A question: What makes a Healer "easy/simple" or "hard/complex"?

[Renathras]

I mean, it SOUNDS like an easy question to answer...but what's the answer?

1) Do only GCDs matter? SCH has around 2x the oGCDs as WHM and they tend to have more indirect effects (less direct healing, more mitigation or resource generation/consumption), but people often don't factor those in as disruptions to the Glare/Broil/Malific/Dosisspam paradigm. Do oGCDs count.....or do they not really count?

2) Is it based on interaction of kit abilities? For example, Dosis generates Kardia. Spending Aetherflow generates Faerie Gauge. Plenary Indulgence modifies AOE GCD heals. Are these examples of something being hard/complex, or are they not?

3) Does availability of backup tools make a Healer easy? Most of WHM's oGCD kit is more or less mimicked by some of their GCD heals, allowing them to cast those (at a damage loss) in cases the oGCDs are on cooldown. SCH has the most limited spamable healing kit in the game, and none of its oGCDs directly replicate the effects of Adloquium or, really, even Succor - even though Adlo (outside of specific situations) and Succor are considered backup tools, they actually have different use cases as SCH's oGCDs don't actually have the ability to generate those effects. Is this complexity or perhaps not?

4) Is complexity only a measure of their damage kits? WHM's damage kit is arguably more involved than SCH, but it doesn't feel that way to a lot of players. So is SGE's. AST has the most slimmed down damage kit in the game, and the most spam nuke casts (Malific) of all the Healers in a given clear. So on the surface, that would make SCH the second least complex Healer and AST the least complex. Yet the community views them as the hardest and most complex. So clearly damage kits aren't a measure of complexity...but then damage kits are always brought up as a component of complexity, even though they seem to be trumped by...something?...else.

5) Is pre-planning a component of complexity? If so, how much? Remembering to use Earthly Star 10 seconds before a raidwide vs using Afflatus Rapture right after the raidwide, are these really very different in complexity? Some people might replace "remembering" with "planning", but in that case, how is planning out when to use your Raptures less complex than planning out when to use your Earthly Stars? Saving and using Recitation + Adlo + Deployment Tactics is more buttons with an arguably tighter application window, so is it more complex? What about Lilybell, another prepatory heal? Or Asylum, a slower heal but that also modifies other abilities to heal for more allowing combinations? How do we measure and rate the relative complexity, and why is one case of "press 1 button" considered more complex than another?

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In short, we talk a TON about simple/easy/braindead and hard/complex/galaxy brain stuff, but how can we actually quantify that? How can we break that down into what SPECIFIC things go into that evaluation, and which trump which when it comes down to it - e.g. AST has the simplest damage rotation but arguably the hardest oGCD one with some kit interactions and required pre-planning for optimization, so if we see AST as the most complex healer, that would suggest that damage rotation is trumped by the other metrics.

As we saw in the "Healers Then And Now" thread, sometimes these things can be a bit misleading. Only by actually breaking it down was it immediately apparent that WHM's damage rotation is actually more complex than SCH's, something that almost anyone (me included) would have said was the opposite before actually looking at it in that depth.

I get part of it is a "feel", but "feel" is different from person to person. Some people may see something simple (on paper) to be challenging to execute, others may feel something complex is child's play, and still others may see a distinction between "complex" and "clunky", relating the latter more to "bad controls" than to actual thoughtful mechanics and skill expression.

For terms oft thrown out, it might pay to have a more concrete way of looking at them.

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I get it's actually a complex question, and is some combination of the above (and probably some other things, besides), but we should have more than a truly vague notion of something if it's so important.

[Semirhage]

Perhaps it would be useful to approach from the opposite direction: take a kit widely considered "good", and play evil job designer with it. Make one change that would absolutely slaughter the kit's fun, and you've probably discovered some key magic that makes the sausage machine work.

