A summary of healer issues

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Originally Posted by Reiryuu

If you've actually done the healer Halls of the Novice Trials, you'll find that's exactly how the devs expect healers to act. The "trainer" NPC will scream at you to heal your allies when they're at like 80% health. It's so pathetic and annoying -_-;

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i am fully aware of that, after all, I am the OP and I put that in the starting post

unfortunately, it appears the member of the job team that wrote that was the one who left in HW

What really sucks too is the fact that the aggressive healer is very much possible in other MMOs. In Dragon Nest, the three healer classes have ENTIRE DAMAGE ROTATIONS. The main difference being that they only have a select few heals. While I don't see flipping the ratio of damage abilities to heal abilities as a viable solution, it's still baffling as to why Dragon Nest isn't the golden standard of how to create healers. Nothing gives me more of an ego boost than being able to have a tight rotation while saving my team.

11111 and 1.2.3 are equally boring tbh

The problem in this game is it's static fights , once u map your healing CDs etc u end up mashing 1111 or 123 consently anyway

I actually want to see more "random" damage given out which isn't predictable by cast bars etc to make me think "oh crap where this damage come from???"

I mean healers can legit have red mage proc style damage and that still be boring, and as people said , which forces the "green DPS" role

ATM se needs to think, add more random damage in raids / dungeons that is unpredictable to force us to actively be a healer, or should they just strip down the healing to ogcds and push us to be "support" rather then "healers' and legit just put us as a full on "green DPS"

ATM as a white mage, I feel more of a green DPS with support healing, then an actual healer

Non-random damage contributes to the green DPS paradigm, but isn't the ultimate creator of it. Downtime is. Downtime will always exist. It's a natural consequence of designing a game that allows a wide range of skill levels to complete most content. Random damage will slightly reduce downtime. Adding support will reduce downtime. Short of doing something utterly insane like disabling healer damage spells in instanced content, it's not possible to eliminate it. Or, based on how low Squeenix wants to maintain the skill floor, reduce by any significant margin.

I've said it a hundred times and I'll say it a thousand more: This community doesn't actually want a huge increase in outgoing damage. The proportion of people who think dungeons or story trials are challenging prevent it.

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Originally Posted by Iedarus

Dragon Nest

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Windwalker for life~

And while I kind of agree with what you say, to be fair, Dragon Nest is a very different game than what FFXIV is. On the other hand, I'm not 100% sure what kind of game XIV is trying to be anymore, so maybe there's an issue with identity as the underlying issue for all of this?

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Originally Posted by MintnHoney

Windwalker for life~

And while I kind of agree with what you say, to be fair, Dragon Nest is a very different game than what FFXIV is. On the other hand, I'm not 100% sure what kind of game XIV is trying to be anymore, so maybe there's an issue with identity as the underlying issue for all of this?

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It started out as a simple but deeply complex game, where the skill Mastery and ceiling was high but the entry was easy. The jobs gradually got more complex and demanded more of you as a game should as you progress through the levels. Later on in ARR, it became less about the simple kit, and really truly trying to understand how to apply it.

Heavensward hit, and in my opinion, the job was at peak complexity and enjoyment. It was not without its issues for sure, they most certainly pale in comparison as to the issues we have now, we just had no idea what was to come.

Healers were absolutely beautiful in Heavensward, Scholar especially was just this beautiful mess of skills that synergized exceptionally well but cohesively made zero sense when talked about separately.

And then the Stormblood Nation attacked, and signaled the doom of the role in a way we couldn't have possibly comprehended. Maybe if we had been even more vocal back then, we may have been able to stop the travesty that is Shadowbringers Healer Iteration? I honestly don't know anymore. I worry that I'm terms of Story Cohesion and Well Designed Battle Mechanics overall 14 has peaked at Heavensward.

We have yet to have an excellent Story coincide with Excellent tuning and combat, and sadly, I just don't think it's in this current teams capabilites without some serious hiring, which I doubt will ever come without something similar happening to Dps as did Healers.

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Originally Posted by Iedarus

What really sucks too is the fact that the aggressive healer is very much possible in other MMOs. In Dragon Nest, the three three healer classes have ENTIRE DAMAGE ROTATIONS. The main difference being that they only have a select few heals. While I don't see flipping the ratio of damage abilities to heal abilities as a viable solution, it's still baffling as to why Dragon Nest isn't the golden standard of how to create healers. Nothing gives me more of an ego boost than being able to have a tight rotation while saving my team.

