I ask the same questions and don’t really get specifics either. I see allot of forum post always talk about how amazing the healers were in SB and yes obviously they have been homogenized but I always ask what do they want and all I get is more dps options or more support/utility and then others say no and no one understands healers but no one gives better answers either. I’m just as confused as you are buddy lol. I think most of them are confused too and just following the trend of healers need more to do.Quote:
Originally Posted by Renathras
I did get a few good answers recently but still would like more specifics on what do the healer mains truly want from each healer. I’m very curious about this.
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11-23-2023, 12:08 AMSweetPete
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11-23-2023, 01:00 AMSebazy
I was always pretty scathing towards SB's healer incarnations tbh. 4.0 SCH was barely functional at any level of content, AST took a significant backwards step in usability and WHM being decent out of the gate felt like more of an accident by virtue of Thin Air being precisely what they needed a year prior rather than anything else they got from that patch.
In my eyes HW was peak healer gameplay:
https://youtu.be/BLGUMzl2cV0
I originally recorded this for a thread in 2017 and requested commentary on it. At a cursory glance my active rate looks pretty top notch, dot uptime is solid, I'm extending multiple cards and buffs, getting good cleric uptime etcetc.
Yet even by my own admission, it wasn't that amazing a run, I could see plenty of mistakes myself and others were able offer lots of suggestions to squeeze a pretty significant amount of extra potency in there too:
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post4123070
Despite how good that run looks today, it wasn't even close to the ceiling, it was upper blue from memory.
Even if you discount the sheer headroom for optimisation that we had in HW, the simple fact was that this gameplay was far more dynamic than anything a healer will experience in today's game. I had to adjust to the cards that were given to me, I was walking a tightrope with resources to the extent that 1 raise at a bad moment could leave me literally OOM and unable to cast and above all else, I was juggling a bunch of responsibilities, tasks and timers so even at the points where Alex Prime wasn't really doing anything, I still had plenty to keep me occupied.
The TLDR is that we had less power, less reach, less up front HPS, less mobility and far less resources to throw around whilst the act of doing DPS carried risks that needed to be managed in raid content.
Simply suggesting healers need more to do is a very fair point because when you boil it down, that's the crux of it all. I know full well I'm not going to get my cherished HW gameplay back, my demands aren't super high or anything, I just want something to think about and manage when I'm doing a snooze fest boss like the average 24 man this expansion. -
11-23-2023, 01:24 AMty_taurus
I really don’t understand where the confusion is coming from because the general consensus here has been largely consistent. Sure if you ask each person individually what they want to see there are different answers, but the overarching answer is, and has always been:
- Stormblood was generally a healthy midpoint between Heavensward and Shadowbringers—not too hard, but not too easy either. Now, there are some specific players who have waxed poetic about the complexity of Heavensward being even better and more fun, but still those players have talked about Stormblood being a good compromise.
- All of this specifically references Scholar post patch, I think 4.01 where Miasma II was returned and Scholar got some emergency balance buffs, and Astrologian after… I want to say 4.2? Is when The Spear was changed from cooldown reduction to critical hit. I’m on my phone right now so I can’t check with wayback. White Mage has never been praised for its Stormblood iteration by anyone to my knowledge. At most, I’ve seen talk about how some like the concept of the old lilies reducing cooldowns, but that’s of course the concept and not the iteration we received. That discussion is more about interest in the idea rather than actually requesting the change. Like “If SE didn’t give up on the idea immediately and actually tried to adjust it, it could’ve looked like this.”
- As for what people believe the healers need in order to fix their issues, naturally when we talk specifics, people are going to have different views and ideas. But again, generally speaking, the answer is D: all of the above. What would make healers fantastic would be: unique, modest DPS actions that amount to more than one spam and one DoT, debloating the healing kits of their excess free healing, make the healing actions kept offer more flexibility and interactivity, making adjustments to encounter design and non-healer sustain to go back to the balance between DPS and healing healers used to have, provide unique forms of utility for different healers that compliments their identities and gives them more defined strengths, and finding ways to connect all of these different aspects together into something that feels cohesive and rewarding when played well.
