[MothEnthusiast]

I've heard it from multiple people by now, and have experienced it firsthand. It's a trope in MMOs for a reason, and I recognize this, but... Plainly put, a fight of healers vs non-healers will end with the healers winning 99.9% of the time. This includes 1v1s, assuming the non-healer can't do insane damage versus the healer's defenses, which is considerably rarer than heals.

Yet at the same time, there are plenty of classes that have no reasonable healing options at all. There's a massive imbalance between classes that can heal, and those that can't. I'm not saying every class needs to be Priest, but it would help if every class had SOMETHING going for them in the way of longevity. Skills like Shore Up are a good balance between not being just a Priest skill, yet not being too small a number to be useless. To highlight this disparity, I'll go over some healing-abundant classes, and some classes that have nothing going for them. I'll (mostly) be going for non-spirited numbers in these break-downs, but at max ranks. Just keep in mind, they can definitely get stronger.



Priest. This one's very self-explanatory, it's THE healing class. It's the one I'm most fine with being a healslut, but it can't be ignored how hard it can be to overcome a team with a good Priest.
   - Graft: 25 + 100% light attack (And I think 100% SWA as well?) 14 FP - Can be made an AoE, 4r cooldown
   - Second chance: Revive spell. 21% HP, 17 FP - Can be made an AoE, 5r cooldown
   - Needle (Small heals admittedly, don't know the numbers off the top of my head), 3r cooldown, 31 fp
   - Malmelo: Up to 30% HP, based on scaled FAI/2, halved for summonable allies. 36 fp, 7r cooldown
   - Mercalan Mist: 25% of light attack as regen per turn for allies, invocation. One of the worst ones in Priest, but still notable.
    - Staff battle items, not sure of the numbers but only curates can use them IIRC.
   - All of the above (save for maybe staves/mist/needle?) are increased by 50% by Detailed Care if they're within 1 range.

Dancer. Basically Priest lite, with more damage. I hate this class with a passion, but I'll try to keep myself contained.
   - Cantus of consideration: 125 + 25 per active bard buff on target, 6 range diamond (9 with volume up). 6r cooldown, 20fp
   - Rest Beat: 30 hp AND fp per tempo (40 with spirit, if it can be spirited?), 180 FP and HP at max unspirited, and removes statuses based on tempo. 8 round cooldown
   ###(Bias warning on this next one.)###
   - The most egregious in 1v1 fights by far, Idol Step: Inflicts charm level 25, battle rush 15, 25+150% light attack as damage or healing (reduced by 50% if they've been hit with it this attack) FIVE times. SIX if spirited. That's 400+ healing, AND damage on top, AND charm, AND battle rush (which becomes worn out). This skill has entirely too much going for it. It could be ONE hit max per enemy or ally, NO charm and NO battle rush and still be a decent skill, assuming the cooldown was cut some. The current cooldown is 7 rounds, but I've seen 1v1 fights where it's used twice. 30 FP cost.



Those two are the most heal-heavy (unless I'm forgetting one, I certainly could be), but there are a few honorable mentions like Lantern Bearer. Now, we move onto a few cases with no healing at all, or so little that it can't really be considered useful in any meaningful way.



