Healers need an overhaul

[Raven2014]

Is it really that hard for you to imagine Heavensward? Did you hit your head at some point?

Why do I need to imagine it when I actually played it? In fact, I remember it well enough to say I don't want to see it again. One of the question I used to wonder is "is SE dev obssessed with DoT?". Like back then, almost every classes (save 2?) have a DoT, some has 2 and I was always wonder like ... why? Maintaining 2 DoT isn't my ideal of fun, not on any class, and especially not healer.


And are you people capable of doing discussion without dissing out slight and insult every other response? No wonder why this thread became a massive echo chamber for the most part.

As for Healers, they're in a far worse position in PLD if you look at their kit. If you played Healer and took a minute to figure out what each and every single thing in the role's kits does, you'd see that it's about 90% Healing for nearly all Healers. Their two damage buttons are just a DoT and a generic attack spell. They've been desperate for something new for the role for years.

One last thing before I go, too: Don't act like Healers share that same mindset and generalize it.

Here is what you don't realize: just because you consider that as a problem, doesn't mean I do. And even if two people agree on a problem, doesn't mean they will have the same solution in mind.

The healer kit is powerful, yes, too powerful in fact. But what I want to see is fight that push the limit of that healing kit, not to become a green DPS.

If you are so big-brained to pull out logs and understand them, and fail to understand how a comment is being hyperbolic and merely symbollic of JUST HOW BLOODY BLAND AND POORLY DESIGNED HEALERS ARE, then you all have a problem.

As a healer main since 2.0, especially a WHM main at that up until this expansion, I looked at the post in the last 3-4 pages and just shake my head because for the most part, they're all hyperbolic.

Hyperbolic is justified if it's used sparingly. But when people hyperbolic EVERY SINGLE argument they make then you gonna get called out for being over-dramatic, and deservedly so. You know why something is called "symbolic"? When everything is symbolic then nothing is symbolic anymore.

[Conchoidal]

The healer kit is powerful, yes, too powerful in fact. But what I want to see is fight that push the limit of that healing kit, not to become a green DPS.

SE has stated that they have no intention of increasing healing requirements to that level (and based on the "healer shortage" in the most recent tier will continue to be discouraged from doing so), so it's unlikely they'll ever make that type of content. How do you feel about healers having more dps tools for solo content (e.g. solo instances in MSQ and job/role quests)?

[AnotherPerson]

Why do I need to imagine it when I actually played it? In fact, I remember it well enough to say I don't want to see it again. One of the question I used to wonder is "is SE dev obssessed with DoT?". Like back then, almost every classes (save 2?) have a DoT, some has 2 and I was always wonder like ... why? Maintaining 2 DoT isn't my ideal of fun, not on any class, and especially not healer.


And are you people capable of doing discussion without dissing out slight and insult every other response? No wonder why this thread became a massive echo chamber for the most part.




Here is what you don't realize: just because you consider that as a problem, doesn't mean I do. And even if two people agree on a problem, doesn't mean they will have the same solution in mind.

The healer kit is powerful, yes, too powerful in fact. But what I want to see is fight that push the limit of that healing kit, not to become a green DPS.

Unfortunately, that will never be a viable solution because SE wants ilvl sync to be as high as it is for accessibility. Healer toolkits are tuned for the Min ILVL, which is where the healing is most intensive. Even so, people doing normal mode content with above average ilvl can still struggle with basic healing because people's average skill levels can be vastly different. Titania for example, is where I met most healers struggle because they simply can't heal a bad tank. They would sometimes fail without 2-3 Echo buffs. Meanwhile another healer won't have to GCD heal at all without echo because they are good at using healing abilities efficiently. At most, they use 2-3 GCD heals and go back to 2-1-1-1-1-1-1-1 attack spam. This vast gap in player skill level can't handle such a drastic increase in damage in normal mode content if ilvl is balanced to keep healing difficult. The same problem applies to Savage to a lesser degree (because people in savage are required to play well, but it's still there).

Fights that are fairly difficult and requires more healing eventually get so much leeway due to party's gear ilvls increasing (for healer stats, party's HP, def stats, & party healing buff effects) to the point that downtime will always inevitably come back. This is just the nature of ilvls and making content readily accessible for everyone to clear.

