Healing is now a state of permanent hatred.

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Originally Posted by DiznypKC

Please don’t nitpick words and then admit that you haven’t been around very long.

A lot of us who’ve been maining healers since 2.0 and beyond, and are allowed to voice our opinions just as much as you.

I used “we” to make it less personal. “We” as in the group of veteran healers who aren’t enjoying this new iteration of healers. That is a group. It exists. And, frankly, it doesn’t really matter if, in your opinion, it’s a minority or not.

There are more retired healers out there than you may realize. Just because they aren’t rabidly posting on the forums doesn’t make them any less real. A lot of them simply gave up trying because other players harassed them or they simply believed that SE wouldn’t ever listen to them. The ones who are still around are tired of explaining the issues over and over again.

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lol.. what? Why do you keep waving this 'veteran healer' card over my head like that gives you some privilege..? I've main'd healer since HW launch and been a AST since it released. . I've seen all the ups and downs. So you can stop talking to me like I just bought the game with ShB. As a matter of fact, its a two way street. When you said "the group of veteran healers who aren’t enjoying this new iteration of healers" well guess what buddy.. there are also veteran healers who enjoy the new iteration of healers. So I dont know what to tell you. Guess just wait till another expansion comes out cause this conversation isnt going anywhere.

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

Who does FFXIV ShB healing appeal to? Who enjoys barely using their healing spells and spamming 1 button over long stretches of time?

SE wanted healers to be "conscious" apparently. To be mindful of their healer role but then, why did they make healing so unimportant?

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It appeals to me, Im enjoying the hell out of it.. actually this is the funniest expansion I've played, HW cutting close second. The savages are amazing, TEA is amazing, the story is amazing, crafters and gathers getting content, gear is amazing, music slaps. Spam click malefic and reapply combust every 30s. Not the most engaging but between handling boss mechanics, healing, managing cards, and dpsing, I'm comfy!

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Originally Posted by Kummies

It appeals to me, Im enjoying the hell out of it.. actually this is the funniest expansion I've played, HW cutting close second. The savages are amazing, TEA is amazing, the story is amazing, crafters and gathers getting content, gear is amazing, music slaps. Spam click malefic and reapply combust every 30s. Not the most engaging but between handling boss mechanics, healing, managing cards, and dpsing, I'm comfy!

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I am really happy for you, really I am. I'm happy for you and the other twenty people who are enjoying AST more now than before, and aren't like many others playing AST merely because they enjoy the healer role most, and/or it's the job they've invested lots of time in, and/or they're hopeful that Squeenix will make needed QoL improvements so they're not clicking and retargeting dozens of times per minute for buffs which require parsing to know the time was better spent than spamming a nuke.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Side-Eye

I am really happy for you, really I am. I'm happy for you and the other twenty people who are enjoying AST more now than before, and aren't like many others playing AST merely because they enjoy the healer role most, and/or it's the job they've invested lots of time in, and/or they're hopeful that Squeenix will make needed QoL improvements so they're not clicking and retargeting dozens of times per minute for buffs which require parsing to know the time was better spent than spamming a nuke.

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I'm deathly curious about how the fact that someone has a different opinion then you makes you want to spew this passive-aggressive "I'm happy for you~" I'm so sorry that this game appeals to different people in different ways and the fact something you dislike is loved by others.

I would wager the guess is a feeling of personal attachment to the old gameplay loop, which lead to a feeling of betrayal from a product deciding it needed to change it up.

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Originally Posted by Brandedblade

snip

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I see sarcasm is lost on you without emojis and words like "deathly". Sorry bout that. I'll do better next time.

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Originally Posted by Brandedblade

I'm deathly curious about how the fact that someone has a different opinion then you makes you want to spew this passive-aggressive "I'm happy for you~" I'm so sorry that this game appeals to different people in different ways and the fact something you dislike is loved by others.

I would wager the guess is a feeling of personal attachment to the old gameplay loop, which lead to a feeling of betrayal from a product deciding it needed to change it up.

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I dunno, why do you feel the need to go in threads just to announce you're only there to "watch them burn" or whatever it was?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

Who does FFXIV ShB healing appeal to? Who enjoys barely using their healing spells and spamming 1 button over long stretches of time?

SE wanted healers to be "conscious" apparently. To be mindful of their healer role but then, why did they make healing so unimportant?

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Hmm...I love playing ast, because despite the simple rotation (which like it or not even sch has always had) it is incredibly flexible. It allows you to play very aggressively with the 1.5 Malefic and Gravity cast time and weave in all of its various abilities and its cards real nice and snappy like. And despite the homogenization of the card effects. I love the seal and Divination mechanic because to me, it's a very satisfying build up, with Divination being the climax. And no, I've found I dont need to use parses to gauge how much damage I'm adding to the group. Just observing how fast a group of mobs die when I do my first Sleeve/Divination combo of a dungeon, with everyone buffed between 7 to 12% stronger depending on rng. I love the use of tools like Lightspeed and Synastry to do powerful snappy spike heals on tanks when they need it. Playing hot potato with Essential Dignity while dpsing also is also rather engaging.


For scholar. Here's my controversial hot take. Despite the simplification of the dps rotation. Sch still plays the same way it's always has. It's always been about managing your pet and aetherflow cooldowns. It actually does have a gameplay loop in the fae guage. Which means all your aetherflow skills have extra effective heal potency equivalent to either a Fey Blessing or a tick of Fey Union. Meaning even if you spent all of your aetherflow on energy drains you still have Gauge to spend. And with the fact the fairy automatically returns to you when Dissipation wears off, I've found it to be a very effective tool, whether to manage my mp and add damage with extra Energy Drains. Or even...*gasp* the 20% healing potency for situations where crap hits the fan and you actually do need to gcd heal. Yes the lack of fae guage during that time kinda hurts, but it's the only real drawback anymore. And if you say "It locks you out of your fairy skills" I say, "That's when you use your fairy skills first, then dissipate her."

