Changing the Two-Healer Dynamic

[Asuras]

I am sure many of you have been asked this familiar question by your co-healer a in raid setting: "Do you want to solo heal so I can DPS?" Of course, when it is simply the matter of solo-healing one or two phases, it's not so bad. However, when they are asking you to solo heal the whole fight, then it gets to be a nail-biter at times. I am sure that many healers would not mind solo-healing in 8-mans; many probably already do (sometimes unintentionally). In fact, I've met several healers with the whole "I'm your rock" mentality that would prefer to be THE healer.

This puts into question the whole two-healer dynamic; it's probably too late to change it as all the fights kind of revolve around it. However, here are my ideas:

• Nerf Cleric Stance
• Introduce a true DPS healer

The DPS healer will have roughly 80 to 85 percent of a true DPS's output and will not scale as well with gear; the DPS healer will have weak heals that can solo heal 4-man content but not 8-mans. In addition, the DPS healer will have abilities that will augment the primary healer's healing output to allow him/her to more easily solo-heal (i.e. an ability that increases the other healer's healing by 20-30%).

This type of job would probably be my dream co-healer and a job that I wouldn't mind playing from time to time.

[Ragology]

So the co healer becomes a player-controlled Fairy?

[FoxyAreku]

The DPS healer will have roughly 80 to 85 percent of a true DPS's output and will not scale as well with gear; the DPS healer will have weak heals that can solo heal 4-man content but not 8-mans. In addition, the DPS healer will have abilities that will augment the primary healer's healing output to allow him/her to more easily solo-heal (i.e. an ability that increases the other healer's healing by 20-30%).

You realize you've basically described a DPSing Scholar that uses Eos, right?

Like...exactly.

[_slowpoke_]

Uh, what the hell is the problem with solo-healing? It usually just means you out-skill and/or out-gear an encounter, and honestly it's great to have all that responsibility, I often offer to solo heal large parts of a fight (and still find time to spend in Cleric) because I enjoy doing that. I also don't know why your solution to this includes nerfing Cleric. If a healer can truly solo-heal a fight, you don't bring another healer in Cleric, you bring an actual DPS job. Otherwise it's just the regular main/off healer dynamic that this game has had since quite a while now, and which is something I really enjoy about it.

Also, as others have pointed out, your "DPS healer" is literally a description of how a (good) SCH plays. If anything, the game needs another off healer to compete with SCH (and it better be DNC!), since WHM and AST - in both sects - are primarily designed as main healers and don't really compete with SCH for a raid slot.

[Tint]

Uh, what the hell is the problem with solo-healing? It usually just means you out-skill and/or out-gear an encounter

the problem is it is bad content design. solo heal is okay for old, outdatet content. but people solo heal alex savage and thordan ex. just imagine 2 DDs would be enough for cleareing the top tier raid while it is still relevant. awesome dps check, right?

If your SCH is asking you to solo-heal an entire fight why wouldn't you tell them to put their money where their mouth is and just go SMN for the fight? :3

i have seen so many scholar who are just really really bad. most scholar are not able to heal properly. they just hide behind cleric stance and let the other healer do the work. it seems many people play the scholar just because it's an easy 4 button DD and if you mess up who cares? your damage is just a bonus, it's the fault of the actual DDs if you fail the dps check xP too bad the game allows them to just being carried >.>

[Veve]

i have seen so many scholar who are just really really bad. most scholar are not able to heal properly. they just hide behind cleric stance and let the other healer do the work. it seems many people play the scholar just because it's an easy 4 button DD and if you mess up who cares? your damage is just a bonus, it's the fault of the actual DDs if you fail the dps check xP too bad the game allows them to just being carried >.>

I main SCH and have actually prevented my raid team from wiping more times than I can remember, so your statement that 'most scholars are not able to heal properly' sounds to me like you just haven't met the right scholars. Assuming that people who play SCH just want to get carried is a rather childish and naive opinion.

[_slowpoke_]

the problem is it is bad content design. solo heal is okay for old, outdatet content. but people solo heal alex savage and thordan ex.

