Tinfoil Hat Time! A new Lens to Look at Healer Changes!

[EaMett]

I think they're just dealing with higher expenses (servers) and deciding to spend their money in other areas of the game. They didn't make role quests instead of job quests to be user friendly, it was clearly to cut costs. They didn't solve the healer balance by thoroughly looking into the classes, they homogenized all of them instead. If you look around there are a lot of these little tidbits strewn around the place.
On the flip side the msq was super solid, thorough and had so many cutscenes. The zones are great, detailed and beautiful. The marketing was spot on and very present. The trailer was pretty crazy. Etc.
Just the woes of budgeting. Healers got the short end again, mostly because I suspect none of them play it in the first place. The absent are always wrong, and healer definitely weren't present during that meeting.

[Enla]

I think they're just dealing with higher expenses (servers) and deciding to spend their money in other areas of the game. They didn't make role quests instead of job quests to be user friendly, it was clearly to cut costs. They didn't solve the healer balance by thoroughly looking into the classes, they homogenized all of them instead. If you look around there are a lot of these little tidbits strewn around the place.
On the flip side the msq was super solid, thorough and had so many cutscenes. The zones are great, detailed and beautiful. The marketing was spot on and very present. The trailer was pretty crazy. Etc.
Just the woes of budgeting. Healers got the short end again, mostly because I suspect none of them play it in the first place. The absent are always wrong, and healer definitely weren't present during that meeting.

I desperately want someone on the development team to be a healer main. Or for them to elevate some of the top healer players as community advocates who can help brainstorm with the dev team if they want to just completely throw the problem at other people. Might be for the best at this rate honestly. The community knows this role better than the developer's do from the looks of it.

[ZaqueXIII]

I think from the lens of healing needed so far in SHB, the minor healing buff across the board and expansion of healing kit was necessary. What is disturbing about the changes to me is that SE doesnt appear trust healers enough to give them a kit to defend themselves and then make MSQ and Job quest have us fight things with our stripped and gutted kit. Its unfortunate but hopefully they will remedy it for all healers in a near future patch now that everyones healing has been brought in line. Also WHM party damage increase when? Like all they had to do was make afflatus misery a debuff and bam all the healers have a similar kit and levels of usefulness.

[Stamps]

I think from the lens of healing needed so far in SHB, the minor healing buff across the board and expansion of healing kit was necessary.

In my experience, the expanded healing kit is only necessary if you're interested in doing dps. That's the baffling bit.

In expert roulette, for example, with wall to wall pulls, I still spend ~60% of my time spamming Art of War when paired with the average tank. That's because I am utilizing our new abilities like Seraph and Recitation (and the busted new SS). But they're entirely unnecessary if my goal was to simply keep the tank alive.

It's why, SE, I am confusion. You give us all these admittedly nice healing abilities; you take away most of our damage kit; we take those new healing abilities and properly utilize them; proper utilization leads to healers DPSing for a large part of their time in group content. So we're still DPSing the same amount, healing a bit more, but are all the more bored for it because we spam 1 button.

[fogboundturtle]

In my experience, the expanded healing kit is only necessary if you're interested in doing dps. That's the baffling bit.

In expert roulette, for example, with wall to wall pulls, I still spend ~60% of my time spamming Art of War when paired with the average tank. That's because I am utilizing our new abilities like Seraph and Recitation (and the busted new SS). But they're entirely unnecessary if my goal was to simply keep the tank alive.

It's why, SE, I am confusion. You give us all these admittedly nice healing abilities; you take away most of our damage kit; we take those new healing abilities and properly utilize them; proper utilization leads to healers DPSing for a large part of their time in group content. So we're still DPSing the same amount, healing a bit more, but are all the more bored for it because we spam 1 button.

So is the solution to nerf tank so healers spend more time healing and less dpsing ?

[Ruzha]

I think they're just dealing with higher expenses (servers) and deciding to spend their money in other areas of the game. They didn't make role quests instead of job quests to be user friendly, it was clearly to cut costs. They didn't solve the healer balance by thoroughly looking into the classes, they homogenized all of them instead. If you look around there are a lot of these little tidbits strewn around the place.
On the flip side the msq was super solid, thorough and had so many cutscenes. The zones are great, detailed and beautiful. The marketing was spot on and very present. The trailer was pretty crazy. Etc.
Just the woes of budgeting. Healers got the short end again, mostly because I suspect none of them play it in the first place. The absent are always wrong, and healer definitely weren't present during that meeting.

I really doubt budget had anything to do with healers. especially since all they really did was remove things that were fun and adjusted potencies. AST was the only class they really messed around with. it feels like they cut them down so the leveling field was the same in order to build them up again in the next xpac. I feel like I am playing 2.0 healers again.

[EaMett]

I really doubt budget had anything to do with healers. especially since all they really did was remove things that were fun and adjusted potencies. AST was the only class they really messed around with. it feels like they cut them down so the leveling field was the same in order to build them up again in the next xpac. I feel like I am playing 2.0 healers again.

I mean. It's part way in your answer. Balance through homogenization is a bad design move in general (baring some types of games). It most definitely wasn't the best move they could make so it's born either from a desire to fix things quickly (less work, cheaper costs) or is the result of not understanding healers / imposing for some meta concept.

[NessaWyvern]

"Not enough people play tanks and healers, Dps Qs are too long because of it, let's make them more accessible!"
....
*people still mostly play dps anyway*
*tank and healers get bored and also play dps instead*

[SayNoToSteam]

I'm not saying drugs was involved in the healer changes but I'm thinking bath salts maybe magic mushrooms.