Why is the healer class basically a one spell dps class?

[GrimGale]

Dude im playing since realm reborn. Healers always were simple with few spells. Whm had 1 spell and 2 dots and 1 aoe , and now its minus 1 dot. Ast was always like that 1 dot 1 spell 1 aoe. Sch had 3 dots 2 SPELLS for single target and a crappy shadowflare. SCH didnt have aoe spell like the other 2 and he was using bane to spread the dots. Now u dont spread the dots , u have 1 aoe spell like the other 2 healers always HAD. SO PLEASE before coment get your sht right. Not to mention that right now SCH kept his ruin 2 and can weave dmg very easily and whm and ast cant do that

"In this game healers mainly heal"

Parsers seem to differ. 60%-80% of casts for damage seems like an accurate representation of the amount of time a healer devotes to damaging in high end content.

I am a grey dps healer and I often have 130+ casts of Broil and 30+ casts of Biolysis in Savage fights as opposed to a combined 20+ casts of Succor and Adloquium. Adding healing oGCDs brings up the total healing abilities and actions a bit higher, maybe 60+ uses of healing abilities.

Even during progression and training I use most of my time with DPS spells, considering the group's HP often stays topped off. There is no point in overhealing, so in order to contribute to the fight and honestly simply do something instead of standing there doing nothing, I end up casting Damage spells.

As to wether we had more spells and damaging abilities before, yes we had more buttons to press even if we had just one or two more.
But this is the thing: Having less buttons to press during healing downtime would not be a problem if said downtime wasn't so prevalent. Healing game play quickly devolves into a very noticeable "one button" spam. I remember for example E3s, where after the first boss AoE we had like almost two minutes of no damage done to the group.

[Genz]

Because the game hates "healing" :

- one shot = healers are powerless
- vulnerability stack, can't be removed = healers are powerless
- QTE = healers are powerless
- "KO on the 2nd strike" = healers are powerless

And the root cause is, the devs hate players' agency ; proved continuously since ARR. They don't want us to go against their design, and healing is fundamentally about turning a situation around (healing the raid-wide aoe at the start of a fight isn't really "healing", to make things clear)

[Ultimatecalibur]

Because the game hates "healing" :
- one shot = healers are powerless

Considering the power of healing in game anything less than a one shot is non-threating.

- vulnerability stack, can't be removed = healers are powerless

Vuln stacks are supposed to allow for punishments to scale with the number of mistakes, but only really punish the healers rather than the dps/tanks that made the mistake.

- QTE = healers are powerless

These are mostly added to allow for cinematic effects. Both Susano and Varis show how to used QTEs and healing together.

- "KO on the 2nd strike" = healers are powerless

Most of these are about either forcing tanks to tank swap (for OT engagement) or for dps to actually spread out rather than just stacking on top of each other.

And the root cause is, the devs hate players' agency ; proved continuously since ARR. They don't want us to go against their design, and healing is fundamentally about turning a situation around (healing the raid-wide aoe at the start of a fight isn't really "healing", to make things clear)

They don't mind player agency, but they have gotten very lazy about how they prevent mechanics cheesing. They developed Extreme and Savage fight design formulas by the end of HW and have not really deviated from them during StB and ShB.

[Kazukiyashuo]

Either that or an absolutely atrocious healer with an incredibly overinflated ego.


Now that I think about it...I vaguely remember him posting in healer threads over a year ago and back then he had no clue how to actually play one either.

You remember me after 1 year posting on the forums. Nice i got fans. Seriously find something more important to do with your life. Byeee

[Absurdity]

You remember me after 1 year posting on the forums. Nice i got fans. Seriously find something more important to do with your life. Byeee

Really not hard to remember someone on these forums who is so utterly clueless about their job but with an ego that's more inflated than anyone else I've seen in this game.

[Lyth]

All this is true. As any professional healer can tell you, increasing the number of DoTs and Stones on a healer job decreases your Netflix uptime. I remember popping Living Dead on impulse this one time, and I never heard the end of it. Never make the mistake of forcing your healer to suddenly tab back to the game. It's off my bars now, I promise. I'll wait for my raise quietly in the corner next time.

