Healer role design change?

[ForsakenRoe]

This brings up an interesting point:

Could part of the problem be gear exponential growth/ilevel inflation?

Not all, but part?

Not part, but all. As a group gets more gear, the damage lowers because higher defense stat, AND the healing power of a skill increases because 'number go up'. This dual-scaling of 'damage counteracting' means that we can go from, for example, Regen on each purple in NA, to 'they have enough defense on gear, plus my Med2 is stronger now, to the point where I can just use a Med2 to cover both of them, in one GCD instead of 2', which then eventually becomes 'they can catch the AOE Lily healing/Lilybell blasts while I deal with the stack/spread/fire/ice, and they're so geared they'll live anyway'

I don't think it's possible to solve the issue though, from this angle. If you change it so defense doesn't go up as much, that makes tanks lose out on the feeling of growth, of getting 'tankier'. If you change it so healing output isn't as affected by statbuffs, then healers lose out on feeling like their healing power is growing. Only thing that comes to mind atm is to use %based damage raidwides more often (like Eden's Gravity from E1, hit for 60% of your max HP). Stuff that is %based, ignores %mits like Addle, but respects Shields, could be interesting if not overused (else it'd make PLD/WAR locked comp)

[Aravell]

I don't think it's possible to solve the issue though, from this angle. If you change it so defense doesn't go up as much, that makes tanks lose out on the feeling of growth, of getting 'tankier'.

I think a possible solution to this would be to add an extra bit to the Tank Mastery trait where a percentage of the defensive value from your gear gets added onto your total defense, then squashing the defense stats of all pieces of gear. This would still give tanks the defensive advantage that they have now while also making the rest of the party squishier and more needing of heals. So in this scenario, maybe you can only go from a Regen on both purple debuffs to a Medica 2, but you cannot ignore it and just use AoE heals to cover the damage.

[Shurrikhan]

Or we could give tanks back the ability to trade between sustain and pure offense, such that otherwise excessive defense would at least mean further offensive resource available, if indirectly. In that way, damage wouldn't be the only role particularly worth gearing first.

Additionally, if we just slightly nerfed AoEs but made them into smart-heals, tanks' natural mitigation and others' personal mitigation CDs would actually have the potential for some rDPS impact, rather than merely feeling redundant respective to those AoE heals.

[vetch]

Not part, but all. As a group gets more gear, the damage lowers because higher defense stat, AND the healing power of a skill increases because 'number go up'. This dual-scaling of 'damage counteracting' means that we can go from, for example, Regen on each purple in NA, to 'they have enough defense on gear, plus my Med2 is stronger now, to the point where I can just use a Med2 to cover both of them, in one GCD instead of 2', which then eventually becomes 'they can catch the AOE Lily healing/Lilybell blasts while I deal with the stack/spread/fire/ice, and they're so geared they'll live anyway'

I don't think it's possible to solve the issue though, from this angle. If you change it so defense doesn't go up as much, that makes tanks lose out on the feeling of growth, of getting 'tankier'. If you change it so healing output isn't as affected by statbuffs, then healers lose out on feeling like their healing power is growing. Only thing that comes to mind atm is to use %based damage raidwides more often (like Eden's Gravity from E1, hit for 60% of your max HP). Stuff that is %based, ignores %mits like Addle, but respects Shields, could be interesting if not overused (else it'd make PLD/WAR locked comp)

I know you don't favor this solution, but reverting the outgoing damage profile to a more traditional MMO shape or to the one used in ARR, such that you simply need to heal more often, also addresses the problem.

At the moment, a lot of mechanics are what one might call 'position enforcement'. I.e. you either find the right spot to dodge it or you get blasted with a vuln up/twice come ruin, a damage down, or outright instant death. This design exacerbates the problem of boring healing because 'success' at the mechanic is usually clearly marked: you either dodge it completely, or you take so little damage that one or both healers popping their weakest, least-useful oGCDs can sort it. And once you get more geared, you don't even need the oGCD because a hybrid DPS-healing tool like Assize or Earthly is going to heal it off incidentally when it gets popped on cooldown in 10 seconds. Both situations are quite boring.

Contrast that design with something like the Earthshaker in T13 of Coils, where two selected targets will take 120-150% of a DPS's max HP in damage over three fast pulses, and there's nothing you can do about it except identify the targets quickly and pump heals in between the hits. Meanwhile, it still has a positioning element, because the pulses spawn puddles and the targets need to keep moving and place them so they're not in the raid's way. Now, this mechanic still becomes less sweaty as you gear up -- indeed I was able to solo heal it on SCH with a BiS crit set and some carefully reserved Lustrates -- but it's still healing-intensive. Add in more damage in general going out on the tank before and after, which depletes the healers' resources more rapidly, and you have a much more interesting healing (and tanking) fight that still retains some of that interest even when everyone is BiS.

