Healers need an overhaul

[Selvokaz]

I'm just baffled at the amount of pushback you guys are getting. Some people must genuinely find 11111 2 1111111 2 gameplay fun lol we got some cookie clicker experts in here.
Reading these peoples responses its like the game didnt exist pre ShB and people were utterly incapable of healing fights designed in the exact same way before they axed SCH and friends. It's just sad.

That's the problem, that type of game play has never existed for a healer ever since the games inception unless NO one is ever taking damage or getting hit which from what I've seen is never the case. Even in dungeons after the healer learns their AOE attack, what is everyone else doing using AOE attacks, so because the ninja or whomever else is using 2 or 3 AOE's the healer now has to have 3 AOE's? Why, for what benefit? to do literally what else other than the DPS they were already doing with one spell? Work more efficiently, people. The only reason to add more buttons to a rotation is to increase DPS, and again NOT the healer's job to be on par with someone else's primarily Role. There is always going to be an order of magnitude when it comes to DPS, the DPSers are number one, and tanks are number 2 because it's their primary function to hold aggro over all other roles so it makes sense they deal the 2nd highest amount of damage, and lastly the healer who is splitting between healing and damaging with the former being their best reflection of Big Numbers, and their dps being clearing the minimal margin. Your ideas are basically, "Let their just be DPSers and the tank, and one of the DPSer can occasionally heal the group."

[Lilapop]

Buffs and debuffs are things you press once every minute or two minutes.
Tanks don't spam reprisal. Scholar doesn't spam Chain Strategem.
Bard doesn't spam Battle Voice.

Sure healers can get extra buffs or debuff buttons, but we all know it's going to be a "press once every minute, two minutes, 3 minute" buttons, like every damn debuff and buff in the game.

What healers need is FILLER.
Something to spam other than Glare, that's flexible enough for the healer to NOT press when there's healing involved, and when there's downtime.

Extra healing isn't gonna work at all either. Like what? Do you think that adding more healing buttons to a game where two GCDs will fill up the entire party's hp from 10% will actually make downtime interesting?
NO. It will give healers even MORE downtime, even WITH more damage going out.

So what's the next best option? Something that can be spammed, and can be seen as more contribution to the team. Hmmm...
Something that can maybe make the encounter go faster? You know, by making the boss' hp go down faster... Hmm... Idk...
Like something that you can just stop when there's healing involved or your mana is low, that it's actually very optional for you to press.

You know, something that you can do besides playing Stream Raiders on a second monitor. Hmmm..

Hmm... I really don't know. It's on the tip of my tongue...

Oh! optional dps buttons

"what healers need is FILLER... no, not the filler we already have, i mean REAL FILLER!!!!! grrrrr" keep your dots up, keep your debuffs up, keep your buffs up, toss in needed heals, use the 1-2 dps spells that are already present in the kit. this isn't that hard, if you're looking to pull bigger numbers, try actually being GOOD at a dps class? that should easily allow you to both pull bigger numbers and have a full dps kit with minimal utility heals, which seems to be... everything you desire! and again, you seem to be ignoring half of my point. i have said many times by now that i think there are too many needless bloated spells in the deck.

so, the next best option? something that can be spammed? it's on the tip of my tongue...

stay with me now...

something you yourself have already acknowledged the existence of!!!

G L A R E!!!

[IDontPetLalas]

Okay, you can keep your "shielding, buffing, healing" AST with 1 button and the rest of us can get something else because SGE, SCH and WHM don't have anything to manage. No, hitting Chain Stratagem on SCH every 2 minutes isn't "managing a buff" either.

DPSing isn't done "safely for a few seconds" it's literally done all of the time. Savage and Ultimate are designed for you to constantly be hitting that one button. Even solo healing DSR you cannot escape having your 1 primary damage nuke being the button you hit the most. The fights are designed so you are DPS in everything but name. I'm really not sure why you use Cleric Stance as a reason for why we cannot have anything more than 1 button to press - seems like SCH was doing just fine from a DPS perspective back in Stormblood where old Cleric Stance didn't exist. Nobody is asking for a "samurai level DPS rotation", stop creating strawmans nobody is asking for. If having 2 more DoTs to manage on SCH would be "samurai level" I really have no clue what to say to you. We can keep bad things in the past while also bringing back good things again. Nobody is asking for punishing systems like Cleric Stance, stop trying to use it for a justification on why they gutted healers in Shadowbringers, an expac after they removed old Cleric Stance.

