Is the "healing portion" of healers hitting a wall in EW?

[Rilifane]

DPSing is everyone's responsible and considering that every role besides healers reflects that, there's still no reason for the role to be completely opposite of what the game more or less expects from players. Content is designed in a way where people can clear it at minimum ilvl but that is only possible if the healers are also DPSing. Healers don't need 20+ healing abilities, I'd argue anything more than 10 is overkill, but that's literally all healers have been getting since this whole fiasco started and it's bottlenecked the role into being boring as a result. What do you have to look forward to? 10 extra potency and some graphic fluff to justify it? Another heal that will copy/paste on all healers? An old skill that was removed just to be given back?

It's a joke that healers have been reduced to a job for nitwits and neanderthals that can't handle something as simple as WAR, DNC or SMN rotations and yet are trusted with keeping 7 other people alive.

The problem is that SE doesn't trust them one bit with keeping people alive and that is reflected in their design choices for the role and content. If they had any trust they wouldn't design content so that it's completable without a healer unless everything goes pear-shaped.

And that a healer has nothing to look forward to is what keeps people from staying. It's all well and good that they managed to reel new players in but if they can't make them stay it was not only worthless but also damaging in the long run. It was a short-term investment and the queue times have noticeably decreased compared to ARR-SB. A healer that only plays it occasionally for a quick ticket into content and isn't really interested in a role but picked it up because it's now easy enough to do doesn't fill nearly as many queues as a dedicated healer main that plays it in as much content as possible.
A quick increase in healer player numbers was the focus and it backfired.

[Katoar]

DPS have 20+ buttons for DPSing because DPSing is their main role.

The problem with Healers having to have most of their buttons for healing originates from the lack of sufficient outgoing damage anywhere in the game including ultimate. Healing kits are filled with redundant healing buttons. For example, AST has countless ways to heal a raid-wide

Collective Unconscious
Celestian Opposition
Aspected Helios
Neutral Sect + Aspected Helios
Helios Spam
Horoscope
Macrocosmos
Earthly Star
Lady of Crowns

All of these basically do the same thing: heal raid-wide damage. All of them except for Neutral Sect and Horoscope have no connection with one another. They are random buttons that can be pressed whenever the player feels like it. The healing design is counter-intuitive because the game forces healers to always prioritizes DPS neutral heals over GCD healing spells through boss enrages. The strife to be better at what your job is supposed to do materializes in the well-known Nuke spam. It is inevitably going to be there even if the healers had to heal all the damage with GCDs.

All in all, healing design is bad. Healing abilities exist only to replace what something else already does but with DPS loss and to enable further Nuke spam. If each nuke is removed from every healer, the role will break apart, completely rendering every oGCD meaningless as there is no DPS to be gained from using it. No other button is so integral to the healers' kits as their nuke spell. That's something that needs to change.

[Frodnoxx]

The problem with Healers having to have most of their buttons for healing originates from the lack of sufficient outgoing damage anywhere in the game including ultimate. Healing kits are filled with redundant healing buttons. For example, AST has countless ways to heal a raid-wide

Collective Unconscious
Celestian Opposition
Aspected Helios
Neutral Sect + Aspected Helios
Helios Spam
Horoscope
Macrocosmos
Earthly Star
Lady of Crowns

All of these basically do the same thing: heal raid-wide damage. All of them except for Neutral Sect and Horoscope have no connection with one another. They are random buttons that can be pressed whenever the player feels like it.

To build onto this, the toolkits of healers reflect the damage profiles of bosses. 99% of outgoing dmg is raid wide bursts of damage, and 99% of outgoing healing is raid bursts of healing. Healing is also too strong, needing only 2-3 spells total to negate a burst of damage. They need to make more interesting types of damage, like (un-esunable) dots, multi target dmg that only hits a few raid members, etc. That they they can reflect in healers kits by making some aoe heals not raid wide. WoW has things like Chain Heal (targeted 4 man heal with reduced healing down the chain), Prayer of Mending (mini excog, which bounces to another target when proc'ed), Binding Heal (heals the caster and the target), and Wild Growth (5 man regen).

Now, I imagine they don't do this for a number of reasons, some already previously stated:

1. Healer accessibility. I know people who are intimidated by healing as it is now, increasing the skill floor wouldn't help them.

2. Healers being blamed for deaths. As it is now, dying is 95% of the time obviously your own fault. If someone died to unavoidable damage that was put in the game to entertain healers, they wouldn't be happy about it.

3. I dont know how it is for ASTs to throw out cards on console, but I imagine spot healing on console is kind of a pain.

[IDontPetLalas]

To build onto this, the toolkits of healers reflect the damage profiles of bosses. 99% of outgoing dmg is raid wide bursts of damage, and 99% of outgoing healing is raid bursts of healing. Healing is also too strong, needing only 2-3 spells total to negate a burst of damage. They need to make more interesting types of damage, like (un-esunable) dots, multi target dmg that only hits a few raid members, etc. That they they can reflect in healers kits by making some aoe heals not raid wide. WoW has things like Chain Heal (targeted 4 man heal with reduced healing down the chain), Prayer of Mending (mini excog, which bounces to another target when proc'ed), Binding Heal (heals the caster and the target), and Wild Growth (5 man regen).

Now, I imagine they don't do this for a number of reasons, some already previously stated:

1. Healer accessibility. I know people who are intimidated by healing as it is now, increasing the skill floor wouldn't help them.

2. Healers being blamed for deaths. As it is now, dying is 95% of the time obviously your own fault. If someone died to unavoidable damage that was put in the game to entertain healers, they wouldn't be happy about it.

3. I dont know how it is for ASTs to throw out cards on console, but I imagine spot healing on console is kind of a pain.