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Jesus, other humans who played dragon nest! Its been years but i had quite a bit of fun with the flail cleric-boy

just watched the benchmark, sage reveal from earlier this year and the leaked aoe from the benchmark to double check

Sage has the following actions from what I have identified

1 art of war copy where the nouliths circle above the head shooting the oppressor's bullets (the roomwide aoe in a1) this is from the benchmark leak so its definately in the game as the benchmark is a modified game client.
1 attack that shoots the nouliths at a single point on the enemy. Either a dot (heat burn on a single point) or a nuke. My money is on nuke given how simple the animation is
1 attack of circling nouliths on the enemy assuming that its not an alphinaud exclusive. I've only seen him using it so far. Possibly a nuke.
1 attack that crosses the nouliths on an enemy and makes trails that leave flames. It was bigger than the enemy in question and had no cast animation. So its likely an ogcd attack.
1 basic heal
1 aoe version of the basic heal
1 circular barrier (single target)
1 cubic barrier (single target)

all in all, nothing to suggest its not simply a 5.0 scholar that turned the fairy into laser guns yet.

curiously one thing I did note is the absence of any reaper actions apart from possibly the limit break 3 for reaper by zenos. Its difficult to say because that end stuff was clearly animated without any actions.

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Originally Posted by FoxCh40s

It started out as a simple but deeply complex game, where the skill Mastery and ceiling was high but the entry was easy. The jobs gradually got more complex and demanded more of you as a game should as you progress through the levels. Later on in ARR, it became less about the simple kit, and really truly trying to understand how to apply it.

Heavensward hit, and in my opinion, the job was at peak complexity and enjoyment. It was not without its issues for sure, they most certainly pale in comparison as to the issues we have now, we just had no idea what was to come.

Healers were absolutely beautiful in Heavensward, Scholar especially was just this beautiful mess of skills that synergized exceptionally well but cohesively made zero sense when talked about separately.

And then the Stormblood Nation attacked, and signaled the doom of the role in a way we couldn't have possibly comprehended. Maybe if we had been even more vocal back then, we may have been able to stop the travesty that is Shadowbringers Healer Iteration? I honestly don't know anymore. I worry that I'm terms of Story Cohesion and Well Designed Battle Mechanics overall 14 has peaked at Heavensward.

We have yet to have an excellent Story coincide with Excellent tuning and combat, and sadly, I just don't think it's in this current teams capabilites without some serious hiring, which I doubt will ever come without something similar happening to Dps as did Healers.

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Heavensward wasn’t special. ARR through SB Scholar was absolutely broken though. It had too much free healing. And warped the other two around it. Micromanaging the fairy wasn’t worth the carpal tunnel at high ping imo. I’m fine with the nerfs it got in Shadowbringers. I’m not okay with the trim on their DPS kit. Any changes I want on the healing side are baseline throughput nerfs that come coupled with flexibility focused buffs. Mostly because I want to widen the gap between Scholar’s min and max throughput.

All Heavensward really had was consistent tank damage that actually cut into Embrace and Regens through a combination of omni-present autos, mini busters/cleaves, crits, and actual factual tank busters. Stormblood Scholar had a sheer excess of tank auto tools. Shadowbringers gave everyone Tank Mastery instead of killing aggro reduction from non-tanks and took away the mini busters and consistent autos for less frequent periods of slightly heavier auto damage contingent on each fight. Those changes resulted in more consistent damage intake, that is overall lower than previous expansions when you finally factor in relative gear scaling into the equation.

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Originally Posted by Grimoire-M

Heavensward wasn’t special. ARR through SB Scholar was absolutely broken though. It had too much free healing. And warped the other two around it. Micromanaging the fairy wasn’t worth the carpal tunnel at high ping imo. I’m fine with the nerfs it got in Shadowbringers. I’m not okay with the trim on their DPS kit. Any changes I want on the healing side are baseline throughput nerfs that come coupled with flexibility focused buffs. Mostly because I want to widen the gap between Scholar’s min and max throughput.

All Heavensward really had was consistent tank damage that actually cut into Embrace and Regens through a combination of omni-present autos, mini busters/cleaves, crits, and actual factual tank busters. Stormblood Scholar had a sheer excess of tank auto tools. Shadowbringers gave everyone Tank Mastery instead of killing aggro reduction from non-tanks and took away the mini busters and consistent autos for less frequent periods of slightly heavier auto damage contingent on each fight. Those changes resulted in more consistent damage intake, that is overall lower than previous expansions when you finally factor in relative gear scaling into the equation.

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Can we stop with the Scholar was OP thing? That is a old, tired, very very dead horse.

Scholars JOB DESIGN was glorious back then; hell, it could have done absolutely awful damage and healing wise and I still would have played it because of how complex and deep it was.

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Originally Posted by FoxCh40s

Can we stop with the Scholar was OP thing? That is a old, tired, very very dead horse.

Scholars JOB DESIGN was glorious back then; hell, it could have done absolutely awful damage and healing wise and I still would have played it because of how complex and deep it was.

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and also only the problem that noc ast was hot grabage almost all the time together with white mage so you only had one decent healer option that whas also good and fun too play.

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Originally Posted by Mortex

and also only the problem that noc ast was hot grabage almost all the time together with white mage so you only had one decent healer option that whas also good and fun too play.

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How is OP considered decent? Was the state of healing that terrible back then that the only thing that's decent is the overturned job?

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Originally Posted by Roeshel

How is OP considered decent? Was the state of healing that terrible back then that the only thing that's decent is the overturned job?

