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

[Verlyn]

I'm not sure where this notion that there is a variety of heal abilities comes from. Most of them are pretty bland OGCD heals that function near-identically to each other. They -are- homogenized. Not enough to be 1-to-1 but enough that you can set up each of their hotbars almost exactly the same and notice every skill has an equivalent across other healers.

Shadowbringers is honestly the worst the game has ever been in terms of job design, flavor and mechanics. There are so many lazy shortcuts, poorly designed mechanics (Here is a button that only exists to use off cooldown. Here is a meter that fills 100% passively. Here is a duplicate button that offers nothing over the buttons you have.) and so much pandering to savage raid parses, that meaningful niches have been removed, buff values must be of near-nonexistant impact unless you're tracking dps, and cool spell effects cannot be added for fear of *creating* meaningful niches.

I don't see it getting fixed until 6.0, as Yoshi-P seems intent on sticking closely to the current paradigm for now (SMN, for example, is still about jamming as many skills as you can into a single GCD, every GCD-- that is not a playstyle, but it is SMN), so until then the most I can muster is to make do.

[Saefinn]

There are some that are close to 1v1v1, like Assize, Indom and Celestial Opposition, where their differences are neglible.

But if put into a scenario where you are dealing with MP management and are pushed to use the extent of your toolkit, I'd argue a SCH would be planning their shields more, they'd be making better use of their free crit shield and how Seraph is deployed.

AST would have to work harder to how it plans its Horoscopes and Earthly Stars. Although both are planned uses like shields, but their use is to be detonated at will, where timing becomes more of a focus, whereas at current, I might throw horoscope because I can and its a free heal and Earthly Star is treated as part of my DPS rotation.

And WHM, admittey I've not touched 5.0 WHM, so I'm not going to pretend I know how it plays, but as far as I understand it'd become about how it manages its Afflatus spells effectively, and being prepared to react as damage comes in and be less 'planned' like AST or SCH.

I see rooms for improving the kit, definitely, but I think in some areas they are an improvement on SB's and seem good when used to their full potential. Such as how they've embraced the fact SCH is a shield healer more. So if they were utilised properly, then yes, healing is still fun because in the cases where I have, that's when I've enjoyed it. Getting into undergeared ShB dungeons when levelling misled me into thinking I might enjoy healing in ShB, them I got into groups where people have better gear and healing was dull again.

[LariaKirin]

There are some that are close to 1v1v1, like Assize, Indom and Celestial Opposition, where their differences are neglible.

They are very different.

Assize is a free DPS button with an aoe healing side-effect. You generally use it on cooldown so as to get as many casts as possible. Whether you can delay it to use it for healing depends on many things, including the encounter itself, incoming downtime, raid buffs, total encounter duration, etc. It is first and foremost a DPS button.

Indom is aoe healing that has an opportunity cost (losing Energy Drain potency). You do not want to use it if you can handle the healing in other ways (e.g. Whispering Dawn, Fey Blessing, asking your AST co-healer to use Celestial Opposition).

Celestial Opposition is free aoe healing that is at the top of your priority list. It's something you want to use over anything else because it's free.

The argument that the healers play the same way is short-sighted and shows a very shallow understanding of how each healer works individually and as part of a two-healer team.

I prefer the idea of this approach because the healer kit is good IMO, I just don't think it is appropriate and therefore not properly utilised.

Where do you draw the line to decide what is "properly utilised"? Is Deployment Tactics not properly utilised because I only use it once in Hades Ex?

They are options you have to handle different things and the way you utilise them is up to your own judgement.

[Risvertasashi]

I'm not sure where this notion that there is a variety of heal abilities comes from. Most of them are pretty bland OGCD heals that function near-identically to each other. They -are- homogenized. Not enough to be 1-to-1 but enough that you can set up each of their hotbars almost exactly the same and notice every skill has an equivalent across other healers.

I meant more within the healers than across the healers. That said, even across healers there's some variety. Take, for example, fey union. An oGCD regen (most are GCD), with no specific duration but instead that relies on a resource bar. How you build that bar depends on exactly how you can use this very powerful regen, and you yourself choose how long you want it last/how much of that resource you want to spend.

Or white mage. Suppose you need a raid heal. Well if the raid's not moving and gathered, you can use asylum which is nice for being oGCD. If the conditions aren't right for that, you can fall back to good old medica 2 - costly, on GCD, and with a cast time, but somewhat powerful and very good range. If you're on the move, want to conserve MP, or just want to mitigate DPS loss and get a chance to weave - pop Afflatus Rapture instead. But rapture is still on the GCD, so it's not an automatic go-to.

Conversely if you're on scholar you don't have anything like this - you just want a weave opportunity to pop Indom, or maybe use Whispering Dawn instead, but you need to consider timing and cooldowns so you don't end up unable to heal for the next raid hit.

Some of these have duplicates in other kits, some don't, but the point is - you have options when selecting a heal, each with benefits and drawbacks and resources to consider.

This also swings back to why, in a perfect world, I'd rather see heal pressure increased. It is true that healing is so easy even in a lot of high end content that... well, considering these tradeoffs is often a bit moot.

[Saefinn]

They are very different.

Assize is a free DPS button with an aoe healing side-effect. You generally use it on cooldown so as to get as many casts as possible. Whether you can delay it to use it for healing depends on many things, including the encounter itself, incoming downtime, raid buffs, total encounter duration, etc. It is first and foremost a DPS button.

Indom is aoe healing that has an opportunity cost (losing Energy Drain potency). You do not want to use it if you can handle the healing in other ways (e.g. Whispering Dawn, Fey Blessing, asking your AST co-healer to use Celestial Opposition).

