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

[Shurrikhan]

What's wrong with having a meta? Just design fights in a way that makes all roles useful. Make them unique and make their uniqueness required in certain encounters or more like have the boss do different mechanics when different jobs are in the party. Basically, have the boss adjust to the jobs instead of having the player base adjust by bringing the best jobs.

While I agree with the direction you're aiming for there, that requires more work while not actually much reducing the impact of a meta, as one composition-based version of the boss will end up easier than others.

Tbf, the metas aren't particularly impactful even now. You can do Ultimate on whatever jobs you wish, given appropriate role counts and few enough (or no) duplicates. And giving us more impactful/tailored mechanics or boss designs would at least give us something to look for beyond merely sustained rDPS, which I feel would be healthier for the game. But, it'd ultimately change very little in regards to a given meta existing, except to make it a bit more chaotic (proficient players wanting Comp A for speedruns and less skilled players wanting Comp B for its leniency unless there's a one-trick who requires a swap to Comp C, etc.)... assuming, even, that everything goes right and it's not the same comp or two that always gets the quickest and easiest cake for the majority of fights.

[KizuyaKatogami]

All i can say on the topic is this. I hope to god 6.0 introduces some form of a mini dps rotation to the healers. Will it happen? Most likely not. This playerbase can barely handle healing in endgame content (lvl 80 dungeons). Having to dps as well would ultimately shut down their brain cells.

[Dearche]

All i can say on the topic is this. I hope to god 6.0 introduces some form of a mini dps rotation to the healers. Will it happen? Most likely not. This playerbase can barely handle healing in endgame content (lvl 80 dungeons). Having to dps as well would ultimately shut down their brain cells.

Except we did have that, at least for SCH back as late as SB, and while there were a few wipes here and there, frankly speaking, I don't see what's so bad about wiping in a dungeon on the occasion.

It's a learning moment. It's definitely better than healers dropping their chosen role because they got bored with it because there's no complexity to DPSing. If dungeons don't give healers anything interesting to heal, then healers need something to make DPSing interesting instead.

You know what I do in every pull in dungeons as it stands? Excog, Sacred Soil, and an adlo prepull. If I find out that the tank's crap or they're taking a particularly hard pull, then maybe a whispering dawn or another adlo mid pull. The rest of my button pressing is just ground slapping until everything's dead.

Can't say it's very interesting to be healer when that's all I do every pull, every time.

[SweetPete]

I don't remember where I saw/heard it, but I feel like I recall the devs saying they wanted to remove a lot of the utility abilities from the game as they felt like it made people feel like certain classes were required. I.E. Utility always leads to meta, which they don't/didn't want to see. Despite the fact that it would just shift the meta from who supplies utility to who deals the most damage.

If they did make that statement I don't think we're going to see a return of utility abilities unless the design philosophy changes.

That was said during the job actions video for shadowbringers. Yoshi said he wanted to kill the meta because some jobs were left out of savage and he wanted every job to be viable so that’s why they stripped bard, Astro and scholar of their utility because they were meta for years. I don’t agree with it but it is what it is. I hope they learned their lesson. All this expansion there have been complaints about sch, Astro and bard. We will see if endwalker fixes what shadowbringers destroyed

[Semirhage]

That was said during the job actions video for shadowbringers. Yoshi said he wanted to kill the meta because some jobs were left out of savage and he wanted every job to be viable so that’s why they stripped bard, Astro and scholar of their utility because they were meta for years. I don’t agree with it but it is what it is. I hope they learned their lesson. All this expansion there have been complaints about sch, Astro and bard. We will see if endwalker fixes what shadowbringers destroyed

As a former WHM main, the only welcome change that Shadowbringers brought to the healing role was that AST and SCH were no longer just strictly superior to WHM in basically every way. Whatever fixes they make to the role in general, I really hope it's not "well these two have powerful utility and you don't. Also they have heals and damage that are roughly as strong as yours. So they're just better. Have fun feeling like you're gimping your party with jobs that are straight up inferior!"