What if, for example, we removed the distinction between black and white mana on RDM entirely? Fold them both into Red Mana. Every spell effectively a Jolt. Suddenly you've killed all interactivity in the casting and burst phase. Overrode a proc? Who cares. Used your spells in the wrong order? Ehhh. Disrupted the flow between your black and white spells? Doesn't matter. Choice between Verholy and Verflare? Don't care.

I think one of the most core things that makes a job fun is meaningful choice. There's a lot of flexibility there; the choice can be largely illusory or superficial, as you might know the black/white mana flow is VERY forgiving. It could stand to gain some skill ceiling from there; lord knows I miss the minor optional optimization game that was potency-gain Reprise, murdered in Endwalker.

Most of the healer kits are aggressively unfun because they're so childproof that they're essentially Red Mana jobs. Did you use the "wrong" heal here? Trick question, there isn't one. You aren't punished for basically anything outside death or healbombing so hardcore you deplete your MP. Oh no, I used a lily on the full HP ninja by accident! Oh wait who cares, I got the refund anyway. Oh no, I used Indomitability instead of Sacred Soil! Oh who gives a crap, they do practically the same thing, have exactly the same reward for using them, and barring tight mitigation checks or highly preplanned minimalism nobody will care, not even you. All of the kit "interactivity" is of the passive sort that has little to no influence on the decision tree. Kardia's up on the tank? Such interaction, wouldn't it be nice if it made me think twice about Dosis Dosis Dosis Dosis Dosis Dosis Dosis. Plenary Indulgence? It's Yet Another Healing Steroid. It doesn't change how you interface with your casting flow or introduce any decision-making. There is not a single moment in time where I wonder what my next ability will be, because if everyone's HP is fine it's just Boring Damage Nuke and if it's not, I could probably throw my healing buttons in a hat, fish one out at random, and be rewarded or punished more or less equally.

[Sebazy]

Don't overlook the impact of APM as well as well as how punishing it is for falling out of the 2 minute buff window. At least in my case, it's the core reason I absolutely hate playing AST in it's current form.

[Zeastria]

What makes a job easy = Few abilites /not having a complex rotation / Less abilities that are dependent or triggered by other abilities(inc shared cds) / shorter cds.

How complex and hard something should be -> should be tied to the difficulity of the the content...
Healers seems easy and brainded..when you do normal difficulity content -> but once you start doing savage and ultimate..
- you realize you do not want any more complex job.

[Vinal211]

just glancing through it, i think my answer would have to be majorly based on person to person alongside what semirhage said. don't get me wrong, a lot of what gets coded into a job defines its simplicity/complexity (or lack of even either), but that's just on a coding level. human error, no matter what, always plays a factor in someone's ability to handle something. AST could be incredibly simple to someone, easier than breathing for another, someone could have the luck to pull out the *exact* card they need exactly when they need it, or it could be the exact opposite in every circumstance. what could be "easy" to play for one person is hard for another. i have a friend who used to play RDM, but switched over to DRK. the reason? because he considered RDM to be too intensive for him to focus on, and DRK was simple enough for him to figure out everything and play it. it didn't matter that it was a tank and that he would have to semi learn how to do proper tanking. it didn't really matter (at first, i think he's planning to stop cause his group is basically gaslighting him for playing DRK) that it was the "worst" tank or that it was cut down heavily from what it used to be in SB. it was a simple and easy to understand action and ability list, and that drew him towards playing it over RDM.

