An interview with Yoshida and his thoughts on healers in 5.0

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Originally Posted by Ahrijlaken

AST is perfect and fun healer that can adapt to his co-healer. It's not a copy of WHM ... It's a WHM 2.0 or even 3.0, it's an evolution of your boring lackfull WHM.

If you want to rework something, rework WHM.

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It's a WHM with cards and some SCH stuff tacked one, not more, not less. Always was, is, and always will be unless they change it.
Why does WHM need to get overhauled completely? IT'S BEEN THERE FIRST! AST is the copy of WHM, not the other way round. AST should have NEVER been implemented the way it was, anyone with half a brain could see its design leading to problems.
If you cannot see the problem, you are part of the problem yourself.

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Originally Posted by Yuyuka3

It's a WHM with cards and some SCH stuff tacked one, not more, not less. Always was, is, and always will be unless they change it.
Why does WHM need to get overhauled completely? IT'S BEEN THERE FIRST! AST is the copy of WHM, not the other way round. AST should have NEVER been implemented the way it was, anyone with half a brain could see its design leading to problems.
If you cannot see the problem, you are part of the problem yourself.

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You were doing so well until you had to add that snarky last line. . .

I'm just a casual dungeon/raid healer, I don't really do any of the savage content but I sort of feel as if AST is missing it's own identity a bit. WHM is the bursty, reactive healer. SCH is the shielding and damage prevention healer. AST has buffs and can become an inferior copy of the other 2 jobs. That's not exactly a great draw to me. Sure it's flexible and that's alright, but at the same time it has the "jack of all trades, master of none" thing going for it which isn't such a great thing for a limited healer pool. Worse yet is if 2 AST's are in a group their best feature, the cards, don't stack. So 1 healer is gimped right out of the gate. If the draw is supposed to be it's card buffs then really give those suckers a punch. Double the strength of them so people really feel the impact when you put that 20% damage, crit or cast speed up on a Black Mage for example.

If they use the stars and constellations to heal then perhaps a job gauge that reflects that is in order. What about a rotating star chart that would change your ability effects depending on the alignment? This could replace the Sects they have now so that you are constantly shifting between Diurnal and Nocturnal mode that makes you adjust your healing on the fly. Sure it would be complex but that's not a bad thing when you look at how easy WHM is to play. Diurnal could have the same effect it does now while Nocturnal could boost your card abilities. Half the cooldown speed of draws, you get the ability to Redraw 1 more time before the ability goes on CD, chance to not erase the card you just used... stuff like that. Sure would be more enjoyable to me over what they are now.

SE have painted themselves into a corner with the «*every healer and healer combo should be equal in the face of every encounter*» moto. They’re so desperate for equality that they can’t create new healers for fear that some combos wouldn’t work as well as others.

AST is a perfect example. They already had two good healers and couldn’t come up with another that would synergize equally with both whm and sch. So they made a class that could switch between both.

Until they get rid of this logic we will never get a new healer, bottom line.

It’s also part of the reason why we’re penalized for bringing dupes. Just saying

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

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Originally Posted by Yuyuka3

It's a WHM with cards and some SCH stuff tacked one, not more, not less. Always was, is, and always will be unless they change it.
Why does WHM need to get overhauled completely? IT'S BEEN THERE FIRST! AST is the copy of WHM, not the other way round. AST should have NEVER been implemented the way it was, anyone with half a brain could see its design leading to problems.
If you cannot see the problem, you are part of the problem yourself.

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You were doing so well until you had to add that snarky last line. . .

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Some have spend to much time in the Loch gathering salt...

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Originally Posted by Ceasaria

And yet for AST and other jobs, it's not like we have given suggestions for years capable of resolving the differents problems...
I can understand the problem with AST, but you need to understand that SCH is untouchable too because of the fairy, the crit sdlo spread, etc.
And because of that, AST noct which is poorly efficient and can't take the spot of SCH, and inevitably because of his utility will (potentially) outshine WHM and be preferable to pick over WHM.

So to sum up, WHM issues is because of AST issues which is because of SCH issues.
Resolve SCH 1st, then AST, and finally WHM.
After that, we should be able to look at the 3 and be able to balance them well.