[ForsakenRoe]

I know you don't favor this solution

It's not that I don't favor the solution because I don't like it, I don't favor it because I think it will bring more issues than it solves re: casuals cant keep up. If SE wants to ramp healing needed, I'll try it openminded like, but I would also be expecting it to get reverted pretty fast

I've also brought up in a different post somewhere, stuff like A11S Photon, while the floor's on fire. You need a shield or you just burn to death on the next tick. Back in HW, that meant GCDs, there was ONE OGCD partywide shield at the time, and it was PLD's Veil (who was very not-favored because lmao DRK/WAR). Nowadays though, we have Consolation, Shake, Veil, Holos, Panhaima. So it's not as simple as just doing encounter healing design more akin to the older days, because we have all these new tools to cover things we couldn't before. We'd have to have like, ARR design inspired stuff, while also factoring in the fact we have this kit, which is presumably what you're meaning, but then I circle back to what I was saying before: casuals won't be able to keep up, I fear

[Renathras]

Most players aren't necessarily trying to break down the state of job design or anything, but I think most people, even if they aren't dissatisfied with the state of healing, feel that there's improvement that could be had.
...
I think most players, if asked what healers could improve on, would say that they want to see more healing needed first, but a fair amount of those players would also say having more DPS gameplay instead if more healing can't happen, or a little of both is also fine.

Quoted just...because I agree with this. (I'll remind you that for AST in particular, the thing they wanted most was more buffing buttons; SCH's seemed to want Energy Drain decoupled from Aetherflow as well as more damage buttons...)

But I think what a lot of people miss in picking camps is that most people AGREE something should be done. The disagreement is mostly on the specifics of the what.

This is the part that is important to me. We know that there are players who like healers as they are now. But what we don't know is how many of those players would change their opinion on healers, if they made changes like those I and others have written up.

The tricky part is, Pandora's box is difficult to close. No one knew how many people would quit healing if the ShB changes went through. Now we know. But it's harder to undo than it seems (even if the changes were outright reverted today, there are many who have left the role forever due to them; and conversely, many who came to it that might leave if the changes were reverted). It's kind of a gamble, which is why there needs to be a mitigation strategy (like the one I always propose, for one...)

The 'wonder and exploration' they wanted back was never going to come back because the playerbase has gotten older, and now they prioritize getting things done with their limited time, not standing in Stormwind for an hour looking for a UBRS group.

This is only part of it, and it's a tricky topic, but part of it is also that something can only be new once. Once you've see the Matrix and know the plot twists, they can never be "surprises" to you again. The third piece is that the internet has changed. Long gone are the days of few guides and little knowledge of game esoteria. You don't have to chance upon the right thread or comment stream on a specific item on WoWhead to learn about something, or get it by word of mouth. It's like the FFXIV Relic quests where they say "talk with other players to discover" what you need; nowadays, it's all written down. Even new relics (the lol EW ones aside, the Bozja ones this same thing happened), within a week if not within a day, there are guides up telling you everything you need.

The internet changing is a pretty huge distinction between the before times and now.

So I'd suggest, in this SCH example,...

I though my SCH suggestion (which was me taking what I consider the most overall complex Healer Job at the moment and using a slight bump in its difficulty as the baseline for "the one (kinda) left alone") was generally well received, despite not being overly complex and only having (I think?) two DoTs, one of which was very non-punishing to the point it could be used reliably as a movement tool.

There are definitely ways to make Jobs more interesting - that are even well received by most everyone - that aren't MASSIVELY drastic changes or that alienate people.

I think another problem is matching playstyle to player. For example, on paper, AST would be the perfect Job for me. It has low personal DPS and is designed around augmenting party members, with at least a decent chunk of mental energy being devoted to buff use...

...but it has the absolute least appealing aesthetic to me of any Healer, and one of the least appealing to me aesthetics of Jobs in the game (honestly, RPR is the only Job whose aesthetic appeals to me LESS than AST; I'm just not into most of the themes AST is designed around like Tarot readings, occultism, and astrology), and an APM antithetical to the way I like to play, which is more methodical and easy going like SCH or WHM, respectively. It's my single least favorite Healer due to the APM, juggling of multiple decision lines simultaneously, and the aesthetics. But if you changed it to suit me (e.g. drastically lowered the APM - nothing really can be done about the aesthetic per se), then that would alienate the people that like it specifically for that.

