Quote Originally Posted by Renathras View Post
Random aside: Suppose for the sake of argument it was possible to do something like ARR where we split healing as a role into two parts that were...actually functional (unlike the Pure/Barrier split which seems to basically be meaningless outside of WHM/WHM comps since everyone else has barriers anyway...)

Where we had one that was a healing focused set of healers, and the other a support/damage focused set.

The former are designed to have powerful and efficient heals with a slimmed down damage kit while the latter are designed to have a more expansive damage suite and dynamic gameplay shifting between support healing and buffing the party vs optimizing their damage potential.

If there was a way to do this where it wouldn't devolve into a meta of 2x supports (let's pretend this is possible), would that not be an interesting and possibly useful change to satisfy everyone?

I get there are a lot of "That's impossible..." what-ifs. But for the sake of argument, let's pretend. As I noted above, on at least some level, this was how healing in ARR worked, and players were (at the time) largely satisfied with this, with many loving both healers despite their individual focuses. Set aside the "impossible" and "ARR wasn't REALLY like that by 2.4 and on..." and so on, just a thought experiment.
We technically have this dynamic now with DNC who's identity revolves around buffs and can also provide very mild sustain. I do play DNC now and enjoy it, but I would rather be playing SGE with the fantasy that it is entirely capable of delivering upon. So in short, I don't think anything would change. You'd get some players who'd accept the DNC identity, but you'd still have a lot of vocal backlash against the healer role for feeling stale in easier content. It would still probably be looked at as inherently flawed by many dedicated healing players. The game would also need to output damage constantly in order to justify the healer role and not have the meta kill it for a 2x support scenario you mentioned, and who knows how that would impact MSQ instance content. You'd probably just have a different game entirely at that point. Perhaps if the frequency of damage was high enough to actually justify healing rotations, it might not be as frowned upon, but it's too difficult to say because the environment would have to be entirely alien to the one we have now.

The reality is, that idea of healer is one that is dying because it was historically very unpopular in older MMOs where healers were HP batteries and little more. Most people don't want to just be a battery or a cheerleader. They want to engage with the gameplay, just from an angle of someone who prioritizes support and needs to make decisions based on the situation their in of when to attack, when to heal, when to support, etc.

Now I know the point of this was for the sake of argument, but I do want to point out that while many of the suggestions several of us have made over the years about the healer role may be a lot for the tepid constitutions the devs seem to have around healer design, that these are suggestions would work within the structure that this game provides. It doesn't require a ground-up rework of the game because we discuss changes that work based on how encounters are designed currently. We need to accept that DPS is a major party of healer gameplay in this game as it has been designed, whether intentional or no, but I also believe that this acceptance can also lead to creating a healer that is meant to appeal to the healer that doesn't like offense--a healer who disguises their DPS contributions through support.