5.0 healer catastrophizing is illogical - Change My Mind

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Originally Posted by whiskeybravo

I'm not a healer main but trying to understand my healers thoughts on why they are upset. After reviewing and thinking as critically as I can, I can only arrive at the conclusion that it's really not all that bad - more or less it's just that people expected something different.

Much like the tanks got homogonized treatment in their CD rotation, healers got homogenized in their dps. They pretty much all have one dot, one spam and one aoe. They all do basically the same base potency with whm edging ahead, and I assume that AST lags a bit behind because of their slightly faster cast time? Either way, it is a dumbing down in a way but also balancing them in that aspect. It hurt SCH the most, but I think they will be OK outside of possible MP drain being too high if they want to spread Bio around before spamming Art of War.

Otherwise, AST healing kit itself is mostly unchanged or upgraded. Cards were simplified, as most people have stated you were always trying to draw balances anyways so now they'll be crapping them out left and right and get to manage seals or whatever else instead. It's not the end of the world.

Outside of obvious complaints about SCH being stripped of it's DPS kit, I think WHM has the next most to complain about. The 2 new heals should've been off the GCD. The charge time for lillies is 30 seconds anyways, just make them 30 sec CDs and it'd probably solve most if not all WHM complaints, at least a major one. Quite honestly I don't see why they haven't done something to consolidate the cures & medicas like most other 1-2-3 abilities get upgraded. I'm sure there's some logic behind it, but I haven't spent enough time on healers to know one way or the other. It's getting into a different topic altogether, but seems like it could be loosely related if it allowed to them to add other types of heals or support abilities.

In hindsight, it might've been better for DNC to be a healer because it would've allowed (or perhaps forced) them to make more interesting utility kits for the other healers to compete. Since they decided to make it a DPS, it seems reasonable to assume they didn't want people stacking DNC buffs with AST buffs and so forth, so they just gave them all to DNC instead. I'm not saying that's a good choice, but it's a somewhat logical conclusion to arrive at if we are just looking at the facts.

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I’d did the exact opposite for tanks before only pld and war ( shake is still a small shield) would reduce raid dmg and reprisal couldn’t be used a lot of times because the dmg source whas a separat entity. Now tanks need to react and work together atleast in random groups. For healer the exact opposite happened you just have 1 healer with more, less or non raid utility and that’s it.

I'm seeing a lot of knee-jerk reactions here. I'm not going to say they're unwarranted, but guys, we don't know how the meta is going to be changed until SH comes out and we see endgame. Everything comes down to one, and only one thing, will we have to heal more or not? Until then, all this unnecessary doomsaying and bickering does nothing but make the healing community look incredibly childish and petty. Calm down, think logically, and wait until launch.

My only problem really is the SCH AoE prune.
Art of war doesn't look like fun, and SCH as of right now is a lot of fun to AoE with imo.

Very good post and I'd like to directly complement the OP rather than joining the current discussion if you all don't mind.

For WHM's rDPS, people forget pDPS is part of rDPS, and if they're high enough they can overcome buffs. Misery is a great addition to WHM because it basically refunds 2 or you 3 GCD heals you've spent. And going by Media Tour number... a lot more GCD healing will happen from now on.

For AST: Everyone complaining complexity is gone while not realizing the complexity was shifted, not gone. Trying to lend a 3 Seal Divination in 10s at encounter openners will be challenging.

My only legitimate complaints to all the changes being... Nocturnal Sect still looking bad, maybe Disurnal+WHM isn't that bad anymore now that Neutral exists but still... They had a chance of empowering Noct throught the Celestial skills but they seem very week on their side (the death of manual embrace being the biggest buff to Noct really). SCH has simply too much horsepower in OGCDs and thats just not fixing the issue we've had since Heavensward, but if numbers are anywhere close to the test builds we've seen footage from, it will require a lot of tought and cooldown cycling (more similar to WoW healing cooldown management in that regard for SCH) which may be a good thing. Sacred soil regen is probably a bit too strong though. This last one isn't a complaint really? But I'd have liked to see a charge system in any of WHM actions, that's more of a personal wish more than anything.

The only complaint I see tossed around that is probably valid is how damage rotations got too simple but uh... I don't know, play a DPS frrom now on if that's the case. If you end up having to press a lot more healing abilities you'll be alternating from Damage to Heals more often to a simpler 1 spam accomodates it better, so now all we need is to see how it will play out in the field work. And for that, we have to wait.

