Remove WHM's and AST's DoTs, give SCH Miasma

Hey peepz,

I heard that dots are being removed because they take up debuff space.

I also hear Scholars would love to have Miasma and Shadowflare (not a debuff) back.

Would you be cool with WHM and AST losing their dots, getting something else that isn't a debuff insead and thus making space for Scholar to get an additional DoT?

While I do want SCH to get its DoTs back, WHM and AST don't need to have theirs removed for it. Jobs like PLD or GNB have two DoTs that are basically superfluous, in the case of GNBs or PLD's Circle of Scorn they aren't something you maintain so they can easily be turned into CDs that do up front damage of the DoT total because the CDs of the skills are longer than the DoT timers - they're fire and forget with 0 ability to mess up getting the total potency of the DoT (disregarding disconnects/applying it right as a boss is going to die etc) so if they want to get rid of the amount of debuff space being taken up, they should look at jobs that don't have DoTs tied to their identity first.

DoTs are great design for healers though and it would only be a benefit if SCH could get Miasma and Shadow Flare back. The "debuff limit" thing has always seemed like a cop-out to me because these are the same developers that say that they don't factor healer DPS into the type of content where that limit would be getting hit, and in things like Alliance Raids you can only have 2 healers per alliance, so even in a situation where there's 6 Scholars, if SCH had Miasma again that's only 12 total DoTs and 1 debuff (Chain) at any time on the boss - and that limit can already be hit by having 2 BRDs in each alliance or back in ShB when SMN had 2 DoTs as well. And SCH was able to have its DoTs in Eureka in SB fine, so I don't really consider the "debuff limit" as a reason for gutting SCH or removing Aero III on WHM an acceptable excuse, honestly. I think they just wanted to get rid of any form of DPS variance in healers beyond the absolute bare minimum base level of what healers would need to get through the MSQ and solo duties because they don't like the idea of healers focusing on DPSing because they quite simply do not care how these jobs are played and do not have a good understanding of how they are played by the playerbase either.

With all that said though, I do think it's somewhat interesting that WHM and AST do not have their DoTs in PvP, but SCH and SGE do, with both having mechanics based around them, and in SCH's case, its entire current PvP identity being around it. It likely doesn't mean anything for the future of PvE direction for healers, but it is something to note.

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Originally Posted by Nizzi

if they want to get rid of the amount of debuff space being taken up, they should look at jobs that don't have DoTs tied to their identity first.

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I know you're talking about mechanical identity and I wanna make a point about that as well, but do you feel like WHM and AST's DoTs are part of the job fantasy?

I agree about tank ogcd DoTs btw.

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Originally Posted by Nizzi

I think they just wanted to get rid of any form of DPS variance in healers beyond the absolute bare minimum base level of what healers would need to get through the MSQ and solo duties because they don't like the idea of healers focusing on DPSing because they quite simply do not care how these jobs are played and do not have a good understanding of how they are played by the playerbase either.

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Don't you feel that DPS variance in healers could be meaningfully adressed in part by having two of them not being based on DoT tracking? As it is now, only SGE plays the tiniest bit differently cause they need to factor in Eukrasia and their DoT isn't instantly applied.

Maybe there is a different way in which WHM/AST could play? Maybe DoTs are such a good fit for healers inherently that they shouldn't be taken out regardless? But why?

If they take a page from blue mage healer anything is possible I cant wait for lvl 80 increase on blue

Who on earth even plays these jobs anymore? I just imagine drool leaking out of people's mouths while they're pressing 1 button over and over again.

Once island sanctuary hits I’m Unsubbing. I’ll come back for patches and then unsub again. My house is the only thing keeping me from doing it but if island means I can ditch the house then perfect.

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Originally Posted by Eisi

Hey peepz,

I heard that dots are being removed because they take up debuff space.

I also hear Scholars would love to have Miasma and Shadowflare (not a debuff) back.

Would you be cool with WHM and AST losing their dots, getting something else that isn't a debuff insead and thus making space for Scholar to get an additional DoT?

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I wouldn't mid... IF they had something else to keep them busy in the dps front. Whm getting a secondary elemental combo, that interacts with Lily usage? I'd be up for it.

Thematically wise, I don't think that healers losing dots would be a huge impact on the class fantasy, especially if the replacement came with a lot of "flavor".

I actually remembered that once SGE's actions got leaked, I couldn't find a dot glancing over the stuff and I was genuinely excited to see that they diverged a bit from the Nuke+dot healer design, but alas the dot was there, but just in a slightly different way.

Honestly, if we could throw tradition to the wind, this could kind of help.

For example, suppose we took Aero/Dia and converted it into a 10 sec CD spell. Make it a direct damage spell and change the effect of Glare/Holy to give the WHM a single stack per cast (call the buff whatever you want). For each stack, it increases the damage of Dia in the following way:

At 1, 2, and 3 stacks, Dia is a DPS loss over Glare.

At 4 stacks, Dia is DPS neutral vs Glare.

At 5 stacks (cap/max), Dia is a DPS gain over Glare.

The rotation then becomes casting Glare 5x than Dia. Note this is already more interaction than we have between the spells, and would have you casting Dia roughly 2.5x as often as we do now. It would remove it as a DoT (getting around that pesky problem of boss debuff limitations), and by making it AOE, would give the Holy-spam rotation a much-needed shake-up, even if a minor one. Also, WHM has never traditionally (in Final Fantasy lore) been a "damage over time" Mage as part of its core identity. While some iterations of the Job over the years have had DoTs, it's not been core to its identity. In FFXIV it just became so because of how uninteresting its damage rotation otherwise is.

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NOTE: I'm not saying to do this, just saying there are ways to remove DoTs from some of the healers that could actually make their gameplay more engaging rather than less. In practice, if you took this same idea and had the buff stack to 11 stacks (11 Glares + 1 Dia fit in 30 seconds of GCD casts), it would be the exact same rotation we have now. Even THAT would be more engaging since you could "mess up" Dia easier and there'd be a smidge more room for optimization than there is with the present system.

Honestly, DoTs that have no interaction with kits are completely braindead abilities. I can never understand why people think they're the pinnacle of skill based and engaging gameplay. They can be if a class is built around them AND THEIR INTERACTIONS with other parts of the kit, but a single fire and forget, refresh on CD DoT has no such draw to me.

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EDIT:

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Originally Posted by GoatOfWar

Who on earth even plays these jobs anymore? I just imagine drool leaking out of people's mouths while they're pressing 1 button over and over again.

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Literally no one presses 1 button over and over.

Even if you're only pressing Glare (and not even Dia for some reason), you're pressing oGCDs. Yes, they don't take up your GCD cast, but you're still pressing separate buttons every time you hit Asize, Tetra, or Presence of Mind. Those are BUTTONS.

So no one is "press(ing) 1 button over and over".

I get it can feel that way sometimes, but hyperbole isn't helping.