General Healer Discussion [The Echo Chamber]

[ty_taurus]

The Absolute State of WHM, hidden for blogposting.

In ARR, the two healers were...alright. Little bare, but that was to be expected. They were serviceable for the expansion they occupied. Scholar was far more interactive than WHM was; Aetherflow made them more flexible, but their lack of beefy GCD options meant that things fell through if they spent their resources foolishly. WHM had the two dots and Fluid Aura plus Stone spam. Not engaging in a vacuum and would definitely grow stale given enough time, but with some Cure 2s and Medica 2s thrown in it worked for an Intro to MMO experience. Scholar's avenue of interactivity wasn't my jam, but I saw the potential.

Heavensward: Cool. They added some spice. Wasn't all sunshine, but it appears Square at least built on their foundation. Assize was neat- choose strong healing or damage with your Cleric Stance toggle. The healing was rarely necessary, but the attempt at a choice was made. Upgraded Stone had a cool animation, but I'd have liked something...interactive with it. Aero 3 was great. Another noninteractive dot, but it at least had great utility in AOE scenarios too. Tetra filled in the gap for that ridiculously long Benediction cooldown. WHM's biggest issues in Heavensward were a crappy mana economy (boy does history ever repeat itself) and the fact that its competition was...well, some say "well-designed", I say "cartoonishly overtuned", but those aren't mutually exclusive things. Scholar could be both fun to play -and- doing comparable damage to a ninja. In that vein, WHM's glaring weakness that compounded this: its competition could fluidly damage and heal at the same time with the fairy, oGCDs, cards, all the weaving, etc. WHM had to stop and swap between them, and the amount of output it had for that weakness was nowhere near enough to make up for it.

But the design itself outside balancing it against its cohealers? It was okay. Serviceable. There was potential just like ARR. Whatever Yoshi-P said in interviews, there were several abilities to use in downtime that went with the healing abilities. Was it terribly interactive? No. Were the spells mostly boring push bars rightward/leftward spells, unrelated to one another with respect to decision making? Yeah. It'd get stale eventually. But baby steps, the MMO was in its first expansion after recovering from disaster. Seeing two Prey targets and a tankbuster coming up and using Cure 2 -> Regen -> Tetra was an alright flow if you don't spend too long staring at it. There's a little decision making, but it's mostly situational and depends on timing rather than kit considerations.

And then there was Stormblood: "What? What the f***? What is this crap? I thought you were headed someplace good last expansion? Are you rewarding thoughtless cure spamming? Ahhhhh!" This is where WHM went from promising honor student rough around the edges to sliding downhill into skeletal crack addict. Where Square could have leaned into decision-making and interactivity, they instead leaned into spending more and more time spamming while whittling away at downtime activities. Fluid Aura, once a decent damage/utility spell with a quick cooldown that could have seen interactivity added to it, was instead stripped down to a POTD soloing spell to be pruned entirely later on. No, no. Interactivity BAD! Spam Cure and Medica more! Good White Mages spam Cure!

Everything about the kit design after that has leaned more and more into "Good healers spam Cure 2 and Medica! Use it whenever it's off cooldown if you like! Spam it more! Afflatus Misery is your reward for spamming Cure 2 and Medica as often as possible! Who cares if you line it up with party damage or not, just use it. Once you're done with that, spend more time refreshing one dot and spamming Glare. No Cleric Stance toggle. Making decisions makes WHM brains go hurty. No skill ceiling for you! If you get good at streamlining your healing, you get rewarded with more Glare spamming!"

I've been bewildered ever since at the sheer number of people in this community who think this is a good direction. Interactivity bad. More spamming. Spamming good. Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare. Finally, WHM is in a good spot. Now that WHM is designed with a glut of free healing tools that don't reward thoughtful use and an anemic downtime activity that involves sleeping on your 1 key, it's the best. Iteration. Ever.

I wanted my elemental healing sorceress to journey onward to a fun, flowy kit with at least the interactivity of say, the RDM kit. Instead we've got....this. This spammy, brainless class. The "real healers" can lavish as much praise on this horrible class as they like; it's unrecognizable from the potential it used to have.

So I'd like to know, whether in an overview or a more detailed explanation, what you would do with WHM if you had a genie wish and could do literally anything you wanted to it. I totally relate to your frustrations, and I really want every healer to feel like it has some element of engagement, and I also don't understand the logic of stapling a baby rattle onto WHM and saying "great job everyone! We did it!" But I'm not sure if I've seen you mention some things you'd personally do if you could. Care to share your thoughts?

