Fixing Every Healer Job

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Originally Posted by Marxam

WHM is admittedly the hardest to come up with something but honestly there's no reason for at least one job in each role to be simple and exemplify what the role is, i.e. healing. WHM in EW is plain as jane but the healing it does is excellent and when it does dmg it does it big. So WHM probably doesn't need to change outside of QoL's. Maybe reintroduce cleric stance

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I disagree. As stated earlier, you can't say a system is bad but advocate to keep it, it defeats the argument of making adjustments because, "if it works, why fix it?"; If it works for 1 healer, why make adjustments to the others? The other healers already have more to micromanage than WHM and considering that WHM and SGE are considered the "selfish" healers, offering no utility other than Damage, shouldn't their Damage Rotations actually be more advance to justify having more DPS than AST/SCH? There needs to be a level of effort from all Healers in order to not only make them more engaging but to also justify why you should bring X over Y other than "it's easier to play" since then, people will just complain about how the more complex role should be better than the simple job, as it had been in the past.

It doesn't have to be complex to the extent of something like SAM but should at least have a skill ceiling that doesn't touch the skill floor.

Personally the barest minimum number of dps related buttons a healer should get for single target is 4-6 depending on the healer.

On something like Astro, keep Malefic & combust, and from there add a dps version of Macrocosmos around the HW leveling range, and make it time delayed and have it deal more damage the longer you wait on it. Heck in general just lean more on AST whole delayed burst.

For WHM you could do something like adding in Water as a spell, perhaps as an ogcd with a short 15-20 second cooldown with stacks to finally round out the six elemental spells. (Seriously why is water as an element so shafted in this game) Perhaps add in BLM and it’s thundercloud system for Aero to further play up how their counterparts of one another. From there you could add Cleric stance that allows you to use Tornado, Quake and Flood as actually spells that feel and look stronger to use.

SCH could bring back its many dots and shadowflare, though it would need its many healing buttons consolidated because I have three full hotbars already.

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Originally Posted by CasterSvarog

Personally the barest minimum number of dps related buttons a healer should get for single target is 4-6 depending on the healer.

On something like Astro, keep Malefic & combust, and from there add a dps version of Macrocosmos around the HW leveling range, and make it time delayed and have it deal more damage the longer you wait on it. Heck in general just lean more on AST whole delayed burst.

For WHM you could do something like adding in Water as a spell, perhaps as an ogcd with a short 15-20 second cooldown with stacks to finally round out the six elemental spells. (Seriously why is water as an element so shafted in this game) Perhaps add in BLM and it’s thundercloud system for Aero to further play up how their counterparts of one another. From there you could add Cleric stance that allows you to use Tornado, Quake and Flood as actually spells that feel and look stronger to use.

SCH could bring back its many dots and shadowflare, though it would need its many healing buttons consolidated because I have three full hotbars already.

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See, I'd love to believe that they're leaning White Mage away from the elemental attacks to make room for Geomancer being the next magical DPS who will inherit those attacks, but we'll see... If they're not though, yes, bring them back! We're really lacking in all kinds of classic FF elements ever since White Mage became Light Mage.

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Originally Posted by Silver-Strider

Why not have the Fairy Gauge work sort of like BRD's Soul Gauge then?
Have Bio and Miasma have a chance of building up the gauge by 5 points per tic, with Broil also granting 5 gauge and having each Fairy ability cost 25/50 gauge to use with the SCH starting off with a full gauge.
Dissipation would need to be reworked for it to function but it could work.

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Yeah honestly having the Fairy Gauge tied to Aetherflow is just a clunky idea overall, but folks here didn't seem to like the idea of a passive resource gain, and I think having it apply to the DoTs would be too much RNG. I'd rather they just scrapped Fey Union at this point and turn the gauge into a support tool. Let it give out buffs instead of having it be just a resource for an interruptible tether heal running off of other healing...

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Originally Posted by SirShady

Fae gauge

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Yeah its an underused gauge at this point and they should lean far more into it with a hopefully rework of aetherflow

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Physis

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Yeah the buff is far from the most important thing but it just was one of those nitpicks that in the case of a full Sage fix I'd like to see addressed, there is also the question of relative kardia power in that physis vs the regen as if the regen is high enough to make the kardia buff loss not relevant then, Why is there? and if its a relevant lost then Sage is losing more than gaining.

The thing about the physis GCD is that precisely by adding it to soteria as the kardia for everyone Sage doesn't really lose any AoE healing Ogcd while gaining more strenght into the dps to heal identity and interactions with Zoe which I also consider another underdeveloped mechanic. The cooldown discussion I feel is meaningless firstly because those can be changed around in the case of a fix and lastly because physis is not even close to be the most used Sage heal, Kerachole is, and by a huge gap as its used close to on cooldown due to its insane power.

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Emergency kardia

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Probably didn't read it right then if its for the sake of the dps to heal go ahead, it just seemed you were treating it like an emergency only thing.

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The unrelated

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The whole shield vs regen healer to begin with is a stupid discussion to be fair, one of those things the devs "want" to impose to us while failing in the design departament

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Button bloat and the dps

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Here I disagree heavily, one can have a decent enough rotation without introducing barely any buttons and BLM is the living example of how with little core buttons there is a deep and interesting rotation relying more on passive effects, upgrades and traits than introducing brand new stuff to press

If you don't mind I'll try to do a (pretty flawed) example of how with your buttons imo it could be done using something I thought about time ago:

Dosis->Duodosis: gives addersting like you said.
Toxicon: spender of addersting, when used gives a buff stack that increases the potency of the next eukrasian toxicon.
Eukrasian toxicon: lower damage than toxicon unless buffed and uses addersting too, its use gives a stack that buffs Eukrasian duodosis.
Eukrasian Duodosis: lowest damage of the kit unless buffed when it becomes stronger than the previous tools
Phlegma: Also gives addersting

So you have Dosis->Duodosis combo that builds into Toxicon->E!Toxicon combo that build into E!Duodosis as the final spender, inbetween you use phlegma and keep the dot ticking
Of course this is flawed as it would give sage way too much mobility for example, potencies would have to be thought about and it may not interat well with the party buffs but stuff like that is what I meant by leaning into eukrasia more as it allows to have essentialy a double button for every new button that is added.

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Originally Posted by WaxSw

Yeah its an underused gauge at this point and they should lean far more into it with a hopefully rework of aetherflow

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Genuine curious question - why do people want the devs to make Scholar revolve around the Fae Gauge? Gauge in this game are all the same thing - they're build and spend. What could be done with "leaning into" the Fae Gauge that wouldn't be the same thing it is at the moment?

And why do you think that Aetherflow needs a rework? In my opinion, it works far better than Lilies or Addersgall do for WHM or SGE and it's way more flexible in usage and implementation.

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Originally Posted by Nizzi

Genuine curious question - why do people want the devs to make Scholar revolve around the Fae Gauge?

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its kind of a waste of a UI element. and i suppose people rather make it useful than throw it away i suppose.

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What could be done with "leaning into" the Fae Gauge that wouldn't be the same thing it is at the moment?

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maybe if the fey gauge was an actual resource, for example if AF abilities gave different amounts of gauge and fairy abilities each cost different amounts of it. or if you could use fey gauge to increase potency of fairy actions. or if fairy actions were more powerful the more gauge you had but you could spend a lot of gauge at once for something.

then again they gutted so much of the fairy that im not sure how any of this could be interesting when we only have Whispering dawn, fey bloat and aetherpact so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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Originally Posted by QooEr

its kind of a waste of a UI element. and i suppose people rather make it useful than throw it away i suppose.

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We shouldn't be doubling down on bad projects on the sole basis of their existing. Let's look at this neutrally:

Ignoring its limited spending options, since that's what we're deciding whether to change, the Fey Gauge at present...

• Is a builder-spender resource that starts from 0.
• Builds from Aetherflow spenders.
• Is decimal (stacks up to 10 contributions' worth of charge -- i.e., takes until just over 120 seconds into the fight, or about 3 minutes of sustained combat, to charge) but appears centigrade for aesthetic.

Given that, the main consequences of typing additional spenders to the Fey Gauge would be that...

