My take on the simplicity of healers and the healer problem

Only changes I like to see for healers is them bringing back cleric stance and group or land base AOE attacks for all healers.

Cleric stance lost its purpose in HW because it didn't affect healing abilities. Things like indom, lustrate, tetra and essential dignity straight up ignored its healing penalty. It only affected healing GCDs, and you already know what the community's stance on healing GCDs are.

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Originally Posted by Jamini

How about Square just leaves SCH alone and doesn't touch it until they start giving us good reworks on classes that need it? [/B]

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I can't think of a healer that needs more work than SCH though. It's the only healer that has an opportunity cost on their healing resources. Dissipation literally locks half of your kit and stops you from building fairy gauge.

Why and for what? 300 potency under raid buffs every 3 minutes? Energy drain doesn't even give back MP anymore. Why does seraph lock out fey blessing AND aetherpact? It's just not worth it. SGE has better damage AND healing across majority groups because it makes no such concessions.

I don't want them to neuter SCH either, and maybe after these recent reworks we should be more wary of who we suggest reworks for. But SCH can be better.

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Originally Posted by Rilifane

You can stop lowkey blaming the filthy savage raiders now, it's getting really old.

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Nah. That's exactly the reason. One half of it anyway. Also, I raid myself. That's the only time in the game where I feel the tiny differences between jobs have a slight impact. Leave it to the players to optimise the fun out of everything. SE shouldn't oblige that behaviour. And the same is true for barely having to press a button to get through the MSQ. There is easy and there is being patronising. lol Different difficulty setting exist for a reason.

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Originally Posted by Jamini

Could WHM do with a group shield? Yes. Do they starkly need it? Not really. Again the difference between the best WHM and the best SCH or AST is a minuscule amount, even less when you consider that healers are less than half as much damage contribution as a DPS is.

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Every.healer.does.not.need.to.be.able.to.do.everything.

The entire point of the revamp was to emphasize shield vs regen healers to attempt to encourage bringing one of each so you don't stack a job.

Same thing was attempted with tanks, it failed miserably. This Shield vs Regen healer thing is looking to do the same because every healer is becoming a copy of each other.

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Originally Posted by Coatl

Cleric stance lost its purpose in HW because it didn't affect healing abilities. Things like indom, lustrate, tetra and essential dignity straight up ignored its healing penalty. It only affected healing GCDs, and you already know what the community's stance on healing GCDs are.




I can't think of a healer that needs more work than SCH though. It's the only healer that has an opportunity cost on their healing resources. Dissipation literally locks half of your kit and stops you from building fairy gauge.

Why and for what? 300 potency under raid buffs every 3 minutes? Energy drain doesn't even give back MP anymore. Why does seraph lock out fey blessing AND aetherpact? It's just not worth it. SGE has better damage AND healing across majority groups because it makes no such concessions.

I don't want them to neuter SCH either, and maybe after these recent reworks we should be more wary of who we suggest reworks for. But SCH can be better.

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Scholar is the single enjoyable healer because of the opportunity costs. Why must everything be handed on a silver platter?

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Originally Posted by fulminating

Scholar is the single enjoyable healer because of the opportunity costs. Why must everything be handed on a silver platter?

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Because capstone skills are supposed to be rewarding, not punishing. No other job has that limitation.

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Originally Posted by fulminating

Scholar is the single enjoyable healer because of the opportunity costs. Why must everything be handed on a silver platter?

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Because negative things are only bad if they're on Scholar. Suggesting good things are given to White Mage = bad homogenization, not every healer needs to be good at everything. Suggesting good things be given to Scholar = thank god, long time coming, Scholar is so singularly aggrieved, poor Scholar is merely a powerful healer, a strong damage dealer, has strong raid buff contribution, and is utility-laden, but *that's* not being good at everything. Now give Scholar some more power. It's sooooo underpowered.

This is the double standard this community has always used for WHM versus Scholar/AST.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

Because capstone skills are supposed to be rewarding, not punishing. No other job has that limitation.

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It is rewarding, you get 3 aetherflows and boosted gcd healing. In other words, you get a broil's worth of energy drains to compensate for the GCD you cast, or a 2/3 refund if you've run into a spot where you need to use an aetherflow for healing.
I mean look at temperance, formerly largesse formerly divine seal - that's currently the same healing buff (20%), with a minor mitigation tacked on. I'd argue that despite white mage relying more on GCDs to heal, it's more of a nothingy ability as it requires no thought instead of very little.

Would I turn down a lv92 trait to make it affect oGCDs too? Of course not, but it's not at all necessary as of yet.
I'm not going to point you at your signature but I am slightly baffled by your stance.