[Semirhage]

So I'd like to know, whether in an overview or a more detailed explanation, what you would do with WHM if you had a genie wish and could do literally anything you wanted to it. I totally relate to your frustrations, and I really want every healer to feel like it has some element of engagement, and I also don't understand the logic of stapling a baby rattle onto WHM and saying "great job everyone! We did it!" But I'm not sure if I've seen you mention some things you'd personally do if you could. Care to share your thoughts?

That's tough to focus on anything specific, if only because the direction healers have gone in for the past several expansions has been just...yuck in so many ways. I've said before that picking one specific tree out of the forest of tedious design decisions is pointless; there are so many -things- that contribute to it. The one-note damage kits, the shallow healing kits, the stale healing elements of fight design, the way that stated development goals conflict with allowing the healer jobs to grow, etc. There have been several ideas on these forums over the years that I've liked. The WHM list you have in the OP is a great start. It adds interactivity to the job gauge. It adds a few choices. It at the very least causes your spells to do something to one another. It even fixes the Assize being a fake healing cooldown issue without just slapping another charge on it. I also like Arcane Ward as a concept. I think I said it a long time ago, but when I was complaining about the horrible lily system I mentioned another Korean grinder MMO I played years ago that did something similar. Not that the system was terribly interactive by itself either, but at least it, you know, steered the player toward playing the job skillfully, which the Stormblood "lol just spam healing GCDs" and the Shadowbringers "lol let's improve the reward for more spamming" gauge didn't. That game gave you a stacking MP refresh buff for every GCD cast, greased lightning style. The way it worked out was, the stacks fell off if you stopped casting for more than ~6 seconds. If you weren't casting very much, your MP economy was fine. If you kept your spells going, your MP was fine. What it punished was inconsistent casting. If you -must- keep WHM the simplest healer (which I wish wasn't a consideration, but we're in a landscape where simplistic braindead jobs are sooooooo good ), I'd say at least lean into things that show new players how skilled healers approach the game. Reinforce things like Always Be Casting. Minimize unnecessary movement. Dangle the promise of two or three reward scenarios in front of the player's face and make all of them tempting. They don't even need to be equally tempting, but "Cast another damage GCD" versus "press a healing button when Assize is almost off cooldown anyway or everyone's full because this is a dungeozzzzzzzz" isn't a set of tempting choices. In the current landscape, you heal when you have to, because you have to. And then you deal damage with your straight line flowchart of a DPS kit, because that's the no-choices path the game has laid before you.

I don't see healer gameplay improving anytime soon. Meaningful choice appears to be the polar opposite of CBU3's true north for the past several expansions, and WHM's eternal popularity isn't telling them to steer any differently. This is an MMO, and I don't expect a 4d chess game from a cRPG against my NPC opponent where I need to pause for 20-30 seconds to determine my next move out of a list of 50 different spells/abilities; we don't have that kind of time in our more fast-paced game. On the same token, I'd like to steer -away- from "There is one objectively correct button to press at this time" and "there are several objectively correct buttons to press at this moment but there's barely any difference between them and what you gain is more or less the same outcome no matter which one you choose". If I had to pick one design holy grail to melt into slag, it'd be that one. I also think it's going to be among the hardest dragons to slay, because that homogenization/deletion of choice is affecting way more than the healers.

[Semirhage]

So I'd like to know, whether in an overview or a more detailed explanation, what you would do with WHM if you had a genie wish and could do literally anything you wanted to it.

Oh, come to think of it. I have a genie wish, but it's not exactly related to WHM. I'd want to create a brand new healer job. Not sure what I'd name it, maybe Pure Healer. It'd have maybe 2-4 GCD heals to cover single target and AOE. A Medica 2 equivalent for those who like regens. A Succor-like equivalent with a damage reduction for the mitigation aspect. The job gauge is called the Sanctimony meter. See, the job would have no damage buttons. Just a passive (or actively refreshed, I'm not picky) +50% damage buff to all party members. Instead it would have a spell that replaces all single-target and AOE damage abilities from healers with a GCD called "Don't be hyperbolic I'm not just pressing ONE button. There are several in this kit". It would be a unique ability, impossible to bind to the 1 key specifically so that when people accuse this healer of pressing 111111111 they can easily say "Nuh uh, don't be ridiculous. This spell is bound to 2."

