Just wanna say, I really enjoy healing in this game.

[GrimGale]

I'm currently progging UWU and it's...really boring honestly. Not to say healing isn't needed, there are a few heal checks where I have to coordinate slightly with my Co-healer. I play as an AST and it gets interesting sometimes, but I feel like my enjoyment comes from the dodging and moving and positioning rather than the healing itself. I still spend most of my GCDs casting Malefic and Re-applying combust, except for some moments like the thermal charges and tumults where AoE healing spam is actually required- (Though you go from spamming Malefic to spamming Helios a few times.)

It doesn't really help that the "proactive" tools for AST are not available at that level. I have no shields, no mitigation appart from Collective Unconscious and no Horoscope. It's fine, I suppose. But I am really feeling burnt out.

[Liam_Harper]

What I really want to know is who are the healer changes the last few expansions really designed for? Think about it.

-They can't be designed to make content more accessible for Sylphies, because content is already equally accessible regardless of dps "complexity". There are no dps checks in most content and even EX is easy with low dps healers. There aren't even heal checks that require the full toolkit, you can spam GCD's and ignore the rest of the kit and complete all regular content just fine. So lowering the number of dps buttons doesn't change the accessibility, you never had to press all your buttons.

-It can't be to avoid overwhelming new players with too many buttons and trying to make it appear more accessible, because we actually have traps like Freecure which lower your effective hps and a ton of filler buttons which range from amazing to near-useless. AST for example is a jumbled mess of filler buttons. You could actually make engaging healers with a high skill ceiling with less overall buttons than we have nowadays.

-They can't be designing it to reduce player pressure to deal dps, because criticism over damage will land you a ban from the game. Not to mention, if dps is only a single button players expect it from you even more because it's low effort, so no excuse.

-They certainly can't be designing for veteran players. We need a high skill ceiling. We want engagement and goals to constantly strive for and keep us playing.

So who are the current healers made for? I genuinely don't get it. The only conclusion I can come to is that they are designing healers to try and get casual players to be able to clear Savage and Ultimate. This is the only content where healer dps matters somewhat, so having only 1 button makes it easier to focus on mechanics. If you just aren't capable of multitasking a rotation and handling mechanics and you aren't bothered to practice and learn, that's more accessible now.

So yes, it seems they've butchered an entire role across the entire game, in order to make the tiny fraction of content designed for veteran players accessible to casuals who aren't bothered to learn their class. That's the only logical explanation.

[LeonKeyh]

[snip]

I think that it is being designed (unfortunately) for people who are afraid of healing. That is honestly me. I'm afraid of Tanking/Healing but healing is so simple that I overcame it fairly easily. The lack of a skill ceiling is a huge problem though. Now that I'm "over" my fear, I really don't have much room to improve. Obviously, there are ABSOLUTELY things that I can do better, but I don't have this long runway of improvements to look forward to, I can't really sit down and say "I'm going to work on my DPS to see if I can do better with my rotation." They have created something that has a huge buffer of failure to attempt to remove the possibility of it at all.

I think that the ideal was to help get more people into healing to fix relative role population imbalances to speed up queues. Unfortunately, I feel like it has caused us to lose as many healers as was gained by pulling in us people who don't really enjoy healing. Also, the people who do actually enjoy healing in MMOs are saying "WTH is this?"

[IDontPetLalas]

I think that it is being designed (unfortunately) for people who are afraid of healing. That is honestly me. I'm afraid of Tanking/Healing but healing is so simple that I overcame it fairly easily. The lack of a skill ceiling is a huge problem though. Now that I'm "over" my fear, I really don't have much room to improve. Obviously, there are ABSOLUTELY things that I can do better, but I don't have this long runway of improvements to look forward to, I can't really sit down and say "I'm going to work on my DPS to see if I can do better with my rotation." They have created something that has a huge buffer of failure to attempt to remove the possibility of it at all.

I think that the ideal was to help get more people into healing to fix relative role population imbalances to speed up queues. Unfortunately, I feel like it has caused us to lose as many healers as was gained by pulling in us people who don't really enjoy healing. Also, the people who do actually enjoy healing in MMOs are saying "WTH is this?"

I would agree, and that is likely because they don't have a healer designer, but have people who are forced into designed healing, or who are forced into testing healing , or getting feedback from various jobs and interpreting it without a healer designer.

All of the above has led them into a design decision that is at the extreme end of "casual friendly" that lets someone get into healing quite easily but will allow a significant number of them to get bored very quickly.

[Renathras]

That's written in my post.

I don't know why you're coming up with jobs since I've only talked about the role. It's not because it cannot be fix by modifying healers' skills or job design that it is not a healer issue.

It's not related to a job and their "gameplay" but to the whole role.