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Originally Posted by fulminating

I mean look at temperance, formerly largesse formerly divine seal - that's currently the same healing buff (20%), with a minor mitigation tacked on. I'd argue that despite white mage relying more on GCDs to heal, it's more of a nothingy ability as it requires no thought instead of very little.
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Now imagine if Temperance stopped your lily generation and locked you out of certain other skills. That's the equivalent of Dissipation.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

Now imagine if Temperance stopped your lily generation and locked you out of certain other skills. That's the equivalent of Dissipation.

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Oh the all-important faerie gauge, however will we cope without it for 30s? It's not even like whispering dawn gets cancelled if you use dissipation while it's active.
And temperance costing a lily would be interesting - now that they're on 20s generation it lines up exactly with the duration. There's no reason white mage shouldn't also have opportunity costs if it makes it more interesting. Why do people go on about making healers more interesting and then turn around to suggest that they be made even more braindead?

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Originally Posted by Jamini

1. You are literally talking about the top 0.01% of all players in the game. SCH and AST only begin to pull away from SGE and WHM when you get to the top 15% of all players who even bother to have cleared savage fights. Right off the bat that's a very small number (something like 10% of any game's population even raids, and fewer will clear even one fight in a tier. Much less all of them.)

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And the problem with this is the community sees these stats and takes away that AST and SCH are better than WHM and SGE if the healer isn't bad. the only scenarios where they're better is when the healer player is bad and parsing low so why settle? Do they want to settle with a bad healer player?
I get these stats but the reality is not what you see on fflogs. Tell that to any MCH player who braves PF when technically MCH is better in unorganized groups and gets asked constantly to swap to BRD or DNC.
People in PF groups and in casual/midcore groups absolutely do not care that technically at the level they play at it's negligible, and those are the groups people have to interact with when they attempt to play endgame content.

It's a bit ridiculous how much people complain about how homogenized healers are and how boring they are and then in the same breath complain and whinge about Energy Drain and Dissipation. I've gotten to the point where I've accepted that this is absolutely the job design that this community deserves, because heaven forbid jobs be unique and do different things. SCH has an opportunity cost and has to leverage its healing kit differently than the other healers? This can't be allowed! SGE, WHM, and AST don't have opportunity costs! Fix it! The 100 potency is ""punishing"" and I need this game to reward me with the best results immediately without any effort or thought! I don't want any decision making present if it means I'm not getting the max amount possible out of my job with no effort!

And you all wonder why everything is going the way of Summoner.

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Originally Posted by Nizzi

It's a bit ridiculous how much people complain about how homogenized healers are and how boring they are and then in the same breath complain and whinge about Energy Drain and Dissipation. I've gotten to the point where I've accepted that this is absolutely the job design that this community deserves, because heaven forbid jobs be unique and do different things. SCH has an opportunity cost and has to leverage its healing kit differently than the other healers? This can't be allowed! SGE, WHM, and AST don't have opportunity costs! Fix it! The 100 potency is ""punishing"" and I need this game to reward me with the best results immediately without any effort or thought! I don't want any decision making present if it means I'm not getting the max amount possible out of my job with no effort!

And you all wonder why everything is going the way of Summoner.

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If homogenization keeps the jobs I like from being considered the bad ones by the community and keeps me from being asked to swap off it, then by all means bring more homogenization. Having to level and gear a job only to find out that this other job is actually better and yours is not viable, optimal, or wanted by the general population of the game is not fun at all.

I've commented in the past about SCH's reliance on Energy Drain. There are virtually 0 ways it can be removed without several adjustments across the board for it to work.

Dissipation is worthless enough as is but removing Energy Drain essentially makes it a dead skill entirely. Between the CDs on Aetherflow Skills as well as their limited use during fights, you will almost never burn all your Aetherflow stacks every minute outside of things going poorly or solo healing. As such, Dissipation would see even less usage since there's almost no benefit to using the skill since the Aetherstacks it grants are mostly not needed but in order to not delay stalling Aetherflow usage, you'd need to have burnt thru 6 Aetherflow in less than 1 minute, which unless you are spamming Lustrates for whatever possible reason, is not happening in almost any instance short of a Tank with Broken Gear, in which case it wouldn't even matter. Couple this with the fact that you cannot build Fairy Gauge or use Fairy Abilities, the value of Dissipation drops exponentially. Speaking of the Fairy gauge, removing Energy Drain would either require needlessly overhealing with Lustrate to build it at a reasonable place or just have it build even slower by overwriting unused Aetherstacks so as to not delay Aetherflow. Aetherpact is already a lackluster ability with how slow it is to build up but coupled with the infrequency of damage to justify its usage, I don't see how making it even worse is a good thing for the skill when it needs more moments it can actually shine in. Finally, despite Energy Drain's low potency, it still accounts for ~2-3% of SCH's damage so there's that to consider as well.

