Every problems with healers at 5.1

Nocturnal feels bad (still), and honestly the CU change is starting to feel more and more like a nerf. When it had a regen effect, that felt like a necessary (albeit weak at 50 potency pre5.1) part of the toolkit.

Would it break the game to give Nocturnal one thing that's objectively better (hot + mitigation for 15 seconds) than the Diurnal equivalent? On paper Nocturnal will look like "it gets more," but in practice and usage Diurnal's gameplay would still win out. The choice won't ever be, "which CU is better?," it's going to be "my cohealer is XXX, I'll respond by switching to the complementary sect." When I'm playing with a SCH, I don't miss my Nocturnal CU bubble. Whatever, that's covered. When I'm playing with a WHM, I still desperately miss and wish for the hot aspect of CU. It wasn't much, but it was all I had. Now, we don't even have that. Using CU as Nocturnal feels empty. The animation is over in a blink, and people get the buff icon... but nothing really seems to happen. No heals, and that unseen damage mitigated by the blue icon are... still unseen.

Sleeve Draw's still a mess for controller. The opener is either a targeting mess with needing to use directional buttons for selecting 3 players in the span of 3 gcds and the boss in between, or it's finicky with macros. I can't see a middle ground between the two extremes until the whole card system is examined from a controller player's perspective.

No mana regen/utility still feels bad. AST has a lot to do and it doesn't need another button, but there's got to be a solution, even if it is attaching mana to an ability we already use. What if Horoscope's second pop restored mana? Or Synergy was reworked to be a font of gradual health restoration for the target and mana for the AST?

I'm coming around to the position of "just rip out nocturnal since neutral sect makes it all but irrelevant anyway."

And the more that I play Scholar, the more I agree that the level 70+ fairy abilities feel really janky and/or marginal.

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Originally Posted by Corbeau

I'm coming around to the position of "just rip out nocturnal since neutral sect makes it all but irrelevant anyway."

And the more that I play Scholar, the more I agree that the level 70+ fairy abilities feel really janky and/or marginal.

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Nope, Seraph is the best thing ever to replace Rouse. It saves casting two GCD Succors in end-game fights where damage is constant hitting.

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Originally Posted by technole

Nope, Seraph is the best thing ever to replace Rouse. It saves casting two GCD Succors in end-game fights where damage is constant hitting.

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Honestly, Seraph is okay, and she is better than rouse, but not by a whole lot. I could take or leave her. For a capstone ability she's underwhelming. Honestly recitation feels much more like a capstone ability, it actually changes healing.

My problem with Scholar isn’t as much the dps; I can take or leave the amount of DoTs / Damage spells I have as long as I have decent ways to support the party in some way, offensively or defensively. I honestly wouldn’t even mind using GCDs on defensive buffs if they made them a thing. That said, I think giving Scholar some DoT spells with debuff effects and lower potency than Biolysis / Broil to compensate would be a nice middle-way between ‘more damage’ and ‘more support’. Maybe even with a high MP cost. I think one of Scholar’s biggest issues is that we have so many powerful oGCDs that we rarely have to actively work to keep the party alive. Not that this doesn’t apply to other healers too, but I feel it’s most apparent on Scholar. That said, I wouldn’t suddenly quit the job if they returned loads of DoTs etc, since it’s not like it hasn’t been like that before.

In terms of the fairy, I wonder if making fairy abilities work like Egi actions would make them less clunky to use. Costing a gcd, but with a stronger effect to compensate (though maybe keep Consolation off-cooldown to try and minimise ghosting. Or at least make it so that if you command the fairy to use an ability, the effect always goes off even if the fairy is in a transition between Eos / Seraph.

Seraph is really cool but I agree that the abilities could use different effects to make it feel more like an ‘upgrade’ than a shiny version of the original. Maybe they could even have summoning it give some sort of passive effect like Phoenix or Bard’s songs, thought it’d have to be super weak and it wouldn’t really add much to the ability.

