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See, while I recognize the idea that out of combat healing should have a Baseline to consider and cleave to going forward, I disagree that all resources spent to get it should be considered on equal ground.
I'm going to set aside the Animist's Garden of Healing (and you can disagree with this choice) as I feel like that can just be feedback for a class that isn't released. We aren't seeing its final form and it feels weird to base an argument on something that's in the process of being tested.
Medicine and Treating Wounds is something that any one character can do without even investing a singular skill feat. All you need is Training in a skill and a healer's kit. This makes it the most accessible out of combat healing, and - to my mind - should probably be the least effective of the out of combat healing. With that same investment you can treat diseases and poisons - things that already many of the focus spells and feats cannot. So, even if Medicine's out of combat healing gets overshadowed, it has more broad applications. You can further specialize in it with skill feats or class feats to fill in holes that your party is missing. I would argue that Medicine is a versatile option you can specialize in - not a strictly out of combat use.
Lay on Hands is a class feature of the champion, but definitely very few play a champion for. People looking to grab the ability to do so could always grab the Blessed One Dedication (I'm assuming that we're going to consider "roleplaying investment" to be zero in these conversations - not everyone wants the baggage of what that dedication means, but we can leave that aside). On top of that, Lay of Hands has more practical applications in battle and doesn't provide much else other than recovering hit point loss (unless you grab a few feats). When the game first launched, I remember many of my groups saying "We either need some Assurance Medicine or a Champion to completely negate hit point damage after combat." All pre-APG, this was sort of "the meta," so to speak, when it came to out of combat healing.
Now we've got more options for healing in the form of Hymn of Healing (which requires a feat investment from the bard, something that neither the Medicine user or champion require), Ocean's Balm (which requires a feat investment and to have the water gate attuned) along with Fresh Produce (and you'll need the wood gate attuned for this). All of these seem like way more investment towards a playstyle than simply "existing as a class and still building in a person direction" or "grabbing a healer's kit from town."
Is the wood/water dual gate kineticist going to provide more healing, more quickly than the rogue with Assurance Medicine? Sure, absolutely. Does this represent power creep? Here, I would disagree in absolute terms. In fact, I would argue that it's good, actually. As I mentioned before, Medicine is always going to be viable just because it does so much more than provide healing. Every group should have someone who at least dabbles a little in Medicine. A group lacking someone who decided to dedicate several class feats and features into being the "out of combat healer" are still a part of the baseline expected math of encounters because they can patch themselves up (albeit slower than a group who HAS dedicated several resources to out of combat healing). By introducing healing in a variety of different ways and functions to different classes (gated behind investment), you allow for parties to adopt different strategies and for GMs to introduce new problems for groups. A group relying wholly on their kineticist for healing could be a bit blindsided when the first disease begins to ravage their wizard and they realize no one has Medicine trained up. A group who only heals through Medicine is caught off-guard when they are interrupted during their "patch up" session. These provide different tools to tell a story, but the "power creep" that you are speaking of is not being considered in relation to investment or use.
It matters because perhaps a GM seeks to design an adventure where time is a factor:
-The group is running out of oxygen.
-Someone is cursed or diseased and we need to finish things quick.
-There's a ritual being cast that we need to stop now.
Thank you. This is what I was looking for.
Now at least we have something specific to use to progress the discussion on further.
I think there is no measure of "how many classes" as in if suddenly the next class to be released had a class feat that said "After 10 minutes, restore everyone to full health," it would be of immediate concern. Well, that's being hyperbolic. More accurately, power creep becomes concerning to me when former options become non-options. For example:
Bard: Alright, great battle, all. Let me get my Hymn of Healing going.
Kineticist: Don't waste a Focus Point on that, I've got Ocean's Balm and Fresh Produce. It's going to be easier and faster for us.
This is not a problem to me. The bard and the kineticst are in the same party and have chosen to focus towards out of healing roles. The kineticist has spent a significant amount of their class strength in doing so - they went dual gate (or are higher level and went back to grab another gate and then the feats) and used two of their impulse feats to do so. The bard spent only one feat and, importantly, is still a bard. They haven't locked themselves into a build more. This sort of exchange feels like...