Unless you can address all of these issues, there isn't a way to remove Energy Drain without a full rework of how SCH works.

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Originally Posted by Nizzi

And you all wonder why everything is going the way of Summoner.

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This just makes no sense to me. Was it unique when dragoon's jump locked them in place for a whole weekend? Some things need revisiting.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

This is the double standard this community has always used for WHM versus Scholar/AST.

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WHM is bad and it should be better. I don't think anyone would argue this point.

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Originally Posted by Silver-Strider

Dissipation is worthless enough as is but removing Energy Drain essentially makes it a dead skill entirely.

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They don't have to remove energy drain. They can just make dissipation not lock out part of SCH's kit maybe? SGE has a skill which gives them resource back and it doesn't cost them anything.

Or hell make it so dissipitation overcharges our aetherflow. They can have some fun with it.

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Originally Posted by fulminating

Oh the all-important faerie gauge, however will we cope without it for 30s? It's not even like whispering dawn gets cancelled if you use dissipation while it's active.
And temperance costing a lily would be interesting - now that they're on 20s generation it lines up exactly with the duration. There's no reason white mage shouldn't also have opportunity costs if it makes it more interesting. Why do people go on about making healers more interesting and then turn around to suggest that they be made even more braindead?

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When did I say they should be more braindead? I WANT healers to be engaging. I want healer kits to be cohesive.

So yeah you're right, they should absolutely make the system they designed for SCH matter and be engaging(Fairy Gauge).

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Originally Posted by Silver-Strider

I've commented in the past about SCH's reliance on Energy Drain. There are virtually 0 ways it can be removed without several adjustments across the board for it to work.

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Disconnect Energy Drain from Aetherflow and make it an exact copy of Phlegma (2 charge system). This gives SCH some early level AoE but doesn't let them spam it (because CBU3 doesn't want healers to spam aoe at low levels apparently).

Aetherflow still allows for mana regeneration, Energy Drain can still be used.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

Because capstone skills are supposed to be rewarding, not punishing. No other job has that limitation.

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While I think that Dissipation is outdated in several ways because they haven't looked at the skill since they first implemented it one bit I also don't think everything that in any form limits you, forces you to adapt, pay opportunity costs is automatically punishing.
Having something to think about is a good thing in my opinion. And we should keep in mind that even with these limitations, SCH is not just able to hold up just fine but even outperforms other healers if done decently well. And isn't that one definition of "rewarding"? Being able to shine when doing something well?
Not every healer has to get rewarded in the same way. I don't mind if SCH is the only healer that still has opportunity costs, toolkit lockouts and limitations as long as all healers have something to work towards.

But since we currently have 3 healers that can use all skills willy-nilly without any restrictions whatsoever I can see how SCH's kit looks "punishing".
Still, I don't think it's a good habit to treat everything as "punishing" just because it isn't easy, straightforward and has no limitations. As fulinmation said, not everything has to be handed on a silver platter. I'd rather see Dissipation adjusted so it's a bit more suitable for the current encounter and toolkit design, not taken away or turned into something that can't interfer at all with how you use skills.

SCH needs a straight up ground up remake. It's design is very antiquated and punished in ways the other healers aren't. And I understand that it's supposed to be a risk/reward situation but quite frankly, no other healer has penalties.

SGE's kit feels a lot more fluid and has regens on half of its kit, not to mention Kardia is a better Eos when it comes to healing a specific target. And Addersgall is not attached to damage so there is no ED optimization.

AST is only punished for not playing cards, and maybe not utilizing your OGCDs properly. Neutral Sect straight up gives shields and regens with no downside.

WHM's lily skills are no longer punishing to use so they can use it whenever neccassry for healing/movement/weaving.

SCH still only have two uses for the fae gauge. And one is on a 60s CD.

The fact that the devs said in the liveletter concerning SCH changes before EW dropped, that it didn't need many changes.

The job is a shell of its glorious days.

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Originally Posted by elioaiko

SCH still only have two uses for the fae gauge. And one is on a 60s CD.

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Aetherpact/Fey Union is the only ability to use the Faerie gauge as of 6.0, since Fey Blessing had its gauge cost removed.

