Healers need an overhaul

[Leonerdo]

I feel like they've made healers easier in the wrong ways. Like for a mid-tier player getting into EX, the ShB changes were good in theory: Make healer DPS more consistent (to hit those incredibly tough DPS checks \s), and provide tons of healing tools so you can't run out no matter how inefficient you are. But that reasoning doesn't make sense unless you're looking at incredibly specific scenarios. Meanwhile, for veteran players it's just more boring, and for complete newbs it doesn't help at all.

If the goal was to make healing more approachable for novices, then they should have made it less punishing. For example, currently, the worst experience for a new player is going into a dungeon, dying to a mechanic they've never seen before, and causing a wipe because they were the healer and nobody could raise them. Why is the healer role the only one that causes wipes by dying in normal content? One thing I loved about TERA (R.I.P.) was that you got 5 free self-resses when you were new to a dungeon, so you had a chance to learn the bosses' attack patterns without wiping. FFXIV could do something similar, or just allow DPS to use Phoenix downs on the healer (slow, annoying, and potentially limited, but it keeps the run going).

Also, because -avoidable- damage is so high (and it gets worse as people take more vuln stacks), healers are heavily taxed by other people's mistakes, and that becomes the central role of a healer: be ready for other people to fuck up. Which is not only stressful for newbie healers, but it's incredibly boring for veteran healers when mistakes don't happen. What if healing were more consistent? Less punishing for other people's mistakes, and a bit higher or more frequent at a base level. Like why are wall-to-wall pulls the only time when single-target heals are needed in a good party? Healers basically have to learn 3 different modes of gameplay: DPS, scripted healing, and panic healing. It's pretty obvious which one is going to be most problematic for newbies, and conversely the least interesting for veterans. Cut that one down a bit (just a small bit), so the others can be increased.

Lastly, I don't know if anything can be done about this, but the simple act of switching targets to heal can be difficult for newbie healers (especially on controller?). Maybe if you cast a single-target heal while targeting an enemy it should go to the tank by default instead of yourself? Idk. (Not sarcastic, I just haven't though about this one as much, so I'm not sure something like that that would be doable or helpful.)

These are just a few systemic things that I think SQEX should be looking at if they actually want to lower the barrier-to-entry for healers. Streamlining the DPS kits just made it easier for mediocre players to beat enrage checks, which I guess is good for EX/Savage PF, but less fun for veterans.

There are other important perspectives, and I'm not at all a newbie healer myself, but those are the things I would look at to fulfill SQEX's goal of making the healer role more accessible. And since that would make healers less punishing for newbies even when they use only the most basic abilities, SQEX can then make the rest of the kit more complex and interesting for the rest of us without fear, right?

I know some people would prefer for there to be less focus on scripted healing, and instead have some built-in random-ish heal checks. Something that requires quick thinking or contingencies, but doesn't rely on people making mistakes. But SQEX would have to be incredibly careful with that, to avoid the possibility of random damage combining with mistake damage to instantly kill someone. That's just doesn't feel fair, as most one-shot mechanics have extra obvious telegraphs. It's still a worthwhile possibility though.