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Originally Posted by Billythepancake

I dunno, why do you feel the need to go in threads just to announce you're only there to "watch them burn" or whatever it was?

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I dunno, why do you have to build your entire internet persona around making a trump parody to express your own bitterness?

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Originally Posted by Brandedblade

I dunno, why do you have to build your entire internet persona around making a trump parody to express your own bitterness?

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I didn't have to, nor did I, my friend drew a picture for me and I like it, so I use it.

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Originally Posted by Billythepancake

I didn't have to, nor did I, my friend drew a picture for me and I like it, so I use it.

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I mean, even before you used that pic you where toting the "Make Scholar great again" signature. But ok, as you say.

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Originally Posted by Brandedblade

I mean, even before you used that pic you where toting the "Make Scholar great again" signature. But ok, as you say.

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Right, moreso because I do want to make SCH fun to play again, aka, being great, and, for all my issues with Trump I like the memes around it, so why not use it as a basis?

I think Kummies came in with the right intentions and that I don't think they meant to come off as dismissive to the person earlier in the thread that took them be as such, so unless I missed something then a passive aggressive or sarcastic comment to them was not fair, that I'll agree because his comment was not abrasive in approach and was trying to say "hey, there are those of us who like it" without saying it's bad to not like it.

But I think Billy is right in illustrating that it's a bit like the pot calling the kettle black. Branded, you've not exactly been clean in your approach with people you disagree with.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Brandedblade

Sch still plays the same way it's always has. It's always been about managing your pet and aetherflow cooldowns. It actually does have a gameplay loop in the fae guage. Which means all your aetherflow skills have extra effective heal potency equivalent to either a Fey Blessing or a tick of Fey Union. Meaning even if you spent all of your aetherflow on energy drains you still have Gauge to spend. And with the fact the fairy automatically returns to you when Dissipation wears off, I've found it to be a very effective tool, whether to manage my mp and add damage with extra Energy Drains. Or even...*gasp* the 20% healing potency for situations where crap hits the fan and you actually do need to gcd heal. Yes the lack of fae guage during that time kinda hurts, but it's the only real drawback anymore. And if you say "It locks you out of your fairy skills" I say, "That's when you use your fairy skills first, then dissipate her."

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I can't say much about AST, since I'm no AST main. But I can about SCH. SCH DPS has always been about managing DoTs. Even with the cull in SB you still had Shadowflare, Miasma, Miasma II, Bio II and Bane. Pet management in HW/SB has been positioning for maximum Embrace (heavily nerfed) and pet OGCD (gone) weaving. Aetherflow also got a big blow from SB with the removal of Quickened Aetherflow.

So no, SCH does not play as it did.

Gameplay loop in the Fae Gauge? Healing tools are always planned around mechanics, and as such do not really loop. You either plan to use Fey Union/Fey Blessing at certain points in the fight or you don't, there's no constant looping like DPS rotations. Dissipation returning the fairy back saves you exactly one GCD compared to SB's version, so while it is a plus, I personally think that it is not a great a buff.

That said, there are things I think SCH gained from ShB (it just lost a lot more than it gained).
Recitation is a very good, in-theme replacement for Largesse. For all its clunkiness, Seraph + Consolation is stronger than SB's Fey Covenant (very rough equivalent) as OGCD mitigation.

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Originally Posted by Kummies

It appeals to me, Im enjoying the hell out of it.. actually this is the funniest expansion I've played, HW cutting close second. The savages are amazing, TEA is amazing, the story is amazing, crafters and gathers getting content, gear is amazing, music slaps. Spam click malefic and reapply combust every 30s. Not the most engaging but between handling boss mechanics, healing, managing cards, and dpsing, I'm comfy!

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I have to point out that most of the things you listed aren't related to AST gameplay directly. ShB fights and story are amazing, the changes to DoL/DoH clean up quite a bit of cruft, and the music is god-tier. But none of these change the fact that compared to SB, AST cards are less diverse in their effects, and Divination is (subjectively) less satisfying to pull off than spreading cards or manipulating buff durations.

Now I'm no AST main, so I'm genuinely curious as to why you prefer ShB's version of AST compared to SB's. Aren't the cards less mechanically interesting?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Brandedblade

For scholar. Here's my controversial hot take. Despite the simplification of the dps rotation. Sch still plays the same way it's always has.

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No.
- I no longer have to keep track of my dots timer during downtime
- I no longer can micromanage the fairy while I'm doing something else, like dedicated target for embrace, whispering dawn when casting something else (raise/heal/dps spell)
- I no longer have to keep track of my aetherflow cooldown, trait was removed + out of combat.
- I no longer have to question myself about the fairy to use. Yes, Eos was the way to go for a lot of content. Be fairy swapping during fight transition/or going full selene when the extra healing was not needeed.
- More and more Raw healing capacity and HoTs were added through time made preshielding really less valuable that it used to be. Adlo slowly transitioned from shield that is recommended to use to "I need gcd heal and physick sucks".
- Less mitigation tools over time (Virus splitted into DPS, eye for and eye deleted)
- Scholar was yet versatile, with really good healing abilities, but misusing one of those at the wrong time (namely indom/whispering dawn) was a stronger punishment. Now just press any button, it'll do something. We lost that risk/reward/planning/knowledge of the fight even more. That's still a thing to preplan healing in a fight, but we got so many oGCD that now you can't even really be wrong, outside of spamming adlo and succor all day.
- Not a really good point but still, no mana managment (I can hear already that scholar's mana never was hard because its mana economy was really good, but i'm taking about Miasma II weaving for this. Without teamwork or good party composition with brd/mch for refresh or even some manashift, you had to deal with it on your own).

