A summary of healer issues

[MaxCarnage]

And this is exactly why increasing the amount of healing required also doesn't work. You have 90 levels worth of content that healing is easy enough that you can get by with the bare minimum in most cases and still compete it. Hell, there's a short clip of a P4S run where the WHM was literally Medica 2 Spamming during the last 8% of the fight.

THIS IS NOT A JOKE.

There is no excuse to be casting Medica 2 back to back like this man was but here he was, in the final fight of the last raid tier, doing exactly that. This is how low the bar of entry is for savage that this type of player could get that close to clearing the raid tier by using Medica 2 spam.

This tier may as well have been Goridas levels of difficulty for this type of player that it really isn't a wonder at all why Healer participation wasn't particularly high this time around. I have no doubt this type of player struggled and probably quit the savage tier entirely, along with any other healer that fell back on their Medica 2 spam as their primary crutch because there was probably no way for them to handle it. Now imagine this type of player being asked to do even the slightest bit more healing in average content and I just don't see it ending well at all.

This is exactly a main part of the reason they can't make things more ngaging for high-end healers. The skill ceiling is so low and yet there are still so many people who can't reach it.

My co-healer in Euphrosyne last night died to every mechanic because they couldn't even heal themself. I was handling the rest of the party, but they couldn't heal themself. They would die and not use tetra or bene on themself when rezzed. The only "cure" they casted was Cure III. And that was only when they were missing health. And they would cast 3 medica 2s in a row. The only reason to cast medica 2 is for the regen. The regens don't stack. It's a pitiful heal otherwise.

I saw them assize once. Just medica 2 and cure 3. And no, I'm not kidding when I say they used cure 3 to heal only themself. The rest of the party was full every time.

And as taboo as it is to say, this is a result of the coddling ToS. Where you can report someone for "telling you how to play". You can't give unsolicited advice without the risk of someone getting mad. Until the lower end players get better, you're never going to get harder casual content. Or even harder high end content. Because when they do, they're going to have people screaming and crying that they can't do it, just like Coils in ARR.

[Tint]

This is exactly a main part of the reason they can't make things more ngaging for high-end healers. The skill ceiling is so low and yet there are still so many people who can't reach it.

If they can't even reach a low skill ceiling then who cares if they also can't reach a higher skill ceiling? We really don't have to cater towards people who can't even keep themself alive.

Either people hit a barrier and try to improve or they quit. Of course SE will lose money when that healer quits. But... how many people quit the game because healing is just too boring?

SE was trying to play it safe for the last years, but the unsatisfied healer community gets louder every year and SE has to decide on a path:

Either increase healing requirements. Or give healers a fleshed out dps rotation and healing becomes only a gimmick like dances, songs and cards. We are on that path already anyway, where tanks and DDs have enough healing and mitigation tools available to carry that healer who can't even keep themself alive through content all the way to Euphrosyne, where you took over then.

How long can they keep healers in this weird state of 1 button rotation and barely enough healing that you can't go into content without them - or can you? How many people will quit healing - or the game altogether - when the next expansion is still just the same old one button spam?

[Absurdity]

This is exactly a main part of the reason they can't make things more ngaging for high-end healers. The skill ceiling is so low and yet there are still so many people who can't reach it.

My co-healer in Euphrosyne last night died to every mechanic because they couldn't even heal themself. I was handling the rest of the party, but they couldn't heal themself. They would die and not use tetra or bene on themself when rezzed. The only "cure" they casted was Cure III. And that was only when they were missing health. And they would cast 3 medica 2s in a row. The only reason to cast medica 2 is for the regen. The regens don't stack. It's a pitiful heal otherwise.

I saw them assize once. Just medica 2 and cure 3. And no, I'm not kidding when I say they used cure 3 to heal only themself. The rest of the party was full every time.

And as taboo as it is to say, this is a result of the coddling ToS. Where you can report someone for "telling you how to play". You can't give unsolicited advice without the risk of someone getting mad. Until the lower end players get better, you're never going to get harder casual content. Or even harder high end content. Because when they do, they're going to have people screaming and crying that they can't do it, just like Coils in ARR.