If you're going to start down the road with a comparison to another game, I seriously doubt that healers in WOW have such a pitiful selection of DPS skills. I won't comment because I lasted only 2 weeks in WOW.

Regarding 1- there could be multiple reasons, there has been discussion of updating the hall of the novice - I would recommend that. Or, those people could start out with trusts. Otherwise healing in this game shouldn't intimidate anyone. for some of those people it's just not the right fit for them - so - do something else? There are 16 other jobs- pick one..

Regarding 2 - I don't see SE has making dramatic changes to damage, however I really do think that various debuffs and some occasional heal check should be put in. If player do die then so what? Unlike some other games, the bosses here don't vanish. You raise someone and then keep going. If the whole party wipes, you lose a few minutes (again, more difficult content is an exception to this). I want to get away from a role being so utterly superfluous that people start to think that it's fine to leave them out, or leave half the party dead on the floor to finish a boss. It's not.

Regarding 3- from what I've heard, there are ways to get around this so that it's manageable.

[Raven2014]

The kind of healing intensity we see at the end of E12S and P4S should be the norm, not exception if SE ever want healers to go back to their root. It's doubtful though.

[Atma]

DPSing is everyone's responsible

Look at an average log for any content,

You both know damn well I meant 'that is the role that all of their class abilities are structured around' and also that I'm even being generous giving a number like 8 for how many active abilities that would leave them with. We can have this discussion without resorting to silly things like "what if they reduced all DPS classes to one button, imagine the uproar!"

The problem with Healers having to have most of their buttons for healing originates from the lack of sufficient outgoing damage

I know, I was making this argument for about 6 pages of the thread. I fully understand why and how healing is broken in this game, (next to) all of the damage is scripted beats that you press an OGCD to deal with. It's crap design. My position is that them changing the situation regarding DPS will result in them never addressing the fundamental problems with the design and thus, the situation will never improve. It's just kicking the can down the road.

It's just easier for people to assume I'm a simpleton that can only handle a single button for DPS (despite clearly having multiple DPS classes levelled to cap) than accept the fact that I'm on their side but I want the core problem fixed first and not to give them and easy out to hang up a "mission accomplished" banner in the office and call it a day for another two xpacs.

[Raikai]

1. Healer accessibility. I know people who are intimidated by healing as it is now, increasing the skill floor wouldn't help them.

But it would be worse than the status quo? Healing literally can't get more easy as it is. I feel that the easiest way to appeal to both audiences is to just increase dps actions or side activities (like the role cards have for AST) for healers and leave healing as it is, because this way the skill ceiling rises, while the skill floor - which is the healer not letting the party die - remains.

[Frodnoxx]

snip

Don't get me wrong, I completely agree healers are in a sorry state in this game (although other reasons make me prefer it over WoW nowadays) and the reasons I listed are not me justifying the design decisions. I'm just try to point out what reasonings SE might have, poor as they might be.

Yes, WoW healers not only have more interesting healing kits, they also have more interesting dps skills.

I agree that novice healers shouldn't be intimidated. Playing whack-a-mole with cure can be as easy as 1,2,3... like the 1,2,3 that novice dps do.

I also agree that added responsibility for healers would be a great thing, but SE has been steering away from jobs (tanks and healers) being responsible for others since SB.

[Kolsykol]

Maybe unpopular take, but imo the excessive Tank healing I think should go.
You basically never have to heal tanks outside of Tank Busters and even then you don't really need to heal them either.
It's just silly, only time you really need to heal in Savage is for big AoE.

[Deceptus]

The problem with Healers having to have most of their buttons for healing originates from the lack of sufficient outgoing damage anywhere in the game including ultimate. Healing kits are filled with redundant healing buttons. For example, AST has countless ways to heal a raid-wide

Collective Unconscious
Celestian Opposition
Aspected Helios
Neutral Sect + Aspected Helios
Helios Spam
Horoscope
Macrocosmos
Earthly Star
Lady of Crowns

All of these basically do the same thing: heal raid-wide damage. All of them except for Neutral Sect and Horoscope have no connection with one another. They are random buttons that can be pressed whenever the player feels like it. The healing design is counter-intuitive because the game forces healers to always prioritizes DPS neutral heals over GCD healing spells through boss enrages. The strife to be better at what your job is supposed to do materializes in the well-known Nuke spam. It is inevitably going to be there even if the healers had to heal all the damage with GCDs.

All in all, healing design is bad. Healing abilities exist only to replace what something else already does but with DPS loss and to enable further Nuke spam. If each nuke is removed from every healer, the role will break apart, completely rendering every oGCD meaningless as there is no DPS to be gained from using it. No other button is so integral to the healers' kits as their nuke spell. That's something that needs to change.

More to the point, all of those spells heal raidwide damage like you said and raidwide damage comes out every minute or so? Do we really need 9 abilities that might only need one used every minute or so?

1. Healer accessibility. I know people who are intimidated by healing as it is now, increasing the skill floor wouldn't help them.

As has been stated numerous times before. People who only want to heal aren't looking to play better if they're being honest with themselves. The role is being held back by people who aren't interested in any sort of optimization. The people who are saying "I don't want to DPS" aren't ever going to touch the DPS buttons so adding more doesn't affect them. At all.

2. Healers being blamed for deaths. As it is now, dying is 95% of the time obviously your own fault. If someone died to unavoidable damage that was put in the game to entertain healers, they wouldn't be happy about it.

And those people are wrong. Deaths are usually a combination of factors. DPS took too many stacks being greedy? Death via one shot. DPS didn't use their own mitigations to possibly help themselves? Tough to feel sorry for that. Tanks that didn't mitigate a tank buster at all? Don't be surprised if you have to be picked up off the floor.