another factor i believe is also availability, even if it can be a minimal one compared to everything else. two of the healers in game are locked behind base content. WHM is the only job you can start out as. SCH requires you to play through to level 30 and start the Sylph portion of main ARR to even unlock (when you're going to check if they're planning on summoning ramuh or not, i think around thousand maws of toto-rak?). for AST, you need to get through the entirety of ARR, both main and post (with having to do Crystal Tower raids for good measure). that's at LEAST over 100 hours worth of things you need to do to even reach the start of HW, get into Ishgard, and unlock AST for play, not to mention leveling up to 50 from 30 so you can play it through the story. SGE is a bit less constricting, but it still requires you to go from level 1 to level 70, 20 levels under the current cap. even if you were to consider either "simple" or "easy", that's more than enough time for even a beginner healer to figure out WHM and somewhat SCHs skill levels/ceiling (however low it may be) and be more than comfortable to continue playing that. consider a player that decides they won't get SGE until they got into the expansion it was released. basically ignoring it all throughout SB and ShB until they start the EW portion of the MSQ. by then, they've most likely gotten at least one healer to 90 if they've been doing roulettes alongside MSQ. they've played through all the content from start to end with one healer and one healer alone. that's the healer they'll know the most, the easiest they can play with.

[Silver-Strider]

Simple and Complex are ultimately subjective but the issue with Healers stems more from what Semirhage says, a lack of meaningful interaction within the toolkit. Healer toolkits are hugely disjointed messes, with the most interaction between any job being "press this to heal more"; Temperance, PI, Protaction, Horoscope, Synastry, etc, all just make you heal more, with maybe some extra mitigation or something else tacked on for good measure but they don't really do anything other than that. The shallow DPS toolkit also doesn't help healers in any meaningful ways since it's spam 1 while using 2 every 30s, with minute differences here and there.

There either needs to be more DPS skills, interactions between Healing/DPS or both for Healers to be in a better spot. Something as simple as the Diacloud proc idea that's been thrown around occasionally would be a refreshing start to say the least.

[ForsakenRoe]

The best example of the 'press whatever, itll probably work' is AST. CO is 700p, CU is 600p, Star is 540 (720 if charged). So if a raidwide occurs, which do you press? Uhh, turns out, any of them really, they're all kinda interchangeable in most situations. And if one of them isn't enough to deal with the damage? No matter, just use another. They're all 1min CDs anyway so it feels like they're always up

As for 'what is complexity', that's entirely subjective. I find SAM complex because of the 'filler GCD' thing. I found HW/SB DRK 'easy to understand' despite supposedly being 'complex' with Darkside management etc (implying Darkside management was hard in HW). So the thread's kinda pointless for asking 'what is complex' unless you're aiming to find out what we, each person specifically, finds complex. Which is not much use to the devs, as we're only a small subset of the playerbase

Simple and Complex are ultimately subjective but the issue with Healers stems more from what Semirhage says, a lack of meaningful interaction within the toolkit. Healer toolkits are hugely disjointed messes, with the most interaction between any job being "press this to heal more"; Temperance, PI, Protaction, Horoscope, Synastry, etc, all just make you heal more, with maybe some extra mitigation or something else tacked on for good measure but they don't really do anything other than that. The shallow DPS toolkit also doesn't help healers in any meaningful ways since it's spam 1 while using 2 every 30, with minute differences here and there.

There either needs to be more DPS skills, interactions between Healing/DPS or both for Healers to be in a better spot. Something as simple as the Diacloud proc idea that's been thrown around occasionally would be a refreshing start to say the least.

The two scenarios of 'WHM life':

'Ah a raidwide has occured, I will press Rapture. Oh, Rapture wasn't enough to top everyone. I will... press Rapture again.' Riveting gameplay.

'Ah a raidwide has occured, Rapture is not enough, but two Raptures is overkill. I will use Plenary to buff Rapture. I don't need to worry about whether it is up or not, as it is a 1min CD and therefore seems to always line up with the raidwides, without fail.' Riveting gameplay.