• They all effectively start on cooldown.
• They all compete with each other.
• They may sometimes encourage rushed Aetherflow spending -- likely on Energy Drain.

Put more simply, to tie Fey skills to the Fey Gauge would be to greatly diminish one's use of Fey skills unless met with a plethora of accordant changes.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Put more simply, to tie Fey skills to the Fey Gauge would be to greatly diminish one's use of Fey skills unless met with a plethora of accordant changes.

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i agree. if they wanted to make fey gauge interesting theyd have to make either it or the entire healing kit something wholly different since as it is its pretty much just taped with duct tape onto scholar.
i honestly think its "fine" because it gives some marginal nuance to aetherpact... (eg if aetherpact is simply a regen on a cd you cant micromanage fey union ticks. which you usually never need to anyways but at least the option is there).
i dont think it merits changing everything just to make this shoehorned gauge feel less out of place.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

We shouldn't be doubling down on bad projects on the sole basis of their existing. Let's look at this neutrally:

Ignoring its limited spending options, since that's what we're deciding whether to change, the Fey Gauge at present...

• Is a builder-spender resource that starts from 0.
• Builds from Aetherflow spenders.
• Is decimal (stacks up to 10 contributions' worth of charge -- i.e., takes until just over 120 seconds into the fight, or about 3 minutes of sustained combat, to charge) but appears centigrade for aesthetic.

Given that, the main consequences of typing additional spenders to the Fey Gauge would be that...

• They all effectively start on cooldown.
• They all compete with each other.
• They may sometimes encourage rushed Aetherflow spending -- likely on Energy Drain.

Put more simply, to tie Fey skills to the Fey Gauge would be to greatly diminish one's use of Fey skills unless met with a plethora of accordant changes.

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So make the Accordant changes that would allow the system to function. If they can change how the Lily System used to function from SB to ShB, there isn't really a reason they can't do similar to the Fairy Gauge.

Have it start at 100 Gauge.
Whispering Dawn, Fey Blessing and Fey Covenant cost 25 gauge, while Seraph and Aetherpact cost 50
Have your DoTs build up the gauge in a similar fashion to BRD's Soul Gauge but to help mitigate bad RNG, continue to allow Aetherflow abilities to build up gauge. Throw Broil in for good measure.
Make Dissipation grant the use of 1 Fairy Ability at no cost on a 90s CD.

Theoretically, that would work but SE would never allow it because they can't be bothered to put more than 2 brain cells towards healer design.

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Originally Posted by Silver-Strider

So make the Accordant changes that would allow the system to function. If they can change how the Lily System used to function from SB to ShB, there isn't really a reason they can't do similar to the Fairy Gauge.

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Lily didn't merely make "accordant changes" to the system's context and spenders, though. In fact, both were untouched. It outright changed the Lily System itself to something that had only the name in common.

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Have it start at 100 Gauge.
Whispering Dawn, Fey Blessing and Fey Covenant cost 25 gauge, while Seraph and Aetherpact cost 50
Have your DoTs build up the gauge in a similar fashion to BRD's Soul Gauge but to help mitigate bad RNG, continue to allow Aetherflow abilities to build up gauge. Throw Broil in for good measure.

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Okay, so now your 320 AoE heal shares resource costs, at equal expense, with your 480 AoE heal (over 21s) and your +10% healing for 20 seconds. Given that you and your cohealer would need to then do 3200-4800 AoE healing over that time to make up for the lost Blessing or Dawn... are you then ever going to use Covenant?

And, is it worth buffing Covenant to the point of being competitive with those other options? Is a heal being instant worth losing a third of its potency? Will there actually remain use cases for the alternate spenders, or have you turned them into non-options?

These aren't rhetorical questions, but they would need to be answered before just making 4 abilities newly fight each other for usage would at all likely be a good idea.

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Theoretically, that would work but SE would never allow it because they can't be bothered to put more than 2 brain cells towards healer design.

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Well, that's what we have people who actually play the game for -- the 0.1% chance that if they hand a completed enough vision to the devs on a silver platter, the works of more than just 2 brain cells might nonetheless slip through into the game.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Okay, so now your 320 AoE heal shares resource costs, at equal expense, with your 480 AoE heal (over 21s) and your +10% healing for 20 seconds. Given that you and your cohealer would need to then do 3200-4800 AoE healing over that time to make up for the lost Blessing or Dawn... are you then ever going to use Covenant?

And, is it worth buffing Covenant to the point of being competitive with those other options? Is a heal being instant worth losing a third of its potency? Will there actually remain use cases for the alternate spenders, or have you turned them into non-options?

These aren't rhetorical questions, but they would need to be answered before just making 4 abilities newly fight each other for usage would at all likely be a good idea.

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That depends on what else is adjusted really.
What if SCH's shields were adjusted to make them advantageous enough to warrant using Covenant over Dawn or Blessing? Say that Addlo now reflects back 140 potency worth of damage on hit, as an example. Most shields would be gone on 1-2 hits from a boss. Between the mitigation and buff to the shield granted by Covenant, if that was able to make it 2-3 hits instead, would that not be worth it? You get a small damage increase over Broil and both Covenant and Addlo becomes actually something to consider using, even more so if it crits. Obviously, you can't Addlo spam everyone in AoE situations so Blessing and Dawn still have their purpose, with Covenant being more as a way to mitigation and potentially gain DPS thru Addlo. Then, I already provided Dissipation to help negate the cost of a Fairy Ability so that there would be less conflict of usage as well. Finally, the abilities still have CDs so isn't not as though the abilities will even conflict with each other any more than they currently do, especially if we add DoTs and Broil as means of accumulating Fairy Gauge that resource management would be almost a non-issue.

It's a bit rough around the edges but still possible.

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Originally Posted by Silver-Strider

That depends on what else is adjusted really.
What if SCH's shields were adjusted to make them advantageous enough to warrant using Covenant over Dawn or Blessing? Say that Addlo now reflects back 140 potency worth of damage on hit, as an example. Most shields would be gone on 1-2 hits from a boss. Between the mitigation and buff to the shield granted by Covenant, if that was able to make it 2-3 hits instead, would that not be worth it?

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I like your thinking there, but unless an affected shield would otherwise have just barely broken on the second hit, nothing in the order of 10% bonus healing raidwide (Covenant), or even a Divine Seal (+30% Spell healing) for oneself is going to make a 50-200% increase in hits taken before said shield breaks.

More simply, though, I think you'd simply have to rework Covenant. As you'd likely want to do with Aetherpact anyways (e.g., to cost 10 gauge per 3s tick of healing thus provided). I'm also unsure if I like Seraph being on there at all, considering it grants more than 75 gauge worth of resource (the benefits, essentially, of all the other spender options) and thus becomes a non-option, a mere CD that at best has some (arguably wonky) margin play by which one can't use other spenders when coming up on Seraph's CD because the latter so outweighs the others' efficiency.

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Finally, the abilities still have CDs so isn't not as though the abilities will even conflict with each other any more than they currently do.

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That seems a cop-out, unless said CDs are at least less than they are now.

Imagine, for instance, if Lustrate, Sacred Soil, Indom, Excog, and Energy Drain all had CDs of a minute or more. Due to attaching Broil to its generators (I'd have to hope at a mere 5 per, at least, if you don't want it capping in under 20 seconds), your earlier spitball generation would cap the Faerie gauge roughly per 30 seconds, while likewise offering 3 actions worth (25, 25, and either 50) of spenders from cap. You'd be unable to spend the resource as quickly as you build it if you left no (nearly) CD-less options.

Or, more generally put... If the SCH can't leverage the situational advantages of one ability over its alternatives (or avoid being budgeted less advantageous abilities) beyond what it could before then why have the shared resource at all? If the system doesn't cause new considerations (i.e., conflicts and affordances), leaving us just doing as we did before, then it will be mere bloat.

The more i read those threads the more i feel like healers nowadays are just dps Players in disguise.
The real problem with healers is not the healers themselves its how the enounters are designed. Remove heavily scripted dmg, add more healing checks, make bosses auto attack the tank for half of their hp like how Bahamut used to do back in the day. Remember the coils how you had to stance dance between cleric to apply dots and normal stance to actually heal bcs bosses hit like a truck ? yeah that was engaging and skillfull. This becomes very apparent for me when i play a dps or tank class and most of the healers i get in PF cant even keep up with a mild heal check like the bleed from endsinger ex.

