The Problem with Healer Feedback, and requested changes

[Shurrikhan]

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99% agreed, but...

Healing throughput only helps if there's healing to do, but Mit ALWAYS has some effect. And if the Mit is strong, the Healing required is lessened.

Ehh, if mitigation doesn't prevent a death or debuff, it does no more than healing. And if it's simply preventing damage that natural healing per 3 seconds would take of anyways, let alone doesn't get consumed over its duration [more a TBN-esque problem than one with these 30s healer barrier durations], that excess is likewise a waste.

The cap, really, is shared between both and probably therefore should be thought of per a shared term --say, sustain (how much HP restoration or preservation can be thrown at something in a given moment to actually extend their life), which wouldn't care of whether that includes a increase to maximum eHP unless the latter actually does something extra.

In either case, I think it comes down to what we've all said earlier: barrier healers just heal too much, to the point that there is no real/additional cost in throwing up GCD mitigation (be it percentile or flat) for things that don't need their max eHP increase.

And if we want more room to diversify forms of sustain, well... we probably need more damage intake (especially, in excess of our oGCD means of dealing with it), sadly.

[ForsakenRoe]

99% agreed, but...


Ehh, if mitigation doesn't prevent a death or debuff, it does no more than healing. And if it's simply preventing damage that natural healing per 3 seconds would take of anyways, let alone doesn't get consumed over its duration [more a TBN-esque problem than one with these 30s healer barrier durations], that excess is likewise a waste.

The cap, really, is shared between both and probably therefore should be thought of per a shared term --say, sustain (how much HP restoration or preservation can be thrown at something in a given moment to actually extend their life), which wouldn't care of whether that includes a increase to maximum eHP unless the latter actually does something extra.

In either case, I think it comes down to what we've all said earlier: barrier healers just heal too much, to the point that there is no real/additional cost in throwing up GCD mitigation (be it percentile or flat) for things that don't need their max eHP increase.

And if we want more room to diversify forms of sustain, well... we probably need more damage intake (especially, in excess of our oGCD means of dealing with it), sadly.

What I mean is, lets say a raidwide hits for 50k, we have 60k max hp so we're not going to die to it. It doesn't matter if WHM can heal for 20k or 30k for example, as it's gonna take 2 GCDs either way. the extra 10k would not be useful. However, being able to reduce that 50k to 45k is, while 'surplus to requirements' (as it wont kill even if not mitigated), the point is that you CAN mitigate it. At no point is there a 'well your mit had literally zero effect' in the same way overhealing can have. As you say, it might be possible for natural regen to handle some things. But Mit can make things that 'cant' be handled by that natural regen, into 'can' situations. Doubly so when the Mit applies a regen effect of it's own.

Rather than having 'more burst healing tool' added each expansion for the Pure healers, more ways to restore smaller amounts, but more often, would probably work better. There's a reason I found Curtain Call so much easier on AST than WHM, and it wasn't just 'well they have like 4 regens'. It was that their healing tools (Star, CO, CU, Horoscope) are all 60s CDs. WHM just doesn't have any good 'short CD tools', cos it relies on the lilies for its design. Which is fine, but damn when you're out of lilies in highend content you're back to playing ARR.

Maybe a solution is to remove one half of what Barrier healers do, and make it Healer wide, either the shields or the Mit. Personally, I'd vote for Shields. This way, we could have eg WHM Temperance no longer applies 10% mit, but a fat regen like PVP. CU on AST no longer applies 10% mit, instead the regen is stronger while the barrier is channeled. For shielding, WHM can have Stoneskin as a Lily spender, and AST can have Noct/Diurnal midcombat swapping as part of it's gameplay. The Barrier healers will instead have ALL of the Mit, and also additionally room for 'mitigation via debuffing' such as Virus and Disable type skills. Some might say 'oh then the WHM will be bullied into using the shields, because it's damage neutral for them' and to that I say 'yeh, and its fine because it's damage neutral for them.' The WHM provides the shield and the fat HPS after the hit, the SCH provides the Soil to mitigate and Virus to debilitate.

Maybe not the perfect solution, but we seem to agree: Pures don't have enough 'stuff', Barriers have too much 'stuff', redistribution makes some sense

[Shurrikhan]

Rather than having 'more burst healing tool' added each expansion for the Pure healers, more ways to restore smaller amounts, but more often, would probably work better. There's a reason I found Curtain Call so much easier on AST than WHM, and it wasn't just 'well they have like 4 regens'. It was that their healing tools (Star, CO, CU, Horoscope) are all 60s CDs. WHM just doesn't have any good 'short CD tools', cos it relies on the lilies for its design. Which is fine, but damn when you're out of lilies in highend content you're back to playing ARR.

That's another funny thing, isn't it? Especially prior to Lillies' being hastened to a 20s CD, barrier healers (or, especially, all but WHM) all had better (or, more granular) ways to deal with minor healing needs at no uptime cost.

WHM just doesn't have any good 'short CD tools', cos it relies on the lilies for its design.

Which may just be a matter of splitting some of its oGCD burst tools (e.g., two charges of Tetra at just 400p each and half the recast time)? If we're working with a fixed budget, that seems to be all that's possible. Else, we could siphon the any excess/flavor strength from its GCD heals towards oGCDs, but that would thereby increase the job's maximum combined DPS+HPS under optimized conditions, a definite buff.

Aside: The Stormblood recuperation system (at its foundation, more flexible than ShB-EW Lilies, though horribly undertuned and in need of optional spending instead) was aimed at hastening abilities in such a way, but, as a recuperation system, still required that GCD healing be spent to see its benefits; it otherwise considered WHM already balanced until such time as GCD healing was necessary, which then really just meant that WHM was supposed to gradually gain advantage in healing-intense situations. I actually prefer that atop any other system by which to supply 3+ mobile GCDs per minute --say, a shorter DoT and each DoT you cast grants a stack of a buff, up to 3, by which your next heal can be cancelled via movement to be instant-cast instead [otherwise doesn't consume the buff stack]-- and an empowerable means of bankable burst damage as that doesn't require the bloat of separate Lily spells... but that still leaves the issue of what levels of per-execute potency would tend to better fit content, being neither so small as to take an extra cast no so large as to be excessive.

Hmmm.