Do you want healers to be reworked from the ground up?

Healers! The dps with short queue times! The devs have made this problem by not incorporating healing as an important part of the game. It’s a trinity for a reason.

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Originally Posted by Thoosa

Forgot to say, the current healer situation just encourages the tunnel vision glare spamming healer who mashes glare even when half the party is dead, because their logs are more important than keeping people alive and clearing the fight. :p

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In most content a half dead party is perfectly acceptable, especially with 2 healers. 1 or 2 oGCD's and they're full again.

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Originally Posted by Thoosa

Forgot to say, the current healer situation just encourages the tunnel vision glare spamming healer who mashes glare even when half the party is dead, because their logs are more important than keeping people alive and clearing the fight. :p

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And we only got to this situation because people kept wanting pure healers, I was far more tolerant back in HW when there was more to kept track of than I am now, a healer only dps can get da boot just like a healer only healing.

When the developer of the game goes and says he finds Sch to leave the healing to its co-healer so it can dps and that was wrong, at the same time Sch was the healer healing the most, it really shows how little they are actually looking at what healers are doing.

Imho revert back to HW or even SB era and build from there, Whm gets lillies and improved QoL regarding clipping, Sch gets its DoTs and fairies back, Ast gets its time/buff manipulation stuff back and build on what we had.

2 DoTs on Ast in HW was not hard or overwhelming, Spear was (as required CD timing knowledge for every job), Balance card was broken because they gave up plain and simple there as it didn't get reduced until savage patch in SB (They clearly were afraid the job be so badly played that they kept a 20% single target damage buff which could be turned into an aoe 10% dmg buff on to make sure people play it at SB launch).

What we had in HW was not hard and people played all 3 healers plenty after 3.2 and only took that long because they undertuned Ast(own admission due to being scared it'll replace both healers) to the point it couldn't do its primary job of healing in Savage(dungeons required more effort than other two but doable sorta like ShB funny how history repeats itself. I mean not like Ast went from the worst healer at start of the expansion and received buffs every patch until they overdo it so it becomes the strongest, oh wait ....)



Content cannot be revolutionised to suit the current playstyle because no way they are going to rework 80 levels of content, healers have to be the ones to change at this point and then have future content fully in line with their design (we are dpsing more than ever before at the time the healers are the most healing focused design wise a correlation should have been formed by now) with old content not being hindered, hello Sch forgetting Aetherflow for 15 levels after using it for the past 12(you wanna argue 2 different Aetherflow, sure but I'll rebuttal give Aetherflow at 30 with lustrate doesn't break those 15 levels anymore than the fairy does).

Sorry ranty but acknowledgement they are looking at feedback would curve my frustration because most of the time I feel like healers don't exist.

So having read some of the thread, here's how I would rework the healers and add in a fourth one:

WHM: Should be the easiest to play (as it's based on CNJ), but focus on balancing damage and healing. all damage and healing should be direct, with regen and medica 2 being the only two HoTs. Shielding should be minimal as well. WHM should be the healing "hammer", it gets the job done, but it's not very pretty about it.

SCH: Highest skill cap, where an OK one can keep everyone alive, but a really skilled scholar can do amazing stuff. DoT Damage (with a skill that can cause all ticks to proc for instantaneous damage), and a mix of shields and HoTs with one single target heal and one AoE heal. The fairy mechanic should also be tweaked slightly to allow the SCH to convert the entire fairy bar for damage, rather than it being solely for healing. SCH should be the most mechanically complex, but the most rewarding when played correctly.

AST: A flexible toolkit that interacts more with the cards. The cards should give the AST some sort of buff when they are played on another class (and a better buff if played on the desired class). Skill cap should be moderate (as the AST should sit in complexity between the WHM and SCH), so someone can do decently well as AST if they play correctly. In other words, believe in the heart of the cards, and you will be rewarded.

Next Healer: I want to see a DoT and HoT based healer that is designed to keep the HoTs up 24/7 and can collapse either into a massive DPS or Healing burst. If we're going with a chemist, the class should be designed so that it overheals when played correctly (due to the HoTs), but the overheal is necessary so they have strong direct heals which should work by consuming the HoTs. This healer would be a glorious hot mess that somehow works and always manages to do that clutch play that saves the day.

As far as Raid DPS goes, all three should be balanced where their personal and raid DPS contributions are roughly equal when played optimally. This will let the WHM be really good at progression because it's designed to be the simplest class, while the AST first in an all around niche. The SCH should find it's home in an instance farm state because knowing the fight inside and out will allow the SCH to be played optimally making it the strongest of the three classes as far as healing and DPS goes, but needs to have the optimal play to hit that point or it suffers greatly.

