Why are GCD heal cast times so long?

[HyonaCookie]

I don't get why we have such long cast times for heals. It makes them harder to use and time. I think shorter cast times would be more beneficial to saving parties and would make casting crit adlo to deploy easier and faster.

[Tint]

Because we are casters. And it would be boring. I mean we have way too many instant heals anyway, but there is no reason to make the healer role even more braindead.

Back in the olden days it was part of the fun to plan ahead and learn to pre-cast your healing spells.

[LilimoLimomo]

Personally, I prefer longer cast times. Longer cast times add more depth to the game by making both time and movement resources that need to be sacrificed in exchange for the spell. In my subjective opinion, FF14 is at its best when I can't get everything I want and need to make strategic choices about what sacrifice is going to lead to the best outcome. Should I start to pre-cast a spell just in case I need it, with the risk being that maybe I'm wasting time or mana? When the heat turns up, should I soak an AoE if it means I get to finish casting an important heal spell? Or would it be more prudent to avoid it even if it means interrupting my cast? I want more of this.

[rawker]

Uhh... isn't that the point? It's all about tradeoffs. Instant cast ones will have longer cooldowns or rely on some other respurce generation, i.e. WHM lilies.

[IDontPetLalas]

Uhh... isn't that the point? It's all about tradeoffs. Instant cast ones will have longer cooldowns or rely on some other respurce generation, i.e. WHM lilies.

Not to mention, there's swiftcast, and potentially other abilities might be added in future, who knows, depending upon encounter design, RDM is a caster however it has skills to have instacast spells, who knows, healers may get more in future, depending upon encounters as well.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

IIRC some GCD heal cast times used to be longer in ShB days.

Medica I & II were 2.50s
Asp Helios was 2.00s
Benefic II was 2.00s

If people dislike the cast time, they can pick SGE.

[Valence]

GCD casts have been dramatically reduced for EW already...

[HyonaCookie]

But it hardly seems fair that SGE can cast their GCD heals with little to no tradeoffs compared to other healers. And trying to deploy a critlo before the the raidwide goes off is often mistimed. I don't see why SE incentivizes GCD healing if it's harder to use than OGCD heals.

[Zeastria]

But it hardly seems fair that SGE can cast their GCD heals with little to no tradeoffs compared to other healers. And trying to deploy a critlo before the the raidwide goes off is often mistimed. I don't see why SE incentivizes GCD healing if it's harder to use than OGCD heals.

You can combat this by :
a) Applying the shields earlier, it's not like their duration is short.
b) Get more [spell speed] to cast faster.
( Keep in mind [spell speed] also reduce the duration / but you cast faster , so it kinda depends on what you pref )

[Supersnow845]

But it hardly seems fair that SGE can cast their GCD heals with little to no tradeoffs compared to other healers. And trying to deploy a critlo before the the raidwide goes off is often mistimed. I don't see why SE incentivizes GCD healing if it's harder to use than OGCD heals.

Because SGE trades movement shields with them being weaker on the pure heal front than succor, Pepsis being far weaker than ET and deployment not existing on SGE