Despite still having a lot of its old toolkit, Scholar lost so many things to think about and got so much more healing capacity that it's now closer to a WHM/AST feeling that the real old scholar.

When I remember all I did during HW (a bit less in SB), I cannot let someone say that's "it's the same but more simple".
No.
I used to say that scholar had 4 mini-games inside its gameplay. Fairy managment, Aetherflow managment, dot managment and shielding managment. Proper planning and usage of each reunited together made a strong and real fun healer.
All of these are still here. But they no longer are mini games cause like I said, now, just press some key buttons, it'll do something anyway.
Scholar's gameplay were terrible butchered in the name of this so called healer balance where they took the decision to cut the fun for it.
For me, scholar was what I called an almost perfect class. He had the tool, the deep gameplay. Now it's plenty boring and blend.
It sure needeed some adjustment regarding the fairy (even critlo was way too strong, you shouldn't have a shield allowing you to ignore mechanic or incoming damage at all), but not to where we are now.


If people are right now having fun with it, who see barely a difference, that's all great for you guys.
But I know what class I played and put time in for these last 5 years, and it's not what I currently have on my hands. All what made me in love and dedicated to it are gone, and no one will make be believe that's it's pure fantasy to think that.

I won't talk about what the healer role got away too, that's another layer of the long list of what we have lost.

That's why healers and precisely scholar is now so dead boring and unfun to play (at least, from an older dedicated healer player's point of view).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Brandedblade

For scholar. Here's my controversial hot take. Despite the simplification of the dps rotation. Sch still plays the same way it's always has. It's always been about managing your pet and aetherflow cooldowns. It actually does have a gameplay loop in the fae guage. Which means all your aetherflow skills have extra effective heal potency equivalent to either a Fey Blessing or a tick of Fey Union. Meaning even if you spent all of your aetherflow on energy drains you still have Gauge to spend. And with the fact the fairy automatically returns to you when Dissipation wears off, I've found it to be a very effective tool, whether to manage my mp and add damage with extra Energy Drains. Or even...*gasp* the 20% healing potency for situations where crap hits the fan and you actually do need to gcd heal. Yes the lack of fae guage during that time kinda hurts, but it's the only real drawback anymore. And if you say "It locks you out of your fairy skills" I say, "That's when you use your fairy skills first, then dissipate her."

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I love that you have an opinion, it's wrong, but its nice.

It doesnt even remotely play how it use to.

There's no dual casting your and fairies ability at the same time, no bane, no slow, no malady, no glorious burst AoE with DoT.

Without Quickened Aetherflow, Dissipate had gone right back to being what it used to be, pointless and counter productive other than pushing extra dps.

I'm sorry, I dont like to sound mean, but I just had to put my two cents in there my dude.

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Originally Posted by KDSilver

I used to say that scholar had 4 mini-games inside its gameplay. Fairy managment, Aetherflow managment, dot managment and shielding managment. Proper planning and usage of each reunited together made a strong and real fun healer.

If people are right now having fun with it, who see barely a difference, that's all great for you guys.
But I know what class I played and put time in for these last 5 years, and it's not what I currently have on my hands. All what made me in love and dedicated to it are gone, and no one will make be believe that's it's pure fantasy to think that.

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*cries in corner*

Need a beer man, because I sure do.

6 years of healing on Scholar, it was a perfect class; now it's not even a shadow of what it used to be.

I miss Heavensward Scholar SOOOOO much.

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Originally Posted by Kummies

lol.. what? Why do you keep waving this 'veteran healer' card over my head like that gives you some privilege..? I've main'd healer since HW launch and been a AST since it released. . I've seen all the ups and downs. So you can stop talking to me like I just bought the game with ShB. As a matter of fact, its a two way street. When you said "the group of veteran healers who aren’t enjoying this new iteration of healers" well guess what buddy.. there are also veteran healers who enjoy the new iteration of healers. So I dont know what to tell you. Guess just wait till another expansion comes out cause this conversation isnt going anywhere.

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You literally said you haven’t been here long. I obviously mistook that to mean you were either relatively new to the game or to healing. That’s my bad, and I’ll own up to it.

Out of curiosity, why do you feel the need to try and shut every person down who disagrees with you? I never said there weren’t veteran healers who enjoy the new iteration. You’ve pretty much offered nothing to the conversation other than “You don’t speak for everyone,” “I like it,” and then stormed out like a child. You just keep coming at me because, what, you’re bored? Maybe go try some of that lackluster healing you’re so happy with and stop derping around on the forums.

You know what, ignore the second half of that message. I’m tired and don’t want to be rude as it solves nothing. You’ve got your opinion, I’ve got mine. We’ll leave it at that. Enjoy your gaming. At least you can.

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Originally Posted by Volkaj

I have to point out that most of the things you listed aren't related to AST gameplay directly. ShB fights and story are amazing, the changes to DoL/DoH clean up quite a bit of cruft, and the music is god-tier. But none of these change the fact that compared to SB, AST cards are less diverse in their effects, and Divination is (subjectively) less satisfying to pull off than spreading cards or manipulating buff durations.

Now I'm no AST main, so I'm genuinely curious as to why you prefer ShB's version of AST compared to SB's. Aren't the cards less mechanically interesting?

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I mean, some people love the old cards but personally I didn't find them interesting. It was just a bunch of unwanted clutter. The most common thing to do with the old card system was fish for a aoe balance. Like it or not but people like to do more damage. I never heard a tank say "sweet bole on that tank buster it saved me" or "Wow that aoe bole saved us from that raid-wide dmg". People parse, people like damage, people want to do more damage. With the new card system I can give everyone the dmg they want while also increasing that damage again with divination. I don't have to stress about rng never giving me and balance and having to settle for something lesser like aoe spear.

