Healers need an overhaul

[Recon1o6]

here's something galling: paladin is getting a rework before healers. despite the fact healers need it more (1 job vs an entire role)

[Allegor]

here's something galling: paladin is getting a rework before healers. despite the fact healers need it more (1 job vs an entire role)

Mostly so they fit into the 2min buff window like everybody else, but since "healers only heal" they don't need a 2min buff window and are perfectly fine as is... I'd like to say I'm being sarcastic, but there are people out there who may unironically think like this, so idk lol

[Raven2014]

here's something galling: paladin is getting a rework before healers. despite the fact healers need it more (1 job vs an entire role)

Explain why healers need it more? Like ... ok, I'm not saying healers doesn't need a rework. I will even say it would be nice if healers get a major rework ... but common now, it's fairly obvious why they need to rework PLD. It's pretty much a forgotten orphan that were left behind. Its output sucks, this tier bleed damage model just rip PLD to shred. Its support kit is badly out of date, too situational, and overall clunky. As a healer main, if I have a choice I would prefer not to heal a PLD. Up until now, PLD has always been my go to tank, and now I hate it. Frankly they should rework and get rid of this idea "PLD is a tank that can save/recover a run" because face it, when people argue about class balance nobody care about "saving a run" unless it's a RDM.

Basically, PLD have an existential crisis. People will avoid to bring a PLD if they can. In fact, if you're part of the early clear crowd then it's not even a choice. And it's obvious they want to square that issue away before the next content circle so PLD main don't get excluded. That's the correct priority.

Healers may think they're desperate due to this "woe is me, and only my trouble is the most important and gravest!" mindset but ... at the end of the day, every group gonna bring 2 healers.

[AnotherPerson]

Explain why healers need it more? Like ... ok, I'm not saying healers doesn't need a rework. I will even say it would be nice if healers get a major rework ... but common now, it's fairly obvious why they need to rework PLD. It's pretty much a forgotten orphan that were left behind. Its output sucks, this tier bleed damage model just rip PLD to shred. Its support kit is badly out of date, too situational, and overall clunky. As a healer main, if I have a choice I would prefer not to heal a PLD. Up until now, PLD has always been my go to tank, and now I hate it. Frankly they should rework and get rid of this idea "PLD is a tank that can save/recover a run" because face it, when people argue about class balance nobody care about "saving a run" unless it's a RDM.

I dunno, maybe it has to do with the role being least played and there's a lack of healers in PF because no one wants to heal when it's too boring to do the same attack skill over and over and over?

Basically, PLD have an existential crisis. People will avoid to bring a PLD if they can. In fact, if you're part of the early clear crowd then it's not even a choice. And it's obvious they want to square that issue away before the next content circle so PLD main don't get excluded. That's the correct priority.

AST loses their card variety.
SCH loses their DoT gameplay. Fairy starts ghosting and AI becomes more clunky due to oGCD commands creating a delay in skill activation compared to manually controlling the fairy through pet GCDs to the point where it doesn't feel like a pet healer. It took over an entire expansion to address these issues, but fairy skills can still ghost on the player's end if they were used in succession.
WHM offers nothing unique to the table when compared to the other 3 healers.

PLD gets more holy magic. PLD gets more healing output.

Ah yes, existential crisis. Don't get me wrong, PLD has obvious concerns, but don't act as if healers have minor problems when the whole healer role is effectively reduced to "press 2-1-1-1-1-1-1" outside of mechanics (THAT EVERY JOB has to handle). People avoid bringing a PLD, people avoid playing healer entirely.

Healers may think they're desperate due to this "woe is me, and only my trouble is the most important and gravest!" mindset but ... at the end of the day, every group gonna bring 2 healers.

