Hello Yoshi-P

[Liam_Harper]

many heals cant even manage normal content. If you make healing any more difficult as it is right now, even expert dungeons and nm trials will turn into huge fiestas

The reason many healers can't manage Normal is because the veterans quit doing that content and all you have left in Duty Finder are the crayon eating Curebots.

If healing had some challenge and engagement, you'd have actual healers in your groups. If healing is faceroll you only attract players who like being able to do a bare minimum.

[GoatOfWar]

The reason many healers can't manage Normal is because the veterans quit doing that content and all you have left in Duty Finder are the crayon eating Curebots.

If healing had some challenge and engagement, you'd have actual healers in your groups. If healing is faceroll you only attract players who like being able to do a bare minimum.

I mean yeah, that's what tends to happen when a game expects not even the bare minimum amount of competency to clear content. On top of that, healers are rewarded with vastly inferior gameplay for playing their role well. So it's only natural that experienced healers move on. There's no depth to explore, or rotations to optimise.

[Deceptus]

The reason many healers can't manage Normal is because the veterans quit doing that content and all you have left in Duty Finder are the crayon eating Curebots.

If healing had some challenge and engagement, you'd have actual healers in your groups. If healing is faceroll you only attract players who like being able to do a bare minimum.

After hitting 90 on all the healers, all jobs really, there is just certain content I Will.Not.Do. anymore because of how bad of an experience it is.

5/6/7/8 roulette. Terrible rewards for the time invested.
Trials? Nope.
MSQ? Definitely not.
Mentor Roulette as a tank? I don't want an EX today with people who are severely undergeared and un-prepared for that content.

[RyuDragnier]

The reason many healers can't manage Normal is because the veterans quit doing that content and all you have left in Duty Finder are the crayon eating Curebots.

If healing had some challenge and engagement, you'd have actual healers in your groups. If healing is faceroll you only attract players who like being able to do a bare minimum.

You also have to take into account how annoying it can get, which deters some vets from even queuing as a healer.

Trials/raids? Congratulations, your co-healer is crap and you're going to have to hard carry this group who is getting hit by everything.
Dungeons in general? Congratulations, your tank/dps are horrible and will either get hit by everything and not use cooldowns, or the dps will be so bad to where you're at the top of the DPS chart and can tell (I should not be 2nd aggro in a 90 dungeon, tyvm).
Mentor? Congrats on getting that EX you never wanted to see again, with a group that's learning how to do the fight via DF instead of PF.

[Katoar]

The problem isn't the content, it's the kit.

Healers spent 80%-90% of their button presses doing damage and have 3-6 damage spells (One of which you press every 30 seconds, One of which is AE only, One of which is single target only, and the rest are limited by cooldowns or resources)

On the flip side, they spend 10%-20% of their button presses healing and have 12+ healing abilities

You see why that doesn't make sense right? If you spend most of your time doing something, that should be the bigger kit or at least more engaging than pressing 1-1-1-1-1-1-1 the whole time.

Thank you for writing this.

I am going to lose it if I have to write this explanation one more time to yet another person who lacks many fundamental skills of a decent healer main player.

[LeonKeyh]

Thank you for writing this.

I am going to lose it if I have to write this explanation one more time to yet another person who lacks many fundamental skills of a decent healer main player.

It doesn't help that, in general, people are not great at verbalizing issues. From the perspective of these players, the "Healer Revamp" crowd are misconstrued as these "elitists" that want the healer's difficulty to increase three fold, "force" healers to DPS in all content, and make the kit 10x more complex just for the sake of complexity.

BUT, that's not the argument at all. Most healers would be happy with something other than 2-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-2. "Casual" (in quotes, because I am absolutely a casual player but definitely don't see myself in that group) players enjoy playing a job they know that is easy and they don't want someone coming in and "changing it for the sake of changing it." Despite the fact that PLENTY of things can be done to make the healers more fun for EVERYONE.

Many of these casual people refuse to DPS anyway, so I'm not sure why increasing the complexity of the DPS kit would be something that they would be adamantly against (unless what they're actually against is the decrease of complexity of the healer kit and if that's the case, it sounds like they like complexity and should be trying to DPS).

[ForteNightshade]

As for your opening point. You are absolutely right, there are indeed many heals that can't handle normal content. Do you know why that is? Because this game will merrily let you waltz right up to the end game and start dipping your toes in Extremes and Savage whilst you barely manage to press more than a few buttons a minute.

I want to emphasis this by highlighting the current 24 man: Aglaia. I have healed it in base i580 gear without pressing a single heal outside of Addersgall for MP. Nearly 550 casts were spent on a single button. Which, by the way, was more than double every other button I press combined. I could have quite literally AFK'd to make dinner and my co-healer wouldn't have noticed a difference. And this wasn't me chadding them either. The content is simply so laughably undertuned it doesn't necessitate two healers whatsoever. You barely need one.

At the Savage level, I've been practicing Sage and cleared both P1S and P2S with only a single GCD shield between both fights. P1S does so little damage, I'm actually trying to find spots for abilities like Pneuma because my kit is so bloated with oGCD heals, I don't even need to use all of them. Dragonsong has scarcely few "healer checks" despite being a near 19 minute encounter. 95% of the time people are dying to mechanical error or forgetting mitigation not due to healing.

This game's difficulty curve is all over the place and horrendously inconsistent. Ultima Unreal does more damage than P1S. Which is insane considering he's meant to be significantly easier.