Celestial Opposition is free aoe healing that is at the top of your priority list. It's something you want to use over anything else because it's free.

The argument that the healers play the same way is short-sighted and shows a very shallow understanding of how each healer works individually and as part of a two-healer team.



Where do you draw the line to decide what is "properly utilised"? Is Deployment Tactics not properly utilised because I only use it once in Hades Ex?

They are options you have to handle different things and the way you utilise them is up to your own judgement.

I draw the line at it being engaging. Yes there are options, but for most content in the game, they are almost meaningless. And the 3 spells I referred to in most cases don't feel different to use, hence negliable. Maybe its less so in content where it makes enough of a difference.

But should only a handful of content feel engaging and interesting to play? when it's only where I get to think about how I am healing.

[LariaKirin]

This also swings back to why, in a perfect world, I'd rather see heal pressure increased. It is true that healing is so easy even in a lot of high end content that... well, considering these tradeoffs is often a bit moot.

Hopefully SE stops being afraid of this. We have a recent example of increased healing pressure that seems to have gone well. I don't know the general opinion about Hades Ex, but I do not see many people complaining about the damage.

Poorly executed (mitigation-wise, getting hit by avoidable mechanics, etc.) Titan Savage runs hover at around 20m damage taken.
The best executed Hades Ex run stands at 46m damage taken.

Obviously, Hades Ex is not harder to heal than Titan, because difficulty depends on many things like timing, mechanic overlap and how tight of a window you have to respond to damage. But it's a good example of increasing healing requirements without skyrocketing the difficulty.

[Risvertasashi]

I draw the line at it being engaging. Yes there are options, but for most content in the game, they are almost meaningless.

So I think this is where a lot of us agree, and goes back all the way to this topic's first post. We have a lot of heal buttons, but we spend far more button presses on the DPS buttons.

A logical conclusion could be to expand the number of DPS buttons since that is where we spend the most time/presses, and some people do want this. But I'd rather be given more reason to spend more time on the healing side of that divide... maybe that's just me, though.

I will say if the healing kits were to get slashed to make room for DPS abilities, that might just be the one thing that makes me quit healing. Despite the ups and major, major downs we've been through since 2013, this hasn't happened yet.

[LariaKirin]

I draw the line at it being engaging. Yes there are options, but for most content in the game, they are almost meaningless. And the 3 spells I referred to in most cases don't feel different to use, hence negliable. Maybe its less so in content where it makes enough of a difference.

But should only a handful of content feel engaging and interesting to play? when it's only where I get to think about how I am healing.

That is incredibly subjective. Some players have fun just doing roulettes every day. Others are bored in Savage.

Your 50th run of a dungeon, savage raid or ultimate raid will be boring due to the nature of the encounters in this game.
Using myself as an example, dungeons are simply not fun, whether I'm spamming Broil on my SCH or doing a more complex rotation on my BLM. It's the exact same degree of "let's just get this over with".
At some point you have to draw the line and say "Sorry guys, this is just not designed to be fun after 50 runs".

You can be idealistic about everything being fun and engaging, but the reality is that it's just not going to happen. How do you make dungeons fun for Savage raiders without making it impossible for casual players?

[Saefinn]

So I think this is where a lot of us agree, and goes back all the way to this topic's first post. We have a lot of heal buttons, but we spend far more button presses on the DPS buttons.

A logical conclusion could be to expand the number of DPS buttons since that is where we spend the most time/presses, and some people do want this. But I'd rather be given more reason to spend more time on the healing side of that divide... maybe that's just me, though.

I will say if the healing kits were to get slashed to make room for DPS abilities, that might just be the one thing that makes me quit healing. Despite the ups and major, major downs we've been through since 2013, this hasn't happened yet.

DPS skills were removed, which made room for more healing spells, but I think the old balance was fine and wouldn't be rocking the boat having that.

My main concern and why I'm more in the pro-DPS column is that to retroactively implement ways to make the current healing toolkit more engaging with existing content would be a lot of work I don't see SE doing. Great if they design future content around it, but it'd mean any content prior to this was still suck to heal. If Hade Ex is an example of this, great, I've yet to try healing it.

Maybe meeting the middle, don't remove heal spells, add more DPS spells, design future content so it engages your heals more so your reduced DPS usage comes from content mechanics and not from removing abilities.

It means in content where we have more downtime to DPS, we have something to fill it. And it doesn't have to be DPS either, other support skills too, like AST currently has (and is why AST is the least boring for me ATM).

[Saefinn]

That is incredibly subjective. Some players have fun just doing roulettes every day. Others are bored in Savage.

Your 50th run of a dungeon, savage raid or ultimate raid will be boring due to the nature of the encounters in this game.
Using myself as an example, dungeons are simply not fun, whether I'm spamming Broil on my SCH or doing a more complex rotation on my BLM. It's the exact same degree of "let's just get this over with".
At some point you have to draw the line and say "Sorry guys, this is just not designed to be fun after 50 runs".

You can be idealistic about everything being fun and engaging, but the reality is that it's just not going to happen. How do you make dungeons fun for Savage raiders without making it impossible for casual players?

I mean, the whole thing is subjective. I thought how healing was in 2.0 and 3.0 was fine and I enjoyed it and only needed adjusting in terms of balance, but not gameplay. But not everybody would agree with me on it and I expect those who didn't agree probably posted feedback as I am. Any feedback about how fun and engaging something is, is entirely subjective, but we give it because we want to enjoy it.

But whenever I've come up with ideas as part of the feedback I give, I try to consider their current design and direction and what people like about it as well as their old design I fell in love with and what people enjoyed about that. Without compromise, it becomes a case of who shouts loudest.