But unless the design goal is to make "paired" Jobs of each playstyle to each Healer type (buff focused healer being one) so you have one for the people who like the high APM decision tree juggling and one for the people who...don't, then what's the answer? While some suggest making it for the former but making it less punishing, as Eorzian once pointed out, people don't want to be told "you did good...enough" because a Job is designed to where they will never do better.

Not part, but all.

I wonder how much would change if that was actually addressed in some way. Not sure though. WoW had this same issue (several times) requiring stat squishes, and FFXIV has had one already. Somehow, the Devs (of both games) don't go "Oh, maybe we should stop doing this" and just keep doing it. And while people SAY that upgrades have to be big enough for players to notice otherwise players don't care to grind out the new gear (which shouldn't EXACTLY be why content has longevity to begin with...), history has shown players will do anything for even a smidge more power.

[vetch]

It's not that I don't favor the solution because I don't like it, I don't favor it because I think it will bring more issues than it solves re: casuals cant keep up. If SE wants to ramp healing needed, I'll try it openminded like, but I would also be expecting it to get reverted pretty fast

I've also brought up in a different post somewhere, stuff like A11S Photon, while the floor's on fire. You need a shield or you just burn to death on the next tick. Back in HW, that meant GCDs, there was ONE OGCD partywide shield at the time, and it was PLD's Veil (who was very not-favored because lmao DRK/WAR). Nowadays though, we have Consolation, Shake, Veil, Holos, Panhaima. So it's not as simple as just doing encounter healing design more akin to the older days, because we have all these new tools to cover things we couldn't before. We'd have to have like, ARR design inspired stuff, while also factoring in the fact we have this kit, which is presumably what you're meaning, but then I circle back to what I was saying before: casuals won't be able to keep up, I fear

Certainly.

I'm all for pruning a bunch of these redundant oGCDs and replacing them with more engaging things, including a few more damage spells and, I hope, an expanded GCD heal kit with more interesting interplay than we have now. I would suggest, however, that ARR damage profiles, intensified to fit level 90 kits and 200+ hours of play experience, would already be much better at soaking up all these free oGCD heals and pressuring the healers than the 'dodge or die' designs we have now.

As for any desire on the part of the devs to accommodate casuals in non-casual content like Savage, well, there may be some in there somewhere. But consider Ultimate raiding, content that is absolutely hostile to casuals, and notice that instead of giving us 'dodge or die' plus a boatload of mandatory healing and difficult tanking that casuals can't handle on top, they instead just... cranked the positioning and coordination requirements even higher while leaving the healing requirement so low that the fights were solo-healed within the same expac. This suggests, to me, that they've lost the ability to design challenging healing, and any excuses about casuals are only that: excuses.

[Aravell]

One problem with simply returning to the damage profile of the old raids is that even they won't be able to stress out the overbloated healer kits that we have right now. Take Blazing Scourge from A12S for example, you had to time a heal in between the 2nd and 3rd hits or the target will die, if we have out current kits for something like that, we can just set an Aquaveil and a Benison and just ignore all 3 hits completely then Tetra/Solace. To make those types of mechanics relevant again, they'd probably have to ramp up the damage to about 200% of our max HP or cut out a ton of bloat in our healer kits.

I personally advocate for quick streams of moderate damage to exhaust our extensive healing kits and force us to dip into GCDs because there's no way we can cover everything with OGCDs. Having occasional damage that totals to higher than our max HP is how they got to the point where mitigation is king.

[vetch]

Well, I said it would be better at it, not that it would be perfect.

I personally advocate for quick streams of moderate damage to exhaust our extensive healing kits and force us to dip into GCDs because there's no way we can cover everything with OGCDs. Having occasional damage that totals to higher than our max HP is how they got to the point where mitigation is king.

Coils excels at this, because between its big raidwides it intersperses more aggressive damage windows with crit-enabled-autos and miniature tankbusters, extending longer than the duration of a single short mitigation, so you either need more than one or to suck it up and use the long mit. (It's also a lot more fun to tank because of all the judgement calls you have to make, like deciding to mit where you ordinarily wouldn't because a healer died and has low MP.)

[ForsakenRoe]

Coils excels at this, because between its big raidwides it intersperses more aggressive damage windows with crit-enabled-autos and miniature tankbusters,

I didn't do Coils in ARR, but did do some synced during HW. For comparison's sake, is Barb EX remotely like what you're looking for, in terms of a more recent addition? Cos if so, I'd agree that Barb EX felt pretty good to heal (the extra ilvl from this tier of raid probably kills that a bit, but that's the nature of vertical progression)