   - Soldier promos, save for Tact, have nothing. 3HP regen a turn certainly doesn't count. It'd have to be upped to 8-12 to even be a factor in a fight, IMO. Admittedly, I think BK is one of the only classes I'd probably not want to see with an Arb-tier healing skill, just because of how tanky they are innately, but DH definitely suffers from a lack of HP recovery and a lot less tankiness to make-up for it.
   - Magic gunner has a 'heal', but it's so miniscule with the change to on-hits that it's hard to really consider it. 7.5 HP per hit, 10 if spirited, but with multi-shot guns only applying on-hits once now, you're shooting yourself in the foot by using this over the other shells to pump more damage out. That's, at absolute best, 30 hp a turn (wasting a spirit, double-critting or using a duelist class and getting 3 attacks off that turn).
   - Mage and all of its promotions. Spirit pain technically counts as a heal, but it has counterplay out the ass, so it's definitely low enough tier to not really count as any form of sustain. RM is strong on its own, but Evoker really needs something sustain-wise. Hexer could use something too, but something low-tier, weaker than Shore-Up. Somewhere between Shore-Up and Disengage from duelist would probably be good.
   - Firebird only has Duelist's Disengage, but Disengage itself isn't really enough to contend in basically any circumstance. It's more of a buff move with a bit of HP sprinkled on top, which is fine, but for the sake of what I'm talking about here, it really isn't enough. A move or two more like Disengage would bring Firebird up to snuff. Ghost isn't included because it at least has rebound and a lot of survivability bonuses (even if it uses HP for some of its skills), and I'm too lazy to go see if Kensei's update got anything.



Not a comprehensive list by any means, but it helps to illustrate my point. I'd like to see every class get some weak heals to make healer vs non-healer match-ups less one-sided. But not only this, I think healing skills in general need something more taxing than just slapping on a big cooldown and calling it a day. With cooldowns alone, a person can feasible go infinitely against an opponent.

A common trend I see in a lot of healing skills is that their FP costs are balanced similarly to damage skills. A lot of 15-20 ranges, with the occasional 30-40 range for particularly big heals. Exceptions apply, of course. Personally, I think healing skills should be twice as expensive compared to their damaging counterparts. Healing should be exhausting as a balancing point, so that spamming all of your healing abilities on rotation will leave you hurting badly for FP. Healers already generally have a load of FP by nature of building FAI to begin with. Let me see a Malmelo taking 60 fp, or a graft taking 30-40.

[Snake]

I had suggested before that heals should consume 10% of your maximum FP plus its normal costs.

[caliaca]

Yes, graft is 100% swa as well. The ones that just say X light attack are swa as well. And yes Rest Beat can be spirited.

[Poruku]

Aoe heal is the real issue. Just give aoe healing diminishing returns. Also fp cost increase may help.

One big thing about healers is that they offer an insane advantage of tempo. Basically, healers are always "in range" to be effective. Sit in a corner, heal, etc... Meanwhile the guy with no heals doesn't get a break. If they let up the pressure for even one turn, and use a buff or something, or god forbid they try to make some distance, then suddenly the healer has won cause woop we get that hp back. Range is extremely important in SL2, and being able to affect the overall hp difference of the match regardless of distance from the enemy means that mathematically speaking it's almost like they had a global damaging skill, that also ignores all defenses. 100 damage to my tank? That's 40 damage. 100 healing to my tank? That's still 100 heal. For all these reasons, healing is intrinsically powerful. Imo, it should just be smaller numbers, especially the aoe ones. Healing your team with malmelo for like 300hp is ridiculous. Healing your team for 100? That's still good, man!

[MothEnthusiast]

While I hear what you're saying about AoE healing, it only really compounds the real issue with healing IMO. That being, as you said, that it's like hitting a person who has no defenses, but in reverse. It's 100% effectiveness for only 100% of the cost. This applies regardless of the battle size, 1v1, 2v2, 4v4v4v4, anything. AoE healing is just more easily felt because it's happening multiple times over.

AoE attacks exist, they just hit against defenses. So I feel like AoE healing being stupidly strong is just a symptom of all healing being very strong in any context where there's even skill and investment involved. Heal numbers need to be addressed, heal FP costs should be doubled, and I think more classes need options for the down-time in a fight. Probably in the reverse of the order I just presented, as a personal preference. Universal Shore-Up-tier healing would go a long way in making sure everyone can at least make use of the down-time in fights.

[Rendar]

Graft is (25+SWA+100% Light Attack). Which can be, lowballed, about 200. (25+125+50 light attack).. Or, in the highball range of

25 + 125 + 75 + (San) (50)... which quickly becomes 275. And then 50% bonus if in melee with the priest. Then another heal to follow up (that can revive).. or malmelo (which is a percentage heal.. but can be affected by Healer's Legacy and priest)...

