I wanted to share this idea based on what I've seen from the devs, players, and my own personal feelings. Please hear me out, I know it might sound like stealing even more of healer's identity at first, but I promise it isn't that.
As the devs were simplifying healers again and again, I remember them mentioning one specific thing a lot as to why. They kept saying they were getting feedback that healing was too stressful. The devs took this to mean that the problem was juggling healing and damage dealing at the same time. Personally, I think they completely missed the mark.
IMO, what is actually more stressful for a lower skill healer is when you die and the entire group wipes because of it, or even worse disbands because of you. The punishment for underperforming on a healer is WAY higher than any other role. A dps or tank can be carried through content by a healer. They get to make mistakes and continue playing. A healer can only be carried by another healer, a caster with a raise, or an OP tank (last one especially sucks cause the healer and often the DPS too dont get to play anymore as they wait for the tank to SLOWLY finish the fight or die).
SKIP HERE IF YOU WANT TO SEE THE IDEA FIRST
The fix I propose is this. Let us use phoenix downs in combat. HOWEVER, they need to be really suboptimal to use relative to a healer's res. They should take as long as a hardcast raise on top of having at least a 30s to 1 minute cooldown and possibly a short range. I think healer's would also possibly need a small buff to their raising ability to make it more clear that they are THE ressers. Whether its cheaper resses, shorter cast time, a special raise-swiftcast, etc. Phoenix Downs should be an emergency item that is typically saved to use ON HEALERS, and practically never elsewhere. This lets lower skilled healers have more room for mistakes, and it lets other players not feel so hard-stuck with a healer that cant clear a fight because they can do something about it.
To make this work however would require removing a lot of the healing that non-healing classes have (please hear me out on this again but I'm doing the follow up in the next comment cause I'm out of space)
IMO this frees up the balance of the game to do many really good things. Caster's with res wouldn't need to be balanced around having resses as much as they are. Non-res classes would be able to save runs of casual content and possibly even occasionally hardcore prog by ressing a healer. You can take a lot of the self-sustain off of non-healers because they wouldn't need to be as self-reliant and encourages more team-play. And one of the biggest things, you can easily internally justify giving healers engaging damage rotations again because the stress of needing to perform perfectly on a healer will be reduced.
Continue reading...
As the devs were simplifying healers again and again, I remember them mentioning one specific thing a lot as to why. They kept saying they were getting feedback that healing was too stressful. The devs took this to mean that the problem was juggling healing and damage dealing at the same time. Personally, I think they completely missed the mark.
IMO, what is actually more stressful for a lower skill healer is when you die and the entire group wipes because of it, or even worse disbands because of you. The punishment for underperforming on a healer is WAY higher than any other role. A dps or tank can be carried through content by a healer. They get to make mistakes and continue playing. A healer can only be carried by another healer, a caster with a raise, or an OP tank (last one especially sucks cause the healer and often the DPS too dont get to play anymore as they wait for the tank to SLOWLY finish the fight or die).
SKIP HERE IF YOU WANT TO SEE THE IDEA FIRST
The fix I propose is this. Let us use phoenix downs in combat. HOWEVER, they need to be really suboptimal to use relative to a healer's res. They should take as long as a hardcast raise on top of having at least a 30s to 1 minute cooldown and possibly a short range. I think healer's would also possibly need a small buff to their raising ability to make it more clear that they are THE ressers. Whether its cheaper resses, shorter cast time, a special raise-swiftcast, etc. Phoenix Downs should be an emergency item that is typically saved to use ON HEALERS, and practically never elsewhere. This lets lower skilled healers have more room for mistakes, and it lets other players not feel so hard-stuck with a healer that cant clear a fight because they can do something about it.
To make this work however would require removing a lot of the healing that non-healing classes have (please hear me out on this again but I'm doing the follow up in the next comment cause I'm out of space)
IMO this frees up the balance of the game to do many really good things. Caster's with res wouldn't need to be balanced around having resses as much as they are. Non-res classes would be able to save runs of casual content and possibly even occasionally hardcore prog by ressing a healer. You can take a lot of the self-sustain off of non-healers because they wouldn't need to be as self-reliant and encourages more team-play. And one of the biggest things, you can easily internally justify giving healers engaging damage rotations again because the stress of needing to perform perfectly on a healer will be reduced.
Continue reading...