The reason why it generally comes down to discussions about DPS is being that’s the part of healer design that continues to be challenged by an even smaller vocal minority of players who are fundamentally at odds with how FFXIV healer design functions at a foundational level, and also because no one has any faith that SE will ever increase healing requirements at all both by not wanting to make fights harder and not wanting to take the healing away from the tanks. Just giving modest DPS rotations is a way to make healing not a completely miserable experience for those that have fought against the current healer design paradigm if that’s all we can get, but the other solutions would be appreciated too. -
11-23-2023, 01:44 AMSebazySorry to nit pick one detail, but I might as well get in there before someone else does ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by ty_taurus
I don't even think this aspect of things needs to come specifically from DPS actions, 3.2+ AST did just fine with a worse DPS kit than it has now IMO. The reason is of course that it had so much else to keep the player occupied with than it does now.
I'd wager that if you dropped HW's card play and time extension mechanics over the top of today's AST and balanced MP costs to give a similar economy as we had back then (Aka MP was plentiful but only if you worked for it, you couldn't just push shroud on cooldown and forget anything else), I'd be the happiest healer on the planet. -
11-23-2023, 02:35 AMty_taurusIn group content, yes. But some of the AST main players have said before that even during HW and SB, Astrologian’s lack of DPS made a lot of solo content very grueling. So even then, I’d say a modest set of attacks would be appreciated then as well. Solo may not be the focal point, but there are a lot of pieces of content where fun solo gameplay is welcome. Deep Dungeons, Eureka/Bozja, bicolor gem farming… Something you could do to remedy this would be to have a way to spend certain support resources on additional GCD DPS tools that give them much stronger DPS for solo, so it’s not as much of a chore, but during group content it’s better to spend those resources on support instead. But I think if you did something like just make it spent on Lord of Crowns, and make the lord a way to burn cards for solo damage, that wouldn’t be all that satisfying.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sebazy
You’d want something more intricate. -
11-23-2023, 03:14 AMSebazy
That's fair yeah, thinking back more, purely solo stuff as AST was pretty painful indeed.
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11-23-2023, 03:47 AMIDontPetLalasGrueling, yep, watching paint dry is more exciting:pQuote:
Originally Posted by ty_taurus
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11-23-2023, 07:43 AMJovakimSimple, the answer is Aero III.Quote:
Originally Posted by Renathras
Plenty of times I see people clamoring for that skill to make a comeback.
And to give you more, something that could apply to all healers: 18s DoTs and SB's Cleric Stace.
The 30s DoTs we have now are so incredibly long that, imo, it makes it easier to forget to refresh them. A shorter duration would not only break the monotony but would also give us more mobility, and more double-weaving windows.
The 5% damage buff from SB's Cleric Stance, albeit boring and unimaginative, would still be a little something to care about during burst windows. It would work perfectly alongside our 1.5s cats, well... except for current AST, too much to weave during burst windows. -
11-23-2023, 08:19 AMAravellI can give you a detailed answer of what I personally want from the healer role if that would help, this might be a long one:Quote:
Originally Posted by SweetPete
General things I want back from SB
I want MP management back, I want to think if I need to use something or if I can save it for later, we're severely lacking resource management after the simplification. I want more attrition fights and less dance fights, O8S is a fantastic example of a good attrition fight, DPS and tanks are the ones doing most of the major mechanics, healers are forced to heal through either being set to 1 HP (Heartless Archangel) or through sheer damage (Forsaken 2/Light of Judgement), we also didn't have many free tools back then, so we had to dip into GCD healing at times. I want party reliance back, we can use O8S as an example again, tanks during Trines are very much in danger of dying to autos unless they receive Palisade from the p.ranged or a Regen from the healer, parties should have to synergise to beat hard content again, not just do whatever in their own little world and just hope everyone else does the right things as well. I want the shorter DoT durations back, the DoTs being so long now makes them incredibly easy to forget and also fills all the DoT refreshes we would have had with more filler spam, contributing to the lame gameplay we have right now.