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Originally Posted by elioaiko

SCH needs a straight up ground up remake. It's design is very antiquated and punished in ways the other healers aren't. And I understand that it's supposed to be a risk/reward situation but quite frankly, no other healer has penalties.

SGE's kit feels a lot more fluid and has regens on half of its kit, not to mention Kardia is a better Eos when it comes to healing a specific target. And Addersgall is not attached to damage so there is no ED optimization.

AST is only punished for not playing cards, and maybe not utilizing your OGCDs properly. Neutral Sect straight up gives shields and regens with no downside.

WHM's lily skills are no longer punishing to use so they can use it whenever neccassry for healing/movement/weaving.

SCH still only have two uses for the fae gauge. And one is on a 60s CD.

The fact that the devs said in the liveletter concerning SCH changes before EW dropped, that it didn't need many changes.

The job is a shell of its glorious days.

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Counterpoint: Every other healer that isn't Scholar needs a straight up, ground up remake. They all suck majorly. AST, WHM and SGE are horribly awful jobs that encourage vomiting out heals and not properly thinking about how to leverage or use your kit well. There's no "punishment" for playing Scholar. Contrary to popular belief within this playerbase, having a skill ceiling isn't a bad thing. This is why Black Mage is the only job that retains any sort of complexity, because for every other job, people whine about it being "punishing" for not giving them immediate rewards, where as the Black Mage community response to misusing your tools is "Plan better for next time."

It's clear you don't like Scholar. That's fine. It's clear that you think SGE and the other healers are better. Your "more fluid" and "better Eos" feels worse to me in every way. I hate Sage. I genuinely think it is the most insipidly boring job this game has ever introduced. Phlegma is boring. Kardia is boring. Addersgall is painfully boring and uninspired. Eukrasia is a boring gimmick that exists solely to consolidate a DoT and fails to do anything interesting at all, like everything about Sage. To me, everything about Sage sucks. It's aesthetics suck, it's gameplay sucks worse than any other healer, all of its buttons are not fun to press or plan and it is BORING.
If you don't like Scholar, play Sage. Scholar doesn't need a rework; Scholar isn't "punishing", you just need to plan better next time - Scholar isn't for you, and that's fine. Sage isn't for me, so I just play Scholar because Scholar has what I'm looking for in a healer. Isn't that what we want in jobs? Diversity and unique playstyles?

People have been asking for a SCH revisit way before SGE. Of course you find SGE boring, its just SCH if they fixed some of its clunk.

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Originally Posted by Jamini

I also forgot that you are neglecting to note that WHM doesn't exclusively have heals.

1. Regens. Regens are vastly useful and efficient heals. While technically healing, their fire and forget nature often makes them really ideal for the current structure of high-end fights. (Where you have periods of a LOT of damage, then a long recovery period.) - Pairing SGE/SCH with a WHM/AST dramatically makes the job of both jobs much easier as their abilities are complimentary. (And yes, SCH and SGE both have regens. But WHM and AST regens are notably better)
2. Asylum. While not a mit, the +healing on this works on basically all forms of recovery. It's also strictly better than Fae Illumination (which only impacts spells) and combos really well with tank heals like Shake it Off, Aurora, Heart of Corundum.
3. Divine Benson. While ST, it is a shield.
4. Temperance. AoE mit and healing up. Core for WHM play in savage content
5. Aquaveil. A single target mit. Comparable to both skills on SGE and AST.
6. Liturgy of the Bell. A beautiful combination of Panaheima AND earthly star. While it's not a shield, this ability basically means I as a Scholar do not need to do much of anything except pop soil during the entire duration. It's insanely good.

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I just want to come back to this since this poster in his rush to justify why WHM should not get any buffs or help with becoming more viable, listed out 6 things he believes are utility WHM has other than heals, and half of them are either straight heals or a heal potency buff while active.
A single partywide mitigation, a single target mitigation, and then a single target shield. The rest is just healing, something that WHM has in spades for sure, but nothing really needs it due to SE's fight design and how people play, we want to avoid overhealing as much as possible.
Compare this to its direct competitor who has a partywide mitigation, a single target mitigation, a single target shield, and also has a heal amp that puts shields on its heals allowing it to do partywide or single target shields as it sees fit.
This competitor also does more damage, which is what really matters in these fights, and has enough healing potential to easily pass heal checks.

Why in this situation would you take WHM? It just straight up has less to offer, unless your group is bad and parses low, something no group wants to admit. This seems to be a bit of a problem that AST and SCH are overloaded in their kits and others struggle to keep up outside of early prog, which is why the AST+SCH combination seems to be so ubiqutous and dominant.