Just to recap on old cards
Ewer - Gave mana regen (Never used, Lucid Dreaming and mana pots are cool)
Bole - Damage Reduction (Cute, but tanks have CD's )
Spear - Increase Crit hit rate (Not bad but one-up'd by balance)
Arrow - Increase attack speed (Other then giving it to BLM with 150% potency, poop)
Spire - TP regen (.. lol )
Balnce - Damage Increase (everyone wants it)

Again, it all comes down to personal preference but for me this is funnier and less of a headache to deal with in savages and TEA. I just personally like not having to wait 5 mins between pulls fishing for that AOE balance for openers.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Kummies

I mean, some people love the old cards but personally I didn't find them interesting. It was just a bunch of unwanted clutter. The most common thing to do with the old card system was fish for a aoe balance. Like it or not but people like to do more damage. I never heard a tank say "sweet bole on that tank buster it saved me" or "Wow that aoe bole saved us from that raid-wide dmg". People parse, people like damage, people want to do more damage. With the new card system I can give everyone the dmg they want while also increasing that damage again with divination. I don't have to stress about rng never giving me and balance and having to settle for something lesser like aoe spear.

Just to recap on old cards
Ewer - Gave mana regen (Never used, Lucid Dreaming and mana pots are cool)
Bole - Damage Reduction (Cute, but tanks have CD's )
Spear - Increase Crit hit rate (Not bad but one-up'd by balance)
Arrow - Increase attack speed (Other then giving it to BLM with 150% potency, poop)
Spire - TP regen (.. lol )
Balnce - Damage Increase (everyone wants it)

Again, it all comes down to personal preference but for me this is funnier and less of a headache to deal with in savages and TEA. I just personally like not having to wait 5 mins between pulls fishing for that AOE balance for openers.

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How would you feel about a system closer to cards in FFXI? I get the problem where some cards are more situational and it's by chance you've got them when they are useful, to me I boiled down to The Arrow or The Balance and how I Royal Roaded.

In the version of the system I'm referring you choose which buff you use instead and the RNG chooses how effective it is based on principles similar to the game of black jack (pull another card to try and better you outcome but risk busting it).

I think people liked the element of choice and RNG rolled into one tactfully playing their cards based on their choices. But it was not without its problems. To me the FFX COR version addresses all these. But I wonder if its something people who have a longer history with AST than I do would find that more interesting

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Saefinn

How would you feel about a system closer to cards in FFXI? I get the problem where some cards are more situational and it's by chance you've got them when they are useful, to me I boiled down to The Arrow or The Balance and how I Royal Roaded.

In the version of the system I'm referring you choose which buff you use instead and the RNG chooses how effective it is based on principles similar to the game of black jack (pull another card to try and better you outcome but risk busting it).

I think people liked the element of choice and RNG rolled into one tactfully playing their cards based on their choices. But it was not without its problems. To me the FFX COR version addresses all these. But I wonder if its something people who have a longer history with AST than I do would find that more interesting

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I think that system sounds interesting. I'm all for changing things up, and if the cards get another rework come 6.0 then I'll really be interested in seeing something like that in place. I like that RNG is a factor in AST identity I just didnt care for how much RNG was in SB AST if that makes sense.

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Originally Posted by FoxCh40s

I love that you have an opinion, it's wrong, but its nice.

It doesnt even remotely play how it use to.

There's no dual casting your and fairies ability at the same time, no bane, no slow, no malady, no glorious burst AoE with DoT.

Without Quickened Aetherflow, Dissipate had gone right back to being what it used to be, pointless and counter productive other than pushing extra dps.

I'm sorry, I dont like to sound mean, but I just had to put my two cents in there my dude.

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I love that you disagree, it's wrong but it's nice.

Just because the dps is simplified does not mean the healing aspect is fundamentally the same. It's still has a heavy emphasis on using cooldown and resource management via your faerie and aetherflow stacks. It still emphasizes damage mitigation over raw potency on your gcd healing. It still has the loop of feeding your aetherflow into fae guage for healing later.

If anything the loss of extreme micromanagement and Quickened Aetherflow was a necessary evil to bring sch back down to a reasonable level. What made it so powerful in previous expansions was the sheer amount of healing it could generate without loosing damage.

While forcing ogcd slots to command your fairy can feel clunky at times, it also takes away that raw power scholar had, it forces scholar take a damage penalty for accessing it's free ogcd healing. (Before you bring up "But AST" Ast is balanced around the fact its damage numbers are lower and that it has damage buffs it needs to juggle to make up the difference) As for Quickened Aetherflow, yeah I do miss it sometimes. But it was too powerful. It more or trivialized the use of Aetherflow by how much more frequently it gave you access to Aetherflow. As fun as it was, it ultimately took away from the intended drawback of Aetherflow, the restrictive number of uses per minute. I find that Recitation is a much more interesting tool for managing Aetherflow due to its sheer versatility in this regard.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Brandedblade

If anything the loss of extreme micromanagement and Quickened Aetherflow was a necessary evil to bring sch back down to a reasonable level. What made it so powerful in previous expansions was the sheer amount of healing it could generate without loosing damage.

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In ShB, he gained
- Strong regen on soil, making it both mitigating and restoring health
- Forced crit on whatever you like, especially excog/indom
- Seraph with 2 charges of aoe shield and the fairy casting stronger version of embrace with shields
- Fey blessing, basically aoe heal

And you say that that what made it powerful is its healing output without loosing damage..?
It's mostly the same from this point. Scholar became a more oGCD powerhouse.

As scholar, you'd always have to weave those abilites in someway, the tradeoff being a slight loose due to clipping with broil or weaving with miasma II or currently Ruin II.
If anything, scholar from a healing perspective became more powerful with minimal lose. You can now even run all around the arena and still do damage to a correct degree (200 is way better than 100 or 80 like in HW/SB)

Gutting the "extreme micromanagement" was not necessary for that.