What I want back for WHM
I want the longer cast times back, WHM used to be the healer you have to think about movement for because they had the most to lose, I enjoyed having to think about where to stand in advance of mechanics. I want WHM to be the powerhouse again, I want them to be the healer that can counter stuff like Almagest in O4S, where they just instantly top people back up from near death.
What I want back for SCH
I want the choices of Aetherflow usage to matter again, Shadowflare and Sacred Soil used to cancel each other out, you were required to think whether or not you actually need that Soil or if you can just leave Shadowflare up and use the Aetherflow for Indom after. I want the fairies to do separate things again and also for them to be separate entities from us again instead of just being a delayed OGCD button, we used to be able to direct the fairy independent of our GCD, it made it possible to spot heal people who aren't the tank when they take damage and also useful to pop old Divine Veil without any cost to us.
What I want back for AST
I want unique card effects back, I want them to fill different niches again and be used to buff later cards if they can't fill their niche at the moment. I want to be able to use the card system for the entirety of the fight rather than be restrained to a very specific burst window where I drop all of my cards and then do nothing for the rest of the filler phase. I want the unique spell interactions that AST had with Celestial Opposition, where they could extend regens, card effects and also sprint. I want the cards portion of the kit to be capable of engaging the player for the entirety of the fight.
That's the general idea of what I'd like to have back from the SB era. There's other stuff I want back from HW too, but it's not relevant to the question. -
11-23-2023, 09:12 AMTheDustyOne
I laid out what I more or less want from healers in the suggestions megathread here
TL;DR
- More downtime options, preferably more DPS options
- Increased healing requirements
- oGCD pruning (or otherwise not having them as readily available)
- Kit interaction between healing and DPSing
- More interesting MP management
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11-23-2023, 09:42 AMSweetPete
Ahh I see. I’m getting an idea of what people are missing from healers. As I said there are no wrong or right answers here. I played back in 2.0 so I remember how things were back then and previous expansions. Healers are very different now. They seemed to have lost allot and gained nothing over the expansions.
I do miss cleric stance. It was such a unique and fun ability toggle. Especially when you quickly tried to heal after a raid wide and realized you were still in cleric lol. -
11-23-2023, 04:43 PMZairava
Adding my voice to bring Miasma, Bane and Shadowflare back into the picture, god I miss those on Scholar
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11-23-2023, 06:40 PMRenathrasCool. Would you please post that in this thread so we could get that discussion going? -> https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...ld-be-combinedQuote:
Originally Posted by Jovakim
That's more or less what I was thinking as well. Aero 3, shorter duration Dia, and possibly SB (not HW) Cleric. The only other thing I think really needs changing is Thin Air reverted and I'd like old Stoneskin back. Have it upgrade to Benison and that be a GCD instead of an oGCD.
This is honestly the reason I posted that thread everyone's so studiously and obviously avoiding ( https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...ld-be-combined ) and no, it's not "because we already have one", because as Noble pointed out:Quote:
Originally Posted by Sebazy
...we already have a thread on SCH, too, yet here is this one, and here people are posting in it.Quote:
Originally Posted by NobleWinter
In any case, that was the point I was making in that thread: What parts of the old kits could we take and graft onto the EW kits to make them into things people would like?
As you say, take HW's AST Card mechanics and MP management and overlay them onto current EW AST and you'd probably have a pretty solid Job.
Take Aero 3 and add it to EW WHM and you pretty much have a WHM that is better than SB's WHM in every way. Lower Dia to 18 sec and have a 1 min CD 5% DPS buff ability and old Stoneskin, and of course revert the EW Thin Air change back to SB/ShB's Thin Air back if you wanted to be really frisky. There's not a lot to change other than that.
SCH is really the ONLY healer Job that needs a lot of changes to get back to SB-ready, mainly because it was the one that had most of its abilities stripped out. WHM didn't lose much and AST mostly didn't LOSE much so much as they had things simplified (Cards) and lost peripheral effects to them. But SCH...