As has been stated, there's simply no way to make healers purely heal focused in this system without overhauling a lot of the basic mechanics of the system.

So yeah, I think what they should do is either give healers more DPS options or give them more support options if they really don't want healers to be green DPSs when not healing.

The issue with reworking healers (overall not just classes) is that theyre designed to work around a certain healing system.

For example a WHM might just at a push fit into an MMO like WoW but the party would be dead while the Astro shuffled cards and the tank would die with the scholars slow and weak heals.

In FF they’ve got a different kind of system which relies more on healers doing dps, and being able to get in their gimmicks. Healing is much more about controlled moments in the fight.

They would either need to rework healing as a whole, which leads to reworking damage and basically the whole battle system, or just add more dps stuff to healers. The kits they have already cover every healing eventuality that this battle system will throw at them.

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Originally Posted by Almagnus1

WHM: Should be the easiest to play (as it's based on CNJ), but focus on balancing damage and healing. all damage and healing should be direct, with regen and medica 2 being the only two HoTs. Shielding should be minimal as well. WHM should be the healing "hammer", it gets the job done, but it's not very pretty about it.

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To beat a dead horse I've turned into jello by this point,
WHM: baby's first healiest healer with no frills, direct damage spamming and no-finesse unga bunga cure spamming is...uh...not a rework.

What you guys are missing is Cleric/Crusader Stance. No need to be on discord to let the tank know you stopped healing and are dropping big damage bombs, no need for anyone in the party that isnt deaf to know that the healer is seriously taking a few to deal damage, what you guys want is a form of risk/reward that all of us do. I'm okay with Final Fantasy healers dealing damage at least half of the time, its how my healers are in any Final Fantasy. What we need is a much more rewarding system for doing so, without a huge disconnect on the healing as a whole. Maube we are done with the days of unignorable yells of this type, which saddens me deeply, but perhaps they need to revisit that dynamic, in a way that works as well as CS did(im not a big huge fan of stance dancing, but the audio/visual queues of CS back in the day no doubtedly let the party know when to mitigate or when to expect healing and it couldnt be ignored or mistaken). Something telling, something that changed phases from healing to damage, something the healer had control of, be it through proc's from healing gave damage bonuses or vice versa. 16 healing buttons, give you guys at least 6 damage buttons, with at least one 3 hit combo, or something?

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

To beat a dead horse I've turned into jello by this point,
WHM: baby's first healiest healer with no frills, direct damage spamming and no-finesse unga bunga cure spamming is...uh...not a rework.

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It's the only healer that doesn't need one, rather it just needs tuning with the other ones.

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Originally Posted by ADVSS

What you guys are missing is Cleric/Crusader Stance.

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For the love of Hydalaen NO.

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Originally Posted by Almagnus1

For the love of Hydalaen NO.

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You know yuu want it back lol

Alright Alright. How about all of your DPS skills are unlocked by hitting a button called Deliri- er -Angel something something, and for the next 10 Seconds you're allowed to Glare. Then for every 6-7 heal spells, you arent allowed to Glare untill the combo is completed. Twice. Deal?
Then every 40-60 seconds you get to spam Glare again, for 4 or 5 times depending on your spell speed, again.

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Originally Posted by Almagnus1

It's the only healer that doesn't need one, rather it just needs tuning with the other ones.

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I totally disagree with this opinion, but I know it's rather common. I don't think it's possible to balance barebones WHM with the other two as long as the kit capability gap is so absolutely gigantic. I've played since ARR. I've seen this design paradigm of "ehhhh just balance two overpowered and ultra flexible kits capable of doing everything really well against the healbot that's barely allowed more than Cure and Stone spamming" before, and shockingly AST was just a superior WHM in basically every metric with buffs on top.

White. Mage. Is. Not. Conjurer. It's not a class that caps at level 30. I promise having buffs/debuffs isn't too bigbrained for stoopid white mages to handle. How about WHM sees actual growth in its kit instead of having their ARR kit shuffled around and sold back next expansion? Monks hate it too, and they're getting a rework.

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Originally Posted by ADVSS

You know yuu want it back lol

Alright Alright. How about all of your DPS skills are unlocked by hitting a button called Deliri- er -Angel something something, and for the next 10 Seconds you're allowed to Glare. Then for every 6-7 heal spells, you arent allowed to Glare untill the combo is completed. Twice. Deal?
Then every 40-60 seconds you get to spam Glare again, for 4 or 5 times depending on your spell speed, again.

