Healer dps is unfairly boring

[Dzian]

I have long advocated that healing potency needs a drastic nerf. Healers are comically strong in this game, which is one of the many reasons you'll spend so much time DPSing. Unfortunately, nothing will change unless the devs move away from balancing content around the lowest common denominator. When their primary concern is addressing how that White Mage spamming Medica II for every little AoE needs to not feel stressed, it leaves healers in the state we have right now.

My view on this is it's not so much the strength of heals. I admit they are strong. But the biggest issue us and has always been the absolute lack of incoming damage.

Tanks highlight this. Tanks never used tank stance not because the heals were so strong it didn't matter. But more because incoming damage was so low that defence didn't matter. Which is why tanks were using slaying accessories for so long and when the devs tried to stop that the tanks just kept i270 right side because nothing ever hit hard enough to worry about.

Heals are strong yes. But that's not the big problem.

[Saefinn]

My argument is that the heals available should be appropriate for the content. The current healing toolkit I think is great, I just don't think they're appropriate. Because the vast majority of content out there doesn't make appropriate use of them.

On the point of simplifying healing. I think Blue Mage is a good example of this. Blue Mage healing is the most engaged I've felt with healing in Shadowbringers. I have 1 big AoE heal (based on my own HP pool), 1 AoE Heal + Esuna, 1 AoE Shield (not heal) and 1 Single Target heal. No oGCD's. My heals felt more planned and I had to heal more than I normally do. When I didn't heal, I had plenty I could be doing, from enfeebling foes to mitigate incoming damage or piling in damage to contribute. By reducing the number of healing skills 4 with no oGCD's I felt more engaged with healing. Not that I would say bring it down to that level of simplicity, but the healing required needs to be appropriate for our toolkit or the toolkit needs to be appropriate for the content.

I realise people might come in with the argument about Savage and Ultimate, where healing can be pushed more. But sadly, this only accounts for a small portion of the game's content, which not everybody does and I hope the devs aren't taking the attitude of balancing jobs solely around Savage Content and higher.

With that said. I realise Savage and Ultimate content needs their balance. I've proposed the idea of a "raid" set before, which is balanced, kinda like how we have a PvP set.

But I have an idea (albeit, not yet well thought out one) about how to implement such a thing. Have your base skill set, what you learn as you level and this is how the job gets balanced for raid and would be what we have now.

Outside of raid this could replace the limited job system (or be an evolution of it) and that's have a separate set of abilities you can learn. These skills cannot be used in any raid content. Some level of balance would still be required, but I think overall it is less important outside of raid and I think there's more room for creativity.

I think Blue Mage has been a good proof of concept to what a job could be in group & solo situations. Whilst it has its problems, its dungeon experience IMO has been a fun one and my experience of it has been that it's not created a scenario where they're OP for the content we run (if anything, that's one of the complaints, people were expecting BLU to be more powerful). And cases where BLU can pull stuff that's game breaking, that's something that can be dialled back. But imagine being able to learn additional DPS spells on your healer, or maybe some enfeebling spells? What if RDM could go out and learn some crowd control? (BLU has shown it's viable, especially as it works well on trash, but not so well that it breaks mechanics).

And as part of that, existing spells could be upgraded or swapped out, so there's less button bloat. EG: I could choose to upgrade Indom into Shadowflare. I have one healing spell I can survive without replaced with a DPS skill I could make use of. As soon as I go into a raid, that Shadowflare is Indom again.

In addition to this, they could then get away with making BLU into a real job with a base set of skills required for content and people can go out and learn and swap out spells outside of it (but the game breaking stuff held back).

[Corbeau]

Imagine if DoT ticks could proc scholar charges of Ruin IV like summoner gets from egi attacks. No new buttons needed, rotation changed.

[Payadopa]

How anyone finds healing in this game stressful, outside of maybe ultimate, is beyond me. You spend 90% of your time dpsing anyway and when you do need to heal you stop dpsing for just a second, use an oGCD, and go back to dpsing. Sometimes if you somehow run out of OGCDS you'll use a GCD. Unless your tank has glass bones and paper skin, or your the kind of healer that has to kiss away any booboo and cant let the tank miss even 10hp, you will be spending the vast majority of your time dpsing as a healer so why shouldnt they have more to do besides spam 1?

Or focus less on DPSing when designing content. At the moment they are doing the opposite and the game suffers for it. I don't want more DPS as healer.

[Malmstrom]

Or focus less on DPSing when designing content. At the moment they are doing the opposite and the game suffers for it. I don't want more DPS as healer.

