Would you rather healers get more complex healing kits or more complex DPS kits?

[Niroken]

The dev team clearly has more interest/knowledge regarding making damage mechanics then healing so might as well ask for something that is well in their comfort design zone.

[Mayhemmer]

I want each healer's 'gimmicks' – their 'thing' that gives them their job fantasy and central mechanic (like WHM's lilies, SCH's faerie and aetherflow, AST's cards, SGE's Kardia and addersgall/sting, etc.) – to be woven more interestingly into the rest of BOTH their healing and damage toolkits, in similar concept to many non-healer jobs. That doesn't necessarily mean to give each job more of both healing and damage tool complexity; if people prefer WHM remain the straightforward healer it is, for example, that's fine, but I do think how lilies are used should be more involved overall with the rest of their kit.

Having many tools that effect each other in a variety of ways inherently provides a deeper level of complexity than many tools that are disconnected. This is something I feel should be improved upon for jobs in general, and not just healers (to reasonable degrees between jobs, so as to provide differences in play style and skill expression for each).

How they should go about doing this...? I dunno. I'm not a developer. I'm just a player who wants jobs to be more interesting again.

[Renathras]

I dont want more complex healing, nor complex dps rota...or many buttons..
I want higher HEALING REQUIREMENTS such has:
1) Bosses deal more auto atk damage
2) Remove self healing from dps/tank
3) Raid-wide dmg happens more often
4) Random damage spikes.
5) Mech that evolve around dispelling
6) AOE DoT DMG!

I'm more or less with this. I think our kits are actually fine, the encounter designs just don't use them and other Job kits make Healers redundant in many cases. If those issues are addressed, our kits themselves will be fine because we'd be healing a lot more and using more thinking and optimization on the kits we already have. And with more GCD healing in general, the damage rotation wouldn't feel as spammy since there'd be far fewer "dead" GCDs you have to use filler in anyway.

Zeastria's post...This is the Way.

EDIT:

Well, I would upvote this a few times if I could.

As would I (I did the one time.

As long as we never have to see the abomination that was SB WHM again with that janky Lily system.

[Boblawblah]

I'm just a newbie healer, but imho, if you make the healing part of healers harder, you'll put more strain on less skilled players. More room for skill expression with dps however, and that lends itself to raising the ceiling, not forcing the floor up.

[Aravell]

Honestly speaking, I'd want neither.

I don't want to see it go too far to either side. I think SB is the closest to striking the perfect mix that the dev team should strive for:

1) A modestly complex damage and healing kit that interacts with each other
2) Fight design that pressures the healer through healing instead of dancing to mechanics
3) Resource management, party can't survive without relying on each other

While I personally greatly enjoyed the delightful mess that was HW job kits, I understand that not many would agree with me, so I think SB is the perfect middle point that everyone can meet at.

[IDontPetLalas]

Honestly speaking, I'd want neither.

I don't want to see it go too far to either side. I think SB is the closest to striking the perfect mix that the dev team should strive for:

1) A modestly complex damage and healing kit that interacts with each other
2) Fight design that pressures the healer through healing instead of dancing to mechanics
3) Resource management, party can't survive without relying on each other

While I personally greatly enjoyed the delightful mess that was HW job kits, I understand that not many would agree with me, so I think SB is the perfect middle point that everyone can meet at.

Well, I would upvote this a few times if I could.

[Vencio]

I dont want more complex healing, nor complex dps rota...or many buttons..
I want higher HEALING REQUIREMENTS such has:
1) Bosses deal more auto atk damage
2) Remove self healing from dps/tank
3) Raid-wide dmg happens more often
4) Random damage spikes.
5) Mech that evolve around dispelling
6) AOE DoT DMG!

I agreed with all of it these points except #2. (Very valid input by the way!).

I for one am content with how healer feels & favour ability pruning & less abilities as I delight more on “situational awareness” & “being in the moment” as I feel too many abilities distracts me & my immersion in the battles. So yes, no more, no less & advocate for higher healing, make us purposeful.

Now on #2 however I slightly disagree in which I believe every job should should have that fair healing survival kit momentarily (like a medic kit) & await for the healers to fully patch you again while on the other hand not making them overpowered like Warrior & couple other’s which renders healing futile (not bashing warrior directly).

[Shurrikhan]

Neither to stay / both to change.

I want higher healing requirements, but that had probably come from both among two routes: Trimming away oGCD bloat (especially the more fixed-use and/or longer among CDs) and increasing the instances of incoming damage (not likely damage per event).

But regardless, there's only so far you can take that before causing accessibility issues and that threshold might not even be sufficient --for SCH and AST, especially-- for what few attacks we have to feel well-apportioned to our opportunities to use them. As such, we should probably get a bit more by way of available downtime complexity, too. Nothing too huge, but certainly something more.

[WaxSw]

Healers can't have any meaningful growth without an increase to its dps options. Its the only part of our kit we always interact regardless of where we are from solo content to ultimates

Yes ideally a healing increase would be appreciated too but:

-That would require a heavy rework of the game
-It would increase the skill floor without increasing the skill ceiling
-It would create more party conflicts (healers that cant keep up)
-There is no sweetspot for healing (high healing requirement for a newbie are a 1 button spam boring mess for a veteran healer)
-Making healing harder leads to a drop of playerbase as shown by abyssos

[Zaniel]

Healers don't need MORE healing but there could be a lot of extra work done in the area of debuff management. Most healers in regular content seem to forget they have the Esuna skill. Perhaps a few extra Esuna style skills like a short duration Esuna-type buff skill that negates the death penalty or vuln stack. There are many other ideas. Would also allow the devs to introduce new mechanics that need to be countered by Esuna/buff/debuff mechanics rather than just HP numbers.

One aspect I would like to see more of is Mesmer/Enchanter (GW2/Everquest) type mechanics. Say for example DPS (or healing) skills that have a tiny duration (like 3s) that need to be placed on a target that reflects a small portion of the enemy's damage, a good solid hit but you need to place it on the target of the attack within a very precise window, like Prot Monk in GW1. Also possibly convert some heals into high value/very small AOEs, rather than just a monster arena blanketing AOE regen, reward the healer for well thought out placement of a 2m placement healing AOE. One of the most fun healers I ever played was the grenade user in that monster hunting game Evolve, the arcing grenades she fired had a small splash so you had to have good aiming with an arcing weapon to get your heals down but were rewarded with high potency healing.