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The "problem" with SCH is that it has always had its identity. The dev team looked at it, knew what they wanted, and have stuck with it since 2.0. It's perfectly built, it hasn't been anything other than its identity, and that identity is invaluable because WHM and AST can't copy its kit. What AST needs is to be something that can compete with it, namely strengthening its support capabilities while dropping its healing potential to compensate. It already has some of the best support, it shouldn't have burst healing on par with WHM (outside of Earthly Star).

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

You were doing so well until you had to add that snarky last line. . .

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Sorry, it's just that reading the same old bullshit from always the exact same people is pissing me off big time at this point. In part because there is no real discourse to be had. It also doesn't help that I repeated the same three lines of text above that remark over and over again like a broken record over the past 4 years; my patience is running extremely thin at this point.

Seriously... I will never get people insisting that WHM is the one who needs to change fundamentally. Why should it yield to the copy? It makes no sense to me. AST should have been unique from the start. They completely messed up everything by lazily copy-pasting WHMs kit, then tacking some card mechanic and some SCH on, and call it a day. Why not try something else? There are so many possibilities and examples from other MMOs, or, heck, even the FF series itself, there honestly was no need for this garbage decision. Yet somehow, WHM takes all the blame when it is the established class here, not AST... It's not really fair, and it honestly drives me up the walls.

Do I want WHM to get something more than just personal DPS and healing (that, let's be honest here, the other two healers are on par with, or even surpass)? HELL YES!
I even got some ideas I think might work for the job, like, for example, a DH group buff. IIRC, that's something nobody has yet, and that would work really, really well. But yeah, I'm totally waiting for tacking that on AST, as they did with the crit buff we asked for pre-3.0 and that went to SCH instead...
They also need to overwork this horrid Lily system; heck, they could even make that into the mechanic that differentiates WHM from the other healers in a way! I'm fine with almost anything at this point, really.
And, for the love of the Twelve, overwork this useless garbage trait that is Secret of the Lily II -.-

I wondered when they announced AST as a new healer how they could possibly fit in with the perfect synergy that WHM and SCH had in 2.0. Now here we are with a WHM, SCH, WHM/SCH that are so homogenized for the sake of balance that it would require a rework of a class and a massive change of the role to make it so we can even get another healer. The developers just didn't understand how they were going to balance tanks and healers going forward.

A more detailed version of the OP-quote: https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...w_with_yoship/

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ただ、ヒーラー3ジョブのバランスというのは、最後まで苦労しているところで、どうしてもフェアリーの分だけ学者が飛び抜けるところがあって、5.0でまたバランスを取り直すにしても、MTとSTといった役割の違いがなく、バリアヒーラー、ピュアヒーラーというくくりはあるにせよ、この状況で4ジョブにして取り切れるのかといったときに、3ジョブのバランスを徹底したほうがいいのかなと。

However, we were still struggling with balancing the three existing healers, and SCH was always dominant because of the fairy. Even if we re-balanced them again for 5.0, and even if they also have the shield healer vs pure healer dichotomy, we thought it would be better to solidify the balance between the three healers instead of trying to balance four. By adding a third ranged DPS, we could round out the number of jobs per role.

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Don't really know what to say here?

Between thinking that WHM is to hard and they want to make it easier, and that SCH is strong because of the fairy... kind of shows how little understanding they have of their healer jobs...

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Originally Posted by Ahrijlaken

AST is perfect

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AST main here. I disagree. Most of my healing woes are actually BECAUSE of AST. You know what I dread when playing AST in 8/24 man content? Playing with another AST. WHM doesn't have this problem. I'll even take SCH and SCH!

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Originally Posted by Hustensaft

A more detailed version of the OP-quote: https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...w_with_yoship/ Don't really know what to say here?

Between thinking that WHM is to hard and they want to make it easier, and that SCH is strong because of the fairy... kind of shows how little understanding they have of their healer jobs...

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This is just sad. Watch them just nerf the faerie into oblivion and us losing our identity to more homogenization. I would quite healing in a heartbeat.

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Originally Posted by Hustensaft

Don't really know what to say here?

Between thinking that WHM is to hard and they want to make it easier, and that SCH is strong because of the fairy... kind of shows how little understanding they have of their healer jobs...

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Sounds like they've only played Healers up to level 50...

Where WHM is hard because before Assize you have no MP ever.

Where SCH literally heals all content with just Fairy (Which will heal for like 30% of a Tank's health per heal)

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Originally Posted by Kalise

Sounds like they've only played Healers up to level 50...

Where WHM is hard because before Assize you have no MP ever.

