To YoshiP, here's what too stress-free: Healer edition

I'm at that stage where I'm no longer hoping for anything from their benchmark/trailers/teaser/thingamabob. The last time I got excited from seeing 2 new actions with lilies insignias from WHM's trailer... for nothing as those two actions turned out to be Holy III and Lilybell that bears no relation to the ever-so-barebone Lily Gauge at all. I get more excitement by tinkering aesthetics that should not be mentioned.

"Hey, we heard you want more interaction and varieties with Lily Gauge. We can't do that at the moment just yet (read: we don't want to) but lmao here's two new actions showing Lily VFX that has absolutely nothing to do with the job gauge. Please look forward to it."

No thanks. Please, surprise me in a good way, SE.

Even PvP Healers are more fun to play than the current ones.

As a SCH main in HW, I actually don't expect anything good anymore. From them cutting out 15% of my kit in SB to them cutting out another 80% of my kit in ShB and then to them giving SCH the most underwhelming bit in the job actions trailer for EW, I'm actually just expecting a surprise full rework of SCH at this point because they said they didn't know what to do with it anymore for EW.

Flamethrower back to usefulness.

Who am I kidding.

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Originally Posted by Valence

Flamethrower back to usefulness.

Who am I kidding.

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The funniest part about Flamethrower is that they had a very easy out to making it actually useful back in SB, just turn it into Stun Gun from PvP where it just did damage and instantly put you in overheat. It fixes the opener and makes the button good, but they instead decided to entirely rework the job and then they forgot about Flamethrower.

I'll expect nothing, so that if something is shown it's a welcome surprise. Fully expecting things like WHM getting Salt and Light for their Asylum, or a new healing tool VFX which turns out to just be a 100p boost to Tetra

For Flamethrower, give it a boosted initial hit (say, 200p instead of 80p), and an additional effect that says 'deals triple damage with said initial hit if the enemy is afflicted by Bioblaster', means that doing Bio+FT once per minute in place of a Drill is a DPS gain even in singletarget. Numbers might need tweaking to compensate for the extra GCD lost to the FT cast

Or maybe implement it as 'immediately deal the damage remaining on Bioblaster, and apply 'Flamethrower Debuff Name' to enemy, dealing 150p per tick for 12s (total 600p for FT, plus 300p for Bio), again numbers adjustable but I just want a way to use Bio-FT once a minute, in a similar way to how NIN uses a Suiton once per minute instead of a Raiton for their own reasons (Trick)

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Originally Posted by Aravell

The funniest part about Flamethrower is that they had a very easy out to making it actually useful back in SB, just turn it into Stun Gun from PvP where it just did damage and instantly put you in overheat. It fixes the opener and makes the button good, but they instead decided to entirely rework the job and then they forgot about Flamethrower.

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But it was useful in SB. It was literally required for overheat and single target, and not using it under overheat snapshot for AoE was not playing AoE properly. Making it instant or not wouldn't have changed much since it was an ogcd, which was what made the whole overheat shenanigans with pint point accuracy required in the first place. Unless this instant overheat stun gun was on the GCD. I kinda forgot if stun gun was on the gcd or not tbh but that's what made the whole difference. I still maintain that the overheat FT tech would have worked perfectly fine if they had just added overheat stacks instead of that insanely tight timer... It also introduced interesting casting shenanigans, especially during opener since you needed 5s of immobility. I think it was actually a nice quirk of the job.

It became borderline useless in ShB, and further compounded in EW since scattergun buffed its direct competitor (ACB).

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

For Flamethrower, give it a boosted initial hit (say, 200p instead of 80p), and an additional effect that says 'deals triple damage with said initial hit if the enemy is afflicted by Bioblaster', means that doing Bio+FT once per minute in place of a Drill is a DPS gain even in singletarget. Numbers might need tweaking to compensate for the extra GCD lost to the FT cast

Or maybe implement it as 'immediately deal the damage remaining on Bioblaster, and apply 'Flamethrower Debuff Name' to enemy, dealing 150p per tick for 12s (total 600p for FT, plus 300p for Bio), again numbers adjustable but I just want a way to use Bio-FT once a minute, in a similar way to how NIN uses a Suiton once per minute instead of a Raiton for their own reasons (Trick)

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It's a popular proposition and I think it's cool on its own. Personally I was very fond of the old pvp flamethrower which dealt increasing vuln stacks to anybody caught in its cone (also went through walls lol), and it was very spicy the longer you stayed inside the flames. Like, very, very spicy. great area of denial tool, especially good for flushing people out of cover as well.

