Has anyone quit healing?

[Renathras]

Edit: the current situation is, yoshida knows that a lot of Ast's left because of the cards and healer dps removal (see shb launch interviews)
He genuinely didn't think healing is so easy (Eden interview and EW q&as)
On some level he knows there's widespread dissatisfaction in the role (lowest player count and falling. Feedback he's received states players like the increased healings contradicting his thinking that its too hard)

If one was to be charitable, then he's just not connecting the dots.

I honestly think this is the most accurate take with ONE caveat:

The Healer community is not one monolithic block. Yoshi P recognizes that. Some people like the status quo as it is, some people want to do more healing (required/complexity), some people want to do more damage (required/complexity), and some people want to do more damage and more healing (both). I think Yoshi P recognizes that and isn't sure how to appeal to everyone at the same time.

I've multiple times in this subforum proposed making an approach that appeals to everyone - have one Healer keep the 1 button spam and straightforward healing kit, have one have a more advanced healing and buffing kit, have one have a more advanced damage kit, and have one have a more advanced both. In this way, everyone could/would be satisfied by playing the Healer that plays the way they desire to engage with the content. This is constantly shot down as "You want carries" and similar nonsense, but there's a reason I present it, and it's because of how diverse the Healer community ITSELF is. We don't have 100% or even 99% of Healer players that want more healing, but nor do we have 100% that want more complex rotations, and we have a large amount that are at least satisfied with the status quo. Wouldn't it be nice if there was a convenient way to satisfy all of them at the same time...

But I don't think Yoshi P has figured out what different Healers like, and he gets questions from different segments of the Healer base - some that want more complex damage and some that would quit the role were that the case - and he's confused because, as a non-Healer, he doesn't have personal experience to draw on there, and he doesn't know the Healer divisions well enough to understand that all of these exist at the same time, or how best to appeal to the various Healer factions without alienating the others.

As you say: Many Healers like the increased healing requirements, but you have people wanting more complex damage rotations insisting everyone hates them (since if the more intense healing catches on, that shoots down their chances of getting their desired damage complexity changes and would invalidate their argument that no one wants it and that the game can't work with it as the typical encounter design model).

The answer is: We all exist and we're all Healers, so any potential solution needs to appeal to all four of the factions.

...and we happen to have four Healer Jobs. It's like the stars aligned but no one's figured it out yet. It's like that scene in The Matrix 2. "Three ships. Three objectives." It's convenient to the point of practically fate...

As someone who used to main AST, my "fix" AST would include giving back nocturnal sect

Honestly, as someone who's only dabbled in AST, I fully support this. It was stupid to take away nAST just to add SGE. There's no reason we couldn't have both. "But we would have 2 Pure vs 3 Barrier healers?!?!" "...and this is a problem.......why?"

I don't think any AST complains about the heal and mitigation options in most content.

AST's current kit is honestly amazing, with it being half a Barrier Healer while having nearly as powerful Pure heals as WHM with better MP economy. The Benefic and Helios spell lies are just as powerful as the Cure, Medica, and Regen ones, but cost less MP. On the Healer with better MP generation. That also has buffing utility, a mitigation up 2x as often, and a partywide 2 min Barrier CD (as well as a single-target barrier every 30 sec). It's honestly stupid good in terms of its healing kit.

Am I the only one who thinks PvP healer design is light years ahead of PvE? You have like 4 abilities yet they’re more interesting and diverse than most of what we have in PvE. And most important there’s a great balance of offense and support without making the jobs feel too far removed from the ‘healer’ role.

Yes and no. It depends on the Healer. And it's a three part issue.

1) All your abilities in PvP have low CDs. Even the LBs often have low CDs, 60-120 sec or so. This means you get to press more interesting buttons far more often than PvP encounter designs allow for. Seraph Strike is an AOE 10% damage reduction Protect for 10 seconds on a 20 CD, allowing 50% uptime on a damage reduction, which WHM would never be allowed to have in PvE since encounters would have to be balanced around you using it on CD, and at that point it becomes like old Protect/Proshell where it's not a bonus you bring to the party but an expected mitigation encounters are based around and where players that don't keep 100% uptime on it are bad and cause wipes.

2) Most PvP abilities are "bundled", for example, Afflatus Purgation is basically laser Misery + Temperance + Medica 2 as it grants both Temperance (sorta...it's more a personal increase, so kind of like Presence of Mind, honestly) and an AOE Regen. Seraph Strike grants Freecure(3)/Afflatus Rapture and Protect (or the defensive part of modern Temperance), with the former on a 60 sec CD and the latter on a 20 sec one. AST's doublecast-with-benefits works honestly like a reverse-Eukrasia of sorts, modifying the PRIOR ability you just used. Adlo is Adlo + Chain Strat (more or less) on a target, and Deployment Tactics is Deployment Tactics + Bane. So you get a lot more mileage out of those few buttons.

3) They actually did what I keep recommending for PvE: They made each Healer a different archetype. SGE in PvP isn't a healer. SGE in PvP is a DPS. Not in the "Green DPS" sense; it's just a straight up DPS that happens to splash heal onto a single party member and poop out a Panhaima every 30 seconds. On the other end of the spectrum, AST is ALMOST a pure buffer/healer, having only 3 attacks, with 1 tied to a party heal; and it's rather buff-happy with the cards being AOE, Essential Dignity having a built in HoT (Barrier of dualcast), Gravity as a support spell to set up enemies for your team to pounce on and kill for you, and Celestial River to bend fate and the tide of battles in your party's favor. WHM is its normal direct self (except for Seraph Strike, which makes no sense), with an oddly high amount of crowd control for a Healer (which would be useless in PvE boss fights, of course; Miracle of Nature isn't something you'd use on a raid boss, no matter how hilarious it would be, and WHM already has a Stun with Holy...and it doesn't work on bosses). And SCH is a real hybrid support/damage healer with a lot of buffs combined with potent healing and the most direct on-demand healing LB.

Point being: It's broken the 4 healers into a "debuffer/healer", "buffer/healer", "damage/debuffer/buffer/healer", and "damage...that does a little healing DPSer".

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I do agree with you that ability interactions are what make things interesting. Like DoTs for the sake of "having something to do" are stupid, but DoTs that actually interact with your kit, proc things, can be stacked where you want to keep the stack from falling off, can be burst for additional damage, etc etc; that's interesting.

To be fair to Yoshi P: A lot of people ARE just asking for "more dps spells". Not everyone, but enough to tilt the conversation.

I don't think everyone would care for PvE Healers to be like PvP Healers, and the encounter design doesn't really work with it - Gravity (single and double cast), Miracle of Nature, Afflatus Purgation, and Mesotes immediately come to mind as not compatible with modern encounter design - but porting a little of that to SOME healers might not go terribly.

Very much this. Each healer has its own unique identity, which not only presents options that can appeal to various play styles, but also is fun for those people who are omni-healers and want to mix things up a bit.

Agreed. Ironically, this is the idea I've been pitching since forever that gets attacked, vs the PvP Healer kits, which actually...just do that...which are widely praised. XD If the PvE Healer kits were massaged a bit into being a bit more like the PvP Healer kits, it would basically be to reflect the position I've argued for for quite a while.