...which is why I say all the time the discussion should be about SCH, not about healers in general, when we're talking DPS kit changes/complexity.
The sad thing is, for all our arguments, we aren't that far apart on things.Quote:
Originally Posted by TheDustyOne
-Increased healing requirements? Agreed.
-oGCD pruning? Agreed (more or less; I prefer having weaker oGCDs that are short CD [30 sec] so we engage with them more often but where they mostly are augmenting/suplementing our GCD heals; stuff like Plenary or Emergency/Deployment Tactics)
-More interesting MP management? MP management AT ALL? Agreed. "Interesting" might be a sticking point, but choosing heals based on how much MP you have and trying to be efficient with expending it/saving it for emergencies is good design, imo
What we disagree on partly is probably interaction between healing and DPSing, but there's wiggle room here. Someone in this thread ( https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...mplex-DPS-kits ) brought up WoW Holy Priests, and looking them up, one thing I like is their Surge of Light ability where using any of your heals OR SMITE (basically Glare) could trigger a free, instant cast, MP 0 cost burst of your MP inefficient medium potency heal. Imagine if the Freecure trait could trigger from any heal OR FROM GLARE. That kind of thing...I'd like to see more of. And you might define Lilies/Misery as "interaction". Those kinds of things I agree with. I DON'T like "have to deal damage with these spells to unlock/empower this otherwise worthless heal" kind of stuff where heals are gated by DPS. For _A_ healer Job (SGE?) that's fine, but not for ALL the healer Jobs.
The only thing we disagree on is "preferably" more DPS options. Downtime options I'm cool with, but they are not preferably DPS in my book, and honestly, this is where the 4 Healers Model shines.
For example, a simple change to AST would be have Draw do 2x Malific's damage to your current target and then have Draw and Play be GCDs and then have the CD on Draw be 10 seconds. Now you've got a DPS neutral Draw/Play, less carpel tunnel syndrome suffering players, and you're throwing buffs out for 2 of every 4 GCDs. That's right, HALF your GCDs are now drawing a card, considering how to use it most optimally (again, pretend we have HW Cards back), and then playing it on the target or alternatively burning the card to boost the effect of a future card.
That would be a super simple change to AST that still has a lot of decision processes and downtime thinking/actions that aren't Malific, but your downtime isn't "more DPS options", it's "more buffing options".
As I've said, some healer Jobs having more DPS options (SGE seems a prime candidate, and SCH not a bad one) would probably be good for the game and players, collectively. But there are other options for the other healer Jobs and the players that would rather fill their downtime with other actions.
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For my part, if AST was changed like that, I'd play it a hell of a lot more and actually like it. I don't dislike AST's kit, I dislike it's oGCD burst APM and some button bloat and inefficiencies (e.g. why ARE Play and Draw separate actions? At least with Crown Play, they figured out that's kind of stupid...maybe because of the charges and something weird on the backend, but then Summon Seraph and Consolation figured that out...)
Would make some sense to have that done. And probably a bit more. Again, thread -> https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...ld-be-combinedQuote:
Originally Posted by Zairava
But yeah, having more SB DPS buttons on SCH so people that want more DPS complexity have their outlet for it would be great for the game, I think.
Uh......agree to disagree, lolQuote:
Originally Posted by SweetPete
I still remember doing the first dungeon in HW with Cleric on until close to the first boss. I was so flustered with "I get it's new content and levels and stuff, but why does everything hit SO DAMN HARD?!" then realized I had left Cleric on from soloing. It's like the forgetting Tank stance or Kardia when zoning in thing. Always hated that. Still hate that. I still think Cleric Stance is the most rose-tinted goggles ability in MMO history, especially since there wasn't much "stance dancing" and in practice you just were in or out of stance for long periods.
That said, I absolutely think there's room to have a healer Job designed around a mechanic like that. SGE with a mechanic like that would make a TON of sense to me, along lines people have proposed before where you have a set of buttons and using Eukrasia makes them heals while being out of Eukrasia makes them damage spells (e.g. a DoT becomes a HoT, an AOE DoT would be an AOE HoT, etc). If that was a toggle/stance, it would effectively work like old Cleric Stance did, just better since the Job would be designed around this.
