Do healers have to be easy to play?

[glamazon]

Healers need all to be able to heal a party.

Healers need interesting dynamic rotations in their healing which correlates to how dps does damage.

If you want us to dps why only give us three dps spells? We need to be the buffers and debuffers and crowd control ( yes make cc great again)

I don’t mind dps to help but I want dynamic systems to support that not mashing one button after I dot

[Lyth]

...

How would you make healing harder?

[Gemina]

I'll have to elaborate more later, but I find healing to be technically the easiest role to play. This is because they have the lowest requirement out of all the roles. However, it is also the only role where it is the competency of their group that dictates this requirement. As a result of this, DPS requirements for casual content have to be very loose, and this makes things easier for healers as well. It is just how it is. However, this does not mean that they cannot give healers more to do. SCH and WHM job gauges in particular collect a lot of dust in casual content, and it should be the first place they address when it comes to making healers more engaging.

[Vitreus]

All I know is spamming one ability and dropping a dot twice a minute is mind numbering. And sadly the downtime will only lengthen, and the job get progressively more boring, the further you progress on content because we are getting stronger relative to said content. The better we get at healing the more downtime we will have. It's the only role that feels worse the stronger you become.

Either the devs need to give us an actually engaging and fun damage kit or they need to increase our support role so we have something fun to do when we don't need to heal.

[Veis_Alveare]

I think a big part of the issue is the lack of tangible reward for the effort of actually "mastering" a job, particularly a healing one.

Like I'd say WHM is maybe the hardest healer to play perfectly, if only because of it's lack of movement/weaving opportunity. I used to prog on WHM then swap to AST once I was comfy, now I just skip it entirely though. AST is so much easier to move with, it's nearly a ranged physical dps at this point. SCH has the inherent dps loss of Ruin II but if you're sticking an Energy Drain in there you can directly offset and even another oGCD usage which saves a future healing GCD can be a worthwhile return on your weaving/movement investment.

I think WHM basically needs a reason to exist now. It's the tedious healer, at least at the high end. Bringing all the rDPS of... the other, more flexible healers.

I think if they want to keep WHM as immobile as it is at least give them something for it. Like for consecutive Glare casts with no break for movement or a weave add 2% potency or something. If they're gonna be a turret embrace the turret fully, if they aren't then ease up and give them the Malefic cast time reduction.

As to a direct response to the OP I think the only issue with adding complexity now is that people have already leveled these jobs. If we take WHM (which is the one I most often see as a given healer's only capped job) and make it more complex are we not kind of pulling the rug from under them? Don't get me wrong, personally I am very much in favor of pulling that rug, by all means people can surely learn if they try, but SE seems very much against asking people to try at all in any capacity.

[Liam_Harper]

Like I'd say WHM is maybe the hardest healer to play perfectly, if only because of it's lack of movement/weaving opportunity. I used to prog on WHM then swap to AST once I was comfy, now I just skip it entirely though. AST is so much easier to move with, it's nearly a ranged physical dps at this point.

I almost regret picking up AST as an alt because going back to WhM after playing it makes you start to dislike WhM. AST is just smooth to play, it flows and works, it keeps you busy and Lightspeed is an amazing ability. WhM at high end is sort of like that old broken piece of machinery you have where you've developed a few tricks over time to make it semi-functional. You get used to it, but when you finally get a brand new replacement you wonder how on earth you ever put up with it.

I think if they want to keep WHM as immobile as it is at least give them something for it. Like for consecutive Glare casts with no break for movement or a weave add 2% potency or something. If they're gonna be a turret embrace the turret fully, if they aren't then ease up and give them the Malefic cast time reduction.

They need to move away from the immobile thing to be honest. Badly. Black Mage is a turret and it's far more mobile than WhM. They should be using BLM as an example of how to do turret caster correctly.
They can add whatever potency they like, but clipping and limping all over the arena with slidecasts is not fun gameplay. And fun gameplay should be what matters most.