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Originally Posted by Kummies

snip snip

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Opinions are opinions, glad you like the new card system, but I don't and I will voice my dissatisfaction of it until media tour info release of 6.0 where the devs will have cemented how they plan to continue Ast and healers going forward, if more of the same meh beast tribes to level them and never touching healers for content again.

Right now the current cards feel like unnecessary clutter, old card system if you remove rng and make them all ogcds you'd need to have 8 buttons, do it for new card system and you have 3 buttons, seals and melee/ranged split are pointlessly tacked on to try and keep all 6 cards relevant to warrant space whereas before it was the individual card effect trying to make it relevant(some succeeded balance/spear, some meh Bole/Arrow/Ewer/Lord/Lady, 1 failed Spire and it only failed due to what the devs did to tp from HW -> SB).

Ast is wanting another mp restoration in its kit, multiple deaths in non savage/ultimate content, you feel the burn of mp far more than sch/whm, the loss of Ewer can be felt but given the sweeping of outside mp regeneration it had to be changed.
5.0 ast would've killed to have Bole for dungeons with their inherently weaker healing kit, now with healing back up not as wanted but still nice especially for newer Ast.
Spear was the backup balance it allowed you to pull earlier of balance was a no show, the only reason you would only go for aoe balance for an opener exclusively is if going for max parse/speed kills which are not that common in the raiding scene, if just going for kill yea Spear is more than sufficient and Brds would love you for them.
Arrow was useful for War (6 fell cleaves), blm (all the fire4s), sam, Ast (especially before the malefic change), but if aoe it was a dps gain without effecting anyone.
Spire- yes this was royal road fodder but that was due to SE' s tp changes, back in HW I remember pld/mnk/drg in static all begging for tp card in a high uptime fight.
Balance was yea balance they broke it for 3.4 and took till 4.01 to rectify it, of you only fished for this and never used other cards you were a bad Ast, if you fished for this but made as strategic use as possible of the other cards you were a good Ast. And that is the big difference, balance or bust was a false meme that the devs seemed to take as truth.

Only 1 card was clutter and it was Spire.

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

Have you gotten into a Roulette and just felt this urge to let everybody just rush in and die? Are you tempted to type angrily in chat everytime somebody makes a mistake in a duty run?

Do you get out of dungeons without saying a word to anybody, wanting to get rid of the other player's presence as fast as you can?
Are you struggling to find your role as a healer fun?

Do you join duties as healer for the rewards, because you like the role, or because you are hoping to be aknowledged by other players?

What makes you enjoy healing in FFXIV?

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To be honest, my only "problem" with healing is this insane hurry that everybody is in. I don't mind the rest of it, I just don't like the pressure that's placed on me when the tank decides they absolutely must grab 3 packs anytime it's possible and they got mobs throwing down AoEs every 2 seconds because there's 30 of them and people are bound to get hit sooner or later and sometimes the tank doesn't know much about mitigation buttons or what-not and it's just.. nngh.

Other than that, though, I really don't mind healing. Trials, boss fights, those are all enjoyable to me, I like being the guy to keep people alive. The trash pulls... nngh. We could do without the trash pulls.

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Originally Posted by Brandedblade

Just because the dps is simplified does not mean the healing aspect is fundamentally the same. It's still has a heavy emphasis on using cooldown and resource management via your faerie and aetherflow stacks. It still emphasizes damage mitigation over raw potency on your gcd healing. It still has the loop of feeding your aetherflow into fae guage for healing later.

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Looking at just healing skills (which I shall remind we're only using ~10-30% of the fight, save maybe ultimate), SCH gained Recitation, Seraph/Consolation, Fey Blessing, regen on Sacred Soil, and then lost Largesse, Rouse, a bit of potency on Indom and Fey Union, and a good chunk of potency on Embrace. Out of this, the only direct mitigation boost is the addition of Seraph. The merging of Fey Illum and Fey Covenant, the regen buff on Sacred Soil and the loss of Largesse are more-or-less nerfs to SCH's mitigation capabilities.

The healing aspect has for sure changed, but if you look carefully at the kit you realize it isn't really a good change. Why? SB's SCH healing was all about managing Aetherflow to make sure you had exactly the right amount of stacks in each 45 seconds interval. Knowing which could be used for ED and which needed to be used for Indom/Exco/Lustrate/Soil.

This management aspect took several hits, the most obvious ones being Recitation (removes Aetherflow cost + crit) and Fey Blessing (free AoE healing). The other sneakier hit is the improved GCD management through the lack of Shadowflare, Rouse, Cleric Stance and matched Bio II/Aetherflow timers. Since you needed to weave these OGCDs, you'd have to Miasma II or Ruin II, and to avoid overcapping Aetherflow stacks later, you'd often want to ED in the second weaving space. But of course you could only do so if you didn't need the Aetherflow stack later. In ShB's version of SCH, since you don't have any DPS OGCDs outside ED and Bio II timer will always match Aetherflow, there's a lot less free weaving room for random EDs: if you're using Ruin II to weave something (and not for movement), 90% of the time its gonna be for healing. There's a much bigger emphasis on spamming Broil DPS-wise, since there's less free weaving spaces.

This is anecdotal, but I find myself healing a lot more through GCD and Aetherflow-free resources in ShB compared to SB.

Except for ultimate, of course. In ultimate the healing and DPS kits are perfectly adequate, especially for TEA's LL.
Shame 99% of the game isn't ultimate, and ultimate-tier healer gameplay elsewhere is a complete waste due to low healing requirements and dull DPS rotation.

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Originally Posted by KDSilver

In ShB, he gained
- Strong regen on soil, making it both mitigating and restoring health
- Forced crit on whatever you like, especially excog/indom
- Seraph with 2 charges of aoe shield and the fairy casting stronger version of embrace with shields
- Fey blessing, basically aoe heal

And you say that that what made it powerful is its healing output without loosing damage..?
It's mostly the same from this point. Scholar became a more oGCD powerhouse.