Yep, every group brings 2 healers. This is also why in PF, there's an abundance of parties just waiting for a healer to show up so they can start, but barely any of those spots get filled up exactly because not many people like the current iteration of healers. The ones who fill the role, in my experience, end up being bad at healing because, surprise surprise - they aren't healer mains, just people who want to start the party. I'm not saying people who main healers don't exist because they do (I love the aspect of managing healing), but they're far fewer in number lately exactly because people simply hate how boring the downtime can be for a healer. The downtime cannot be erased, but instead got magnified in basically every piece of content while healers simulataneously lost their DPS skills. It's simply not fun to play a healer, and therefore no one wants to play it. It doesn't matter if balance is good if the role as a whole sucks because balance destroyed the fun aspect of it. This is why people are afraid of PLD's gameplay being ruined and turned into a 2 min burst job. People are afraid it's going to feel just like every other tank and no one likes homogenization to that extent. Unsuprisingly, people can draw parallels to healer gameplay in that regard, except for healers, it's many times worse from a lack of damage skill variety once they enter downtime.

Just look at SAM complaints with Kaiten. Kaiten doesn't even get pressed all that often, but it's still a centerpiece to the Samurai gameplay. People hate only using their gauge for Shinten, and using Shinten isn't even as frequent as using healer's attack spell. That should be an obvious example of how poorly healers are designed for the past two expansions.

Honestly, the longer they take to update healers, the more I'm inclined to leave the role as well and never look back at it. Basic updates for this role take months to years to come out. I honestly rather play DPS or tank at this point like everyone else and ditch the role too.

[Selvokaz]

ive yet o hear a healer overhaul idea that wasn't make them a wizard who has a heal spell and a resurrection spell.

[Raven2014]

I dunno, maybe it has to do with the role being least played and there's a lack of healers in PF because no one wants to heal when it's too boring to do the same attack skill over and over and over?

Oh really, that's how you read it? Healer this tier ain't any more boring or exciting then it has been before, so not like there have been any change on that front. What CHANGED however, is the healers kinda ... need to heal this tier? Just a little more tinsy then usual, but apparently that's a bit much too ask for the green DPS.

I'm personally fine with it. This is the first tier in a long while that I actually feel I "need" to heal, make me feel alive I tell you. As a healer main the PF's healer draught ain't my problem, more option for me I would say. Even if they are both problems, from a developers' POV having a class so bad the community may exclude it is a bigger problem, period.

PLD gets more holy magic. PLD gets more healing output.

That ... kinda my point. Class balance you always gonna lose something when you gain something else, and in case of PLD they're not getting new useful thing because they were being balanced around getting "useless" things. PLD needs rework because it was designed in the 2.0 and 3.0 days, and the raid paradigm had shift away from those times. The class itself pretty much need a redesigned to not feel like an oddball out.

ive yet o hear a healer overhaul idea that wasn't make them a wizard who has a heal spell and a resurrection spell.

Just get rid of all healers then add a few healing spell to SMN and call it a day I say. Like everytime I see people mentioned it: trim down the healing bloat on healer, give it a simple DPS rotation ... I had this picture of a SMN light in my head.

[Midareyukki]

That ... kinda my point. Class balance you always gonna lose something when you gain something else, and in case of PLD they're not getting new useful thing because they were being balanced around getting "useless" things. PLD needs rework because it was designed in the 2.0 and 3.0 days, and the raid paradigm had shift away from those times. The class itself pretty much need a redesigned to not feel like an oddball out.

It had a mini-rework in 4.0, actually. And from then on, it became much more viable to play than ever before. You guys didn't just gain a new magical phase, your combos got reworked because they sucked, and you finally had an AoE skill that was actually good to use and not a non-damaging GCD.

And guess what was meta in 4.0. It wasn't DRK, let me tell you, and WAR actually sucked until around 4.2.

That said though, AnotherPerson is right when he says that PLD's stuff outshines healers, and tanks need to be dialed up a tiny bit. Especially on dungeons, dear god. BUT you're right also in that it doesn't fit the current fight design, and that I think it's a relic from 5.0. A LOT of stuff on PLD and GNB I feel is like... "It worked at lv 80. But then they added something new at lv 90 on top of the lv 80 rotation, and then forced them to still operate as though they were lv 80". idk if this makes sense? But to me it feels like so many things drift, you have awkward resource management and you have to make so many weird decisions because the game expects you to do what you used to at lv 80, but you're lv 90 and have more to do than what you otherwise did at lv 80.

