A summary of healer issues

[Renathras]

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I'm just...not going to with this.

Fulminating made a hyperbolic statement. I tried to show this by using hyperbole. You decided to call out MY hyperbole but not hers. And now you're on a tangent about me "failing to recognize" something when I was actively employing hyperbole as a rhetorical tool to argue against someone using hyperbole and not making an argument for or against any game changes in that statement.

I'm not sure how many ways to tell you "I was using hyperbole to show why hyperbole is bad" so that one of them sticks.

It wasn't "uno reverse" it was "please stop doing this". And I'll note you STILL haven't called out Fulminating for her use of it. Clearly you don't have an issue with the use of hyperbole or people not allowing for nuance, you're just arguing against me at this point, Picard meme or no. If that wasn't true, you'd be including her in your correction, which you clearly aren't.

So no, I'm not going to engage with you on this, since I wasn't seriously arguing that "a single element" was "convoluted". Get of your soapbox, seriously.

Healing doesn't become more dynamic, because...

There is absolutely more skill expression in having to find a safe time to stand and hardcast a heal than having an instant heal that does the same thing.

As for the Misery - as I noted in another thread, the simple address for that is to have Blood Lily stack to two. While you would need to press it at least once per 6 GCDs. But it doesn't change the fact that's already better than what we have now is, where you just don't touch GCD heals at all that don't have Afflatus in the name. THAT, to me, is a far bigger problem than having to find time to press a Misery ever 3/6 GCDs.

And I don't even know where you're coming from with "If someone has an issue with GCD heals as they currently stand"; the discussion - WHICH I DIDN'T START, I'll add:

Throwing this in here since this seems to be the most relevant topic.

A while back I tried doing a loop of Eukrasian Diagnosis -> Dosis/Dyskrasia until the barrier's broken -> Toxicon in a lv90 dungeon run and it was one of the most fun runs of healing a dungeon I've done. It felt like I was doing a combo befit a healer, but I never did it again since it's far worse than just spamming Dyskrasia while weaving addersgall heals.

So then I've been thinking, why are GCD heals (that aren't lilies, and even that's relatively recent) designed to be a dps loss? I know if a party member's dead that's a worse drop and all, but it still feels like we're being punished for doing what the role is supposed to do.

...was why GCD heals can't be damage neutral to actually allow for their use to NOT BE SUBOPTIMAL/ANTIOPTIMAL.

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I swear, it's like some of you see "Renathras" post about literally anything and you feel you have to argue against it, even when it was literally someone else's idea. And, oddly, never once do you guys go after that person instead with your counter arguments, you just quote my posts. One might be forgiven for thinking you guys are more just automatically opposing every post I make/thing I say rather than caring about the content, considering you aren't quoting and replying to the other people making those arguments...

Though I will say this is a good question:

But taking a step back, why are we designing for people who are more worried about what some third-party website tells them than doing their actual job?

...but it's also already been answered:

And like I said I do understand that keeping the party alive matters more for dps than you losing a glare. It's just that the trade-off doesn't feel great. It also makes the role as a whole largely a test of your reflexes and how much you can keep the party up with just oGCDs and lilies.

We want to squeeze in as many glares without letting the party die, and using cure and such is one less glare. We always prefer using oGCDs or lilies over them and I think that contributes a lot to how monotonous attacking feels right now.

Bold and underline emphasis added by me.

Again, you might read and reply to the person presenting this idea - and not just "Renathras said a thing, so I need to oppose it" - as she already presented the case well and arguments for the why. I was just agreeing with her and making mechanical suggestions for how it could be done.

If you're going to argue against the idea, quote Azurarok's posts and argue against her points. Don't quite mine and, yet again, argue against me specifically when I'm not the one championing the idea and she literally answered your questions already.

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It's like I'm not even allowed to post mere agreement with someone else without you people jumping down my throat, and then you act all confused when I point this out and ask you to stop.

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EDIT2:

Editing to add:

I think this right here is a large issue. Designing jobs for people who care so much about their funny numbers on a website is hurting the game in general, not just the healer role. Why should it matter that healing loses damage? Isn't that normal? I have to wonder how many of the people who are so concerned with losing damage by GCD healing are actually doing the content where losing that damage actually matters.