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WHM is only hard before 50 when you get a tank in DPS gear 10+ lvls lower than the lvl of the dungeon and they haven't discovered defensive skills yet :p

It used to be a bit tougher before you got shroud at 42, but lucid is twice as good as shroud ever was and I think it's available earlier than shroud was.

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Originally Posted by Lozza

WHM is only hard before 50 when you get a tank in DPS gear 10+ lvls lower than the lvl of the dungeon and they haven't discovered defensive skills yet :p

It used to be a bit tougher before you got shroud at 42, but lucid is twice as good as shroud ever was and I think it's available earlier than shroud was.

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I can still run dry pre-56 with Lucid though. Even if I am only spamming Stone.

It was always the thing that frustrated me when leveling WHM, that their class based MP tools came pretty late (Assize at 56 and Thin Air at 62) compared to SCH/AST whom get some MP tools at level 6 and 30 respectively. In addition to their Lucid (Also, SCH gets their free healz from Lily)

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Originally Posted by EaMett

This is just sad. Watch them just nerf the faerie into oblivion and us losing our identity to more homogenization. I would quite healing in a heartbeat.

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Oh the SCH nerf is definitely coming based on that quote. Only time will tell if it's to the level of 4.0 where we got hit so hard with the nerf bat they spent the entire expansion trying to adjust us, and by that I mean they fixed us then frankly went a bit too far in the other direction for a time, or if it'll be a soft nerf to the complexity of the job.

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Originally Posted by Kalise

I can still run dry pre-56 with Lucid though. Even if I am only spamming Stone.

It was always the thing that frustrated me when leveling WHM, that their class based MP tools came pretty late (Assize at 56 and Thin Air at 62) compared to SCH/AST whom get some MP tools at level 6 and 30 respectively. In addition to their Lucid (Also, SCH gets their free healz from Lily)

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Moving tetra down to before 60 would help too. Most of the time dungeons aren't that healing intensive but lack of a ogcd heal skill (so 0 mp) can be a bit tough, honestly though at that point bringing tetra in line with ED which makes AST and WHM more alike - not necessarily a good thing to aim for.

Still even running dry has options of not dpsing for a little to get some mp back - or yelling at RDM/BLM/SMN/BRD/MCH for juice. Lack of mp management doesn't make the job "hard" and wasn't it Yoshida himself that said they didn't expect healers to dps? You really have to go out of your way to dps to get close to running out with lucid, or have a tank in bad gear, or have dps who stand in everything - at which point it's really not the healer's problem :p

Relative to AST or SCH I just don't see how WHM can be considered so "hard" that it needs to be made "easier". Mobility really is the only thing that stands out.

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Originally Posted by Hustensaft

A more detailed version of the OP-quote: https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...w_with_yoship/ Don't really know what to say here?

Between thinking that WHM is to hard and they want to make it easier, and that SCH is strong because of the fairy... kind of shows how little understanding they have of their healer jobs...

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They are totally right for the SCH, he is the main issue since the beginning. How do you want to do a separation between HoT and shield type healer, when SCH do already both ?
Auto Embrace is too strong because it's a free mono regen.
Whispering Dawn allow to give a strong free AOE HoT every min.
And again, Crit adlo (even without crit) deployed is too strong.
That and other abilities make him too valuable.

But I agree with you for the WHM part (or maybe he is talking about lilies and the fact you are less free to move as the two others).

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Originally Posted by Ceasaria

Auto Embrace is too strong because it's a free mono regen.

Whispering Dawn allow to give a strong free AOE HoT every min.

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SCH MP costs are signficantly higher - you'd have a point if SCH spells would cost as little as the other two healing jobs. A WHM with 45 sec assize does hardly run OOM, a SCH with a 45 sec Aetherflow still can. There is no "free" healing provided by the fairy. (also remember that they had to reduce manacosts in 4.05 or 4.1 - because the situation was that bad - even though "free healing" AND a newly added lucid dreaming)

If they really want to nerf fairy, they should get rid of Rouse. That alone is a 10% nerf to all fairy healing, even more as rouse syncs quite perfectly with whispering dawn.

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And again, Crit adlo (even without crit) deployed is too strong.

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Crit = double shield should've been removed a long time ago...

Scholars are going to get nuked so hard ><

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Originally Posted by Kalise

Direct Healing
Healing Over Time
Reactive Healing
Shields
Channeled Healing
Healing from dealing Damage

Compared to what? DPS?

