Healers need an overhaul

[Midareyukki]

Do you need me to put up the like 2hr ish vod of me running Smileton over and over on my AST the "hardest healer" in the game to prove this goes all the way up to 90?

...isn't Scholar the hardest healer? AST is all about preparing safety nets o,o

Still, yeah, even as an AST I'm just casting Combust and Malefic until stuff dies. If I press anything to heal it's bound to be Essential Dignity and Earthly Star (for damage too, no less). Maybe Exaltation, Intersection and a regen, but only so I don't get nasty surprises from tanks that don't use cooldowns/is undergeared. It's otherwise stupidly straightforward even at higher levels. To really make use of your kit and feel like you must use everything, you'd need your team to properly suck, massively. But unfortunately, even a mediocre team is really easy to handle. And AST especially has tools that just outright laugh at damage (Macrocosmos).

This is a bit toxic on my end, but often when my friends are learning how to tank and I heal them, they sometimes say "Sorry if I'm doing poorly" or so. I tell them "If I didn't press Synastry or cast Benefic 2, you're doing a good job". And while it's daft that I have to confirm they did a good job on whether or not I felt pressured to use my kit at all, it does go to show that the class can handle the bare minimum with a minor part of its kit.

Hell, I already had this mindset back in Shadowbringers anyway. I had friends who were skeptical of how strong Scholar and Astro were, especially in dungeons, "because they're not like White Mage whose heals are so strong". I'd run dungeons asking them to never once press a single cooldown. And again I would say "Didn't even cast Benefic".

While a bit of a braggart move and obviously I wouldn't do it to randoms, it proves the point. Healers are just so straightforward. There's no difference between going into Sastasha and pressing Malefic until you need to use a Benefic vs going into a higher level dungeon, spam Gravity until you need to use a charge of Essential Dignity.

I sometimes feel bad. I know that things will be fine. I have regens on, Earthly Star ticking, two charges of Essential Dignity that are more useful at 30% or lower health, regens, some shields and I could have Macrocosmos'ed if I wanted to. And so many other spells that I'm just not bothered to use. The point is that the tank will be fine.
But I feel like if I don't pretend like I need to heal a little, the random tank on Roulettes will get mad and accuse me of not healing. Some people aren't comfortable with me playing ping pong with their health.
Even when the tanks can self-heal now, I still feel pressured to do something, because I'm scared of looking like I'm griefing.

[ASkellington]

...isn't Scholar the hardest healer?

Its in quotes for a reason. AST is considered "hard" or "complex" because of the card system and weaving.

And I'm over here going like: "it is literally no harder than any other healer even considering your opener lmao".

If I ever press Lightspeed (because I am stubbornly refusing to use it to finish off being optimal and thus "done" with AST not going to bother using it for my opener outside of EX and Savage I am not doing) to spam Benefic 2 something's gone wrong.

Of my toolkit in 90 content with W2W pulls for AST its usually Macro/Exalt for first pull with ED and/or CI as needed and then ES CI/ED for second pull provided dps slays adds in seconds. Otherwise well if I need to press Benefic 2 I will. /shrug

Neutral Sect? Never heard of them.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

[...]I sometimes feel bad. I know that things will be fine. I have regens on, Earthly Star ticking, two charges of Essential Dignity that are more useful at 30% or lower health, regens, some shields and I could have Macrocosmos'ed if I wanted to. And so many other spells that I'm just not bothered to use. The point is that the tank will be fine.

But I feel like if I don't pretend like I need to heal a little, the random tank on Roulettes will get mad and accuse me of not healing. Some people aren't comfortable with me playing ping pong with their health.
Even when the tanks can self-heal now, I still feel pressured to do something, because I'm scared of looking like I'm griefing.

This is so me, too. At least first few couple of months trying to polish my healing gameplay. Eventually I learned the beauty of that quippy remark: "But did you die though?". People can dance in disco panicking but if they aren't dying, I know that I'm healing enough. For the most part, health bars are MY resource, after all.

Its in quotes for a reason. AST is considered "hard" or "complex" because of the card system and weaving.

