5.05 Healer Changes

So AST/SCH buffs but no fixes for WHM issues. Business as usual in other words.
Looking forward to AST/SCH meta again with some of those changes...

I am overjoyed with AST potency buff and divination reduced CD. Hopefully enough to make me comfortable healing with the job again. I'm happy too that WHM stays the same! :)

trick attack atm is not doing enough to make ninja worth taking for one, and two thats when you use all the buffs at once. The value of the card buff outside of actual cd windows is pretty low.

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Originally Posted by Lagomorph

Irrelevant when it doesn't even come close to making up for their terrible personal dps.

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What do you mean irrelevant? The very reason why AST personal DPS is so low is because their raid utility is so high. You can't have it both ways.

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Originally Posted by Lagomorph

Irrelevant when it doesn't even come close to making up for their terrible personal dps.

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On the contrary. AST has been meta when its personal DPS has been low before (See Stormblood yet again). But then when AST's personal DPS gets buffed up, then it just goes completely off the charts and makes the others (well, WHM) irrelevant.

If you want to play a healer with excellent personal DPS, play WHM.

If you want to play a healer with excellent buffing, play AST.

Even if specific numbers need slight tweaks - This is balance and this is the way it should be. I hope AST is never the best at everything again. Because no healer should be.

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Originally Posted by Lagomorph

I thought the point was to make all three healers meta, right? Isn't that what balanced means? Also if you think that ast will be on an even playing field with sch and whm right now, you're mistaken. Healing potencies was not what they needed most. The only actual buff they got to their raid contribution is divination being on a shorter cooldown. And let's be real, divination being a 6% buff for 15s on a 2 minute cd is still pretty pathetic.

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Even so, it does put AST on a much sturdier base than it was before and while the Divination change will need to be fully tested before we can make any actual arguments about AST's spot in terms of the meta, it's still a good improvement overall.

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Originally Posted by Dogempire

Well, SCH is still boring to play

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That's what the bed mount is for.

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

On the contrary. AST has been meta when its personal DPS has been low before (See Stormblood yet again). But then when AST's personal DPS gets buffed up, then it just goes completely off the charts and makes the others (well, WHM) irrelevant.

If you want to play a healer with excellent personal DPS, play WHM.

If you want to play a healer with excellent buffing, play AST.

Even if specific numbers need slight tweaks - This is balance and this is the way it should be. I hope AST is never the best at everything again. Because no healer should be.

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Ast never was the best at everything. I'm not sure how you and a few others have deluded yourselves into thinking that. It's fine if ast is the "buffs" healer. But their buffs are not strong enough to make up for how weak malefic/combust are. Also realistically there are two metrics that matter: healing output and raid dps contribution. Whm was the best in both of these areas. I'm not sure what you're talking about when you say that no healer should be the best at everything?

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Originally Posted by Exiled_Tonberry

What do you mean irrelevant? The very reason why AST personal DPS is so low is because their raid utility is so high. You can't have it both ways.

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It is not having it both ways. Ast needs their personal dps combined with their contributions with buffs to be at least close to the other healers. It can be a little behind, that's fine. I'm saying that it will still be far behind. If you disagree with this, then just way a few days and see for yourself.

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Originally Posted by fantasticm

That's what the bed mount is for.

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Petition to make mounts usable in dungeons so I can heal the tank and then go back to sleep

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Originally Posted by Zolvolt

Absolutely sourgrapes about Energy Drain coming back. Gameplay wise Energy Drain does one thing: Makes it feel bad to use healing aetherflow. If damage aetherflow is an option it will ALWAYS make using healing aetherflow feel bad. Always. Sacred Soil got some amazing frequent use with the new Sch and not we're going to go back to only using it seldom to negate big damage. Your designers knew what they were doing when they removed Energy Drain and to bring it back because people who don't understand class design are crying about wanting more damage is just incredibly disappointing.

Astro changes are great. I wanted the gravity cast time and horoscope duration changes so I'm happy about those. I didn't expect sleeve draw to change at all but it looks good. I'm a little bit curious why Ast shields get nerfed but sch shields don't. Considering how strong sch shielding can be.

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Are you insane? Energy Drain came back because we needed a way to dump excess Aetherflow. Using it to heal SHOULD ONLY feel bad if you could have, as a team, not needed that heal to survive. That's how literally every heal in this game should be though of. Every Cure II could have been a Glare. Every Adloquium could have been a Broil III. You will ALWAYS feel bad about using a heal over damage if you don't need it. Seems like you don't understand class design. Feel free to ignore energy drain and continue to overheal / sit on Aetherflow stacks. You can't keep it off your hotbar. The rest of us will actually play the class properly.