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sch+ast wasnt the only decent comp. when people say it its mostly hyperbole. Whm+sch was a decent healing pair as well. it was just mostly better for prog and was usually the comp in world 1st clears. however Whm+sch was actually found in some top speedkills in Stormblood, so its not like sch ast was so overpowering that it was impossible to compete.

sch+ast wasnt "too strong" imo, but it was easily the best comp because whm lacked utility/damage and noct lacked mitigation. for whm ast to be on par with the other healer comps whm wouldve needed to do more damage to compensate not having chain strat, and noct ast would've needed enough mitigation/healing to compensate not having soil. but they never bothered touching either the whole expansion

had they ever actually adressed those issues then maybe we wouldn't be where we are now.

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Originally Posted by FoxCh40s

Can we stop with the Scholar was OP thing? That is a old, tired, very very dead horse.

Scholars JOB DESIGN was glorious back then; hell, it could have done absolutely awful damage and healing wise and I still would have played it because of how complex and deep it was.

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No. Because I still think you could nerf Scholar harder given how little SE challenges healers as-is. It also wasn't that deep back then either. The majority of your gameplay that's different from now was in-between your Broil spam you'd occasionally mash an Embrace macro or target a party member manually for it between casts if the AI wasn't going to handle it (fun fact, The fairy was generally decent at this, so you'd really only do this for a tank when literally nothing was going in), or one of three pet actions, the majority of which were close to useless on BOTH pets. And the Embrace portion you can simulate with /place now with exactly the same results, just under different conditions.

Sure, sometimes you might have some Deploy shenanigans that were worthwhile, which I agree was satisfying to use with the old fairy, but most of the 'interesting' situations with that involved LB cheese or pet abuse during the same raidwide spam we complain about having too many actions for now, the former of which wouldn't be possible even if SCH hadn't been nerfed. Shields already need a second look to ensure their shelf life extends past the first month.

And as for the rest of Scholar's best traits, most of it wasn't even in Heavensward! Quickened Aetherflow and Miasma II were Stormblood exclusive interactions. Booksmacking and Ruin II spam wasn't a staple like it was in ARR either, where I'd say SCH was at it's best because it actually kind of sucked at something (and didn't have to compete with another healer or force its co-healer to fight over a slot). Cleric Stance wasn't an amazing button either. Most of Scholar's best abuses of it died with ARR Lustrate, which, yes, meant you'd swap out and back into it fairly consistently if you needed to use Aetherflow heals, but I don't think that added engaging gameplay.


If you like fiddly micromanagement, fine, but don't pretend it was 'complicated'. Fights never demanded you actually jam 4 different actions and movement into a single GCD as the "Scholar's potential" back then. At best you were just delaying your pet's 2s cast timer because of the same garbage AI you're mad at now, only now it fires without you needing to give yourself carpal tunnel.

Finally, we get to Selene. Which most people didn't use past the opener. Gordias showed everyone where she was useful and where she wasn't, and it became clear Eos was the better option most of the time based purely off of Rouse + Whispering Dawn's value. Keeping both healers DPSing as long as possible was worth more than a fiddly haste buff that you had to adjust your party's skill/spell speed thresholds around to really properly abuse.

Scholar's healing kit is just as complicated now as it was back then. More cooldowns, less synergies. The problem is the DPS kit being gutted, pure and simple. I don't think we need a Cleric Stance rehash across all healers (if SE wants Sage to use it then I hope they actually DO MORE with the stance concept, ideally more than Tank Stances and AST Sects were), but beyond bringing the DoTs/Bane back I would like to see something added to make weaving feel less like hot garbage. I don't expect more than that because SE's pretty good at messing things up as it stands.

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Originally Posted by QooEr

sch+ast wasnt the only decent comp. when people say it its mostly hyperbole. Whm+sch was a decent healing pair as well. it was just mostly better for prog and was usually the comp in world 1st clears. however Whm+sch was actually found in some top speedkills in Stormblood, so its not like sch ast was so overpowering that it was impossible to compete.

sch+ast wasnt "too strong" imo, but it was easily the best comp because whm lacked utility/damage and noct lacked mitigation. for whm ast to be on par with the other healer comps whm wouldve needed to do more damage to compensate not having chain strat, and noct ast would've needed enough mitigation/healing to compensate not having soil. but they never bothered touching either the whole expansion

had they ever actually adressed those issues then maybe we wouldn't be where we are now.

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WHM/AST didn't have Embrace. They had to overcome an effective 2% DPS difference just from the regen tax alone. Nevermind all the other crap Scholar did. It's also why current Scholar isn't that bad. Free healing is good. Even if you can't control it perfectly.

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Originally Posted by Roeshel

How is OP considered decent? Was the state of healing that terrible back then that the only thing that's decent is the overturned job?

