Make healers DPS with four or five healing actions

[Sebazy]

HW broke everything.

SCH became insanely OP

Here's an old school spicy take:

SCH was always wildly OP throughout ARR, people were just blinded by Selene's seemingly huge but actually nigh useless haste buffs and didn't realise just how incredibly powerful Rouse+Whispering dawn was in enabling SCH to use it's superior MP economy for extra damage that WHM couldn't hope to compete with.

I literally sat entire instances in Cleric on SCH back in ARR because I could hammer enough HPS out of EoS and focus it where it was needed.

SCH was every bit as much of a healer as WHM was and in some cases had quite a clear advantage thanks to all the infirmity debuffs ARR used to throw around. Was it really a 'support DPS' when it was every bit as potent a healer as WHM was in reality? IMO I think it was just the superior job of the two with vastly more room for the top tier healers to really shine on it vs WHM that was forever having to pump the brakes.

The bigger problem for WHM in HW was that ARR added competition for the second slot, gone was the superstar SCH and it's mandatory comfort blanket pick up the pieces, now WHM actually had to earn it's raid spot and it was only a matter of time before it basically defaulted on that. Couple that with SE's then complete ignorance and lack of understanding towards healers back then and it was never going to go well IMO. SE just really didn't understand healers properly at that point.

Is that necessarily better, though? Granted, that may be an unnecessary extreme, but I much prefer when you actually can flex roles somewhat.

Aye, FFXI took it to too much of an extreme really. Having to sit in Jeuno because you didn't have the buffer necessary to enable your DPS to actually hit your target mobs was a prime example of things being taken too far.

WoW and Everquest 1 struck the balance just about right IMO. You could do group content whilst missing a part of the team but it was typically clearly subpar and a hinderance to do so.