Rogue: Now, as a Mastermind, I can find out all the weaknesses of my opponents and exploit them to my advantage.
Thaumaturge: No need. I can do that for us without needing to dedicate my subclass and a bunch of skill training to it.
Both of these classes bring different things to the table that isn't just "Recalling Knowledge," but if that's the goal you're aiming for in a party (I want to be the Recall Knowledge character), then you might want to change your approach. Retraining and Session 0s exist to sort out these sorts of problems before they happen.
If our bard wanted solely to be the best out of combat healer, there are certainly better options than being a bard. However, if they wanted to be a bard and be able to heal, Hymn of Healing is there for them - however, with their party composition, there are better options to take. This is a problem with the party - the bard doesn't need to use their Hymn of Healing do the out of combat healing because the kineticist has decided to invest more fully into that role (though that extra temporary hit points and lack of involvement on the reciever's part help out quite a bit more in battle than Ocean's Balm or Fresh Produce does).
I feel like your displeasure would be a little more understandable if we started seeing things like:
Master Surgeon
Level 1 Medicine Skill Feat
You gain a +2 circumstance bonus to your Medicine check to Treat Wounds, and if you roll a success, you get a critical success instead.
Something like this is just a better version of Risky Surgery with no additional costs or options involved. Or something like...
Song of Life's Rebrith
Bard Focus Spell 1
All allies within range gain fast healing 2. When you Cast the Spell and the first time each round you Sustain the Spell, the target gains 2 temporary Hit Points, which last for 1 round.
This represents real power creep in that it entirely invalidates Hymn of Healing rather than providing just an alternative to it with different investment and application. Now, if this focus spell became, say, a Wizard Focus power behind a feat or even one of the new Wizard Schools, I would give it a little more scrutiny, but not in terms of power creep, but of niche protection (Why should the arcane caster gain healing sort of thing).
So really, spreading out different options across different classes, features, feats, and skills feels like it is only allowing players to choose how much and what sort of healing they value on their characters. It does not state emphatically "the best healing comes from (source)" without noting that you have to lose out on other options to get it.
Doesn't 10d4 and 30d4 average out to 25 and 75, respectively? Where did 100 and 300 come from?
What am I missing?
EDIT: Never mind. I figured it out; it's the sum of healing between four PCs in your typical party.
Player One has 3/21 health remaining after the fight.
Player Two has 10/16 health remaining after the fight.
Player Three has 8/17 health remaining after the fight.
Player Four has 8/14 health remaining after the fight.Medicine DC 15 is ~9 health on a success.
It'd take ~2 successes to heal Player One full
It'd take ~1 success to heal Player Two full
It'd take ~1 success to heal Player Three full
It'd take ~1 success to heal Player Four full
If we assume every single medicine check was a success it's 50 minutes of idling over an hour and a ten minutes. If just one of these is a failure then we begin tacking on substantially higher amounts of time.With that same array of health Animist's Garden of Healing heals for ~25 per use.
It'd take ~1 use to heal Player One to full
It'd take ~1 use to heal Player Two to full
It'd take ~1 use to heal Player Three to full
It'd take ~1 use to heal Player Four to full
This is done in 1 minute with a follow up 10 minute refocus.
I am not opposed to if someone likes the Animist allow to enjoy it. It forces the character class, which is enough cost IMO.
About Medicine, it is not hard that at least one character in the party to develop some of it. Only requires getting proficiencies and 2 skill feats, which are the most numerous, and with the corresponding Background you get the skill training and an extra feat (not really required for out of combat). With only Ward Medic and Continual Recovery that changes a lot, and at level 7 you get mastering on Medicine skill to finish.
Can get one at level 2 (check which one is better for your party style, if want to hurry get Ward Medic + consumables for the remaining and if want to ensure full healing using more time then Continual Recovery) and at level 4 have both, can treat 2 targets each 10 minutes. At level 7 can treat 4 targets each 10 minutes.