As scholar, you'd always have to weave those abilites in someway, the tradeoff being a slight loose due to clipping with broil or weaving with miasma II or currently Ruin II.
If anything, scholar from a healing perspective became more powerful with minimal lose. You can now even run all around the arena and still do damage to a correct degree (200 is way better than 100 or 80 like in HW/SB)

Gutting the "extreme micromanagement" was not necessary for that.

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Sacred Soil requires trading an Energy Drain to use, and while Recitation mitigates this cost for Excog and Indom, it's a 90 second cooldown that effectively only affects either every 3 indoms or every 2 excogs.

Seraph has double the cooldown of Rouse did back in stormblood, and even then all those powerful Seraph heals still cost weave slots to use, irregardless of being able to offset the potencies with Energy Drain.

Even with the buffed ogcd healing recieved in Shadowbringers. There is still the trade off of weaving space and thus potency loss. In stormblood not only was this mitigated by having more access to Aetherflow via Quickened Aetherflow, and thus more Energy Drains over a fight then we get now. But the fact you did not need to create a weave slot for any fairy action, combined with the target able stronger embraces and access to Rouse to further increase Embraces potency. A stormblood sch could do far more lossless healing just by virtue of having abilities that could be used and spammed without clipping or creating weave slots.

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Originally Posted by Brandedblade

I love that you disagree, it's wrong but it's nice.

Just because the dps is simplified does not mean the healing aspect is fundamentally the same. It's still has a heavy emphasis on using cooldown and resource management via your faerie and aetherflow stacks. It still emphasizes damage mitigation over raw potency on your gcd healing. It still has the loop of feeding your aetherflow into fae guage for healing later.

If anything the loss of extreme micromanagement and Quickened Aetherflow was a necessary evil to bring sch back down to a reasonable level. What made it so powerful in previous expansions was the sheer amount of healing it could generate without loosing damage.

While forcing ogcd slots to command your fairy can feel clunky at times, it also takes away that raw power scholar had, it forces scholar take a damage penalty for accessing it's free ogcd healing. (Before you bring up "But AST" Ast is balanced around the fact its damage numbers are lower and that it has damage buffs it needs to juggle to make up the difference) As for Quickened Aetherflow, yeah I do miss it sometimes. But it was too powerful. It more or trivialized the use of Aetherflow by how much more frequently it gave you access to Aetherflow. As fun as it was, it ultimately took away from the intended drawback of Aetherflow, the restrictive number of uses per minute. I find that Recitation is a much more interesting tool for managing Aetherflow due to its sheer versatility in this regard.

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Even though I have things I'd much prefer they did differently, I think the healing toolkit this time around is better on SCH than it was during Stormblood. Although we lost Selene, we still got a faerie update in the form of Seraph and they embraced our damage mitigation more, which should be my jam. Because this is an aspect I liked about SCH and as one who'd try to max out crit for those sweet Critlo's, the fact I can force a critlo is nice.

Personally I'd have kept the micromanagement and made Selene more useful instead of ditching her completely. Because to me they were also parts of the job. I was a heavy micromanager, because it helped you push your effectiveness as a healer. And people could still get away with an AI if they weren't confident, just they were less efficient.

So I won't deny that when I'm pushed to make use of my healing toolkit that it's fun and that's regardless of what I'd have kept or done differently. Obviously, and you know that the key phrase here is "when I am pushed to". I feel like that's the biggest flaw with the changes because they could be good changes, especially for SCH and WHM, but most of the content doesn't make them appropriate when you're not touching many of them.

But out of the suggestions I've made, I think my most preferred compromise is based around the idea of not adding or removing any of SCH's abilities nor adjusting their potency but to embrace the idea of dual purposes more and in bringing back Selene. Though I'm sure my ideas here could be better refined/defined.
Selene's equivalent faerie abilities could be based around utility.
Selene could have her own Fey Blessing based around utility
Selene could have her own Fey Union based around utility - a boost to Biolysis could be a use for a tether ability
Using Seraph with Selene could have more of a utility-based approach. I liked one person's idea of a system based around finding and exploiting weaknesses - it could be called 'Libra', but it doesn't have to specifically be that.

Then expand the usage of Emergency Tactics and Deployment Tactics to affect more abilities, which could aid party support in other ways. Such as:
Deploying Selene's Effects (if we opt for single target abilities we can weave)
Deploying Biolysis
Making Biolysis deal all of its damage at once instead of over time (like a Thunder proc on BLM)
Making Indom into an AoE (like Painflare on SMN)

I feel the outcome is that you're making the choice whether to sacrifice your own healing effectiveness to offer more utility and a better rDPS contribution to the party.
You might base your faerie choice on your co-healer or try to juggle them or pick them based on your own confidence.
You're not adding too many extra DPS abilities to make them OP, especially as DPSing comes at a cost without being janky like Cleric Stance was.
You're using skills you might not touch in your downtime and some that as healing spells increase your down time (you might have to hard cast Succor if your Indom is on CD from using it like Painflare, which is less effective).
You end up retaining the exact same skill floor (because the job can still be played exactly as it is now), but you raise the skill ceiling.

And I'd expect WHM and AST to have adjustments too, as I feel they need them too. But they'd need to be brought up too, if SCH were to receive the above treatment. (Maybe something like the COR-like adjustment I posted above for AST, but I realise card design is a divisive one I don't have enough experience on both systems to give a fair opinion on)

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Originally Posted by Brandedblade

Sacred Soil requires trading an Energy Drain to use, and while Recitation mitigates this cost for Excog and Indom, it's a 90 second cooldown that effectively only affects either every 3 indoms or every 2 excogs.