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Originally Posted by SenzorialBoundries

The real problem with healers is not the healers themselves its how the enounters are designed. Remove heavily scripted dmg, add more healing checks, make bosses auto attack the tank for half of their hp like how Bahamut used to do back in the day. Remember the coils how you had to stance dance between cleric to apply dots and normal stance to actually heal bcs bosses hit like a truck ? yeah that was engaging and skillfull. This becomes very apparent for me when i play a dps or tank class and most of the healers i get in PF cant even keep up with a mild heal check like the bleed from endsinger ex.

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I think most of us are more than agree with your point... but SE have already clearly state that they do not plan to increase healing requirement because they want to keep healing easy, relatively failsafe and accessible (and for me it only goes lower and lower...).

So since they won't change encounter design and our healing side won't improved, what remains is asking/coping to have a better dps side to fill the void.

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Originally Posted by SenzorialBoundries

The more i read those threads the more i feel like healers nowadays are just dps Players in disguise.
The real problem with healers is not the healers themselves its how the enounters are designed. Remove heavily scripted dmg, add more healing checks, make bosses auto attack the tank for half of their hp like how Bahamut used to do back in the day. Remember the coils how you had to stance dance between cleric to apply dots and normal stance to actually heal bcs bosses hit like a truck ? yeah that was engaging and skillfull. This becomes very apparent for me when i play a dps or tank class and most of the healers i get in PF cant even keep up with a mild heal check like the bleed from endsinger ex.

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Sadly that’s exactly what the game expects of us. You can see it as far back as Gordias and Midas with some more modern fights outright requiring significant amounts of healer DPS to clear enrage (E8S was probably the worst offender here).

This mentality filters down into comparatively irrelevant content in the same way that forced metas have in the past.

SE made this situation, not the player base.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

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Well, with Dissipation no longer granting a 20% heal boost, we could probably give that to Covenant to compensate and maybe increase the mitigation from 5% to 10%. I feel that lowering the CD of Covenant 60s would also be beneficial. Still might not be enough but since most "Heal" checks in the game nowadays are mitigation checks, it would still be a buff in that department to consider.

For Seraph to work on the Gauge, her abilities would probably need to be free to cast to justify it being on the gauge at all. Having her off the gauge, depending on if Consolation cost gauge or not, would still result in a 50 gauge cost for using Angel Whisper and Seraph Illumination so I don't really seem much of a difference whether she's on or off the gauge. Personally, I think Blessing should have turned to Consolation while Seraph is out but that would mean they'd cost gauge as well so I figured having her on the Gauge and just making her skills free to cast would be a good compromise but that's just me.

I imagine Fey Blessing is weak enough to where it could be lowered to a 30s CD without much issue; It's just a weaker Indom so I don't really understand why SE put it on a 60s CD to begin with, which is even more perplexing considering it started off costing gauge as well. Being on a 30s CD would allow it to be used more than Dawn or Covenant at least so you could somewhat stem the tide of overflow but Gauge generation was something that I was unsure of on the direction of which to go with. Originally, I was more for just having Aetherflow abilities no longer build up Gauge and just having DoTs and Broil build it up since that would generate quickly enough on its own that you'd always have enough gauge to continue using your fairy abilities without much issue. However, since I knew that newer players would be somewhat apprehensive to do much DPS when starting off, it would be harder for them to heal with SCH that I sort of haphazardly kept the Aetherflow aspect of it to at least help them out a bit, despite knowing it might be a bit more than could realistically be spent in that case. It was just a matter of, do I want to give an olive branch to new players, even if it came at some level of detriment to the design. Ultimately, I chose the olive branch.

Unpopulr opinion, I know, but I do not think healers really need fixing.

Having played all healers at max level, the only real problems I ever saw was that SGE sucks if your Tanks are terrible or super squishy (Kardion stops contributing to healing when you cannot DPS) and healing inbetween Holy spam for WHM feels clunky (give Holy the same cast time as Glare or make it instant cast).

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Originally Posted by Bonkleberry

Unpopulr opinion, I know, but I do not think healers really need fixing.

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Agreed.

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Originally Posted by Bonkleberry

Having played all healers at max level, the only real problems I ever saw was that SGE sucks if your Tanks are terrible or super squishy (Kardion stops contributing to healing when you cannot DPS) and healing inbetween Holy spam for WHM feels clunky (give Holy the same cast time as Glare or make it instant cast).

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Plus Holy's damage coming at the end of the channel, rather than immediately as is the case for Dyskrasia and Art of War, can be really annoying. I've been leveling WHMs to get my 5th and 6th characters able to enter the housing lotteries, and I've lost track of how many times a tank has dragged the mobs out of Holy's AoE before the channel finished.

Holy's stun is nice, while it works, but it doesn't make up for being able to move freely and weave heals in between casts, like you can do with Dyskrasia and Art of War. You can't run with the mobs as the tank kites them while spamming Holy.

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Originally Posted by Bonkleberry

Unpopulr opinion, I know, but I do not think healers really need fixing.

Having played all healers at max level, the only real problems I ever saw was that SGE sucks if your Tanks are terrible or super squishy (Kardion stops contributing to healing when you cannot DPS) and healing inbetween Holy spam for WHM feels clunky (give Holy the same cast time as Glare or make it instant cast).

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Playing something at max level isn't necessarily the same as playing it at a high level. Could you elaborate a bit on what kind of content you heal? I have played all the healers in expert dungeons, but wouldn't really feel comfortable offering any feedback on AST for example.

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Originally Posted by Silverbane

Plus Holy's damage coming at the end of the channel, rather than immediately as is the case for Dyskrasia and Art of War, can be really annoying. I've been leveling WHMs to get my 5th and 6th characters able to enter the housing lotteries, and I've lost track of how many times a tank has dragged the mobs out of Holy's AoE before the channel finished.

Holy's stun is nice, while it works, but it doesn't make up for being able to move freely and weave heals in between casts, like you can do with Dyskrasia and Art of War. You can't run with the mobs as the tank kites them while spamming Holy.

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Having what is essentially a hallowed ground every mob pack on top of fair damage is a more than reasonable deal.

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Originally Posted by SirShady

White Mage Changes
Aero 3 is back.
A lesser version of Blood Lily is now unlocked at the same time as Lilies.
Glare is now a part of a 3-hit rotation. The Glare combo reduces the cooldown of their new damage GCD, Bloom, by 1 second per cast.
2 charges of Assize. Assize now restores 10% mana.
Gave lilies a spender for when HP is not needed.

New White Mage Abilities
Bud of the Blood Lily - Level 52 version of Blood Lily. Less potency. Replaced with Afflatus Misery at 74.
Shine - Combos off Glare. Deals 310 potency and reduces the cooldown of Bloom by 1 seconds. Combos into...
Smite - Combos off Shine. Deals 330 potency and reduces the cooldown of Bloom by 1 seconds.
Bloom - 30 second GCD AoE with a potency of 400 and empowers the next Blood Lily by 10%. Can not stack. Its cooldown is reduced by 1 seconds for each cast of Holy II and Shine/Smite.
Aero 3 - AoE DoT.
Refulgence - The upgrade to Aero 3. AoE Dia. Has a chance to proc Blinding Refulgence, which works like Thundercloud procs, dealing the full amount of the DoT and reapplying it. This works for Dia as well.
Afflatus Inspiratione - Spends 1 lily to grant a 300 potency shield to all party members.

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I guess I'll just throw my feedback on the pile. In the quote, I've bolded the parts that I like. Criticisms first, followed by positive stuff:

Aero 3/Refulgence is okay, but it's not worth an extra button slot. It's just 1 button you press once after mobs are grouped up. People already use Dia on the first pack while running to the next one, and this would overwrite that for almost no gain. You'd just be replacing Dia spam with one Refulgence, and then you have nothing to cast while running. Besides, WHM already has plenty of AoE buttons (especially if Bloom is AoE).

Thundercloud only works on BLM because it's used for movement, filler during Ice phase, or DPS. Balancing those 3 applications makes it interesting. Thundercloud on Dia would change nothing: you would still try to reapply the DoT every 30 seconds.