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Originally Posted by Yuyuka3

So AST/SCH buffs but no fixes for WHM issues. Business as usual in other words.
Looking forward to AST/SCH meta again with some of those changes...

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Um. What issues exactly is WHM even having?

While the healing buffs on AST are a welcome change and definitely a necessary one, I doubt that the cooldown reduction on Divination and the changes to 1 and 2 seals’ potency is going to suddenly make up the ~900 rDPS that WHM has over it... We’ll see for sure what AST’s rDPS contributions are once people start clearing Savage, but I don’t see this change being a ~900 rDPS difference.

WHM is in a really good spot right now. It’s quite hilarious for you to suggest that it has issues compared to AST’s right now.


EDIT because posting limits—

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Originally Posted by Yuyuka3

I don't know, maybe the jarring lack of lily dumps and oGCD weaving? Or them having almost only GCD heals at their disposal? No rDPS contribution, which will only get better over time? Their notorious lack of insight tbat just buffing AST and SCH while never touching WHM is a receipe for disaster?
No, WHM isn't super great as you make it out to be.

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Well, right now all you’re doing is doomsaying with this “they’ll only ever buff AST/SCH and never touch WHM”. It’s not much different from the other thread saying that WHM is the black sheep of healers up on the front page right now.

We don’t know what they’ll do, even based on poor precedent. I’m really hoping that they learn from their mistakes and listen to the community for once. You also shouldn’t act like AST wasn’t in need of some sort of assistance, because it was. The Divination change is hardly anything ground-breaking, and the rest was just potency buffs/cooldown reductions to its healing, which was needed. They got no buffs to their personal damage whatsoever. SCH only got slight recast changes on Succor and the return of a way for it to dump excess Aetherflow.

Personally, I think WHM should have Bravery/Cheer as an rDPS contribution; however, it was ~900 rDPS above AST: the healer that is supposed to be the buff healer. That’s a fairly significant amount, and I don’t think that gap will be bridged with just this patch alone. I also think that it would be nice to have a shorter recast on Glare to allow for better Assize weaving. And while Lily dumps may be an issue, we’ll honestly have to see how Savage turns out in terms of outgoing damage—this may not even be an issue if there is a lot of AOE damage for Rapture use or if Solace is nice to have in the event the MT is taking a lot of damage. It’s hard to say because the fights aren’t out yet.


But WHM is hardly in a bad spot right now even with it having things that need addressing. It’s really disingenuous for you to insinuate otherwise.

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Originally Posted by Lagomorph

I'm not sure what you're talking about when you say that no healer should be the best at everything?

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Late stormblood AST did more personal DPS than WHM, did more raid buffing than WHM, and was the only healer to solo heal ultimate content while also having much greater mobility than WHM.

Now technically you can say 'But holy spam was better for dungeons!' or 'AST shields weren't the best!' and yeah that's true, but in all major areas AST was outperforming. And it was meta before the 4.3 AST buffs let it do all of that at once.

If AST's raid buffs are far behind in total contribution, they'll get buffed again.

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Originally Posted by Lagomorph

Ast never was the best at everything.

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This is a bold faced lie and you know it.
AST in SB has the best personal dps, best raid dps and was better at healing than WHM.

Right now WHM is the best at personal DPS but with no utility.
SCH is in the middle.
AST is low DPS high utility.
Healing, after this patch, should all be hitting for around the same.
The numbers are not 1:1 perfect but what more can you want? Also there's something else to take into consideration with raid contribution for WHM specifically. Depending on how much damage goes out, WHM will have to heal a lot more, and their contribution will suffer far greater since it's coming from their personal DPS and not utility. WHM needs that extra DPS potential to make up for times it can't contribute with damage.

Energy Drain is back baby!

Hopefully, the cards are changed at some point..but this is a step in the right direction~

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

Um. What issues exactly is WHM even having?

While the healing buffs on AST are a welcome change and definitely a necessary one, I doubt that the cooldown reduction on Divination and the changes to 1 and 2 seals%u2019 potency is going to suddenly make up the ~900 rDPS that WHM has over it... We%u2019ll see for sure what AST%u2019s rDPS contributions are once people start clearing Savage, but I don%u2019t see this change being a ~900 rDPS difference.

WHM is in a really good spot right now. It%u2019s quite hilarious for you to suggest that it has issues compared to AST%u2019s right now.

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I don't know, maybe the jarring lack of lily dumps and oGCD weaving? Or them having almost only GCD heals at their disposal? No rDPS contribution, which will only get better over time? Their notorious lack of insight tbat just buffing AST and SCH while never touching WHM is a receipe for disaster?
No, WHM isn't super great as you make it out to be.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

Um. What issues exactly is WHM even having?

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Not to say WHM is bad, because it's not at all, but lilies only having heals and your big damage spell being a refund of the damage you lost more than a gain might catch up to use eventually.