Healers aren't healers anymore, before Endwalker the role has been about "keeping the party alive" and now it is only "making up for others' mistakes" because if there is no mistake the party will stay alive even if you don't heal.

If for you, having almost nothing to heal and being useless even when the content is new isn't an issue as a healer it's fine too, but I think my post was clear enough.

It wasn't QUITE clear, that's why I asked.

This clears it up, so thank you. If I understand it right, you're saying that encounters may not have changed MUCH, but they've changed such that you don't really need to actually heal people if they're performing mechanics correctly (or the healing you have to do is minimal and can be easily covered by oGCDs?), such that you feel like you're only REALLY having to heal people when mistakes are made, such that once content is well known and players are adept at the mechanics, there's almost nothing left to heal.

That the general gist of it?

I think the biggest change from ShB to Endwalker for me was the insane amount of self healing all the tanks received. The healer role stayed the same relatively but...

This is also an interesting thing to consider. Though I feel like WAR still had pretty insane self-healing in ShB and PLD could still solo 4 man bosses with Clemency. But it makes sense that those things being expanded on has shifted the healing needs/focus of healers. Granted, I played SCH mostly back then, so Eos handled a lot of the tank healing for me... <_<

[Hellebore_Ghrian]

It wasn't QUITE clear, that's why I asked.

This clears it up, so thank you. If I understand it right, you're saying that encounters may not have changed MUCH, but they've changed such that you don't really need to actually heal people if they're performing mechanics correctly (or the healing you have to do is minimal and can be easily covered by oGCDs?), such that you feel like you're only REALLY having to heal people when mistakes are made, such that once content is well known and players are adept at the mechanics, there's almost nothing left to heal.

That the general gist of it?

Then an example, take the last boss of the bunny dungeon, there's only one raidwide which doesn't even put ppl mid-life. Everything else is avoidable, that raidwide doesn't even have to be healed since nothing else will come afterward, meanwhile the tank doesn't have to be healed either and he can even heal someone else beside himself (with no downside at all for the WAR).

What remains to be healed outside mistakes from 2 ppl ? What the so powerful and numerable healing skills are for ? MP management ? Making some sound and light ?

Outside bosses ? Wall to wall pull can be handle with only ogcd if the tank use cd and dps are decent enough.

That's like this from day one.

Ok it's a dungeon, the lowlest level of difficulty of the game but even extrem can be solo healed with ogcd only (it's even worse with 2 healers) and I won't talk about the last 24-ppl raid which is just a nuke spamming slugfest. That covers 90% of the game content on PvE side.

In the last 10% harder content that's remains ?

The only real heal check in Savage last tier (p3s) is resolved with lb3 or macrocosmos and that's legit since there is only one. I remember maybe 2 or 3 mechs in p4s which are asking for some healing too but in most other cases we have the time to take a nap between unavoidable dmg. And here, most of avoidable damages directly kill ppl if they take it.

Old Ultimates heal checks aren't even the shadow of what they were at SB/ShB time. Can't say for the last one since i've not progged it yet.

So I wonder what people like to heal since there is almost nothing to heal in the first place in 90% of the game ?

That's why I'm no longer healing.

[Sebazy]

This clears it up, so thank you. If I understand it right, you're saying that encounters may not have changed MUCH, but they've changed such that you don't really need to actually heal people if they're performing mechanics correctly (or the healing you have to do is minimal and can be easily covered by oGCDs?), such that you feel like you're only REALLY having to heal people when mistakes are made, such that once content is well known and players are adept at the mechanics, there's almost nothing left to heal.

That the general gist of it?

A good way of clarifying this would be Regen usage in Savage.

Go back to Coil and Alex, you would see pretty solid uptimes on Regen, then with Omega we started seeing outliers where it frequently wasn't worth casting, O4S and it's lack of auto attacks coupled with agro resets are probably the most obvious, E8S was another example where the boss pretty much just sat there casting for the bulk of the fight. With SHB it almost feels like the tables have flipped and the only instant regen spot that comes to my mind is P4S p1 just before Pinax where the boss actually strings together some auto attacks (And amusingly that only seemed to be an issue because of the way my static tanked it). Outside of that, maaaaaybe P2s when one of the tanks has to run far from the raid with the tether? And this is coming from someone who used to maintain Regen like it was life or death =(

[Magiqa]

I like the balance of exciting heal checks, DPSing in the background, and occasional bursts. I like how all the healers have unique abilities; although some things feel similar, there's enough differences that I can switch between them to get some extra variety in my dailies/weeklies. And recently, I've been really enjoying the Ultimate challenge in Dragonsong Reprise. I'm glad I'm playing WHM for it, because I've got a lot of quick healing tools, and don't have to manage as much stuff as AST while doing mechanics, so it feels very smooth and powerful.

Anybody else want to share some healer positivity?

