General Community Resistant to Healer Damage?

[Deceptus]

Nothing needs to be done for solo quests (I level as WHM, so yeah I do know what I am talking about) and why wouldn't group support work in 4 man groups?
AST Cards work there too and are a nice change of pace.

Agreed.

All of the buff / debuff abilities need to be taken from the DPS and given to healers.

Imagine if instead of trying to balance around regen / shield based healers they could balance around buff / debuff based healers. Next expansion: 2 buff based healers, 2 debuff based healers.

And the reason I can justify asking for the utility to be removed from DPS:

The amount of times I've actually seen them use it has been minimal. Look, if SE wants healers to focus less on DPS they HAVE to give us something to do during the downtime. And if it's not going to be DPS, as a healer I want to be support.

[JohnSpawnVFX]

And the reason I can justify asking for the utility to be removed from DPS:

The amount of times I've actually seen them use it has been minimal. Look, if SE wants healers to focus less on DPS they HAVE to give us something to do during the downtime. And if it's not going to be DPS, as a healer I want to be support.

Why do you think they took away most DPS tools from healers? The amount of times they've actually use it is minimal. They've squandered it, so SE took it away.

(this is how ridiculous taking support from DPS sounds. you don't balance classes having in mind the worst players. that's how they currently ruined healers).

[Sylve]

Look, if SE wants healers to focus less on DPS they HAVE to give us something to do during the downtime. And if it's not going to be DPS, as a healer I want to be support.

No, The answer is to remove the downtime. While i wont say no to a more support oriented Healer, I want Healing to be engaging throughout the fight rather than something that sometimes gets cast between the Malefic spams.

Constant damage pressure to the team is the answer. Give me damage to heal through the entire encounter, not just in blocks during specific mechanics.

[Granyala]

I'm also certain that this has been consistent though the game's lifecycle

Correct. They mainly use later dungeons and 24mans for catch-up purposes. Hence the low difficulty.

Imho, that is lame design. You should not cater the majority of the non raiding content to returning folks.

No, The answer is to remove the downtime. While i wont say no to a more support oriented Healer, I want Healing to be engaging throughout the fight rather than something that sometimes gets cast between the Malefic spams.

Constant damage pressure to the team is the answer. Give me damage to heal through the entire encounter, not just in blocks during specific mechanics.

To be perfectly frank: I don't think constant pressure would feel much different, I come from WoW, where healing is (was? been a few years) designed more as a full time occupation. It can be fun, it can be intense (esp at lower item level when every extra heal puts you in conflict with your mana) but in easier content it feels no different than damage spam. Whether I mash the Cure II button or the Glare button is pretty irrelevant to me.

Content needs to engage and that only works with mechanics that require you to think and react. You could design a boss with mad pulsing AoE, so the healer would be healing like there is no tomorrow to compensate for it but it would not be more engaging or fun than designing the boss w/o the pulse and let the healer DPS between the spikes.

[Barraind]

Heh. Thats why the best way forward is gradual changes to boss mechanics. Random hit here, random hit there and just slooooowly introduce it as a thing that appears more and more frequently in future updates.

I really dont know why boss damage outside tankbusters and raidwides is as negligable as it is.

One of the things we've learned over the last couple decades is that the more you put damage on castbar telegraphed attacks, the easier healing gets. I should be worried about big boss attacks, but I should also have to care about what happens in-between to maximize avoid/mitigation.

If I never have to worry about boss melee as a tank or healer, only one thing every 30/45/60 seconds means anything, and once you can survive those, defensive anythings and efficient healing gets meaningless.

[Awha]

I wish they just made a healer that healed through doing damage either they are required to do damage to generate a resource to heal something of that nature. I get SE does not want to give every healer a full dps kit, but at the very least they should add one.

[GucciSan]

I wish they just made a healer that healed through doing damage either they are required to do damage to generate a resource to heal something of that nature. I get SE does not want to give every healer a full dps kit, but at the very least they should add one.

I don’t think they would since the game and playerbase are so DPS centric it would be the only healer anyone would ever want. Everyone would want it for everything from dungeons PUGs to statics; why take any other healer when this one could get the clear faster than the rest since its whole kit is (theoretically) focused on damage?

They could go the other route and balance their output to be slightly higher than the other healers for balance but then people would rightfully complain about the low payoff for their efforts; why play this healer when you get the same amount of damage the others get from hitting one button?

It just seems like too much of a balancing nightmare for them to consider it.

[Morningstar1337]

I don’t think they would since the game and playerbase are so DPS centric it would be the only healer anyone would ever want. Everyone would want it for everything from dungeons PUGs to statics; why take any other healer when this one could get the clear faster than the rest since its whole kit is (theoretically) focused on damage?

They could go the other route and balance their output to be slightly higher than the other healers for balance but then people would rightfully complain about the low payoff for their efforts; why play this healer when you get the same amount of damage the others get from hitting one button?

It just seems like too much of a balancing nightmare for them to consider it.

Ironically this is one area of healing that homogenization might help them, or at least help some of them. Of course there still needs to be some balance.

[GrimGale]

To be perfectly frank: I don't think constant pressure would feel much different, I come from WoW, where healing is (was? been a few years) designed more as a full time occupation. It can be fun, it can be intense (esp at lower item level when every extra heal puts you in conflict with your mana) but in easier content it feels no different than damage spam. Whether I mash the Cure II button or the Glare button is pretty irrelevant to me.

I agree. That's why I am in favor of mixing things up with healer design. You heal, you dps and you support (I varying degrees). AST is the busiest and most interesting healer because you balance these three acts during your gameplay. You might argue the support part of their kit needs some reviewing to regain some of its depth, but it doesn't change the fact that AST's skill set allows you to constantly be on your toes regarding your contribution to the party.

Considering how boring and basic healing and dpsing effects are in this game (No synergy, single target flat heal or damage, heal or damage over time and point blank aoe damage or healing.) with a few interesting exceptions that happen once every minute or so (Excogitation, Earthly star, Asylum, Assize, Sacred Soil etc.), expanding on each job's secondary identity (SCH as a debuffer, WHM as a Heal/Damage weaver nuker and AST as a buffer.) could be a potential way to differentiate the jobs without hindering their healing capabilities.

[Dreamsoap]

I'm in a weird position on the fence about it. Ideally, I'd love to be a pure healer. If the gameplay actually called for it in a majority of content. Right now the most interesting thing for me to do is balance DPSing vs when to heal, which sure is a nice little challenge, but also not terribly difficult. I wouldn't be against them having more dps tools which brings to mind pre-shb scholar. I levelled it from 1-70 in stormblood though after I dropped it and played Astro only. Now I'm picking it up again because whm is an incredible snorefest as an alternative healer and I'm mourning the changes, lol. It's kind of sad but I had to constantly reassure the dps in my copied factory the other day that I didn't care that they were dying often because it's the only time I actually get to do my job.