Fixing Every Healer Job

[Hellebore_Ghrian]

The real problem with healers is not the healers themselves its how the enounters are designed. Remove heavily scripted dmg, add more healing checks, make bosses auto attack the tank for half of their hp like how Bahamut used to do back in the day. Remember the coils how you had to stance dance between cleric to apply dots and normal stance to actually heal bcs bosses hit like a truck ? yeah that was engaging and skillfull. This becomes very apparent for me when i play a dps or tank class and most of the healers i get in PF cant even keep up with a mild heal check like the bleed from endsinger ex.

I think most of us are more than agree with your point... but SE have already clearly state that they do not plan to increase healing requirement because they want to keep healing easy, relatively failsafe and accessible (and for me it only goes lower and lower...).

So since they won't change encounter design and our healing side won't improved, what remains is asking/coping to have a better dps side to fill the void.

[Sebazy]

The more i read those threads the more i feel like healers nowadays are just dps Players in disguise.
The real problem with healers is not the healers themselves its how the enounters are designed. Remove heavily scripted dmg, add more healing checks, make bosses auto attack the tank for half of their hp like how Bahamut used to do back in the day. Remember the coils how you had to stance dance between cleric to apply dots and normal stance to actually heal bcs bosses hit like a truck ? yeah that was engaging and skillfull. This becomes very apparent for me when i play a dps or tank class and most of the healers i get in PF cant even keep up with a mild heal check like the bleed from endsinger ex.

Sadly that’s exactly what the game expects of us. You can see it as far back as Gordias and Midas with some more modern fights outright requiring significant amounts of healer DPS to clear enrage (E8S was probably the worst offender here).

This mentality filters down into comparatively irrelevant content in the same way that forced metas have in the past.

SE made this situation, not the player base.

[SirShady]

The more i read those threads the more i feel like healers nowadays are just dps Players in disguise.
The real problem with healers is not the healers themselves its how the enounters are designed. Remove heavily scripted dmg, add more healing checks, make bosses auto attack the tank for half of their hp like how Bahamut used to do back in the day. Remember the coils how you had to stance dance between cleric to apply dots and normal stance to actually heal bcs bosses hit like a truck ? yeah that was engaging and skillfull. This becomes very apparent for me when i play a dps or tank class and most of the healers i get in PF cant even keep up with a mild heal check like the bleed from endsinger ex.

"healers nowadays are just dps ̶p̶l̶a̶y̶e̶r̶s̶ in disguise" Fixed that for you!

As much as I would absolutely LOVE them to move away from heavily scripted fights with little outgoing damage, at this point, that has become part of the game's core battle design philosophy. Every single fight is structured this way, a dance, and I don't see them suddenly changing their mind on how combat encounters fundamentally work. Trust me, if I had my way we'd have BOTH interesting kits AND interesting non-scripted fights that actually required you to hit your GCD heal buttons. That would be a godsend. Sadly, as much as I'd love to believe that the next major chapter in the game's story will bring with it huge changes and some actual difficulty, I HIGHLY doubt they will give up their incredibly digestible scripted encounters because they want to keep the game incredibly approachable for its casual audience.

[Bonkleberry]

Unpopulr opinion, I know, but I do not think healers really need fixing.

Having played all healers at max level, the only real problems I ever saw was that SGE sucks if your Tanks are terrible or super squishy (Kardion stops contributing to healing when you cannot DPS) and healing inbetween Holy spam for WHM feels clunky (give Holy the same cast time as Glare or make it instant cast).

[Silverbane]

Unpopulr opinion, I know, but I do not think healers really need fixing.

Agreed.

Having played all healers at max level, the only real problems I ever saw was that SGE sucks if your Tanks are terrible or super squishy (Kardion stops contributing to healing when you cannot DPS) and healing inbetween Holy spam for WHM feels clunky (give Holy the same cast time as Glare or make it instant cast).

Plus Holy's damage coming at the end of the channel, rather than immediately as is the case for Dyskrasia and Art of War, can be really annoying. I've been leveling WHMs to get my 5th and 6th characters able to enter the housing lotteries, and I've lost track of how many times a tank has dragged the mobs out of Holy's AoE before the channel finished.

Holy's stun is nice, while it works, but it doesn't make up for being able to move freely and weave heals in between casts, like you can do with Dyskrasia and Art of War. You can't run with the mobs as the tank kites them while spamming Holy.

[fulminating]

Unpopulr opinion, I know, but I do not think healers really need fixing.

Having played all healers at max level, the only real problems I ever saw was that SGE sucks if your Tanks are terrible or super squishy (Kardion stops contributing to healing when you cannot DPS) and healing inbetween Holy spam for WHM feels clunky (give Holy the same cast time as Glare or make it instant cast).

Playing something at max level isn't necessarily the same as playing it at a high level. Could you elaborate a bit on what kind of content you heal? I have played all the healers in expert dungeons, but wouldn't really feel comfortable offering any feedback on AST for example.