[SenzorialBoundries]

Play Savage/Ultimate if you want "engaging" contents for healers.

savage is not different its the same 111111111111111. you have like 3 gcd heals cast per fight.

[Saefinn]

Play Savage/Ultimate if you want "engaging" contents for healers.

1) People have found that it doesn't improve for Savage/Ultimate, the content is harder, but you still have the exact same problem, especially once you've learned the content. (arguably, it's the content and not the healing that's engaging)
2) As a semi-casual player, I'm not doing Savage/Ultimate clears, Savage is something I'll rarely do, because it's not something you casually do and I'm not interested in doing it most of the time.
3) Savage/Ultimate represents only a small portion of the game's content, shouldn't the content be engaging overall? I can at least use my full kits at DPS & Tank and whilst I realise given the nature of healing I'm not going to be able to use my full kit all the time, but a compromise needs to be had so it doesn't feel like a single button spam. Something needs to break the monotony.

It doesn't help that, in general, people are not great at verbalizing issues. From the perspective of these players, the "Healer Revamp" crowd are misconstrued as these "elitists" that want the healer's difficulty to increase three fold, "force" healers to DPS in all content, and make the kit 10x more complex just for the sake of complexity.

BUT, that's not the argument at all. Most healers would be happy with something other than 2-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-2. "Casual" (in quotes, because I am absolutely a casual player but definitely don't see myself in that group) players enjoy playing a job they know that is easy and they don't want someone coming in and "changing it for the sake of changing it." Despite the fact that PLENTY of things can be done to make the healers more fun for EVERYONE.

Many of these casual people refuse to DPS anyway, so I'm not sure why increasing the complexity of the DPS kit would be something that they would be adamantly against (unless what they're actually against is the decrease of complexity of the healer kit and if that's the case, it sounds like they like complexity and should be trying to DPS).

Pretty much, I'm a semi-casual and WHM co-healer is a semi-casual, we're far from the elite types, we're just experienced healers. All we want is for the experience to be engaging. We're not asking for being a healer to be difficult or overly complex. We think what we had back in 2.0 and 3.0 were good (though I think 2.0 SCH was better as it was not OP), but WHM was in need of more love. The game evolves, sure, but healers haven't evolved with it. The way healers have evolved is to handle a much higher healing requirement, but the content hasn't increased healing requirements.

I don't think embracing the DPS downtime more would make the classes any less accessible either. You're right that many don't DPS anyway and DPS is optional for the vast majority of content so those people can do what they like with their DPS, but it is what most healers end up doing for the majority of their time, regardless of whether they want to DPS or not, it's what we have to fill the space.

It feels like the perception is that more healing skills = more healing focus, fewer DPS skills = less DPS focus, which isn't true because it means less healing required with only a monotonous DPS left to fill the time.

To me the ideal situation would be where you're healing 70% of the times and DPSing 30% of the time, but if I'm going to have to deal with a weighting of 30% healing and 70% DPS, then give me more in the DPS department. If they don't want us focusing on DPS then change the weighting. If you can't do that because of accessibility then give us more to do that isn't healing that isn't required for newbies or less skilled healers. Otherwise they can't expect experienced healers to enjoy the experience.

[LeonKeyh]

Pretty much, I'm a semi-casual and WHM co-healer is a semi-casual, we're far from the elite types, we're just experienced healers. All we want is for the experience to be engaging. We're not asking for being a healer to be difficult or overly complex. We think what we had back in 2.0 and 3.0 were good (though I think 2.0 SCH was better as it was not OP), but WHM was in need of more love. The game evolves, sure, but healers haven't evolved with it. The way healers have evolved is to handle a much higher healing requirement, but the content hasn't increased healing requirements.

I don't think embracing the DPS downtime more would make the classes any less accessible either. You're right that many don't DPS anyway and DPS is optional for the vast majority of content so those people can do what they like with their DPS, but it is what most healers end up doing for the majority of their time, regardless of whether they want to DPS or not, it's what we have to fill the space.

It feels like the perception is that more healing skills = more healing focus, fewer DPS skills = less DPS focus, which isn't true because it means less healing required with only a monotonous DPS left to fill the time.

To me the ideal situation would be where you're healing 70% of the times and DPSing 30% of the time, but if I'm going to have to deal with a weighting of 30% healing and 70% DPS, then give me more in the DPS department. If they don't want us focusing on DPS then change the weighting. If you can't do that because of accessibility then give us more to do that isn't healing that isn't required for newbies or less skilled healers. Otherwise they can't expect experienced healers to enjoy the experience.

I DEFINITELY get the idea of wanting to heal more. That seems fairly ideal for a role called...healer. However, it's unrealistic at this point (IMO) and I feel like requesting it is too easy for SE to ignore. Increasing the amount of healing required is going to be a HUGE undertaking including revamping most encounters and trying to rebalance all of the different abilities.

That's why generally people lean towards a more interesting DPS kit. They can fairly easily make a DPS rotation do an average of whatever Glare/Dia would do in the same number of button presses. Honestly, I'd rather have something "different", namely having the healers lean into a "support" role. I like the idea of indirect DPS like AST's cards and I feel like giving healers more abilities to increase the damage of other players would make the role distinct while also giving them more to do. I would say WHM/SGE would get a bigger DPS kit and SCH/AST would be focused on support more.

But, it seems unlikely anything would change unfortunately.