Make healers DPS with four or five healing actions

[Raiya]

Exactly. The way they design fights and neutered everything that isn't a DPS race in this game means that healing is utterly irrelevant.

By reducing the number of healing actions you actually will make the healing part of healers more fun.

We don't need junk like Macrocosmos or Aquaveil or Haima. It's too much.

Neuter healing, make healers into DPS with 4-5 healing actions and 4-5 support actions. It'll suddenly be 500% more engaging and you actually need to think about healing again, plus you now have a fun rotation in casual content where none of that matters.

To be fair its not that some skills should be removed but that they should be reworked into upgraded versions of earlier abilies adding more effects as you reach higher levels and engage stronger enemies. Ill give some examples for WHM where there should be some reworking.

To take Aquaveil as an example this should be an upgrade of stoneskin where the base Stoneskin merely adds a barrier Aquaveil adds a damage mitigation effect.

Medica should be just a strait upgrade to Medica 2. Same for Cure to Cure 2.

Aero III should be brought back and should be Upgraded to Dia 2 with higher potency.

Water should brought in at lower levels as an AoE version of Stone Eventually upgrading to Glare 2 (which is missing for some reason it skips to Glare III) at higher levels with Holy Changed to a burst damage ability after a certain amount of uses of Water. This would pace the stunlock better so mobs dont become immune so quickly.

Maybe add in Tornado/Flood/Quake as Special Burst Damage abilitys under certain requirements. It would work better than what we have now and make gameplay more engaging. It would also tie back into Conjurer at lower levels which has become increasingly disconnected from WHM at higher levels as the spells have been more or less replaced by light based spells.

[ZenoDiogenes]

Healers shouldn't DPS.
Tanks shouldn't heal.

[ty_taurus]

Tanks shouldn't DPS either.

[Sebazy]

Healers shouldn't DPS.

What do you propose healers do when they don't have anything to heal? Solo content/downtime/casual content etc.

[ChrysOCE]

To be fair its not that some skills should be removed but that they should be reworked into upgraded versions of earlier abilies adding more effects as you reach higher levels and engage stronger enemies. Ill give some examples for WHM where there should be some reworking.

To take Aquaveil as an example this should be an upgrade of stoneskin where the base Stoneskin merely adds a barrier Aquaveil adds a damage mitigation effect.

Medica should be just a strait upgrade to Medica 2. Same for Cure to Cure 2.

Aero III should be brought back and should be Upgraded to Dia 2 with higher potency.

Water should brought in at lower levels as an AoE version of Stone Eventually upgrading to Glare 2 (which is missing for some reason it skips to Glare III) at higher levels with Holy Changed to a burst damage ability after a certain amount of uses of Water. This would pace the stunlock better so mobs dont become immune so quickly.

Maybe add in Tornado/Flood/Quake as Special Burst Damage abilitys under certain requirements. It would work better than what we have now and make gameplay more engaging. It would also tie back into Conjurer at lower levels which has become increasingly disconnected from WHM at higher levels as the spells have been more or less replaced by light based spells.

I like your ideas, where can I sign up?

[TheDustyOne]

What do you propose healers do when they don't have anything to heal? Solo content/downtime/casual content etc.

/beesknees, /mandervilledance, and /playdead between healing moments, what else?

/s

[ThaCa]

If Healers aren't meant to DPS at least give them filler spells to repeatedly buff other players that you can spam during downtime. How big buff can you build before pressing next oGCD to ignore another raidwide?

[Connor]

If Healers aren't meant to DPS at least give them filler spells to repeatedly buff other players that you can spam during downtime. How big buff can you build before pressing next oGCD to ignore another raidwide?

I’d genuinely love this, even just for one healer. It’s a balance nightmare but plz Yoshi-P let me buff my party with gcds during downtime. Also debuffing enemies with actual gcd spells as well - honestly I don’t even mind if it doesn’t do any actual damage (though I’m aware that really wouldn’t work lol). Maybe if they made the values really low to account for always being available like Bard’s songs it wouldn’t be too impossible to balance huffs support copium

[Fyrebrand]

I just had a random idea, and it's probably really dumb, but figured I'd throw it out there. So, healers have their basic hard-cast heal spells, that under most conditions you really don't want to be casting because they're inefficient and waste time. Like Cure I, or Benefic, or Diagnosis. What if there were a way to jazz them up a bit and give them special effects, under certain conditions?

For example, for White Mage -- maybe you could have a mechanic to buff Cure I temporarily so that it increased your target ally's damage briefly. Or you could buff Cure II so that it provided a small shield or increased their max HP temporarily. Something like that, anyway. You could even make use of that awful "Freecure" trait, and say that if it procs, then Cure II also benefits from the damage buff of the enhanced Cure I.

The trigger for such enhanced effects could be something like... you have to cast them while under the effects of Presence of Mind, or you have to use Thin Air to cast them. Or it could be something that is available for a short period directly after using Assize or Afflatus Misery.

I guess the idea is, instead of them being really crappy healing spells, they could become limited-time buff spells with a heal attached. It doesn't increase button bloat, it doesn't make the job harder for players who are struggling or are playing new content. But it gives experienced players something extra to play with and think about on a quasi-regular basis.

[Niroken]

Besides the whole DPS vs Healing debate, I'm pretty sure the entire issue with healers is with each expansion is the loss of decision making. DPS benefit from maximizing their rotation, the higher the skill the better the results. Tanks how have the same thing because SE continued to push them on that path. Healing used to require a different skillset. With Cleric Stance you had to juggle between choosing optimal damage or optimal healing, you had to juggle your mp, you had to decide which heals for which party member. Now, we lost a lot of that decision making because healing was made so easy and they reduced our DPS options.