A summary of healer issues

[Aravell]

Has anyone actually given any actual, proper reason why adding in extra damage spells to healers to make downtime more interesting will suddenly make new/casual players suddenly unable to clear the content that they do yet?

[ty_taurus]

Has anyone actually given any actual, proper reason why adding in extra damage spells to healers to make downtime more interesting will suddenly make new/casual players suddenly unable to clear the content that they do yet?

We actually have video evidence of the opposite: A relatively casually-seeming player somehow managing the impossible task of clearing a dungeon during Heavensward as a Scholar. They had far less healing resources to work with, yet also had to deal with the incredibly unforgiving and anti-beginner-friendly old Cleric Stance, and was able to do so while still remembering to do things like keep Shadowflare up, apply DoTs, and keep the party alive even if they idled quite often. All on controller too.

Another dungeon as well with level 60 Scholar. Makes me wish I could go back in time. Here's a WHM example managing Aero, Aero II, and Aero III as an additional bonus.

[NobleWinter]

We actually have video evidence of the opposite: A relatively casually-seeming player somehow managing the impossible task of clearing a dungeon during Heavensward as a Scholar. They had far less healing resources to work with, yet also had to deal with the incredibly unforgiving and anti-beginner-friendly old Cleric Stance, and was able to do so while still remembering to do things like keep Shadowflare up, apply DoTs, and keep the party alive even if they idled quite often. All on controller too.

Another dungeon as well with level 60 Scholar. Makes me wish I could go back in time. Here's a WHM example managing Aero, Aero II, and Aero III as an additional bonus.

Omg I I miss having all those Heavensward dots so much. That first Scholar video was a little cringe watching them hit physic over and over while ignoring Whispering Dawn and Aetherflow tho. I'm so glad I found the forums by then and learned how to heal more efficiently from them. I can only hope they roll back the healer simplification for DPS cause this kind of gameplay is why I fell in love with healing in 14 and also why I want to unsubscribe currently.

[Mimilu]

We actually have video evidence of the opposite: A relatively casually-seeming player somehow managing the impossible task of clearing a dungeon during Heavensward as a Scholar. They had far less healing resources to work with, yet also had to deal with the incredibly unforgiving and anti-beginner-friendly old Cleric Stance, and was able to do so while still remembering to do things like keep Shadowflare up, apply DoTs, and keep the party alive even if they idled quite often. All on controller too.

Another dungeon as well with level 60 Scholar. Makes me wish I could go back in time. Here's a WHM example managing Aero, Aero II, and Aero III as an additional bonus.

It still blows me away that Heavensward was 6-8 years ago and how much the game has changed. (●´ω｀●)ゞ

[Silver-Strider]

It still blows me away that Heavensward was 6-8 years ago and how much the game has changed. (●´ω｀●)ゞ

If you told me that Healer gameplay would devolve into a Shell of a role back then, I'd have chalked it up to Tinfoil hat conspiracy. How naïve I was.

[Aravell]

We actually have video evidence of the opposite: A relatively casually-seeming player somehow managing the impossible task of clearing a dungeon during Heavensward as a Scholar. They had far less healing resources to work with, yet also had to deal with the incredibly unforgiving and anti-beginner-friendly old Cleric Stance, and was able to do so while still remembering to do things like keep Shadowflare up, apply DoTs, and keep the party alive even if they idled quite often. All on controller too.

To add to this, I was a terrible healer back during HW too (Was tank main in ARR). Back when I was struggling to figure out how to heal, I never actually had anyone tell me to put on Cleric Stance and do damage or they'll kick me, not even in extremes. However, when I started learning and got comfortable with juggling both healing and doing damage, I got many people telling me to turn off Cleric Stance and just heal.

I really don't see any addition of extra downtime buttons making the life of weaker players any harder at all, if they struggle to keep up with healing already, then they'll still just heal and not even bother with the new buttons anyway. The main argument I've seen is "But then the casuals/weaker players will hit enrage more often", to which I say "What content do they even do where missing damage from one singular healer results in an enrage?"

[Nizzi]

I don't know why people continue to entertain people who don't do Savage/Ultimate saying that "Savage/Ultimate is so hard, that's why healers can't have more DPS buttons because they can't focus on more than one thing."

