General Community Resistant to Healer Damage?

[Laesha]

I have a lot of empathy for both sides of this argument. It's really frustrating that on one dungeon run, I get ripped for being lazy and treated like a lol-cow for keeping HP totals @ around 70% and dps'ing the rest of the time, while on the next run I get all 3 coms for doing the exact same thing. I think the deep divide in opinion on this subject is the worst thing about healing, to be frank. It's far more harmful and onerous to my enjoyment of the class than any lack of dps, over dps, or lack of hard hitting dmg.

That being said, As a long-time healer, I don't miss past-expac healing in the slightest. I play Astro as my healer of choice almost exclusively, and I enjoy its current iteration more than any of the others. I'm never bored when i play it. Not even a little bit. The mix between keeping my buffs spinning, planning my delayed heals/shields/hots, and using my dps kit (small as it is), is perfect for me. Personally, I think this is the direction they should go with healers and focus on making the dps equation a non-issue. I love the idea of buffs and debuffs, while at the same time I completely acknowledge that current encounter design offers healers a lot of downtime for dps. It becomes a fun juggling act for me between casting my Mal's with their short cast time and then managing the other half of my GCD between each cast. What do i use for my ogcd? do I put up a hot with CO or CO? Do i have cards to play? Do i need to use a GCD for healing? Can i avoid it? As someone who plays DPS often (probably more than any other job these days), i feel like the direction they've gone with Astro gives me just as much opportunity and dynamics as any of the dps classes I enjoy. I know most people don't like Astro at all, and that's fine, but I think it's absolutely a joy right now. The best thing about it for me also is that the cards STILL contribute to overall dps (thus falling in line with dps-focused encounter design) in a different way than having a direct damage "rotation"

Honestly, this is the direction i'd like to see them take healers. More buffs and debuffs while keeping the DD abilities few and far between. Scholar, for example, having more abilities like old-school Shadow Flare. It was a zone that did dot, but also applied a potent Slow debuff. Those are the things that I would really love to see from future iterations of healing classes.

[Morningstar1337]

Frankly I'd be okay IF SE took oneof the following two routes (mostly the former)

• Return the printed DPS tools to WHM and AST, and give SCH more flavorful DPS tools
• Grant Healers more access to buffing spells (in which case AST gets Time Dilation back) to set up for when the downtime ends, as well as maintaining those buffs if case there are no mobs left, preferably proced by healing spells and HoT ticks
• OR change trash pulls so that every mobs has tank busting AoEs, stacking vuln stacks and spicy DoT and overkill damage for failing mechanics, ensuring that healers have less downtime, in other works make the trash hit as hard as bosses, whether as punishment for failing mechanics or as scripted inevitabilities that healers must adjust for.

The former would ensure that Healers have something to do during down time, the third makes it moot by forcing healers to heal 90% of the time, the second also fixes the downtime issue by giving them something to do besides DPS. But as it stands right now, the current approach as an attempt at having the cake and eating it too.

[Fourbestintoner]

Remember when they said they would make healing more intensive? Such a sad lie that turned out to be, 4s and 8s and tea barely require you to heal.
Sch is such a sad pathetic joke now, all the ones I knew quit or play whm now, which they also hate.

[Sylve]

The better the Party is at avoiding mechanics, The less work a Healer has to do.

Its the only Role where the performance of the party directly impacts how active you are.

Tanks always need to keep enmity.
DPS always need to deal damage.
Healers ... Don't always have missing Health to restore.

That right there is what i would change. Our healer toolkits are full to the brim with useful and niche tools to cover any situation we find ourselves in. The only way we get to use all of these tools is when shit is going sideways and people are taking enormous amounts of damage they should otherwise be avoiding.

We absolutely do not need HARDER hitting mechanics. That doesn't solve anything.
For as long as incoming damage is on a script, we Healers will always have deadzones in our Role gameplay.

So break the script. We know the devs have tools in place that allow them to specifically single out Roles for mechanics. We need sporadic, dangerous damage going out to the party with enough frequency that oGCD cooldowns simply cannot cover them all.
It'd be fine to keep some of the scripted damage since fights need to be learnable and not subject to RNG wombo combos, but that scripted damage needs to be interspersed with random damage, either party wide, role wide or singling out party members for hits.
Busters need to be used more frequently at odd intervals so Tanks wont always have their "Anti Buster Button" there to take it every time.

Give me reason to watch the party list like a hawk. A reason to be ready to tap a Heal into someone at all times.
I want Cure/Physik/Benefic to be used as GCD 'fillers' instead of DPS.

Weaving some damage in amongst all the hits the party takes would be what separates Healers from Excellent Healers.

[Morningstar1337]

snip

Honestly I hadn't considered that as a solution, Adding more randomness might address the issue because the Tank cannot sponge all the damage.

That said I think the Grand Cosmos might have that to an extent as I remember some mobs pulling away to AoE someoenne other than the Tank (course that might just be emity-related stuff)

[Granyala]

Give me reason to watch the party list like a hawk. A reason to be ready to tap a Heal into someone at all times.
I want Cure/Physik/Benefic to be used as GCD 'fillers' instead of DPS.

Would be cool for us but If they did that, 90% of the healers our there would be lost.

BTW: Tanks rarely worry about enmity these days. You basically sneeze in the general direction of the mob and it is already glued to you. Tanks are basically blue DPS that press a damage reduction cooldown every few minutes.

[Sylve]

Would be cool for us but If they did that, 90% of the healers our there would be lost.

BTW: Tanks rarely worry about enmity these days. You basically sneeze in the general direction of the mob and it is already glued to you. Tanks are basically blue DPS that press a damage reduction cooldown every few minutes.

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.

[technole]

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.

Savage has more "healing" in SHb than Stormblood. But on the same token, better buttons were given to healers. Hitting lily button after lily button. assize when it's up, along with finally useful Asylum, etc. Medica is practically obsolete save for some mismanaged situation.

The damage/healing curve has to go up a bit more in savage, and much more in casual content to even get to that level.

[Morningstar1337]

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.

Again, I think that's already in the works with the Grand cosmos. Though I still think they should add more mechanics common to bossfights like Vuln stacks and such as well. Make the healers real paranoid.

[Allegor]

Again, I think that's already in the works with the Grand cosmos. Though I still think they should add more mechanics common to bossfights like Vuln stacks and such as well. Make the healers real paranoid.

Technically true for Malikah's Well too. The second boss does two tank busters almost back to back, and the third one doesn't even have one so the damage is more "random".

Honestly, I'm all in for more rng-based fights, as in, let the bosses have a set of skills which they use in no particular order - it'd take away the monotony of tank buster > aoe > mechanic A > aoe/adds > mechanic B > tank buster > mechanic A> ...rinse and repeat until dead.