Again, that question was already answered:

Feel.

If you press Heavy Swing then Storm's Path on WAR - missing Maim and knowing you screwed up - it feels bad. The actual level of damage lost is pretty insignificant. The odds of that one mistake being the difference between a clear and enrage is so small as to be nonexistent. But it feels bad.

If you realize you have 2 AF left and AF is coming off CD, so you burn one on an ED but have to choose between using a second ED and pushing your AF CD to the right by one GCD or going ahead and refreshing AF, losing out on that one ED, it feels bad, regardless of the fact that it's a ridiculously small loss either way so that either "wrong" answer shouldn't, rationally, feel wrong at all because of how minute the difference is.

But that's the thing; Humans aren't always rational.

The irony here is people saying folks are worried about numbers - a mechanical argument - when folks are talking about how bad it FEELS - a non-mechanical argument that is actually in opposition to the mechanical argument since the difference is so minor, it can be handwaved away as RNG difference using the mechanical argument.

People aren't talking about the mechanical, Commander Data or Mr Spock analysis. That's what you guys are mistaking, I think. You think that's what they're talking about, but the mechanical argument would be the one to say the concern is illogical and irrelevant.

People are talking about the Dr McCoy or Counselor Troy feely argument.

[Aravell]

Feel.

If you press Heavy Swing then Storm's Path on WAR - missing Maim and knowing you screwed up - it feels bad. The actual level of damage lost is pretty insignificant. The odds of that one mistake being the difference between a clear and enrage is so small as to be nonexistent. But it feels bad.

If you realize you have 2 AF left and AF is coming off CD, so you burn one on an ED but have to choose between using a second ED and pushing your AF CD to the right by one GCD or going ahead and refreshing AF, losing out on that one ED, it feels bad, regardless of the fact that it's a ridiculously small loss either way so that either "wrong" answer shouldn't, rationally, feel wrong at all because of how minute the difference is.

I don't think any game should be designed to help people not feel bad for making the wrong decisions. GCD healing is not always a wrong decision, the community just thinks it's always the wrong decision.

Also, if you start talking about GCD healing feeling bad because you lose damage, how am I supposed to interpret that other than you wanting the big numbers? If you don't care about chasing numbers, why should you feel bad for GCD healing? I genuinely do not understand.

[ForsakenRoe]

I don't think any game should be designed to help people not feel bad for making the wrong decisions. GCD healing is not always a wrong decision, the community just thinks it's always the wrong decision.

Also, if you start talking about GCD healing feeling bad because you lose damage, how am I supposed to interpret that other than you wanting the big numbers? If you don't care about chasing numbers, why should you feel bad for GCD healing? I genuinely do not understand.

This is the issue I think, I don't see how anyone can 'feel bad' about GCD healing when it is required to prevent a wipe, except for if they're already fully aware of the funny number site and are trying to get a big funny number there. I don't 'feel bad' when I have to put up Medica 2 in P12S for something because I'm out of Lilies, I do it because my job is to heal first and foremost

I think WHM's main issue is that it's stayed as an ARR-style design in an EW world. It just doesn't have the 'flow' to it in the way that the other healers do, and so it feels out of place in this EW fight design. The two don't mesh smoothly. I described it to a friend as being that the healers are cars, and WHM is the manual with the janky clutch. Sure, some people prefer to drive a manual gearbox, but sometimes the clutch is gonna stick and you get that horrible 'missed gear shift' screech and the whole car shudders in pain. That's the Medica 2 hardcast, causing the sudden slowdown in the 'flow' of the fight.