Still, WHM is great and I don't feel bad playing it at all.

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

AST has been buffed, and SCH has an aetherflow dump again. Will this balance the healers? Ehh, maybe, maybe not, but I think the majority are going to be happy and that's a good thing.

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Hopefully, but the healers don't need to be balanced compared to each other right now. What they need is collective power creep.

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Originally Posted by Yuyuka3

So AST/SCH buffs but no fixes for WHM issues. Business as usual in other words.
Looking forward to AST/SCH meta again with some of those changes...

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WHM doesnt gave any issues. The small potency buffs AST got and SCH getting ED back isnt going to bump them out of the meta. Not by a long shot.

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Originally Posted by Selova

WHM doesnt gave any issues. The small potency buffs AST got and SCH getting ED back isnt going to bump them out of the meta. Not by a long shot.

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WHM still has issues with weaving, movement and the fact that as healing requirements go up it's pDPS drops like a rock due to having minimal oGCD heals. The main thing is ALL these were problems the class has had for years, just with ShB SCH/AST got smacked hard enough (and WHM got a little in buffs) that the main issues WHM has have been overshadowed.

They are still issues however.

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Originally Posted by Selova

WHM doesnt gave any issues.

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While WHM isn't in a bad spot, there are still QoL issues. Clipping, PoM's weird CD causing alignment issues, lily's being the most punishing resource to lose on death since their cooldown doesn't start until revived, etc.

Note that this is not a request for buffs. But WHM is not exactly perfect, either.

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Originally Posted by Selova

WHM doesnt gave any issues. The small potency buffs AST got and SCH getting ED back isnt going to bump them out of the meta. Not by a long shot.

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I do want to say one thing towards this.
Everyone said this exact same thing in 4.3 was it? When malefic got it's 1.5s cast time. Everyone said it wouldn't effect damage, but it did; by an absurd amount.
The same might not be the case for Energy Drain, but remember that if a SCH wills it, they can push out 3 every minute. With Recitation being a thing it's not too far fetched to say this might not be the case at times.

I'm not saying it will be, I'm just saying people were wrong before.

I can take AST/SCH back ... WHM was so boring, thanks god.

White Mage isn’t in a bad spot in terms of balance, but is in terms of QoL and fun factor. But at the moment I think they’re issues we are all sharing as healers. Being a healer got boring.

Lightspeed - Recast time reduced from 120 to 90 seconds.
Hyper Lightspeed - Effect changed from "Reduces Lightspeed recast time by 10 seconds upon executing Essential Dignity" to "Reduces Lightspeed recast time to 90 seconds."

So... Is the base recast timer for Light speed 90 seconds or does the Hyper light speed trait make it 90?
Cause if the base is 90 then the trait became pointless.

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Originally Posted by Rubiss

Are you insane? Energy Drain came back because we needed a way to dump excess Aetherflow. Using it to heal SHOULD ONLY feel bad if you could have, as a team, not needed that heal to survive. That's how literally every heal in this game should be though of. Every Cure II could have been a Glare. Every Adloquium could have been a Broil III. You will ALWAYS feel bad about using a heal over damage if you don't need it. Seems like you don't understand class design. Feel free to ignore energy drain and continue to overheal / sit on Aetherflow stacks. You can't keep it off your hotbar. The rest of us will actually play the class properly.

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That analogy only works when healing/dps is a choice. Since there was no dps option for aetherflow it felt good to be able to frequently use something like sacred soil. Keep excog running on tanks. But now you get to use fun abilities like that less often and for what? an instant low dps spell because now its a decent dps loss to use aetherflow on healing. THAT is an insanely poor design decision because healing aetherflow abilities are fun to use and energy drain is not.

I will say the one interesting part to energy drain is thinking how you can turn dissipation into a dps cooldown. Though I'm not actually sure if using that mechanic incorrectly is actually a good thing or a bad thing.

SCH is still a boring, unimaginative, shallow corpse of a class it was before - in context of enjoyment of the gameplay. The joke potency changes (along with re-adding energy drain) are nowhere need bridging that ridiculous damage gap it's behind WHM.

At least you got your dump key back.

Um Energy Drain on sch will work like smn's energy drain single target dmg which GIVES aetherflow stacks not use them sch just got more healing with tiny damage increase.

Ast changes are nice especially Celestial Opposition but Nocturnal is still a stay away from me button, Collective Unconsiousness is still poor man's Sacred soil still being worse in every way, Divination every 2 minutes will not fix ast rdps contribution being vastly lower than whm pDps so nothing changes there, Looks like they just fixed Diurnal woo the more used sect is more potent o/.