[SpiralMask]

@OP: previously AST and SCH did have more depth so that they had something to do when healing wasnt required, either via direct dps or party utility; be it damage buffs (damage, crit, weapon/cast speed, etc), alternate buffs such as damage reduction or mana recovery etc, enemy damage debuffs, alternate debuffs such as stun/silence/slow/etc, precast esunas, and more). WHM did not, and this was a major valid complaint from WHM mains since ARR, that especially picked up after AST was introduced in HW and gave it TWO complex counterparts, with their only supposed niche being big chungus heals (and regens--except the ones that SCH and AST also had).

now rather than give WHM something to do during downtime (which i suppose could have been addressed at some point during the... three? complete lily mechanic reworks), they removed such activities from the other two in their entirety and pruned down WHM for good measure.
this was done while completely ignoring the core gameplay designs of SCH (strong OGCD healing suite and shield GCDs so that they can specifically buy adequate time to maintain their many DoTs or micromanage their pet for greatest effect) and AST (constant moment-to-moment decisionmaking regarding their sects and card system, between the buffs themselves and whether to modify them in some way for greater effect, and who would most benefit from them).

a few reasons cited during interviews and LL's were soft 'action limits' relating to how many buttons a mouse+keyboard or controller player should reasonably have to have on-tap at any given time--this does have some merit, as it's also been an issue for several other classes such as NIN's old incredibly strict rotation timings to squeeze all their myriad attacks and buffs in, or ShB SMN and SB BRDs "piano" approach of pressing everything that isnt currently on cooldown, all the time via constant weaving or double-weaving, or SB [dark arts] dark [dark arts] knight's [dark arts] constant [dark arts] OGCD [dark arts] tapping--coincidentally, recent BLU has been playing around with skills that are multiple skills in one, such as skills that toggle into other skills like cold fog/chelonian gate/phantom flurry, or skills that are conditional based on stance, etc, which could provide avenues for other classes like healers to gain more depth without increasing the number of buttons on your hotbar, as well as PVP/npc story sections having auto-combo skills as another option.

another reason being that healers were abandoning healing in lieu of dpsing more; yoshi posed this as a 'healer vs healer' problem during SB when commenting on seeing a WHM+SCH team where the WHM was left to do all the 'heavy lifting' (the class's only strength, and lacking any options to contribute otherwise in comparison) while the SCH spent the majority of the time DPSing and only throwing out shields or OGCD heals when required (which is again the class' strength, using their healing kit to cover any emergencies either preventatively with shields or as-needed with OGCDs while maintaining their DoTs/pet with the bulk of their time--or simply trusting their co-healer)--which was taken as a reason to look into nerfing SCH and AST rather than giving WHM something other than massive healing to put their time towards--or that WHM being powerful enough to effectively solo-heal content isnt already a great strength, or a problem with basic encounter design/overal healing-done expectations.

[Truen]

I just pray they give us back decent dps options like we had with 4.0. I've never been more unhappy with a job than I've been with the 5.0 expansion cycle.

[ASkellington]

The devs want healing to be widely accessible without realizing the problems of doing so:

The enjoyment of the healing role thrives on punishment aka resource management.

Used all of your CDs incorrectly, you'll be punished (nothing for the next TB or raid wide).
Used burst healing here when you could've regen'd instead, you'll be punished (no mana).
Got too greedy and dps'd here instead of healed, you'll be punished (death/wipe).

Its strange, but this is something we actually enjoy. We like having to choose the right cooldowns, and manage our mana and squeeze as much dps as we can while keeping the party properly healed.

The lack of punishment not only makes the role unfun, but it doesn't let newer healers learn and it also locks the devs into making the current content we have in normals and all the "difficult" content in extremes and savages.

I didn't get to where I am as a healer through hand holding. I got here through massive pulls I wasn't prepared for, undergeared tanks, dps who stood in fire, wipes, deaths, OOMs, nonexistant cohealers, and me hard carrying a run as if I was Atlas holding up the world.

Did I get salty on the way? You bet your gil I did! But I also learned and had fun doing so.

[NYCLouisGamer]

The devs want healing to be widely accessible without realizing the problems of doing so:

The enjoyment of the healing role thrives on punishment aka resource management.

Used all of your CDs incorrectly, you'll be punished (nothing for the next TB or raid wide).
Used burst healing here when you could've regen'd instead, you'll be punished (no mana).
Got too greedy and dps'd here instead of healed, you'll be punished (death/wipe).

Its strange, but this is something we actually enjoy. We like having to choose the right cooldowns, and manage our mana and squeeze as much dps as we can while keeping the party properly healed.

The lack of punishment not only makes the role unfun, but it doesn't let newer healers learn and it also locks the devs into making the current content we have in normals and all the "difficult" content in extremes and savages.

I didn't get to where I am as a healer through hand holding. I got here through massive pulls I wasn't prepared for, undergeared tanks, dps who stood in fire, wipes, deaths, OOMs, nonexistant cohealers, and me hard carrying a run as if I was Atlas holding up the world.

Did I get salty on the way? You bet your gil I did! But I also learned and had fun doing so.

Everything you just said is admirable. But what you described is not at all the majority of the player base. The gritty & exhilarating challenge that you mentioned would make about 80% of new players bounce off this game.

The problem is the same one that every MMORPG has. Do we want to make a bunch of high-level content that 90% of the player base will never see? Will we dumb it down to increase participation?