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You're just desperate to not get healed in the next encounter, aren't you?

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

I totally disagree with this opinion, but I know it's rather common. I don't think it's possible to balance barebones WHM with the other two as long as the kit capability gap is so absolutely gigantic. I've played since ARR. I've seen this design paradigm of "ehhhh just balance two overpowered and ultra flexible kits capable of doing everything really well against the healbot that's barely allowed more than Cure and Stone spamming" before, and shockingly AST was just a superior WHM in basically every metric with buffs on top.

White. Mage. Is. Not. Conjurer. It's not a class that caps at level 30. I promise having buffs/debuffs isn't too bigbrained for stoopid white mages to handle. How about WHM sees actual growth in its kit instead of having their ARR kit shuffled around and sold back next expansion? Monks hate it too, and they're getting a rework.

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That's kinda the problem with buffs, either you homogenize all the healers so they have the same buff and DPS side of things, or you figure out how their RDPS contribution works and balance their personal and buffing ability around it as you've got to figure out how to do different flavors of DNC and MCH, and then hope you don't end up with a broken BRD in the process.

Having a "selfish" DPS healer, in this regard, makes a lot of sense as we've seen it work with the DPS classes, so why not apply the same thing to the healers?

I thought the point was to make all healers Carole of healing but distinct in how they do it and with what else they bring to the table?

Heal with direct heals (chemist)
Heal with regens ( whm)
Heal with shields (sch)
Heal with mix of shields/regens (ast)

Also each could take one of the following to focus on

Personal dps
Buffs
Debuffs
Group dps

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Originally Posted by Almagnus1

So having read some of the thread, here's how I would rework the healers and add in a fourth one:



As far as Raid DPS goes, all three should be balanced where their personal and raid DPS contributions are roughly equal when played optimally. This will let the WHM be really good at progression because it's designed to be the simplest class, while the AST first in an all around niche. The SCH should find it's home in an instance farm state because knowing the fight inside and out will allow the SCH to be played optimally making it the strongest of the three classes as far as healing and DPS goes, but needs to have the optimal play to hit that point or it suffers greatly.

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I agree with a lot of your post, except where you want to see SCH as the most complex. To me, that's not very logical given AST- I main SCH and see it as falling naturally in complexity between WHM and AST.

I also don't see any sense in have one class targeted more for progression over another, or making an argument for one class being more for "instance farming" you really had me scratching my head at that -- seriously who would want to have "optimal play or you suffer greatly"- really?? and why not the other healers? Really, all three healers should have their unique playstyle but none of them should be faceroll easy to the point that they don't need to know a fight and how to optimize their class to a certain extent.

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Originally Posted by Almagnus1

That's kinda the problem with buffs, either you homogenize all the healers so they have the same buff and DPS side of things, or you figure out how their RDPS contribution works and balance their personal and buffing ability around it as you've got to figure out how to do different flavors of DNC and MCH, and then hope you don't end up with a broken BRD in the process.

Having a "selfish" DPS healer, in this regard, makes a lot of sense as we've seen it work with the DPS classes, so why not apply the same thing to the healers?

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Ahhhhh, you'd think that. Me too for a while, but that idea has proven to be a trap twice now. There are two issues with it. 1) the reason it works with DPS jobs is because damage contribution isn't a metric that becomes worthless after you hit a cap like healing does, and all combinations must be able to comfortably clear everything, which means that being the "healiest" healer is a non-identity. That leads to 2) so why not make their damage contributions mimic the way, say caster DPS do it? Let's take that hypothetical, setting aside fiddly balancing issues with Summoner being OP. So you've got selfish on top, then progressively trade out damage contribution for utility as you add more Batman tools to a healer's kit. Maybe that could work, seems to be a reasonably settled argument with the casters.

But I've never seen anything like a call for that around here or in game. AST and SCH must not only have the most utility, but they also must have the highest output because they require just so much skill to play you see. And that's why reason 2 exists, because the community has a collective stroke if AST and SCH aren't the best at everything. Nobody will say that outright of course, but you get a feel around the edges. "WHM should be the simplest and therefore have the lowest skill cap" they say. "It wouldn't be fair for a higher skill healer to have less output for more work". "WHM should be good at prog and fall off during farm, it's only fair" "WHM has a stun that makes them good at dungeons, that's so unfair!" screams the healer with like 10 buffs/debuffs that WHM doesn't have access to. And so on.