Cast a damage
Slap a damage
Shoot a damage
Uhh... Damage over time
???

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This. The basic classifications only barely scratch the surface of differentiating gameplay and capacity, and we still have most of the basic differentiators left to go anyways.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

Scholars are going to get nuked so hard ><

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I think I will not begin the expansion with him ^^ (excepted if they show us superbe new skills during the video presentation).

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Originally Posted by Hustensaft

If they really want to nerf fairy, they should get rid of Rouse. That alone is a 10% nerf to all fairy healing, even more as rouse syncs quite perfectly with whispering dawn.

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Whispering Dawn was changed to an ability several patches ago and is no longer a spell, therefore Rouse has no effect on it. Only Embrace actually gets any benefits from it, as it's the only spell (not ability) left for the Faeries to use.

I have a feeling this will be the expansion of the WHM. To where since they didnt add a new healer job they had to make WHM perfect.

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Originally Posted by Derio

I have a feeling this will be the expansion of the WHM. To where since they didnt add a new healer job they had to make WHM perfect.

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Yeah that was supposed to be SB. And WHM was great for all of what 3 weeks at launch before they started buffing up SCH and AST (not to say they didn't need it but at the time WHM had be 6+ months significantly below the other healers).

Since long time we need those QoL updates, but indeed, that buffed AST and SCH a lot.
WHM should have had the same treatment.

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Originally Posted by Enla

I still remember the state SCH was in when SB came out. We had trouble healing most dungeons due to our reduced potency and I very much felt like a burden to my FC whenever we would do content together on the road to 70. Hell the person who taught me SCH outright quit the class and moved to AST/WHM in the aftermath of it and still hasn't come back due to how badly SCH started the 4.0 patch cycle. Which is to say nothing of the fact that they then buffed us and then OVER buffed us over the course of the expansion because they once again just fundamentally don't understand how to balance the healers in this game.

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That reminds me of the tale of 3.0 AST weak pitiful beginnings to i can stand with my fellow healers to I AM A GOD OF BUFFS.

I hope ShB will be Whm's Overbuffed expansion

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Originally Posted by Yuyuka3

Do I want WHM to get something more than just personal DPS and healing (that, let's be honest here, the other two healers are on par with, or even surpass)? HELL YES!
I even got some ideas I think might work for the job, like, for example, a DH group buff. IIRC, that's something nobody has yet, and that would work really, really well. But yeah, I'm totally waiting for tacking that on AST, as they did with the crit buff we asked for pre-3.0 and that went to SCH instead...
They also need to overwork this horrid Lily system; heck, they could even make that into the mechanic that differentiates WHM from the other healers in a way! I'm fine with almost anything at this point, really.
And, for the love of the Twelve, overwork this useless garbage trait that is Secret of the Lily II -.-

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AST sects definitely need a rework i was thinking(posted in another thread) of something like this
Duirnal - AB/AH - Increase card buff potency cannot stack cannot be refreshed same healing potency
Nocturnal - AB/AH - Increase card buff duration cannot stack cannot be refreshed same healing potency
Let them keep the speed/healing increase but force ast kit to synergies more with its cards as it's base healing kit is fine without regens/shields. Now Ast with these changes will be forced to gcd heal far more often lowering their pDPS but their rDPS will be increased as the trade off.

Whm does need changes it's lilies system is the prime offender it also needs straight up utility to increase rDPS or provide Substantially more pDPS than the other 2 healers and if Ast got the above changes Whm would have its identity back as a regen healer

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Originally Posted by Kurando

Whispering Dawn was changed to an ability several patches ago and is no longer a spell, therefore Rouse has no effect on it. Only Embrace actually gets any benefits from it, as it's the only spell (not ability) left for the Faeries to use.

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And Embrace is still the problem child because of how much it ultimately provides just by virtue of the Scholar being alive. Hopefully they do a thorough redesign to make the fairy revolve more around things like micromanagement, Excog, and Fey Union instead of just nuking Embrace's potency.

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Originally Posted by Daralii

And Embrace is still the problem child because of how much it ultimately provides just by virtue of the Scholar being alive. Hopefully they do a thorough redesign to make the fairy revolve more around things like micromanagement, Excog, and Fey Union instead of just nuking Embrace's potency.