Meanwhile, combine with consumables, looking at loot wealth seems you can replenish them if using some.
Try to recalculate the time for Medicine if only one character gets Medicine (improving up to master at level 7) and those 2 feats.
Improving a single skill proficiency and 2 skill feats are a much lesser cost than forcing a class.
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I appreciate how you're taking the time to really consider this from many angles, but I think we may just approach PF2 from such wildly disparate positions to find much common ground.
This situation is completely realistic and makes my stomach wrench at how vile it is. It's not that I'd blame the kineticist player necessarily, they are objectively correct. However I find that to be a horrible gameplay experience that we've not really seen the risk of happening in this system before. No player should be made to feel like a class feature they've invested in is a waste. Healing numbers up to this point have followed that standard baseline and continually interacted with exploration activities (except chalice). And this has always kept these sort of class investments usable in every party, even when paired with people with high medicine investments.
I'm hoping that you're being a bit hyperbolic at the start there. I don't think there's anything gut-wrenching or vile here.
Like, if I'm in the bard's position, I would either have...
A) ...not known my party member would be fully invested in out of combat healing. This happens in PFS, but that comes with the territory; much like you can potentially end up in a group with two champions stepping on each others' toes. This is typically solved in home games with either some more pointed questions during session 0 or even just retraining a feat that I thought would be useful, but ended up not being useful.
Or...
B) ...deliberately chosen Hymn of Healing because it functions differently from the other healing options. With this particular example, Hymn functions better in combat than Ocean's Balm or Fresh Produce (at range, sustainable, grants temporary hit points). They have entirely separate functions, just as all of your examples do.
As for power creep, I'm finding your views of what falls under the definition of power creep to be difficult to follow. While it may just be a game of semantics at this point I'd like to pose a question in hopes that I can understand your viewpoints on the topic. So you've claimed that it wouldn't be power creep of a wizard was granted an area version of Hymn of Healing. Let's say we gave barbarian a better version of the You're Next Rogue/Swashbuckler feat, we'll say the Barbarian version is also level 1 and gives them a +8 to the intimidation check instead of +2. Is this power creep? If so what is the difference between these two instances?
I mean, this is getting into semantics because it is not power creep. A barbarian having a better feat than a rogue does not invalidate a rogue, much like a barbarian having more hit points than a rogue does not invalidate them. A barbarian doesn't gain access to a rogue's skill progression, their evasion, or individual thief rackets. There's still a reason to play a rogue - even to play an intimidating rogue! Don't forget that not every party will have a barbarian and among parties that do, not every one will have the "Super You're Next" barbarian. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't attempt Demoralizing without being a barbarian - in this extreme example.
So is this hypothetical feat power creep? No. Is it aboslutely busted and makes the barbarian a more appealing option? Sure!
Lastly your hyperbolic example, "After 10 minutes, restore everyone to full health", this is exactly what Garden of Healing is. I know you don't want to compare test classes but it's just kind of funny to me that I, at risk of sounding monotonous, made this thread in response to that very thing you said would be problematic. Kineticist isn't this extreme obviously but I sought to show its increased in efficacy in out of combat healing explicitly in response to seeing Paizo testing even higher numbers.
The numbers could certainly be played around with when it comes to the playtest classes, but I also don't see it being as big of a concern, really. In combat it lacks the range of other options, but out of combat, it's phenomenal. If I'm choosing options for my character, I tend to focus on things that will help me out when my life is most threatened (and I feel like designers tend to balance around Encounter mode moreso than Exploration mode). I think it's a decent trade off to say "I have incredibly good out of combat healing as my main option, but it's much more dangerous to use in combat." It has a 10 foot emanation.
This feels a bit like comparing Invisibility Sphere and Invisibility. It is absolutely better to cast invisibility sphere even though it is a higher level... unless you need to be away from the caster. Out of encounter mode, sphere is king for moving a group unnoticed, but that doesn't negate the need for invisibility.
