Healers need an overhaul

[Shurrikhan]

[On damage neutrality]

The way I see it is fairly simple.

Let's say you expect that a healer pair needs to output the minimum ilvl equivalent of 120k potency's worth of sustain (where damage nullification is divided by HP per potency of healing, etc.) per 3 minutes (the healer's longest CD).

Or, averaged out and divided, each healer would be expected to do ~20k sustain potency per minute.

Now, they're designed to also be able to do ~10k offensive potency per minute within the given setting, if perfectly optimized, even if at minimum item level (for now, let's consider this the average of aDPS and rDPS, so that we're neither leaving out the value of buffing nor of exploiting buffs).

So now you have a spectrum of options with two extremes:

Extreme #1:
You make all healing have no offensive opportunity cost so that no matter how much healing one does, they will still do that 10k ppm offensively.

Extreme #2:
No healing is free, but you set a balancing point around the minimum playing perfectly with a perfect team and tune their offensive casts such that they'd still do 10k ppm offensively if playing well.

Both result in that 10k ppm under perfect play at minimum ilvl. The difference is simply that the second has a lower floor (is more skill-dependent) and its offensive increases quadratically with gear (as it can now spend less opportunity cost on healing, whereas had no opportunity cost it was tuned against anyways and is therefore static except insofar as its getting individually stronger attacks).

We're currently somewhere in between those two but shifted nearer to the first than the second. I prefer the second. I would much rather have a healer on a striking dummy be able to pull much higher damage than they do right now, and to in turn have damage output vary more with healing output.

To me, the current "shape of the curve" between combined sustain ppm and offensive ppm just feels really off; rather than a long plateau of healing doable before damage declines, I'd rather that decline start much sooner, but from a higher high.

It's fine for those curves to vary healer by healer; I'm fine with Sage tapering off slower than most at first and then increasingly starting to fall more sharply than the rest (an arc vs. others' more linear curve), or for WHM to have a slight advantage in combined HPS+DPS at very, very high HPS counts such that its slope seems to flatten out a bit at the end. I just think all 4 should be shifted over a bit, becoming less dependent on free healing and having their healing spells feel redundancy (presently akin almost to a fall-back option of a fall-back option that nonetheless end up as rigidly scheduled as everything else just due to the shittiness of very limited healing agency in modern fights).

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EDIT:

The main things I want to see, in order of perceived reward per developer effort likely required (not necessarily in the order of what I think is most important, which is nearly the opposite order):

1. More non-healing actions / depth / interaction

Give healers more to do and more complexity to work with when no healing is required. Ideally in varied ways (some more by buffing, some more via damage alone).

It'd help a lot to also have incidental interactions with healing, such as via priority conflicts with ideally-timed soft-CDs like Regen (or some new Time Magic spells on AST for seeding healing to go off later or to restore HP instantly but then damage the target over time such that you'd have to catch up on that healing, etc.) and versatile recast pools like Aetherflow/Addersgall, as those interactions synergize well to create a sort of 'critical mass' in total cognitive load... but we'll save that for later.

2. Reducing free short-term outputs to make greater room for expression and role-centric play

Reduce free sustain (healing + damage nullification) on Healers, be that by revamping Mana as an overall system or by simply trimming and consolidating some healing abilities, replacing their button-space with new downtime options. In this way, we end up with (A) a greater effective breadth of kit since the superior options would no longer be so able to meet content's needs, making what remains less feel redundant/vestigial, and (B) a more palpable sense of progression available to healers over a fight.

Similarly, reduce free sustain on Tanks and again allow them choices between pure offense and sustain. Finally, also slightly/roughly reduce free mobility on Casters and Rangers, giving them higher output ceilings instead. Icing on the cake: give back Rangers access to indirect means of rDPS such as old at-cost, MP-limited Ballad/Promotion opposite (a revised) Foe's Requiem/Hypercharge. If MP is fixed as a system through and through, then Mana Shift can do similar for Casters, potentially.

3. Increased damage intake + Risk-reward / rDPS exchange via healing / Further healing-based healer agency

First, get rid of most (ramping-to-)OHKO mechanics, replacing them with some way for healers to actually undo them, ideally without relying on Esuna. It's fine if the ally would die exactly 3s later from a non-global DoT tick if not healed in time (and to require significant healing thereafter), or even for survival to cost a spammable but at-hefty-MP cost (especially if, say, lower %MP = lower effective potency to attack spells as well, giving those oGCDs a slight offensive opportunity cost more immediately) eHP-increasing tool to be cast on them just before impact, but there must be something that the healer can do to prevent that death.

Thrice Ruin instead reduces their maximum HP but allows overhealing to increase their max HP by 30% of the amount overhealed until again reaching normal max HP? Fine. That's healer-recoverable. It just shouldn't guarantee one-shots nor cause a second hit 1 secondaway from the duration ending to be as punishing as a second hit taken 1 second into the duration.

Thereafter... (A) increase unavoidable damage altogether, at least slightly away from existing damage bursts, and/or (B) create new forms of avoidable damage that would cost uptime to actually avoid. For instance, let's say a boss may cause near-flat (attacker's GCD-based) reflect damage on hit; if the healers are dead and still being rezzed, you may have to stop attacking for a bit, but otherwise they could heal you through it on the assumption that it's more rDPS to keep attacking despite the healer damage lost (unless one can enter the phase already very low HP and use that time to heal up and use other at-uptime-cost non-attacks, etc.; whatever).

Perhaps even introduce a new class of AoEs that visually signal that they are not as threatening as most and will not cause Vulnerability Up or Damage Down stacks... and speckle them liberally across fights. A player should be theoretically able to dodge all, but doing so should cost uptime and at least sometimes be a party-DPS loss relative to just being healed through it.

While we're at it, revamp AoEs to be more consistent in their connection between indicators and their actual timing, and create some sort of color-system for subtly indicating their raw damage proportionate to the player's max-HP.

Perhaps also include some overlying subtle visual effect to indicate what kind of debuff the AoE would convey.

We could maybe do similar for special attacks and tankbusters, too, and put indicators on the cast bars: e.g., a thick border = No debuff if the damage is fully nullified; dark gold swirled texture on the cast bar itself = Slows; Red gash texture = inflicts DoT; Red-and-black swirled texture = reduces healing; Purple glow = inflicts Doom; if not immunized; etc., etc.).