A summary of healer issues

[QooEr]

I guess what I mean is "I'm bored" isn't a course of action. I was in the military and something my bosses were fond of saying is "Don't come to me with problems; if you see a problem, DO come tell me, but come armed with a proposal for a solution."

that might work in the military, but we are customers. when designers come up with a product they start with dozens of things that could work, and then they narrow it down based on different criteria. they dont need us telling them how to fix healers. they only need us to tell them if we liked their final product. laymen are incredibly uneducated and i for one wouldnt appreciate my clients telling me how to do my job unless i can see that they know what theyre talking about. and guess what? Despite proposals being unneeded and perhaps even unwanted, people in these forums have suggested a lot of things for many years. not all good, not all bad.

many who are not bored aren't bored all the time - during prog, people often say, healing is far more engaging and not boring since mistakes are being made and chaos is everywhere, so healers actually have to use their healing tools and don't have the (boring as all hells) "healing plan" set up yet. Once those things are no longer true, THEN healing becomes boring. When you're actually having to hardcast heals because all your oGCDs are on CD, you aren't just pressing 1 button over and over. The viewpoint from these people is that healing is fun UNTIL farm, and that the better their team gets, the more bored they get healing.

and i would say i share the sentiment about healing being fun in prog. but that presents a pretty big flaw with the inherent design of healers: healer enjoyment has an expiration date.

this game asks you almost by design to do the same duties over and over and over. you farm dungeons to level, you farm expert to get tomes, you farm trials for mounts, you farm raids for gear, etc etc etc. you even do the same phases over and over in ultimate before you can clear it. healers, as much as any other job, ought to be designed to be fun when farming in a game that expects you to farm. healers are the only role where the replayability value gets worse over time.

I think one big problem in this discussion is that not all healers ARE bored. [...] A second problem/third group of people is that many players LIKE that style of healing and don't like being damage dealers - if they did, they'd be playing damage dealers. They enjoy simplistic rotations allowing them to focus on healing and boss/fight mechanics.
The issue is that a solution has to address all three perspectives - those who are bored, those who are sometimes bored, and those who are not at all bored - and simply saying "I'm bored" or "Give us more DPS buttons" doesn't do any of that. It's also why my solution always involves doing something for each group of people.

its a multifaceted problem that cant be solved with a simple solution. but its not up to us as customers to find solutions. its up to us to give feedback. indeed every camp should be considered and catered to, and the reason you see so many people saying "Give us more DPS buttons" is because that camp is not just not being catered to, its being actively avoided for the most fallacious reasons.