Why is Blue Mage a more fun healer than WHM/SCH/SGE/AST

[Zeastria]

And of course these Sylphies are incredibly loud on the forums, sometimes they even post three essays in a row.

Do you honestly believe a player like that would research and seek external information in the first place?.
Let alone write and reflect on their role.

[Rehayem]

BLU lacks instant heal abilities, doing Pom Cure feels like hardcasting cure 2 most of the time. Would be nice if they added something instant. Tanking on BLU is very difficult due to how squishy it is.

[Kaurhz]

Simple - BLU wasn't designed with the express purpose of conforming to a single role, but instead drawing from all of them whilst making it a DPS-centric class.

I would at least say that BLU is evidence that they can do something more interesting and complex with healers without overwhelming the more casual players - IMO, most players are not as bad as they were in Heavensward, so it would be nice.

If for no other reason than to give those players a little more something to do between healing.

[Rithy255]

Ultimately, a lot of healers...

Even if healers Don't want to do damage its been apart of the classes for the entire games life span, That will never likely change, in fact it really can't unless you remove DPS fully which would make healer really boring, as one of the core fundamentals of healer is to balance healing vs Damage, that's what makes them engaging in the first place, I don't think healers would be fun at all if you were spamming a aoe heal spell or your single target heal spell either.

What makes good healer design (to me) Would be having you GCD heal a lot more then current healers do but also having extra DMG skills such as a Proc, Such as a varying different DOT from another healer (not all just 30 seconds), Having a full on rotation isn't really needed, but I'd like one healer to be more "rotation focused" maybe?

I think healers Should appeal to all types of players, Like I have said before I generally gravitate to the more "supportive" roles but I also like having a interesting Damage mechs, I don't want to play a "heal only" who just spams heals in a game, I get others may want to do healing only, I want to play someone who supports their team but also brings out some of my own offensive power, the only semi role like that is Tank currently in a sense.

Tanks are actually a good example, of roles that have a set purpose, with some utility but are also DPS, I don't think healers need to have anything even close to tanks, but y'know i personally would make rather have some more offensive capabilities on healers.

I think the most important changes are encounter designs though, I 100% agree that healers would be way more fun if they actually had to heal a lot more, I just think the reason why healer would be more fun is because you're trying to balance your damage and healing, trying to do your best at both.

Healers generally need less OGCDs, more outgoing damage first and foremost, I really agree with that sentiment, but i think healers would kinda be neat if they add more to do offensively aswell (Again not to say that should be the design for every healer)

I also think Astro as it is Doesn't and shouldn't get more DMG options as card balancing is already hard enough, with White Mage/scholar I wouldn't ideally want anything too drastic nor would i want a combo rotation. Sage could ideally have more.

I don't want to upset people who already enjoy current healer, this is just my perspective on the role and why I personally just feel like it isn't fun for a lot of people, DMG buttons don't solve everything I think at least we can agree on that.

[ForsakenRoe]

And for those who do like damage dealing, it probably won't really solve things long-term. The underlying problem of low healing requirements in encounters and too much oGCD healing leading to GCDs used for damage will remain. And the damage rotations are unlikely to be more complicated than SMN or WAR's are today, meaning it wouldn't really fix the boredom long-term, at least not in any implementation SE would likely use (again, SMN/WAR level rotation), for the people who actually want a meaty damage rotation.

You know why those rotations are 'not fixing the boredom long term' for SMN and WAR? Because those jobs don't have to do anything beyond that rotation. WAR's rotation has not changed much in terms of what buttons we press since SB's 4.2 rework, it's been 'keep up Eye, use FC when you're about to cap, dump everything in raidbuffs, IR for free FCs' since then. But back then in SB, there was extra stuff to do on top. Aggro management (or what little of it this game allowed), swapping stances for emergency mit via Inner Beast (and Unchained to prevent the damage penalty from screwing you as hard), moving the boss into position for certain mechanic phases, etc.