And I'm over here going like: "it is literally no harder than any other healer even considering your opener lmao".

This is a painful realization that I ended up after picking up AST to flex for my previous static. No, it's not hard. It boils down to the same 1 button press ad nauseam for 105s after dumping down all that many superfluous weaving into a tight 15s window. Wall pulling? It's as you've described & it's not even an esotericism to switch from lightspeed'ing Fall Malefics into lightspeed'ing Gravity II to proceed with the carpa tunnel inducing 15s window.

[ASkellington]

This is a painful realization that I ended up after picking up AST to flex for my previous static. No, it's not hard. It boils down to the same 1 button press ad nauseam for 105s after dumping down all that many superfluous weaving into a tight 15s window. Wall pulling? It's as you've described & it's not even an esotericism to switch from lightspeed'ing Fall Malefics into lightspeed'ing Gravity II to proceed with the carpa tunnel inducing 15s window.

I remember in the healing forums there was a post asking which healing tools we'd axe and with how I played AST you could literally give me nothing but ES, Exalt, ED and CO along with A.Benefic, A.Helios and Benefic 2 and I would be ok.

CI? I don't use outside of W2W pulls unless I don't have access to Exalt or the boss is alive long enough to where tank busters are faster than 60s.

CU? Don't use outside of instances where I don't have ES/CO.

Macrocosmos? Its a lv90 skill. I rarely get lv90 content.

Neutral Sect? I don't need it and would rather have Noctural back as a battle stance.

Horoscope? I love the ability but damn if I never need it for anything. I just use it because I can and because I like the ability.

My level 70 kit is more engaging than my level 90 kit. That is so backwards its beyond unfunny.

[Rilifane]

This is so me, too. At least first few couple of months trying to polish my healing gameplay. Eventually I learned the beauty of that quippy remark: "But did you die though?". People can dance in disco panicking but if they aren't dying, I know that I'm healing enough. For the most part, health bars are MY resource, after all.

I can relate.
Did the same for some time, just pressing buttons so the tank feels like I'm actually here for a reason and doing my job but the reality was that I wasn't needed in the slightest. I eventually went with the "But did you die?" too. Every single tank, not just WAR, barely needs anything from me. If the dps is good, I can get away with just spamming Holy, dumping all Lilies between pulls for Misery and not using any oGCD heal at all. If it's average, I'll drop a Lilybell or Bene if the tank dropped and that's it. It needs bad dps and bad mitigation for me to even consider using oGCDs and Solace mid-pull. Same on all other healers.

I instead started to eat damage and heal myself, like keeping good dot uptime on bosses like all Alzadaal bosses and last Troia boss. The minigame of "How much can I eat without dying?" is surprisingly fun to play.

And if anyone comes around the corner with "just do savage if you want something to heal": soo... healers are only supposed to have a bit to heal in savage and for all other content it's entirely fine if the nuke casts vastly outnumber all other casts combined, including all oGCDs and other dps casts like dot, ED, Assize etc?
I could healbot my way through the current tier and I'll guarantee that even with using a GCD or two for every single aoe and buster, my nuke would still make up for well over 50% of my total casts because I already rotate every tool (even the pointless fluff tools) out of sheer boredom unless I'm playing the "Can the non-WAR outheal me? c:" minigame.
By the way, they can and we're still never in any danger whatsoever.

[Mutemutt]

And if anyone comes around the corner with "just do savage if you want something to heal": soo... healers are only supposed to have a bit to heal in savage and for all other content it's entirely fine if the nuke casts vastly outnumber all other casts combined, including all oGCDs and other dps casts like dot, ED, Assize etc?

Honestly, yeah. I feel like the healing is savage is a pretty good level and I've definitely seen players struggle with it. Hell, I've seen people have trouble healing through the latest extreme trial when it first arrived. I'd definitely like to see more content that needs more healing on a personal level, but bulk of the content just isn't meant to be challenging at all.

Of course, my favorite dps also spends like over 40% of its casts on the filler spell lol.