What the spell would do is provide a variety of randomized favorite catchphrases (fully voice acted!), like one of those Chatty Cathy dolls with the pull string on the back. A non-exhaustive list includes:

• I chose a HEALer to HEAL
• I'm on this job because I know what REAL healing is. All the others are just fake DPS mains besmirching the name of REAL healing.
• All of you are elitist tryhards obsessed with numbers. I actually play this game to have fun. You don't know what REAL fun is.
• I'm focused on HEALing. My cohealer is a parse-obsessed DPS wolf in healer's clothing. I'm doing all of the REAL work.
• Redditors and statistics agree that simpler classes are more popular. That means I'm more enlightened than the rest of you.
• All of you think runs are perfect! You don't know what a REAL HEALER does when someone gets a vulnerability stack. I'm the one saving our runs here. Me.
• If you don't hear anything in the next few seconds you should know it's because I'm HEALing. You know, like a HEALER should. Pay attention to how a REAL healer plays.
• I'M playing the most powerful and useful healer. My cohealer is holding you back with their fake non-healing tryhard elitist DPS main nonsense. I'm the one REALLY contributing here.

When the Sanctimony gauge hits 10 stacks, it automatically deducts 50% of all party members' remaining HP and doubles the damage buff aura to +100% for 15 seconds. The HP deduction gives the Pure Healer more opportunities to increase their HPS contribution. The damage buff they provide is strong enough that they'd be limited to one per party unless running unrestricted.

I think it would make a lot of people happy. It'd be designated as the most powerful healer. It'd provide a job that doesn't do anything but heal. We horrible numbers-obsessed elitist optimizers would have to concede that it provides the strongest benefit and we only refuse to play it due to preference. Plus it allows anyone who plays it to constantly tell everyone around them that they're better, exalted creatures more enlightened than the people who don't like simplistic jobs and it's even tied to a job gauge! I know the randomized catchphrases would draw some flack, maybe a future update could put them on optional separate buttons.

Then we can have the dream: the Five Healer Model. The Pure Healer can be the absolute best one numbers-wise. The rest of us will have to brainstorm ideas for ruining the other four jobs with like, engagement and choices and too many buttons. Horrible, I know. But I'm willing to give it a shot.

[Azuri]

*best idea ever but it takes too much space in a quote*

Then we can have the dream: the Five Healer Model. The Pure Healer can be the absolute best one numbers-wise. The rest of us will have to brainstorm ideas for ruining the other four jobs with like, engagement and choices and too many buttons. Horrible, I know. But I'm willing to give it a shot.

Finally a compromise worth getting behind. See, Renathras? This is the kind of deal might be worth making with your ilk, hesitant as I am to concede even the smallest amount of ground to you.

[ForsakenRoe]

I have a genie wish, but it's not exactly related to WHM.

this is the kind of compromise i can get behind, but the 'auto deduct 50%' worries me. what if they have a mechanic where you have to be full HP (eg someone got hit by the doom in dead ends), and the meter caps out and drains them back down by 50%? this would cause stress for the healer player. maybe a CD that makes the next gauge cap-out effect not trigger the HP removal, and just gives the buff?

[AFuzzyMu11in]

Oh,snip."

What the spell would do is provide a variety of randomized favorite catchphrases (fully voice acted!), like one of those Chatty Cathy dolls with the pull string on the back. A non-exhaustive list includes:

• I chose a HEALer to HEAL
• I'm on this job because I know what REAL healing is. All the others are just fake DPS mains besmirching the name of REAL healing.
• All of you are elitist tryhards obsessed with numbers. I actually play this game to have fun. You don't know what REAL fun is.
• I'm focused on HEALing. My cohealer is a parse-obsessed DPS wolf in healer's clothing. I'm doing all of the REAL work.
• Redditors and statistics agree that simpler classes are more popular. That means I'm more enlightened than the rest of you.
• All of you think runs are perfect! You don't know what a REAL HEALER does when someone gets a vulnerability stack. I'm the one saving our runs here. Me.
• If you don't hear anything in the next few seconds you should know it's because I'm HEALing. You know, like a HEALER should. Pay attention to how a REAL healer plays.
• I'M playing the most powerful and useful healer. My cohealer is holding you back with their fake non-healing tryhard elitist DPS main nonsense. I'm the one REALLY contributing here.

snip

I think it would make a lot of people happy. It'd be designated as the most powerful healer. It'd provide a job that doesn't do anything but heal. We horrible numbers-obsessed elitist optimizers would have to concede that it provides the strongest benefit and we only refuse to play it due to preference. Plus it allows anyone who plays it to constantly tell everyone around them that they're better, exalted creatures more enlightened than the people who don't like simplistic jobs and it's even tied to a job gauge! I know the randomized catchphrases would draw some flack, maybe a future update could put them on optional separate buttons.