Overall I don’t have a problem with Scholar’s skill set on-paper, but then you go into actual content and it’s like ‘I’m only using 3 of the abilities I have and the rest basically just directly restore HP in some way’. And then you soon realise that your healing oGCDs are powerful enough to deal with the vast majority of the healing, so you have a bunch of ‘heals target’ spells (and even some oGCDs) you don’t want to use, 1 attack spell you use every 30 seconds and 1 attack spell you use for like 90% of a fight.

I don’t even disagree with their reasoning tbh. I assume they wanted to make it easier to deal ‘respectable’ / ‘decent’ damage as a healer whilst still keeping the party fully healed. But then they keep healing requirements extremely low, despite designing the healers as if we were constantly going to be on the precipice of death.

Sometimes I find myself spamming Broil thinking ‘what should I do now?’ before quickly realising ‘oh, nothing’ and just Broiling some more. That’s the best way to describe my problem with Scholar currently


Addendum: they made such a big deal of ‘separating Scholar and Arcanist’, but we still have the same Ruin II spell we’ve had since 2.0. Couldn’t that have gotten an animation upgrade like Bio II becoming Biolysis instead of Bio III. I’m sure it wouldn’t be too much of a challenge to create a new instant cast spell animation for something that’s more tailored towards Scholar

Side note: I wish that the Summon Seraph button turned into the Seraph AoE heal+shield while she was summoned. It feels odd that those don't consolidate.

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Originally Posted by Connor

I think one of Scholar’s biggest issues is that we have so many powerful oGCDs that we rarely have to actively work to keep the party alive. Not that this doesn’t apply to other healers too, but I feel it’s most apparent on Scholar. That said, I wouldn’t suddenly quit the job if they returned loads of DoTs etc, since it’s not like it hasn’t been like that before.

[...]

Sometimes I find myself spamming Broil thinking ‘what should I do now?’ before quickly realising ‘oh, nothing’ and just Broiling some more. That’s the best way to describe my problem with Scholar currently

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Very much this. Healer gameplay right now is spam 1, use your CDs if someone's hurt, use your healing spells if you don't have any CDs available.
Each passing expansion makes us heal less and less, we have less damage options, less things to worry about, less interaction.

When was the last time we actually got new spells?
Let me see, WHM got Afflatus spells in 5.0, and... well, that's it.
In two whole expansions, we got potency boosts, less spells, and a metric crapton of CDs.
What does Plenary do? Oh, it makes it so you need to use Medica once instead of twice. Celestial Opposition/Intersection? They're just a free Aspected Helios/Benefic. Excogitation? Lustrate but better. Fey blessing? Free Indom.

I wish our new abilities had more identity than "this spell but free/better/faster".

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Originally Posted by Connor

In terms of the fairy, I wonder if making fairy abilities work like Egi actions would make them less clunky to use. Costing a gcd, but with a stronger effect to compensate (though maybe keep Consolation off-cooldown to try and minimise ghosting. Or at least make it so that if you command the fairy to use an ability, the effect always goes off even if the fairy is in a transition between Eos / Seraph.r

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After playing the new version of SMN, I honestly think this is going to be the best way to go. Some may not like it, but the current state isn't optimal.

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Originally Posted by Connor

Overall I don’t have a problem with Scholar’s skill set on-paper, but then you go into actual content and it’s like ‘I’m only using 3 of the abilities I have and the rest basically just directly restore HP in some way’. And then you soon realise that your healing oGCDs are powerful enough to deal with the vast majority of the healing, so you have a bunch of ‘heals target’ spells (and even some oGCDs) you don’t want to use, 1 attack spell you use every 30 seconds and 1 attack spell you use for like 90% of a fight.

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I basically called this the second I saw they finalized what they were doing with healer spells.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

I basically called this the second I saw they finalized what they were doing with healer spells.

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Boy, this thread did NOT age well.

I still remember all the "who cares about having two dps buttons, you're going to heal so much you won't even have the time to use them", I knew they were wrong but not that badly.

Can we get 4.5 back?

AST feels a lot better with the change to minor arcana and collective unconcious isnt a massive joke anymore. However its mp issues are still prevalent esp under noct. Diurnal still feels superior esp now you can shield under diurnal with celestial intersection.

Still the encounter design makes both tanking and healing boring. It feels like they lowered the bar so much for both roles they equally come up as adventurer in need now.