What I was trying to say with all of this is that WHM needs an identity, it needs a reason to pick it. AST is considered a must pick for certain strategies due to Macrocosmos and cards, SCH is considered the same for Expedient and Chain Strategem. What is the situation for WHM being a must pick on fights? Why do you pick it?
It either should be brought back up in parity with the abilities and damage of its direct competitor or given a unique reason to pick it, something that only it can do. Right now it's just raw healing output, but that is very much not something that gels with how the game is played at this point.

Not to mention that both SGE and SCH have more oGCD regens than WHM.
WHM only has Asylum. While WHM has a spammable regen with Medica II and Regen, both are on the GCD and avoided as much as possible. When it comes to oGCD regens, SGE wins by a mile.
Pairing a SGE or SCH with AST or WHM doesn't make their job "dramatically easier" - SGE/ SCH is an insanely strong comp both in terms of healing and combined healer DPS because both bring everything you need on their own but twice. Double mitigation that stacks trivializes a lot of mechanics.
You can 0 GCD heal (not counting downtime GCD heals obviously) all current savage fights right up to Dominion on part 2 on SGE/ SCH, the very last mechanic and the big "heal check" that still barely requires GCD healing and even the few could probably eliminated with a proper mapping. Without an AST or WHM making the job "dramatically easier".

AST and WHM both don't bring what's really important in terms of countering incoming damage.
AST is simply ahead and a meta choice because it brings raid buffs during an expansion where 2min burst is more important than ever. And because Papa Yoshi discouraged everyone from bringing double shields and people really like to take his word for gospel.

In order to create a healthy balance between jobs within any given role, we need to acknowledge these key factors:

Damage
Damage comes in two major forms:
1. Selfish DPS
2. Offensive Buffs
Whether your damage comes from your own DPS or buffs doesn't really matter. Buffs add a few extra steps to calculating your total damage dealt, but what matters is that total. BLM is still considered the strongest DPS caster despite not having raid buffs even though RDM and SMN do because its selfish DPS is much higher. Damage also isn't just a specific variable. You can also take into consideration aspects like job difficulty and uptime which can create more flexibility in job balance as its not always about which job can be the strongest, but about the player.

Utility
Utility comprises all of the non-damaging tools a job can have. While these tools don't contribute to damage directly, they improve a party's margin for error. Most groups are not speed clearers, parsing parties, or world first groups. Most players make mistakes, even when reclearing. There is value in jobs that have less damage, but bring some form of utility, but not all utility is inherently valuable. Rescue, for example, as clever as it is, almost never applies to Savage scenarios. Forms of currently meaningful utility we have:
- Instant Raise/Free Raise (Instant being vastly more useful)
- Mitigation (in some parts mandatory, but additional mitigation is beneficial as well)
- Sustain (on non-healers--tools that aid the healers for back-to-back damage mechanics)
- Mobility (Mainly expedient)
I'd also consider Macrocosmos to be a fringe example of utility as while it is primarily a healing tool, we did have a mechanic that Macrocosmos was able to skip during P3S. I'd consider that beyond normal healing requirements. I'd say that tools that allow the party to skip mechanics count as utility rather than straight healing.
There are other aspects that could count as Utility as well, such as MP restoration and debuff removal, but these are not tools that have applicable value right now. They could be made to be useful, but don't actually matter right now.

SCH remains at the top of the healer list because it has both the best damage and the best utility--great mitigation and expedient. Below SCH, AST has better damage thanks to raid buffs than SGE, and SGE has better utility with all of its extra mitigation. The two aren't exactly even, but they're not that far apart either. WHM has the worst damage and only offers free Raising for utility, which has negligible value as MP is not a major concern this expansion, and also has almost no party mitigation in a meta that demands it.

The balance that I'd like to see in the future would look something like:

SGE: Highest damage a few notches above the others; selfish damage only that is more challenging to optimize. Moderate mitigation; no utility beyond that.
WHM: Second highest damage; mostly selfish with a modest raid buff (like determination). Moderate mitigation; new utility (I proposed Float previously--buff that negates floor damage and puddle damage).
SCH: Second lowest damage; more DoT focused with Chain Stratagem. High mitigation; expedient as utility.
AST: Lowest damage; selfish DPS disguised as support with raid buffs. High mitigation; add instant raise utility.

I would like to see 7.0 shift away from the 2 minute meta of course, but buffs can still exist if we go back to having different cooldowns on things. This would just be the overall field with all that considered.