At some point you unfortunately just have to put your foot down and tell players to "get good" or your game will be in an endless spiral of making everything dumber than previously.

[kyyninen_kirahvi]

This is exactly a main part of the reason they can't make things more ngaging for high-end healers. The skill ceiling is so low and yet there are still so many people who can't reach it.

My co-healer in Euphrosyne last night died to every mechanic because they couldn't even heal themself. I was handling the rest of the party, but they couldn't heal themself. They would die and not use tetra or bene on themself when rezzed. The only "cure" they casted was Cure III. And that was only when they were missing health. And they would cast 3 medica 2s in a row. The only reason to cast medica 2 is for the regen. The regens don't stack. It's a pitiful heal otherwise.

I saw them assize once. Just medica 2 and cure 3. And no, I'm not kidding when I say they used cure 3 to heal only themself. The rest of the party was full every time.

And as taboo as it is to say, this is a result of the coddling ToS. Where you can report someone for "telling you how to play". You can't give unsolicited advice without the risk of someone getting mad. Until the lower end players get better, you're never going to get harder casual content. Or even harder high end content. Because when they do, they're going to have people screaming and crying that they can't do it, just like Coils in ARR.

This is why I want some kind of reason to have all healing actions introduced in game. As I said before, I got way too far with Medica 2 and afflatus/cure 2 spam. I can't blame the game for that. I'm still not very good but I'd like to think I'm at least competent with how I try.

I had to make a consious choise to use the other actions, which was kind of hard and ridiculus after I leveled up some DPS and tank classes. With them it comes naturally to try new actions to do more damage. Healers have no reason when the old strategy still works fine and everyone is alive. Healers are bloated with healing and nothing to use it on in solo content. Dungeons don't really need lot of healing unless people have no idea what to do and/or refuse to learn. It's a bit sad in my opinion that even a casual like me can recognise that. I enjoy support roles but it's becoming harder and harder.

[ty_taurus]

This is exactly a main part of the reason they can't make things more ngaging for high-end healers. The skill ceiling is so low and yet there are still so many people who can't reach it.

My co-healer in Euphrosyne last night died to every mechanic because they couldn't even heal themself. I was handling the rest of the party, but they couldn't heal themself. They would die and not use tetra or bene on themself when rezzed. The only "cure" they casted was Cure III. And that was only when they were missing health. And they would cast 3 medica 2s in a row. The only reason to cast medica 2 is for the regen. The regens don't stack. It's a pitiful heal otherwise.

I saw them assize once. Just medica 2 and cure 3. And no, I'm not kidding when I say they used cure 3 to heal only themself. The rest of the party was full every time.

You explained an anecdote of someone who is failing to perform the game at a foundational level. No amount of more or less DPS buttons will do anything to resolve that, so why should healers be barred from ever improving their DPS gameplay because some fringe examples of players cannot comprehend how to dodge combat mechanics?

[Silver-Strider]

This is exactly a main part of the reason they can't make things more ngaging for high-end healers.

I'd argue the opposite. These people already aren't hitting their DPS buttons so whether it's 1 or 100 buttons is irrelevant to them. You already have healers that don't touch their DPS buttons in casual content as is and we can't really call them out on it without the ToS biting us in the ass for it, so whatever toxicity that could amount from the change already has a counter to it. You're not raising the skill floor for healers by giving them more to do during downtime. That only occurs if the healing demand is increased.

[Shurrikhan]

You're not raising the skill floor for healers by giving them more to do during downtime. That only occurs if the healing demand is increased.

Technically... perhaps not even that.

The less of healers' damage output is bound up in their filler attack, the lower the relative penalty of excess healing GCDs.

And when it comes down to it, one could just not hit their DoTs if they idled too long and now need to heal when their last application's duration has just elapsed.

Healing requirements don't have any particular anti-synergy with more offensive or non-healing buttons.