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I'm half expecting them to nuke the Fairy and SCH's heals and try and make Fairies work like Demi-Bahamut. Whereby they don't auto-cast Embrace but merely use it in addition to your own casts instead making it merely a potency boost to your GCD heals with the caveat of having lower potency heals (Which I expect them to make a mess of and thus make Adlo suck due to having a lower shield because they forgot it was still based on the heal amount)

Theoretically this could be done in a way where there can be more focus on using Fairies for their abilities and less for their free Embraces constantly through a fight. But given how derp AI still is, I wouldn't be surprised if it ended up a colossal failure...

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Originally Posted by Daralii

And Embrace is still the problem child because of how much it ultimately provides just by virtue of the Scholar being alive. Hopefully they do a thorough redesign to make the fairy revolve more around things like micromanagement, Excog, and Fey Union instead of just nuking Embrace's potency.

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Effectively, Embrace is roughly 10% of healing done in a raid. That might be a lot for a passive thing, but what people seem to forget is:

Embrace only is strong because there overall is so little damage to heal - between oGCDs, Absorbs, and the occasional AoE HoT, Embrace is just the perfect fit to top people off to 100%.

Funny thing is most people have been arguing that healers are balanced so y didnt they get a new job?, and then the next several pages of threads like this is you all prooving your roles are unbalanced. Though I do feel for the healers as a new job is always nice, it cant come at the expense of balance and noone happy with their own jobs to begin with, hence y i think the community it particularly annoyed with the no new job. I hope the rework comes to most peoples liking, and they sort out this cross role abilities mistake they made, all jobs lose their identity when you can all have the 10 same abilities on each of the the jobs int he same role.

The tanks got a new job because they want to move in the direction of off tank/main tank identity to hopefully allow more people to play tanks as it is the most demanded role in any DF and PF, with healers coming second. Healers need identity and hopefully more demand to actually heal when doing content rather than just dps and throw a few emergency heals when hp gets low. A healer should always feel the need to prioritise healing and most content that isnt the case, then we lead to issues where the appeal of healing is so low because the demand to dps is high that it just makes sense for the community to just go dps, like i did during HW. trying to dps to such high levels whilst healing never sat with me right as a healer, as surely if thats the case just make all jobs like rdm and give them healing and raising and then all jobs can just be dps.

Ranged physical got another job because in order to balance that role you need three jobs minimum, that is the reason, for the whole of SB, MCH has been broken somewhat. Same happened when their was only 2 magical dps.

All the community of healers can do is help SE identify constructive ways to move forward with healing and hope if that gets sorted in a short time there is room to possibly start working on a new healer role (possibly meelee ranged healer) that could be introduced mid patch rather than at the beginning.

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Originally Posted by ForgottenScholar

Ranged physical got another job because in order to balance that role you need three jobs minimum, that is the reason, for the whole of SB, MCH has been broken somewhat. Same happened when their was only 2 magical dps.

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That statement is simply wrong. DPS is balanced around only one measure: DPS.

If BRD would deal 20% less personal DPS - you wouldn't take a BRD. You always take BRD because it provides overall one of the highest and most consistent DPS of all 9 current DPS jobs. Adding DNC will change absolutely nothing about this.

Ranged physical is a gameplay choice - DNC balances the number of gameplay options of ranged physical vs. melee/caster.

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Originally Posted by Enla

I still remember the state SCH was in when SB came out. We had trouble healing most dungeons due to our reduced potency and I very much felt like a burden to my FC whenever we would do content together on the road to 70. Hell the person who taught me SCH outright quit the class and moved to AST/WHM in the aftermath of it and still hasn't come back due to how badly SCH started the 4.0 patch cycle. Which is to say nothing of the fact that they then buffed us and then OVER buffed us over the course of the expansion because they once again just fundamentally don't understand how to balance the healers in this game.

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The fairy only got nerfed this expansion. Dungeons being harder leveling up was mainly gear scaling. Every new expansion leveling up Scholar will feel the brunt of the fairy not feeling top-tier until they get end-game gear.

The biggest change in 4.05 was the quick Aetherflow trait going to 100% which absolutely encouraged being aggressive with stacks for MP economy. I remember having candid conversations whom were not good at playing the job here at 4.05 that they needed to stop sitting on stacks to see the fruits of the buff relief. Whereas they were still whining about Adlo and Succor "costing too much", and of course that didn't change at all.

The Indom potency buff to 500 basically still made it the best healing oGCD in the game.