[Dearche]

That was said during the job actions video for shadowbringers. Yoshi said he wanted to kill the meta because some jobs were left out of savage and he wanted every job to be viable so that’s why they stripped bard, Astro and scholar of their utility because they were meta for years. I don’t agree with it but it is what it is. I hope they learned their lesson. All this expansion there have been complaints about sch, Astro and bard. We will see if endwalker fixes what shadowbringers destroyed

I don't get why they decided it was better to simply strip the utility rather than give utility to the jobs that didn't have it. WHM should've simply gotten some sort of party buff to make up for the difference rather than strip AST and SCH so badly.

You can't even make the "it's for the newbies" argument when it's not like newer players would even use the utility until they're comfortable with the base mechanics anyways. At least aside from AST, but you went for AST specifically for the cards anyways.

And for the DPS, I mean, utility is amazing and all, but it doesn't work without some selfish DPSs to maximize its use in the first place. Though that would depend on the balance of output, I don't see how it's that bad as long as the dev team has some baseline rules when it comes to designing the jobs vs the content.

[Irenia]

One has to wonder... How can DPS have zero party damage buff jobs but healers struggled with it until the others were nerfed to the baseline? I'm sure it would have been possible to buff WHM without giving it party damage buffs or nerfing SCH or AST.

[Anhra]

This playerbase can barely handle healing in endgame content (lvl 80 dungeons). Having to dps as well would ultimately shut down their brain cells.

Sometimes, true Progress demands sacrifices to be made, in one form or another. And i hope that "mini dps rotation" means more than just 1-2 additional dps spells for lvl80+.

Healers deserve to have at least 5-6 more dps abilities from the way i see it (and with that, i mean actual skills, not just the same basic spell that just does raw dmg on single target/splash range, let us have placeable AoEs or something that channels for a few seconds).

[KizuyaKatogami]

Sometimes, true Progress demands sacrifices to be made, in one form or another. And i hope that "mini dps rotation" means more than just 1-2 additional dps spells for lvl80+.

Healers deserve to have at least 5-6 more dps abilities from the way i see it (and with that, i mean actual skills, not just the same basic spell that just does raw dmg on single target/splash range, let us have placeable AoEs or something that channels for a few seconds).

I mean, i wholeheartedly agree, but unfortunately the playerbase i mention is also the one that is the loudest on the likes of twitter and reddit which are two places SE looks at for feedback. My problem with this whole thing is how they haven’t even addressed it at all. Yoshi P said awhile back they tune raids to where they don’t require healer dps, but that’s literally not the case. If healers didn’t dps week 1 savage raid clears wouldn’t be a thing. There are so many other mmo’s that have unique forms of healing and healer dps and this game it’s just, regens,shields, oh wow they can do both now, here’s a random ground target aoe. Like, please let Sage break the mould and actually have unique forms of healing or dpsing cuz otherwise it’s just going to be another expansion of boring ass healers with nothing changing. They supposedly spent the most amount of time on healers they ever had in ShB, and look how release went. Sch got energy drain taken away, Ast was a mess. So if that was them spending a lot of time on them...i have low hopes for 6.0. Especially with a new healer taking time away from the others.

[KizuyaKatogami]

Except we did have that, at least for SCH back as late as SB, and while there were a few wipes here and there, frankly speaking, I don't see what's so bad about wiping in a dungeon on the occasion.

It's a learning moment. It's definitely better than healers dropping their chosen role because they got bored with it because there's no complexity to DPSing. If dungeons don't give healers anything interesting to heal, then healers need something to make DPSing interesting instead.

You know what I do in every pull in dungeons as it stands? Excog, Sacred Soil, and an adlo prepull. If I find out that the tank's crap or they're taking a particularly hard pull, then maybe a whispering dawn or another adlo mid pull. The rest of my button pressing is just ground slapping until everything's dead.

Can't say it's very interesting to be healer when that's all I do every pull, every time.

I mean again, i agree with all of these points. I wasn’t saying they shouldn’t do it. I’m just saying what’s more likely as they seem to try and cater to the part of the playerbase that’s very lazy and only wants to do the minimum in content. Sch in SB i wouldn’t say had so much of a rotation. It definitely had more dps tools yeah but they felt kind of disjointed. I’d like something fluid that actually feels nice.