A summary of healer issues

[Aravell]

Feel.

If you press Heavy Swing then Storm's Path on WAR - missing Maim and knowing you screwed up - it feels bad. The actual level of damage lost is pretty insignificant. The odds of that one mistake being the difference between a clear and enrage is so small as to be nonexistent. But it feels bad.

If you realize you have 2 AF left and AF is coming off CD, so you burn one on an ED but have to choose between using a second ED and pushing your AF CD to the right by one GCD or going ahead and refreshing AF, losing out on that one ED, it feels bad, regardless of the fact that it's a ridiculously small loss either way so that either "wrong" answer shouldn't, rationally, feel wrong at all because of how minute the difference is.

I don't think any game should be designed to help people not feel bad for making the wrong decisions. GCD healing is not always a wrong decision, the community just thinks it's always the wrong decision.

Also, if you start talking about GCD healing feeling bad because you lose damage, how am I supposed to interpret that other than you wanting the big numbers? If you don't care about chasing numbers, why should you feel bad for GCD healing? I genuinely do not understand.

[ForsakenRoe]

I don't think any game should be designed to help people not feel bad for making the wrong decisions. GCD healing is not always a wrong decision, the community just thinks it's always the wrong decision.

Also, if you start talking about GCD healing feeling bad because you lose damage, how am I supposed to interpret that other than you wanting the big numbers? If you don't care about chasing numbers, why should you feel bad for GCD healing? I genuinely do not understand.

This is the issue I think, I don't see how anyone can 'feel bad' about GCD healing when it is required to prevent a wipe, except for if they're already fully aware of the funny number site and are trying to get a big funny number there. I don't 'feel bad' when I have to put up Medica 2 in P12S for something because I'm out of Lilies, I do it because my job is to heal first and foremost

I think WHM's main issue is that it's stayed as an ARR-style design in an EW world. It just doesn't have the 'flow' to it in the way that the other healers do, and so it feels out of place in this EW fight design. The two don't mesh smoothly. I described it to a friend as being that the healers are cars, and WHM is the manual with the janky clutch. Sure, some people prefer to drive a manual gearbox, but sometimes the clutch is gonna stick and you get that horrible 'missed gear shift' screech and the whole car shudders in pain. That's the Medica 2 hardcast, causing the sudden slowdown in the 'flow' of the fight.

It also lacks the spread of tools, of 'decision-making' on how to heal each situation, instead having a 'doesn't matter what the shape is, it goes in the square hole' approach with Rapture just covering pretty much everything. For example, AST has to choose, since all are 1min CDs, 'do I use COpp for the extra range on the heal, or do I use CU for the 10% mit, do I need to put Horoscope with this heal to give it an extra 200p, will I have enough healing needed on everyone coming up to get full value from Star'. WHM's 'choice' is 'Do I press Plenary here'

It'd be fine if there was at least a bit of something going on on the damage side of things. But when there's very little thinking needed for the damage side, little thinking needed for healing, and almost zero needed for mit (lol Temperance), it's not hard to see why WHM is uniquely alone in this regard. The other healers have similar issues with their damage rotations, but at least they have something more going on healing-side or mitigation-wise. It gets bland when we know the fight timeline and have our mit planned out as a SGE/SCH yes, but at least that takes a bit of time to work out. WHM almost, by design, autosolves it's 'role in the fight' because whatever comes up, Rapture probably solves it.

On a personal note,

I've been trying to play AST more for reclears recently. I still don't like it, because of how much weaving it has to do in the 2min window, and how much that makes my hands hurt, but I enjoy how I have things to think about compared to WHM. Even if it's just 'who do I put this card on' or 'would CO or CU be better here'. And related to above, I don't 'feel bad' when I use Neutral Sect for something. This week, in fact, my cohealer friend stood in the poison on P10S, and we managed to keep her alive through the full DOT, even during one of the Bonds sets going off, because Neutral Sect spamming shields on her. I guess in one regard, it was 'this feels bad because this is so much damage being wasted to fix a problem caused by another player', but the alternative is to let said player die, and in hindsight, that'd have wiped us because of Bonds being un-clearable (gotta love body checks). I'm pretty sure that the 'this feels bad cos no damage' feeling is entirely because I'm aware of the funny number site, and if I had no knowledge of it's existence, I'd be popping off much more that we salvaged a 'theoretically unsalvageable' situation.

