Healers need an overhaul

[Lilapop]

Oh yes, the classic provide absolutely nothing to the discussion other than this piss poor argument.

There is not enough to heal that makes up for unending dps spam ad nauseam. Most of your time spent as a healer is dealing damage because the receiving damage is abysmally undertuned. Even in ultimate it has been proven repeatedly that most of spells casts is your single target dps spell, even in the recent solo heal clear of DSR Which shouldn't even be possible to begin with, but ya know, just stand there and do nothing I guess. Very fun, engaging gameplay to either just stand there and wait until you can cast a single healing spell or two. Which isn't much worse than 1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1. Also, Unless your dps are absolute brainlets you should not be doing more dps than them in any circumstances. If you are outdps-ing the literal dps, that's the actual dps's fault, not the healers.

i don't see how it's a piss poor argument. there's not enough to heal for healers who know what they're doing, we completely agree on that point. as well as healers out-dpsing the actual dps not being the fault of the healers, thats on the dps. but we're operating under the assumption that the average healer knows exactly how to play their class "optimally" (???) and uses their full kit. the average healer usually doesn't, in my experience and likely many others considering i see more often people complaining about poor healers (not healing, not holy-ing, only using cure, not touching regen/medica/etc.) which is more often than not the reality. + when people go for advice on the "proper" way there's usually not a one size fits all cookie cutter template which should exist, it being... use your full kit. that and don't tank aoes. it's that simple, every healer should be told this at a beginning level.

[Silver-Strider]

healers: "waaaah muh dps"

you are a healer. heal.

if you want a dps, play... a dps...? it's not that hard, this is how it used to be back in the old days, considered COMMON SENSE for healers to HEAL and not outdps the actual dps classes.

Back in the old days, we had less healing oGCDs and STILL had more DPS skills than we do now and it played fine.
SCH had 5 DoTs (not counting Nukes, Energy Drain or Bane), 2 distinct Fairies to micro manage, and at most 10 healing abilities and played fine.
AST had distinct cards and ways to alter their cards to apply to everyone/extend their durations, etc. and played fine
WHM actually had Shields they could apply to everyone and despite having fewer oGCDS than either SCH or AST, still had at least 2 DoTs to manage, and STILL PLAYED FINE.

We didn't have 20+ healing abilities because we didn't NEED them but now we do have those 20 abilities and they're so stupidly powerful that you literally can avoid using half of them and still be fine. FFS, you can go AFK entirely and if the Tank is even semi-decent, you won't be missed because of how little damage there is to heal that they themselves can resolve with their own toolkits. The "Healer should Heal" mentality only works when there's actually something to heal, which has been lacking since HW IMO.

I don't want another unnecessary oGCD heal that I will rarely use, I want some god damn synergy within my kit to keep me entertained.
I don't want to Spam 1 Button endlessly in content, I want something that actually stimulates my mind.
I don't WANT to play a DPS role, I want the Healers that I fell in love with back.

[anhaato]

healers: "waaaah muh dps"

you are a healer. heal.

if you want a dps, play... a dps...? it's not that hard, this is how it used to be back in the old days, considered COMMON SENSE for healers to HEAL and not outdps the actual dps classes.

So should I be spamming cure instead of glare orrrr…

[pikalovr]

well tbf fight design also has alot to play here as well at least for bosses whens the last time you used esuna? exactly, outside of the once in a blue moon reminder of wait a minute i have this skill? you could just remove it just like the sleep skills outside of the one SHB role quest. imagine a boss similar to nidhogg EX where it'd be beneficial to sleep the middle mob and keep it slept until the two side minibosses were taken care of. in this scenario it would be using it's vuln up at faster intervals out the gate. so you have to keep it CCed to prevent the damage from getting to a point that tanks even kitchen sinking and swapping will die.

or bring back multiple ways to deal with each fight. like if you needed the extra time for your tanks to double weave their opener you can prepull cast aquachains (just an example) on boss to apply a casting bar slow effect to the boss. letting the tanks get an extra GCD and 2 more weaves in before the buster or if the mechanic would (actually) force melee out you can use it then to give your melees more uptime. let's even take this a step further and think about how each healer could this.