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Originally Posted by Aravell

It's even more strange that we're seeing so many more "I only want to heal and I don't want to contribute dps at all" healers in the one expansion where you need to heal the least.

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I don't know if I have seen anyone seriously say that they don't want to contribute DPS at all. I think (at least for myself), what a lot of us feel like, is that we want healing to be the focus and right now, it just doesn't feel like that is the case, especially with the lack of incoming damage and/or the glut of self-sustain that tanks have. Also the ilvl differences. I can get behind having additional DPS options, to make it more varied. But what I do fear (or more accurately, don't trust) is CBU3 giving us another pointless heal or leaning the role more and more into DPS, instead of trying to strike an actual balance.
The only times i ever feel alive, as a healer, is doing MINE content or when several people make mistakes and, as the healer, pulling things back. Outside of that, it's using up solace/rapture's pointlessly just to fish for a crit misery.

The easiest, and more useable, but probably not as interesting change they could do to Flamethrower is to rework it to be a GCD, and make it the AOE version of Heatblast. And then move Auto Crossbow to the multitool rotation. I know it doesn't exist, but I feel like a job like Chemist should be the job that goes harder on debuff interactions.

the problem with giving healers more dps buttons is that they will use them and not heal, hell we have 2 buttons now and healers wait till the group is at half hp or less to bring everyone back up. The problem is not everyone can dodge everything every time and when your group is at half hp and a mistake happens usually dps die now you rez and they have less damage, keep everyone topped off and usually it goes better. Bottom line is you are there to heal not dps if you need to dps to stop feeling "bored" roll a dps. These healer dps posts really take me back to the idiocy of the strength stat stacking tanks that was so bad SE had to step in and change the way tanks work to save people from themselves.

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Originally Posted by Valence

But it was useful in SB. It was literally required for overheat and single target, and not using it under overheat snapshot for AoE was not playing AoE properly. Making it instant or not wouldn't have changed much since it was an ogcd, which was what made the whole overheat shenanigans with pint point accuracy required in the first place. Unless this instant overheat stun gun was on the GCD. I kinda forgot if stun gun was on the gcd or not tbh but that's what made the whole difference. I still maintain that the overheat FT tech would have worked perfectly fine if they had just added overheat stacks instead of that insanely tight timer... It also introduced interesting casting shenanigans, especially during opener since you needed 5s of immobility. I think it was actually a nice quirk of the job.

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The main problem with it was the server ticks where you can't actually tell when you'd reliably overheat and so you can waste time accidentally, also the immobility caused problems in the opener of certain fights *cough*O7S*cough*. I honestly believe that Flamethrower would've been so much more usable if it was an instant overheat GCD.

Anyway, knowing how the dev team operates, they'd probably take the most basic path to making Flamethrower usable in your rotation, and that's probably to upgrade it and turn it into your Hypercharge finisher button.

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Originally Posted by ChrysOCE

I don't know if I have seen anyone seriously say that they don't want to contribute DPS at all. I think (at least for myself), what a lot of us feel like, is that we want healing to be the focus and right now, it just doesn't feel like that is the case, especially with the lack of incoming damage and/or the glut of self-sustain that tanks have. Also the ilvl differences. I can get behind having additional DPS options, to make it more varied. But what I do fear (or more accurately, don't trust) is CBU3 giving us another pointless heal or leaning the role more and more into DPS, instead of trying to strike an actual balance.
The only times i ever feel alive, as a healer, is doing MINE content or when several people make mistakes and, as the healer, pulling things back. Outside of that, it's using up solace/rapture's pointlessly just to fish for a crit misery.

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The biggest problem I can see now is that the healer and tank players are in opposition of what they want. Healers want to actually heal while tanks want to be immortal like WAR is in dungeons. SB had the greatest balance of healing requirements and tank defensives, healers were required to GCD heal and a really good tank can still solo the last 20-30% of a boss' HP, but there was none of the nonsense of soloing 90% of the boss like what we have now.

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Originally Posted by OogaShaka

the problem with giving healers more dps buttons is that they will use them and not heal, hell we have 2 buttons now and healers wait till the group is at half hp or less to bring everyone back up. The problem is not everyone can dodge everything every time and when your group is at half hp and a mistake happens usually dps die now you rez and they have less damage, keep everyone topped off and usually it goes better. Bottom line is you are there to heal not dps if you need to dps to stop feeling "bored" roll a dps. These healer dps posts really take me back to the idiocy of the strength stat stacking tanks that was so bad SE had to step in and change the way tanks work to save people from themselves.