So if anything Scholar did pretty well in SB.

Technically they're adding three new healer jobs because of the expected full scale class overhauls for every class including WHM, SCH and AST. So rather than losing your collective minds on the issue, calm down, take a break and wait until May when we are sure to get the final ability reveals during that pre-expansion fanletter stream. If it's still crap and no different, THEN you can go ahead and start throwing a tantrum and shoving petitions down YoshiP's throat for more healers. No matter what you say, this late in the game, the fact that there's no healer is not going to change. It is finalized and done, and the team needs to focus on completing and preparing for the implementation of future battle content such as the 8-man raid in the middle of 5.0 (which is still in design phase) and the 24-man raid in 5.1 (same hat).

I don't think excluding a healer this patch was a good move due to community anticipation and expectations, but honestly I'd rather they sit down and try their best to satisfy the current trinity first before pushing a 4th in. There are still a lot of unhappy WHMs out there and thanks to the community (not the devs), WHM and AST pull the short stick compared to SCH despite the fact that every class in this game as it is has the ability to clear all content at all levels. That is how this game is designed. They do not want a repeat of FFXI where, during it's golden age, half of the 15+ classes available were EXCLUDED by the community from high end content because they were effectively useless. Sucks to be you if you only mained BST. Good luck being a WHM in Treasures of Aht Urghan because RDM stole your job and it won't get better in Wings of the Goddess because Scholar stole it, too. Hope you don't like Paladin because literally every other class with high damage and sub WAR can tank and do more DPS than you, especially Ninja. Actually, screw being a main tank. Thief stole your job 2 years ago. We don't need this in FFXIV, but unfortunately with the amount of classes we're bound to get for each role, it's inevitable and that's more worrisome than having no healer class in 5.0.

On a different note, if we were to get another healer style, I think splash healing would be the best option. Something similar to PLD's splash shield. I also like the idea of a true DPS healer, but the problem with that is with the game as it is now (and possibly in ShB), it can't be balanced. Everyone would want to have that DPS healer because of the damage it does. You'd be better off making another support class. Like Dancer. /wink

Mrhappy Fan Fest interview :
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...vPw4uI/preview

Yoshida :
"When looking at this history of healing jobs. Making strong balance between three jobs it has been tough. With three its been tough, so with a 4th the balance might get even worse. Instead of doing this, we want to prioritize balancing them better this expansion so we didn’t want to add a new healer at 4.0 or 5.0. We really think we need to restructure the way healers are handled. We can’t keep this strict division between pure healer and barrier healer. Something needs to change here so we can maintain good balance. Thats the main reason we didn’t have a healer. First priority was to add a 3rd ranged, then a 4th tank while we balance the healers better."

The question is : it is a good thing to have this (supposed) homogenization ?

I need to see these Scholar buffs cause the potency is still the same on all the skills since i left 6 months ago. not to mention fairy potency is not equal to scholars. embrace and adlo say they have nearly the same potency but embrace heals for less than 50% that of adlo. 250 potency is not half of 300. someone really need to check this math thoroughly.

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Originally Posted by Ceasaria

The question is : it is a good thing to have this (supposed) homogenization ?

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I don't know that it's homogenization. But I do agree the healers need more distinct identities. So if this is a step in that direction... I hope it'll actually be for the better, this time around.

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Originally Posted by Ceasaria

The question is : it is a good thing to have this (supposed) homogenization ?

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I'm also concerned about this. I suspect that whm will be getting shields + utility and SCH better heals. Given that the pet has been a sticking point I suspect it's use to be significantly reduced or simply turned into a buff instrument that no longer heals.

If the homogenizing removes too much class identity I don't know how I'll feel about it.

I think this is such a sorry state of affairs. I was so sad about dancer not being announced as healer because I wanted a new healing job to force them to get out of their comfort zone and shake things up. I wanted it because it has a different aesthetic compared to our current healers. Our current healers are very static animation wise, and a bit boring. I did not want it to be a melee healer like some other people did, but I wanted to bring something unique fresh and new like astro's cards were at the start of Heavensward. I'm glad it's in the game at all and I expected it to be a melee bard even though I desired a healer personally, but it's still very disappointing. Because that means no new healers. And the reasoning they used is the same one they used in Stormblood.

