What are the games that make healer interesting?

[Avoidy]

Healing in Tera was so good that even after the game shut down and private servers popped up, the actual queue time as a healer was longer than it was as a dps because people were actively queuing as healer since it was just that enjoyable. Your responsibilities included buffing the group, debuffing the boss, managing the group's MP, cleansing debuffs, ressing the dead, and occasional dps among some other stuff I'm likely forgetting. Since it was an action game, the snappiness was very satisfying; for example, you could actually pull off some seriously clutch heals without a janky "server tick" deciding that your heal actually didn't go off in time to save that one guy who can't stop getting hit. Or you could do that game's esuna equivalent but so quickly that it would be like the debuff had never even occurred if you timed it right.

There were 2 healers if I'm remembering right. One of them had a skill that made the party attack faster and on a reduced cooldown; another of the healers increased the entire group's critical hit rate just by existing. Both applied (iirc) debilitation debuffs on bosses. In other words, unlike XIV, going into an encounter with no healer -- even if your team were skilled enough to never take damage -- was often a detriment because you would attack slower, or crit less, or run out of mana, or take longer to down the boss because no debuffs, etc. In some cases it was fun and very quick to take both types of healers because of the benefits they provided. Really skilled healers could let their parties ignore certain mechanics because their team would just trust them to heal through it reliably. There were different forms of skill expression and people felt proud when they mastered it. Likewise, a group noticed quickly when their healer was new, because they'd run out of MP during their burst or the debuffs would expire on the boss or the team buffs would never go out, etc. Tanking was really good too. You could actually block incoming damage if you could read the boss well enough, and you had loads of support options for your team. Aggro was maintained through raw force; you had shouts you could use as a crutch, and you could apply augments to your skills (called glyphs) to boost aggro if you were still new, but those were like training wheels. If you were good enough, you'd hold aggro against your team by being really aggressive or by outgearing them. It was a lot more engaging than tanking in this game, where you just turn on your stance and fall asleep. I fear if we ever got a similar gameplay setup in 2024, modern MMO gamers would hate it because they don't want to be dependent on anyone. Everybody wants to be an island. Never mind the fact that there are thousands of single player games these people could play. No, they have to ruin this.

In a just world, Tera would not have been mismanaged by idiots. The combat in that game was so good that it kept it alive despite the constant stupid developer decisions. They would release a dungeon and then remove it from the game a few months later. They only ever wanted to have 3 dungeons in the game at a time. Then they'd limit how many times you could run it per day and that number would be like 1-2 times a day. These people were absolute morons. They had lightning in a bottle and they sucked on the bottle like cavemen until it broke.