A visual representation of where I picture these damage values falling with PLD as the control--the lowest DPS tank:

EDIT: I found a website where I could make an actual graph to better articulate the values I imagine. I used a vaguely similar metric to where the tanks currently stand as a reference point, and the healers are adjusted to what I'm describing. I know our community generally holds damage on a higher pedestal than everything else, but in practice, there are many times where I can say that my own group would've not wiped had we a RDM instead of a BLM. No shade to my group's BLM of course. It was never his fault because he couldn't raise or anything, but the value he brought in having extra damage did not matter when having a raise would. There are also times where his extra damage helped us skip And all I mean by that is, adding margin for error, while not as easily measurable, is a worthwhile exchange for DPS for most groups.
https://i.imgur.com/c8i5SwT.jpg

I don't understand why you would list macrocosmos as utility for AST, and not list Chain Strategem for SCH, if anything I would say CS is > macrocosmos (not that maco isn't a good skill, it is). Looking at the highest to lowest healer, there's a fairly wide DPS gap, unless I am reading it completely incorrectly than would increase the gap from the current state - which not be an improvement- and would add a utility skill (instant raise) that would be situational - if anything I would say make it a role skill, but don't subtract from AST because of it.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

In order to create a healthy balance between jobs within any given role, we need to acknowledge these key factors:

Damage
Damage comes in two major forms:
1. Selfish DPS
2. Offensive Buffs
Whether your damage comes from your own DPS or buffs doesn\\'t really matter. Buffs add a few extra steps to calculating your total damage dealt, but what matters is that total. BLM is still considered the strongest DPS caster despite not having raid buffs even though RDM and SMN do because its selfish DPS is much higher. Damage also isn\\'t just a specific variable. You can also take into consideration aspects like job difficulty and uptime which can create more flexibility in job balance as its not always about which job can be

https://i.imgur.com/suVHLIR.jpg

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Is your charts, actual SE tho? Or your calculations through an add-on?

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Originally Posted by DivineP

Is your charts, actual SE tho? Or your calculations through an add-on?

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It's google sheets lol. It's not calculated, it's just me coloring in cells to represent where I think each healer would fall. Note that because it's google sheets, it's blockly. It looks more exaggerated than it is.

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Originally Posted by IDontPetLalas

I don't understand why you would list macrocosmos as utility for AST, and not list Chain Strategem for SCH, if anything I would say CS is > macrocosmos (not that maco isn't a good skill, it is). Looking at the highest to lowest healer, there's a fairly wide DPS gap, unless I am reading it completely incorrectly than would increase the gap from the current state - which not be an improvement- and would add a utility skill (instant raise) that would be situational - if anything I would say make it a role skill, but don't subtract from AST because of it.

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Chain Stratagem would fall under damage. I don't consider damage buffs utility because utility is traditionally non-damaging methods of influencing combat. Things like crowd control, mobility buffs, debuff removal, resource management, cooldown reductions, etc. Chain Stratagem just increases damage dealt to the target (via critical hits). Macrocosmos is only fringe utility in my mind if its negating a mechanic. Otherwise it's just healing.

Healing is just adding a value to an HP number. There isn't a lot you can do with that. That is the only way healing is expressed. You can overheal (shield), which is just a temporary extension of the HP number. You can reduce the subtraction of HP through temporary damage reduction.

Since you can't expand this to any further variety the solutions people put forward are always geared toward changing boss encounters in ways that only benefit healers while screwing over everyone else. On top of that, the benefit to healers are dubious.

For example, if you put vuln stacks instead of damage down (as OP suggested) all that means is the healer simply will not be able to heal someone if they take vuln. It makes you less good at healing, because you won't be able to mathematically prevent them from hitting 0 HP no matter what you do. It would entail your damage reduction mitigation becoming stronger or boss damage mechanics becoming weaker, because in Savage they can already kill you easily on your first mistake, if you aren't topped off or if your gear isn't the best yet.

All by itself, vuln over damage down doesn't actually help healers and entails a lot of other changes to mechanics and abilities just on the back of this one idea.

Every "healer" system change suggested is like this--it entails a bunch of things changing about the way the game is played and penalizes every other role in favor of rebuilding the whole game around healing.

Your job is just to put numbers back on the HP bar. If you don't like that, healing isn't for you.

The problem is the rigid game design more than anything.
Probably sound like a broken record but as long as every healer needs particular types of heals on set intervals. They're all going to be very samey with the only difference being the margins.

Same deal with tanks. The actual damage soaking capacity needs to basically be the same on all so best tank is simply the most dps one.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

It's google sheets lol. It's not calculated, it's just me coloring in cells to represent where I think each healer would fall. Note that because it's google sheets, it's blockly. It looks more exaggerated than it is.