I would also say that 'swap healers from spamming damage filler to spamming Aspected Benefic/Cure2/whatever' is not the solution some seem to believe that it is. It wasn't 'more interesting' to keep my friend alive per se. It was 'interesting' in the moment we had to react to her getting the poison DOT, and me thinking 'how can I solve this', but after Neutral Sect was activated, that 'interesting' is gone. From there on, it was a case of 'Press Ctrl-1 10 times, instead of Ctrl-2 (my Malefic key)', and I gotta say, it felt pretty similar in monotony after the first two casts. That's against a DOT that ticks for like 45k per tick. So I dunno how some expect that 'oh we can make healer more interesting by increasing how often we have to press GCD heals', I don't think doing that for a full fight would make for 'interesting gameplay'

I wait with bated breath to see how much of the bathroom SE throws out alongside the baby and bathwater with this 'rework' that is coming for AST. Because I want to see, do they remove the 'decision-making' from AST to lower it to WHM level? Do they actually 'fix' things with good intuitive design choices, or do they take the easy way out again and just go 'eh people think too much APM, so now card is GCD' and mangle the flow of that class too

[Aravell]

This is the issue I think, I don't see how anyone can 'feel bad' about GCD healing when it is required to prevent a wipe, except for if they're already fully aware of the funny number site and are trying to get a big funny number there. I don't 'feel bad' when I have to put up Medica 2 in P12S for something because I'm out of Lilies, I do it because my job is to heal first and foremost

That's what I really want to know, why does it feel bad to press your healing? It should only feel bad if you're aware of the funny numbers and you want one, if you don't care about said numbers, why would you feel bad about it? I liberally press Succor in reclears and I feel nothing, I press Indom and Soil a lot and never cringe over how much damage I'm losing. I genuinely do not understand why one would feel bad unless they were chasing numbers.

This week, in fact, my cohealer friend stood in the poison on P10S, and we managed to keep her alive through the full DOT, even during one of the Bonds sets going off, because Neutral Sect spamming shields on her. I guess in one regard, it was 'this feels bad because this is so much damage being wasted to fix a problem caused by another player', but the alternative is to let said player die, and in hindsight, that'd have wiped us because of Bonds being un-clearable (gotta love body checks). I'm pretty sure that the 'this feels bad cos no damage' feeling is entirely because I'm aware of the funny number site, and if I had no knowledge of it's existence, I'd be popping off much more that we salvaged a 'theoretically unsalvageable' situation.

It sounds much more boring on AST. I had the same situation happen in my reclears last week, the phys ranged stepped in the green and I had to use Adlo, Physick and Lustrate to fix it, it was more fun than just mindless Broil to be honest. But then again, I stopped caring about my placement on the funny number site since early ShB when all the nuance and optimisation of healers was ripped to shreds, so I do enjoy when things go wrong and I have to do quick thinking to salvage things.

[Recon1o6]

That's what I really want to know, why does it feel bad to press your healing?

Generally, because of the sheer volume of ogcd heals, if you're forced to use a gcd that isnt a required one, then it means you and/or your co healer messed something up since in 95% of content, that's all you need to an extent even taking into account dps standing in the bad or someone getting killed (eg zoning out when byregot moves his arena and falling)

The one exception here is whm for blood lily.

[Azurarok]

Generally, because of the sheer volume of ogcd heals, if you're forced to use a gcd that isnt a required one, then it means you and/or your co healer messed something up since in 95% of content, that's all you need to an extent even taking into account dps standing in the bad or someone getting killed (eg zoning out when byregot moves his arena and falling)

The one exception here is whm for blood lily.

This is some of it yeah. It's pretty noticeable when a tank's adamant about doing wall to wall pulls while not using their mitigation well enough, or the dps is low and the mob's not dying fast enough that both the tank and I run out of oGCDs. I don't mind this sort of thing happening in ARR~mid-SB content since sprouts are learning and we also don't have that many tools until after that, but it does get to me a little when it gets around to lv70 content and up and this happens without anyone saying a word.

But also yes, it'd feel bad to have to use raise if someone died from my not healing well enough. If I fall back to a GCD heal it also makes me think if I could've done something better to not have to do that (for me it's usually been forgetting the lv86 mitigation exists). The current design does do that right.

At the same time, if you think hitting the same button every gcd for 27.5 seconds then the dot once and repeating that while the rest of your inputs are all oGCDs for 95% of content is fine then I don't know what to tell you.