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This assumes you're using Indom and Excog on cooldown. Which is rather rare (especially for Indom) outside ultimate, since there are better tools available.

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Originally Posted by Brandedblade

Seraph has double the cooldown of Rouse did back in stormblood, and even then all those powerful Seraph heals still cost weave slots to use, irregardless of being able to offset the potencies with Energy Drain.

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The use cases of Rouse and Seraph differ. Seraph is mainly used for its Consolation ability because its Seraph Veil heal, while more powerful than Embrace, cannot be targetted. Its more of a mitigation cooldown than Rouse's single-target burst (with proper planning).

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Originally Posted by Brandedblade

Even with the buffed ogcd healing recieved in Shadowbringers. There is still the trade off of weaving space and thus potency loss. In stormblood not only was this mitigated by having more access to Aetherflow via Quickened Aetherflow, and thus more Energy Drains over a fight then we get now. But the fact you did not need to create a weave slot for any fairy action, combined with the target able stronger embraces and access to Rouse to further increase Embraces potency. A stormblood sch could do far more lossless healing just by virtue of having abilities that could be used and spammed without clipping or creating weave slots.

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The only healing ability in SB's SCH that was truly lossless was Eos' Whispering Dawn. Everything else costed a weaving slot and/or Aetherflow.
In ShB, everything costs weave slots (and there are less of them available) but there are more Aetherflow-free healing abilities: Fey Blessing, Recitation and Seraph.

Comparing the two, the only net loss would be on Whispering Dawn, which now costs at worst 80 potency to weave. Everything else seems strictly better resource-wise.

Scholar always had to trade one energy drain for Indom or Excog. But it was always worth him sacrificing 150 potency that your other healer on gcd heal (Stone IV 240/Malefic III 220).
How is that different in Shadowbringer..?

As someone who loathes the direction healing has gone in the last few expansions, I'm all for fun gameplay loops and impactful management on healers. A direction I've wanted for WHM for several expansions.

As a former WHM enthusiast, I'm with part of the main thrust of Branded's argument here. Let's get healer fun back! The Scholar gravitational singularity around which the rest of the healer design space merely orbited? I could do without. There are tons of ways we could go toward adding some pizzazz to healer kits. Merely reverting a bunch of changes to SCH would also restore its throne. That (former) throne I suspect is part of the reason we're in this mess in the first place.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

As someone who loathes the direction healing has gone in the last few expansions, I'm all for fun gameplay loops and impactful management on healers. A direction I've wanted for WHM for several expansions.

As a former WHM enthusiast, I'm with part of the main thrust of Branded's argument here. Let's get healer fun back! The Scholar gravitational singularity around which the rest of the healer design space merely orbited? I could do without. There are tons of ways we could go toward adding some pizzazz to healer kits. Merely reverting a bunch of changes to SCH would also restore its throne. That (former) throne I suspect is part of the reason we're in this mess in the first place.

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SCH was always a bunch of uncohesive CDs and oGCDs stuck together, which ironically gave the Job the versatility to reign supreme in the meta.

I am all for moving forward in terms of design and actually giving SCH a cohesive set of skills that fit mechanically and thematically together.

Mainly I'd want a debuff system powered by AF and a heal system powered by Fairy Gauge, held together by core skills that enable the production of both resources.

Imagine a skill akin to SMN Energy Drain that would grant you charges of AF allowing you to put strong debuffs on the target. Those debuffs would then generate Fairy Gauge to unlock potent oGCDs.

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

What makes you enjoy healing in FFXIV?

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Just enjoy the sensation of being the backbone of a party. Despite having met some overzealous players since playing as medic Return to Castle Wolfenstein mp and every other class-based game. Having had an affinity for enchanters, druids, tacticians, bards, medics, engineers, saboterous. Act of aiding my team in different ways than just killing the opposition. While of course enjoying the occasional carnage of a massive miningun- og hammer-wielding fighter, I always default to the support job, preferably one that lets me keep everyone alive and disrupt the enemy in unconvential ways while under stress. A fun memory is from a Fighter soul in Rift called "No permission to die" buff you could place on a party member, did exactly as it said.

And despite outbursts that the best 24-man is the kind where every other alliance is dead because of the memorable moments, I do not hold disdain over my fellow players. Call it parental instinct, but I will rarely "let them die" because they might not show same understanding of fight than of those that've run it a thousand times.

And it's only for how incredibly unique 3.0 Scholar was in my big book of "Support classes" and how eye-rollingly-face-palmingly bad 5.0 was that I persist on trying to make SE aware of what good thing that had to either bring it back or give us an actual evolvement of the job.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

As a former WHM enthusiast, I'm with part of the main thrust of Branded's argument here. Let's get healer fun back! The Scholar gravitational singularity around which the rest of the healer design space merely orbited? I could do without. There are tons of ways we could go toward adding some pizzazz to healer kits. Merely reverting a bunch of changes to SCH would also restore its throne. That (former) throne I suspect is part of the reason we're in this mess in the first place.

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As someone who loved SCH of old and have no idea what the other green iconed jobs went through, please know I don't want 3.0 back so I can skip some queue or feel smug because some shcmuck on the internet said it's meta and some even bigger shcmucks treat it as canon.

An evolvement before SE got high on job gauges and numbers would be preferable, but since they are a tiny studio operating out of a closet in a bicycle repair shop in eastern Illinois who only get electicity power every second tuesday it might just be easier and affordable for them to just rollback the job version to 3.5.

I can see that SCH being the root of the issues, or rather SCH is the tree and ACN is the root. In a sense where both WHM and AST could've benefitted, both in support and also offensively, from a dps class to bring unique mechanics that blend with a healing job. Just trying make us forget that classes were a thing is an oversight on SE's part. And another leaf in the grimoire of "SE does not play AST, WHM or SCH."