Afflatus Inspiratione is debatable, but at the very least it needs to be weaker than that. At 300 potency, it's nearly the value of a Succor shield, almost for free (just 1 lily charge, and we have a plenty of lily charges nowadays). For Ultimate and early Savage prog, mitigation is very important, and this could provide an extra mitigation on every single big raidwide. I already think Collective Unconscious on AST is maybe too much mitigation for a pure healer, and this is better than that. Maybe it would be balanced at 200 potency, but it's still feels like an out-of-place ability to throw on WHM. It adds shielding output, but doesn't add interactivity in the kit. (Although it would make WHM/AST a more viable team, to match SCH/SGE. Not sure if that's good or bad.)

On to the positives. Misery is definitely crucial to end-game WHM gameplay, because it shifts a huge amount of power (and fun) into the lily system. As a side-effect, this also make WHM much more flexible because lilies can be used for movement. Making a version of that available at level 52 would help a lot. Being a little conservative though, I would say it's not needed until level 62+. WHM gets a lot in HW, and almost nothing in StB.

The GCD Combo into Bloom I think is pretty much what I would expect SQEX to add to healers. Because it adds a little depth/busywork for the veterans, but ultimately is not very impactful (i.e. casuals can ignore it and not lose much). Maybe that sounds like a complaint, but I think it's good because it gives veterans something extra to track, and you can get very precise about it, but it doesn't hurt much if you drift cooldowns or screw up the combo. (While using Shine/Smite, you want to pay extra attention to the Bloom cooldown, in case the reduction makes it come off cooldown early.) I'd just make Smite reduce the cooldown by 2 seconds to differentiate it from Shine.

The 10% blood lily buff isn't super necessary, but if it's a short buff (like 5 sec), it could be interesting trying to align it with Misery and burst windows. Mixed feelings on that though. It might be one-too-many things to optimize at once, and thus might be frustrating when things can't be aligned properly. I would want to test it before concluding anything.

Oh and I almost forgot. I've advocated for 2 charges on Assize in the past. It's an easy win-win-win. It can be used back-to-back for big burst, so it's fun. It would be available for healing more often (even when trying to use both charges in raid buff windows), so it improves the versatility of WHM. And it's easier to avoid drifting the cooldown, so it lowers the skill floor.

Overall good post, OP. Some of your ideas are crazy, but I like the initiative.

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Originally Posted by fulminating

Having what is essentially a hallowed ground every mob pack on top of fair damage is a more than reasonable deal.

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Other healers have more oGCDs to facilitate not needing Holy's stun. Power creep has left Holy as little more than a bandaid to compensate for the lack of oGCDs in the toolkit.

The "fair" damage is lower than both Art of War and Dyskrasia while Gravity is only 10 potency lower than Holy but has both a quicker cast time and is ranged.

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Originally Posted by Leonerdo

I guess I'll just throw my feedback on the pile. In the quote, I've bolded the parts that I like. Criticisms first, followed by positive stuff:

Aero 3/Refulgence is okay, but it's not worth an extra button slot. It's just 1 button you press once after mobs are grouped up. People already use Dia on the first pack while running to the next one, and this would overwrite that for almost no gain. You'd just be replacing Dia spam with one Refulgence, and then you have nothing to cast while running. Besides, WHM already has plenty of AoE buttons (especially if Bloom is AoE).

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I assume that SirShady's suggestion of Aero 3 would be as it was back in the day, aka it could stack with Dia. Timing it to land during trash pulls in dungeons was a pretty neat mini game in itself, especially if you didn't want to use swiftcast on it. I could be wrong OFC but that would certainly be my preference.

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Originally Posted by Silver-Strider

Well, with Dissipation no longer granting a 20% heal boost

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Ngl, I do not like the idea of a pet-purging ability doing nothing more than giving you a free pet ability when it comes back, especially when overflow is so high (enough for at least 4 spenders per minute).

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I imagine Fey Blessing is weak enough to where it could be lowered to a 30s CD without much issue; It's just a weaker Indom

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Again, even if you tie only Broils and DoTs applications to Fairy Gauge generation at half the current tick value, you'd generate 120 gauge per minute, enough to use Fey Blessing (which takes only 12.5 seconds' build-up) almost 5 times, while also further pushing Broil spam over heals (as Broil would now provide free healing that healing GCDs would not provide). You'd need to far more.

But the redundancy is also a significant issue. Do we really need both two Indoms (AF-Indom and FG-Indom)?

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Originally Posted by fulminating

Having [Holy,] what is essentially a hallowed ground[,] every mob pack on top of fair damage is a more than reasonable deal.

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This would depend entirely on mobs not progressing towards auto-attacks or future special attacks while stunned. If player behavior is anything to go by, they likely progress towards both. The stun would then merely delay readied auto-attacks from being cast, much like downtime does for us.

I.e., if one is stunned for 2 seconds with only 1.5 seconds left until auto-attack, they've lost .5s of autos; however, if they're stunned for 2 seconds and still had 2+ seconds left until their next auto-attack, their damage won't have decreased at all.

The same interaction would occur with special attacks, most noticeably the instant casts among them.

tl;dr:
Holy's total stun duration would need to have no gaps for it to provide even 7 seconds of complete damage mitigation (technically, still short of that, as any time until next auto eclipsed by the stun would not be affected).

On average, Holy likely instead tends to net about 3 seconds of trimmed autos from mobs being unable to use capped/readied auto-attacks, and briefly delayed castless specials, across the spam. Its utility value is both generally greatly overestimated and appears to come at cost elsewhere in the toolkit (in terms of bankability and modularity of free heals).

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Ngl, I do not like the idea of a pet-purging ability doing nothing more than giving you a free pet ability when it comes back, especially when overflow is so high (enough for at least 4 spenders per minute).

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That's assuming Dissipation would continue to dispel your fairy or anything of what it currently does. If DoTs return, SCH won't need the roundabout DPS gain that Dissipation currently gives thru Energy Drain so that it could be changed to do something else.

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Again, even if you tie only Broils and DoTs applications to Fairy Gauge generation at half the current tick value, you'd generate 120 gauge per minute, enough to use Fey Blessing (which takes only 12.5 seconds' build-up) almost 5 times, while also further pushing Broil spam over heals (as Broil would now provide free healing that healing GCDs would not provide). You'd need to far more.

But the redundancy is also a significant issue. Do we really need both two Indoms (AF-Indom and FG-Indom)?

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Looking at the average SCH on the forbidden site, they use Fairy Abilities roughly 20 times within a 7-8 minute fight.
So approximately 2.5 abilities per minute, meaning at minimum, that's 62.5 gauge used per minute and towards 112.5 on the high end of the scale. The average used would be 87.5 gauge a minute. 120 gauge generation a minute vs 87.5 gauge used per minute. Now, this is also not factoring in that Blessing and Covenant would have their CD halved, allowing for more usage as well. You could see an increase in usage go up to about 26-30 uses in a 7-8 minute fight. You'd be at around an average of 95-110 vs 120 gauge generated, making it just barely able to outpace the speed of being spent. Ofc, this is assuming 100% uptime. Any DoT that falls off or any Broil substituted with an Addlo/Succor drops that 120 gauge generated and do you think that your average SCH can have 100% uptime? Does every single SCH keep their DoT rolling 100% of the time or does it fall off for 1-2 seconds periodically? Does your average SCH not use the occasional Addlo or Succor? What about Addlo+Deployment on a mechanic? You used Covenant for a reason, right? Hell, just looking at some DSR data, you see SCHs using Succor and Addlo well into the double digits so why do you cling to this notion as though generating X amount of gauge per minute is somehow problematic?

It's virtually a non-issue, even theoretically.

I agree with the redundancy part but that's more a problem with Healer Design being over saturated to the nines with Healing abilities. Do you need both Indom and Blessing? Not necessarily but despite that, both skills are used pretty often enough to justify their coexistence.