I'm not sure that we're going to see eye-to-eye on this one. I can't be sure, but it seems that you're saying that "if there is a best at something, that negates the need for anything that does that" even if they have different situational applications (and actual abilities).
It is not about
that Animist itself doesn't bring any other strong tools to the table as well
but about you want to play anything else.
You don't play a Cleric if you don't like the Cleric, even if it has convenient things. Then telling a player "you must be an Animist" is not the best and probably refuse, unless like it.
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I do find it strange the degree to which Addendum is getting push back here - I think they've used some strong language, but are describing something that is worth considering. It is my experience that even with someone in the party pretty focused on healing (I play in one game where we have a high-WIS cleric with the medic archetype and all the expected Medicine skill feats, plus a thaumaturge with the chalice implement), it will take 20-30 minutes to get everyone healed back to full health. Often nothing else of narrative interest will happen in that time - some Refocusing, some Repairing, etc - but sometimes we will be Investigating or the like at the same time. Either way, if the out-of-combat healing changed to take one minute, there'd be a very different set of incentives for gameplay. Not even necessarily better or worse, just different! I don't think we need to demand specific examples from Addendum to see that the ability to move on to the next fight at pretty close to full capacity (missing focus spells, primarily) within a minute instead of ~30x that length is going to change the narrative. Anything with a time pressure fit for 30-minute breaks almost immediately becomes far less immediate. It's a lot easier to fit in one-minute breaks with narrative plausibility, in my opinion, so I'm not even saying the narratives are worse! But 'you have 5 minutes to get into the building before the ritual is complete and the city is destroyed' versus 'you have 30 minutes to get into the building' do have a different feeling to them.
Have made some calculations, and even not maximizing Wis you can full heal in about 30-40 minutes depending the HP to restore, using both Medicine feats plus assurance to achieve the corresponding success in Expert or Master DC.
And that not using any resource, like consumables or spells, that could be used to reduce 10 minutes for healing the remaining, as there is no need that on each combat all the party to finish at the edge of death.
In the case of that Animist (another forced selection), it would be 11 minutes, 1 for healing and 10 for refocus. Then usually we could say that is:
- 11 minutes for an specific class and specific "subclass". With the option if are in a hurry to spend just 1 minute but cannot use later or have to spend 21 minutes (refocus, cast, refocus) to return to normal. So this 1 minute once could be just like a subclass signature ability.
vs
- 20 minutes for Wis class specialized in healing and some resources, or 30 minutes without resources.
vs
- 30 minutes for non-Wis class that specializes in Medicine and get 3 feats (the 2 Medicine ones plus Assurance) and some resources, or 40 minutes without resources.
Then is more something up to each one to evaluate if enclosing that lesser time used to a specific class, and within that specific class, to a specific Apparition is trade-off enough or not.
While I understand that, I don't see it as a bad thing. That is to say, you can still tell the same stories, it's just that different parties will interact with them differently.
"My group has the ability to heal up efficently so we aren't worried about time constraints," seems fine to me. That party in particular has made choices to allow that to happen and should be rewarded as such.
"My group doesn't have to worry about flying opponents because we all have access to flight," trivializes certain thematic beats, but that's what the group invested in.
As an example, one of the most frustrating encounters in an older AP for PF2 was completely negated by a player who simply made sure to keep dispel magic prepped every day. The player was rewarded for his choices, even at the cost of another spell that could be more useful. This situation is much smaller in scale to "I've made my entire build to be efficent out of combat healing," there's still the weighing of what you lose to do so. These proposed Encounter mode healing sources are good, but they certainly lack in other ways. A tough trade-off for most.
Alright, we're doing breakdowns, but really - a high-level Medic Cleric isn't focused on Treat Wounds (the out of combat healing). As a matter of fact - quite the opposite! Of the Medic's six feats, only one of them actually improves healing, the base dedication. A medic who invests into the dedication can do so much more with their class feat investments than healing.
