned out another copy healer with flashy skills.

I do not know why devs afraid of giving proper combo / burst phase to healers.. some will complain it is to complicated but you don't have to execute it flawlessly every time.. all we have healing skill 1 / healing skill 2 / healing skill 3 / healing skill 4 ..... with different formats but always does same thing.

I hope one day they give healer proper DPS rotation.. example.. GNB can stop while doing Contination rotation (with small dps loss if it is double weave) for damage mitigation.. why can't healer have same thing all they have to do stop combo and heal and resume combo. or.. Inner release phase with big burst and impactful combo.. with stacks just healer version they will have plenty of time consume their stacks if healing necessary.

But not everyone will agree with my opinion.. and majority of people apparently preferring simple healer game play.. so this is what SE giving us as healer: 1-3 dps skill and excessive amount of copy paste healing skill with minor alterations.

[eagledorf]

Even in savage though, in between the especially massive healer checks (that are real and good) what do you do? 1-1-1-1-1-1...

Take P3S:

Shield the party prepull.
Pull: 1-2-1-1-1-1-
AoE (already shielded): oGCD HoT + 1-1-1-1-1-
Tankbuster: will be topped with the HoT and tank self-heals so 1-1-1-1
Dodge: 1-1-1-
Dodge: 1-1-1
Fires-tankbuster-AoE: oGCD+mits. If your party is really bad at using mitigation skills, heal here.
Dodge X4: 1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-ONE-ONE-WON

Go to the nono site and look at the cast timelines for some clears and you'll see it's almost filled completely solid with one skill even for late Savage turns.

[Theox]

As I believe the devs design healers to be optimal for high-end duties I can see why they don't want healers to have full on dps skills and rotations. Having a dps rotation means you now have to care about your uptime and be careful to not drop your combo, but unlike dps jobs healers also have to heal (hence the name), so that might lead to very weird situations where you have to decide whether you drop the combo or heal your party, which might lead to you a) losing a lot of potential damage, your combos etc b)wiping your party bc you didn't heal in time. While that might sound engaging and thrilling on paper, it's very hard to balance such a playstyle with how this game's combat is, so I don't think the devs want to dip their toes into that when they can just simply play it safe.

As a compromise, I do think healers need something to keep them busy with that feels rewarding, I don't know how people are playing whm and not gagging with the amount of unnecessary healing spells. How about we take half of those spells and give whm, I don't know, a spell that buffs damage? Mitigation spell? It's better than just being a healing bot, especially now when you do not need an excessive amount of healing.

I think the best healer in the game in terms of gameplay is ast, and it's by no means perfect, but it's busy and gives something to keep track of, and also provides utility for the party besides just being a heal bot (not to mention that ast's healing abilities are different and more skill-expressive, like timing your earthly star for the next big raid wide and things like that). That's a good place to start. Just give healers something besides healing, make it actually impactful and worth keeping track of and I think half of the people complaining would be satisfied enough.

[Mortex]

As I believe the devs design healers to be optimal for high-end duties I can see why they don't want healers to have full on dps skills and rotations. Having a dps rotation means you now have to care about your uptime and be careful to not drop your combo, but unlike dps jobs healers also have to heal (hence the name), so that might lead to very weird situations where you have to decide whether you drop the combo or heal your party, which might lead to you a) losing a lot of potential damage, your combos etc b)wiping your party bc you didn't heal in time. While that might sound engaging and thrilling on paper, it's very hard to balance such a playstyle with how this game's combat is, so I don't think the devs want to dip their toes into that when they can just simply play it safe.

As a compromise, I do think healers need something to keep them busy with that feels rewarding, I don't know how people are playing whm and not gagging with the amount of unnecessary healing spells. How about we take half of those spells and give whm, I don't know, a spell that buffs damage? Mitigation spell? It's better than just being a healing bot, especially now when you do not need an excessive amount of healing.

I think the best healer in the game in terms of gameplay is ast, and it's by no means perfect, but it's busy and gives something to keep track of, and also provides utility for the party besides just being a heal bot (not to mention that ast's healing abilities are different and more skill-expressive, like timing your earthly star for the next big raid wide and things like that). That's a good place to start. Just give healers something besides healing, make it actually impactful and worth keeping track of and I think half of the people complaining would be satisfied enough.