Recently got my WHM to 90 aswell. Just that moment... When you know the fight and the boss is doing a big AOE and a tank buster. But you are prepared. The tank is secured, and your timing on the AOE is perfectly. After the hit you get everyone up to full health instantly. This moment feels very satisfying!

[Mortex]

A good way of clarifying this would be Regen usage in Savage.

Go back to Coil and Alex, you would see pretty solid uptimes on Regen, then with Omega we started seeing outliers where it frequently wasn't worth casting, O4S and it's lack of auto attacks coupled with agro resets are probably the most obvious, E8S was another example where the boss pretty much just sat there casting for the bulk of the fight. With SHB it almost feels like the tables have flipped and the only instant regen spot that comes to my mind is P4S p1 just before Pinax where the boss actually strings together some auto attacks (And amusingly that only seemed to be an issue because of the way my static tanked it). Outside of that, maaaaaybe P2s when one of the tanks has to run far from the raid with the tether? And this is coming from someone who used to maintain Regen like it was life or death =(

I actually realized this as I did read your text sebaz. I had a lot of fights since arr and heavenward were I would actively chain use regen as whm because of the mana efficiency and the way the heal would stay strong even if you enter cleric stance. And that shifted massively at around end stormblood and was in some fights a still present in Eden but it mainly vanished. And the reason is ogcd do cover all options

[Renathras]

...

Thank you for the conversation/explanation. I'm not saying you're wrong, just making sure I understand correctly.

Though by this, you mean GCD heals, right? Doing P1S, for example, requires a good deal of healing, but most of it can be covered with oGCDs once you're above ilevel 590 or so. Intemperance, for example, does several hits of unavoidable damage. There's the crystal (fire/ice) damage itself, which is pretty significant, and then the Goaler's whateveritscalled thing where he pounds the ground and does an unavoidable AOE. That and Fourfold are the most healing intensive parts of the fight and will kill people if no healing is performed.

I haven't done P2S as much, but I'm pretty sure it has a lot to, and I remember doing my first clears of it when people had to use Feint/Addle/Reprise because not doing so, the stack mechanics would actually kill the weaker HP party members outright (healers and casters have the lowest max HP values) if they weren't mitigated.

So oGCD heals are definitely needed, but I take it you are referring to not casting GCDs here?

A good way of clarifying this would be Regen usage in Savage.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is because of Lillies as much as anything, right? Per TheBalance, Regen is an movement tool/HPS gain until Misery unlocks, at which point it is a loss vs Solace because Solace generates damage and Regen does not? Regen is still the bigger HPS, though. A part of this might also be the prevalence of oGCD Regens. Whispering Dawn aside (because it existed then), Asylum, Sacred Soil, etc all have a HoT component, and you have things like Physis floating around. That's a LOT of oGCD Regens.

Something that's strange to me:

The "Pure" healers all have oGCD barriers, and the "Barrier" healers all have oGCD Regens (as do...the Pure healers), with the only healer not having an oGCD barrier being SCH (it has to do it indirectly via Seraph). And yet Regen ITSELF is a GCD...imagine if Regen was an oGCD. Regen uptime would probably be a far bigger thing. Compounding this is that Eos and Kardia are both DPS free healing.

Part of the issue there is that, during Alex and definitely during Coil, we didn't have the overwhelming parse DPS environment. DPS was even more important (ironically), but there was more of a focus on healing. Though I think that's a combination of (a) encounter design back then and (b) oGCD over abundance and over power now. You just didn't have the oGCD tools in Alex to heal without using GCD heals. In Pande, you have oGCDs coming out your ears that, as Hellebore points out, can solo heal the encounters. I do wonder which is the bigger part of that, (a) or (b).

EDIT:

NOTE: I'm not saying I prefer the now to the then, either. My favorite healer in WoW was Resto Druid precisely because of how its "downtime" was called "rolling HoTs" because it had something like 5 different kinds of HoTs and you'd "roll" them across the party to keep everyone topped off, and you'd keep the separate one you have that stacks to 3 rolling on the main tank (if it fell off, you'd have to reapply 3 stacks, but as long as you refreshed it before the duration, it kept all 3 stacks, so you'd just refresh it before it fell off), an AOE party HoT, and a heal+HoT. It was also cool you could and would use HoTs (anything that wasn't the party limited one) on other parties, so Resto Druids not in the main tank party would still keep at least a Rejuvination (their standard Regen) on the main tank.

I always found that more satisfying than refreshing a DoT on the boss, personally, and would like it if WHM played more like that today. In ARR, when I was horribad (and so was everyone else), on WHM I played it this way, keeping Regen uptime on the tank and often Medica up on the party to keep people topped off. It was actually vaguely useful back then, but it's completely unnecessary in any way now because of our oGCD toolkits.