Unless this community is willing to eat WHM being both straightforward AND top dog DPS like BLM is, it needs a rework. Because if it stays as-is and isn't on top, then why bring one? It doesn't bring anything else to the table.

Edit: As an additional argument for a rework, both BLM and RDM have a relatively straightforward, easy to grasp gameplay loop without complicated utility weaving beyond using things more or less as they come off cooldown. They're both pretty fun to play too. I'd imagine the BLMs and RDMs would explode the DPS subforum if that gameplay loop were dia 11111clip111111 dia 11111111111 dia 111111clip1clip1111 dia 11111111111 dia 11clip111111111 dia 11111111111 dia 11111clipclip111111.......

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Originally Posted by ADVSS

You know yuu want it back lol

Alright Alright. How about all of your DPS skills are unlocked by hitting a button called Deliri- er -Angel something something, and for the next 10 Seconds you're allowed to Glare. Then for every 6-7 heal spells, you arent allowed to Glare untill the combo is completed. Twice. Deal?
Then every 40-60 seconds you get to spam Glare again, for 4 or 5 times depending on your spell speed, again.

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Imagine a WHM Enochian, as a parallel to BLM. You press the Enochian button and your Stone IV turns into Glare, Aero III into Dia and your Fluid Aura into Flood of Light.
WHM Enochian is maintained by using Flood of light or Lily-Based spells.

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Originally Posted by Almagnus1

This will let the WHM be really good at progression because it's designed to be the simplest class,

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There's just one flaw with this assumption. This is what happened with Heavensward and Stormblood. Whm was the simple healer with one of the more dumber gimmicks and look what happened to it. Heavily ostracized to the point to where it was one of the three classes that got a temporary buff in 4.5 before shadowbringers. Since it offered nothing and all healers need to be able to heal the content, whatever over-healing advantages the whm brought were basically moot. In Heavensward, it certainly was only a safety net for things like nidhogg's akh morn which wasn't often. In Stormblood, they were the most mp-efficient but even that fell wayward because the 4.3 buffs to Astro and and that lead to the aforementioned 4.5 buffs which usually never happens.

And for the selfish healer to work, it's some of sort of buff to maintain its damage much like how SAM and BLM have their respective buffs in Jinpu/Shifu and Astral Fire so that it can keep with the cards of the astro and the chain strat of the scholar. Which at that point, you're almost turning it into a full fledged dps at that point.

Differentiating between jobs because they are simple vs. "complex" is always going to be controversial. Performance should be player skill gated, not job gated.

Likewise, differentiating between jobs on the basis of personal dps vs. raid dps contributions doesn't work very well for healers. First, healers (and tanks) are doing contributing progressively less to total raid dps with each expansion. Second, there's less of a time trade-off involved when you just toss a buff on someone and focus on healing than there is when you split your time between healing and doing damage. Lastly, most players care less about good your dps output is than they do about how good you make their dps output look. Even if you're a walking afk dps buff, people will want you for the ego boost alone.

The sensible thing to do is to have all healers do comparable personal dps, comparable raid damage buffs, and then differentiate between them on the basis of utility. Actions that increase uptime without directly buffing damage are very difficult to compare. For example, what's the dps benefit associated with increasing movement speed? It depends on the fight, but a good melee player could certainly translate that into a buff to their personal dps. What if you could set up a teleporter between two points on the arena? A good caster could exploit that to minimize their movement. What if you could prevent someone from being targeted by single target abilities/mechanics for the next X seconds? What if add spawns were a genuine threat and healers could help CC them until the tanks corral them up?

If you can't make a direct comparison between two abilities, there's no trade-offs. Just opportunities for skilled players to take advantage. It's okay for certain jobs to have a situational advantage in certain fights. That rewards really versatile healers who understand how to play to the strengths of a variety of jobs. When you can mathematically compare them on the basis of raid damage output, then you run into the present problem. Flat raid buffs on healers are a terrible idea. Trading off personal vs. raid dps on healers is also a terrible idea.

Give healers utility, and let them support your team. Damage buffs for the sake of existing are boring.

For me whm needs only one tool. just one tool that they've shown it exists but never really put that "promised" effect in. Reverse from ff12, the white statue boss if you havent played it. All healing spells are now dmg spells there done.
A distinct phase, only whm can do playing to whm's exessiveness . And no i dont mean old cleric stance.
I simply hope they revert the changes to Sch, it just doesnt feel good to play. From being a different flavour of summoner to a one button fest, I honestly cant play healer this tier just cause i get so bored i literally sleep on the wheel.