I would like my fun gameplay back, and they could slice a quart of potencies of everything for all I care about numbers. In best case scenario, every job gets fun, additictive unique overpowered skillsets and gameplay that just looks and feels good to play from the moment you step into a Guildhest, to getting your job stone, every cornerstone at 50, 60, 70 and beyond and just as fun wrecking an overworld mob, to keeping a party alive in a dungeon to contemplating every GCD in Deep Dungeons.

I like healing in ffxiv, but that's becuase I can spam dps spells once I pop a regen and media 2

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Originally Posted by Volkaj

The only healing ability in SB's SCH that was truly lossless was Eos' Whispering Dawn. Everything else costed a weaving slot and/or Aetherflow.
In ShB, everything costs weave slots (and there are less of them available) but there are more Aetherflow-free healing abilities: Fey Blessing, Recitation and Seraph.

Comparing the two, the only net loss would be on Whispering Dawn, which now costs at worst 80 potency to weave. Everything else seems strictly better resource-wise.

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Targetable Embrace that was about double the potency of current embrace was an IMMENSE amount of free healing even factoring in what was said about Indom and excog. Even saying that the point I'm trying to make is that technically all healing on scholar has a cost now irregardless of how weak or how powerful is. And as far as I'm concerned that's a good tradeoff. The only truly free healing sch has now is a very weak random embrace spam that I'm honestly surprised they didnt remove out right.

Also Fey Blessing isnt free. It technically costs an aetherflow to activate. While the aetherflow can be any ability yes. You still have to use a stack to even activate it and a weave slot to command your fairy to use it.

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Originally Posted by KDSilver

Scholar always had to trade one energy drain for Indom or Excog. But it was always worth him sacrificing 150 potency that your other healer on gcd heal (Stone IV 240/Malefic III 220).
How is that different in Shadowbringer..?

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That's the point, from a healing standpoint Scholar is still functionally the same as it was with SB, just with a simpler dps rotation and some of the fairy's former free power moved to ogcd space.

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Originally Posted by Brandedblade

Targetable Embrace that was about double the potency of current embrace was an IMMENSE amount of free healing even factoring in what was said about Indom and excog. Even saying that the point I'm trying to make is that technically all healing on scholar has a cost now irregardless of how weak or how powerful is. And as far as I'm concerned that's a good tradeoff. The only truly free healing sch has now is a very weak random embrace spam that I'm honestly surprised they didnt remove out right.

Also Fey Blessing isnt free. It technically costs an aetherflow to activate. While the aetherflow can be any ability yes. You still have to use a stack to even activate it and a weave slot to command your fairy to use it.

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My assessment did not include Embrace, and you are correct that it did an immense amount of free (lossless) healing. The Embrace nerf does not, however, change the playstyle much, since it will only make you use your other healing abilities more often to compensate. Just like the boss dealing more damage would.

Another cost to consider is opportunity cost. Even if SB's Whispering Dawn was lossless, it still had a cooldown. You needed to time it right for maximum efficiency. This is very similar to AST's OGCD heals, which are all lossless since AST can weave for free. Not having a DPS cost isn't necessarily a bad thing.

You get 3 Aetherflow charges per minute and Fey Blessing has a cooldown of one minute. The only other healing ability using Fairy Gauge is Fey Union, which is 50 fairy potency higher than Fey Blessing (inconsequential). It still costs a weave slot, but realistically you will always have the Fairy Gauge you need to use it.

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Originally Posted by Brandedblade

That's the point, from a healing standpoint Scholar is still functionally the same as it was with SB, just with a simpler dps rotation and some of the fairy's former free power moved to ogcd space.

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But how this simpler rotation and OGCD space have been implemented changes the full picture quite a bit, making it feel a lot more like SB's WHM: spam Broil III (Stone IV) until you have to use a healing OGCD, weaved with Ruin II (Aero II or clip) which will be a DPS loss.

Only if you look just at the healing skills and the healing skills alone, with a marginal consideration for DPS costs, then yes the fairy's free power has been moved to AoE OGCDs (adding weaving requirement) with some mitigation thrown in.

Considering that outside ultimate we're still spending only ~10-30% of our time healing, the worse meshing of DPS + healing kit hurts a lot more than just adding weaving requirements would suggest.

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Originally Posted by Volkaj

But how this simpler rotation and OGCD space have been implemented changes the full picture quite a bit, making it feel a lot more like SB's WHM: spam Broil III (Stone IV) until you have to use a healing OGCD, weaved with Ruin II (Aero II or clip) which will be a DPS loss.

Only if you look just at the healing skills and the healing skills alone, with a marginal consideration for DPS costs, then yes the fairy's free power has been moved to AoE OGCDs (adding weaving requirement) with some mitigation thrown in.

Considering that outside ultimate we're still spending only ~10-30% of our time healing, the worse meshing of DPS + healing kit hurts a lot more than just adding weaving requirements would suggest.

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The only issue I'm seeing here is a personal preference issue. I understand and even agree to an extent, I personally would be content to have Miasma and Bane back myself. (I still want to keep Ruin II and AoW over Miasma II however.)

Where I disagree is that those two changes you bolded out are significant to changing how it fundamentally plays, the only difference in single target dps is that you cast an extra Broil every 18 seconds instead of a Miasma and you use Ruin II to weave and handle mobility mechanics instead of Miasma II. And the only difference in AoE is that you skip the first two gcds setting up dots and go straight into the filler. And for both pressing an ogcd once a minute to plop a Shadow Flare.

The only change in the healing department is that you lose more by forcing more weave slots since the fairy's power was redistributed. Which I consider a positive change since the big thing that made scholar too strong was the power that was on the fairy.

These changes are changes but looking at them I dont find them significant enough to change what my perception of scholar is and plays like? Would I like more dot spread back? Yeah sure? But I don't find the lack of them enough to loose my enjoyment of playing scholar.