Healers need an overhaul

[Merrigan]

This should be pinned to the op and printed out and taped on YoshiP’s office door.

The game should not be balanced around the least skilled.

Just... This. Thank you.

And to answer to those who are asking (... don't be impolite Merri) why we don't play dps : we're not asking to do huge numbers, dammit. We're asking to have a little more to do between each healing phase.

[IDontPetLalas]

let's break it down so you can understand, then.

how many people want to play... a primarily dps class that can toss in heals when needed without bloat?

how many classes do we have that... are primarily dps classes that can toss in heals when needed without having bloat?

and after that,

how many people refuse to play the classes that contain... utility heals with solid dps rotations?

you see it yet, or do I need to simplify it a little more?

Let me simplify this for you

1- Damage is scripted in this game
2- You cannot heal people over 100%
3- You cannot heal things to death

Ergo, given 1, 2 and 3 damage in this game is predictable, and all jobs DPS. They are all various flavours of DPS.

Your first question ? That's a healer. I could care less if you believe me, if you happen to view posts of logs and check the casts of DPS skills vs heals, without the job label or the DPS output, you would think that it was a DPS - and 'bloat" is going to be relative to each personal, but don't be silly, if you surveyed people, the chances of people responding "yes, I like bloat" would be low. So what?

Asking how many want to play that- don't ask me- do your own work and read the past forum posts, there is enough history to read. Ones that include metrics to back up what I've said.

Your questions aren't implying anything - it is your viewpoint that healers want to "do big numbers without having to heal" - that isn't want people have been expressing, and once again you won't provide evidence to back up your statements using examples or metrics. Just rhetorical questions to prolong your baseless claims.

[Lilapop]

Since when should content be wisely divided between "HL" and "so easy I can almost fall asleep"?

it shouldn't be, and yet it is.

[Rolder50]

Since when should content be wisely divided between "HL" and "so easy I can almost fall asleep"?

Even in the hardest content in the game, healers are still using 75% or so of their GCDs on Glare/Broil/etc spam, since there's nothing else to do and nothing to heal. I don't see why giving people more options to make that 75% of your playtime more fun is such a hot take around here.

[MintnHoney]

it shouldn't be, and yet it is.

That's what we, in the business, would call: a "problem."

[Merrigan]

Even in the hardest content in the game, healers are still using 75% or so of their GCDs on Glare/Broil/etc spam, since there's nothing else to do and nothing to heal. I don't see why giving people more options to make that 75% of your playtime more fun is such a hot take around here.

Yeah, I agree with that. Was just answering to the - cliché - argument that there is difficult content for people who want more difficulty IG.

[pikalovr]

as much as people will hate me bringing this up but i've switched to GW2 recently and leveling up a scourge heal necro and i gotta say playing it has been far more fun. having debuffs and buffs again and them actually meaning something if you build for them. being able to rez multiple people at once with AOE based rezzing abilities or hell, i can make one of my shade abilities not only deal damage to all enemies around me but also heal/rez up to 5 people around me which is great for open world or dungeon content (5 people in a dungoen so you can see why 5 is the limit)

the best part is this build hits that perfect balance of if you have players messing up it's the best anti booboo build. but once you get experienced players it becomes outclassed by other supports. but see this is where one of GW2s strengths comes into play i can just have multiple builds to switch to on the fly so i just swap 2 specialities and bam i'm a buffing harbringer necro now one of the higher wanted supports in current endgame.

to put this into FFXIV perspective WHM could be the heal scourge necro and AST could be the buffing harbringer. WHM has more emphasis on healing and covering booboos (basically the prog job like SCH), and AST could have a more buff/debuff oriented kit with lower healing options as a trade off for more experienced groups. (but that would require people to realize that having jobs in each role that are good for seperate things is ok. so never gonna happen regardless)

[Nizzi]

Map it to a different button if you don't like the 1-1-1-1. Mine is mapped to #4. Better, map the same skill to 4 different button, than you can 1-2-3-4, almost like a tank.

Alright I followed your instructions, time to queue and let the fun begin >:-D

[Silver-Strider]

Snip

Geez, I wonder why. Could it be because, on top of removing all our DPS options at that level, we also lost a boatload of support tools as well?

Let's look at everything we lost.