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Originally Posted by Almagnus1

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The problem with having skill caps like this is competent groups would only want the "best" healer. We had those issues when AST was really good, and when WHM was in a bad spot.

I think a lot of it has to do with the shield vs regen dichotomy and only having 3 healers. Currently you can't have 2 shield healers and 2 regen healers. It also doesn't help that Regens stack but Shields don't. 2 WHM's is perfectly viable but 2 SCH's or a SCH and a Noct AST are hindering themselves.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

White. Mage. Is. Not. Conjurer. It's not a class that caps at level 30. I promise having buffs/debuffs isn't too bigbrained for stoopid white mages to handle. How about WHM sees actual growth in its kit instead of having their ARR kit shuffled around and sold back next expansion? Monks hate it too, and they're getting a rework.

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I'd love to have healers based on Buffs/Debuffs vs shield/regen. AST can Buff, New Healer can Debuff.

But yeah why we don't have a short group defensive CD in Protect or Shell is beyond me.

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

Imagine a WHM Enochian, as a parallel to BLM. You press the Enochian button and your Stone IV turns into Glare, Aero III into Dia and your Fluid Aura into Flood of Light.
WHM Enochian is maintained by using Flood of light or Lily-Based spells.

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Yeah after posting that, i thought a better idea might be what you just posted, but ran out of posts per day lol
Obviously, im just joking, but perhaps maybe some might like the idea. The reason i liked CS besides its initally terrible turn off and then back on by accident with a cd to turn it off again, was that it kind of gave you a mode, where your heals werent as strong but your damage was stronger. It was pretty skill based, so obviously they wont go back to that. What do they really have left to do? Seems like people want enochian or blood of the dragon tacked onto their healers for even bigger deeps. We know thats what they thought was going to make bard a major damage turret in 3.0, and nobody liked that crap. The only thing left really is what? 3 part spell combo's? My absolute most hated thing with the DPS classes, random procs that have a random chance proccing on top of that.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

I'd love to have healers based on Buffs/Debuffs vs shield/regen. AST can Buff, New Healer can Debuff.

But yeah why we don't have a short group defensive CD in Protect or Shell is beyond me.

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I know, right. There's an entire series of games related to this one the class designers may have heard of. Reflect, Bubble, Bravery, Faith, Bar-spells, Berserk, Silence, there's a mile long list of spells to take inspiration from. And yet 14's forums are filled with "Uhh, WHM is the one with Holy and Cure right? That's been their entire identity for all time and they never had any complexity, why would you shake that up?"

So responding to some of the points raised, we're at a bit of a crossroads with healers, as the concept of a pure healer in FFXIV needs to be basically thrown out of the game, as the only way forward for healer diversity is for all three to just embrace being a DPS/healer hybrid and have their healing capacity normalized between the three - similar to how all tanks can hold agro but there's enough other stuff going on with the tanks to make them feel unique and each has their own personality.

So bringing this back to the healers, I'm all for giving WHM something like Enochian, or some other buff based around lilies, where the WHM has to figure out how to do enough healing to maintain the DPS state, but if they can stay in the DPS state they will do the most DPS of the the three as WHM is already leaning towards being a selfish DPS healer. That gives enough room for AST to keep their buffs, but be balanced so that their buffs compensate for their lack of personal DPS. SCH should sit somewhere between the two as far as DPS goes, and a good dichotomy to draw might be letting WHM be the stronger single target DPS while SCH becomes a stronger AoE DPS. That also allows for better possibility of giving us additional healers as you pick different points on that line between buffs and personal DPS to drop newer jobs.

Hybrid is good but how they do dps is what should be different.
Whm gets more damage abilities for personal dps

SCH gets more debuffs which would make the whole party do more damage indirectly

AST gets buffs which make the whole party do more damage

All three would be viable

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Originally Posted by glamazon

Hybrid is good but how they do dps is what should be different.
Whm gets more damage abilities for personal dps

SCH gets more debuffs which would make the whole party do more damage indirectly

AST gets buffs which make the whole party do more damage

All three would be viable

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The issue with this is that to balance it between 4/8man is very difficult because dungeons and raids are very different.

When you only have one healer in a dungeon you'd want it to be a WHM because if the other two are tuned around buffing party dps in what would be a single target, 8 player situation they aren't going to hold up in the jumps between AoE and ST in a dungeon nearly as well as raw WHM numbers.

Part of this is offset right now by WHM having the weakest potency AoE ability and even with that in mind the max dps contribution of WHM in Hero's Gauntlet is 3k above SCH and 4k above AST. If you grow that gap too far you'll be back in ARR dsys where they were kicking SCHs from dungeons because WHM was that much better.