Glad whm was untouched they deserve their power \o/

SCH job guide updated to show energy drain with

"Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 150.
Additional Effect: Absorbs a portion of damage dealt as HP and restores MP
Additional Effect: Increases Faerie Gauge by 10
Aetherflow Gauge Cost: 1"

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/jobguide/scholar/

It isn't giving us aetherflow. It's using an aetherflow.

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Originally Posted by Crushnight

Um Energy Drain on sch will work like smn's energy drain single target dmg which GIVES aetherflow stacks not use them sch just got more healing with tiny damage increase.

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Where did they say this?

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Originally Posted by Mesarthim

SCH job guide updated to show energy drain with

"Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 150.
Additional Effect: Absorbs a portion of damage dealt as HP and restores MP
Additional Effect: Increases Faerie Gauge by 10
Aetherflow Gauge Cost: 1"

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/jobguide/scholar/

It isn't giving us aetherflow. It's using an aetherflow.

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so they are finally giving the same skill to 2 different jobs with 2 different effects so why can't smn have a useable physick?

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Originally Posted by Hatstand

Where did they say this?

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My assumption based on current Energy drain on smn since it is the exact same named skill i thought was going to work the same apparently i was wrong

Yeah I can't believe they didn't even bother to rename the skill, and instead we now have two different skills on two different jobs that do two entirely different things but share the name.


Giving SCH Energy Drain as a DPS Aetherflow dump was something that was severely needed. But it needs much more than that to make it fun to play again.

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Originally Posted by Taika

Yeah I can't believe they didn't even bother to rename the skill, and instead we now have two different skills on two different jobs that do two entirely different things but share the name.


Giving SCH Energy Drain as a DPS Aetherflow dump was something that was severely needed. But it needs much more than that to make it fun to play again.

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I agree, I'm hoping 5.1 has more changes for healers, and I'm thinking maybe they didnt want to change them too much now because of savage being new.

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Originally Posted by msoltyspl

SCH is still a boring, unimaginative, shallow corpse of a class it was before - in context of enjoyment of the gameplay. The joke potency changes (along with re-adding energy drain) are nowhere need bridging that ridiculous damage gap it's behind WHM.

At least you got your dump key back.

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I'll take it as a step in the right direction honestly. Especially since I'm fairly, and sadly, sure the boring mess they turned healers into is here to stay. Having at least one small quality of life change is better than none - even if I desperately miss the complexity of old SCH and would jump at the chance to have it back in a heartbeat.

Yeah I'm mixed about ED changes.

lazy me liked that I didn't feel the need to use all my stacks when AF was up again (especially if didn't need mana)

also we get ED back but not the trait that lowers AF CD ... so my bet is we're gonna use dissipation more ... but not for healing.

it's just I feel ... there is some design issues .. what I'd do is put ED on a 30 sec CD but not use AF stacks ... or something similar

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Originally Posted by nalol

Yeah I'm mixed about ED changes.

lazy me liked that I didn't feel the need to use all my stacks when AF was up again (especially if didn't need mana)

also we get ED back but not the trait that lowers AF CD ... so my bet is we're gonna use dissipation more ... but not for healing.

it's just I feel ... there is some design issues .. what I'd do is put ED on a 30 sec CD but not use AF stacks ... or something similar

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I think people wanted it on AF so they have something to dump excessive AF stacks on

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Originally Posted by Taika

Yeah I can't believe they didn't even bother to rename the skill, and instead we now have two different skills on two different jobs that do two entirely different things but share the name.


Giving SCH Energy Drain as a DPS Aetherflow dump was something that was severely needed. But it needs much more than that to make it fun to play again.

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In the Live Letter thread here's been several questions about the Healer adjustments and also seen a couple about general feel about jobs outside of high-level content. Hoping this to be adressed and for me, Scholar in particular.

Best outcome I'm wishing for is they announcing a rejoining of ACN abilities and full fairy control or added back under other names. If not, I'm positive they can come with up something other than Ruin/Broil I/II/III and Biolysis (and now with occasional ED).

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Originally Posted by Exiled_Tonberry

Um, so? Making it meta again was never the point. It was to balance them with the other healers.
You shouldn't want any job buffed into meta.
Healers are, as of right now, pretty nicely balanced.

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No, not really. AST is still far behind in rdps contribution and their healing kit still sucks compared to what WHM has. Even tho AST is much harder to play than WHM, this is leaving WHM in lead in both aspects by a large margin. This is by no means balanced.

Energy Drain back, which mean more dps, more mana recovery, less boring (even if not as satisfying as before), SCH has now nothing to worry (Nocturnal AST, where are you ?).
But for AST, I just wonder how people can say it's fine now.
Half of their changes are artifices.
Sure, Divination, Sleeve Draw (still 3 min cd) and Celestial Opposition are better now, but compared to SB AST and other healers ? No, still underpowered in every departement.