If casual healers cannot handle the skill floor (which is just healing well), then having having increased damage will never be a possible option to the solution of removing healer downtime. The only effective solution would be to make healer downtime more fun through other means. The most cost-effective / least impactful way to go about this (without changing all the old content's encounter design) will be adding DPS skills because DPS skills is a last-priority focus for healers. After ensuring no one needs more healing, they can focus on their secondary role - which currently is DPS (Skill ceiling).

And this was discussed many many MANY pages ago in both this thread and in the "If you want more engaging content, go play ultimate" thread". This is the only logical conclusion healers can make for engagement while making this role accessible. Everyone who tried arguing against healer getting more DPS skills kept on trying to deny it, which is what led to this "echo chamber", because at this point, SE has been quite literally showing that every other option isn't working and hasn't been working for years now. Otherwise, there wouldn't be people asking about why the healer role is so empty right now in the interview.

[Semirhage]

As a healer main since 2.0, especially a WHM main at that up until this expansion, I looked at the post in the last 3-4 pages and just shake my head because for the most part, they're all hyperbolic.

Hyperbolic is justified if it's used sparingly. But when people hyperbolic EVERY SINGLE argument they make then you gonna get called out for being over-dramatic, and deservedly so. You know why something is called "symbolic"? When everything is symbolic then nothing is symbolic anymore.

This is, again, emblematic of how the current healer design white knights go at it. "I press 1 several hundred times in every single instance, all the way up to Ultimate fights" "Hyperbole!" *provides logs showing that everyone, from the most to the least skilled, does this* "Hyperbole! Hyperbole!"

Casting Glare. Hundreds of times. Over and over. And over and over. Is. Not. Fun.

Spamming Cure. Hundreds of times. Over and over. Is. Not. Fun.

Give us interesting kits, Square Enix. Kits that interact with themselves in more than the most shallow of places. Kits that build to things, that allow us to combine things together to make them more than the sum of their parts. Kits that flow well and reward the skillful application of their abilities.

But instead, we have two camps. A group of people who argues for ^ that, and a group of people shoving their fingers in their ears going "LALALALALA you're being HYPERBOLIC! Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare is fun actually! We need more places to spam Medica 2! That's how healers become more fun!"

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

But if they increase healing intensity then that poor sprout BLM cannot progress the story because some pug healer cannot handle SoS Normal healing requirements =(((

/s

[LeonKeyh]

Here is what you don't realize: just because you consider that as a problem, doesn't mean I do. And even if two people agree on a problem, doesn't mean they will have the same solution in mind.

The healer kit is powerful, yes, too powerful in fact. But what I want to see is fight that push the limit of that healing kit, not to become a green DPS.

As I, and many other more important people, have said in this topic, that "solution" is not going to happen at this point. People don't necessarily disagree with fixing it by making healers heal more (though some certainly do), but they have realized that in order to do something like that, they would need to essentially completely change the way they design encounters as well as completely changing EVERY existing encounter to be more heal intensive to stop a new expansion from being a brick wall for new people that hit it.

Fact of the matter is that SE has determined their design philosophy is to make the "healing" part of being a healer extremely approachable. Which means, making the requirement healers have (i.e. healing) be very easy to do to make a low skill floor for people. You're asking for them to change their encounter design, change their role design, and raise the skill floor which ISN'T going to happen. People asking for a more worthwhile DPS rotation have already realized that is the case and are asking for something much much simpler that has the possibility of not affecting the skill floor, encounter design, and role design AT ALL.

Adding a better DPS kit is literally just making a 30 second "ideal" rotation do around the same damage as 11-12 Glares and a Dia (Ideally a bit more to reward people for performing the more complex rotation, but even if it's the same damage it would be better). Something that is infinitely easier to do than redesigning the entire game.

If you want more healing instead, then anything that lowers damage (e.g. Tank Defensive Cooldowns, Feint, Addle, the Ranged DPS abilities that are all the same, etc) is MUCH more valuable, shifting the entire landscape of balance towards not only jobs that have those abilities, but more importantly, players that use them. Thus, not only increasing the skill floor on healers, but also on DPS. Increasing the skill floor on DPS, most of which are probably completely unaware of the usefulness of the abilities mentioned, means more DPS players who people will criticize, which means more negativity in the game.