Buffs/debuffs are just really unreliable. I say this as essentially an AST main at this point. The crux of part of your own contribution being reliant on that of other players is that the other players be... like at the very least not dumpster fires.

I dunno if you're aware but a good portion of players, especially in DF content, are kinda dumpster fires. No real rotation, dps below a tank or healer... it hurts to be spending cards on myself and the tank in expert roulette but more often than it should be that's the efficent choice for me.

So no, I dont want to exacerbate the current personal dps v rDPS contribution thing. It leads to bad places.

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Originally Posted by Veis_Alveare

So no, I dont want to exacerbate the current personal dps v rDPS contribution thing. It leads to bad places.

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Fair, and that circles around to my point earlier: so if we've (relatively) normalized damage output, and normalized healing output, and returned to something approximating earlier AST and SCH design......... why would you ever bring the red headed stepchild who at this point has zero utility for no reason? I realize you didn't make this point, but I think it illustrates what I was saying before. The moment WHM personal damage enters the chat, the other two healers complain. WHM has to get a specialty that's actually useful. If it's not utility of any stripe or doing more damage, it's going to be exactly what it was before. Overhealer of the year.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

Fair, and that circles around to my point earlier: so if we've (relatively) normalized damage output, and normalized healing output, and returned to something approximating earlier AST and SCH design......... why would you ever bring the red headed stepchild who at this point has zero utility for no reason? I realize you didn't make this point, but I think it illustrates what I was saying before. The moment WHM personal damage enters the chat, the other two healers complain. WHM has to get a specialty that's actually useful. If it's not utility of any stripe or doing more damage, it's going to be exactly what it was before. Overhealer of the year.

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But why can't all the healers just have utility? Like it doesn't take gigabrain coordination to press Chain Stratagem every two minutes, I think even the bad WHM players could cope if they had to use an occasional buff on someone. Give them Bravery and Faith with some % damage increase and nerf their personal dps a bit.

Boom, now each healer is somewhat reliant on the party for their dps.

I think people are way too caught up in job "identity" as if everyone needs a whole gimmick or they're all the same. No one needs to be "the buffer" or "a shield healer" especially since (as we learned from the HoT/shield dichotomy) that just doesn't function in practice.

AST has a very similar kit to WHM with exact spell parallels for most of its GCD heals... but playing AST feels nothing like playing WHM and a lot of that doesn't come from it's "identity" being cards but rather from the actual way it plays - faster cast times for greater mobility, more and more frequent oGCD heals as you level... those are the things that make AST feel good to play.

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Originally Posted by Veis_Alveare

But why can't all the healers just have utility?

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You'll get nothing but thunderous agreement from me.

But Square Enix and generous portions of this forum think giving WHM utility is rocket surgery beyond the feeble minds of poor overworked White Mages. One of the three "has" to have no utility. It's WHM's "identity" to have no utility. It's a design corner the healer dynamic is painted into through nothing more than sheer, total refusal to give WHM an identity. I've said ever since Shadowbringers dropped that THIS is the ugly elephant in the room that will prevent healing design from leaving the trap it's entered as long as it goes unaddressed. Because current healing design is the only logical conclusion to the contradictory paradigms that go into current healing design.

If A) All healers must be reasonably balanced with respect to healing and damage contribution, and B) WHM cannot ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever have utility because reasons, what conclusion is there to be had except stripping all other healers down to a level as simplistic as the one we've defined as the mandatory lowest common denominator?

If WHM bringing the uncontested most damage (like BLM and the caster DPS hierarchy does it) isn't acceptable, and WHM can't have utility (for...reasons only clear to Square Enix), then the healers are fundamentally unbalanceable unless they're all three boring healbots. *shrug*

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

... then the healers are fundamentally unbalanceable unless they're all three boring healbots. *shrug*

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I mean not that I find AST as boring as WHM right now, but the Sleeve Draw nerf has definitely made it more accessible. I'm not wholly against that in theory but I think doing things like giving more oGCDs earlier, or even Sleeve Draw earlier, could just better prepare people for complexity instead of simplifying at cap because people havent managed to learn how to use an ability over the course of their whole ShB leveling process.

If that's what it takes to make healers fun again, then yes re-work them from the ground up. Because now, they're a boring chore to play.

It sounds like you guys want the healers to all do the same thing the same way. Why even have three let alone four healers if they play the same way?

Whm is fun but needs a couple more damage abilities. In face healing is fine with all three healers. The problem is that we need something else to do.