The content is actually rather well designed for the main/off-healer dynamic, with regular damage that a WHM and AST can mostly solo-heal and heavy spike damage that (usually) needs a SCH to mitigate. The fact that you can - through very good planning, extremely well coordinated play, and some unconventional tactics (like using the Tank LB to survive Thordan's Ultimate without shields) - solo heal current content is not a testament to bad encounter design, but to extremely high player skill. Additionally, many fights are designed in a way that damage starts to rack up as the fight drags on, so you'll increasingly need your co-healer. Again, Thordan is a great example, and a major reason people can even solo-heal those fights is because they have enough DPS to skip phases at the end (everything from phase 8 onwards is almost impossible to solo-heal).

just imagine 2 DDs would be enough for cleareing the top tier raid while it is still relevant. awesome dps check, right?

That's not a valid comparison, though. Healing is not (primarily) a numbers game, like DPS is (not trivializing the jobs, but this is how the result is measured). Healing, at least in this game, is way more oriented towards knowing fights and planning appropriately than it is towards raw HPS or any other well-measurable numbers. There are very, very few situations in the game where you need constant, heavy healing to stay alive if you're planning appropriately.

i have seen so many scholar who are just really really bad. most scholar are not able to heal properly. they just hide behind cleric stance and let the other healer do the work. it seems many people play the scholar just because it's an easy 4 button DD and if you mess up who cares? your damage is just a bonus, it's the fault of the actual DDs if you fail the dps check xP too bad the game allows them to just being carried >.>

It seems to me like you just have a fundamental misunderstanding about how SCH works. Good SCHs will spend 50-80% of a fight in Cleric Stance, and that's perfectly okay. Again, they are mostly needed when heavy spike damage happens that must be shielded through, or during split damage situations which are difficult (though not impossible) to solo heal (Preys + Tankbusters in A1S, or the two knights phase in Thordan, for instance). Plus, a SCH contributes healing through their fairy (which they usually have to micromanage to be 100% effective), and can provide mitigation without ever leaving Cleric (Sacred Soil, E4E, Virus). As a main healer, you *will* notice a missing SCH, even if they spend most of the fight in Cleric.

Nop... A SCH is much more than being a LAZY healer XD (that's the whm job)

You can play a WHM as lazily as you can play a SCH, or you can maximize its potential - which is different from maximizing the potential of a SCH, but IMO equally as challenging. The one thing I would agree on is that the skill floor for a WHM is lower, it's easier to be mediocre at the job than it is to be mediocre as a SCH.

[Syzygian]

If your SCH is asking you to solo-heal an entire fight why wouldn't you tell them to put their money where their mouth is and just go SMN for the fight? :3

[Nekotee]

If your SCH is asking you to solo-heal an entire fight why wouldn't you tell them to put their money where their mouth is and just go SMN for the fight? :3

Maybe because those "oh so glorious" elite whm are simply so bad in mitigation and shielding and need help XP
SCH can ease many damage and be a great help with the fairy who act as a permanent random tick regen

Run a Thordan EX with 2 whm...
You better have a huge DPS and a paladin to make up the no shield situation

And on A2S
Most team are happy to have a DPS SCH than can compete with DPS and greatly help to down some pack.

[Harrycanis]

I think the classes are fine, and cleric is fine, but I do feel that the content could be better tailored toward this main and off healer dynamic.

I main SCH and for instance, Turn 12 of Coil, this fight was ( and likely still is ) my favourite fight as a healer. It promotes team work, it allows the off healer to dps but also still actually heal, where as a lot of current content I feel I'm just present to mitigate the big aoe hits like cascade that could kill the team otherwise, and then I'm back into dps mode.

I understand your issue, but I personally believe it is simply a problem with the 3.0 - 3.1 content. And I do believe going ahead, we will see more of how healing was during the coils, where the off healer had a much stronger presence on the healing front. And with less time to dps, AST's viability for the off healer position is slightly raised. AST still needs tweaking to compete, but I believe we will see more AST's in both main and off heal position in 3.2 and onwards.