As a super simple example, say you have Diagnosis (attack spell like Dosis is now), Dosis (DoT attack spell), Toxicon (AOE attack like Dyskrasia is now), Plegma (AOE DoT attack spell with a 20 sec CD and 20 sec duration). Now, if you go into Eukrasia stance, these become Diagnosis (heal/Cure 1), Regen HoT, Prognosis (aoe Heal/Medica 1), and AOE heal with a HoT (like Medica 2). Super efficient on button bloat, and also has the "stance dancing" element that people miss from ARR/HW SCH, and you might have some things that ignore it (Haima/Panhaima, maybe Taurochole) for emergencies when you got caught in the wrong stance, as well as Kardia healing as you attack (with a small/weak HoT if you use the DoT attacks) so that even in DPS stance you're doing some upkeep/sustain healing on your tank.
I'm not necessarily pitching THAT as an idea, but more saying that would be one way to try and capture that gameplay feel with a modern take that is designed around it rather than it being kind of a clunky add-on that doesn't work for some Jobs, etc.
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EDIT:
Adding to the above, Sabezy, something I saw in a YouTube comment:
So I'm not the only one thinking things like trying to work AOE abilities into the single target rotation - in my case, it was Holy, but kind of the same deal here with Gravity.Quote:
Include Gravity in AST single target rotation somehow. Pair that with the Job having unique cards again (they did so in PvP) you have a winner. No new dps ability is needed.
The healer jobs would benefit if the only “new” dps ability is to have their aoe abilities included in their single target rotation somehow.
Like, take Draw and Play. Make them GCD. Give Draw a 10 sec CD but no charges. When Draw is used, the next Gravity does 3x Malific damage. Rotation is now "Combust, Draw, Play, Gravity, Malific, Draw, Play, Gravity, Malific, Draw, Play, Gravity, Combust. It's simple, but much more involved than Combest, Malific, Malific, Malific, Malific, Malific, Malific, Malific, Malific, Malific, Malific, and less obnoxious than Combust, MalificLightspeedDraw, MalificPlayDraw, MalificRedrawPlay, MalificDrawReadraw, MalificPlayDivination, MalificAstrodyne. The cards are actually interesting, requiring some thinking, and you can substitute Play for Royal Road, and probably have some charges on Redraw so it's not one per Draw and you can play around with that, like DrawRedraw, Play or Draw, GravityRedraw, Play or stuff like that.
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Oh, for fun, here's a SB era SB video (have a WHM one in that thread, so thought I should look at SCH. Going to go hunt down an AST one now since...I actually really want to see what they had then):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czZVDtR7_I0
All that Miasma 2...
EDIT:
EDIT for post limit:
This I agree with.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sebazy
And the thing is, they've done it before.
As you know, I do fully advocate for SCH to get that kit back. Our contention is over WHM or SGE or something, but for what it's worth, I fully agree they could do things like Miasma 2. -
11-23-2023, 09:55 PMAravellWhile I personally enjoyed the thrill of Cleric Stance, it is an undeniable fact that the toggling isn't exactly smooth. There's plenty of cases where it won't toggle off when you tap it, then you mash it and it turns off and back on again, then your tank dies.Quote:
Originally Posted by SweetPete
There's also an argument to be made that it curbed the growth of new healer players because the button intimidates them into not doing damage. It's not exactly smooth design to have a button that blocks a player off from performing their main role. The move to damage spells scaling off of MND was a good one, though I firmly believe that they should have stopped there and considered it QoL and not kept going to the point of major simplification of the damage kits. -
11-24-2023, 07:26 AMSebazy
I've got no problem with AoE abilities getting worked into a single target rotation and I'm sure there's a wealth of ways it could be done. SB Miasma II played a huge part in restoring faith back into SCH amongst high end healers. It offered a ton of min max headroom.
The number of keys isn't the limitation here, it's CBU3's imagination and willingness to put some effort in that's the stumbling block IMO.