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Originally Posted by Nizzi

fey gauge and aetherflow

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Its all personal opinion but about the gauge is mainly because it can give more depth to the fairy skills than only being limited by a cooldown. It could allow for a more interesting resource management, it would be build and spend yes but if properly managed it could lead to Sch having to think more deeply about the efficiency of the tools vs their effectiveness in the short and long term, allowing smart and efficient Sch to rely more on their pets than less experienced ones and as such giving a skill ceiling in the healing that is not simply "do not use X unless you dont have anything else"and because right now is used in a way that has very little impact on Sch gameplay when one could think that in a pet healer a pet related gauge would be something big. (I have an old example of how I'd envisioned that gauge in this forum that could give a better idea of what I talk about, keep in mind it was before EW tho)

About Aetherflow:

Because it does not fit the current game, the game is moving to a place where more free healing is happening than ever and Aetherflow in its current iteration only serves to punish Sch when used to fulfil its role. One could argue that it serves as a way to force Sch to really think about the way they approach their healing and while that is to some extent true the approach is very rarely something more deep than "not use it" instead of "use X instead of Y" is not that much of depth, if healing is a puzzle "do not use this piece that is core to the job" shoudn't be the correct solution that often, worst of all is that in relevant content the Sch is rarely the one paying for its own mistakes as is usually the cohealer who has to pick up the slack. One could also argue that is allows Sch for more dps depth but imo that should come from its own dps rotation and not from a tool that penalize it for healing, especially when once again, if the healing is not done properly more often than not the Sch is not the one paying the consequences

About the flexibility sorry but I disagree, Addersgall and Aetherflow are the exact same thing with the only difference being that one does not penalize the job that interacts with the system and as such all of the tools in it are used more frequently while the other penalize its use on any heal, look at the parses and see out of all the aetherflow how many are used on ED vs the rest of actions if they are used at all (Spoiler: Top Sch in P4s only use AE to heal once and left its cohealer deal almost twice as much healing as they did). The current Aetherflow design creates a dominant strategy within the mechanic of using it in ED in almost its entirely while Addersgall allow for its tools to have breathing room where they all can see use (Same argument with Lillies with the difference of not being so quite the exact same thing and its use being encouraged more as it makes the job not only more capable of healing but also allows for smart Whm to capitalize raid buffs).

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Originally Posted by Silver-Strider

So approximately 2.5 abilities per minute, meaning at minimum, that's 62.5 gauge used per minute and towards 112.5 on the high end of the scale.

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Comparing 4 separate CDs to a shared spender system is comparing apples to oil tankers. You cannot draw blanket stats from the less constrained to apply acontextually to the more constrained system. The whole reason for the alternative system is to add complicators, no? Do not then leave them out.

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The average used would be 87.5 gauge a minute.

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And this is why they're not comparable without simulative context. Neither 80 or 90 gauge are spendable values threshold in your proposed system, only 75 or 100 (any sums of multiples of 25 and 50). If one generates less than is necessary to optimize a given CD strapped to the gauge, the CD is now effectively longer; meanwhile, if a CD is far longer than can be spent on competing

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120 gauge generation a minute vs 87.5 gauge used per minute.

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But your free play area, given the superiority of Seraph (worth more than triple any 25-gauge spender), and Dawn over Blessing, is actually only whatever remains. They are not separate anymore. You need to simulate that instead of just drawing blanket stats from purposely different systems.

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Does every single SCH keep their DoT rolling 100% of the time...?

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If you're giving gauge per tick, even at 5 gauge per Broil/DoT tick, you'd then have a max of 210 gauge generation per minute. A mere 2 DoT casts per minute would already net you 100 gauge. And, again, that's after having already halved the generation from 10 to 5.

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Any DoT that falls off or any Broil substituted with an Addlo/Succor drops that 120 gauge generated and do you think that your average SCH can have 100% uptime?

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Mate, you are the one who made Fey skills dependent on Broil spam. (Or DoT maintenance; it's hard to tell now because you're still using the 120/min value, down from 210, despite implying that DoT uptime would matter.) I'm under no obligation to evaluate whether the constraint you designed follows your intent. And as you've yet to really lay out any gameplay intent, I would not be able to do so anyways.

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Hell, just looking at some DSR data, you see SCHs using Succor and Addlo well into the double digits so why do you cling to this notion as though generating X amount of gauge per minute is somehow problematic?

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If your argument for constraining a kit is backhand excused by DSR healing alone, that is Yoshida-level BS.

You have yet to present why making Fey skills dependent on Broil spam (and/or DoT maintenance) is a good thing. You have yet to present why constraining the kit is a good thing. You have yet to present why tying restorative Fey magics to boiling/poisoning enemies even makes sense thematically. You have offered no affordances beyond a higher available frequency of Fey Blessing (albeit at cost -- except not really, because it's somehow fine if the gauge has overflow thereby overtunes the kit in full Broil-spam scenarios despite undertuning it in intensive healing scenarios), or I guess now Dawn, too (except, at competing cost).

That's a lot of not-great impact you're waving off on the mere basis that "We need a second gauge (for the sake a second gauge)!" (Or, that we need to revitalize the Fey Gauge, no matter the surrounding impact, rather than just addressing Aether Pact (and/or Fey Blessing, formerly its AoE variant.)

Pretend there's no gauge involved by which to get pissed at a UI element being used on relatively little. What gameplay impact do you want from this?
Every shared-resource and/or builder-spender system will have, and constrain gameplay towards, its particular incentives. So what are you hoping to accomplish from these beyond just throwing more stuff in to the "Other" basket so that Aetherpact feels less lonely / in need of correction?

Because right now you've just got at most a slightly greater frequency of lackluster Fey skills, at cost, that now have to be mindful of the time-until-refresh on Seraph -- all of which increases the value of Broil spam and, at best, overtunes the kit in high offensive uptime scenarios while likely making it clunkier for many, especially in more healing-intensive or when in less optimizing hands.

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Do you need both Indom and Blessing? Not necessarily but despite that, both skills are used pretty often enough to justify their coexistence.

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They're both used because they are superior and free, respectively.

Using Indom to use one fewer Succor has nearly three times the offensive value (through an extra Broil) of Energy Drain. If Soil and cohealer scheduled CDs have already been used, and one still needs an AoE heal, it will be taken over ED + Succor, every time. Fey Blessing, meanwhile, costs nothing anymore, rather than being the AoE Aetherpact option.


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Let me clear here: I do not think there is anything inherently wrong with constraining skills to a gauge. But the result of that change must then feel better than what we have now, and I'm not seeing that here.

I even rather like well-made gauges, due to the affordances and considerations (well, more like timing-interplay) they produce. The primary affordance, naturally, is the ability to exchange casts per minute of one skill into that of another, favoring whichever is least wasteful. It's worth noting, though, that the ability selection almost never takes more than two braincells (three if the gauge uses different ST->AoE breakpoints than the rest of the given job's kit); it instead simply produces a matter of margining (having X gauge by Y time), which can easily degrade to bar-watching if the rhythm of generation is not intuitive / able to be tracked by muscle memory.

Thematically, SCH is sort of an intersection between ability selection (AF spenders, with ED nerfed enough to be punished almost threefold for any use outside of overflow) and ability timing. But does making Fey skills compete for resource give us more, of interest, from ability selection than we lose in separable ability timing and general feeling of polish (such as per responsiveness, or in our current feeling of having our array of tools that do not blot each other out)? And is making the kit whose performance already varies most with healing requirements vary yet more with those healing requirements... a good idea? I could be convinced, but at present it looks like the far simpler solution is to drop the Stormblood gauge obsession, just put a stack count on the Aetherpact button itself, and call it a day, and/or maybe put Fey Blessing again share those stacks as an AoE alternative.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Snip.

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I mentioned Bad RNG in my initial statement. Why would I mention that if not to insinuate that DoTs would not guarantee Gauge generation? I originally thought about it working that way but due to the number of variables I had to also consider (uptime, GCD healing usage, new players, etc) I figured that I needed to add a contingency or 2 in order to make the system work effectively, hence why Aetherflow and Dissipation were mentioned as well to add onto the System. I only stated 120 because that was your initial argument based on DoTs and Broil alone so I based my argument on yours. DoT uptime is still important though because, despite not being guaranteed, it still helps to build your gauge so ofc I'm going to mention it.

I'm not drawing blanket stats out of thin air here. I'm going based on what you can theoretically achieve thru actually mathing out everything.