White Mage also suffers from similar issues visually, since you go from having Stone and Aero to just light-based spells in ShB. This is even more highlighted by Y'shtola using 4~5 different elements as a conjurer in The Fell Court of Troia

[ForsakenRoe]

White Mage also suffers from similar issues visually, since you go from having Stone and Aero to just light-based spells in ShB. This is even more highlighted by Y'shtola using 4~5 different elements as a conjurer in The Fell Court of Troia

I'm not sure what annoys me more about the current WHM rotation, how samey it plays, or how samey it looks. Both are definitely big points of contention, of course, but I do wonder if it'd help at least a tiny bit if the DOT was green and the nuke was orangey-brown so they at least look a bit different. At least Misery is pink. Then again, Dosis is blue-white and E.Dosis is purple...

I want to have the elements back too. But I'd do it in a way where the holy light stuff we have now isn't completely removed. But then, we'd likely see people complaining about my plan because 'oh I prefer the holy lights but they're the weak filler part of the rotation, why can't the part I like be the cool strong bursty part' or such

It sounds much more boring on AST. I had the same situation happen in my reclears last week, the phys ranged stepped in the green and I had to use Adlo, Physick and Lustrate to fix it, it was more fun than just mindless Broil to be honest.

AST has to at least think a bit about what it's going to use for each raidwide, for example. Like, as WHM for the P10S raidwide, it's Lilybell if you have it, Asylum if you don't, basically. Macrocosmos is cool, but it doesn't auto-delete bleed-raidwides in the same way the Overheal Weed does, so it's not necessarily better to use it for those, instead it might be better to do CO/CU for mit/double regens, and use Macro on something else. Or not, idk I'm not good at the class. I did get a 58 this week even with the Neutral Sect incident, though, and that's with a 645 relic

[Allegor]

Generally, because of the sheer volume of ogcd heals, if you're forced to use a gcd that isnt a required one, then it means you and/or your co healer messed something up since in 95% of content, that's all you need to an extent even taking into account dps standing in the bad or someone getting killed (eg zoning out when byregot moves his arena and falling)

The one exception here is whm for blood lily.

When a raidwide happened, and it's safe to just wait for Rapture/Assize, but your cohealer is spamming AHelios/Medica II (heal over time? what's that?), or the melees are turning on Bloodbath..... I'm not a "but did you die?" type healer but some people just REALLY can't stand an HP bar being below 90%

I want to have the elements back too. But I'd do it in a way where the holy light stuff we have now isn't completely removed. But then, we'd likely see people complaining about my plan because 'oh I prefer the holy lights but they're the weak filler part of the rotation, why can't the part I like be the cool strong bursty part' or such

I personally liked how EW double down on ShB's idea of giving WHM a "crystal flowers" aesthetics that blends in the light/holy and nature aspects of the job. It always lowkey annoyed me how a CNJ starts off as basically a druid and suddenly I'm a holy priest.

[Shurrikhan]

I want to have the elements back too. But I'd do it in a way where the holy light stuff we have now isn't completely removed. But then, we'd likely see people complaining about my plan because 'oh I prefer the holy lights but they're the weak filler part of the rotation, why can't the part I like be the cool strong bursty part' or such.

That much, at least, could be easily fixed by just having the elements be the set-up and the Holy/Light stuff be the less frequent burst.

My main concern, I guess, is just whether we even need one more "Hard Light" job? How many ways do we really need to express "Bright, thin, wall of force" or "shockwave/percussed zone of light"? It's no more diffuse than SGE's fatter lasers or SCH's Fey stuff.

Like, I'm fine with it, but I also don't see the appeal of including the HolyLight theme kit-wide in general except in that it offers more distinct of name changes on our generic potency upgrade traits (for a single step) than if we had stuck with elements alone. It's just kinda... there.

[Aravell]

Generally, because of the sheer volume of ogcd heals, if you're forced to use a gcd that isnt a required one, then it means you and/or your co healer messed something up since in 95% of content, that's all you need to an extent even taking into account dps standing in the bad or someone getting killed (eg zoning out when byregot moves his arena and falling)

The one exception here is whm for blood lily.

I know why GCD healing is bad. What I want to know is why the people who don't care about chasing numbers on the funny number website feel bad for pressing their GCD heals. If you're not chasing numbers, why would you be upset at losing numbers? That's what I don't get.