It also lacks the spread of tools, of 'decision-making' on how to heal each situation, instead having a 'doesn't matter what the shape is, it goes in the square hole' approach with Rapture just covering pretty much everything. For example, AST has to choose, since all are 1min CDs, 'do I use COpp for the extra range on the heal, or do I use CU for the 10% mit, do I need to put Horoscope with this heal to give it an extra 200p, will I have enough healing needed on everyone coming up to get full value from Star'. WHM's 'choice' is 'Do I press Plenary here'

It'd be fine if there was at least a bit of something going on on the damage side of things. But when there's very little thinking needed for the damage side, little thinking needed for healing, and almost zero needed for mit (lol Temperance), it's not hard to see why WHM is uniquely alone in this regard. The other healers have similar issues with their damage rotations, but at least they have something more going on healing-side or mitigation-wise. It gets bland when we know the fight timeline and have our mit planned out as a SGE/SCH yes, but at least that takes a bit of time to work out. WHM almost, by design, autosolves it's 'role in the fight' because whatever comes up, Rapture probably solves it.

On a personal note,

I've been trying to play AST more for reclears recently. I still don't like it, because of how much weaving it has to do in the 2min window, and how much that makes my hands hurt, but I enjoy how I have things to think about compared to WHM. Even if it's just 'who do I put this card on' or 'would CO or CU be better here'. And related to above, I don't 'feel bad' when I use Neutral Sect for something. This week, in fact, my cohealer friend stood in the poison on P10S, and we managed to keep her alive through the full DOT, even during one of the Bonds sets going off, because Neutral Sect spamming shields on her. I guess in one regard, it was 'this feels bad because this is so much damage being wasted to fix a problem caused by another player', but the alternative is to let said player die, and in hindsight, that'd have wiped us because of Bonds being un-clearable (gotta love body checks). I'm pretty sure that the 'this feels bad cos no damage' feeling is entirely because I'm aware of the funny number site, and if I had no knowledge of it's existence, I'd be popping off much more that we salvaged a 'theoretically unsalvageable' situation.

I would also say that 'swap healers from spamming damage filler to spamming Aspected Benefic/Cure2/whatever' is not the solution some seem to believe that it is. It wasn't 'more interesting' to keep my friend alive per se. It was 'interesting' in the moment we had to react to her getting the poison DOT, and me thinking 'how can I solve this', but after Neutral Sect was activated, that 'interesting' is gone. From there on, it was a case of 'Press Ctrl-1 10 times, instead of Ctrl-2 (my Malefic key)', and I gotta say, it felt pretty similar in monotony after the first two casts. That's against a DOT that ticks for like 45k per tick. So I dunno how some expect that 'oh we can make healer more interesting by increasing how often we have to press GCD heals', I don't think doing that for a full fight would make for 'interesting gameplay'

I wait with bated breath to see how much of the bathroom SE throws out alongside the baby and bathwater with this 'rework' that is coming for AST. Because I want to see, do they remove the 'decision-making' from AST to lower it to WHM level? Do they actually 'fix' things with good intuitive design choices, or do they take the easy way out again and just go 'eh people think too much APM, so now card is GCD' and mangle the flow of that class too

[Aravell]

This is the issue I think, I don't see how anyone can 'feel bad' about GCD healing when it is required to prevent a wipe, except for if they're already fully aware of the funny number site and are trying to get a big funny number there. I don't 'feel bad' when I have to put up Medica 2 in P12S for something because I'm out of Lilies, I do it because my job is to heal first and foremost

That's what I really want to know, why does it feel bad to press your healing? It should only feel bad if you're aware of the funny numbers and you want one, if you don't care about said numbers, why would you feel bad about it? I liberally press Succor in reclears and I feel nothing, I press Indom and Soil a lot and never cringe over how much damage I'm losing. I genuinely do not understand why one would feel bad unless they were chasing numbers.

This week, in fact, my cohealer friend stood in the poison on P10S, and we managed to keep her alive through the full DOT, even during one of the Bonds sets going off, because Neutral Sect spamming shields on her. I guess in one regard, it was 'this feels bad because this is so much damage being wasted to fix a problem caused by another player', but the alternative is to let said player die, and in hindsight, that'd have wiped us because of Bonds being un-clearable (gotta love body checks). I'm pretty sure that the 'this feels bad cos no damage' feeling is entirely because I'm aware of the funny number site, and if I had no knowledge of it's existence, I'd be popping off much more that we salvaged a 'theoretically unsalvageable' situation.