Having started healing as a SCH when cleric stance existed I had far more fun back then- not that I am saying that we need to have the exact same system- but it was perfectly possible to heal and have interesting (and meaningful) DPS options back then.

[Payotz]

That's the problem, that type of game play has never existed for a healer ever since the games inception unless NO one is ever taking damage or getting hit which from what I've seen is never the case.

If you want to top the people off after taking like 500 damage then you're free to do so. That's totally fine regardless if you have extra dps buttons or not.

Your ideas are basically, "Let their just be DPSers and the tank, and one of the DPSer can occasionally heal the group.

Yeah, but at least they're actually doing something when they're NOT healing the group.
Downtime is dps. If you don't wanna do something about downtime in a dungeon, then don't do it.

Don't stop people from actually making that downtime efficiently. You can still /mdance in the middle of healing the tank every 5 seconds if you want, I don't care.
Like you can have Rosa in FF4 be on "Defend" all the time if she isn't healing. Whether or not she has offensive spells or an "Attack" option doesn't change the fact that "no Rosa, you're only going to Defend."

But give the healers that actually want to contribute to making the encounter go down faster, actually room to do so.

Give Rosa offensive spells. You're never gonna press it anyway, so give other people the option to do so. It won't change your playstyle.

[Merrigan]

It makes me sad to see healers in this state. And I'm not an ancient player, by far : I really began to play when Shb was already up.

What struck me immediately was the potential of healers in FF. They're designed in such a way that you could easily make jobs more complex, without losing an ounce of identity for each class, and still keep the same focus on being able to map your fight, to optimize each heal moment to open up more windows for dps. Where, on WOW, I felt like I was much more "stuck" in my options; and when it didn't work... Well, it didn't. End of the story.

It's not even necessary to increase the healing to be done (it seems to me that the game doesn't necessarily lend itself to it). On the other hand, there would be a whole synergy to establish between dps - regen mana - heal rotation that would explode the difficulty. And unfortunately, we'll probably never see all that, because the devs seem to want to artificially limit the difficulty.

Similarly, they refuse to play on dispell / buff / debuff. The result is that most dots are insufficient to kill anyone. We could almost delete esuna, it would not change anything.

The problem is to limit the difficulty for whom? Newcomers, who in a few months won't be newcomers anymore and will end up saying the same thing as the old players? The same newcomers who will be criticized when they struggle to heal... Because let's be honest, failing in basic content is really difficult rn? While an increase in difficulty could make people more patient?

[Payotz]

"what healers need is FILLER... no, not the filler we already have, i mean REAL FILLER!!!!! grrrrr" keep your dots up, keep your debuffs up, keep your buffs up, toss in needed heals, use the 1-2 dps spells that are already present in the kit.

Yeah man. How dare we want Aero 3 back? How dare you want to make this filler interesting!
Oh no, whatever shall we do! The sylphies are having trouble keeping the only 30 seconds DoT we have!

Pathetic. Healers have room to expand that filler more. You said it yourself that that filler can actually be a lot more interesting.
So make it interesting.

Dps buttons that are optional to push. Expand that with two more DoTs

this isn't that hard, if you're looking to pull bigger numbers, try actually being GOOD at a dps class? that should easily allow you to both pull bigger numbers and have a full dps kit with minimal utility heals, which seems to be... everything you desire! and again, you seem to be ignoring half of my point. i have said many times by now that i think there are too many needless bloated spells in the deck.

Buddy if I actually cared about dps numbers, then I wouldn't be healing in WoW. LOL
I care about making filler interesting and making that filler give meaningful contribution to the team.

And making the encounter go faster, is the best contribution I can give to the team.

Give me more optional dps buttons

so, the next best option? something that can be spammed? it's on the tip of my tongue...

stay with me now...

something you yourself have already acknowledged the existence of!!!

G L A R E!!!

