Dev team, please fix the healer role

[Rilifane]

I don’t know what kind of healers you have ran with, but I have seen plenty of healers refuse to raise or refuse to shield/heal players in danger. Instead spamming their 1 damage abilities sometimes until they die/raid wipe.

This may be really shocking but... bad players exist.
And what's even more shocking: they are allowed to chose the green role thus resulting in a bad player playing a healer. It's almost as if every role and class can have bad players.

A bad player will be bad regardless how you design the toolkit.
A bad player spams 4 Medica II back to back, runs out of MP and then complains that he doesn't have MP because he was "solo healing".
A bad player tries to hardraise someone 3 times in a row and always get interrupted by mechanics last second while people around them keep dying because they were busy doing nothing for 6s and then get interrupted.
A bad player panics and pushes random buttons when things go sideways.
A bad player zones out and forget to pay attention to party HP.
A bad player misjudges party HP.
The list of signs of a bad player is long.

These people don't actively refuse to heal to chase a parse in Bardam's and would rather let the group wipe over and over instead of healing just once to get on with their life, they are simply bad players that have absolutely no overview of the situation, constantly misjudge, misuse their toolkit and zone out at the worst times. That has nothing to do with the amount of dps buttons.

[D6Damager]

A bad player will be bad regardless how you design the toolkit.
A bad player spams 4 Medica II back to back, runs out of MP and then complains that he doesn't have MP because he was "solo healing".
A bad player tries to hardraise someone 3 times in a row and always get interrupted by mechanics last second while people around them keep dying because they were busy doing nothing for 6s and then get interrupted.
A bad player panics and pushes random buttons when things go sideways.
A bad player zones out and forget to pay attention to party HP.
A bad player misjudges party HP.
The list of signs of a bad player is long.

It's funny how people say healers aren't engaging...and then you get a post like this actually listing some of the things you have to keep track of and figure out the timing on the fly (as 'crap hits the fan') in the healer role vs. another role that only has to pay attention to it's rotation and positioning.

[Rilifane]

It's funny how people say healers aren't engaging...and then you get a post like this actually listing some of the things you have to keep track of and figure out the timing on the fly (as 'crap hits the fan') in the healer role vs. another role that only has to pay attention to it's rotation and positioning.

Oh please, don't tell me it's rocket science and super engaging for all eternity to read the tooltip of a level 50 skill and think "Hmm... it has a regen. So I should probably, maybe, potentially not... uh.. spam it when only the tank gets damage?".
A role isn't engaging because someone out there might be too busy netflixing to fulfill it at a basic level. You consider "not zoning out" as something healer-specific that makes it engaging? Really?

Edit: on second thought - I agree, not zoning out on healer is hard. I suppose we do have something resembling a skill ceiling and that's not falling asleep when the next scripted raidwide is another 2min away.

[ThorneDynasty]

It's funny how people say healers aren't engaging...and then you get a post like this actually listing some of the things you have to keep track of and figure out the timing on the fly (as 'crap hits the fan') in the healer role vs. another role that only has to pay attention to it's rotation and positioning.

Those are all very beginner mistakes though, coming back to the problem of how dull the role is the minute your feet leave the skill floor.

[Sebazy]

It's funny how people say healers aren't engaging...and then you get a post like this actually listing some of the things you have to keep track of and figure out the timing on the fly (as 'crap hits the fan') in the healer role vs. another role that only has to pay attention to it's rotation and positioning.

All of these things are basically the same point though, at least from another healer's perspective. Someone sits in the bad and eats damage/vuln stacks.

We shouldn't be needing to be praying for clown showers to get some work in, a clean run on something like Byregot is just mindnumbingly dull =(

And secondly, people eating the bad is overvalued anyway, in most casual content AoEs are pretty spaced apart, most of the time a regen+shield is absolutely plenty and exceptions where the hits are fast enough to be dangerous but not so fast that they are just going to die before much of anything lands are rare (Dead Ends Fa La and Azeyma's Fire quadrants into AoE are the 2 that spring to mind for me.

[Xtrasweettea]

It's funny how people say healers aren't engaging...and then you get a post like this actually listing some of the things you have to keep track of and figure out the timing on the fly (as 'crap hits the fan') in the healer role vs. another role that only has to pay attention to it's rotation and positioning.

After repetition, it's no longer really "on the fly." Unless you are doing a run with a team full of goobers, you will know what to prep for and what to look out for to prepare. Doesn't take that many times either.

You also get to know how much effort you will take to keep someone who is a Vulnerability collector alive before you just let them die. Sometimes Raise is just cheaper (besides, that person is probably doing less damage then you anyway).

On top of that, if you know a mechanic isn't going to be that much of a problem to you or the group in the long run, you can just take the hit. I think a good example is the final boss in Smileton. I on purposely step on the land-mines and set them off so the DPS don't have to fear keeping their uptime. That one vulnerable stack isn't worth of DPS loss from the melee disengaging. A simple Regen takes care of the damage.

[fulminating]

On top of that, if you know a mechanic isn't going to be that much of a problem to you or the group in the long run, you can just take the hit. I think a good example is the final boss in Smileton. I on purposely step on the land-mines and set them off so the DPS don't have to fear keeping their uptime. That one vulnerable stack isn't worth of DPS loss from the melee disengaging. A simple Regen takes care of the damage.

Why not just use the safe spot? It saves you from getting paralysis and the vuln stack. Mainly asking because the one time I've seen someone try that on my dc, they inadvertently or otherwise clipped the entire party with it.

Fully agree with the thrust of that though, same applies to the adds in stigmascape's third boss. Just ignore them if you're willing to dodge the aoes and your party damage is sufficient.

[Xtrasweettea]

Why not just use the safe spot? It saves you from getting paralysis and the vuln stack. Mainly asking because the one time I've seen someone try that on my dc, they inadvertently or otherwise clipped the entire party with it.

Fully agree with the thrust of that though, same applies to the adds in stigmascape's third boss. Just ignore them if you're willing to dodge the aoes and your party damage is sufficient.

The paralyze and vuln stack is nothing to me. No real loss on me using Esuna (the paralyze rarely procs) and any concern by the Vuln stack be covered by a Divine Benson. If a party member gets hit, it's just a quick esuna and a use of one of my oGCD heals that have been off cooldown since the start of the fight.

You can literally heal the fight with Regen only. The mechanics are that sparse and under-tuned.

I also communicate before the fight that I plan on stepping on mines to cheese mechanics. Sometimes I get tanks who volunteer to alternate stepping on mines.

[Liam_Harper]

It's funny how people say healers aren't engaging...and then you get a post like this actually listing some of the things you have to keep track of and figure out the timing on the fly (as 'crap hits the fan') in the healer role vs. another role that only has to pay attention to it's rotation and positioning.

This is when damage happens. Actual damage does happen, but quite rarely.

"Requires braincells from time to time if your group plays poorly" does not equal engaging and well designed. It means you get to be engaged 10% of your playtime and put to sleep the other 90%.