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Well the problem was you only had 3 healer and one of the two shield healer was way way better then the replacement option aka astro. Also astro being absolutely bad as hell at the start of every expansion didn’t make it better. Like pre creator astro was not so good to say it friendly. Doesn’t mean whm was any better. They did buff astro like every patch back in heavensward and with that I mean 20 % single balance and 10 % aoe balance were the best arguments. And stormblood was another thing. They nerfed sch (not for a long time before they gave buffs there), nerfed astros balance and also every other healer got decent too good new toys were astro had some bad stuff. Also they tried to bring noc astro too the lvl of sch but it was still so farm away from it that you rather replaced whm then scholar. We’re Paladin got really good changes and new abilities too get back in a good tanking spots healer we’re just disappointing changes. Also they did ignore a entire expansion again white mage (I don’t count 15 seconds reduce on assize a good change, made it even worse too weave effectively).

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Originally Posted by Grimoire-M

WHM/AST didn't have Embrace. They had to overcome an effective 2% DPS difference just from the regen tax alone. Nevermind all the other crap Scholar did.

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i agree, i forgot to mention the free healing from the fairy that both also lacked and cut into their combined dps even more.

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Originally Posted by Grimoire-M

It's also why current Scholar isn't that bad. Free healing is good. Even if you can't control it perfectly.

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I wouldnt say any of the healers are bad rn, just boring. If anything ast is too strong for the same reasons scholar was too strong pre-shb (most dps, endless free healing).


I concede that embrace was too strong back then, but at least fairy micromanging was something else you had the option to do if you wanted to try even harder to optimize healing. Current healing optimization is mostly letting ast do everything, begging your party to use their mitigations and healing whenever a weave window comes up. zzz

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Originally Posted by Grimoire-M

No. Because I still think you could nerf Scholar harder given how little SE challenges healers as-is. It also wasn't that deep back then either. The majority of your gameplay that's different from now was in-between your Broil spam you'd occasionally mash an Embrace macro or target a party member manually for it between casts if the AI wasn't going to handle it (fun fact, The fairy was generally decent at this, so you'd really only do this for a tank when literally nothing was going in), or one of three pet actions, the majority of which were close to useless on BOTH pets. And the Embrace portion you can simulate with /place now with exactly the same results, just under different conditions.

Sure, sometimes you might have some Deploy shenanigans that were worthwhile, which I agree was satisfying to use with the old fairy, but most of the 'interesting' situations with that involved LB cheese or pet abuse during the same raidwide spam we complain about having too many actions for now, the former of which wouldn't be possible even if SCH hadn't been nerfed. Shields already need a second look to ensure their shelf life extends past the first month.

And as for the rest of Scholar's best traits, most of it wasn't even in Heavensward! Quickened Aetherflow and Miasma II were Stormblood exclusive interactions. Booksmacking and Ruin II spam wasn't a staple like it was in ARR either, where I'd say SCH was at it's best because it actually kind of sucked at something (and didn't have to compete with another healer or force its co-healer to fight over a slot). Cleric Stance wasn't an amazing button either. Most of Scholar's best abuses of it died with ARR Lustrate, which, yes, meant you'd swap out and back into it fairly consistently if you needed to use Aetherflow heals, but I don't think that added engaging.

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Don't cite the magicks to me, I was there when it was written.

How could nerf Scholar even harder? It's objectively the worst healer right now, just sounds like you're one of the people who would Rage at Scholar no matter what state it was in. Scholars wanted everyone brought up to their level, not everyone brought down to White Mage.

Can we not argue old semantics that no longer matter, this is a tired old, VERY DONE, arguement.

Simple. You create a new sub-role around SCH, and then introduce in a second job into that sub-role that does the same thing better. SE doesn't like openly nerfing jobs, so they usually do it on the sly during expansion transitions when most people tend not to notice. The problem, as you know, is that if they do it to a job that's been a dominant raid pick across a few expansions (i.e. the big three), there's a huge outcry when players of the job are suddenly not the best at everything and the devs end up having to rapidly backpedal and revert most of those nerfs. {Everyone's Grudge}.

But if everyone's busy trying out a new job, there's nobody left to complain. We've seen a couple of successful examples of this already. It ends up being more amicable and better for the community in the long run. I just wish that they would be more open and more frequent with their balance adjustments. Sometimes comps just get stagnant and you need to force a change, regardless of whether feelings are hurt in the process.

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Originally Posted by FoxCh40s

How could nerf Scholar even harder? It's objectively the worst healer right now

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I'm curious to know what you even mean by this and what the rationale is. On a personal level you could argue it's the clunkiest healer or that it's a shadow of its former self, but in terms of actual performance I'm not seeing a lot of competition in the healers. There's a pretty clearly defined winner and loser imo, and Scholar's in the middle. Without harping on about AST being the best healer, Indomitability, Excogitation, Sacred Soil, and Whispering Dawn are better than anything in WHM's kit and as limited as Ruin II might be, at least it exists. SCH is ahead of WHM in rDPS as well. Better mobility, better damage, better oGCDs, and better tools to weave them.

SCH has its problems, but I wouldn't trade it for the Glarebot with cement shoes.