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Originally Posted by zuzu-bq

For AST: Everyone complaining complexity is gone while not realizing the complexity was shifted, not gone. Trying to lend a 3 Seal Divination in 10s at encounter openners will be challenging.

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Excuse me ??
And even if this is the very little complexity left of AST, it's every 3 min...

But I agree with you about nocturnal stance & Sch case.

My issues aren't even to do with how effective the healers are as healers or DPS, but as how they are to play and what I like as a playstyle from a healer perspective. To me homogenisation is blurring the lines between what I felt made the jobs enjoyable and over time I think I've found myself enjoying being a healer less over time. Stormblood I played healer a lot less than I did for ARR or HW and I get the feeling I'm gonna find it less appealing in Shadowbringers, but I will be fair and give it a go to make a final conclusion on whether I enjoy it.

Healing already feels homogenised and they're homogenising the DPS more now. It's positive there's more Scholar shielding and I will see how that plays out. But to me the nerfs it has needed are to its actual healing output. This might be me speaking as a 2.0 Scholar, where I loved the fact keeping health up was harder but I could mitigate damage to make up for it and there were ways I felt i had to optimise both healing and mitigation, even in dungeons (because I could then weave DPS between). Even its DPS moves put debuffs that helped reduce enemy damage (and enemy healing) output. But these became less effective over time, particularly in endgame and ended up removed entirely. But I enjoyed playing Scholar like that. The other aspect I enjoyed was it's a DoT mage and now that's gone too.

Whilst I think it is good they've not forgotten shields are Scholar's thing, but I expect it's still gonna feel the same to play and having played all 3 healers, I've never really felt that much different when healing between the three from a heals perspective - some different flavours, sure, but it feels like there's a lot of "this is AST's equivalent of this" or "This is SCH's equivalent of that".

I would have loved to see more emphasis in Scholar's evolution in damage reduction through buffs and debuffs and use that approach to balance it rather than trying to balance it by bringing up its healing output to render White Mage's identity as "Healiest Healer" meaningless. But they're changes that already exist. To me, that'd be more exciting to play. At the moment it feels like they're taking away more things we like in their attempt to balance the healers.

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Originally Posted by Rai_Takara

I'm happy that the core healing kits are being homogenized. Makes it easier to balance healers and introduce new ones later. I don't get the doom and gloom though.

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Yes, we're all looking forward to the 4th skin of generic homogenized healer toolkit.

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For AST: Everyone complaining complexity is gone while not realizing the complexity was shifted, not gone. Trying to lend a 3 Seal Divination in 10s at encounter openners will be challenging.

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Calling RNG complexity...

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Originally Posted by Rai_Takara

I'm happy that the core healing kits are being homogenized. Makes it easier to balance healers and introduce new ones later. I don't get the doom and gloom though.

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Homogenisation shouldn’t really be seen as a good thing unless the only deciding factors for you between the healers is wether you’d want to see some pretty flowers, stars or faeries litter your screen while providing near-identical gameplay. How can they be called different jobs at that point, and not simply re-skins? Where do we draw the line between “homogenising” and straight up just re-skinning all the healers to fit a very particular and repetitive mould? It’s certainly the “easier” way to balance healers, but incase you couldn’t tell from the huge amount of general discontent, it does very little to inspire satisfaction or hype for many healers. You don’t get the doom and gloom since you’re likely in the minority here.

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Originally Posted by zuzu-bq

For AST: Everyone complaining complexity is gone while not realizing the complexity was shifted, not gone. Trying to lend a 3 Seal Divination in 10s at encounter openners will be challenging.

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In terms of APM maybe. In terms of gameplay you play two different seals and they pray for 3rd one that you need.
You're also forgetting that besides savage, there is other content in the game where playing AST will be trivial bordering on boring.

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Originally Posted by Cled-cat

Homogenisation shouldn’t really be seen as a good thing unless the only deciding factors for you between the healers is wether you’d want to see some pretty flowers, stars or faeries litter your screen while providing near-identical gameplay. How can they be called different jobs at that point, and not simply re-skins? Where do we draw the line between “homogenising” and straight up just re-skinning all the healers to fit a very particular and repetitive mould? It’s certainly the “easier” way to balance healers, but incase you couldn’t tell from the huge amount of general discontent, it does very little to inspire satisfaction or hype for many healers. You don’t get the doom and gloom since you’re likely in the minority here.