In the 1st minute of P4S, you end up using Covenant, Blessing, Dawn and Seraph for a total of 125 Gauge usage. You cast Broil approximately 9 times in that minute for a gauge restore of 45 for a total of 20 gauge, with Covenant and Blessing being off CD already more than likely, and with a 15s gap to build up the gauge for Inverse Chlamys, you should be able to use both for it. Setting the Scene gives you plenty of time to build up the gauge to roughly 75 before any of the mechanics come out and you can utilize Blessing to help during them, while having enough gauge for Seraph again for the Bloodrakes after the 2nd Tank Buster. I could go on but my point is that I already mapped out fairy usage based off of when and where you would need it and when CDs permit, while using only Broil as a means of building gauge (because I can't account for RNG DoT procs). It could work, IF 100% uptime is achieved, which is not something I would force onto any player, especially during prog. DoTs, Aetherflow and Dissipation would all allow a level of leeway with the system so that a SCH wouldn't be screwed with it. So, in theory, you can absolutely compress all of the Fairy abilities into my proposed Gauge system rework.

The reason why I primarily built the system on DPS is because I sternly believe that Healer's toolkits should revolve around a gameplay loop of DPS and Healing feeding into one another. Your DPS skills help you to heal, hence Broil building Fairy Gauge, and your heals benefit your DPS in some way, such as Addlo reflecting damage so as to compensate for not using Broil. I don't really see it as constraining, at least not any more than SCH currently is with its conflicting toolkit.

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They're both used because they are superior and free, respectively.

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This is one of my problems with the current healer design. Why use GCD heals at all when oGCDs are so abundant, free and powerful? Shouldn't there be some level of trade off between them to make the choices not so black and white? In your example, Indom is not only more powerful than Succor in terms of healing but also in the fact that it allows you to use Broil to gain DPS over using Succor+Energy Drain and that it doesn't cost 1k MP. What is the benefit of Succor then? A last ditch effort for when crap hits the fan? Why are we content with that? Why is every single suggestion on how to "Fix" healers only geared towards part of the toolkit and not the whole job?

I admit, I have not shared my entire rework for SCH and without that context, some of my suggestions come off as impractical or, to use your own words, constraining but to receive this level of push back for trying to salvage a horribly underutilized system seems excessive.

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Originally Posted by WaxSw

snip

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In regards to the fey gauge, I don't disagree that it could allow for more interesting resource management, I just do not believe SE is capable of making anything literally anything interesting about resource management on healers; especially going into the second point about how more free healing is happening than ever.

I do want to say that I don't necessarily disagree that ED has a perception or feeling of being punishing, and that Aetherflow is very much a relic of an older game design for healers that doesn't exist anymore. In that same token though, I think the current game design for healers really sucks and because of that it shouldn't be removed. There's absolutely nothing interesting about the multitudes of free healing that is now present in the game to me; and while I understand some disagree, it's just so mindnumbingly dull that I can't bear it. It's one of the reasons I really didn't like AST in ShB, and it's why SCH is the only healer I find fun anymore.

Silver-Stride touches on something I really agree with and want to bring up here for the sake of discussion:

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Originally Posted by Silver-Strider

Why use GCD heals at all when oGCDs are so abundant, free and powerful? Shouldn't there be some level of trade off between them to make the choices not so black and white? In your example, Indom is not only more powerful than Succor in terms of healing but also in the fact that it allows you to use Broil to gain DPS over using Succor+Energy Drain and that it doesn't cost 1k MP. What is the benefit of Succor then? A last ditch effort for when crap hits the fan? Why are we content with that? Why is every single suggestion on how to "Fix" healers only geared towards part of the toolkit and not the whole job?

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This is what I find so boring about non SCH healers. Imagine a Energy Drain-less SCH. Why would you ever use Fey Blessing over Indom unless Indom just happens to be on CD? Currently, you always use it first because Indom has a DPS cost to it outside of Recitation. But without ED? It's just button bloat with lower potency on a longer CD. You can argue that it's pretty much just button bloat now (and I wouldn't disagree, really) but all of the free healing has just become "I hit [insert oGCD here] to heal and I healed!" Would an Energy Drain-less Scholar suddenly be healing more? Yeah, maybe, but is the content going to be tuned to actually require it? No, not at all, so we warp back to the age old thing that everyone claims to hate but always end up wanting - homogenizing something in order to make it perform as every other job does. (Of course, not implying that you specifically want this, but the DPS trade off is something unique no other healer has.) Personally, if they decide ED has to go, they need to get rid of oGCD bloat across all healers as well to necessitate us using our GCD heals more while also increasing our DPS rotation and depth. Nothing short of this will make that trade off worth it.

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Originally Posted by WaxSw

One could also argue that is allows Sch for more dps depth but imo that should come from its own dps rotation and not from a tool that penalize it for healing, especially when once again, if the healing is not done properly more often than not the Sch is not the one paying the consequences

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This is pretty much the reasoning that led to SCH's DPS kit being gutted in the first place, and I don't think the existence of bad players or greedy players should be even more of a reason to homogenize and neuter whats left of distinct differences between jobs that aren't base level paint jobs at this point. Don't get me wrong though; I don't really disagree on that either - but I think we both know that SE will absolutely not replace Energy Drain with anything that is more interesting; considering they seem to have a fear of even giving Ruin II or Energy Drain new animations, I sincerely believe they would make Energy Drain a 2 charge 30s oGCD with a potency of 150, separate it from Aetherflow and call it a day. That sounds exactly like the level of work they'd be willing to do if they didn't decide to just outright remove it and replace it with a fat whopping nothing like in the past.

Energy Drain is a non significant DPS gain to focus on purely, and I think Scholars who focus on ED, something that amounts to an 5% DPS gain if totally optimal in coordinated environments above healing are just bad players; I don't think this is a reason to remove it. It wasn't a reason to remove Miasma, Shadow Flare, Bane and Miasma II either even though there were Scholars that focused on that above healing as well.

Sorry if this comes off as just total Scholar apologism, I just really love the job. I don't want to see one of the things I find fun about it reworked with current job design in mind, because that spells nothing but death for things anyone likes.

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Originally Posted by Silver-Strider

I admit, I have not shared my entire rework for SCH and without that context, some of my suggestions come off as impractical or, to use your own words, constraining but to receive this level of push back for trying to salvage a horribly underutilized system seems excessive.

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While in isolation it's a good thing to salvage the dung heap, that is only a net positive in practice if you haven't worsened the kit on the whole in doing so. "X needs more stuff attached to it," is not a sufficient reason for a loss in overall quality, which seems the case --albeit slight-- here. Maintaining resource margins without a reliable/rhythmic element generally devolves into bar-watching; pair that with shared CDs atop individual CDs, especially without use cases for the otherwise inferior tools (e.g., Lustrate, at least, is the only single-target spender after Excog), and you're very likely to have convolution more so than complexity.

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I mentioned Bad RNG in my initial statement.

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Which confused me because you specifically mentioned Repertoire, which is based on server ticks during an ongoing buff, not a DoT, and, again, would push gauge generation to excessive levels (which your later changes to FB's and then FC's CDs seemed to indicate was not your intent) unless you removed Broil from being a generator.

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It could work, IF 100% uptime is achieved, which is not something I would force onto any player, especially during prog.

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But you can't have both the system have sufficient gauge under low-offensive-uptime situations and allow Broil to play such a large factor, as then you'd have tremendous excess in high-uptime situations.

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So, in theory, you can absolutely compress all of the Fairy abilities into my proposed Gauge system rework.

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Can =/= should. Again, that the system is not necessarily broken, in theory, isn't sufficient to make it appealing. What is its gameplay appeal? Is it just that one is then able to trade some of the frequency between Fey Blessing and Fey Covenant? Is it that Broil becomes more important? What's the desired impact on gameplay?

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Why use GCD heals at all when oGCDs are so abundant, free and powerful?

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But note that you are currently causing GCD heals to punish oGCD healing and having Broil provide yet more free oGCD healing.

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The reason why I primarily built the system on DPS is because I sternly believe that Healer's toolkits should revolve around a gameplay loop of DPS and Healing feeding into one another.