Then we can have the dream: the Five Healer Model. The Pure Healer can be the absolute best one numbers-wise. The rest of us will have to brainstorm ideas for ruining the other four jobs with like, engagement and choices and too many buttons. Horrible, I know. But I'm willing to give it a shot.

Sarcasm aside I think i'ts a good idea minus the voice quotes etc, it would give you guys who just want complicated stuff your own class while leaving those of us who do want simplistic healing etc our own class, that still provides great dps. I think it's actually a good idea no cap, prob damage buff needs a tweak ofc.

[AnotherPerson]

Oh, come to think of it. I have a genie wish, but it's not exactly related to WHM. I'd want to create a brand new healer job. Not sure what I'd name it, maybe Pure Healer. It'd have maybe 2-4 GCD heals to cover single target and AOE. A Medica 2 equivalent for those who like regens. A Succor-like equivalent with a damage reduction for the mitigation aspect. The job gauge is called the Sanctimony meter. See, the job would have no damage buttons. Just a passive (or actively refreshed, I'm not picky) +50% damage buff to all party members. Instead it would have a spell that replaces all single-target and AOE damage abilities from healers with a GCD called "Don't be hyperbolic I'm not just pressing ONE button. There are several in this kit". It would be a unique ability, impossible to bind to the 1 key specifically so that when people accuse this healer of pressing 111111111 they can easily say "Nuh uh, don't be ridiculous. This spell is bound to 2."

I think it would make a lot of people happy. It'd be designated as the most powerful healer. It'd provide a job that doesn't do anything but heal. We horrible numbers-obsessed elitist optimizers would have to concede that it provides the strongest benefit and we only refuse to play it due to preference. Plus it allows anyone who plays it to constantly tell everyone around them that they're better, exalted creatures more enlightened than the people who don't like simplistic jobs and it's even tied to a job gauge! I know the randomized catchphrases would draw some flack, maybe a future update could put them on optional separate buttons.

Then we can have the dream: the Five Healer Model. The Pure Healer can be the absolute best one numbers-wise. The rest of us will have to brainstorm ideas for ruining the other four jobs with like, engagement and choices and too many buttons. Horrible, I know. But I'm willing to give it a shot.

*waits for someone to not realize this is spoken in sarcasm and agree, only for another person to call them out and destroy that dream simply with: "Solo instances that require player DPS in MSQ exist" and "You can't heal enemies to death even if you wanted to before the timer runs out in the MSQ".*

[ForsakenRoe]

*waits for someone to not realize this is spoken in sarcasm and agree, only for another person to call them out and destroy that dream simply with: "Solo instances that require player DPS in MSQ exist" and "You can't heal enemies to death even if you wanted to before the timer runs out in the MSQ".*

Nah, any solo instance which would otherwise force you to press a dirty damage button, SE can rework so that the enemy's will to fight is drained over time until they give up, because they realize that the Pure Healer was right all along. This wouldn't be damage over time though, it'd be more akin to a 'non-lethal boss fight completion' from MGS games, where you run them out of stamina gauge instead of health gauge. Or they get too old and die of old age, maybe that'd be more accurate here

[AFuzzyMu11in]

*waits for someone to not realize this is spoken in sarcasm and agree, only for another person to call them out and destroy that dream simply with: "Solo instances that require player DPS in MSQ exist" and "You can't heal enemies to death even if you wanted to before the timer runs out in the MSQ".*

I know it was sarcastic but I like the idea honestly. My job would be healing only, and dps is worried about by the team, I think a pure healer class that just heals while giving passive dps boosts would be interesting and definitely should be a thing. It's less stressful to worry about rotations, and you can just focus on what matters healing only. Maybe like if the class had no broil but a stronger Chain Strat, strategem and some copies of it with different names, that you had to time with raid cooldowns etc. It's a very interesting idea. Your main focus being healing and never worrying about dps.

[Sunhwapark]

Loved the idea for Thin Air granting the next spell to be instant cast, I'd be down for that.

In addition to the mp recovery stuff, I'd like it if we were also given back offensive debuffs on bosses again please. (Disable/Virus/Addle)

WHM went from promising honor student rough around the edges to sliding downhill into skeletal crack addict.

Just wanted to say that this is the greatest summary of WHM's stormblood experience I've ever read.