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Pretty much. I know healer balance is one of their big challenges, but homogenisation just makes them feel...the same. For a game series that has generally prided on job identity and there being wealth and diversity in its jobs and job system homogeny is not something that'd gonna be well received. I know the balance is hard, but there are other ways of helping address that. Given how they've approached balance here, I'm happier they didn't introduce a 4th healer, although I wanted one to be announced, because I'm not sure the team yet know what they want to do with healers overall. I think Astrologian's introduction was a testament to that back in HW when their solution to balance was to give it a White Mage stance and a Scholar Stance, because in ARR the Scholar and White Mage balance was in a really good place.

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Originally Posted by Ceasaria

Excuse me ??
And even if this is the very little complexity left of AST, it's every 3 min...

But I agree with you about nocturnal stance & Sch case.

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Thing is, yeah new system is simple. But so is the current one. So the current complexity that isn't really that great is maintained. Current system is just a mini card game, and from a card game point of view it's just a simple card fishing.

But yeah, they had a chance to try and fix Noct again and didn't. Neutral Sect will probably just consolidate WHM+Diurnal duos as the non-scholar comp.

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Originally Posted by Veis_Alveare

I can see that this thread has devolved into much of the same stupidity and overreactions that the rest of the healer forum is going through.

I'll enjoy it when you guys are thoroughly embarrassed come ShB but there's only so many times I can literally restate the same things over and over to the same group of people.

Your lives would likely be much happier if you spent more time rationalizing and less time bandwagoning onto whatever bad thing someone else said, then you could spend the next mouth preparing for an expansion instead of whining on the internet about things it doesn't seem like you're able to understand.

This isn't all of you but it's too many for me to attempt to wrangle so peace, I'll go back to crafting and leave you to your illogical death spiral.

My mind was very much unchanged.

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Just asking why would we want to change your mind again?

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Originally Posted by Veis_Alveare

AST Changes

[LIST][*]The idea that AST identity was tied to suboptimal card use needs to die in a hole and be buried there. You aren't an AST because you throw Boles on tanks, you're an AST because of mobility and timing. Short cast times on Malefic, Lightspeed being generally amazing, ED and Star being two of the best and most interesting healing CDs in the game; these are the core of AST's identity... and also the prettiest spell animations, don't @ me.[*]People are mad about the cards. People need to actually think about how the cards work now, the rework and which set of cards requires more thought.

Right now you fish for an AoE Balance and you'll toss a Spear in a pinch. Bole and Arrow are for Minor Arcana. You know what you're doing with a card as you see the color of the sign show up.

In the new system the goal in the short term is actually to Minor Arcana as much as you can since it gives better buffs, but since they're single target ideally you should know who is going to be doing the best damage in the upcoming 15 seconds within a given role. Standard comp is 2melee/2ranged so you've still got choices to make there even once you know what you've drawn.

While giving out as many Ladys and Lords as you can you still need to fish up seals for Divination so now it becomes a game of do you fish first? Do you risk burning something like Sleeve Draw on just buffing your dps directly or do you use it to secure a successful Divination? AST feels more like a gambler here and I like that. It also synergizes better with the idea floating around of a potentially meta comp composed of mostly selfish dps, something we haven't seen before.

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The thing is. Right 'now' Meta-players fish for Balance. In 5.0? Their now 'fishing for seals'.

The new system 'supposedly' cares which face of the coin you get so you can give it to the corresponding class (mele or ranged). But again.. meta-players dont care about the 'single-target' spell, they want that 'boosted' AOE spell. And how do you get that? you 'fish for seals'. There's not a single meta player that will not throw a mele-faced Balance onto a BLM if it gets them that 3rd seal they need to then use that 1 oh-so-helpful AOE buff.

The 2-sided coin we now have in place of a deck of cards is there simply to give you 'some' semblance of randomness, when in effect its the same exact buff.

The 3 seals are there to give you a mechanic to 'work for' in order to use that buff you 'really' want.

They could have simplified the entire thing into what it actually is by giving us 2 buttons instead of a flashy UI and a marginally complicated mechanic. 1 Button for the 'balance' buff, and 1 button with a set 3 minute cooldown that's the 'aoe balance'.

But.. the whole 'aoe buff' is what your saying is the new "goal" of Astro's correct? that its what they are 'based around' ? that its the magical buff that makes them Astros?

Every single party member can get a +8% Direct hit rate buff(which is essentially Balance i guess?), which lasts for up to 60 minutes, persists between deaths, + gives an added exp bonus. Simply by eating a Braised Pipira.

Why bring an Astro for its 1, single, buff. If you can get that same buff via a cheep food? Just replace the Astro with another WHM or a Scholar and make sure everyone in your static has the Pipira's.