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Originally Posted by Boizinho

I'm curious to know what you even mean by this and what the rationale is. On a personal level you could argue it's the clunkiest healer or that it's a shadow of its former self, but in terms of actual performance I'm not seeing a lot of competition in the healers. There's a pretty clearly defined winner and loser imo, and Scholar's in the middle. Without harping on about AST being the best healer, Indomitability, Excogitation, Sacred Soil, and Whispering Dawn are better than anything in WHM's kit and as limited as Ruin II might be, at least it exists. SCH is ahead of WHM in rDPS as well. Better mobility, better damage, better oGCDs, and better tools to weave them.

SCH has its problems, but I wouldn't trade it for the Glarebot with cement shoes.

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*sigh* how many times do I have to say it's not about the NUMBERS, it's about the gameplay?

Scholars gameplay loop right now is absolutely AWFUL, coming from a Scholar main since 2.3 (7-8 years ago). It is NOTHING like it used to be gameplay wise; no shadowflare, no using fairy actions in between casts, no micromanagement of fairy embraces, no Miasma 2, no Eye for an Eye spread, no original virus, no Malady debuff, no slow debuff.

NOTHING.

OP here. The majority of these issues if any of you go back and read is how each healer feels awful and boring to play right now. If potencies were buffed through the roof, it won't change that as you are all fully aware. That is not to say potencies are a none issue, but its lesser compared to the feel of the job.

Remember how in HW people still played Astro when it was undertuned and Whm when it wasn't meta? But in SB everyone abandoned whm because it got reduced to being the first pure healer?

Its because they were fun even if they were weak in the former. The latter was not fun in the slightest

Fun>balance because ilvl tends to make up for lower parse numbers.

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Originally Posted by QooEr

i agree, i forgot to mention the free healing from the fairy that both also lacked and cut into their combined dps even more.



I wouldnt say any of the healers are bad rn, just boring. If anything ast is too strong for the same reasons scholar was too strong pre-shb (most dps, endless free healing).


I concede that embrace was too strong back then, but at least fairy micromanging was something else you had the option to do if you wanted to try even harder to optimize healing. Current healing optimization is mostly letting ast do everything, begging your party to use their mitigations and healing whenever a weave window comes up. zzz

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AST is not that strong when compared to the other healers at min item level. It is just the healer that scales better and it becomes more apparent in 8-man content.

AST is a favorable choice only for raids and trials. For casual content at level cap, WHM and SCH win hard over AST with over 2k rDPS in Paglth'an. You are simply more effective as a WHM or SCH in dungeons than as an AST.

From what I learned, SCH was better than anyone in anything, including dungeons.

Edit:
We can just compare healers rDPS in Amaurot(item level sync) with Matoya's relict(no item level sync):
Amaurot: :
AST: 9k-9.5k*
SCH: 10,5k
WHM: 11,3k
*The first AST has 9k rDPS patch 5.3 but the 2nd has 9.5k and they are from patch 5.4

Matoya:
AST: 16,1k- 13.1k*
SCH: 15k
WHM: 16,6k
*First and second-best again. If SCH was in a party with yellow parse players like the #1 AST instead of gray they would have probably gone up to 16k as well.

The out scaling is visible. AST is a good role to pick when people around you know how to play but that's rarely the case in dungeons. AST's damage output falls off quickly in casual content.

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Originally Posted by Recon1o6

OP here. The majority of these issues if any of you go back and read is how each healer feels awful and boring to play right now. If potencies were buffed through the roof, it won't change that as you are all fully aware. That is not to say potencies are a none issue, but its lesser compared to the feel of the job.

Remember how in HW people still played Astro when it was undertuned and Whm when it wasn't meta? But in SB everyone abandoned whm because it got reduced to being the first pure healer?

Its because they were fun even if they were weak in the former. The latter was not fun in the slightest

Fun>balance because ilvl tends to make up for lower parse numbers.

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you and i know reading is hard around here :p

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Originally Posted by FoxCh40s

*sigh* how many times do I have to say it's not about the NUMBERS, it's about the gameplay?

Scholars gameplay loop right now is absolutely AWFUL, coming from a Scholar main since 2.3 (7-8 years ago). It is NOTHING like it used to be gameplay wise; no shadowflare, no using fairy actions in between casts, no micromanagement of fairy embraces, no Miasma 2, no Eye for an Eye spread, no original virus, no Malady debuff, no slow debuff.

NOTHING.

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If anything, i don't want embrace micromanaging back.

That was tripe.

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Originally Posted by Recon1o6

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Actually, I remember many healers in Heavensward complaining that once they had finished their prog on WHM, their groups kept badgering them to swap to AST to individually inflate their numbers. If players can optimize the fun out of the game then they will, and then they will complain that you allowed them to do it.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Actually, I remember many healers in Heavensward complaining that once they had finished their prog on WHM, their groups kept badgering them to swap to AST to individually inflate their numbers. If players can optimize the fun out of the game then they will, and then they will complain that you allowed them to do it.

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that's nothing to do with white mage not being fun though? that's the problem of parsers being parsers and wanting their epeens bigger because role dps wasn't a thing then.

healers were still choosing white mage to play because it was fun which is the point, were it not for other people, they would have stuck to whm. Most people do not parse, but instead pick jobs to have fun. Plus, they still picked whm when they were progging which is the most important time- getting the clear.

