I hate to, but I think I put down healing for now. Please make it engaging again, SE.

[Punslinger]

If you follow the trail of discussion you'll find my first post, in which I say that this will always be a problem so long as encounters are scripted. And that this is a problem for every job. I'll repeat myself, but - the fights are not designed to be fun forever and certainly not when you are overgeared/have 20 clears experience. This is true for every single job.

Do you know what going through Titan is like for a DPS player? It's 3 minutes of trying to fit the predefined rotation (stored in muscle memory) that you've been doing for weeks while making minor adjustments, followed by 9 minutes of a dummy fight with minimal movement.

You're not wrong, but my point is that healers hit this wall much faster than tanks or DPSers, because healers have fewer ways to optimize their play. As the group becomes more skilled, whether you're in a static or just enjoying the average improvement over time in the PF pool, less healing is required. A healer can fill that downtime by doing DPS, but it's trivially easy for a healer to maximize their DPS, because all that's required is to press 1 until the boss dies, and press 2 every half-minute. Tanks and DPSers can practice higher-uptime strats, or iron out the slop in their rotation during mechanics. There's more headroom for a tank or DPSer to improve their play in any given fight, compared to a healer, and that's why I find healing unengaging.

Simply put: any given piece of content stays fun, for me, for longer if I play it as a tank or a DPS job.

[Sloprano]

If you follow the trail of discussion you'll find my first post, in which I say that this will always be a problem so long as encounters are scripted. And that this is a problem for every job. I'll repeat myself, but - the fights are not designed to be fun forever and certainly not when you are overgeared/have 20 clears experience. This is true for every single job.

This is the crux of my issues aswell: Dungeons are as scripted as they've always been, but our skillset's potential has gone down. Before, after I had healed and shielded there was another world of oppertunities waiting on me, today I heal and shield and only thing left to do is Broil III.

The strength of a scripted sequence is that you can take every chance to improve, if you want to. That's why in my first run of Wanderer's Palace I was at the edge of my seat, finger ready over Adlo, Lustrate and the fairy hotbar for the slighest new dent in the tank's hp. By the twentieth I was sprinting with the tank, seeing if I ccould apply all dots while pulling, when to cast Shadowflare or prevent aero from dropping off the boss and stilling finding new openings where it was safe enough to Cleric Stance.

And the good thing is: If I didn't find Scholar interesting beyond healing and shielding, I could still run those places successfully. It's not like a DPS job, it's exactly the same for different reasons: I kept getting more and more active because the job would let me get more and more out of it for each run.

I keep bringing up Arcanist skills, fairy hotbar and Cleric Stance, not entirely because, if just very partially, for nostalgia, but also because I've come to dread the expansions. Instead of being filled with wonder of what kind of interesting new spells like Emergency/Deployment or Dissipation they will reveal or start a expansion Live Letter "Hey Scholars, we're sorry to say we're removing X for x.0 after being in the game for six years, but oh boy! Are we excited about these new things you're gonna get!", they've instead proven two times in a row an expansion is a harbinger for removing choices, backtrack on what they removed, introduce more oGCDs and buff Broil.

[Saefinn]

You're missing the point or the context. I'm not saying that's all we do, I'm saying the opposite.

Comparing DPS rotation vs Broil/Biolysis in any of the contexts he mentioned completely ignores the healing part of playing healer.

This shows me that you're all hyper-aware of your Broil/Biolysis, so much that you forget that healing is still a significant part you have to think about. Healing is unique in its own way, because it's the collective effort of two healers. Meanwhile, playing DPS is a predominantly individual pursuit.

I don't know why you all choose to bring up so many flawed analogies. Your TP analogy fails because it's nothing like healing. Healing is single target, aoe, affected by mechanics, affected by other players and has much more severe consequences when you fail. TP management is completely individual.

I could point out some problems with your 30-70% split, but this all drifts away from my original point.

The point of the analogy is that if you're doing 1 thing over and over for the larger part of the role then do something else for a smaller part of the role is boring. The TP thing was completely arbitrary and not to reflect like for like healing and something DPS do.

The point being if I'm not healing for a large portion for the content I'm doing then it feels like I'm doing nothing. So in the case of my analogy a large portion of what the DPS is doing doesn't feel like you're doing much.