That is what most Astro players are upset about. Vary few are upset about the HEALING aspect that got changed a bit. I like most of the changes honestly.

But the 'core' of what made us want to BE Astro's, instead of WHM's or Scholars. Has been torn down to the point of being no different then a food item being used.

Yess, everything in those post is exactly how I feel. Absolutely perfect and well thought out.

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

will we have to heal more or not? Until then, all this unnecessary doomsaying and bickering does nothing but make the healing community look incredibly childish and petty. Calm down, think logically, and wait until launch.

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Two things:

1) there is no way they're going to make healers heal significantly more than they do now. No way. Not in 90% of this game's content. Do you remember the community flipout over Steps of Faith and the Royal Menagerie? The skill difference between the low and high end in this game is a chasm. Do more than bump the healing requirements up a bit and the community will lose its collective minds.

2) Even if bizarro world comes to us and they do massively raise healing requirements for some reason (the media preview dungeon videos confirm this isn't true), and if the community Matrix-downloads some much higher average level of skill in the next month, the first seventy levels of this game and all the dungeons, trials, raids, overworld, and solo instances are going to play like Sastasha for all three healers.

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

will we have to heal more or not? Until then, all this unnecessary doomsaying and bickering does nothing but make the healing community look incredibly childish and petty. Calm down, think logically, and wait until launch.

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This is the exact same garbage trotted out before HW and before Stormblood.

The only real change to combat was that overworld enemies became more dangerous, so you could only fight one or two at a time. Barely anything else has changed in how the dev team approaches encounters for healers beyond adding new mechanics. The majority of players are not terribly good*, and healers already struggle to heal at times with our ridiculously overpowered healing toolkits. Increasing the healing burden will harm them a lot more than those of us playing at the high end, because we really wouldn't give two flying figs if we were pressing green buttons instead of red buttons. We just want compelling decision making and gameplay systems while doing so.

SE has just stripped SCH and AST's compelling systems (Fairy Management, Aetherflow Management, Card management, buff management) down to the bone (WHM still lacks one), while also stripping down what little complexity in DPSing all healers had which gave high end players something to strive to improve. You don't need to "wait until launch" to see this.

*See The Chrysalis, The Vault, Bardam's Mettle, etc.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

Two things:

1) there is no way they're going to make healers heal significantly more than they do now. No way. Not in 90% of this game's content.

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Healers are damaging considerably in Ultimate. The hardest content in the game.

https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statistics/23#class=Any

If you think they can bring up the damage floor considerably so people heal more and dps less when that happens? I've got a bridge to sell you.

I can't find the article atm, but in it FFXIV encounters were described as a dance. With periods of lots of things going on and periods of rest. That's where healers get time to DPS.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

2) Even if bizarro world comes to us and they do massively raise healing requirements for some reason (the media preview dungeon videos confirm this isn't true), and if the community Matrix-downloads some much higher average level of skill in the next month, the first seventy levels of this game and all the dungeons, trials, raids, overworld, and solo instances are going to play like Sastasha for all three healers.

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This. Hope you like hitting one dot and one filler spell in your downtime because you're going to be doing it from lvl 4 until lvl 80.

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Originally Posted by IttyBitty

*snip*

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Well said.

Whilst I think there is room for unseen variables and "wait and see" to a certain degree.

But when you know the jobs you play, the roles you play, how SE progresses the difficulty and battle systems expansion-by-expansion, then you've got a decent or strong idea of how changes are going to pan out. We may not immediately see how our jobs are balanced for what content there will be (as things like potency are subject to change and can depend on content). But of course, the issue isn't balance, but how the jobs play and what makes them interesting and SE has showcased this aspect.

Scholar is now even further from what I enjoyed about it.

Plus the thing is, the homogenisation isn't new either, healing has been more and more homogenised per expansion. From a healing perspective, SCH, WHM and AST don't feel too much different from each other at present.
Need mitigation? SCH has Adloquium & Succor. WHM has Divine Benison. AST has Nocturnal Sect.
Need a base heal? SCH has Physick. WHM has Cure. AST has Benefic.
Need strong single target heals? Scholar has Embrace + Physick (with Embrace AI controlled only now, we can use Lustrate still). White Mage has Cure II, Astrologian has Benefic II.
Need a HoT? SCH has Whispering Dawn and now Sacred Soil HoTs. WHM has Regen, Medica II, Asylum. AST has Diurnal Sect
Need an insta or emergency heal? SCH has Lustrate and Excogitation. WHM has Tetragammatron and I swear Benediction went off. AST has Lightspeed & Essential Dignity.
Need an insta or emergency AoE Heal? SCH has Indomitability. WHM has Assize and Plenary Indulgence (if lucky). AST has Earthly Star (if deployed, but can still be set off quickly in a pinch).
Need an AoE Heal? SCH has Emergency Tactics + Succor (or just Succor). WHM has Cure 3 and Medica. AST has Helios
Need a DoT? Now SCH has Biolysis. WHM now has Dia/Aero. AST has Combust.
Need to do Burst? SCH has Broil/Ruin. WHM has Stone. AST has Malefic.
Need to do AoE Damage? Now SCH has Art of War. WHM has Holy. AST has Gravity.

