A summary of healer issues

[ForsakenRoe]

Giving Healers additional damage options will create an expectation to use those damage options. I personally don't think that's a bad thing, since the average caliber of Healer skill and skill expression has gotten worse (and more dull) with each expansion... but expectation of Healer DPS is something SE has shown they specifically want to avoid. Adding 1 or 2 DPS options would be perfectly fine for the current iteration of healers. It was the previous iteration of healers that created the obvious "good" or "novice/bad" labeling. Using Cleric Stance effectively, Scholars keeping Shadowflare uptime, White Mages using Assize for DPS (back when it was either/or, not both).

yeh, which is why I'd personally say SB was the best state for healing to be in, the DPS rotations had some meat to them still, but the annoying 'Cleric Stance locked me out of being able to actually heal' issue was resolved. I can understand why SE needed to get rid of that, it'd be like a tank being unable to use any mitigation for 5sec after swapping into their DPS stance like Sword Oath or Deliverance. But the removal of DPS actions to reduce us to 1 nuke, 1 heal has caused the problems we see now, and EW hasn't even 'made things worse', it's just been an extension of the SHB problem. IIRC, we were told in SHB there was going to be no new healer, so they could look at how to rebalance healer as a role. This was because AST was way more popular than WHM, and it was getting to the point where WHM was getting locked out of PFs. Well, SHB hit and we got this design, which honestly feels like a baseline kit to build off in the next expansion, so we gave it benefit of the doubt. EW hit and it's the same sh!t, different day, with 3 new healing tools for each healer, a new rank of 'nuke spell', and a 'new healer' that is 70% reskinned skills. We got told multiple times when raising concerns that we get more tools to heal with 'dont worry they'll add more damage to heal, you wont even have time to dps!' Then we got ZodEX which has been done with zero healers.

The reason the 'discourse' is flaring up now, is people are realizing that giving SE the benefit of the doubt just means they see the data and go 'yeh nobody is complaining so clearly this is the right way to go!'. And with SMN now getting 'reset to a baseline kit, to build on in expansions', it's entirely possible that SE WONT actually build on it in later expansions, and leave it in it's current simple state. People are understandably worried about that possibility, so now there's mobilisation to make voices heard, to tell SE that we don't want classes that are boring to play. Unfortunately, healers have been in this state for 3 years now, and if there's no sign of it getting addressed in the FanFests and Media Tour, I can guarantee the healer shortage will get so, so much worse.

Lastly, nobody gave a qiqirn's arse about whether someone used Assize for damage or healing in anything below Savage. Nobody cared whether you used ShadowFlare or SacredSoil in your EX roulette. In fact, a lot of people probably wouldn't SEE the ShadowFlare, because their 'other player's effects' setting is set to Limited or Off (like mine is). In fact, I'd argue it was EASIER to keep contributing 'some' damage as healer back in SB, as you had more of the pie chart of 'your damage' come from DOTs, on account of having more DOTs. So much of our power is now condensed into the nuke spell, whereas with multiple DOTs that nuke could afford to be a lower potency, and therefore less punishing to have to drop one or two of in a pinch.

Regardless of what they do or do not want to do, their current path is a terrible one that will eventually hit a breaking point, and they will need to address that. EW is showing cracks to a lot of players, and healers being badly designed is one of those cracks that is becoming more apparent to those outside of the circle. The healthiest thing they can do is realize how bad this sterilization tactic of healer gameplay is and change their mind. I think if nothing is really done to shake up the current status quo that EW has established come 7.0, there's going to be a lot of discourse. Healer design is not the only thing here, but job design as a whole is being brought into question.

'Sterile' is the best way to put it. It's like, by playing with the light magic of WHM too much, the whole role has undergone the 'stasis' the lore implies Light causes, and now there's no 'life' left in the role lmao. Every bloody media tour, 'can healers have more to do in downtime' comes up as a question from several of the 'influencers', and so far it seems like it's had bugger all 'influence' on SE. If SE can't come up with any new fresh ideas for the role, I'd rather they just said so before FanFest (or at, but that would kill hype), and give the community a way to send in ideas. It's clear they don't read the non-JP forums, since they said they didn't hear Blood Weapon was an issue (it was talked about as an issue since SHB launch). Hearing they 'didn't really know what to do with Scholar' was also pretty sad, considering how many people have how many ideas on where to take the class. Crowdsource ideas for fixing the healer role, like they crowdsource Weapon and Gear designs with those contests. If there was a 'Healer Skills Redesign' contest, I'm sure most of us who have been throwing out ideas would put in the effort to make full Potency/CD balance additions to our pitches (I would for my WHM without hesitation, for example)