A healer with a WAR rotation would likely have their hands not only full, but overflowing slightly, because on top of doing the WAR rotation, they'd still have to heal. Unlike tanks, however, where the timing of 'when to press mit' is set in stone by the fight timeline, there are times where the healer has to adapt to someone standing in fire, or shuffle where they have resources because of said 'unexpected occurences' (eg you Lustrate to save someone, now you don't have that AF to use on Indom so you have to find something else to cover the gap, etc)

[Mostly_Raxus]

i personally dont like blu that much, I do what i have to to get rewards on it, but thats it.. My problem is what others like about it, so its just clearly not for me, its just every instance every fight, no matter what, im having to juggle that clunky ability list, most skills are just flavor it seems but still , i hate the limit on skills, i hate having to swap builds, i hate having to save a loadout, i hate having to redo my bars every time, granter i think there is a way to save bar layouts i think but i dont know how and its not made easily accessible it feels like..

yeah i get it i'm lazy about a side project thats not not really anything but a mini game, thats just me, i just cant be made to care.
but happy hunting to all you out there who do care.

[Connor]

I’m not sure I see the point of this comparison really. Obviously people are going to think Blue Mage is a better everything - you can literally customise your spell set. Which means there’s the added benefit of ‘no general heal actions’ that have homogenised healers. If White Mage/Scholar/Astrologian/Sage had fully customisable load outs I don’t think people would be complaining nearly as much. They don’t though, because Blue Mage is a limited job mini-game thing, so the comparison seems a little ‘apples to oranges’ to me.

It’s not like if they released Blue Mage as a healer one day on a whim that it would still look the way it does. Isn’t the topic essentially saying ‘I like Blue Mage as a healer because it’s not a healer’?

[Eastwall]

How difficult is it to get into them?
I've been tempted into trying it out for a long time but I'm afraid of finding out that nobody wants to go into content.

It is not hard if you like hardcore solo. I soloed all dungeons and trials to learn my spells, but not all the normal raid unfortunately because there is no Echo in there.

[Sebazy]

The issue could just as easily be described as "we need to remove oGCD heals" as it can be "we need one more DoT".

In relation to pressure on healers to contribute DPS?

IMHO it's much more complex than either of the above.

Adding more DPS complexity isn't going to change it, and sadly I don't think stripping out our oGCD healing will radically change things either TBH.

Increasing the value of safety and caution vs raid wide DPS needs to be looked at first and foremost. As mentioned repeatedly, the first prong of that is to make damage taken streakier and more erratic akin to what we had back in ARR/HW. Allow bosses to crit, give them non telegraphed instant cast secondary cleaves and busters, make us have to babysit the tanks and anyone else who's caught in the line of fire.

Secondly, to reduce the ultimate value of damage dealt, it's worth looking back at the 'mistakes' of the past. Many fights either had mechanics that bugged out or simply didn't align correctly if you pushed too much damage and secondly, it used to be more common for fights to have overall somewhat lenient damage checks but with specific burst phases that spiked the check far higher for a moment. T5's adds, A3's hand of pain etcetc.

If the group doesn't need the healer's damage to pass checks outside of those specific windows, then it's not such a problem if the healer is focusing on making sure the rest of the fight is comfy and no one's getting stomped in the space of a GCD right?

Also, trying to categorise and 'speak for' healers that 'only want to heal' is the biggest folly imaginable. There are going to be almost as many differing reasons behind it as there are actual individuals taking the stance. Some might not enjoy the fantasy, some might simply prefer to watch their Netflix. Suggesting they are united in opposing anything is a huge reach.

[IDontPetLalas]

I’m not sure I see the point of this comparison really. Obviously people are going to think Blue Mage is a better everything - you can literally customise your spell set. Which means there’s the added benefit of ‘no general heal actions’ that have homogenised healers. If White Mage/Scholar/Astrologian/Sage had fully customisable load outs I don’t think people would be complaining nearly as much. They don’t though, because Blue Mage is a limited job mini-game thing, so the comparison seems a little ‘apples to oranges’ to me.

It’s not like if they released Blue Mage as a healer one day on a whim that it would still look the way it does. Isn’t the topic essentially saying ‘I like Blue Mage as a healer because it’s not a healer’?

I see it rather as - it's possible to heal a group with a limited set of healing skills while having the ability to do damage beyond a single skill spam on this limited job. It works as a healer and it's fun.

Why can't that model be applied on the healer jobs.