How well can each do the above? Considerably well. Except WHM probably weak in mitigation where SCH is weak in Regens, but both are effectively used in the same/similar context "people gonna take damage, this will keep their HP as they do".

Now the homogenisation has touched on DPS and others of healer gameplay.

Back in 2.0 SCH sucked in pure healing output, but made up for it in damage mitigation (not just shields) and you had to be smarter about how you did your heals to puts your output further. 2.0 WHM was great for pure heals. Both had means of DPSing, but WHM was burst, like a BLM and SCH was DoT based like a SMN. MP management was different, WHM refreshed, SCH used Aetherflow and Energy Drain. The end result the two felt different to play and had different benefits and strengths as healers, yet balanced enough.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

Healers are damaging considerably in Ultimate. The hardest content in the game.

https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statistics/23#class=Any

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I'm aware of that, and fair point. The angle I was aiming for was something more like: Large increases to outgoing damage are highly doubtful, but if they did it to Ultimate, the people who run Ultimate would likely find a way to adjust if it didn't turn out to be unclearable, whereas a leveling dungeon that couldn't be defeated by GROG SMASH MEDICA 2 would make the forums explode in a maelstrom much bigger than current healer outcry.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

2) Even if bizarro world comes to us and they do massively raise healing requirements for some reason (the media preview dungeon videos confirm this isn't true), and if the community Matrix-downloads some much higher average level of skill in the next month, the first seventy levels of this game and all the dungeons, trials, raids, overworld, and solo instances are going to play like Sastasha for all three healers.

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Man, this bears repeating again. So well said. As a returning player leveling a new Scholar, I'm cringing thinking of my Bane/Miasma but *especially* my Energy Drain being removed. In every solo thing I do in the open world, I'll just be spamming Ruin x100000 until I fall asleep on my keyboard. From a returning player/new player perspective, it's really a strange choice. If the level 76-80 or so extreme/savage content requires heavy healing and whatnot, I can understand the changes, but what about the rest of us dying of boredom until we get there? [edit: I do know of course that I can swap to Summoner to do my open world/MSQ stuff, but the point is, I've never needed to do that before, and have enjoyed playing my healer in open world as well.]

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

Two things:

1) there is no way they're going to make healers heal significantly more than they do now. No way. Not in 90% of this game's content. Do you remember the community flipout over Steps of Faith and the Royal Menagerie? The skill difference between the low and high end in this game is a chasm. Do more than bump the healing requirements up a bit and the community will lose its collective minds.

2) Even if bizarro world comes to us and they do massively raise healing requirements for some reason (the media preview dungeon videos confirm this isn't true), and if the community Matrix-downloads some much higher average level of skill in the next month, the first seventy levels of this game and all the dungeons, trials, raids, overworld, and solo instances are going to play like Sastasha for all three healers.

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Reposting this because it needs to be said...again. And the OP needs to read it because it’s important.

Furthermore,

Every person I’ve read touting the positive changes to the healing kit have neglected to touch on the actual gameplay of the three jobs as complete individuals.

Yes, this is a MMO and healing is an important part of that gameplay, but FFXIV has two distinct facets to its gameplay: 1) co-operative gameplay; 2) Solo content.

How do you feel about completing the solo MSQ duties with 1 nuke, 1 DoT, and 1 AoE? I mean, sure, you’ll be able to over-heal yourself straight to Hydalen, but Ser Aymeric’s trousers that’s going to be a ridiculously long, boring encounter.

All three Healer jobs should have a fleshed out DPS rotation to utilize outside of party mechanics. Doesn’t need to be complicated like the hordes of DPS standing in AoE that they’re trying to keep alive, but it should certainly be more complex than “Apply DoT, Cast [insert generic healer attack spell here] until DoT needs to be re-applied.”

They are not balanced in and of themselves if they can’t perform both. They are not balanced as a whole if they all have the same kit with slightly different potency numbers. That’s not balance, that’s assimilation.