The thing is, these abilities that you're quoting and describing are being reduced to a single aspect of what they do and considered in an absolute void. It's pure white room at its worst. If a single class with a specific set of choices can heal up a group more effectively than the medic, I... don't see a problem with that? The medic isn't the "out of combat healer" just like the bard with the Hymn of Healing or any champion is the "out of combat healer." They do so much more than that.
I don't understand why other classes being able to heal efficently outside of combat invalidates the choices of other healing that functions entirely different in Encounter mode. If you're picking something for its efficency in Exploration mode, that's good! It's not going to excel in other situations - you're paying a cost in both versatility and, in many cases, locking you into classes, class features, or class feats.
I just geniunely don't understand.
Disregarding Garden of Healing for the moment. I had done some math on Fresh Produce, a level 1 feature when compared to Rebuke Death, the level 8 Healing Domain focus spell. At level 8 Fresh produce is over 3 times more exploration healing than Rebuke Death and they both maintain a similar number of actions used for health gained in combat. When presented with the need to heal 130 health, the high end of health at that level, Fresh Produce heals it in ~5 uses while Rebuke Death heals it in ~12 uses, with the added caveat of needing to remain idle for the full two hours. When they are used in tandem rebuke death shaves off 10 minutes for a total of 40 minutes of healing but now the group needs to idle instead of being able to move.
This is exactly the sort of thing that you're doing that I find is skewing your point at best, and disenginuous at worst.
Let's actually look at these abilities. They're different. They're very different and you're comparing specific uses of them as if they are the same.
Rebuke Death: Rebuke Death allows a caster to heal up to three targets in a 20 foot emanation and uses a variable number of actions. On top of that, it specifically stops the wounded condition when bringing back dying characters. It's use is not for Exploration mode, but of mid-combat healing - it excels when things have gone poorly and the caster has several important choices to make. It's not a great spell for out of combat healing.
Fresh Produce: Fresh Produce on the other hand is not good when your party is on the backfoot. It grants a single creature within a 10 foot emanation a usable item that they have to spend an action to gain the benefit from. It's not a go to spell for Encounter mode healing, especially if you haven't got martials with free hands. Out of combat healing, it's excellent!
You're comparing apples and oranges and wondering why there isn't more agreement. "This feat that is good at Exploration mode healing is better at healing during Exploration mode than the focus spell that is good at Encounter mode healing," is not quite the most dramatic statement.
They function entirely differently - a dying character can't spend an action to heal. A character with their hands occupied (either holding a two-handed weapon, a sword and a shield, grappling, or any other number of things) cannot benefit from Fresh Produce. Not to mention that waving away "sure the actions are spent by two different characters" is incredibly disingenuous as to the impact being dramatically different between Encounter mode and Exploration mode - to say nothing that essentially "giving your allied slowed 1" for a minor heal is a risk that many groups cannot take.
You're taking two different applications and reducing them to numbers that have nothing to do with how they function. Yes, that is disingenuous.
You're saying that you can't account for every difference, but ignoring them is removing a very important set of data and you're blinding yourself to it. Yes, Fresh Produce is going to heal for more outside of combat, but Rebuke Death wasn't designed to be a powerful out of combat heal.
You've created new standards of measurement which don't have any basis in reality. It's easy to remove things that make measurement hard, but that doesn't make the measurement correct. In a white room, in perfect conditions Fresh Prduce can heal a lot. But it's because those perfect conditions (having 1 to 3 wounded allies within 10 feet who all have a hand free and are able to safely spend an Interact action to heal) are so difficult to achieve, it doesn't function well in Encounter mode.
On the other hand, Rebuke Death doesn't need to have much to function: just wounded allies within 20 feet. This allows it to function more often in play during Encounter mode.
Now, outside of Encounter mode - sure Fresh Produce heals for more. I don't see that as a bad thing. Fresh Produce is not a great ability within round to round combat and I'm very much okay with it being more poweful outside of Encounters.