WHM would just be a quick easy GCD that just costs a lily (no feeding the blood lilly as that would incentivize it to be used on CD) (WHM is the noob/new player healer so it has the simplest solution ofc)

AST could use a seal to apply the efffect (allowing you to reroll seals in other ways incase you get screwed RNG wise as well)

SCH could spend 50 gauge to have their fairy do respective abilities (selene would apply the cast bar slow eos would apply a group wide buff seraph would of course do both and prolly apply shields as well maybe)

SGE would spend an toxicon stack to apply the debuff (this would hopefully happen next to you being able to trade addersgall for toxicon stacks so you can make up for the loss potentially)

since i can almost guarantee the melee getting more damage in, at the cost of your own damage would be higher overall. it would make it worth it in the long run. but we all know fights are now damage or nothing essentially. heaven forbid we have unique ways to tackle fights anymore besides how braindead can we make this mechanic?

also can i just sneak in rq how much i hate eukrasia and kardia and how poorly they were implemented? a 1 sec GCD to access your alternate abilities instead of something more interesting and thought provoking like having to use an addersgall or toxicon stack to access your alternate abilities. or hell just make it an oGCD so you actually have to think about weaving it. also why just like three GCD abilities? why not like 2 oGCDs as well?

kardia not even having an option to be turned into a party wide effect where each damaging ability used applies a small shield to the group for 15s for example. hell i'd get rid of pepsis for that. no offense to pepsis it's just way too niche to be relevant once you actually know the fights. but it still does have it's uses and could see even more with this kardia change so eh idk

[Liam_Harper]

healers: "waaaah muh dps"

you are a healer. heal.

if you want a dps, play... a dps...?

I've said it before, but if you only want to heal then go play a dps. Stop being a waste of a healer spot and pick a role where tunneling on one thing is optimal.

Healers are a support class. A support that only does one thing is far less useful than a support who can do two. You are a support. Heal and dps.

[Raikai]

Back in the old days, we had less healing oGCDs and STILL had more DPS skills than we do now and it played fine.
SCH had 5 DoTs (not counting Nukes, Energy Drain or Bane), 2 distinct Fairies to micro manage, and at most 10 healing abilities and played fine.
AST had distinct cards and ways to alter their cards to apply to everyone/extend their durations, etc. and played fine
WHM actually had Shields they could apply to everyone and despite having fewer oGCDS than either SCH or AST, still had at least 2 DoTs to manage, and STILL PLAYED FINE.

We didn't have 20+ healing abilities because we didn't NEED them but now we do have those 20 abilities and they're so stupidly powerful that you literally can avoid using half of them and still be fine. FFS, you can go AFK entirely and if the Tank is even semi-decent, you won't be missed because of how little damage there is to heal that they themselves can resolve with their own toolkits. The "Healer should Heal" mentality only works when there's actually something to heal, which has been lacking since HW IMO.

I don't want another unnecessary oGCD heal that I will rarely use, I want some god damn synergy within my kit to keep me entertained.
I don't want to Spam 1 Button endlessly in content, I want something that actually stimulates my mind.
I don't WANT to play a DPS role, I want the Healers that I fell in love with back.

This is very true.

Also with fewer oGCDs, mana management was way more prevalent to the point that if the group ate a lot of bad, you would need to actually hold dpsing to not run OOM because you needed those AoE gcds.

The healing kit we have today is really bloated not in usability, but in functionality - I don't even remember the last time I had to use Synastry as an AST. I'm not an ultimate player so maybe there's an use for everything that a healer offers there, but then, that content is approached by a minority.

I think bringing healer dps complexity back is the only way to make the role more interesting without revamping bigger things like fight design and whatnot.

[Nizzi]

my bad for not clarifying, i meant old days of mmos in general

The thing is that this isn't an old MMO, this is an MMO where since the beginning healers had more DPS actions than they do now while also having to heal less than they did in the past. Even if we up the healing requirements moving forward (which is absolutely not going to happen, they've said they do not want to do this and any time Yoshida says "uhh you'll be healing more later on" it's been a lie) all of the content that comes before will still be just as boring as it is now. The game is fundamentally not designed for healers that are healing more than they are DPSing. This is a major part of the problem when you consider our DPS rotation is 1-1-1-1-1 with a DoT refresh every 30s and an occasional damaging oGCD/Phlegma if you're SGE.

Nobody is asking for us to do MORE damage. We are asking to have something more to do that isn't 1-1-1-1 because they are designing everything to require us to contribute by spamming 1-1-1-1. Even in DSR which was solo healed by an Astrologian player recently, the button the player pressed the most was Fall Malefic. They are designing our kits for a game that does not exist. We do not need all of these overbloated, overpowered oGCD heals. It is bad design to have buttons that we are meant to ignore as much as we can. We're not complaining about the DPS numbers. Healers were doing more DPS than tanks were in Shadowbringers, and now they're not. Nobody is complaining about this because nobody cares. We are complaining about the constant Glare/Broil/Malefic/Dosis spam that EVERY healer has and not a single one is free from because it is garbage design.