So to you OP, all I will say is thank you for outlining, once again, the positive side of the healing kit changes. The problem, however, remains that the healers are bored with their lackluster DPS rotations, and want to have three different jobs they can play, not a single healer with three different weapons.

OP, 10/10.

Great post.

As DiznypKC above and others have said, thank you for pointing out the changes for healers that are generally, perhaps objectively, all well and good and positive. I'm of the mindset to try to look at things objectively and find merit in the positive and negative threads both. I'm glad there are people pointing out the positive aspects, because they certainly are there.

However, as many other threads and comments have stated; the homogenization of certain aspects of healers, particularly changes to SCH and AST, may detract from the general perception of fun for players regardless of skill level.

I do not doubt that the dev team has considered how fun the adjusted healers are. Needless to say: it's probably is still generally fun to heal in 5.0. But from what information we have to determine from, it seems as though much of what people found subjectively fun about their job was changed to various degrees or removed completely. I particularly found myself disappointed by the breakdowns of the new AST card system and how all three healing jobs now have essentially the same DPS abilities (barring Afflatus Misery and Earthly Star and whatnot of course). A direct damage, a DoT, and an AoE with minor differences in potency/MP cost for each is not particularly attractive after the kits we had access to previously.

Since the job action trailer dropped I was split between going through ShB story with RDM, DNC, DRK, or AST. But I can't deny that the NA media event breakdowns haven't colored the role in a negative light for me. AST is no longer part of that list for now. And I'm really leaning DNC since I really like support abilities (and it's my 2nd favorite job in the FF series, first being RDM).

I love healing, have since 2.0. I have WHM, SCH, and AST at 70 already (WHM on 2 characters even). But I get the feeling the negatives have the potential to outweigh the positives, particularly for AST and SCH. Time will tell, once we all get to play the adjusted jobs. Until we do, I hope we can all try to hold our judgements until we actually get our hands on the jobs.

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Originally Posted by Rahspdoy

There's not a single meta player that will not throw a mele-faced Balance onto a BLM if it gets them that 3rd seal they need to then use that 1 oh-so-helpful AOE buff...But the 'core' of what made us want to BE Astro's, instead of WHM's or Scholars. Has been torn down to the point of being no different then a food item being used.

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This guy gets it.

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Originally Posted by DiznypKC

Reposting this because it needs to be said...again. And the OP needs to read it because it’s important.

Furthermore,

Every person I’ve read touting the positive changes to the healing kit have neglected to touch on the actual gameplay of the three jobs as complete individuals.

Yes, this is a MMO and healing is an important part of that gameplay, but FFXIV has two distinct facets to its gameplay: 1) co-operative gameplay; 2) Solo content.

How do you feel about completing the solo MSQ duties with 1 nuke, 1 DoT, and 1 AoE? I mean, sure, you’ll be able to over-heal yourself straight to Hydalen, but Ser Aymeric’s trousers that’s going to be a ridiculously long, boring encounter.

All three Healer jobs should have a fleshed out DPS rotation to utilize outside of party mechanics. Doesn’t need to be complicated like the hordes of DPS standing in AoE that they’re trying to keep alive, but it should certainly be more complex than “Apply DoT, Cast [insert generic healer attack spell here] until DoT needs to be re-applied.”

They are not balanced in and of themselves if they can’t perform both. They are not balanced as a whole if they all have the same kit with slightly different potency numbers. That’s not balance, that’s assimilation.

So to you OP, all I will say is thank you for outlining, once again, the positive side of the healing kit changes. The problem, however, remains that the healers are bored with their lackluster DPS rotations, and want to have three different jobs they can play, not a single healer with three different weapons.

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Good post.

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Originally Posted by DiznypKC

The problem, however, remains that the healers are bored with their lackluster DPS rotations, and want to have three different jobs they can play, not a single healer with three different weapons.

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So, for you, if 2 or 3 healers have the same DPS rotation, they aren't different? is DPS rotation determining how unique a Healer job is? i don't get it dude. I agree with DPS rotation being boting, but i don't think that DPS rotation is what make healers unique or equals.

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Originally Posted by Greywolfamakir

So, for you, if 2 or 3 healers have the same DPS rotation, they aren't different? is DPS rotation determining how unique a Healer job is? i don't get it dude. I agree with DPS rotation being boting, but i don't think that DPS rotation is what make healers unique or equals.

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To some people yes.