If it felt like DPS was very minor and secondary to my role, that'd not be so bad. But the downtime we get a for an awful lot of content means it can feel the healing part is secondary, when it shouldn't. If it felt like healing was more significant then I would be more inclined to agree.

The 70% in cases is on the high end of the scale. 30% is the lowest I've tested for so far. Either way it's a big chunk where it feels like you're not really doing anything.


There are options. And we've been asking for the simplest solution with the least impact to the status quo. Accept downtime is a thing and fill it with more to do.

If I got my own way, I'd be healing a lot more, but the above to me is the fairest compromise.

[Saefinn]

I suppose the question should be asked, Laria, why do /you/ think healers like myself, Billy, Sloprano, Forte and all of the regular complainers here, are unhappy?

Re-reading your post. I feel, honestly, yes you are absolutely right there is a lot more to healing jobs than just a handful of DPS moves. And yes, our focus seems to detract from a whole plethora of skills we do have. And you hold issue with the 70% I gave (which I used after somebody else did), yet for some content, that seems perfectly plausible to me. Given my own figures on SB and ShB content has been 30-60% (I think I posted the exact runs in an older thread, the 30% was a dungeon with a medium-to-full tank pull) and I sincerely expect there are better healers here than I, because it has been a long time since I really did any high-end raids as I'm mostly a casual player these days, so I think 70% is not necessarily insane, even if at the higher end of the scale.

And when I started this game, the way it was designed and how it worked with healers meant I healed more, whilst simulatenously having the most complicated version of healer DPS in this game (as a SCH at least). Back then it mattered less that I DPS'd too (in fact, I was told off a few times for it) because my healing was busy enough and the downtime wasn't long enough to find it dull if I didn't bother DPSing all the time. This was also a time when I was a raider and the balance between DPS and heals was never really an issue.

So I think if we're complaining that our DPS is too boring. I feel the question should be asked, "how much time is needed spent healing for them to feel that way?" I've seen plenty of arguments about accessibility for healers, and if say, I got my way, healers would be more complicated than they are and might be less accessible to somebody who is new, less experienced or have some sort of handicap. Although my argument would be to offer more to help them along the way, I realise my way might not work for as many, hence my willingness to meet somewhere in the middle. And taking the assumption that this is the direction SE want to take to make things more accessible, then what us moaners have asked for if anything is quite reasonable and quite fair, because what I tend to see people ask for is a varied DPS rotation or more to do in our downtime. This approach impacts nothing about how accessible the jobs are, it doesn't impact how they feel to heal or any of the healing mechanics in the game, no content needs to be adjusted, those who're finding it harder to keep up will not be impacted and so on. The only people who'd be impacted are those who have the downtime to DPS and those who believe in green DPS, which for the majority of content is not that important to have optimised DPS, and for the content where it is important, they're going to be at a level where they can handle it.

[vtndll]

It might just be me but I enjoyed being able to cast miasma,II,& III, being able to bane it to the whole group, then throwing shadowflare on the ground. Or in the case of one target switching fester with bane.

Now it's just run like a mad man into melee range and spam art of war while trying to dodge AoEs on the ground. Or single target casting miasma every 30 seconds then spamming broil.

Well I guess a good thing that comes out of the changes making healing braindea- I mean "streamlined" I can catchup on all my favorite shows on popular streaming services like Netflix or Disney's new Disney+™ while running dungeons, raids, and/or trials!

[Maltothoris]

On a side note, you can't really solo heal TEA because healers are the only class that can esuna on demand with the BRD being on a cd. You have to clean 6 debuffs in 10 seconds, at most a single healer can only get 4 cleanses. Not to mention the auto attack damage during that bit. And there are some really tight heal checks here, with the nisi dot ticking while photon goes out, the autos from Brute Justice and Cruise Chaser and the fact if one person dies everything can easily snowball from there so I'll say that this fight can't be solo healed.

On that note, while the heal is intensive here, it's a shame it isn't anywhere else.

