Yoshi-P: "If you want more engaging content, go play Ultimate"

[Phantasmal]

Again, why would you raise the skill ceiling on classes that have low play rates as is? That makes no sense.

I think raising the skill ceiling for healers is actually the play, but begrudgingly, not through healing.

Imo class design is at it's best when something has a low skill floor and a high skill ceiling. You can pick up the class and play it to success with minimal effort/knowledge, but if you want to excel, you have room to grow. Since healing is so binary, either someone is gamer enough to keep up with the incoming damage, or not; the skill floor has to be low in order to not dissuade people from the role. So with that restriction, the next best bet would be to give healers a more comprehensive and engaging damage rotation. The devs already design non-savage/ultimate content around healers not doing any damage, so I fail to see why they wouldn't try to at least give healers more than 2~3 buttons to press.

It doesn't have to be a casual vs hard-core debate if both can get what they want out of the job. Healer damage might not be what folks exactly want in order to make it happen, but it's the best I can think of that isn't just telling newer healers to drop their canes in the name of the role being made more interesting/difficult, or telling raiding healers that they should play a different game or switch roles.

[Silver-Strider]

A bad healer is far more noticeable and can wipe your raid more consistently at literally any ilvl more than any other role in the game.

This was maybe true once upon a time, but the ridiculous levels of support they've given to DPS and Tanks have killed this argument. I was carrying groups with my PLD all thru ShB and EW just made Healers totally irrelevant in regards to casual content, even in normal raids and 24 main and I would not call myself a good tank at all. It also doesn't help that healing requirements are so low in all current content that you can clear everything up to P2S without healers at all, leaving only 2 fights that actually require healers at all. Hell, my FC has been training people that have never done Savage content to clear P1S with a SGE solo healing and they've been getting clears and immediately starting to help them learn P2S. I know because they occasionally ask me to come in as DPS to fill out spots.

Healing has become ridiculously unnecessary and people STILL fail at it and at that point, I just chalk these people up as lost causes. There's no helping them at this point, regardless how child proof they make the role and SE needs to stop pandering to them.

[Atelier-Bagur]

I kinda hate how many of the people shouting about "healing is easy and boring" is that they actively ignore the many players in this game that struggle with managing heals during normal content. Its not as blatant in 8-man or 24-man stuff because of the fact that you have co-healers to synergize with when things get bad as well as other alliance healers who can spare a rez or two.

Ive commented on this thread about it before but in my time playing this game Ive had many situations where if a healer is down on a dungeon mob pull pretty much the entire party is just dead unless the tank is very good in its mitigation to finish the rest of the culling. There's people of different skill levels and I agree with Havenchild that there's this odd situation between the casual and mid/hardcore where each side has a different view of healing in general. So I can see the struggle behind the devs trying to find that rough middleground.

Although I will say they have yet to find it. Healing classes in general needs a bit of a rework, at least with its dps department. Having a single button rotation for it is so outdated and we could use just a bit more useful things to support the party instead of just spamming a single spell for damage. Thing is, some classes already have those extra dps damage abilities, like a White Mage's Assize and Afflatus Misery or a Sage's Toxicon and Phlegma. What we need is for those abilities to get retooled to being able to be more freely available to use for dps time. Sage's design is a step in the right direction but it can definitely be a lot better.

[Nethereal]

I kinda hate how many of the people shouting about "healing is easy and boring" is that they actively ignore the many players in this game that struggle with managing heals during normal content. Its not as blatant in 8-man or 24-man stuff because of the fact that you have co-healers to synergize with when things get bad as well as other alliance healers who can spare a rez or two.

Ive commented on this thread about it before but in my time playing this game Ive had many situations where if a healer is down on a dungeon mob pull pretty much the entire party is just dead unless the tank is very good in its mitigation to finish the rest of the culling. There's people of different skill levels and I agree with Havenchild that there's this odd situation between the casual and mid/hardcore where each side has a different view of healing in general. So I can see the struggle behind the devs trying to find that rough middleground.

Although I will say they have yet to find it. Healing classes in general needs a bit of a rework, at least with its dps department. Having a single button rotation for it is so outdated and we could use just a bit more useful things to support the party instead of just spamming a single spell for damage. Thing is, some classes already have those extra dps damage abilities, like a White Mage's Assize and Afflatus Misery or a Sage's Toxicon and Phlegma. What we need is for those abilities to get retooled to being able to be more freely available to use for dps time. Sage's design is a step in the right direction but it can definitely be a lot better.

Get to level 80+ content and you won't have to worry about healing, because you're not needed.

[Deceptus]

Get to level 80+ content and you won't have to worry about healing, because you're not needed.