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And I agree with that in principle, but we're in a place where most content is already Broil, Broil, Broil, and Broil. Tying yet more healing to filler-attack spam, further increasing the punishment of GCD healing, does not seem a wise direction given the current state of healers.

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Shouldn't there be some level of trade off between them to make the choices not so black and white? In your example, Indom is not only more powerful than Succor in terms of healing but also in the fact that it allows you to use Broil to gain DPS over using Succor+Energy Drain and that it doesn't cost 1k MP. What is the benefit of Succor then? A last ditch effort for when crap hits the fan? Why are we content with that?

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I am far from content with the state of GCD heals. I am far from content with how Succor faces up to Indom, especially given how often (i.e., in all but the most healing-intensive content) Indom makes Succor a non-option rather than simply a fallback.

Heck, I'd still find it a problem if they were designed such that one could, with little loss in affordance, simply macro Indom atop Succor. Buttons should not only have a place, but multiple places should be decently competitive.

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Why is every single suggestion on how to "Fix" healers only geared towards part of the toolkit and not the whole job?

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They're... not. Many, many suggestions have been addressed towards their respective jobs as a whole, rather than trying only to "fix" parts in isolation.

Which is what I've been asking for here. If salvaging a particular part would worsen the whole, it's not worth having. That does mean that focusing on some small concrete detail --especially in a direction that would more constrain it, let alone further favor Broil-spam and further widen the performance gap of the job whose gap is already widest-- will open itself to more criticism.

That's not being "excessive" so much as simply a greater interest in the whole than on any part in isolation, since I do not see why a vestige of Stormblood gauge-obsession would be worth constraining the kit unless those constraints create a more enjoyable job, again, on the whole.

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All that brings us back to this point:

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I have not shared my entire rework for SCH

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As you've said, that context is vital. At the very least, though, maybe let us hear the intended affordances for gameplay, not merely for systems X, Y, and/or Z being worth having on screen (even if not necessarily increasing the kit's fun/affordances/consideration/engagement)?

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Originally Posted by Nizzi

Snip

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They need to adjust Healers in a way that makes the opportunity cost of using GCD heals not feel like a punishment and warrant actually using them. If they do that, then we can discuss cutting button bloat off of healers since then we wouldn't need 20+ abilities geared towards healing.

The question though is how?
Would Addlo reflecting damage work?
Would Succor extending/refreshing DoTs work?
What skills could be cut if we were to make GCD healing worth it enough that these oGCD skills would no longer be necessary? Protration, for all its merits, is scarcely used outside of Shield Cheese. Could the effect be consolidated onto another skill instead of being its own thing? Either Blessing or Indom would probably need to go? What about Lustrate? Between Excog being stronger, Addlo getting buffed to be worth using more and that Energy Drain exists to remove excess resources, would we really need it?
Speaking of Energy Drain, that's also something to think about as well. Could something be done with it to make it more utilitarian in nature other than just being a generic DPS button that we use to prevent overcapping on Aetherflow?

There's so much room to work with on SCH, it's mind blowing.

idk if it's just cause the AST changes are fine but it's kinda weird only like 1-2 other people have even brought up the changes besides me

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Originally Posted by pikalovr

idk if it's just cause the AST changes are fine but it's kinda weird only like 1-2 other people have even brought up the changes besides me

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Yeah it's a bit of a bummer cause honestly I think it's the set of changes I think are most reasonable and well thought out overall. I think it's a bit too much for most folks to want to read, honestly. It can be a little confusing to parse.

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

I assume that SirShady's suggestion of Aero 3 would be as it was back in the day, aka it could stack with Dia. Timing it to land during trash pulls in dungeons was a pretty neat mini game in itself, especially if you didn't want to use swiftcast on it. I could be wrong OFC but that would certainly be my preference.

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Yep! This was what I had in mind, so stacking Dia during pulls would still be your general gameplan, then hit them all with a nice Aero 3/Refulgence and get into your Holy spam, using Bloom, Refulgence procs, and Blood Lily when you can for max damage. Still a simple rotation, but a lot more room for optimizing.

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Originally Posted by Leonerdo

Yummy feedback!

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Hey Leonerdo! Appreciate you weighing in here! As Sebazy stated for me, the effects of Dia/Aero3 (Refulgence) would stack with each other, giving you a reason to use both in trash pulls. Perhaps having the proc work on Dia as well is unnecessary. I was just thinking it would give you more overall damage if you were keeping your eye out for it, and keep you from having to reapply the buff.

Oh yeah, I agree there. The numbers are definitely off now that I think about it. I was just thinking of a Lily spender White Mage's could use when no healing had to go out, and it can't be outright damage since then they'd be penalized for choosing to use the Lilies to heal, as is the intention. With how Bloom works to empower the next Blood Lily I was thinking it would be good to have Afflatus Inspiratione so that if you had lilies to burn you wouldn't just be outright wasting them.

Yeah, I thought about making Smite 2 seconds as well! I just thought that might be too overpowered from a balancing perspective, but I definitely see where you're coming from. The combo finisher should feel better outside of a small amount of potency gain.

To be honest I was just thinking the Bloom buff would be pretty generous. The optimization wouldn't come from timing your Blood Lily within the buff window, but spending your lilies wisely, but liberally so that you could get one off each time Bloom came back up for maximum damage.

I appreciate it! I know my changes are quite significant and would definitely throw some balance out of whack, but I feel they could be balanced number-wise while also bringing some much needed life/fun to the slog that is current day healing.

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Originally Posted by SenzorialBoundries

The more i read those threads the more i feel like healers nowadays are just dps Players in disguise.
The real problem with healers is not the healers themselves its how the enounters are designed. Remove heavily scripted dmg, add more healing checks, make bosses auto attack the tank for half of their hp like how Bahamut used to do back in the day. Remember the coils how you had to stance dance between cleric to apply dots and normal stance to actually heal bcs bosses hit like a truck ? yeah that was engaging and skillfull. This becomes very apparent for me when i play a dps or tank class and most of the healers i get in PF cant even keep up with a mild heal check like the bleed from endsinger ex.

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"healers nowadays are just dps ̶p̶l̶a̶y̶e̶r̶s̶ in disguise" Fixed that for you!

As much as I would absolutely LOVE them to move away from heavily scripted fights with little outgoing damage, at this point, that has become part of the game's core battle design philosophy. Every single fight is structured this way, a dance, and I don't see them suddenly changing their mind on how combat encounters fundamentally work. Trust me, if I had my way we'd have BOTH interesting kits AND interesting non-scripted fights that actually required you to hit your GCD heal buttons. That would be a godsend. Sadly, as much as I'd love to believe that the next major chapter in the game's story will bring with it huge changes and some actual difficulty, I HIGHLY doubt they will give up their incredibly digestible scripted encounters because they want to keep the game incredibly approachable for its casual audience.

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Originally Posted by Bonkleberry

Unpopulr opinion, I know, but I do not think healers really need fixing.

Having played all healers at max level, the only real problems I ever saw was that SGE sucks if your Tanks are terrible or super squishy (Kardion stops contributing to healing when you cannot DPS) and healing inbetween Holy spam for WHM feels clunky (give Holy the same cast time as Glare or make it instant cast).

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Not to sound condescending, but do you legitimately believe that all of the healer jobs bring with them a unique and fun "healing experience"? Because that's what this is about. They're all perfectly serviceable to do all content, sure, but that's part of the problem. They play it so safe with all of them that their kits are just about identical. They're scared of taking any kind of risks that might jeopardize the balance. Because of that, every healer job feels bland and same-y, and offers nothing in the way of stimulating gameplay once you know how to use OGCD's effectively. If the game is going to be kept so braindead easy through 90% of the content, to the point where we don't get to actively HEAL as healers, then why stick us with a 1-button rotation on every god damn healer job? It's infuriatingly stagnant and boring when you consider just how much could be done to make it better.

Even IF you're happy with the way the healers are designed, it's still a problem because they're ALL designed in the same exact way. We need some diversity, some variation, something to keep me from falling asleep on my 300,000th Glare/Broil/Malefic/Dosis cast.

