Dear SE, I am a Healer

[Nujana]

This whole dicussion is going in circles right now, because there are different viewpoints and opinions on the whole role distribution and honestly that is fine.

But I do think there is one thing we all can agree on:
The way they handled the whole thing was (to word it nicely) suboptimal to say the least...

I really think, if they just gave us healers some kind of recognition or explained some of their plans for the healing jobs at fan fest a lot of the backlash would have been avoided. They did give us the reason for no tank/heal in 4.0 and that was fine for most of us. They did not deliver on it and to give the exact same reason now is just disappointing.
All we got was some vague stuff from interviews, with one of this being "we want to make WHM easier". That does NOT exacly give the healing community any hope for them understanding the problem with healers at all.

Right now we can only speculate what will happen with healers in 5.0. It could be an amazing rework - it could also be 4.0 all over again (this is what I fear most). We have no way of knowing and obviously many healers (me included) don't have much hope for real changes.This could have been avoided by them just giving at least some info on their plans.

[Metsonm]

Yoshi did mention in, I think, the Mr Happy interview that going forward they might announce the roles first and then the specific jobs at a later date after talking about the healer expectation.

[Maero]

I agree what others have said, split or not the fact is their is plenty of dps and a new one could have waited until 6.0
No amount of "fixing" will supposedly balance out the healers and just you watch when 6.0 comes and it will be just dps added.
Threads will be made, dps will argue that another whatever dps slot was needed, etc...

[Thoosa]

Hi, so I main Warrior but feel I’m fairly competent healing (done Alphascape 1 and 2 with White Mage and Astro, plus half of o11s with those healers too).

I was a bit disappointed that dancer isn’t a healer but after thinking about it I think there are a couple of things that need looking at before they add another healer.

It seems to me that SE don’t have a proper identity for healing, like are healers DPS with healing abilities or are they a class of their own? Most of the content I’ve done (dungeons, trials, raids, savage raids) have all had parts in the fights that have required quick healing but then most of the the rest of the time of the fight I’m just dishing out dps.

Also it seems that shields are so strong that you don’t need massive heals like cure 3 or even benediction, since the shield will absorb the hit and give you time to just cure 2 the person, and even making aoe heals that much less urgent.

SE seem to cover this up (lack of required healing in savage fights) by creating one-death mistake mechanics.

I don’t know how balancing the healers will solve the issue, shouldn’t they be adjusting the content to make it so that healing is required much more often and make the damage sufficiently strong so that shields and heals are both required? Or should they just give dps more healing ability and remove the healer role?

[OcieKo]

Also it seems that shields are so strong that you don’t need massive heals like cure 3 or even benediction, since the shield will absorb the hit and give you time to just cure 2 the person, and even making aoe heals that much less urgent.

SE seem to cover this up (lack of required healing in savage fights) by creating one-death mistake mechanics.

I don’t know how balancing the healers will solve the issue, shouldn’t they be adjusting the content to make it so that healing is required much more often and make the damage sufficiently strong so that shields and heals are both required? Or should they just give dps more healing ability and remove the healer role?

/applause

That nail has a massive headache now. Tanking and Healing are both suffering more from encounter design than they are from class design.

[Enla]

Hi, so I main Warrior but feel I’m fairly competent healing (done Alphascape 1 and 2 with White Mage and Astro, plus half of o11s with those healers too).

I was a bit disappointed that dancer isn’t a healer but after thinking about it I think there are a couple of things that need looking at before they add another healer.

It seems to me that SE don’t have a proper identity for healing, like are healers DPS with healing abilities or are they a class of their own? Most of the content I’ve done (dungeons, trials, raids, savage raids) have all had parts in the fights that have required quick healing but then most of the the rest of the time of the fight I’m just dishing out dps.

Also it seems that shields are so strong that you don’t need massive heals like cure 3 or even benediction, since the shield will absorb the hit and give you time to just cure 2 the person, and even making aoe heals that much less urgent.

SE seem to cover this up (lack of required healing in savage fights) by creating one-death mistake mechanics.

I don’t know how balancing the healers will solve the issue, shouldn’t they be adjusting the content to make it so that healing is required much more often and make the damage sufficiently strong so that shields and heals are both required? Or should they just give dps more healing ability and remove the healer role?

