Give your opinion on healer design!

-Are you happy with the current design of the three healers? Which one is your favourite?
No. can't really call a favorite at present as I've only capped one so far (my FC does have a WHM main and a now-ex AST main, so most of my info on them is secondhand or academic at best)

-What keeps you engaged when playing a healer?
The.. faster queue times? the improved mood of my friends not having to worry about pugging an incompetent healer? (which i'm still shocked exist given how simple everyone's kits have become)

-Regarding healer identity, what gimmick or gameplay style would you give each of the healers? Both in terms of how the healing itself would work and what to do during healing downtime.
SCH: more pet focus (and more stable pet actions on the backend!). more skills that gain and spend faerie guage and allow greater interaction with a currently neglected facet of the class (perhaps bringing back fae wind as an aoe buff that spends meter, swapping energy drain from damage+mp recov to additional meter gain+mp recov if devs are super against healer DPS options, etc etc etc), shifting their core to a resource-management angle from their now-removed DoT/downtime-DPS one.
AST: make cards more engaging again--having all their time-related skills (except lightspeed) completely removed and the entire card mechanic made basically worthless (to the point of making the AST main since HW drop it out of disgust) in the ShB redesign hurt to see even as someone who doesn't play the class. if reverting to the previous lore-inspired versions for cards is somehow impossible, at least add an appropriate sub-effect to each card if every card simply MUST be The-Balance-In-Tiny-Degrees, related to what seal they grant or something--at least make them line up with the lore for the class again. cards were already an excellentsource of engagement for the class and that could easily remain the case if made interesting again i think.
WHM: scrap the "everything is just a fancy holy" ShB aesthetic change and go back to it's CNJ roots (yes i know that the AST quests are apparently winding up for a geomancer class or something, that isnt relevant to this topic). perhaps with aura skills or zone effects with various buffs/heals/etc, or perhaps (gasp!) a shield of some kind! perhaps as just one/two catchall skills (water- earth- or wind-aspected Protect and Shell?) that they cycle between while managing everyone's battlefield positions (providing some real moment-to-moment stuff and a 'terrain/nature' theme back on top of their healing kit).

-Are you expecting a new healer job to be added in the next Expansion? If so, what job would you like to see and what type of gameplay would you like the new job to have?
probably. I don't really have a preference as long as it's got an interesting core mechanic/gimmick to handle while healing. i'm not really sure what the major candidates for a new healer would even BE (chemist/alchemist? sage? seer?).

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

-Are you happy with the current design of the three healers?

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No. I unsubscribed because healing is so profoundly unsatisfying in this game. I'm only able to post because I'm playing around with BLM using the free week for returning players.

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

Which one is your favourite?

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Scholar.

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

-What keeps you engaged when playing a healer?

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In this game? Nothing. In general? Moments of awesome. To me, that means saving pulls and/or making the impossible possible by using unique class mechanics and situational awareness to (usually preemptively) respond to mistakes and/or unusual configurations of mechanics. Scholar gets the closest, with the potential to multilayer shields, but that player skill (which is mostly remembering to start long enough in advance) was tested so rarely during the time that I played that it didn't make the experience worthwhile.

What hooked me on healing in WoW was Spirit Link Totem, Ancestral Protection Totem, and a bunch of stackable output multipliers with varied cooldowns. When Blizzard removed most of those cooldowns in BfA, I quit WoW.

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

-Regarding healer identity, what gimmick or gameplay style would you give each of the healers? Both in terms of how the healing itself would work and what to do during healing downtime.

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Scholar is about using foresight and a huge toolbox to get the group through unusual situations that would normally kill them. Shielding is an obvious expression of this theme, but I'm flabbergasted that there's nothing like a movement speed buff or a temporary invincibility in the Scholar kit. Both of these things would feel awesome to use when you recognize that someone is in the process of screwing up.

Astrologian is about moment-to-moment adaptation, making the most of RNG to boost teammates' power rather than following a methodical personal plan each pull. I feel that it ought to be akin to SCH as a utility character, except with more frequent but less reliable access to it's situational tools.

White Mage is about making huge reliable chunky numbers. When the raid is about to get flattened by repeated waves of damage, WHM is there to blast the whole raid straight back to full between pulses and then smash the boss in the face with the bigass damage spell they've built up.

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

-Are you expecting a new healer job to be added in the next Expansion? If so, what job would you like to see and what type of gameplay would you like the new job to have?

