Quote Originally Posted by Semirhage View Post
First, that's not how "healers" work in the vast majority of RPGs. When's the last time you played something other than an attrition healing model MMO where the goal was to spam healing spells as often as possible? Healing is a means, not an end. You perform that task until it's done, and then you return to doing something productive. If that amount of time is half the fight, then it's half the fight. If it's two GCDs out of an entire 11-minute encounter, then it's two GCDs. Like it or not, there will always be downtime. If there weren't, the role would be the hardest in the game by a country mile. You'd have to play perfectly in order to keep the party alive, and Yoshida is plainly uninterested in doing that (as am I). He wants people who aren't skilled at the role to be able to pick it up. Large windows of downtime aren't some boogeyman people who are actually good at healing invent from thin air. They're the logical outcome to the existence of a skill allowance.
I mean, there's a good example with WoW, both the retail and classic versions. Heck knows I actually enjoy healing in those games because it has that model. In retail it's still more or less expected that you do damage with downtime if mana permits but those occasions are few and far between. Of course it helps that the groups over there are more dynamic, and if you have too many healers for a fight you can have them swap to their DPS spec no problem. Parses are also generally ranked on amount of healing done, rather then damage, which is nice.