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Originally Posted by FoxCh40s

Don't cite the magicks to me, I was there when it was written.

How could nerf Scholar even harder? It's objectively the worst healer right now, just sounds like you're one of the people who would Rage at Scholar no matter what state it was in. Scholars wanted everyone brought up to their level, not everyone brought down to White Mage.

Can we not argue old semantics that no longer matter, this is a tired old, VERY DONE, arguement.

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Easy. Reduce all of their healing potency to the lowest values they existed at, and undo some QoL. Indom goes back to 300 potency, Lustrate down to ARR physick at 400 potency, excog matches ARR cure II at 600 potency and loses the auto detonation buff. Adlo goes to a 300/300 split as does Succor to 150/150. You know, just back to your good old ARR numbers. Fairy doesn’t keep the pet action resolution improvements that came with ShB but remains tied to our oGCD space so if you ever overcrowd her queue she drops actions consistently even without ghosting factored in. There’s more you could do, but you can survive on that.

Again, Scholar’s design is what makes it broken. The numbers just keep it fair. In a game all about minimizing healing having the easiest time sacrificing the least of its DPS resources kept it relevant even when it’s DPS was the worst of the three. I don’t think it needs this grand revival. Just good tuning and an actual rotation like every other healer. Every single one of its problems aren’t even unique to it thanks to Summoner. Scholar has been balanced around high oGCD frequency to make up for its throughput issues and as long as it has that edge in flexibility it’s going to synergize well enough with WHM and AST to always remain relevant. SE has to screw up Sage just for it to be preferred over Scholar. If that isn’t proof of just how little attention it needs don’t know what’ll convince you otherwise.

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Originally Posted by Grimoire-M

Easy. Reduce all of their healing potency to the lowest values they existed at, and undo some QoL. Indom goes back to 300 potency, Lustrate down to ARR physick at 400 potency, excog matches ARR cure II at 600 potency and loses the auto detonation buff. Adlo goes to a 300/300 split as does Succor to 150/150. You know, just back to your good old ARR numbers. Fairy doesn’t keep the pet action resolution improvements that came with ShB but remains tied to our oGCD space so if you ever overcrowd her queue she drops actions consistently even without ghosting factored in. There’s more you could do, but you can survive on that.

Again, Scholar’s design is what makes it broken. The numbers just keep it fair. In a game all about minimizing healing having the easiest time sacrificing the least of its DPS resources kept it relevant even when it’s DPS was the worst of the three. I don’t think it needs this grand revival. Just good tuning and an actual rotation like every other healer. Every single one of its problems aren’t even unique to it thanks to Summoner. Scholar has been balanced around high oGCD frequency to make up for its throughput issues and as long as it has that edge in flexibility it’s going to synergize well enough with WHM and AST to always remain relevant. SE has to screw up Sage just for it to be preferred over Scholar. If that isn’t proof of just how little attention it needs don’t know what’ll convince you otherwise.

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The point just soars right over your and Roeshel's head doesn't it?

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Originally Posted by FoxCh40s

The point just soars right over your and Roeshel's head doesn't it?

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The point is that the glorified DoT management was awesome gameplay but I really doubt that. You just used the exact same type of attack under different names with no interaction between one another when it comes to a single target. For AoE you used bane which consumed AE and that's the only interaction SCH actually had with their DoTs. If you look at SMN you will see that their DoTs are actually a fundamental part of their gameplay since they have Fester, Bane, Tri-disaster, Summon Bahamut & Summon Phoenix both of which are resetting Tri-disaster's cd so that you can apply your DoTs again for free.

DoTs were never a part of a healer's rotation. They were just there. Having access to 5 DoTs on GCD does not bring depth into the role. It's just chaos that you are trying to make sense of.

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Originally Posted by Roeshel

It's just chaos that you are trying to make sense of.

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Actually, I wonder if that is what people enjoyed back then. I've been pondering what the essence of MMO healing is, and one of the answers I've come to is "Managing Chaos".

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Originally Posted by FoxCh40s

The point just soars right over your and Roeshel's head doesn't it?

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You’re the one with literal rose tinted glasses in your avatar, not me.

I’m just tired of people hand waving my go-to healer’s (I started playing it in Heavensward, embrace management and all) former traits away as good gameplay instead of as the same jank we have now but with way more button mashing, because that was my experience of the class back then. It has legs to stand on without having to deal with carpal tunnel. The parts I love about it on the healing side didn’t go away entirely. If anything, they’re improved from prior iterations for the things that were added. It’s the DPS kit that we agree on. But pretending that the fun factor and ‘fluidity’ (which personally was never true for me prior to Shadowbringers) of old fairies and the power it carried weren’t inherently linked is also flat out incorrect. AST’s half casts are an example of the same thing from the other direction. Adding lossless weaving made their card management not garbage but also shot their DPS up by similar margins. The only reason I think Scholar’s was justified is because it brought all three healers to equal parity regarding their oGCDs. Unlike Roeshel, I do -not- think it should have cost their DPS rotation along with it. I play both sides of Arcanist equally and I get why you miss Bane. Losing Shadowflare was worth getting Soil back for me.