I just have zero confidence in the development team at this point. They released astro as a hot mess and it took half an expansion for it be usable by higher skilled players (Midas), and until the end to be usable by the masses (Creator). But willingly doing so pushed white mage out of the meta and it has been out of the meta now for a whole expansion and the end of the last expansion.


In the new actions stormblood trailer meant to hype us up they used 2-3 healer role skills (lucid, largess and rescue if I remember correctly..) instead of actual white mage skills. The game developers who work for SE are very smart people. How in the world did they think it was okay to showcase "role" actions for a job because they didn't have enough new skills to actually showcase. We got told to calm down by Yoshi P after the press told us their opinion's from playing with Stormblood classes. In the end...the playerbase was right about everything.

We didn't get a healer back then because they were trying to "fix" healer balance. Instead they gutted white mage, spread it's skills in the healer role actions, and never gave it anything back to compensate for it's loss. A useless job gauge, removed our only form of mitigation below 60. Got it handed back to us as divine bension (which is so much more useful and beautiful then stoneskin), but we literately just got our old tool reskinned and buffed as part of the expansion except now we can't use it in below 60 content. I wouldn't really call that a "new" skill. Oh and Plenary Indulgence, I don't feel like I have to say anything about that. Scholar got horrible MP costs and lost their aoe skills (blizzard 2 & miasma 2) and damage potential (bane) which made dungeons a pain and a hassle. It made scholar not fun. Astro still had ridiculous 20% balance at the launch of Stormblood until 4.05 and a useless but pretty job gauge as well.

Throughout this whole expansion the only fight I felt white mage was better than astro was exdeath savage because of the white hole mechanic. And that was only because no one was comfortable with the fight at the start so human error could make earthly star not be primed for it so cure 3 would be better. Once astro's got comfortable with the fight and memorized the timings (or some PC players let ACT call it out for them so they didn't even have to think) astro ended up being better for that fight too.

I don't know how they expect us to be satisfied or happy with their actions when they've done nothing to instill confidence in us. Since we're not getting a healer job I expect them to finally separate scholar from arcanist so they can balance summoner/scholar better.

Give astro an identity outside of cards. Some sort of mechanic unique to them that works with their job gauge and get rid of diurnal/nocturnal stance We kept track of cards in 3.0 just fine, we don't need a job gauge just to keep track of cards. Let the job gauge interact with this new mechanic. Make them their own unique healer. Because we're in this situation partially because they didn't want to break the synergy between scholar and white mage, but it ended up breaking other things because of their decision.

To rework white mage to make it competitive in end game, the "black mage" of healers isn't working. This is the bare minimum imo.

I just don't think anyone on the development team actually plays healer at a high level. They don't seem to understand the problems, or find suitable solutions. There's other inherent problems with healers too such as fight design not actually requiring GCD healing and using OGCD's for almost everything or medica 2/aspected helios. It's a bit sad when I see some healers just having medica 2/aspected helios up nonstop and that's "healing" and enough healing for some fights. Maybe we need to go back to Twintania days and give bosses their own plummet they use nonstop alongside a tank buster (death sentence in this case), and infirmity that effects OGCD healing as well, but that's a matter of perspective and I'm sure some will disagree with me. But it's quite contradictory for them to say they don't encourage healer DPS when they have such low healing requirements for most fights. Do they just want us to stand there twiddling our thumbs? I find stormblood healing just not as fun compared to A Realm Reborn, and Heavensward. Maybe it's the changes to cleric stance, homogenization of the healers, or the lack of healing requirements. I'm not sure.

I want to get to the point where I think about all the healers currently available to me and compare/contrast their toolkits and decide which would be best for which fight. Adjust and be flexible because all three healers bring something unique and are fun to play and have their own weaknesses as well. Not just default to astro/scholar.

I'm just really sad about the current state of things.

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Originally Posted by Kalise

snip.

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FFXIV does not have a HoT healer, they have healers with HoTs attached to a few abilities which is a big difference. The only 2 healing play styles in this game are shield healer and pure/direct healer. I imagine they are trying to figure out how to introduce a new kind of healer that wouldn't completely break the game, with the way combat is designed and damage is dished out a Resto Druid-esque healer would be completely broken.

It's obvious how much work coming up with a brand new type of healer that doesn't fall into the pure healer or shield healer category and they would honestly rather focus on trying to balance the current roster of healers rather than adding another one into the mix. Let's at least hope it doesn't take them another entire expansion to figure out how to balance the current three.