We can have a 4th healer and have balance between all of them.

[YusiKha]

It’s not mutually exclusive, but time and time again I see people saying that they want our 3 balanced before a 4th.

[Billythepancake]

To me, its not about balance, it's more about the fact that they attempted to achieve balance by gutting all the healers of what made them fun and unique. I don't want a 4th healer, not for balance's sake, but because they can't make the 3 we have fun and unique. Why would I want a 4th WHM with a small gimmick that barely distinguishes itself from the other 3?

[Hatstand]

What’s more, if the process of gaining a new healer becomes entwined with the process of gutting the existing healers (as this gutting is somewhat connected with the preparation for a fourth healer, given that they told us they were focusing in healer balance before giving us a new one) then getting a new healer becomes a bad thing. I want a new healer. I just want our old healers to be fun again first. SE broke healing. Their first priority should be fixing it. (I understand that they have other priorities, but it should definitely be up there).

[YusiKha]

There is no reason that they can’t make the 3 fun and add a 4th. I understand what you’re getting at, but making 1 additional engaging healer play style isn’t an insurmountable task.

[Hatstand]

There is no reason that they can’t make the 3 fun and add a 4th. I understand what you’re getting at, but making 1 additional engaging healer play style isn’t an insurmountable task.

I absolutely agree with this. I just think making ALL healers fun is more important than having more healers, and any request for more healers should be prefaced with “and fix the existing ones, and if you can only do one or the other, fix the existing ones”. Given the lack of effort that SE seems to have put into healers this expansion I feel a bit paranoid that if we ask for a new healer they’ll just do that because they don’t think they’ve done anything wrong or they won’t admit that they’ve done anything wrong and have no real interest in making our lives better if they can get away with not doing it.

[Ulelu]

To me, its not about balance, it's more about the fact that they attempted to achieve balance by gutting all the healers of what made them fun and unique. I don't want a 4th healer, not for balance's sake, but because they can't make the 3 we have fun and unique. Why would I want a 4th WHM with a small gimmick that barely distinguishes itself from the other 3?

Mirroring what Billy has said in bold, and also mirroring what OP has said in regards to seeing people time and time again stating they don't want a new healer until the other three are balanced - I also see time and time again people that want a fourth healer, but for what? This again leads into what Billy has said in terms of it being another WHM, one filler spell, one dot etc etc and then a neat little gimmick.

Healers as a whole need to be made fun whilst being balanced, which in itself is a balance that the devs can't seem the achieve, I don't want another fun and unique job to be compromised just as AST and SCH have this expansion simply for the brief period of ecstasy that a fourth healer would bring.

[Connor]

Not gonna lie, I have little faith that a new healer will be different from the other three.

I feel like it’ll just follow the same stale conveyor belt of ‘spam dps’ - ‘use oGCD’ - ‘spam DPS’ - ‘use another oGCD’, repeat ad infinitum. DPS will be one filler, one DoT and one AoE, it will have at least one oGCD that deals damage, and the healing kit can mostly be ignored bar the one Super Strong Instant Cast oGCD that probably relates to job gauge, which is strong enough that the job gauge doesn’t act as a restriction and you can do 80-90% of your healing with it. If the tank ever does get low HP. it’ll have ‘Long cooldown healing boost’ ability on a 120 second cooldown, but your healing is already so powerful you don’t technically need it.

Only alternative I can think of is they’ll release a new healer that’s entirely DPS oriented. So, no/minimal GCD heals, majority of GCD abilities are dedicated damage, oGCDs are all healing, job gauge turns DPS into healing or vice-versa. It will be a guaranteed raid spot in every composition, which the developers will react to by buffing it each patch. Which is pretty much how all three healers play now anyway though, so it’d still just be more of the same.

Addendum: I didn’t even mean to but I basically described pre-5.0 Scholar in last paragraph, except it still followed the healer standard toolkit

[Duskane]

There is no reason that they can’t make the 3 fun and add a 4th. I understand what you’re getting at, but making 1 additional engaging healer play style isn’t an insurmountable task.

there reason was they wanted to fix the other three before adding a new one so there was a reason

[Sloprano]

I know SE is capable of making healers, all jobs even, that has unique playstyles and their own theme and asthetic in Heavensward. But I can't shake the feeling some priorities got lost in the 4.0 and 5.0 patch and I hope we soon get to know more what reasoning went into it. Would want them to make the existing healers good to play and appeal to different playstyles first, then challenge themselves to make something completely different as a 4th Healer entry.

[Saefinn]

There is no reason that they can’t make the 3 fun and add a 4th. I understand what you’re getting at, but making 1 additional engaging healer play style isn’t an insurmountable task.

I wholeheartedly agree and I hope they do this.

But I'd rather they get the healer's right and have a direction that both works and keeps people relatively happy before they add another because otherwise it'd encounter the same issues.