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Originally Posted by FoxCh40s

*sigh* how many times do I have to say it's not about the NUMBERS, it's about the gameplay?

Scholars gameplay loop right now is absolutely AWFUL, coming from a Scholar main since 2.3 (7-8 years ago). It is NOTHING like it used to be gameplay wise; no shadowflare, no using fairy actions in between casts, no micromanagement of fairy embraces, no Miasma 2, no Eye for an Eye spread, no original virus, no Malady debuff, no slow debuff.

NOTHING.

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You said SCH can't be nerfed any more than it already is and it's objectively the worst healer. What you actually meant was that SCH is the job you have the strongest emotional reaction to. Those aren't anywhere near the same thing.

Did SCH get gutted harder than any other job in ShB? Yes. But even if you took SCH's current kit and removed all of the Faerie abilities, put all Aetherflow abilities on the GCD, and deleted Ruin II and Energy Drain, it would still have more going on than WHM's kit. The fact that SCH and AST got their kneecaps sawn off and still landed above WHM anyway just goes to show how huge the gap was to begin with. It was absolutely wrong for them to try to drag everyone to WHM's level rather than giving WHM a kit that's more complex than a level 30 Dragoon. But even after the mass gutting of the other two healers, they're like level 60 Dragoons at least.

It's just weird to suggest that SCH is in the worst shape out of the healers when you could remove half of its remaining kit and still give WHM a run for its money. It sort of just comes across as a selfish exclamation. Scholar is the worst one because I play Scholar, so Scholar being bad is worse than other healers being bad, because I don't play the other ones. Or maybe it's just a foregone conclusion at this point that WHM is completely non-competitive with other healers so they're not even part of the equation.

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Originally Posted by Boizinho

You said SCH can't be nerfed any more than it already is and it's objectively the worst healer. What you actually meant was that SCH is the job you have the strongest emotional reaction to. Those aren't anywhere near the same thing.

Did SCH get gutted harder than any other job in ShB? Yes. But even if you took SCH's current kit and removed all of the Faerie abilities, put all Aetherflow abilities on the GCD, and deleted Ruin II and Energy Drain, it would still have more going on than WHM's kit. The fact that SCH and AST got their kneecaps sawn off and still landed above WHM anyway just goes to show how huge the gap was to begin with. It was absolutely wrong for them to try to drag everyone to WHM's level rather than giving WHM a kit that's more complex than a level 30 Dragoon. But even after the mass gutting of the other two healers, they're like level 60 Dragoons at least.

It's just weird to suggest that SCH is in the worst shape out of the healers when you could remove half of its remaining kit and still give WHM a run for its money. It sort of just comes across as a selfish exclamation. Scholar is the worst one because I play Scholar, so Scholar being bad is worse than other healers being bad, because I don't play the other ones. Or maybe it's just a foregone conclusion at this point that WHM is completely non-competitive with other healers so they're not even part of the equation.

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Which is true, because they are never going to significantly change White Mage, ever. It's why I stopped maining the job, for that very reason. Expecting them to significantly change Whitr Mage is like asking water to not be wet. It's impossible.

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Originally Posted by FoxCh40s

Which is true, because they are never going to significantly change White Mage, ever. It's why I stopped maining the job, for that very reason. Expecting them to significantly change Whitr Mage is like asking water to not be wet. It's impossible.

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True enough. Though water may end up not being wet if they nerf Fluid Aura again in Endwalker.

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Originally Posted by FoxCh40s

Which is true, because they are never going to significantly change White Mage

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And IMHO this is fine as long as it's still viable. SE really should embrace the job system's flexibility and push for diversity within the roles. Switching healers for different turns and content helped keep things fresh and I wonder if that's a big part of why so many look back fondly on HW when it was particularly common around 3.2 to 3.3.

In WoW, if my Shaman was obsolete for some piece of content I was probably going to be sitting out for it, in FFXIV, I just click a button and switch to the job that is more suited. Gearing just isn't an issue in the grand scheme of things. FFXI did well with this concept but FFXIV seems terrified of it.

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

And IMHO this is fine as long as it's still viable. SE really should embrace the job system's flexibility and push for diversity within the roles. Switching healers for different turns and content helped keep things fresh and I wonder if that's a big part of why so many look back fondly on HW when it was particularly common around 3.2 to 3.3.

In WoW, if my Shaman was obsolete for some piece of content I was probably going to be sitting out for it, in FFXIV, I just click a button and switch to the job that is more suited. Gearing just isn't an issue in the grand scheme of things. FFXI did well with this concept but FFXIV seems terrified of it.

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Thunderous agreement in theory.