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Yes, though I don't particularly care what the new job is if it follows the current healing philosophy. It would have to include far more interconnectivity between abilities, including the DPS rotation, and be capable of powerful and visceral moments of awesome. None of which is likely (and may be outright impossible) within the current healing design philosophy (for both class- and encounter-design).

Though if a miracle occurred and SE gave me Legion Resto Shaman then I'd resubscribe for sure.

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Originally Posted by Corbeau

Though if a miracle occurred and SE gave me Legion Resto Shaman then I'd resubscribe for sure.

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To be fair, wouldn't you also need Legion healer content to really get anywhere near the full joy out of that?

...Not that I wouldn't take a Cloudburst Totem, High Tide/Undulation mechanics, and their Spirit Link Totem regardless...

-Are you happy with the current design of the three healers? Which one is your favourite?

No, I'm really not. And I don't play AST or WHM so don't feel I'd give them a fair assesment. Scholar is an old favorite that ultimately sealed the deal for me to keep playing in 2.0.

-What keeps you engaged when playing a healer?

That I can make a difference, that I can help achieve victory through indirect or unorthodox methods and playstyles, often under stress and enemy fire.

As in current iteration of 5.0 SCH? When I'm on voice with friends I can still zone out on SCH when helping them with roulette queues. Which I can do on any job. Or play another game with them entirely.

This remains a massive juxtaposition to 2.0 and 3.0, where just logging in and knowing I had the whole world at my fingertips was enough to keep me engaged.

-Regarding healer identity, what gimmick or gameplay style would you give each of the healers? Both in terms of how the healing itself would work and what to do during healing downtime.

Bring back the tactician feeling of Scholar simply put: Make filling up healthbars difficult, make shields and debuffs more numeral and impactful and bring back the pet management, Hotbar, gcd and mortality. This current way of "when health goes down press this to make it go up"-cooldowns is not what Scholar should be about.

I would say give the job the dps treatment. Look at old Arcanist class, and now look at level 50 Sam and RDM: Simple but engaging core, gauge that isn't on a timer and be used whenever. Just Iaijutsu and the Sen on Scholar would liven it up immensly.

So with that mindset, just give SCH to the Black Mage designer to work on without telling them it's a healer. Sure it'd be weird but at least you know they'd actually spend more than two braincells on it.

-Are you expecting a new healer job to be added in the next Expansion? If so, what job would you like to see and what type of gameplay would you like the new job to have?

New jobs generate hype like the Black Plague generated corpses. I know the temptation will be too much, but for once in their fucking lives since Heavensward I would love for the developers to actually stop. Stop and take a step back. See this entangled mess they've made where Healers are indistingusable from bots, where they made a good job of make sure sprouts find parties for Copperbell, but at the same time make it excruciating by locking away your skills. See that you have a million combat scenarios where you are free to go as either Black Mage or Scholar, but you get severly punished with an acute case of boredom and wearing out your "1" key if you picked the dumb option. Get some new perspective or lend someone else's eyes, get the whole picture again and see what the hell you are doing.

I want SE to stop making me feel Scholar, and by extension Healers, are playing second fiddle wretches to red and blue-iconed jobs. It's getting ridiculous. What I mean by this is a ton of grapes I have with current Scholar comes from a history of SE considering OTHER jobs or roles then coming in and kicking down the flamingos in our own front yard because of it. Just see:
* SMN and SCH share stuff from ACN
* SMN gets new stuff and they lose some old ACN skills, these are also removed from SCH without anything to replace them.
* SMN gets new pet functions for their rotation, SCH get's delayed pets that eat your cooldowns for breakfast.
* SMN gets major patch reworks, SCH gets to eat shit.

And just endless parade of inconsiderations, combat restrictions, thoughtless changes, removing choices, clueless Directors and just more that feels it was made by what someone not playing Scholar would do if he got the assignment "Balance Scholar for Savage raids" and had nothing more to work with. Even then I think they spent most of their day on their phone.

So yes, I'm expecting a new Healer, but I don't want it. It's gonna be another round of SE going "well, fans wanted it so what can we do" and later "yeah, new jobs are such hard work so we had to cut corners everywhere else and make existing tanks and healers even more the same. Nothing to be done you know." If this giant corporation conglomerate only has resources to work once every second year on jobs then save all those resources staging a Expedition into the archives and retrieve 3.0 Scholar along with Cleric Stance.

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

Are you happy with the current design of the three healers? Which one is your favourite?

