Healers need an overhaul

[Semirhage]

First, RPG and MMORPG are two distinct gene. You dismiss WoW (an actual MMO) as a anomoly, yet using a bunch of single player to make your case ... how does that even make sense?

Because MMOs grew from single-player RPGs. Hence MMORPG. If you want MMO examples, how about Aion? I remember healing in SWTOR. I spent a ton of time debuffing + dealing damage and miraculously, my parties stayed alive through it. The entire RPG genre family looks askance at "pure healers". "Pure healer" classes are the ones you tend to replace in most games. They're just not that useful as you get more skilled. It's just how the zeitgeist of the game style works. Killing things has a functionally infinite ceiling on usefulness. Health bars do not. Eventually you get good enough at filling the health bars that your utility ends. And then you do other things. Constantly spamming healing spells is boring. Healers are fun because you weigh options and multitask with them. If you want to spam spam spam one task, go play a DPS and stop trying to ruin the healing role. Hyperfocusing on one(ish) task are what DPS are good at: they have a theoretically infinite ceiling on refining their one task and getting better at it.

Also the irony is in almost half of those games (the D&D style ones), healers main purpose is a buff bots, heal second, and DPS is a distant third only useful late game with a min/max build. I enjoy those games a lot. Path 1 + 2 together clocked in 1000h for me on steam. But no, keep those healers away from my MMO please.

D&D style games see healers as buffbots first, DPS second, healers third if you're actually good at them. Casting healing spells in combat is something you want to actively avoid. You want to patch people up after everything is dead.

On unrelated note: my observation on this forum about WoW is it seems to be like a certain ex-president. Both the people who hate it and love it seem can't help but let it live rent free in their head. It's always funny seeing two sides gaslighting each other over it.

Funny, I don't often bring up WoW until other people do. I have no interest in that game, but good lord do its disciples love to invade other MMOs and wail and screech and gnash their teeth demanding that the entire design paradigm be upended to make it more like WoW. It's happened in every. Single. MMO. I have ever played.


MP and aggro management is interesting insofar as it enables/adds flavor to choices. In a better system, I'd love to see 'em. In the current one? Good riddance. There's no point to punishing players for just playing the game. And GOD no, I wouldn't want old Everquest-style "MP management" anywhere near me. Sitting on your butt in the middle of combat for 8-10 seconds at a time is somehow even more boring than spamming Glare.

just do what I do. Leave them be and let them keep on agreeing with each other in circle

Well yeah, it's because Sylphies don't have compelling arguments. Just rewordings of "HeALeRS sHOuLd HeAL OnLY", then they pitch fits when people dare to disagree with that simplistic stance. Make healers interesting to play. Not boring spammy snorefests. What a novel opinion, how dare we agree that healers should be improved. NO! Keep them as they are! They're in the best state ever! Spamming one button over and over and over again is a good start, but we need to make them even more boring to finish perfecting them.