[GhostXO]

I keep bringing up Arcanist skills, fairy hotbar and Cleric Stance, not entirely because, if just very partially, for nostalgia, but also because I've come to dread the expansions. Instead of being filled with wonder of what kind of interesting new spells like Emergency/Deployment or Dissipation they will reveal or start a expansion Live Letter "Hey Scholars, we're sorry to say we're removing X for x.0 after being in the game for six years, but oh boy! Are we excited about these new things you're gonna get!", they've instead proven two times in a row an expansion is a harbinger for removing choices, backtrack on what they removed, introduce more oGCDs and buff Broil.

This really resonates with me, because while my friends (who play dps and tanks) were all very happy and excited for the expansion, I was very much dreading it because I knew what made Scholar fun for me would be lost once the expansion hit. Sure enough too, I hate what they did with the job. I absolutely loved Scholar too. I loved doing all content with it and it made me love the game so much more. I miss old Scholar a lot now and I only just dread updates now because I have no faith in the development team making these changes.

[Lodi]

Since we're talking about removed spells, Aero III. A new dot, great for si gle targets and groups alike, 24s long so it's not hard to maintain, and it also works as a cheap aoe since Holy burned through your mp in seconds. A cool spell that nobody had any reason to dislike, and it's been there unchanged for four years.

And now it's gone, haha! Zoop! Bye! Now Aero II is stronger instead!


Just... why, Square? What was the point? Was healing so hard that people physically couldn't click another button every 24 seconds? Give us damage CDs and put a bigger emphasis on gcd healing, if you are afraid of us healing too little. And if you're gonna remove useless and niche skills, then maybe take a look at Fluid aura or Cure III first, instead of one of our most used spells? Or why not rework Cure so it's more useful in the later levels? Please?

The current state of healers makes no sense.
We deal more damage than ever, healing is the easiest it has ever been, but our dps is so boring and discouraging us to be involved in our figths.
What are we supposed to do?
Healing all the time? Then why can we get away with so much dps?
Dpsing all the time? Then why was it made so boring and uninspired?
Somewhere between the two? Then why do we have several times more damage skills than healing skills?

I just don't know what Square wants us to be, and the deafening lack of communication from them just makes having faith a harder task.

[Crushnight]

Since we're talking about removed spells, Aero III. A new dot, great for si gle targets and groups alike, 24s long so it's not hard to maintain, and it also works as a cheap aoe since Holy burned through your mp in seconds. A cool spell that nobody had any reason to dislike, and it's been there unchanged for four years.

And now it's gone, haha! Zoop! Bye! Now Aero II is stronger instead!


Just... why, Square? What was the point? Was healing so hard that people physically couldn't click another button every 24 seconds?

Given what happened between HW to SB especially AST but it affected all 3, yes having more than 1 DoT is way too hard we need consolidation everywhere wah wah wah /s

AST from inception had a much easier time with DoT management than WHM and SCH with only having 2 yet even this was cut in SB, i could get behind stuff like malefic/malefic II being consolidated as you just used the most powerful one for your level but DoTs were entirely separate and added a tiny fraction of extra complexity (Do i have time to spend multiple gcds to maintain DoTs, can i afford to DoT at this time for each different DoT duration etc).

But SE don't want to embrace their own encounter design and how the community sees healers being more than healers, no doubt the only reason dps spells exist is because you need to kill things in msq if you didn't i could see them getting rid of everything altogether :/

[EwokAssassini]

This really resonates with me, because while my friends (who play dps and tanks) were all very happy and excited for the expansion, I was very much dreading it because I knew what made Scholar fun for me would be lost once the expansion hit. Sure enough too, I hate what they did with the job. I absolutely loved Scholar too. I loved doing all content with it and it made me love the game so much more. I miss old Scholar a lot now and I only just dread updates now because I have no faith in the development team making these changes.

That was about the same experience I had. I was excited for Shadowbringers until I saw the healer changes at the media tour. I got told "don't overreact, wait until you get your hands on it before judging how it plays." So I spent the rest of SB playing healer and trying to enjoy it while it lasted, and boy, when ShB released, I was just as disappointed as I thought I would be. Every upcoming patch disappoints me again and again. When SE told us SCH got an "improvement on usability" and it just turned out to be that steady paused embrace? It was salt in the wound. I didn't want to support SE's direction for healers anymore, so that's why I decided to put it down (in addition to just being tired of spamming one button).