Even if they finally decide to get their heads out of their behinds and somehow walk back their decision of not wanting to increase healing requirements, this does nothing for a vast majority of content in the game. If you are a new player who wants to play a healer, you will be hitting Glare/Broil/Malefic/Dosis over and over in everything. Every solo duty you will be spamming 1-1-1-1. Every time the MSQ or a job quest wants you to kill mobs in the overworld you will be hitting 1-1-1-1. If you want to run the game as a single player experience because they're shifting it away from an MMO with Trust support in all MSQ content, you will be spamming 1-1-1-1 because the bots do not mess up and do not require healing. This is BAD DESIGN. It is not fun and it is insulting that it has gotten to this state, and even more insulting that the developers are happy with it and consider it good.

Imagine doing your Zodiac relic now - just the Atma FATE stage. Back in ARR when this was current content, if you were playing a SCH, if you were downsynced to level 30 in a Single Target Boss FATE so you could try to get an Atma, your DPS kit looked like this -
Bio, Bio II, Miasma, Ruin, Bane and 2 stacks of Aetherflow to use on Energy Drain.
Now what do you have at level 30? Bio II and Ruin. That's it.
What do you have at level 90? Biolysis, Broil IV, 3 stacks of Aetherflow to use on Energy Drain. You had more to do on Scholar at level 30 8 years ago than you do now at level 90 for all solo content that they continue to design and add to this game. Saying "just do a DPS job for that content" is not the answer. They should not be designing an entire role to be unfun, unengaging and boring while shifting this game towards a solo focus. WHM players don't get a free DPS job as they level. AST players don't either, and neither do SGE players. Healers are the only role in this game where the developers continually try to excuse how awful they have become. Tanks and DPS are not like this.

[pikalovr]

This is very true.

Also with fewer oGCDs, mana management was way more prevalent to the point that if the group ate a lot of bad, you would need to actually hold dpsing to not run OOM because you needed those AoE gcds.

The healing kit we have today is really bloated not in usability, but in functionality - I don't even remember the last time I had to use Synastry as an AST. I'm not an ultimate player so maybe there's an use for everything that a healer offers there, but then, that content is approached by a minority.

I think bringing healer dps complexity back is the only way to make the role more interesting without revamping bigger things like fight design and whatnot.

tbf fight designs can still be improved like i brought up esuna and sleep are basically worthless two abilities we have for the entire role. or something like a cast bar slow that wouldn't necessarily require reworking every fight aside from maybe ultimates. cause even in the coding they can give each cast time a little leeway like 3 seconds (if x cast is going off normally then y other cast also goes off normally. but if x cast is slowed down by 3seconds then the subsequent cast y is held back by 3 seconds if they're back to back)

[Lilapop]

So should I be spamming cure instead of glare orrrr…

my point was my point. heal. generally use everything in your kit, i'm not memeing lol

[Lilapop]

Back in the old days, we had less healing oGCDs and STILL had more DPS skills than we do now and it played fine.
SCH had 5 DoTs (not counting Nukes, Energy Drain or Bane), 2 distinct Fairies to micro manage, and at most 10 healing abilities and played fine.
AST had distinct cards and ways to alter their cards to apply to everyone/extend their durations, etc. and played fine
WHM actually had Shields they could apply to everyone and despite having fewer oGCDS than either SCH or AST, still had at least 2 DoTs to manage, and STILL PLAYED FINE.

We didn't have 20+ healing abilities because we didn't NEED them but now we do have those 20 abilities and they're so stupidly powerful that you literally can avoid using half of them and still be fine. FFS, you can go AFK entirely and if the Tank is even semi-decent, you won't be missed because of how little damage there is to heal that they themselves can resolve with their own toolkits. The "Healer should Heal" mentality only works when there's actually something to heal, which has been lacking since HW IMO.

I don't want another unnecessary oGCD heal that I will rarely use, I want some god damn synergy within my kit to keep me entertained.
I don't want to Spam 1 Button endlessly in content, I want something that actually stimulates my mind.
I don't WANT to play a DPS role, I want the Healers that I fell in love with back.

thats fair, and we can agree to disagree here (most likely scenario), but if we have shield healers like sage, then why does white mage need to be the most potent healer and a shield healer? what's the point of sage if so? the amount of healing classes there are means they don't need to shove "everything" in one. white mage is the most potent, sage is less, but has shields, etc. like i said, a healer who knows their stuff will feel like theres not enough to heal, myself included. but the vast majority of the healers generally don't use their kits past cure, holy, and medica. quite a few don't even medica, and just cure. see where i'm going with this? they dumb it down so so much because theres more classes to divide the load amongst as well as players just being unable to work the painfully simple "rotation"