Chain Stratagem would fall under damage. I don't consider damage buffs utility because utility is traditionally non-damaging methods of influencing combat. Things like crowd control, mobility buffs, debuff removal, resource management, cooldown reductions, etc. Chain Stratagem just increases damage dealt to the target (via critical hits). Macrocosmos is only fringe utility in my mind if its negating a mechanic. Otherwise it's just healing.

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Thanks, also the graphics are much appreciated , i just saw the one comparing tanks to healers, which is closer to what I was visualizing.

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Originally Posted by Floortank

Healing is just adding a value to an HP number. There isn't a lot you can do with that. That is the only way healing is expressed. You can overheal (shield), which is just a temporary extension of the HP number. You can reduce the subtraction of HP through temporary damage reduction.

Since you can't expand this to any further variety the solutions people put forward are always geared toward changing boss encounters in ways that only benefit healers while screwing over everyone else. On top of that, the benefit to healers are dubious.

For example, if you put vuln stacks instead of damage down (as OP suggested) all that means is the healer simply will not be able to heal someone if they take vuln. It makes you less good at healing, because you won't be able to mathematically prevent them from hitting 0 HP no matter what you do. It would entail your damage reduction mitigation becoming stronger or boss damage mechanics becoming weaker, because in Savage they can already kill you easily on your first mistake, if you aren't topped off or if your gear isn't the best yet.

All by itself, vuln over damage down doesn't actually help healers and entails a lot of other changes to mechanics and abilities just on the back of this one idea.

Every "healer" system change suggested is like this--it entails a bunch of things changing about the way the game is played and penalizes every other role in favor of rebuilding the whole game around healing.

Your job is just to put numbers back on the HP bar. If you don't like that, healing isn't for you.

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I disagree with the last sentence, the people in an instance only need enough HP in order to survive. Healers won't be constantly healing.

We don't have constant incoming damage in this game, there is no need to be constantly healing. Healers need to heal what can't be avoided, or to assist with mistakes.

I have no idea where the "healing is not for you" comment comes from, I have no idea what jobs you play, but it isn't at all unusual for heals to heal and do damage in games, to various degrees depending upon the context.

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Originally Posted by IDontPetLalas

I disagree with the last sentence, the people in an instance only need enough HP in order to survive. Healers won't be constantly healing.

We don't have constant incoming damage in this game, there is no need to be constantly healing. Healers need to heal what can't be avoided, or to assist with mistakes.

I have no idea where the "healing is not for you" comment comes from, I have no idea what jobs you play, but it isn't at all unusual for heals to heal and do damage in games, to various degrees depending upon the context.

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I really don't understand why it's the healer role that continues to be subjected to a very blunt and literal interpretation of what the role is "supposed" to do when the DPS and Tank roles are not subjected to this in any way. Why are there people who say that healers should only heal when there are no people saying that DPS should only deal damage, or tanks that should only manage aggro and mitigate? I totally understand that there are healer players who may not want a very aggressive playstyle, but I imagine the majority of that group would not just be restoring HP--that they'd also want to be mitigating damage, providing buffs, offering utility and crowd control, and have all that take the place of damage, but not just be HP batteries.

FFXIII showed how you could have a tank role that never attacks, or only deals damage through counterattack. Where are all the extremist tank players clamoring for that?

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

I really don't understand why it's the healer role that continues to be subjected to a very blunt and literal interpretation of what the role is "supposed" to do when the DPS and Tank roles are not subjected to this in any way. Why are there people who say that healers should only heal when there are no people saying that DPS should only deal damage, or tanks that should only manage aggro and mitigate? I totally understand that there are healer players who may not want a very aggressive playstyle, but I imagine the majority of that group would not just be restoring HP--that they'd also want to be mitigating damage, providing buffs, offering utility and crowd control, and have all that take the place of damage, but not just be HP batteries.

FFXIII showed how you could have a tank role that never attacks, or only deals damage through counterattack. Where are all the extremist tank players clamoring for that?

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When you see a very slow interruptable spell being cast (the chimeras at the very start of WoD say hi) but you're just a healer...

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Originally Posted by Allegor

When you see a very slow interruptable spell being cast (the chimeras at the very start of WoD say hi) but you're just a healer...

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It's a shame that healers are stuck with Repose, a near-useless form of crowd control that barely even works in environments where Sleep would be useful (I find most enemies are immune to Repose while soloing HoH as SGE) not to mention it is blatantly inferior to the caster's Sleep which is AoE. I love the concept of sleep as a debuff, but it's not at all given value in this game.