It's less singular heals are a huge problem (They are, don't get me wrong), it's more it just adds effective HP to the battle. The same problem can be, roughly, seen with Wraithguard giving you effectively 300 more HP (400 spirited).. and then even more if the fight drags on. 600/800. 900/1200, etc.

This HP is only available for these classes, and while it's not wholly problematic on it's own, it becomes a problem whenever someone has access to 2... or 3 heals.

Even more of a problem whenever Pacifist's Boon comes into play and lowers the cooldown on them by 1.

[Autumn]

I'm actually go out on a limb here and say you don't actually see Healing Discharge, Cantus of Consideration or Solo graft (as in, when not paired with Phoenix or malmelo) become an issue mostly because I think that positioning is a very heavy playing card in what makes healing good, and the existence of global heals certainly needs to go entirely, every heal should have a position requirement of some sort.

But the reason why Curate gets away with their healing so much is because Rescue has fuck tons of range, and Mass has fuck tons of range as well, you can fix the positioning problem of Graft by using Mass Rescue into 1 range which procs detailed care from Priest, leading to some quite frankly, ridiculous healing numbers.

How do you fix these issues? Well i think the cooldowns on healing currently are like, very generous and fit their skills atm. So touching those is fine, the healing numbers is a little off the rockers but for such large cooldowns its fitting, and honestly I really really hate how easy it is to focus someone down through healing already.

I think that personally, the following aspects should be looked at in major detail
-Global healing, AKA: Healing you do not ever have to be in position for, simply hit the button regardless of your circumstances.
-Detailed Care's healing bonus
-Curate's ability to yoink people away from any circumstance and into 500+ HP Heals in the same turn, this is simply not ok, Mass AND rescue need nerfs.

[MothEnthusiast]

How do you fix these issues? Well i think the cooldowns on healing currently are like, very generous and fit their skills atm. So touching those is fine, the healing numbers is a little off the rockers but for such large cooldowns its fitting, and honestly I really really hate how easy it is to focus someone down through healing already.

I think that personally, the following aspects should be looked at in major detail
-Global healing, AKA: Healing you do not ever have to be in position for, simply hit the button regardless of your circumstances.
-Detailed Care's healing bonus
-Curate's ability to yoink people away from any circumstance and into 500+ HP Heals in the same turn, this is simply not ok, Mass AND rescue need nerfs.

Here's the problem, though. I noted Priest and Dancer specifically because they aren't heavily affected by these cooldowns. Cooldowns work for specific skills, but stop working when you have multiple options for healing. You just rotate through your healing as needed, and even with positioning requirements, this can be easily achieved. Especially in 1v1's-- there IS no positioning for healing yourself. Interference isn't a common enough status to deal with this, silence is treatable and rare as well, cursed wounds are rare as well, and there is no other realistic counterplay.

In a world where a class has 3-5 healing options of varying potency, no amount of cooldown spamming is going to deal with the fact that they give you 200-500 HP back per. FP costs won't even fully fix this, but it'd be a good step in the right direction. Giving other classes healing options isn't perfect either, but it does make it so you're not stuck with zero healing versus someone with lots of it. I'd go as far as to say most Arbs have a huge leg up over most martial artists just for the decent heal every once in a while, as a random example.

That said, yes, it's fair to say that single heals aren't really problematic as a whole. Hence my suggestion for more of them across the board.

EDIT: I'd also like to add that, while I'm not against the changes proposed, I think they also don't really hit the root of the issue. I don't want this post to end with a balance change that only slightly shifts the needle instead of actually fundamentally fixing the issue.

[Ray2064]

Please add SWA scaling to Aid PLEASE

[Senna]

Someone suggested this before, I don't remember who but, their suggestion was just a potion sickness var for healing. 3 rounds, target can't be healed by spells or skills. (Their body is still recovering), but they can still use potions.