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Originally Posted by Nizzi

This is pretty much the reasoning that led to SCH's DPS kit being gutted in the first place, and I don't think the existence of bad players or greedy players should be even more of a reason to homogenize and neuter whats left of distinct differences between jobs that aren't base level paint jobs at this point. Don't get me wrong though; I don't really disagree on that either - but I think we both know that SE will absolutely not replace Energy Drain with anything that is more interesting; considering they seem to have a fear of even giving Ruin II or Energy Drain new animations, I sincerely believe they would make Energy Drain a 2 charge 30s oGCD with a potency of 150, separate it from Aetherflow and call it a day. That sounds exactly like the level of work they'd be willing to do if they didn't decide to just outright remove it and replace it with a fat whopping nothing like in the past.

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I mean the whole "Sch does not heal so we gut its dps" was just an excuse they threw around to justify an unnecesary gutting, and a wrong one too as the logs showed how Sch were healing as much if not more as its cohealer in the top runs of the last floors of savage back then, while right now that argument holds true as the top Sch runs of both P4s p1 and p2 show Sch that are healing significantly less than its cohealer (and generally less too in the rest of floors but not that much, we know how the healing requirements are there after all...)

I completely agree on the whole SE does not give a fuck argument tho, that's why a lot of times I say that Aetherflow needs a rework but highly doubt SE is able to do a proper one.

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Energy Drain is a non significant DPS gain to focus on purely, and I think Scholars who focus on ED, something that amounts to an 5% DPS gain if totally optimal in coordinated environments above healing are just bad players; I don't think this is a reason to remove it. It wasn't a reason to remove Miasma, Shadow Flare, Bane and Miasma II either even though there were Scholars that focused on that above healing as well.

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Maybe its my parsing Sch talking but they are significant and to be fair if you don't focus on getting the most out of them you may as well be playing Sage at that point as ED optimization is the only remaining bit of complexity Sch has. The reason to remove is not because the damage they deal but because they are a tax for healing, the game is moving to a place where every healer has loads of free tools and Sch remains as the only one who has to pay to interact with part of its kit which feels weird and obsolete and even if its not much potency just the mere payment you have to do feels like much by mere comparision.

There woudn't be a problem if every healer had to pay some tax but the problem is that the payment is only for Sch and if they are goint to go that route I'd rather see them make the healing free and giving back all the lost dps tools and new ones so the depth increases without hurting the healing part.

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Sorry if this comes off as just total Scholar apologism, I just really love the job. I don't want to see one of the things I find fun about it reworked with current job design in mind, because that spells nothing but death for things anyone likes

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Its your opinion, for me the job died after SB when it got gutted so much that its dps healer identity was lost and EW put the last nail in the coffin when the ruin 2 optimizations for weaving were lost and actions that do not give/interact with shields, interact with the fairy or aetherflow were added, so thats why I want it to go back to its former glory even if it means changing some stuff to fit the new gameplay because Shb/EW Sch is not Sch.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Which confused me because you specifically mentioned Repertoire, which is based on server ticks during an ongoing buff, not a DoT, and, again, would push gauge generation to excessive levels (which your later changes to FB's and then FC's CDs seemed to indicate was not your intent) unless you removed Broil from being a generator.

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Perhaps I should have specified how Repertoire used to work and not so much its current iteration to clear up that confusion. I haven't played BRD much this expansion so forgive my ignorance on the changes that made it no longer DoT reliant.

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As you've said, that context is vital. At the very least, though, maybe let us hear the intended affordances for gameplay, not merely for systems X, Y, and/or Z being worth having on screen (even if not necessarily increasing the kit's fun/affordances/consideration/engagement)?

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I suppose that's fair. Just bear with me as it's far from being complete given that SCH has a vast array of gameplay elements to it, from the pet, to Aetherflow, to Energy Drain, etc. that I needed to consider and for all of my theorycrafting, I am still not 100% on some of the suggestions myself as of yet nor do I have ideas for some skills. The overall Goal was to reduce the need for our oGCD heals by both expending the DPS toolkit to provide some level of utility and to make the GCD healing toolkit work in a way that would benefit DPS but not handicap the healing side of things. There are some buffs to the oGCD healing side of things but there is also some skills that I want to remove.

GCD healing:
As already stated, Addlo could be given a damage reflection element to it. It wouldn't build up the Fairy Gauge and is merely a means of refunding the DPS lost from missing a Broil cast but with the added benefit of Broil granting Fairy Gauge, would that be enough? You're still healing the target so it's not as though you're losing Healing or DPS but it is limiting the Fairy Gauge from building so how to rectify that is still something I have to work on. I don't want to pull a Toxicon when Addlo breaks but making Ruin 2 turn into Ruination that matches the potency of Broil but offers 10 gauge instead of 5 when Addlo breaks is an option I've been considering.

Succor could be used for both healing and to refresh/extend SCH's DoTs. Since DoTs do help to build the gauge, being able to refreshing them wouldn't have the same problems as Addlo does and since Healer DoTs only cost 400 MP now, the true cost of the ability comes down to 200 mp as you save 800 from not having to recast Bio and Miasma.

Physick I am at a loss. Upgrading it to Addlo at level 30 is an obvious solution but then there's also the option of just making every healer's Cure 1 equivalent skill have an Esuna effect added to them. You remove 1 skill either way so they both work.

DPS:
Broil and Ruin 2 now offer 5 Fairy Gauge. I'm not 100% on the Ruination thing for Ruin 2 but that's still an option.
Miasma returns and stacks with Bio with both having a 50% proc to grant 5 gauge per tic.
Shadowflare returns as an oGCD DoT that lasts 15s on a 60s CD but instead of a Slow effect, it grants the Protraction effect to any ally that enters the Dome for 10s. This way, it can remain useful for all content since most bosses are immune to the Slow effect and it would normally be centered on the Tank since that's where the enemies generally are so that they can still receive the benefits of Protraction.
Art of War gains the effect of spreading DoTs but to keep the Fairy Gauge from overcapping, only the initial target of the DoTs count towards the Gauge generation.
Bane is added as a 15s DoT on a 60s CD that doesn't build Fairy Gauge but turns the ability into Fester. Using Fester causes Bane's DoT to expire but reduces the damage the Target does by 5% for the remaining duration of Bane's DoT timer upon use.

Aetherflow: I am honestly completely stumped here.
Indom is in contention with Fey Blessing and Succor now so would we really need it? Either Indom or Blessing would need to go but I'm more invested in keeping Blessing than Indom since otherwise it becomes harder to balance the Fairy Gauge unless I add a new Fairy Ability, which defeats the purpose of reducing the over abundance of oGCD healing tools.
The can of worms that is Energy Drain is also something that I can't really think of what to do with. SCH should have plenty of DPS tools now that it wouldn't really need it and if we're reducing oGCD healing tools, we might need to use more Aetherflow abilities more often.
Sacred Soil, Excog and Lustrate are fine as is.

Fairies:
Eos
Whispering Dawn now lasts for 15s with a cure potency of 120. 60s CD remains unchanged.
Fey Blessing CD reduced to 30s
Fey Illumination now provides a 15% Healing buff with 8% mitigation on a 60s CD
Selene
Whispering Dawn now lasts for 24s with a cure potency of 75. 60s CD remains unchanged.
Fey Blessing CD reduced to 30s. Provides a 380 potency Shield instead of a heal.
Fey Covenant provides a 15% mitigation effect with a 8% Healing Buff on a 60s CD.

Fairy Gauge:
Starts off at 100 upon entering an instance.
Whispering Dawn, Fey Blessing and Fey Covenant/Illumination cost 25 gauge.
Aetherpact costs 50 gauge and summons your unused fairy to the target to provide healing for 15s. This way you can use your other fairy skills without needing to worry about the tether turning off.
Seraph costs 50 gauge but Angel's Whisper, Consolation and Seraph Illumination can be cast without cost.

Misc:
Dissipation no longer dispels your fairy nor grants Aetherflow but instead allows the use of 1 fairy ability with no cost.
Alternatively, Dissipation and Recitation could be reworked to allow 1 free Aetherflow or Fairy ability usage with 2 charges, Recitation just allowing the skill to Crit over Dissipation.
Expendant is also something I hesitate to touch since it's still useful, even after the nerf but with the buff to Covenant/Illumination, do we need it?

Like I said, it's a work in progress and it might not provide the full picture of anything either but hopefully, it can at least give some context on my thought process.