Or as a tank, for that matter.

CRIT / DH OR GTFO is boring.

[Billythepancake]

Or focus less on DPSing when designing content. At the moment they are doing the opposite and the game suffers for it. I don't want more DPS as healer.

I don't see it happening. Making content where healers have to use their tools and use them well makes the game harder. Making the game harder is not their ideal goal considering they want this to be a game for everyone, look at how they added an easy mode for MSQ instances. Making healers have to heal more makes the game harder, because if they fail people die. Content is so casual if a dps doesnt do their rotation right, the fight just takes a bit longer, tank doesn't CD right? They just have a bit less health, what happens if healers mess up? Someone, potentially the entire party, dies. That's why I dont ask to have to heal more because I know what they want for the game, they want the game to be for everyone, I just want more to do in that down time. DPS is the easiest thing to add, but there are other options such as buffs and debuffs.

[ForteNightshade]

Or focus less on DPSing when designing content. At the moment they are doing the opposite and the game suffers for it. I don't want more DPS as healer.

Unfortunately, that isn't going to happen because as previously noted between Dzian and myself, they don't want to make healing stressful for the babiest of players. The end result is incredibly overpowered heals and not nearly enough outgoing damage to compensate. Until they move away from that philosophy, healing will always be secondary in this game.

I wish they'd go the Support or Saboteur route. At least that'd give healers something else to focus on. I suppose it, too, falls into the "we don't want this to be too complicated". Basically, the dev team has pigeonholed themselves into a corner.

I don't see it happening. Making content where healers have to use their tools and use them well makes the game harder. Making the game harder is not their ideal goal considering they want this to be a game for everyone, look at how they added an easy mode for MSQ instances. Making healers have to heal more makes the game harder, because if they fail people die. Content is so casual if a dps doesnt do their rotation right, the fight just takes a bit longer, tank doesn't CD right? They just have a bit less health, what happens if healers mess up? Someone, potentially the entire party, dies. That's why I dont ask to have to heal more because I know what they want for the game, they want the game to be for everyone, I just want more to do in that down time. DPS is the easiest thing to add, but there are other options such as buffs and debuffs.

I feel like something has to break sooner rather than later. If they insist on this incredibly basic design philosophy for healers going forward, it's only going push more and more players away from the whole. I can't tell you how many average players I've seen complaining how bored they are with healers. It isn't simply the raids voicing concerns but all types of players because, lets face it, if you aren't doing Savage or Ultimate. You're doing content where barely one healer is necessary. Let alone two.

[Crushnight]

I feel like something has to break sooner rather than later. If they insist on this incredibly basic design philosophy for healers going forward, it's only going push more and more players away from the whole. I can't tell you how many average players I've seen complaining how bored they are with healers. It isn't simply the raids voicing concerns but all types of players because, lets face it, if you aren't doing Savage or Ultimate. You're doing content where barely one healer is necessary. Let alone two.

Whoever called solo healing will be the norm is going to get their prediction soon, not yet we ain't quite there yet but getting damn close.

If that does happen hopefully that would shock the devs enough to realise what they have designed, it shouldn't have to go that far but sometimes people need to have something straight up in their face before they concede something might be wrong.

[ForteNightshade]

Whoever called solo healing will be the norm is going to get their prediction soon, not yet we ain't quite there yet but getting damn close.

If that does happen hopefully that would shock the devs enough to realise what they have designed, it shouldn't have to go that far but sometimes people need to have something straight up in their face before they concede something might be wrong.

Funny enough, both Astro and White Mage have solo healed TEA. I don't think we'll ever reach the point of that being meta simply because the devs like to throw in healer mechanics that would screw up DPS. But it's kinda sad that's becoming the only reason to bring two healers half the time.

Umm, being in a new dungeon you've never healed before with a tank that pulls far more than they should, doesn't use proper cool downs, and can't keep aggro from the DPS that hit whatever mob they feel like can be quite stressful (game stressful not "food or meds this month?" stressful).

I'd call that fun because it would actually give me an excuse to do something besides spam Holy. Dungeons nowadays are comically undertuned. Not that tanks shouldn't use their CDs but unless they're doing a mega pull, it'll keep you awake more than anything.

To each their own, I suppose.

[Mesarthim]

I remember some point in late 5.0 I had to solo heal E3N on SCH because my cohealer had connectivity issues and dc'ed for almost the entire fight. It was... very easy, especially so with a party that doesn't take avoidable damage. These fights aren't designed where 2 healers are necessary.