I'm a SCH main but I think you hit the nail on the head. Half the problem isn't just the design of the classes but all the design of healing itself in this game. I can legit go through most content as a SCH and DPS 80% of the time. (Crit Adlo + Excog is no joke) With WHM I can go about 60% of the time if only because most of their spells have casting times. (I dislike AST so I haven't touched it since getting it to 70, but I'd imagine the numbers are about similar because they certainly were while leveling it.) Then I just go right back to a DPS rotation that consists of 1-4 buttons and snore my way through the instance. Healing is a joke in most of this game and in a game where healing isn't all that strenuous, it makes sense that a pure healing class like WHM would be disadvantaged and SCH constantly made to sit at No.1. It's not because it's a better class, though SE did over buff it in an attempt to fix the 4.0 disaster, but rather that WHM and AST to a lesser extent severely overheal what healing there even needs to be done.

[FeliAiko]

Making encounters harder is almost pointless when this game's general playerbase is the way it is. Look at the reaction Shinryu NORMAL had on release, and it's no surprise why SE makes challenging encounters a niche instead of a cornerstone of content.

[RukiaFae]

Since it's been established that healers have the right to be upset at how they handled healers over the last few years, maybe we should try to keep the thread on the topic of constructive feedback. Maybe we should all work together to discuss the core issues with healers and make suggestions. If we provide constructive feedback maybe we will be pleasantly surprised in May.

We can't control what company decides to do but we can control how we act. If we try to work together and fix the problem, then we will know that as a community at least we did our part.

[Campi]

I think a big Problem is the Skill Lvl of the Playerbase.
While good Players heal every Content easily with barely using GCDs on healing spells, other Healers struggle rly hard and can't heal enough in the same content.

So it's a bit hard for SE to make Content "healing intense" when 97% of the Healers wouldn't be able to clear it.
Think about o12s or the Ultimates.
Must of the healing can be done by only using the oGCDs and some GCDs here and there. But who can rly do that?


So i think it's a good choice of SE try to overthink how healers should work in this game.
It would be good for everyone, if SE can make the gap between good and bad players smaller, before the add a new healer.

[BroodingFicus]

I think a big Problem is the Skill Lvl of the Playerbase.
While good Players heal every Content easily with barely using GCDs on healing spells, other Healers struggle rly hard and can't heal enough in the same content.

So it's a bit hard for SE to make Content "healing intense" when 97% of the Healers wouldn't be able to clear it.
Think about o12s or the Ultimates.
Must of the healing can be done by only using the oGCDs and some GCDs here and there. But who can rly do that?


So i think it's a good choice of SE try to overthink how healers should work in this game.
It would be good for everyone, if SE can make the gap between good and bad players smaller, before the add a new healer.

While there is sure to be a difference between a 'good player' and a 'bad player' in any role, I wouldn't want them ever basing changes to those classes of the latter end of the spectrum. Especially with healers. Mechanically, they're not difficult to operate. Some like AST have a little more juggling to do if they're going to keep their buffs going and heal but none of them require super tight rotations. Most of their difficulty comes from knowing fights, acting fast, and anticipating incoming damage or mistakes.Its less about a sequence of buttons and more about knowing what tools you have in any given situation to right it should things go sideways. It's what I love about being a healer and a WHM: bringing things back from the brink. That is my reward for playing in the same way big numbers or things dying faster serve as a reward for DPS players. If they make it so a poor player can do nearly the same thing as a good one...where is the satisfaction of playing that role any longer? It would be like if they said they were going to make it so a bad dps who fumbled their rotations and a good dps who did their perfectly did essentially the same damage anyway. Why should any player try to be good then if the reward isn't there and you can get the same result by being sub-par?

I think this is why people, myself included, are worried about the comments of making WHM 'easier'. It's mechanically already the most straight forward of the three mostly straight forward healers. I don't want to see it stripped back to nothing just so it can have training wheels attached that make poor players feel more like good players. Are there things that need fixing? For sure. Lillies need to go or be redone, I'd like to see something added that gives me something to do when people aren't messing up and healing requirements are low other than spamming Stone, I'd like better cast animations that feel equal to what they give the other healers, I'd like a niche of our own outside 'pure healer' which doesn't work from a balance perspective, and yes I would like to see some fights that are more challenging from a healing perspective. If anything I want a little more nuance and complexity, not to be made easier.