[Deceptus]

Basically, PLD have an existential crisis. People will avoid to bring a PLD if they can. In fact, if you're part of the early clear crowd then it's not even a choice. And it's obvious they want to square that issue away before the next content circle so PLD main don't get excluded. That's the correct priority.

The entire Healing Role has been in an existential crisis for four years now, two expansions.

Healers may think they're desperate due to this "woe is me, and only my trouble is the most important and gravest!" mindset but ... at the end of the day, every group gonna bring 2 healers.

You say people are actively not playing Paladins? LOL. People legitimately aren't bringing healers to runs at all. Single healer EX is relatively common.

WHM was actively avoided for multiple expansions.

But like we said in our Double Standard post on the healing forums, Hydaelyn forbid a tank have an issue, because then it gets fixed really quick (With the exception of the Bastard Child Dark Knight and Living Dead).

[HyperiusUltima]

Basically, PLD have an existential crisis. People will avoid to bring a PLD if they can. In fact, if you're part of the early clear crowd then it's not even a choice. And it's obvious they want to square that issue away before the next content circle so PLD main don't get excluded. That's the correct priority.

Healers may think they're desperate due to this "woe is me, and only my trouble is the most important and gravest!" mindset but ... at the end of the day, every group gonna bring 2 healers.

Yeah sure, let's talk about PLD and how they don't fit into the 2m Burst Window that actually destroyed balance in this game. Typically they're doing this fix because PLD was a massive outlier in terms of clears done mainly because of the following:

1) Boss HP was WAY too high, even for Week 1 World First Groups. They had to rely on Crit Variance to clear the fight, even using perfect play and uptime strategies.

2) PLD was an outlier because of the fact in Phase 2 you get a major buff; PLD can't fit their entire burst into the window of other jobs because it's 11 GCDs long. This means some of PLD's damage is left out compared to other jobs who can fit all their potential damage inside of burst phases.

All the other tanks can fit their damage into the burst window. PLD can't. What do you think the emergency buffs were for to their Confiteor combo?

As for Healers, they're in a far worse position in PLD if you look at their kit. If you played Healer and took a minute to figure out what each and every single thing in the role's kits does, you'd see that it's about 90% Healing for nearly all Healers. Their two damage buttons are just a DoT and a generic attack spell. They've been desperate for something new for the role for years.

One last thing before I go, too: Don't act like Healers share that same mindset and generalize it.

[Gemina]

The entire Healing Role has been in an existential crisis for four years now, two expansions.

"Existential crisis"? SMH man.

Look, I can understand that for many healers, it is currently in a state that makes it difficult to enjoy. But when terms like this is just thrown out there, it becomes very easy to see that the problem is not just with healer design. It's also with the healers themselves.

I can't and won't try to speak for things on a savage level. I can only speak as a player who has used all four healers up to Barb EX, and what they are going through isn't an existential crisis. On the contrary, they have plenty to do, and there are numerous ways for them to deploy their kits to handle the situations within these duties. Each of them also have varied ways to handle a situation that give them slight edges over the other healers and feeling of uniqueness.

I will repeat that this does not mean that there are not issues with healing. There definitely are. Lack of offensive skills if probably the furthest on the list of these to the devs though. Trust me, I know because of my hotbar setup for each healer has at the bare minimum five offensive skills. Some skills such a Pneuma, Assize, and Macrocosmos, I feel are well designed because of their duality, which gives them both optimal and suboptimal applications of these skills that change depending on a ST vs AoE scenario. Even a skill like SGE's Phelgma can have you reserve or spend charges depending on what's going on. So it's not like these thought processes while healing don't exist. Players just say they don't, which is a blatant lie.

As usual, I default to if you want more DPS options, play a DPS job.