It is an entirely ahistoric view given healer kits in previous expansion and an opinion that has no basis in reality. SCH had more DPS buttons when UCoB and UWU were on content; and not a single time when doing DSR on SCH did I ever think "oh gee i sure am glad i only have to spam broil! my tiny stupid dumb dumb moron brain couldn't handle this super hard encounter if i had more than broil!"

Jobs should not be designed for the lowest common denominators, especially when they aren't even doing the content that requires you to have an actual understanding of how to properly play your job.

[ty_taurus]

Omg I I miss having all those Heavensward dots so much. That first Scholar video was a little cringe watching them hit physic over and over while ignoring Whispering Dawn and Aetherflow tho. I'm so glad I found the forums by then and learned how to heal more efficiently from them. I can only hope they roll back the healer simplification for DPS cause this kind of gameplay is why I fell in love with healing in 14 and also why I want to unsubscribe currently.

The fact that their gameplay is far from perfect is exactly my point too. A select few keep bringing up “but it’s too hard.” “I need to focus on healing.” Okay then focus on healing. In that first video where they are not managing their aetherflow, not using cooldowns effectively, dropping DoTs, idling, stopping casting to complain about their tank, etc… they have a Sophia weapon, so clearly they were also able to clear extremes at their skill level.

No hate to that player of course, but HW was when the game was at its hardest, yet a player with a lot of room for improvement could still manage to clear extremes despite having a much larger DPS library and old punishing Cleric Stance. Having DPS actions will not prevent the novice healer from clearing anything.

The only thing that you lose is the ability to parse purple without even trying. Oh no, the tragedy…

[ty_taurus]

Savage content (on launch) is quite literally not a "it'd be nice if…" situation.

Right, DPS players focusing on the party is only really a requirement for Savage and up… just like healer DPS optimization. That’s the point.

Jobs don't exist in isolation. They exist within a combat model. The two have to work together. You want jobs to change to fit the current combat model? Fair. I merely pointed out an alternate take, that the combat model should change to fit the current jobs. And really, that's a change that would benefit everyone, not just the healers, because if it is really about "the stress of mechanics", then let's see how everyone does when there's enough randomness that they can't plan out all the possibilities in advance.

I mean, the combat model, with all of its predictable scripting, is boring. Piling on more DPS buttons to push will certainly give healers an opportunity to expend more of their attention span and effort, but, my two cents, is unlikely to actually do anything about that boredom unless you introduce BLM-like failure states that are recognizable in all content (which is something that most all of the jobs lack).

So rather than adjust 4 jobs, you feel it’s the more logical solution to rework the entirety of this game’s 10+ years of content to make the existing healing kits work better? Rather than fill a hole in the road, we’re just going to build a new road without the hole?

[ty_taurus]

It's been said before as well, but is worth reiterating...

There is still room to shake up future combat encounters to some degree. You can feel a difference between ARR and HW encounter design vs more modern encounter design, for example, and yet it still stays within a certain margin of rhythm. It's possible to shake up the general flow within a similar margin of difference. But it's unrealistic to change encounter design enough to actually shift action dominance away from DPS tools. As Semirhage said, there will always be a skill gap issue, and the primary issue we keep talking about over and over and over is how the better you get, the less rewarding healing becomes because your reward is a monotonous lack of gameplay. If you're objective is resolving that by making healing requirements so intense that those who master healing are meant to heal at a much higher rate than they attack, then the novice and intermediate healers will get absolutely destroyed. It would be catastrophic.

This is why the argument is having DPS gameplay on the same level as the tanks--the other support role whos primary responsibility is also not dealing damage and has even more things to focus on than healers do. It allows those that master the healing role to be rewarded with fun and engaging gameplay, and the optimization of that gameplay is in no way shape or form required for 95% of the rest of the game, so someone who is having a harder time healing will still be able to comfortably clear everything in the game that they can already clear right now. As I said earlier, the only difference is that you actually have to work harder to parse purple or higher--something that doesn't even matter for Savage because many teams will still be able to clear parsing grey or green.