To me personaly the differences were that WHM was a pure healer, No pet, no fancy ui (except for the lily thing). Just pure old healing. Scholar was healing with a 'pet' that had some neat abilities, and Astro was a healer with a bunch of various buffs they could use or tweak to use on the party.

In 5.0, WHM's are still a pure healer. Scholars still have their pet, granted Selene and Eos got smushed together, but hey! they got a 3rd fairy out of the deal!.

Astro's?. We got degenerated into a Baker that can heal while we hand out Braised Pipira's to everyone every so often.

In no way at all do i ever see myself enjoying the 5.0 astro as much as i did the Heavensward / Stormblood Astro. In fact, ive completely stopped playing it even now and am instead leveling up a WHM. Because if im expected to just be a Baker walking around that heals, i may as well play the class that has the better of the healing and just bring along 99 Braised Pipira's to hand out to group mates before each dungeon run.

I just want to throw my two cents in, humbly of course.. ^^’ I do feel that due to all the healing buffs we will be required to heal a lot more. Maybe even a lot more outside our OGCDs. I know it’s hard to imagine SE changing things up this much, but they are and who knows. Maybe we will need these abilities more than we think. It may look like a healing bloat but we haven’t really seen too much to judge that on. I’m no veteran but I do have all three healers to 70 and I have to say I’m super excited for Astro. It’s true, for me personally, that I burn most of what isn’t Balance. Sometimes Spear after a redraw and feeling like I get what I get..

Also on a side note I haven’t seen anyone talk about yet(if they did I’m sorry!) is Astro in pvp is good, but the card system they give us in pvp is not that great :/ you almost never need any of the cards that aren’t Balance so I think this may make pvp more engaging for AST at least. Scholar too. In pvp Scholar doesn’t get the fairy until you have enough Fairie gauge to make it worth it but Summoners constantly have Bahamut out. Not to blatantly compare the two but as the only two pet classes in the game, I do wish Scholar had more use of its Fairy in pvp.

I know pvp isn’t a huge part of a lot of people’s play time in this game, and not to say these changes were made based on pvp but idk. It is a positive to consider what could be.

I feel like I kinda rambled and I’m sorry about that. I am overall excited to see what is to come for all of us when the expac does drop :)

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Originally Posted by Alfric

I do feel that due to all the healing buffs we will be required to heal a lot more. Maybe even a lot more outside our OGCDs.

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If the media tour dungeon runs are a representative sample, we won't. Also, as I stated earlier in the thread, this game's playerbase wouldn't be able to handle a healing requirement increase that could remotely be described as "large".

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Originally Posted by DiznypKC

How do you feel about completing the solo MSQ duties with 1 nuke, 1 DoT, and 1 AoE? I mean, sure, you’ll be able to over-heal yourself straight to Hydalen, but Ser Aymeric’s trousers that’s going to be a ridiculously long, boring encounter. .

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Two out of three of them basically do?

I really doubt the second dot on White Mage is adding any real gameplay during those MSQs.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

Two out of three of them basically do?

I really doubt the second dot on White Mage is adding any real gameplay during those MSQs.

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Ah yes. MSQ trials are already boring for us so why rock the boat? Bring on the boring!

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

I really doubt the second dot on White Mage is adding any real gameplay during those MSQs.

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Which is kinda why I was hoping WHM would get a real DPS rotation seeing how we are the supposed to be the pDPS healer with no raid utility.
But get got one thing added and one thing taken away, leaving the DPS part of WHM just as dull as it already was.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

Two out of three of them basically do?

I really doubt the second dot on White Mage is adding any real gameplay during those MSQs.

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It is something else to keep track of, therefore increasing engagement, so yes, it does.

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Originally Posted by Alfric

Also on a side note I haven’t seen anyone talk about yet(if they did I’m sorry!) is Astro in pvp is good, but the card system they give us in pvp is not that great :/ you almost never need any of the cards that aren’t Balance so I think this may make pvp more engaging for AST at least. Scholar too. In pvp Scholar doesn’t get the fairy until you have enough Fairie gauge to make it worth it but Summoners constantly have Bahamut out. Not to blatantly compare the two but as the only two pet classes in the game, I do wish Scholar had more use of its Fairy in pvp.

I know pvp isn’t a huge part of a lot of people’s play time in this game, and not to say these changes were made based on pvp but idk. It is a positive to consider what could be.

I feel like I kinda rambled and I’m sorry about that. I am overall excited to see what is to come for all of us when the expac does drop :)

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The PVP in FFXIV is balanced 100% seperate from the PVE side of things. Which is how it should be.

