Let's talk about healing...

[Dan]

Having many abilities = fun.
Having very few abilities = boring.
Having to wait ages for regenning life/mana as 'in the old day' = last millenium way to go, super boring...

We all want to move around, and use our cool abilities instead of just idly stand and wait for stuff to happen.

Scaling down layman heals by scaling their use of enhancers down would probably be the quickfix, and the added bonus is - when you cast in combat - you don't do white hits, so the layman healer will then find himself in the defacto situation Nils was describing (adrenaline) choosing to heal instead of doing much damage.

With all the powers laymans have gotten in # of spells and free heal spells in a few guilds, it should be considered making the occ casters 'stronger' e.g. by doubling the amount of cast per ingredient and with the current powerlevel on their enhancers casts, and possibly by adding some of the cool layman spells to their arsenal. Oh and, allow some occ casters to wear a shield without it diminishing their enhancers effect - afterall a Priestess of Takhisis do look more cool with a mace and shield... Make shields great again!

[buddah]

We have our problematic premise (layman healing spells are too good) but what is the issue it is causing? What change are we hoping to bring about? A more even distribution of Layman Guild selections? Fighters Guilds that don't need to rely on healing spells? Higher incentives for teaming up with a "Healer" Specialized Guild? Less solo players in the more difficult grinding areas? If we can decide on a narrow end goal, I feel like it'll be a lot easier to figure out the simpler solution.

I have tried healing without an enhancer and its pretty ugly. Nerfing the enhancer benefits for layman magic across the board without increasing the base value for some spells may be problematic. In my opinion, this will (1) especially wreck the support driven guilds like Oots which is barely played as it is due to its difficult progression and alignment restrictions and (2) it'll eliminate the possibility for offensive layman magic which I suppose isn't being used anyway (Warlocks/EW).

I am a fan of people being able to contribute via healing. I remember teaming with smaller folks who couldn't attack npcs but were able to heal me a solid amount and anything that incentivizes cooperation is a good thing! I am not a fan of people being able to self heal as much, this is something that not only affects pve but pvp where a player is able to out heal likely all damage in a 1v1 scenario unless there is a large stat/gear difference. If this was the end goal for me, I would make casting a support skill reduce one's base defense/acrobatics/parry by a large percentage so there would be little incentive for the one tanking or soloing to cast a heal in combat.

Another idea I've been contemplating is to add a "levels tax" thing, which shows (with text descriptors) the tax of a guild. (Thanks Wolverine for the idea).

Yesss reveal thy secrets! For some reason the Tricksters' tax rate is public information and I know I read in either a file or scroll that one of the magic guilds was "high" tax. I wonder if the policy on transparent tax information changed in the past decade? Anywho I assume when you say "levels" you mean vague tiers, I think that's ideal. Exact numbers will just led to negativity.

Sincerely,
Buddah

[Thalric]

An option could also be to make layman heals only work on others, not the caster themselves...
That would make them be in the supporter role, but removing them from being a one man army.

They should still be less powerful than now. No layman spell should be better (component cost, mana cost, effect) than an OCC spell. (Added after Buddah's response)

Also, I think that casting layman spells should also disable specials, not just white hits. Not only heals, all spells.
But that's another thing for another thread.

[buddah]

An option could also be to make layman heals only work on others, not the caster themselves...
That would make them be in the supporter role, but removing them from being a one man army.

Ooo, I like this!

[Morglum]

An option could also be to make layman heals only work on others, not the caster themselves...
That would make them be in the supporter role, but removing them from being a one man army.

They should still be less powerful than now. No layman spell should be better (component cost, mana cost, effect) than an OCC spell. (Added after Buddah's response)

Also, I think that casting layman spells should also disable specials, not just white hits. Not only heals, all spells.
But that's another thing for another thread.

I think that not being able to self-heal would be disastrous. I'm all for making it so that you can't heal when taking hits (so you can still heal the tank in combat and yourself outside of combat to reduce downtime). Or just make it super easy to fail spellcasting when being hit. Spellcasting also disabling specials (as it used to work) would also be a good idea I think.

[Rincon]

I also think that layman heal (minstrel, warlock, vampire, EW, OoTS, Heralds) should be nerfed. Wizards have already received several suggestions how to do it, so it's up to them if they want to implement it.

[qwertheangmarim]

As a healer, yes, it's too strong. however, I think rather than nerfing every aspect of magic guilds and crushing their utility, lower their heals, haste, stat boost, shields etc (not their straight utility spells, like DV, featherweight, etc). I'd also love to see combat layman's buffed significantly, bumping up all their specials, and being in a combat layman provides small boosts (5-10) to the persons occupational parry and defense skills (eg, sup vet -> conf master, sup master -> conf guru) on top of their buffed guild specials. Heal tanking might still be better in hard areas than a tank layman, for the sustain, and that's okay, but the magic layman's should be focused on utility, with less damage and damage avoidance tanking than a fighter layman, but the ability to switch between 'modes' and gain utility spells.

Edited for run on sentences, typos, and unclear writing

[Zestana]

As has been pointed out somewhere else on this thread insofar as laymen healing goes...

If an enhancer is being used, depending on the strength of it... the heal can be very powerful.

Take away the enhancer and the heals are very minor.

Adding in an adrenaline cooldown would make the heals borderline useless.

Back in the day (as mentioned by someone) if you got hit while casting, your concentration was broken and you had to restart. That seems to have predominantly vanished in the modern day casting system. Finding a way to reimplement that would make laymen healing more of a support class... and make it more difficult to heal while taking hits.

[Cherek]

I also think that layman heal (minstrel, warlock, vampire, EW, OoTS, Heralds) should be nerfed. Wizards have already received several suggestions how to do it, so it's up to them if they want to implement it.

Just like basically every player in this thread has their own idea about how to change heal, it's the same in the wizard world. It's really about someone just picking an idea they believe in and making it happen. Unfortunately we have very few wizards who actually can do it. The majority of ideas in this thread have been discussed before on the general Discord server and/or in wiz discussions. We have no shortage of ideas on HOW to solve it (we never lack ideas), but as usual we have a shortage of wizards with the technical knowledge of how to do it.

[Ckrik]

... as usual we have a shortage of wizards with the technical knowledge of how to do it.

Disentangling the code is also quite difficult and requires many hours of work. Because the underlying code drives so much of Genesis one has to take great care to not break 10 other things when making the changes. And often times it's not immediately obvious where things will come undone. If it were quick and low risk, it would have been done already.