Healers need an overhaul

[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.

[IDontPetLalas]

[QUOTE=Gemina;6136381]"Existential crisis"? SMH man.

You seem to contradict yourself, On one hand you recognize that there are already skills that integrate healing and DPS.
On one hand you acknowledge that there are issues with healing design, then you seem to indicate that actually it's fairly well designed, then you go back to- well no there are issues.

The final touch which seems to indicate that you aren't arguing in good faith however is that tired old cliché of "if you want more DPS options, play a DPS job". At that point, anyone who adds that is just trolling, we're gone through this so many times at this point.

[tearagion]

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.

Is it really that hard for you to imagine Heavensward? Did you hit your head at some point?

[Atelier-Bagur]

On the shield healer side, isn't this a pretty milk toast issue? The core of scholar's toolkit is a two-second hard cast shield while sage's core toolkit is a pure heal that transforms into an instant cast shield of the same potency. Sage can just mitigate a lot more stuff than scholar due to being faster, and at the same potency to boot. Its the same thing on the cooldown side of things. Either its cooldowns are linked to adloq/succor and thus are slower by relation or the cooldown requires extraneous input (ground targeting, summoning seraph to use seraphic veil, having to dismiss a status effect to get your fairy back, etc).

People get bored of playing the same job all the time. When the only other option in a role is a downgrade, people are going to start playing another role.

I mean, you say that but as somebody who enjoys playing Warrior or Paladin, I always switch to other roles or classes to avoid self-burnout.

I cant ever understand people who limit themselves on having a "main" job on a game that gives you the freedom to switch your playstyle on the fly. Sounds like a very easy way to get bored or burn yourself out if you just stick to one or two classes.

If healer gets boring, I switch to dps, if dps gets boring, I switch to tank, and if tank gets boring I switch back to healer. I dont ever try to stubbornly stay on one role or class in this game if I dont want to, and I find myself the happier with this game's combat when I switch up playstyles and roles often.

[ThaCa]

Healing is at a point where PFs have to wait for someone willing to do it and even several Healers in Statics that I know have either swapped to another Role or are planning to by next Tier.

[ASkellington]

I cant ever understand people who limit themselves on having a "main" job on a game that gives you the freedom to switch your playstyle on the fly. Sounds like a very easy way to get bored or burn yourself out if you just stick to one or two classes.

Welcome to how MMOs like WoW are played, where you have 1 class per character. I'll grant you, that in such cases there are talent trees to where you can switch you role (say from Heal/Tank to DPS) but to me there's little difference when fundementally I am playing one class (even if specs/trees play differently)

Much like you can't understand people who limit themselves on one job I can't understand why (outside of flexing) people like to have multiple jobs. Its a difference of preference. I like having one job to get good at, other people like several.

That said, that doesn't excuse the state of the healer role. "Self burnout" as you call it is a real thing yes, but self burnout is not the whole reason contributing to why people think healers currently suck.

[Nizzi]

I mean, you say that but as somebody who enjoys playing Warrior or Paladin, I always switch to other roles or classes to avoid self-burnout.

I cant ever understand people who limit themselves on having a "main" job on a game that gives you the freedom to switch your playstyle on the fly. Sounds like a very easy way to get bored or burn yourself out if you just stick to one or two classes.

If healer gets boring, I switch to dps, if dps gets boring, I switch to tank, and if tank gets boring I switch back to healer. I dont ever try to stubbornly stay on one role or class in this game if I dont want to, and I find myself the happier with this game's combat when I switch up playstyles and roles often.

Not really how Savage works. Gearing necessitates that you're locked into a role for at least 8 weeks, often way longer due to not everyone being week 1 clear material (nothing wrong with this) so often times you're stuck to your role for months a tier.
Further more, healers do not play meaningfully different from each other for a majority of their casts. There's not a single healer that breaks the monotony of 1 DoT 1 Filler Nuke spam. There's no "playstyles" within the healer role. There's one enforced way to play, on all four jobs within the role.
I get the point you're making, and I don't necessarily disagree with it (I don't do casual content on the jobs I raid on for the same reason) but at the same point, shouldn't "switching your playstyle on the fly" also apply within roles too, like it used to in the healer role?

[HyperiusUltima]

Not really how Savage works. Gearing necessitates that you're locked into a role for at least 8 weeks, often way longer due to not everyone being week 1 clear material (nothing wrong with this) so often times you're stuck to your role for months a tier.
Further more, healers do not play meaningfully different from each other for a majority of their casts. There's not a single healer that breaks the monotony of 1 DoT 1 Filler Nuke spam. There's no "playstyles" within the healer role. There's one enforced way to play, on all four jobs within the role.
I get the point you're making, and I don't necessarily disagree with it (I don't do casual content on the jobs I raid on for the same reason) but at the same point, shouldn't "switching your playstyle on the fly" also apply within roles too, like it used to in the healer role?

To add onto this, the only difference between the healers is in HOW they treat the damage that happens to keep the party alive. SCH/SGE provide shields and abilities that reduce overall damage with hard mitigation. I can't relate WHM to AST as much because they rely more on GCD healing than most, and AST relies on their oGCDs to handle things. The playstyles I see are extremely similar between SGE/SCH, but slightly different between WHM and AST as AST has a high APM and WHM is slower than most in terms of APM.

[Gemina]

"Existential crisis"? SMH man.

You seem to contradict yourself, On one hand you recognize that there are already skills that integrate healing and DPS.

On one hand you acknowledge that there are issues with healing design, then you seem to indicate that actually it's fairly well designed, then you go back to- well no there are issues.

The final touch which seems to indicate that you aren't arguing in good faith however is that tired old cliché of "if you want more DPS options, play a DPS job". At that point, anyone who adds that is just trolling, we're gone through this so many times at this point.

Yes, I do recognize that there are issues within the healer role. "Existential crisis" is not the term that describes them, or the state healing is in. Do I really need to spell that out? How much of an overdramatization that is? It is however, indicative of the emotional state of the person who states it that way. And if you think it is really that bad, then I honestly don't know what to tell you. When I log into the game, and group with players. Everything proceeds apace. Again, I can't speak for Savage, but for Barb EX and below, everything is fine. There are some issues than can improve current gameplay, but a lot of that has more to do with refining current skills, not adding new ones.

When I say, "Play a DPS job". You can call it trolling if you wish. It really doesn't matter to me. But it has more to do with the exhaustion of letting players know that moving in the direction of having more DPS skills to tangle around with isn't happening. And even if it was, it's not happening this instant. You're not going to log into the game tomorrow and will need to find a way to add 3-4 new DPS skills to your hotkeys. If healing sucks, and you're not enjoying it, and the state of them is in an "Existential Crisis", what else am I going to tell you? Honestly?

[Nizzi]

Again, I can't speak for Savage, but for Barb EX and below, everything is fine.

LMFAO

/10char