I k ow someone poo pooed my idea of buffs to others to give ast his dmg but this is a mmo not a single player game you will have to rely on people. I guess you can just run trust for everything if you don’t want to encounter less skilled players. You’ve already found a way to deal with those people so it shouldn’t make my idea irrelevant. It’s a different way to play and that’s what we should want right? Different ways to play healer.

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Originally Posted by Veis_Alveare

But why can't all the healers just have utility? Like it doesn't take gigabrain coordination to press Chain Stratagem every two minutes, I think even the bad WHM players could cope if they had to use an occasional buff on someone. Give them Bravery and Faith with some % damage increase and nerf their personal dps a bit.

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I'm not sure that would make WhM more fun though. Not that I'd disagree with it, I just don't think it's a major fix. Selfish dps can work, especially now fflogs goes by rdps. SAM is in the best spot it's ever been.

One problem with WhM is, being the no-utility healer of the bunch, you'd expect it to be great at raw dps and healing. You'd expect WhM to be the one to say "I got this, you focus on buffs/dps, I'll take the bulk of the heals. That's my specialty." In reality WhM is arguably the worst at taking bulk healing, with AST being the king, having ample strong oGCD's it can smoothly weave in, the highest potency aoe heal in Star, shields and even being solid at on-demand heals with a much cheaper Cure II, Medica II and Regen. WhM pays high taxes to heal. Even using a lily to heal costs a precious weave/movement tool and unexpected oGcDs cost 100 dps potency each due to the clip.

WHM's identity is strange in that Enix are stubborn it must have the weaknesses of being the least mobile class in the game, no shields worth speaking of and no utility but gives it nothing in exchange but simplicity and being good in dungeons.

I don't think it needs a full rework and high complexity, it's the most popular healer in the game so there's probably something in that. People like straightforward and effective. There's no juggling redraws for the same seal 3 times or clunky ghosting pets to manage. But it falls off badly in endgame because it lacks depth and feels awful to optimize and ends up being the trap healer for people who aren't that great at healing. It does need changes and they need to ease up on this triple weakness design they've latched onto because it makes it impossible to make the class fun.

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

...fun.

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God yes, to all of this post.

My bad if what I was saying came off as me claiming the addition if some arbitrary damage buffs would fix WHM, they certainly wouldn't. Even if they made Glare 400 potency and therefore placed WHM ridiculously ahead of the other healers in dps contribution the actual act of playing WHM would still be a chore. I'd do it, because I heal with a SCH who won't flex, but I'd hate it still.

I think the idea someone mentioned a while ago (or in another thread? I'm unsure) about giving healers (but in this case specifically and perhaps only WHM) an instant GCD filler that was around the same potency as Glare but costed more MP would be a really elegant bandaid to the situation we're in right now. It would take the strong MP economy of WHM and aim it at the biggest weakness it has (it's lack of movement and mobility) with a fun, flexible result.

It could even be expanded in the future to become WHM's gimmick. Give it a full cast bar DPS spell with a base potency of let's say 300 for now, a reduced cast time version (a la Malefic) with maybe a slight potency and MP cost gain and then an even more powerful and expensive version that's instant but that if you literally spam you'll just go OOM. Like 1k mp or something crazy.

I hate thinking "I'd love to give him DB for this buster but... Dia has 8 secs left so *shrug*" but that's where I am right now on WHM.

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

One problem with WhM is, being the no-utility healer of the bunch, you'd expect it to be great at raw dps and healing. You'd expect WhM to be the one to say "I got this, you focus on buffs/dps, I'll take the bulk of the heals. That's my specialty."

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That's one of the steps in the endless cycle. The others are:
-AST and SCH mains: but we should get more damage and healing as a reward for being more complex!
-WHM: benched because now they're just worse and have no advantages at all
-WHMs: can we have utility if we're not allowed more damage and healing?
-SE, AST, and SCH: NO WAY! We'll just change the tuning around it's fine.
-WHM: gets more damage and healing
-ASTs and SCHs: but but but that's not faaaaaaaair.......

And round and round we go.

I made a similar post like this on another thread already but i think it is worth mentioning here.
I think that a reworked System with Role Skills would be best for most, if not all jobs. The idea itself was good but i think it was poorly executed to the point where they simply just took the "why not just give the players all of them at once and be done with it?" solution. I am suggesting that Skills should be divided into 2 cathegories, Role and Job exclusive skills:

(using healers as reference for this)
-Job exclusive is self explaining, its about the Skills which are UNIQUE for their job. This is where the scholar keeps only his shields/fairy abilities (or maybe even utility spells which compliment other spells in a way like deployment/emergency tactics work), the AST maybe his HoT effects/time magic/geomancy (?) and the WHM his high level white magic (maybe even something like wind/water/earth based spells as well which would compliment the lore of the Conjurer class). The Skills in this Tab should have enough potential to keep the player alive in most situations and make every Job feel of what it is suppoest to be, instead of just having the same "cookie cutter" over and over again.