I do think that is precisely the reason they should do combos and dmg rotations for healer. Endgame healer that what too improve will take that with kissing hands and in all other fights you dont need it so the casual/healbot player base doesnt lose anything i mean they dont care already when they have 1 buttons for dmg.

[RinaShinomiya]

As I believe the devs design healers to be optimal for high-end duties I can see why they don't want healers to have full on dps skills and rotations. Having a dps rotation means you now have to care about your uptime and be careful to not drop your combo, but unlike dps jobs healers also have to heal (hence the name), so that might lead to very weird situations where you have to decide whether you drop the combo or heal your party, which might lead to you a) losing a lot of potential damage, your combos etc b)wiping your party bc you didn't heal in time. While that might sound engaging and thrilling on paper, it's very hard to balance such a playstyle with how this game's combat is, so I don't think the devs want to dip their toes into that when they can just simply play it safe.

There are multiple problems with that argument (which I assume is the devs argument too):
- GCD healing is almost non existent in fights meaning that you never really choose whenever to DPS or heal. You do both.
- Vast majority of healing in this game is done with oGCD's which don't go against your DPS
- EW gave AST and SGE GCD Attacks which also heal a good amount of HP, again letting us do both at the same time
- Tanks have a similar responsibility of mitigating damage so they don't melt as easily yet they have no problem having a decent DPS rotation with mitigation, supportive and restorative based oGCD's
- Healers worked in ARR, HW and StB and there wasn't any issues with them healing content to my knowledge.

The reason Healers simply are designed to work and not to be fun is because the dev team doesn't seem to really care about the healer role that much. As Deceptus reminded everyone in that P1N warrior solo kill thread, they will claim to not want to remove "something you can do" and rather buff weak aspects of a job rather then delete it, while at the same time, literally the same expansion, deleting half of Scholars kit, which was it's biggest draw, and not even trying to fix issues caused by the removal of said kit. Which we kinda see this expansion again. Our nukes got 1.5s cast time across the board (which is great) but now our previous weave and movement tools feel out of place because nothing got really adjusted to accommodate for that change.

[FoxCh40s]

A class with a medium learning curve is not a good reason for "Remove X spell."

A role being really strong in non-endgame content is not a good reason to "Remove X capability."

Square has designed this game in such a manor that if you WANT challenging and engaging content, it is out there. Week 1 Savage is a BRUTAL experience where you need to play the game extremely well if you want to succeed. Ultimate encounters are very good tests of skill as well. Minimum ilvl exists for players who are chasing a challenge.

Alternatively, skill alone isnt meant to gate players from completing almost all the content. You do not need to play optimally to complete most content in this game.

Classes have different spells and capabilities. This is healthy class design. Some jobs will be better in some situations and others in different situations. But that doesn't change the fact that every job can do all the content. Every single class was represented in week 1 Pandaemonium Savage clears.

I could go on and on about individual aspects that I see gripes on here about, but truly they are being blown way out of proportion. All I see is a clear lack of understanding of the game and how it functions.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

Healer checks are non existent, in any content. The damage rotation is so boring I just can't do it anymore. We have godlike instant healing abilities after we've been telling them for years we don't need more healing abilities. They balance for the lowest common denominator, and people always defend the one button spam because it would be "too hard" for healers. As if we're all some drooling brain dead idiots; if they keep balancing to the lowest common denominators like they are now, it's going to get much worse, and I garuntee you we will see this come to a head in the middle or end of this expansion.

Healer are useless now, everything is so face roll, the only thing we are there for is to babysit people who can't do content because God forbid we let people fail so they can learn from their mistakes.

[_forgotten]

Even in savage though, in between the especially massive healer checks what do you do? 1-1-1-1-1-1...

Take P3S:

Shield the party prepull.
Pull: 1-2-1-1-1-1-
AoE already shielded, oGCD HoT: 1-1-1-1-1-
Tankbuster will be topped with the HoT and tank self-heals: 1-1-1-1-1-1
Dodge: 1-1-1-1-1-1

Go to the nono site and look at the cast timelines for some clears and you'll see it's almost filled completely solid with one skill even for late Savage turns.