[Valmaxian]

For me, healing is only complex when the group is bad. When players are nailing mechanics, all I have to do as the healer is press 1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1... and Use OGCDs for the scripted AoEs. Its much more challenging when I actually have to spot heal, quick rez, emergency shield, etc., all while adhering to mechanics. To me, that's an issue - good gameplay is considerably less rewarding. Healing gameplay is overly simplistic because the balance of healing vs. DPS vs. utility tools is poor, as is their implementation. For example, as an AST main, we have close to a fun and interesting design, but our DPS kit is simplistic and weak, our utility (cards) are conceptually cool, but clunky, weak, and unreliable (as opposed to Mug, Technical/Standard Step, etc.), and we have LOTS of healing buttons that are never needed (Synastry, Neutral Sect outside of high-end content, Benefic I, etc.).

[ASkellington]

What makes healer easy? Its simple really. We have too many healing tools that the game doesn't make use of and lack of interactions with them all. Someone already pointed out AST, but I'm going to use it since I know the class so well.

Collective Unconciousness (CU), Celestial Opposition (CO), Earthly Star (ES) and I'll even put Horoscope here are all on a 60 cooldown with raidwides (both in dungeons, raids, and EX) coming in at AROUND the 60 mark. That means I usually have 3-4 heals up every raidwide and can usually use the same one for the same mechanic - there fore, its boring.

Further, CU and CO are just regens. I hit a button and it HoTs. CU has the benefit of also having a mitigation on it, but in 90% of content I don't need the mitigation, so why would I use CU which requires my party to stand it in when I can press CO instead? It makes it a dead skill in most content. Another point to being boring. I want a choice between my abilities and I want them to matter.

Then there is the problem of lack of interactivity. Take Synastry for example. Its an ability where you can press it on one person and if you heal another, they get 50% of the healing, yet, it only works on Benefic and Benefic 2. A.Benefic doesn't apply the HoT to the person, (though it does, apparently apply the initial heal), and it doesn't work with Celestial Intersection (CI), Essential Diginity, OR even Exaltation because those are healing ABILITIES and not healing SKILLS. For what reason? Do explain SE. Making Synastry work for all of our single target abilities would make it more interesting.

I'm going to ignore Noct Sect's interesting mechanics were AST actually have been able to stance dance. But that too would make healing more fun and interactive.

What I am going to end on is an example:

My AST at lv70 vs my AST at 90.

At 70 I have ES, CO, CU, ED and of course my GCD abilities. Vs at 90 I have all of those, 2 charges of ED and CI each, Macrocosmos, Neutral Sect, Horoscope, Exaltation. At 70 I need to space out my healing. Maybe even saving one of my oGCDs for a specific mechanic meaning that if I need to use them earlier due to party member's mistake I have to supplement that tool I don't have for something else.

Where as for at 90, it doesn't matter if I use ES on cooldown for damage. I have 5 other tools that are just as good. Or, worse, I have 3-5 tools I am not using because no one is taking damage because the fights are undertuned for how many healing tools we have.

That is why I believe healers are so easy. Because it isn't just AST that suffers from this problem. All four do in some respect.

[ty_taurus]

What makes healer easy? Its simple really. We have too many healing tools that the game doesn't make use of and lack of interactions with them all. Someone already pointed out AST, but I'm going to use it since I know the class so well.

Collective Unconciousness (CU), Celestial Opposition (CO), Earthly Star (ES) and I'll even put Horoscope here are all on a 60 cooldown with raidwides (both in dungeons, raids, and EX) coming in at AROUND the 60 mark. That means I usually have 3-4 heals up every raidwide and can usually use the same one for the same mechanic - there fore, its boring.

You inspired an interesting idea... What if instead of Horoscope being a reactivated heal... the effect changes depending on which tool you activate it with. Even if it were something simple like, if you activate it with a regen heal, it increases magic defense by 10%, and if you activate it with a flat heal, it increases physical defense by 10%. In practice, it can be a lot more specific--even tool specific, but that's just a very simplistic example to communicate the idea. You could have Horoscope have a shorter cooldown, but other heals have longer ones, so you'll often have Horoscope to pair with heal mechanics, but you have to plan out your tools to better take advantage of the secondary effect.