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Not particularly, but they're not terrible. All three are over-homogenized imo. A lot of the cooldowns feel like they're just thrown in to give more to do while not necessarily being important or needed or offering anything unique in terms of gameplay, many are just different forms of aoe heals.

I get the impression Square doesn't really know what they want healers to do, and/or is too afraid of making them more unique for balance reasons.

My favorite by far is AST for the aesthetic, busyness and unique gameplay but I haven't been playing it much because that unique gameplay (the card system) was changed for the worse.

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

What keeps you engaged when playing a healer?

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Same as any other job, having varied and interesting things to do.

What tends to turn me off from healing is how dependent the gameplay is on other players and certain mechanics, you can go from being bored out of your mind to nearly having a heart attack from one group or raid to the next. Having tools to make the experience more consistent is nice - having more to do in downtime and solid emergency abilities.

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

Regarding healer identity, what gimmick or gameplay style would you give each of the healers? Both in terms of how the healing itself would work and what to do during healing downtime.

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WHM: "Healers without peer, possessed of the power to deliver comrades from the direst of afflictions."

Healing: Big beefy no-nonsense direct heals.

Downtime: Maintaining long-term buffs on allies, buffing their own spells. Dmg is relatively simple and direct.

SCH: "Brilliant strategic maneuvering, spell-weaving faeries, bolster strength of allies."

Healing: The fairy does a lot of the work through ogcds while the player buffers that with shields and other preventative spells.

Downtime: Preparing damage prevention through shields, buffs, and debuffs. Dmg mostly in the form of increasing the output of allies with a more significant shared resource for healing and damage making choice more important.

AST: "Magicks with unseen properties, power over fate."

Healing: Weird/fringe stuff like buffs that trigger on dmg or revert someone back to a previous state, ability to rez without debuff (if used preventatively), delayed effects, abilities with extra range, more emergency spells - healing (and dmg reduction) to low hp targets. Some randomized healing tools through cards (bolstered by the emergency heals in case you get unlucky).

Downtime: Buffing allies with movement and some dmg reduction, preparing spells to "reverse fates", maybe even gain vision of incoming telegraphs that others can't see. Cards drawn determine what you can do, your interpretation of them determines who lives and dies. Dmg as varied as the healing, more focus on marking enemies for death than buffing allies.

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

Are you expecting a new healer job to be added in the next Expansion? If so, what job would you like to see and what type of gameplay would you like the new job to have?

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Only in the regard that healers and casters have the fewest jobs atm so they're the most likely to get a new one. A nature-themed healer with over-time effects would be cool. Could also see an edgelord healer that mostly heals through damage. Chemist seems popular though I'm not a huge fan myself, I'd see that as a sort of healing Machinist with turrets and other neat mechanical tools to dispense a variety of concoctions.

I still stand by my opinion that healer design is fine but could be improved. ButI think I should elaborate on ideas for the Jobs

• Return Aero III to WHM, but have it share the DoT with Aero/Dia if DoT stacking is a concern. Also have a CD that ensures the nest GCD is a crit, which would have uses ranging from a massive AOE heal to making Misery a straight DPS upgrade instead of just DPS forgiveness and a oGCD earth aspected attack to replace Stone
• For AST: Have Stella return and be useful for more than CC, perhaps tie it to Earthly Star somehow. Also return time dialation is TMG isn't gonna be a thing. Another idea is to have the major arcana be pure utility effects and double Divination's DPS buff per seal to compensate.
• For SCH, I'd say fairy specific abilities should return, but Whispering Dawn shouldn't be one of them. Have Silent Dusk be a shared skill like WD, and when Selene is out have Fey Wind and Fey Caress replace Illumination and Covenant (also implies the latter returned as well). Not much to say about DPS options though other than maybe having them proc Broil/AoW to give an additional effect. (Also worth noting that the Seraph might have different abilities as well depending on which form the faeries takes, but Union and Blessing wouldbe unchanged). Lastly have a CD that switches the fairy mid battle or something like Neutral Sect where Lily's (the faeiry) abilities gain all the effects of both her Selene and Eos forms

On a side note, for SMN, have Miasma I return as the middle point between the base spell and III, that gap is quite an annoyance

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

To be fair, wouldn't you also need Legion healer content to really get anywhere near the full joy out of that?

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Probably not, since Legion Resto's toolkit could probably solo heal any given XIV fight.

I wouldn't turn down mythic plus if they threw it into the package though.