If they are concerned with how Astro's work in PVP, they'd simply change the PVP skills instead of changing both the PVP 'and' PVE skills.

For whatever reason, they felt dumbing the Astro's card system down to what is essentially 2 buttons for us to press (1 for the small buff, and 1 for the AOE buff) Was the right decision.

Hopefully after seeing the backlash from so many of us Astro players of how flat out boring that would be, they give it another thought and make changes.

As for me personally. Im not touching Astro again after ShB comes out if they dont. I'll just level up a WHM and bring along a 99stack of Braised Pipira's so i always have a 60-minute pocket Astro in my inventory while having better heals.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

Ah yes. MSQ trials are already boring for us so why rock the boat? Bring on the boring!

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Because it's so much fun for everyone else. :P

I feel like your putting a lot of spin on your statements and ignoring what doesn't support your argument.

Like saying the new card system is somehow deeper is just plain ridiculous.
Your going to just use the first card you pull since it will have a symbol for your 3 minute cooldown ,which is just useless unless you have 3 different symbols, 100% of the time
your second card will have a symbol you need 66% and you can redraw if necessary
third draw will be a 33% chance but you likely have several redraws and sleeve draw to get it
any forced symbol dupes get minor arcana'd and after you get your 3 symbols you minor arcana everything until you use the cooldown
then start over

They somehow managed to make it both braindead boringly simple and overly convoluted simultaneously.

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Originally Posted by Nihility

I feel like your putting a lot of spin on your statements and ignoring what doesn't support your argument.

Like saying the new card system is somehow deeper is just plain ridiculous.
Your going to just use the first card you pull since it will have a symbol for your 3 minute cooldown ,which is just useless unless you have 3 different symbols, 100% of the time
your second card will have a symbol you need 66% and you can redraw if necessary
third draw will be a 33% chance but you likely have several redraws and sleeve draw to get it
any forced symbol dupes get minor arcana'd and after you get your 3 symbols you minor arcana everything until you use the cooldown
then start over

They somehow managed to make it both braindead boringly simple and overly convoluted simultaneously.

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They had to make it convoluted to hide the fact that they could have just removed the cards completely and its corresponding UI and just given us 2 skills and gotten the same effect. :(

I can definitely agree to an extent. It would really take some getting uses to. It is just a lot ifs at the moment is what I guess I was trying to say :)

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Originally Posted by Greywolfamakir

So, for you, if 2 or 3 healers have the same DPS rotation, they aren't different? is DPS rotation determining how unique a Healer job is? i don't get it dude. I agree with DPS rotation being boting, but i don't think that DPS rotation is what make healers unique or equals.

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I mean, that’s a simplification of my statement but, in short, yes, in this case. DPS is merely a fraction of the grander discussion.

Basically, it “broils” (see what I did there?) down to intent. The Devs have said two things regarding healers, and I’m not quoting because I don’t have the exact interviews on hand: 1) any healer job should be able to clear all content; 2) healers should be, well, healing.

These two sentiments dictated how the jobs adjusted for Shadowbringers. The healing kits are, as the OP put it, much more streamlined yet, frankly, similar. All jobs received buffs to their healing capabilities and more heals. So it looks like all three can heal just as well with some variation and viable for all content. Also more heals means...more heals.

So the best way for them to diversify the three jobs so that they didn’t feel exactly the same is in the DPS kits. As it stood, WHM and AST were simple and SCH was much more interesting. They could have given more interesting mechanics to the other two to further individualize the classes, but instead they struck down the SCH to fall in line with the other two.

That’s why I was speaking on DPS kits differentiating the healers.

Look at the tanks, for example. They all have similar Tank and mitigation abilities, yet all four feel different in action, according to the media breakdown. They could have done something similar with the healers. They should have done something similar with the healers.

After all, White Mage, Scholar, and Astrologians are not healing AT ALL times. They have to be able to clear solo content as well. And why not make it interesting for them? Why have them press a single button for 30 seconds? It’s illogical based on the structure of literally every other job class in the game.

All of these healer changes are being made as if the game was being changed to meet these changes. But we've seen nothing to this effect, and when asked about it Yoshida skirted around the issue.
Going from the past and how we know SE looks at healing requirements, things won't change, or at least not enough to warrant this massive overhaul of DPS kits and increased healing across the board. I would love to be proven wrong, but the changes in ShB for every role so far were made to make each role feel more comfortable to jump into and play. Do you really think they took healers alone and made their job harder?

When I look at it like this, it just makes me feel like we've all lost a big chunk of our kit and identity for no actual reason.