I would really love if interrupt were a thing that was regularly useful and not just reserved for the fringiest of cases, and then to offer healers a silence. I don't really want to add buttons for mechanics that the devs seem to forget exist, but it is quite a bizarre experience seeing an incoming attack and not being able to do a thing about it when that's otherwise the only thing healers are really doing other than atomizing their filler DPS button. Also, having the ability to dispel buffs is something that feels like it should've been a day 1 healer mechanic.

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Originally Posted by Allegor

When you see a very slow interruptable spell being cast (the chimeras at the very start of WoD say hi) but you're just a healer...

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Swiftcast Holy :cool:

How did I managed to post in the wrong thread. Who am I? Where am I?

[now irrelevant)

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

It's a shame that healers are stuck with Repose, a near-useless form of crowd control that barely even works in environments where Sleep would be useful (I find most enemies are immune to Repose while soloing HoH as SGE) not to mention it is blatantly inferior to the caster's Sleep which is AoE. I love the concept of sleep as a debuff, but it's not at all given value in this game.

I would really love if interrupt were a thing that was regularly useful and not just reserved for the fringiest of cases, and then to offer healers a silence. I don't really want to add buttons for mechanics that the devs seem to forget exist, but it is quite a bizarre experience seeing an incoming attack and not being able to do a thing about it when that's otherwise the only thing healers are really doing other than atomizing their filler DPS button. Also, having the ability to dispel buffs is something that feels like it should've been a day 1 healer mechanic.

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A lot more dispellable debuffs/bleeds and interrupts would be nice to break monotony more often. I'm sure the reason people don't ever even use Esuna/Interject is because A- they're so few and far between that most even forget they can counter those effects, and B- an aoe regen will be enough to cheese through it.
I recall someone in the healer forum suggesting the Cure I variants be fused with Esuna and honestly that idea lives rent free in my head since.

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Originally Posted by Allegor

A lot more dispellable debuffs/bleeds and interrupts would be nice to break monotony more often. I'm sure the reason people don't ever even use Esuna/Interject is because A- they're so few and far between that most even forget they can counter those effects, and B- an aoe regen will be enough to cheese through it.
I recall someone in the healer forum suggesting the Cure I variants be fused with Esuna and honestly that idea lives rent free in my head since.

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I also think cleansable debuffs are poorly communicated. The little cyan bar above icons is too small and too out of sight that, given how infrequently they occur, it's too easy to forget that Esuna is a thing or to pay attention to debuffs like that. I think the UI needs a major update on debuffs as well as dispelable buffs. FFXIV already pulls UI aspects from FFXII, which is something I've brought up before as being a great source of inspiration for updating the debuff UI.

https://i.imgur.com/v1Vcwsg.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/Xa9P4C7.jpg?1

As you can see, the icon overlays atop the character's HP bar, and an icon appears near their overhead HP bar. The name of the debuff also appears as flying text overtop the active character, which you can see is fading in the first image. The part where the debuff icon and name overlay the party list HP bar flickers slowly rather than sits over the HP bar perpetually, and if the character has multiple debuffs, it will cycle through them. This is only done for debuffs in FFXII (and Lure for some reason, which is essentially a 'tank stance' buff). If this were exclusively done for buffs that can be Esuna'd away, it would drastically increase the visibility of these aspects and make it easier to work into more challenging content.

Here's also a video link to see how the debuff examples work in FFXII for further reference. The boss has a "bad breath" type attack that applies a bunch of debuffs to everyone hit.

Something else from XII that I just now realized would be incredibly helpful is, anyone being targeted by abilities has their name change to pink. It would be really cool if a character's name changed color when they're at the top of the threat chart, or when they're being targeted by certain mechanics, like double healer stack markers.

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Originally Posted by Allegor

When you see a very slow interruptable spell being cast (the chimeras at the very start of WoD say hi) but you're just a healer...

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The amount of times I've seen people die to:

1) A mob turning around to a DPS charging up it's massive laser attack
2) A mob holding a single had up with a massive glowing orb

etc etc

Is to damn high.

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Originally Posted by Allegor

A lot more dispellable debuffs/bleeds and interrupts would be nice to break monotony more often. I'm sure the reason people don't ever even use Esuna/Interject is because A- they're so few and far between that most even forget they can counter those effects, and B- an aoe regen will be enough to cheese through it.
I recall someone in the healer forum suggesting the Cure I variants be fused with Esuna and honestly that idea lives rent free in my head since.

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Similar with Surecast too. I love to use it on knockbacks to not move, but you're never 100% sure if it's going to work on the knockback because CBU3 has made it work on some but not others.