My point is this - you're cutting away the parts of abilities like their function in various modes of play, feat investment, feature investment, and even little things like range just to get more easily digestible numbers. That isn't providing the full picture. Some abilities are going to be more powerful in different modes of play, but that doesn't represent power creep, but a diverse range of abilities and playstyles.
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1 minute to restore the whole party health outside combat... I'm a bit surprised some people try to make a comparison with existing healing abilities. There's a level of magnitude between Medicine and Garden of Healing.
It's also a strong change in adventure pace. With Garden of Healing, you can chain encounters with a 1-minute interval as long as you don't put too many of them in a row. Still, 3 or 4 encounters in a row with a 1-minute interval in between is something that was not really possible in the past without burning limited resources like crazy.
You can now try to make an entire dungeon under 10-minute buffs (Heroism, Barkskin...). It's a core paradigm of the game that is brought down.
You shouldn't compare two literally different things with different functions. I truly, truly don't understand what you think I'm doing by saying that Rebuke Death and Fresh Produce shouldn't be used as points of comparison when they function entirely differently and you're making points for them both functioning at their optimal when one has significantly more hoops to jump through to be optimal.
But alright then, would it make it better for you if I went back to comparing Lay on Hands to Ocean's Balm? Because this is, in my opinion, the most direct one to one comparison that you could possibly make between two healing abilities. Same range, same actions spent, similar healing, I even thought that their subsidiary effects were something that could possibly be quantified against one another. But when I tried to make such a comparison between these abilities I was told that they were not comparable abilities. It feels like at this rate I'll run out of combat healing tools that I'm able to compare against one another. Perhaps we should just not compare any healing abilities at all! Just throw healing values at the wall because none of the options can be quantified against one another!
I mean, alright - compare away, but I think you're losing sight of the point you've been trying to make. Like, you're saying that newer options can outpace the out of combat healing of older options. Sure, alright, but you are exclusively picking abilities that are Encounter mode abilities first and Exploration mode second.
If I want to make an out of combat healer, it would be silly of me to make a champion and expect Lay on Hands to work as efficiently as other options. It's a really good combat trick, one that essentially lets you slap a shield onto an ally midcombat (arguably not that useful since those in touch range to a champion are likely to get some protection from a reaction anyway).
Then there's Ocean's Balm which... is also a fine Encounter ability? I mean, I personally would rather have Lay on Hands since I likely won't have the opportunity to spend more than one Focus Point an encounter anyway, and I prefer the versatility of being able to give minor AC bonuses and have a little debuff for the undead. For the trade off of devoting an entire portion of my character build (water attunement), I guess Ocean's Balm works better out of combat, but in combat Lay on Hands feels - to me - to be the winner.
But that's the thing, this isn't "which ability is better," you're saying that recent abilities heal more in Exploration Mode. And I'm saying that's not a bad thing. Characters are sacrificing something in order to get the ability to do so. You are not understanding what so many in the thread have been saying, which is that these abilities aren't worth the investment for most.
Small anecdote, maybe it will help, maybe it won't: There's this place near where I live where the soba goes on sale between 3 pm and 5 pm. Now, most people don't eat there at that time because lunch breaks tend to occur between 11 am and 1 pm in the area. They advertise for cheaper soba during this off-time to make a little bit extra money and get a few customers after the "lunch rush." Me? I'm lucky - my break time happens to be a very strange 4:30 pm. So I can get a nice cheap meal. It's sort of silly that I would ever pay full price for the soba. Really, it's cheaper than most everything else around.
Another - smaller - anecdote: My group has a sword and board champion, a two-weapon flurry ranger, and a wizard. I realize that my group is pretty well balanced, but lacking on the out of combat healing. I could play a rogue with Medicine, but we feel somewhat full on melee martials. A cleric is nice, but not what I'm looking for. I could grab a wood gate kineticist for out of combat healing, but I'm not a big fan of Fresh Produce for healing in combat when most of the party has their hands full. However, Ocean's Balm could work nicely for me since the champion can handle healing the ranger in combat while I can potentially keep the wizard topped up should attention come our way. All this and I'd get to play a class I'm interested in.