What we're doing is asking for a handout of a couple of dollars, you're asking for a couple thousand. We're just trying to be realistic.

[Ivtrix]

SE has stated that they have no intention of increasing healing requirements to that level (and based on the "healer shortage" in the most recent tier will continue to be discouraged from doing so), so it's unlikely they'll ever make that type of content. How do you feel about healers having more dps tools for solo content (e.g. solo instances in MSQ and job/role quests)?

Hard agree, raising healer requirement floor will only exasperate the issue and you will see less healers and not more. Healing needs to be accessible from a design perspective and that’s why we’ve seen issues this raid tier especially p8s. When the going gets tough, it seems like more people pack up and get going then dig deep.

The desire anyways is for healing to be engaging, not difficult.

I think that both the healing and damage should compliment each other. Proc based incentives like freecure (except don’t fish for freecure it’s terrible), but if cure 2 gave a chance to something like make your next dot, or next couple Clare’s stronger, and vice versa if you casted a couple glares in a row, it would boost the power of your next GCD heal by a stacking amount.

Damage and healing should compliment each other, it will incentivize good habits and potentially change the way you may approach specific mechanics in encounters.

[tearagion]

Why do I need to imagine it when I actually played it? In fact, I remember it well enough to say I don't want to see it again.

lmao you people are unreal. "actually I do remember, and am capable of conceptualizing, when healers had marginally involved damage toolkits, and I don't want to go back I would rather healers stay braindead" incredible

[Nizzi]

If SE really wanted to make healing more accessible, why did they not reduce how uniquely punishing it is for a healer to die instead of getting rid of the DPS buttons that were fun to use in all content in the game?

Taking SCH for example:
You lose your fairy
You lose your built up fairy gauge
You lose all of your Aetherflow
You get res-sickness which makes your heals worse and you take more damage in turn, making dying again to raidwides extremely likely.
SCH also has no way to quickly patch itself up without losing its res invuln, as without Aetherflow/Fairy SCH's healing kit is 3 GCD heals and protraction

Further still, the new "design" direction is massively exacerbating the original stated goal of "having healers focus on healing more than DPSing" because of how many free heals you get and how easy it is to do DPS. You're expected and pressured to DPS over anything else because "it's only 2 buttons" and it makes having to use GCD heals feel absolutely awful because of how large in potency your nukes are, and those constitute around 80% of your total damage. New healers are conditioned to avoid their GCDs entirely because there's basically nothing to heal in normal content, and getting better means doing more damage and healing less by how healers are designed. But when "getting better" just means you spam the same spell over and over, can you really blame most people for not wanting to play healer?

We have way too many oGCDs. "Well, SE should make content that pushes our oGCDs" will never, EVER make spamming Broil Broil Broil Broil fun. Making content that does push full use of a healer's kit is great, but when that kit has anti-fun things like 1111 spam built in, there's nothing you can do to hide from the fact that at the core of the issue, 1 button spam is not fun.

The solution is incredibly simple, and while we're on the topic of SCH, old SCH shows exactly how well an expanded DPS kit that relies more on GCD healing works within the constraints of the game, and how it would still work in Endwalker. I'm not going to go in depth on SCH and DoTs since it's been explained many times, but just that having DPS options that enable us to GCD heal more without hurting our DPS or hurting it entirely are good, be that DoTs, Lilies or other systems. If SE culled oGCD bloat like Fey Blessing, Protraction, etc in exchange for DPS buttons and having to GCD heal more, I wouldn't complain at all. Design these jobs for the game that they are in, and focus on fun first and foremost.

[Bsrking5]

if you're not happy go play healer in ESO, WOW, GW2, New World, Bard/pally in Lost Ark, Overwatch even.
So many options,

You know, at first I thought that this was a troll or a joke. But if enough healers bounce out and duty/party finder breaks down because of a lack of healers. Just maybe SE will give one the healers a second look. And 6 or 9 months down the line it'll get a 10pot buff to it's attack.