If Healers had Tank rotations, what would they be?

[GrimGale]

I feel like FFXIV had carved a niche into a type of healing gameplay that tried to embrace the interesting balancing act of keeping your party alive and dealing damage- Something that is still true in this version of the game.

WoW comparatively expect less dps output and more support in the form of constant healing or crowd control out of their healers. I feel like that has always been the case for WoW: A focus on triage and healthbar whacking.

FFXIV on the other hand seemed to initially focus on resource management (which included Cleric Stance dancing and DoT upkeep when MP allowed), then after SB it lessened the pressure on healing, naturally allowing DPS to play a more common part in healer gameplay. To that effect, they simplified the DPS tools so that the DPS part would require less effort to maintain-

Ironically, WoW gives its healers more varied/interesting DPS tools and expects them to heal more.

[ForsakenRoe]

It was supposed to be a humorous over exaggeration, not a statement of what people are actually doing. I probably should’ve put at an /s or something.

So instead we’ll end up with bloated dps kits and a small selection of basic heals, in like a complete inversion of what we have now lol.

Ah my bad, it can be hard to infer sarcasm through text sometimes and doubly so for someone like me

On the one hand, it wouldn't surprise me if the devs did kneejerk super hard in most situations. On the other hand, this is healers we are on about, so I'd expect they'd take the absolute babiest of baby steps, and when the feedback comes in that 'you didn't do enough' (because they played so safe with it) they just give up and go 'well we tried and they still complained so F them, they don't know what they want'

WoW comparatively expect less dps output and more support in the form of constant healing or crowd control out of their healers. I feel like that has always been the case for WoW: A focus on triage and healthbar whacking.

Ironically, WoW gives its healers more varied/interesting DPS tools and expects them to heal more.

Since the addition of M+, an infinitely scaling gamemode with a hard timer on it's success/fail condition, healers doing damage has been pushed to the forefront there too. Whether it's Holy Priest using Smite, Mindblast and SW:P, to Holy Paladin or MW Monk using melee attacks to gain resources for healing tools/applying HOTs respectively, every healer in WOW now has a focus on dealing damage. The difference is, where we have healers that deal about 50-60% of the damage of a DPS class, WOW has their healers dealing about 25%. There was a time when Holy Paladin was dealing 50% of a DPS's output because of a specific skill, and the general consensus iirc was not really 'nerf HPal', moreso 'HPal is cracked, can the other healers get something as impactful as what they have'

And yet, despite all of that, healers in WOW still have to heal more, and that's fine. Why? Because the healer player knows, in Mythic+ dungeons or Mythic Raid, that if they're not safe to deal damage and need to cast a heal instead, that they should cast that heal. The overly accessible nature of our OGCDs means that people have grown accustomed to 'not having to heal' with GCDs. But I think that trying to change that, at this point in the game's lifespan, is just going to cause backlash. The removal of Energy Drain tells me that people won't want to adapt. So instead, I'd rather SE focus their time on making ways to gain 'healing' in a more interlinked way from the rest of the kit. Something like the 'deal damage, build gauge' idea, or making SGE an actual 'Disc Priest' style healer, where the gameplay is focused on augmenting Kardia to have other effects, Soteria's a good start but it's too inaccessible (90s CD, 4 hits). So I'd like to see it as like, Soteria has a 5s CD but costs MP (and there's some other augmentation effects, I'd nominate Krasis, Soteria, Zoe, PanKardia to make it AOE, and a reworked Toxikon), so mana management is the name of the game for the class. If the optimization of that 'Kardia healing' is complex enough, SE might not even need to add extra damage buttons on SGE. And the basic garbage GCDs like Prognosis can remain, and be zero MP cost, as a 'failsafe' to prevent less-well-practiced players from having zero options if they make mistakes (due to lack of practice, stress and misplaying, etc)

Finally, there's a seasonal Classic WoW thing coming, where Blizzard will add some new 'Runes' to classes to allow for new playstyles. Like a Shaman Tank stance, Rogue Tank stance, Warlocks getting Metamorphosis so they can tank too, but the healer runes are interesting to me. Namely, Arcane Mage will be able to heal with a 3s channel that puts a 30s not-Kardia on the ally, which then transfers 100% of the Arcane damage you deal as healing. Yes, dealing damage to heal, in Vanilla format. Also a Druid rune that makes Wrath (their Glare) cost 0 mana, and have a chance to make Healing Touch (their Cure1/Cure2 depending on spell rank) instantcast (usually it has a cast time of anywhere from 1.5s to 3.5s depending on rank). Seems to me like they want to give options for healers to have something to do besides standing around and waiting for MP5 ticks, especially that Wrath one, since MP regen starts after 5s of not spending mana, casting a free spell doesn't interrupt it. Oh, and Holy Paladin can choose Crusader Strike, and using it will restore 2% MP (not that Vanilla HPal really needed MP help), or Divine Storm which heals 3 allies for 25% of the damage it deals (giving Vanilla HPal an actual AOE healing option in a roundabout way). Everyone's probably just gonna run Beacon of Light though