Is it time to get rid of the PIE party bonus?

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Originally Posted by FoxyAreku

How about we leave it as it is because there's nothing wrong with it and this whole thread is mostly nitpicking.

Or we can have AST give mind when in diurnal and PIE when in nocturnal, that'd make more sense than anything I think.

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It is nitpicking, and the only reason it's coming up is because of the weaker AST potency and toolkit. One more MND accessory in stats won't fix the stubborn RNG of the cards, nor the high cooldown cost of it's niche skills. Giving both jobs both bonuses adds new questions, and new possible problems are created that could upset the apple cart in balance (SCH+SCH with MND bonus, that is a problem). Not to mention there will be more healer jobs in the future.

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Originally Posted by technole

It is nitpicking, and the only reason it's coming up is because of the weaker AST potency and toolkit.

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Astrologian and scholar are support healers, people seem to love to forget the fact white mage is the main healer and that simple fact warrants certain perks.

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Originally Posted by mp-please

Astrologian and scholar are support healers, people seem to love to forget the fact white mage is the main healer and that simple fact warrants certain perks.

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This is 100% wrong. They are all healers that each have a different focus and kit, mitigation and mana efficient dot dmg (sch), raw dmg/heal and excellent recovery tools (whm), and all I can really come up with is card utility for astro (and I play one at 60 too, really not much kit here).

The game is designed to have any mix of players in a group for success (so long as all the proper roles are filled). Problem with Astro currently is they are a bit under-tuned and are being looked at and adjusted accordingly..

The thing with buff can easily be fixed by simply having mnd be the default and pie trigger only when a second healer is present. That would pretty much solve the issue.

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Originally Posted by mp-please

Astrologian and scholar are support healers, people seem to love to forget the fact white mage is the main healer and that simple fact warrants certain perks.

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They threw that already-debatable meta out the window when they drastically improved SCH's ability to handle raid damage and removed WHM's exclusive Graniteskin and Proshell traits. Clearly they intend for all healer jobs to be capable as "main" healer, albeit with different strengths. They just didn't do so well at giving AST distinctive strengths.

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Originally Posted by Cynfael

They threw that already-debatable meta out the window when they drastically improved SCH's ability to handle raid damage and removed WHM's exclusive Graniteskin and Proshell traits. Clearly they intend for all healer jobs to be capable as "main" healer, albeit with different strengths. They just didn't do so well at giving AST distinctive strengths.

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Originally Posted by Alu79

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That's because this game is a MMO and every class needs to be balanced in some sort of way or everyone will play the same thing (or cry that one class is overpowered).
On every final fantasy game white mage/devout was and has always been the main healer with every other healing class sacrificing healing output in exchange for party support skills and that's what makes them support healers rather than main healers. There's 13 games before this one for god sake, get with the lore.

edit: and before someone picks on my line "this is a MMO", this is still a FF game, there's a legacy behind it that needs to be respected or the game will turn into another generic themepark rather than FF themed.

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Originally Posted by Cynfael

They threw that already-debatable meta out the window when they drastically improved SCH's ability to handle raid damage and removed WHM's exclusive Graniteskin and Proshell traits. Clearly they intend for all healer jobs to be capable as "main" healer, albeit with different strengths. They just didn't do so well at giving AST distinctive strengths.

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Yet we all know what is really happening when it's a WHM/SCH paired raid. That hasn't changed at all.

See the threads asking for WHM's 20y HoTs, this one for MND bonus, among other things that ASTs want to raid from the WHM toolkit. Now why is that?

AST is supposed to bring buff utility at the cost of potency, it's not reliable. The combo is kind of like how DRK negates the loss of the highest defensive tank (PLD) with it's higher tank DPS and raid utility skills like Delirium, yet with the most inferior immunity cooldown. Clearly one job is in a better position because it is reliable utility.

Sure, YoshiP did apologize for flattening stoneskin and proshell, but also on the same line said they made up for it by giving WHM more healing power. Sure, SCH can perform the main healing role. Albeit with Indomitability requiring Aetherflow and Emergency Tactics also being a cooldown. Is it optimal? No. But it can work.

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Originally Posted by technole

Sure, SCH can perform the main healing role. Albeit with Indomitability requiring Aetherflow and Emergency Tactics also being a cooldown. Is it optimal? No. But it can work.

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It can be optimal if that's all your party requires. By the end of 2.x SCH had largely closed the healing gap with WHM simply because of ilvl inflation (remember all the SCH>WHM threads after everything was on farm?); with the new tools in 3.0, SCH provides enough raid healing even at our effectively lower ilvls to fill the main healer role even better than before when necessary.

Anyway, the real point I'm making here is that "main healer" is a subjective label. All three Jobs should be viable in this role. As you suggest, WHM brings the heaviest healing with the fewest CD and resource restrictions; SCH brings heavy single-target healing and burst raid healing restricted somewhat by CDs and resource consumption; AST is clearly supposed to bring added utility for the party, but that's where they went wrong by making the utility fairly weak and by failing to grant AST a fraction of the useful healing CDs that WHM and SCH have.

It's basically like making PLD the only tank that brings VIT and the others bring STR. All it's doing is punishing healers since the bonus is about 30 MND and 20 PIE and the MND is about +100 to Benefic and the PIE is only about 150 mp.

Easy fix for this is make it so that having one healer gives piety bonus while having 2 healers you get piety and mind.

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Originally Posted by Lebannen

Easy fix for this is make it so that having one healer gives piety bonus while having 2 healers you get piety and mind.

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When I play WHM in a 4-man, I still want my personal MND bonus, however small. More Holy, more Assize! :P