I would like to see more hard to heal fights. That is for sure. Also yeah.... dps kits are laughable.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

As I believe the devs design healers to be optimal for high-end duties I can see why they don't want healers to have full on dps skills and rotations. Having a dps rotation means you now have to care about your uptime and be careful to not drop your combo, but unlike dps jobs healers also have to heal (hence the name), so that might lead to very weird situations where you have to decide whether you drop the combo or heal your party, which might lead to you a) losing a lot of potential damage, your combos etc b)wiping your party bc you didn't heal in time. While that might sound engaging and thrilling on paper, it's very hard to balance such a playstyle with how this game's combat is, so I don't think the devs want to dip their toes into that when they can just simply play it safe.

While you might be correct about wanting to play it safe without adding combos, we’re here already planning heals around using oGCDs before dipping into GCDs when needed. oGCDs by its design won’t interrupt combos.

Even if they worry, they can give them the DNC treatment. I.e. spending procs without overwriting combos. Likewise if healers need to GCD they get to cast it without dropping their combo. Seems equally forgiving.

[IDontPetLalas]

As I believe the devs design healers to be optimal for high-end duties I can see why they don't want healers to have full on dps skills and rotations. Having a dps rotation means you now have to care about your uptime and be careful to not drop your combo, but unlike dps jobs healers also have to heal (hence the name), so that might lead to very weird situations where you have to decide whether you drop the combo or heal your party, which might lead to you a) losing a lot of potential damage, your combos etc b)wiping your party bc you didn't heal in time. While that might sound engaging and thrilling on paper, it's very hard to balance such a playstyle with how this game's combat is, so I don't think the devs want to dip their toes into that when they can just simply play it safe.

As a compromise, I do think healers need something to keep them busy with that feels rewarding, I don't know how people are playing whm and not gagging with the amount of unnecessary healing spells. How about we take half of those spells and give whm, I don't know, a spell that buffs damage? Mitigation spell? It's better than just being a healing bot, especially now when you do not need an excessive amount of healing.

I think the best healer in the game in terms of gameplay is ast, and it's by no means perfect, but it's busy and gives something to keep track of, and also provides utility for the party besides just being a heal bot (not to mention that ast's healing abilities are different and more skill-expressive, like timing your earthly star for the next big raid wide and things like that). That's a good place to start. Just give healers something besides healing, make it actually impactful and worth keeping track of and I think half of the people complaining would be satisfied enough.

As you say AST is by no means perfect. It is definitely busy but half of that busyness isn't really what you would call impactful (looking at minor Arcana). It's opener is really quite difficult to pull off well.

So i do want a certain amount of complexity and flexibility so that I am not reduced to spamming a singled DPS or dot, and have sveral option for healing and utility - but all of these should work WITH each other.

[HyoMinPark]

All I want is more heal checks like we had in Shinryu (where we needed to heal the heads that were linked to people otherwise those people died) and then people suddenly wont complain no more Then you don't need to do role design change, just add some more work to healers in the content.

Yes for more heal checks — but definitely NO to more Shinryu dragonhead heal checks. That’s just forcing healers to single-target heal dragon heads. Not even their own party. It’s not a good healer check since the strat back then was: WHM > Benediction one of them; if you had an AST > Essential Dignity another; and then Cure II/Benefic II spamming. I can’t recall exactly what SCH would do, but I remember hearing a lot of complaints from SCHs about that mechanic due to it just being a pointless resource dump.

Any “heal to full” mechanic of any kind is just boring and lazy encounter design. There’s zero riveting gameplay to it, in my opinion. You’re just spamming AOE heals and tossing in pointless overhealing just to get people to 100% before the Doom or whatever kills them. Not because the boss is actually threatening them. A lot of these heal to full mechanics happen when the boss is just standing there punching the tank in the face for the next 30-45 seconds. Not even threatening the party. So the party would be perfectly fine with 80% + regens ticking them up — but the developers want to force an overheal for…no real reason. Other than they can’t think up many creative ways for healers to actually heal.


I’d prefer more soft enrage-esque heal checks where boss AOEs steadily deal more damage and you need to consider mitigation on top of allocating your oGCD resources properly. Not mind-numbing Cure II/etc. or AOE heal spam in a sub-10 second window.