Some of the limitations and freedoms placed on me allowed me to gain benefits that others might not in both situations. I may feel like I'm doing better than others, when really I'm just in a position that allows me to get the most out of my situation.
1 minute to restore the whole party health outside combat... I'm a bit surprised some people try to make a comparison with existing healing abilities. There's a level of magnitude between Medicine and Garden of Healing.
It's also a strong change in adventure pace. With Garden of Healing, you can chain encounters with a 1-minute interval as long as you don't put too many of them in a row. Still, 3 or 4 encounters in a row with a 1-minute interval in between is something that was not really possible in the past without burning limited resources like crazy.
You can now try to make an entire dungeon under 10-minute buffs (Heroism, Barkskin...). It's a core paradigm of the game that is brought down.
I mean, this is sort of why Garden of Healing is going to be a tough one since it's part of the playtest. I haven't gotten to play with the Animist yet. I feel like the main point of "Exploration mode healing is too powerful" gets muddied with material that isn't in the game yet. The topic of Garden of Healing should really be a topic for the playtest forums.
Generally speaking, abilities that speed up time between encounters are a good thing which makes it easier to tell stories. The extended breaks required to heal up between fights have always been narratively awkward to deal with, and makes it really hard to do, say, fighting your way through several waves of goons while they try to cover for their escaping leader.
You can still tell stories with a ticking clock until the evil ritual finishes, just on shorter intervals. Meanwhile, in games with no time pressure the investment of those abilities doesn't really mean as much, although it might feel better to the players.
More broadly speaking, this is also the function of the kineticist. They are the mid-point class that trades the raw power of a martial or the sheer versatility of a caster to be able to use a small bag of tricks repeatedly and reliably. Ocean's Balm makes the party less susceptible to time pressure, but Cyclonic Ascent makes the party less susceptible to hazardous terrain, and Clear of Air makes it easier for the party to reliably scout. Given the incredibly positive reception of the kineticist, it isn't surprising Ocean's Balm and Fresh Produce are of little concern to the larger player base.
I mean, this is sort of why Garden of Healing is going to be a tough one since it's part of the playtest. I haven't gotten to play with the Animist yet. I feel like the main point of "Exploration mode healing is too powerful" gets muddied with material that isn't in the game yet. The topic of Garden of Healing should really be a topic for the playtest forums.
I agree, this discussion should have been posted on the playtest discussion as it's mostly about Garden of Healing.
I don't find Kineticist out of combat healing to be "magnitudes" higher than other class features. It's high and it's true that you can potentially take multiple healing impulses, but that's something also available to some classes (Chirurgeon gets to some crazy high out of combat healing at high level).
Is it possible that continual recovery is going away in the remaster and treat wounds will just lose its cool down time entirely? It feels like a lot of unnecessary book keeping at this point compared to just magical healing abilities. It seems like the game has settled into a position where added work to limit out of combat healing is just unnecessary and keeping track of an hour is more of a pain that it really feels is necessary anymore.
As a GM, I probably play with interrupting short rests more than most, and the Garden of healing raises my eyebrow a fair bit too, but the kineticist options haven't felt out of control to me. I agree with Superbidi that the GM encounter pacing meta has just shifted heavily towards either no time limits between encounters, or just keeping the encounters crashing over each other with no time between them. Any thing else is just pretty much testing whether or not your party has figured out the meta of "heal up the fastest with the least amount of resources," which just really isn't that fun of a game to play more than once ever in a campaign.
The biggest problem with the Animist focus spell healing options is that they get to just cycle through their focus spell options so easily, even in middle of the day, that it is not like having access to this ability is particularly limiting to the character. A few too many of the choices for the animist hardly feel like character choices, and are instead just "you will always have this when you really want it." Kinteticists being able to retrain all of their feats every day would probably cause me to raise my eyebrow as well.