Quote Originally Posted by Renathras View Post
So, I'm confused about something:

I'm trying to figure out what change we can make to these Jobs to make it where using GCD heals is NOT bad gameplay.
First of all, "Bad" is a gross simplification of the situation you're describing. I can't speak for everyone who's engaged with these conversations in the past, but I do understand what someone means when they refer to GCD healing as "Bad."

The best healer player is a player who has maximized their damage output while still providing just enough healing to sustain the party throughout the entire encounter. Ignoring lilies for a moment, GCD healing comes at the opportunity cost of damage--using a spell like Cure means you've lost a cast of Glare, essentially. This does not mean GCD healing is inherently useless, but when you are trying to perform to the best of your abilities as a healer, you need to think about what you lose when you cast a spell like Cure II or Medica II, including the damage you lose as a consequence of needing to heal. In other words, if that healing spell is not necessary, you are hurting your performance casting it. Thing is, that opportunity cost itself is not actually a bad thing. As the healer, it's at your discretion to choose when you need to cast a heal, and when you can attack. That ability to choose at any given moment makes healing interesting and makes healing feel rewarding when done correctly.

The problem we have with GCD healing now is not because GCD healing is "Bad," but that it's been power crept. Tanks have gained a considerable amount of self-sustain, removing a lot of need to spot heal them in encounters. Healers have gained many additional OGCD healing actions as well--heals that come at no opportunity cost at all. The result is an environment where GCD healing is almost never necessary at all. Dungeons, Trials, Normal Raids, Alliance Raids, even some Extremes and Savages can be completed while healing exclusively with OGCD healing (at least with Scholar and Sage), and the lilies, while being GCD, refund the damage they cost by rewarding you with Misery. Medica II isn't "Bad" because it's a weak heal. It's just not needed anymore, most of the time. It still is necessary in most Savages and Extremes to some degree, though.

That said, the reason I say that the current healer design philosophy is not sustainable is because if we continue down this path, get two more free healing actions in 7.0, tools like Medica II are just going to get even more power crept and will be used even less often. We can't just keep adding more and more heals, adding more and more regens, barriers, or other secondary healing effects to existing cooldowns, and leave the healers like that. We are bloating out hotbars and knocking existing healing tools out of circulation. Once upon a time, Succor was a major part of playing a Scholar, but now it's almost never needed.

Having said all that, I also don't mean to imply that OGCD heals are inherently bad or unhealthy for the development of the game either. I would say that the total lack of OGCD healing in ARR meant that healing felt more binary. In HW, each healer got more, but also didn't have that many either. It created more opportunities for choice, and the removal of Cleric Stance in SB allowed that choice to feel more fluid. In HW, you'd need to drop Cleric Stance to use Tetragrammaton effectively, but in SB you could weave it directly after an Aero II. Yet GCD healing still wasn't so heavily power crept in SB, and you'd still rely on your healing spells regularly throughout even casual environments. It's all about striking a good balance.

What I'm getting at is, the solution isn't about making Medica better than Rapture or Cure 2 better than Solace or Tetragrammaton. It's pruning excess healing and ensuring that content creates enough reasons to actively ask players to make those opportunity costs again. Free healing is something we should have a limited amount of and that we can use to our advantage.