-in Role exclusive skills, every healer job in this case, should have access to skills which CAN be taken if it suits the playstyle, like low- to mid-tier White magic skills and some quality of life utility or even attack spells like mentioned earlier. You should'nt be able to pick them all for obvious reasons but a fair amount of them according to your level (maybe one slot every few levels?). Those Skills selectable in this Tab should have a good selection to choose from so that it allows players to experiment arround a little and discover their favorite job in new ways. Maybe even in the form of Skill Trees (similar on what WoW for example had back then)? maybe passive skills could work in a similar way or even be inplimented into role skills.

I am not saying that every Job should simply become a red mage here, but i think that having variety to choose from could be quite the benefit on the long run.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

That's one of the steps in the endless cycle. The others are:
-AST and SCH mains: but we should get more damage and healing as a reward for being more complex!
-WHM: benched because now they're just worse and have no advantages at all
-WHMs: can we have utility if we're not allowed more damage and healing?
-SE, AST, and SCH: NO WAY! We'll just change the tuning around it's fine.
-WHM: gets more damage and healing
-ASTs and SCHs: but but but that's not faaaaaaaair.......

And round and round we go.

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Exactly.

This is why we got the healers we got. 5.0 was the rebalance and 6.0 is going to build off it. Any new healer is virtually going to now play similar to the other 3 and will only majorly differ in aesthetics. This is by design so they don't have a headache trying to balance the existing bunch. The game's encounter design and battle systems (which are solidified and can't be changed this far into the game's life) do not allow much else besides the current style of healing if they want to preserve balance. Currently all healers are fairly balanced with maybe SCH being slightly behind but not by much.

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Originally Posted by Rai_Takara

Currently all healers are fairly balanced with maybe SCH being slightly behind but not by much.

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Go look at clear rate statistics for endgame content and come back and tell me that same thing. AST and SCH both having significantly less usage than WHM and AST being used half as much as scholar.

The classes may be balanced but they sure has hell aren't fun or worth it to play to the community at least. and I don't think anything they could build onto this simplified system could fix it, either start over from scratch or revert SCH and AST to SB and go from there.

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Originally Posted by Laphicet

The classes may be balanced but they sure has hell aren't fun or worth it to play to the community at least. and I don't think anything they could build onto this simplified system could fix it, either start over from scratch or revert SCH and AST to SB and go from there.

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Correction: May be balanced on paper, in practice they aren't. Both in healing and damage, the amount of effort needed to do damage consistently as a sch/ast is easier on account of the weaving opportunities afforded by the latter. The former meanwhile has no effort on healing.

Addendum: Whm should also build on its HW kit and fix the flaws it had during that era (no utility, still piss poor mobility) and combine it with the current shb lily system. The current kit has no mechanical depth to it, at least in HW you had self buffs to juggle and a few dots and, shocker, you had to use mp as an actual resource rather than it only being low after rezzing the alliance

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Originally Posted by Laphicet

Go look at clear rate statistics for endgame content and come back and tell me that same thing. AST and SCH both having significantly less usage than WHM and AST being used half as much as scholar.

The classes may be balanced but they sure has hell aren't fun or worth it to play to the community at least. and I don't think anything they could build onto this simplified system could fix it, either start over from scratch or revert SCH and AST to SB and go from there.

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I've looked at them. You make the silly assumption that: Usage =/= balance. Just look at DPS, NIN and SAM are top dogs, yet there are twice as many SAMs as there are NINs. Go look at the last expansion when AST was always better than WHM, yet you saw the same amount of WHMs as you did AST or even more WHMs than there are ASTs. Better yet look at HW where WHMs were dominant even though AST was better from 3.2 onwards. Only in 3.4 with Creator did ASTs jump in popularity because they were made overpowered and because it was the rise of parsing culture and AST was required for it.

The reality is when someone wants to play healer, WHM is the one that comes to mind. It's the simpler and less complex of the healers so it's a wise decision to start as WHM than it would be as the other two.

Anyone who played healer worth their salt in the past two expansion realized that the old healers had to be fixed and homogenized or we would never see a fourth healer.