"Yoshi-P please, I just want to press another button with Glare. Can we have Aero 3 back? Please. I want to make the downtime more interesting!"
"NO! YOU ALREADY HAVE DPS OPTIONS! YOU WILL ONLY PRESS GLARE RAWR"

It's so funny. HAHAHAHAHHAHA

[Lilapop]

It makes me sad to see healers in this state. And I'm not an ancient player, by far : I really began to play when Shb was already up.

What struck me immediately was the potential of healers in FF. They're designed in such a way that you could easily make jobs more complex, without losing an ounce of identity for each class, and still keep the same focus on being able to map your fight, to optimize each heal moment to open up more windows for dps. Where, on WOW, I felt like I was much more "stuck" in my options; and when it didn't work... Well, it didn't. End of the story.

It's not even necessary to increase the healing to be done (it seems to me that the game doesn't necessarily lend itself to it). On the other hand, there would be a whole synergy to establish between dps - regen mana - heal rotation that would explode the difficulty. And unfortunately, we'll probably never see all that, because the devs seem to want to artificially limit the difficulty.

Similarly, they refuse to play on dispell / buff / debuff. The result is that most dots are insufficient to kill anyone. We could almost delete esuna, it would not change anything.

The problem is to limit the difficulty for whom? Newcomers, who in a few months won't be newcomers anymore and will end up saying the same thing as the old players? The same newcomers who will be criticized when they struggle to heal... Because let's be honest, failing in basic content is really difficult rn? While an increase in difficulty could make people more patient?

failing in any content usually brings out the rage in people pretty fast. not all the time, mind you. plus, as discussed earlier in the thread, there's a random difficulty spike when people enter into extreme/savage, for those who are looking for a more difficult encounter, which... if you fail there, there'll still be angry people too.

[IDontPetLalas]

but if one wants to not be expected to heal and doesn't feel like wasting time/slots on the hotbar for something not needed, playing a class literally classified as a healer doesn't sound right for them. if someone wants to do the big numbers without having to heal or being expected to heal, dps class would be their better bet. ++ as you say, they can play a dps with utility heals if they want to (someone shockingly) stop dps-ing to heal.

really, you keep , as the saying goes, putting words into people's mouths - no one "wants to do big numbers without having to heal" you are stating this. It seems that you are threatened by healers being able to do decent DPS and heal - that is a "you" problem.

I was wondering how long it would take you to repeat this old trite fallacy. "If you want to play a DPS why don't you play one?". For shame, you were doing so well up to now. It was almost entertaining. Finally showing your true colours.

If you don't understand what I mean, I can explain it to you.

[anhaato]

Easy for who? People with years of experiences?

If someone can barely do 5 push-up and they are asked to do 20 they will have a bad time. It doesn't matter if it was 50 before and now it's easier it's still way too much.

Stop expecting people who might have started the game way more recently than you to be as good. Especially when you can't handle them making mistake because 'it was harder back in the day'.

If you guys want a rewarding Job you can apply for a real one.

Does glare spam make healing easier or does it not? At first you were arguing that it did by lowering the chance of making mistakes, but now you’re saying it’s STILL too hard for new players?

I’ll be quite honest, if you can’t handle the effort to learn an important role as you level, and can’t handle people losing patience with your visible lack of effort, then maybe you shouldn’t play it. Heal anxiety is a bad excuse because very rarely do you get flamed in this game for making a mistake. As long as you’re trying people will be courteous.

Yes, it’s easy. Your heals are so strong that it really only takes a couple buttons to heal a given amount of damage. The game never spikes in difficulty the way you claim it does, nor does it ever have rigorous heal checks that expect you to use a lot of gcd heals in a row past level 45. The only way you’d experience a sudden spike in difficulty is if you bought a skip, and at that point it’s really not my problem if you’re level 80 and getting overwhelmed by glare glare glare and the occasional heal. I really wish the game would stop babying the playerbase.

Edit: there is a bit of a jump in difficulty going to ex trials, but those don’t require anything even close to optimal gameplay. And if they do, that’s still a level where you should be putting in some form of effort.

[Merrigan]

failing in any content usually brings out the rage in people pretty fast. not all the time, mind you. plus, as discussed earlier in the thread, there's a random difficulty spike when people enter into extreme/savage, for those who are looking for a more difficult encounter, which... if you fail there, there'll still be angry people too.

Since when should content be wisely divided between "HL" and "so easy I can almost fall asleep"?