Protect - AoE mitigation.
Stoneskin - WHM shield effect that got later replaced by Divine Benison but removed from Low level content.
Stoneskin 2 - AoE shield. Could only be used outside of combat but was useful for pre-pull buffing for any raid wide attack that happened at the start of a fight, of which there were plenty.
Divine Seal - Increased Healing on a 60s CD that was later changed to Temperance but at a 120s CD instead and also unavailable for low level content.
Silent Dusk - Single Target Silence effect
Fey Caress - AoE Esuna
Fey Wind - AoE Haste buff
Fey Covenant - AoE mitigation effect.
Virus - Debuff that lowered the Target's damage
Eye for an Eye - Buff that would cause enemies that hit the target to deal less damage.
Bole - Mitigation effect
Disable - Debuff that lowered the Target's damage

There were also some DPS skills that had secondary functionalities to them to further help to support the group

Fluid Aura - Single Target Knockback effect that did damage in ARR. Admittedly limited in functionality since you wanted enemies together to AoE down but useful for knocking ranged NPCs into the group for AoE or for keeping problematic enemies separate, such as Golem in T9 of Coils that would merge if kept together and kill the party.
Shadowflare - AoE Ground Targeted DoT that would apply a slow effect to enemies so they attack less frequently, aka, they do less damage.
Stone 1/Stella/Miasma - Applied a Heavy effect to enemies. Again, another limited skill since the heavy would only be useful if you needed to stall an enemy for a mechanic, such as with Liquid Limbs in A3S but still.

Would having these tools return, suddenly, make the healer role more difficult? How so? I've been suggesting for awhile that SE rework the vast majority of these skills and return them as low level versions of our current toolkit so that low level gameplay is improved.

Protect could be reworked to function as a low level version of Aqua Veil and there was even a point in PvP that it did exactly that so it should not be that hard to do. Same thing with Stoneskin and Divine Seal being made into low level versions of Divine Benison and Temperance. Fluid Aura could function as a low level version of Assize so that WHM has a slightly better MP economy at low levels where it actually needs it. Selene could literally just get back all her old skills and be fine. AST's cards could be diversified again so they can have Bole back as a mitigation effect. Virus/Disable should have stayed as Role Actions for Healers, instead of the uselessness that is Repose.

There are so many things wrong with low level healers that I am not the least bit surprised that people can fail MSQ. They don't have any tools to help them out anymore nor are they properly taught how to play their role because all the useful skills are backlogged well into the high end of the leveling experience, which makes absolutely no sense. Why is a skill like Afflatus Rapture unlocked at level 76? It's literally just an instant cast Medica, a skill that WHM has at level 15 but for some reason it's unavailable until literally 60 levels after that. WHY? Does SE not trust a low level newbie to know how to use Swiftcast+Medica until literally ShB? Do they not realize that Assize, which is unlocked at level 56, does more or less the same thing as an instant cast ability? It's ridiculous.

Healer design needs to change. There needs to be more tools that help new players get into the role and actually teach them how to play it effectively. However, at the same time, the role needs to be engaging enough after learning for players to want to keep at it and get better at the role. Currently, once you've gotten better at healing, you start to actually heal less as a result because the content doesn't have a high enough healing requirement. Between other jobs providing a plethora of mitigation/healing/shielding on their own as well as how overbloated healing toolkits are, you come to where we are today, with healers asking for more to do, be it support or DPS or whatever else and SE is failing us all at every turn, from start to finish.

[anhaato]

-

This touches on another key issue, in that fight design is also being severely neutered to where secondary effects like this are either fully resisted or irrelevant. Savage raids now are just fighting the same cylinder using damage, heals, buffs, and taunts only. Like you said with A3 and T9 there used to be room for niche abilities that suddenly made them really important and fun to use. I really badly want them to go back to that fight design but I'm afraid we're at a point of no return because they might feel compelled to rework all shb-ew fights should they consider making fights like that again for 7.0, and decide it's not worth it.

And ANOTHER key issue, in that leveling is never designed to get you used to tools before you get "strong" versions of them. You don't get used to self-buffs like temperance or less tangible support like aquaveil because you have them handed to you at 80+ after you've spent all this time not using them. How could we prevent a more complicated dps rotation from overwhelming new players? By properly ramping up to it. Fill it out at a digestible rate so that by level 50 you're comfortable with doing nearly everything you'll be doing at level 90.

They're so close to touching on a great identity for whm ever since adding misery, the identity being "dps gained through healing," but they refuse to pursue it. Sge could actually truly gain healing potential through dps if they decided to be less afraid to get unique and creative, and whm could have the same but in reverse, again, if they were less afraid to get creative. Sch could regain its identity as the debuff juggler, and ast could become the flexible buffer again. That's healer design I would salivate for. I'd be eager to play each and every one of them. Unfortunately, as they are now, they all just kinda do the same thing with a few differences here and there. Sch has some buffs and fairy buttons, ast has some dmg buffs, sge has eukrasia, and they want to call that flavor? It's like claiming salt is a spice. So boring. It doesn't have to be this way, and it wouldn't be this way if they didn't fire their healer tester for being too good at the current healers.