As always, leveling dungeons are far more dangerous than "Expert" dungeons mostly because your kit is incomplete and you're not above the ilvl for them.

[ThivraK]

I kinda hate how many of the people shouting about "healing is easy and boring" is that they actively ignore the many players in this game that struggle with managing heals during normal content. Its not as blatant in 8-man or 24-man stuff because of the fact that you have co-healers to synergize with when things get bad as well as other alliance healers who can spare a rez or two.

that's because those players do not want to put in any kind of effort into this game and only want to get carried
the same players that single pull and don't mitigate anything
the same players that do nothing but press 1 to 3 buttons as a dps and nothing else
and why? because people enable this toxic behaviour and bend over backwards to appease to people disrespecting them

[rewd]

I kinda hate how many of the people shouting about "healing is easy and boring" is that they actively ignore the many players in this game that struggle with managing heals during normal content. Its not as blatant in 8-man or 24-man stuff because of the fact that you have co-healers to synergize with when things get bad as well as other alliance healers who can spare a rez or two.

Nothing can ever be classified as "easy", then. There will always be someone that struggles with the most basic task. This is particularly funny because a lot of the people that are bad at this game are bad because they don't want to improve, not because they can't. If this community wasn't so averse to advice or normal human interaction, everyone would be able to see how completely braindead healing currently is.

Yes, Freecure fishers struggle with healing. No, this doesn't make healing "hard" or "not easy for everyone". I could use my nose to tie my shoes and I would find it struggling. Doesn't change that tying up shoes is easy.

[KizuyaKatogami]

I've skimmed through a good portion of this thread and while I understand the frustrations (Healer Main, UCOB downed), I heavily believe that if they add much more challenge to Healers or healing in general (in almost any form), there is a high chance more players will leave the role. PF already struggles to fill Healer and Tank roles and many players actually get performance anxiety as is. A bad healer can wipe your raid consistently, and there's ALOT of underperforming healers already. To take the chance on making these roles more complicated will definitely backfire on the community as a whole and if history shows us, the idea is not even supported by the community overall.

A bad dps or tank can wipe your raid entirely too though. All it takes is one tank mis-positioning and cleaving the entire raid team to kill everyone. In savage, just one mistake from anyone can wipe the whole group. This whole argument of healers wiping raids consistently is heavily flawed.

[Atelier-Bagur]

A bad dps or tank can wipe your raid entirely too though. All it takes is one tank mis-positioning and cleaving the entire raid team to kill everyone. In savage, just one mistake from anyone can wipe the whole group. This whole argument of healers wiping raids consistently is heavily flawed.

Dps responsibility is only really true in savage and extreme content though, where complex mechanics are relegated to EVERY member to follow or else the whole thing gets screwed. In regular content difficulty is less demanding and the responsibility is really only relegated to the tank and healers surviving the fights.

[Havenchild]

A bad dps or tank can wipe your raid entirely too though. All it takes is one tank mis-positioning and cleaving the entire raid team to kill everyone. In savage, just one mistake from anyone can wipe the whole group. This whole argument of healers wiping raids consistently is heavily flawed.

True but in a very skewed context. Your counter point is in an enviorment where all roles and handling of mechanics is balanced against each other as all are subjected to the same context.

Let's analyze:

DPS - Primarily responsible for doing damage. A bad player on this role, while still performing all mechanics 100%, could contribute to failing a DPS check. A single bad player is directly mitigated by the gearing on the rest of the party. A bad DPS that is mechanically sound, can still clear the fight if everyone else is good or better.
Tank - Primarily responsible for holding aggro and positioning and mitigation. A bad player in this role, can have a cleave shoot unexpectantly however most TB's hit one tank at a time usually in frontal cleaves or on the MT. There are cases like P3S tethers that go wary but this is easily resolved by strategy (party stacking south). Bad mitigation can be offset, by proper shielding from healers in most cases, and almost all TB's can be face tanked as Tank ilvl improves.

Healer - Primarily responsible for keeping people alive. A bad player in this role, will result in inefficient healing that can directly lead to death of raid or persons within it, while also reducing raid DPS due to ress sickness. This includes healing + shielding on MT / OT and AoE Raid healing and mitigation on party. Mismanagement of cds here has more direct consequences of life and death of a raid, especially when more consistent AoEs (ie. Curtain Call) or P3S (Power Healing / Mitigation) is needed.

No other role has more responsibility than a healer. You can save a run with a bad DPS even one mechanically sound. You can save a run with a bad tank (low DPS? / Poor Mitigation) that is mechanically sound. You can RARELY save a run with a bad healer that is mechanically sound unless the other healer is way better at adjusting and carrying the weight and suprise surprise, prioritizing the healing.

PF already proves this daily. That is only referencing Savage + Ultimate content.