Something just rubs me the wrong way that, from my perspective, healer design "diversity" nearly always means WHM has less-smooth healing, zero utility, lower rDPS, clunkier weaving...when I come to the healer bazaar, I'd like to see what I see in the DPS caster section: several items each suited to their own special purposes for different reasons. In the metaphorical healer section, I've seen two items that look like Kitchenaids with a dozen attachments for doing anything you want, alongside a potato masher that has the dual weakness of doing nothing the other two don't already do (and often better), but it also doesn't bring anything to the table that they don't.

This is going to be the albatross around the healer role's neck forever, mark my words. So long as WHM is cursed to never bring anything unique, healer design is still going to be stumped that for some ~weird~ reason, the community thinks the healer with no unique contribution sucks compared to the others.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

In the metaphorical healer section, I've seen two items that look like Kitchenaids with a dozen attachments for doing anything you want, alongside a potato masher that has the dual weakness of doing nothing the other two don't already do (and often better), but it also doesn't bring anything to the table that they don't.

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This is the best content I've read on the forums for a while++

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

So long as WHM is cursed to never bring anything unique, healer design is still going to be stumped that for some ~weird~ reason, the community thinks the healer with no unique contribution sucks compared to the others.

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Players fixation with whm being the simplest healer adds to this, but whm couldve been simple And strong. they simply never build on the supposed strengths of whm. if it was supposed to be the "big heal healer", how come its healing potential is always lower than ast's, and its heal opportunity cost is always the highest? if its supposed to be the gcd healer then why is its only notable gcd heal cure iii? whm doing the comparative damage it does now was overdue since 3.4

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Originally Posted by QooEr

Players fixation with whm being the simplest healer adds to this, but whm couldve been simple And strong. they simply never build on the supposed strengths of whm. if it was supposed to be the "big heal healer", how come its healing potential is always lower than ast's, and its heal opportunity cost is always the highest? if its supposed to be the gcd healer then why is its only notable gcd heal cure iii? whm doing the comparative damage it does now was overdue since 3.4

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I've never understood why White Mage wasn't the buff healer? Like, where was Faith? Bravery? Their absolute insistence on all the healers being able to do everything means no one is good at anything. There are no strengths and weaknesses, meaning the one that can do both becomes the strongest.

It has absolutely perplexed me, as I started out as a White Mage for a reason. I wanted Iconic Elemental Power combined with Unsurpassed Party Interaction.

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Originally Posted by FoxCh40s

I've never understood why White Mage wasn't the buff healer?...I wanted Iconic Elemental Power combined with Unsurpassed Party Interaction.

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I've never really associated White Mage as the 'buff character' across all FF games. It certainly has those aspects (ProShell), but it's never been the distinguishing factor the way it has been on classes like Bard or Dancer, or even within the mage category, Scholar, Green Mage, and Red Mage. And that's mostly due to Faith/Bravery being very late additions to the series in particular while those effects also have been traded across classes as much as they were across the White & Black magic Spell Lists themselves. Support Magic often fills out lower level spell lists that multiple classes have access to across the entire series, and sometimes lean on for their identities through secondary mechanics that White Mage itself doesn't get (hence the RDM/SCH association). I do associate White Mage with strong healing and strong caster damage at endgame (thank you Holy), but if I were to give it a unique identity that fits that theme, it would probably be through something like the Confession mechanic we got in the later half of Stormblood, but way more involved, where you get this additional healing resource that changes the context of your spells (Lily and non-Lily alike), and enables you to DPS in situations the other two straight up wouldn't be able to.

As an example of what I mean, here's a theoretical rework of Assize that uses Confession in the manner I'm talking about:

Assize: Deals damage with a potency of 400 to all nearby enemies. Additional Effects: Restores 5% of MP and applies two stacks of Confession to self and all allies in range.
Confession Effect: Upon receiving HP recovery or regeneration from the next Cure, Cure II, Medica, Tetragrammaton, Afflatus Solace, Afflatus Rapture, Regen, or Medica II cast by self, Confession consumes a stack for an additional heal. Potency: 200. Maximum Stacks: 4.
Cooldown 45s. Maximum Charges: 2.

Of course, the problem with "300 potency regen ticks*" and "Do I cast Medica or Cure III here?" is despite their theoretical ramifications SE still has to design fights that strain those resources mid-fight, not at the last minute pre-enrage. A rework like that needs even all healers to at least be using healing GCDs 20-35% of the time in end of tier speedclears to feel impactful. And I think that's why something like the above Assize rework just doesn't matter (and why I haven't bothered posting my full reworks of all three healers), even if it would be fun to juggle in theory. If SE isn't going to put some effort into easing off their item level scaling and amping up sustained damage accordingly, adjustments to any of the healer's kits in the name of chasing raw potency will consistently fall into that trap.

That's at least partially why I advocate for squishing the item level gaps we have each tier and want to add a significant healing potency increase to Piety. Those are vectors that directly target that problem, and also have the benefit of making gear and 'dead on arrival' content matter more, without actually requiring SE to change much on their end. If the gap between min-ilvl and BiS healing requirements is smaller, then actual skill expression matters more, or at the very least, you won't see Succor becoming irrelevant within a month.