Plus Holy's damage coming at the end of the channel, rather than immediately as is the case for Dyskrasia and Art of War, can be really annoying. I've been leveling WHMs to get my 5th and 6th characters able to enter the housing lotteries, and I've lost track of how many times a tank has dragged the mobs out of Holy's AoE before the channel finished.

Holy's stun is nice, while it works, but it doesn't make up for being able to move freely and weave heals in between casts, like you can do with Dyskrasia and Art of War. You can't run with the mobs as the tank kites them while spamming Holy.

Having what is essentially a hallowed ground every mob pack on top of fair damage is a more than reasonable deal.

[Silver-Strider]

Having what is essentially a hallowed ground every mob pack on top of fair damage is a more than reasonable deal.

Other healers have more oGCDs to facilitate not needing Holy's stun. Power creep has left Holy as little more than a bandaid to compensate for the lack of oGCDs in the toolkit.

The "fair" damage is lower than both Art of War and Dyskrasia while Gravity is only 10 potency lower than Holy but has both a quicker cast time and is ranged.

[Shurrikhan]

Having [Holy,] what is essentially a hallowed ground[,] every mob pack on top of fair damage is a more than reasonable deal.

This would depend entirely on mobs not progressing towards auto-attacks or future special attacks while stunned. If player behavior is anything to go by, they likely progress towards both. The stun would then merely delay readied auto-attacks from being cast, much like downtime does for us.

I.e., if one is stunned for 2 seconds with only 1.5 seconds left until auto-attack, they've lost .5s of autos; however, if they're stunned for 2 seconds and still had 2+ seconds left until their next auto-attack, their damage won't have decreased at all.

The same interaction would occur with special attacks, most noticeably the instant casts among them.

tl;dr:
Holy's total stun duration would need to have no gaps for it to provide even 7 seconds of complete damage mitigation (technically, still short of that, as any time until next auto eclipsed by the stun would not be affected).

On average, Holy likely instead tends to net about 3 seconds of trimmed autos from mobs being unable to use capped/readied auto-attacks, and briefly delayed castless specials, across the spam. Its utility value is both generally greatly overestimated and appears to come at cost elsewhere in the toolkit (in terms of bankability and modularity of free heals).

[fulminating]

This would depend entirely on mobs not progressing towards auto-attacks or future special attacks while stunned. If player behavior is anything to go by, they likely progress towards both. The stun would then merely delay readied auto-attacks from being cast, much like downtime does for us.

I.e., if one is stunned for 2 seconds with only 1.5 seconds left until auto-attack, they've lost .5s of autos; however, if they're stunned for 2 seconds and still had 2+ seconds left until their next auto-attack, their damage won't have decreased at all.

The same interaction would occur with special attacks, most noticeably the instant casts among them.

tl;dr:
Holy's total stun duration would need to have no gaps for it to provide even 7 seconds of complete damage mitigation (technically, still short of that, as any time until next auto eclipsed by the stun would not be affected).

On average, Holy likely instead tends to net about 3 seconds of trimmed autos from mobs being unable to use capped/readied auto-attacks, and briefly delayed castless specials, across the spam. Its utility value is both generally greatly overestimated and appears to come at cost elsewhere in the toolkit (in terms of bankability and modularity of free heals).

I think you're downplaying it a bit, being able to halt the entire pull's damage output for any length of time is insanely good mitigation. It's difficult to tell just how long the mobs stop for, but from experimenting it seems to be closer to seven than three seconds. Not to mention the bulk of damage naturally coming at the start of pulls when all the mobs are still alive.

Tetra, bene, assize, asylum, liturgy for free heals, 2x divine benison, aquaveil and temperance for free mit. Pulls usually last about 40s-1m so you're usually going to have at least tetra and assize up each time.

[Shurrikhan]

It's difficult to tell just how long the mobs stop for, but from experimenting it seems to be closer to seven than three seconds.

It has a cumulative stun time of 7 seconds, yes, but that is irrelevant to the cumulative full mitigation time unless, during time stunned, the given mob generates no offensive resource / do not progress towards any further offensive events. That does not appear to be the case.

Instead, a stun only appears to prevent capped/readied auto-attack / special attack timers from going off, not from progressing their timers.

Tetra (700p), bene, assize (400p), asylum (800p), liturgy for free heals, 2x divine benison (500p), aquaveil (15%) and temperance (10%) for free mit. Pulls usually last about 40s-1m so you're usually going to have at least tetra and assize up each time.

As compared to Essential Dignity (up to 900p), Collective Unconscious (500p), Celestial Opposition (1000p), Earthly Star (720p), Lady of Crowns (400p), Celestial Intersection (600p), Horoscope, Exaltation (10% + 500p), and Macrocosmos (15s, 25%), and Neutral Sect into pre-shield (750p).

Again, the claim was merely that the other healers have a bit more potency and fluidity to make up for Holy's full mitigation time, which is, again, less than the total stun time Holy provides.