It sounds much more boring on AST. I had the same situation happen in my reclears last week, the phys ranged stepped in the green and I had to use Adlo, Physick and Lustrate to fix it, it was more fun than just mindless Broil to be honest. But then again, I stopped caring about my placement on the funny number site since early ShB when all the nuance and optimisation of healers was ripped to shreds, so I do enjoy when things go wrong and I have to do quick thinking to salvage things.

[Recon1o6]

That's what I really want to know, why does it feel bad to press your healing?

Generally, because of the sheer volume of ogcd heals, if you're forced to use a gcd that isnt a required one, then it means you and/or your co healer messed something up since in 95% of content, that's all you need to an extent even taking into account dps standing in the bad or someone getting killed (eg zoning out when byregot moves his arena and falling)

The one exception here is whm for blood lily.

[Azurarok]

Generally, because of the sheer volume of ogcd heals, if you're forced to use a gcd that isnt a required one, then it means you and/or your co healer messed something up since in 95% of content, that's all you need to an extent even taking into account dps standing in the bad or someone getting killed (eg zoning out when byregot moves his arena and falling)

The one exception here is whm for blood lily.

This is some of it yeah. It's pretty noticeable when a tank's adamant about doing wall to wall pulls while not using their mitigation well enough, or the dps is low and the mob's not dying fast enough that both the tank and I run out of oGCDs. I don't mind this sort of thing happening in ARR~mid-SB content since sprouts are learning and we also don't have that many tools until after that, but it does get to me a little when it gets around to lv70 content and up and this happens without anyone saying a word.

But also yes, it'd feel bad to have to use raise if someone died from my not healing well enough. If I fall back to a GCD heal it also makes me think if I could've done something better to not have to do that (for me it's usually been forgetting the lv86 mitigation exists). The current design does do that right.

At the same time, if you think hitting the same button every gcd for 27.5 seconds then the dot once and repeating that while the rest of your inputs are all oGCDs for 95% of content is fine then I don't know what to tell you.

White Mage also suffers from similar issues visually, since you go from having Stone and Aero to just light-based spells in ShB. This is even more highlighted by Y'shtola using 4~5 different elements as a conjurer in The Fell Court of Troia

[ForsakenRoe]

White Mage also suffers from similar issues visually, since you go from having Stone and Aero to just light-based spells in ShB. This is even more highlighted by Y'shtola using 4~5 different elements as a conjurer in The Fell Court of Troia

I'm not sure what annoys me more about the current WHM rotation, how samey it plays, or how samey it looks. Both are definitely big points of contention, of course, but I do wonder if it'd help at least a tiny bit if the DOT was green and the nuke was orangey-brown so they at least look a bit different. At least Misery is pink. Then again, Dosis is blue-white and E.Dosis is purple...

I want to have the elements back too. But I'd do it in a way where the holy light stuff we have now isn't completely removed. But then, we'd likely see people complaining about my plan because 'oh I prefer the holy lights but they're the weak filler part of the rotation, why can't the part I like be the cool strong bursty part' or such

It sounds much more boring on AST. I had the same situation happen in my reclears last week, the phys ranged stepped in the green and I had to use Adlo, Physick and Lustrate to fix it, it was more fun than just mindless Broil to be honest.

AST has to at least think a bit about what it's going to use for each raidwide, for example. Like, as WHM for the P10S raidwide, it's Lilybell if you have it, Asylum if you don't, basically. Macrocosmos is cool, but it doesn't auto-delete bleed-raidwides in the same way the Overheal Weed does, so it's not necessarily better to use it for those, instead it might be better to do CO/CU for mit/double regens, and use Macro on something else. Or not, idk I'm not good at the class. I did get a 58 this week even with the Neutral Sect incident, though, and that's with a 645 relic

[Aravell]

Generally, because of the sheer volume of ogcd heals, if you're forced to use a gcd that isnt a required one, then it means you and/or your co healer messed something up since in 95% of content, that's all you need to an extent even taking into account dps standing in the bad or someone getting killed (eg zoning out when byregot moves his arena and falling)

The one exception here is whm for blood lily.

I know why GCD healing is bad. What I want to know is why the people who don't care about chasing numbers on the funny number website feel bad for pressing their GCD heals. If you're not chasing numbers, why would you be upset at losing numbers? That's what I don't get.