A summary of healer issues

[SieyaM]

Not every movement can be covered with slidecast and Phlegma requires melee-izh range.

Which brings me to my biggest question to the design team, why do so many of your casters have one or two abilities that bring them into melee range, they are not melee jobs and the melee range is already crowded with tanks and jobs that need to be there. Seriously are we ranged casters or not make up your mind here.

[RinaShinomiya]

I don't even think it's a resource they want you to fish for. You see tank buster, shield the tank, get a ruin 2 stack, have fun during mechanics. Heck, most fights start with an very early AoE fart so you could just shield your party pre-pull and when the AoE hits, you trigger all 3 stacks at once. This is nowhere near level of freecure useless trap.

[Rilifane]

Which brings me to my biggest question to the design team, why do so many of your casters have one or two abilities that bring them into melee range, they are not melee jobs and the melee range is already crowded with tanks and jobs that need to be there. Seriously are we ranged casters or not make up your mind here.

Because while casters and phys ranged can stay at range, there is no benefit in doing so. On the contrary, most mechanics are far easier to resolve if people stay close to melee range (donut, cones etc) and only move out when absolutely necessary for mechanics that have limited space at melee range like spread markers. Healers have everyone in range, people with party buffs/ mitigation have everyone in range even for skills with a fairly limited range like Curing Waltz.
And SE knows that.

[SieyaM]

Because while casters and phys ranged can stay at range, there is no benefit in doing so. On the contrary, most mechanics are far easier to resolve if people stay close to melee range (donut, cones etc) and only move out when absolutely necessary for mechanics that have limited space at melee range like spread markers. Healers have everyone in range, people with party buffs/ mitigation have everyone in range even for skills with a fairly limited range like Curing Waltz.
And SE knows that.

But then they went and made Earthly star cover nearly the entirety of every arena, also they should be able to realize that the hit box for enemies is going to get real crowded if they want all jobs to be in melee range. Can you imagine doing a 24 raid with all 24 players standing within melee range of the boss. Unless its something like Cid where alliances are separated that is going to make it real crowded.

[Rilifane]

But then they went and made Earthly star cover nearly the entirety of every arena, also they should be able to realize that the hit box for enemies is going to get real crowded if they want all jobs to be in melee range. Can you imagine doing a 24 raid with all 24 players standing within melee range of the boss. Unless its something like Cid where alliances are separated that is going to make it real crowded.

Yes, most likely because one of the major complaints about Star was that the effect was very subtle and somehow people never stood in that thing because they thought "I'm a ranged hurrdurr let the healer chase me with heals hurrdurr".
There is no downside to the "hitbox being crowded". Every halfway decent ex or savage party spends the majority of their time stacking with 6-7 people at the back of the hitbox and the MT plus sometimes OT in front of it. If there is a spread mechanic coming up, you have ample time to spread. It works perfectly fine for mechanics that force you inside the hitbox and immediately after into a spread position like on 2nd trial ex.
The majority of people (at least the ones that knew what they were doing) were constantly stacking near the hitbox of several of the Nier alli raids. Why? Because you really don't want to try dodging a gigantic sidecleave while standing in Narnia. So, yes, I can imagine how it is: perfectly fine.
Ranges have to move out for spread mechanics and they got the tools to get back in range with a gap closer because the devs know perfectly well that dodging almost every mechanic is easier at 5y than 20y.
This game doesn't give ranges a special award for staying at max range.

[GideonWilhelm]

This thread needs to see the light of day again. "Just play ultimates" isn't the answer.

[Semirhage]

I'd argue that Ultimates don't even make the act of healing that much more difficult or interesting, as a rebuttal to Yoshi's dismissive comment. Think about it. Ultimate mechanics usually come in two flavors: chunk its targets down 90% of their max HP, or outright kill them for failing. You're still not doing anything interesting with your healing, not anything that lasts more than a GCD or two tops. Indomitability. Whispering Dawn. Back to Broiling.

Ultimates just make the mechanics more complicated and increase failure punishments. You can't heal through punishments that cause instant death or cascade immediately into a party wipe due to mechanic failure.

"Go play Ultimate" is the latest in the long list of "I've never played a healer after Copperbell" evidence tidbits from our fearless leader.

[Recon1o6]

It does need to see the light of day again but unfortunately I have yet to have the time to update the first post and cut down the bloat in the thread. Rl is being as bad to me as yoshida is to healers rn

[Deceptus]

It does need to see the light of day again but unfortunately I have yet to have the time to update the first post and cut down the bloat in the thread. Rl is being as bad to me as yoshida is to healers rn

Don't worry about toning down the bloat, almost all of them were good points that where relevant when they were written. Hell most of them still are. If the devs didn't see this thread when it was posted they're probably not going to now anyway.

[Silver-Strider]

Don't worry about toning down the bloat, almost all of them were good points that where relevant when they were written. Hell most of them still are. If the devs didn't see this thread when it was posted they're probably not going to now anyway.

There's a few ways the Devs could reduce Button Bloat on Healers.

Merging Aqua Veil and Divine Benison into 1 button
Merging the Cure 1 equivalent on all jobs with their Cure 2 equivalent OR merging Cure 1 with Esuna.
Giving WHM a Eukrasia equivalent skill so that it can be used to merge Afflatus spells with their corresponding skill (Solace=Cure 2, Rapture=Medica, Misery=Holy)

That alone removes 4 buttons off the bar instantly, and allows for the creation of more Afflatus Spells since they no longer contribute to button bloat. People will complain about Homogeny because Eukrasia is supposed to be SGE's gimmick but since healers already share 80% of their toolkits between each other, I don't really see it as much of an argument if 2 healers share a little more.