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The game isn’t designed to put out the level of damage that necessitates sitting there and heal slutting the party, to quote the GCBTW if you want to heal slut then go play WOW, 14 healers have always been accomplished damage casters in their own right

Healers shouldn’t be forced to be the most boring role possible so the DPS can feel babied during mechanics, healers are their own players as well, not just bots for the DPS enjoyment

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

The game isn’t designed to put out the level of damage that necessitates sitting there and heal slutting the party, to quote the GCBTW if you want to heal slut then go play WOW, 14 healers have always been accomplished damage casters in their own right

Healers shouldn’t be forced to be the most boring role possible so the DPS can feel babied during mechanics, healers are their own players as well, not just bots for the DPS enjoyment

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Honestly, if they want to make healers so boring, maybe they should give us the option to fill the healer slots with bots. :)

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Originally Posted by OogaShaka

Bottom line is you are there to heal not dps if you need to dps to stop feeling "bored" roll a dps.

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Bro what else are people supposed to do during healing downtime?? And I mean specifically when people have already been topped off, the result still ends the same.

Please don't encourage healers to AFK for 6 out of 10 minutes in fights, In a raid setting of 8 players it's not even fair to your party.(unless it's a static team that wants that) If you're unwilling to chip in any offensive contribution it just means that in the event of being in a fight with an enrage timer - DPS deaths are a much bigger penalty for the team because not only are they now down in DPS, but they are missing the supplementary DPS that a healer can comfortably accumulate by contributing damage when their primary task ((healing)) is on standby due to the party being full health and no current dangers are threatening the party for the next 10-15s.

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Originally Posted by Sunhwapark

Bro what else are people supposed to do during healing downtime??

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/beesknees and ERP of course.

/s

I know one way to fix Healer for good, and its a simple fix:

Give their few DPS attacks big damage numbers, but comes with a big timer cooldown.

This way they don't have to constantly spam DPS rotations and keep up with healing at the same time.

Problem solved (hopefully).

Also give all of them more Negative Status Effects (like Physical Defense Down, Physical Attack Down by 5%), etc to cast on enemies while their waiting on their DPS Cooldowns.

That's... the opposite of what people have been asking for.

We want more to do when there's nothing to heal, not less. The status effects would be nice, but you wouldn't need to turn our nukes into large cooldowns for that, just give the debuffs and have us refresh them semi-frequently.

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Originally Posted by TheDustyOne

That's... the opposite of what people have been asking for.

We want more to do when there's nothing to heal, not less. The status effects would be nice, but you wouldn't need to turn our nukes into large cooldowns for that, just give the debuffs and have us refresh them semi-frequently.

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I say it in a way like this because I know the Developers are not going to budge on their position.

I should had mentioned that, my apologies.

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Originally Posted by Kaliesto

I know one way to fix Healer for good, and its a simple fix:

Give their few DPS attacks big damage numbers, but comes with a big timer cooldown.

This way they don't have to constantly spam DPS rotations and keep up with healing at the same time.

Problem solved (hopefully).

Also give all of them more Negative Status Effects (like Physical Defense Down, Physical Attack Down by 5%), etc.

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This doesn't fix anything.

The problem is that there is TOO LITTLE OUTGOING DAMAGE to heal so healers are forced to either sit there and do nothing or dps. The only thing this proposed fix would do is make me sit there doing nothing every X seconds waiting to attack because I have nothing to deal.

How you fix the healing role:

• Stop. Babying Fights. Tank busters should come up more often. UNAVOIDABLE DAMAGE should come up more often.
• LESS dodgable mechanics and one shots and body checks.
• MORE targeted mechanics on the DPS for the healer to heal.
• Force me to actually ration out my bloated healing kit instead of having me sit on tools for ages because the bosses don't do anything for long stretches of time for legitimately no reason.
• Give buffs/debuffs to manage - something that I am always reapplying to a party member/enemy.
• And when I have nothing to heal give me a decent DPS kit to keep me occupied and to make it so MSQ and solo instances aren't a snoozefest.

I made a clarified post, but yeah I don't mind your way either.

Thing is the Developers are absolutely stubborn, how many years has it been you all been screaming into the void to get them to change the Healers?

Just seems impossible to get them to budge on the healer problem; its either their way or their way.

"sigh" :(

Seems like the Devs. care about about their current position than what others have to say, so I tried to work around it, but hey if my way sucks then that is fine..I just don't know what can be done to get them to listen.


Ironically....


The PVP Healers is like the best version, why not just import that to PVE?

Also speaking as a Dragoon Main I want that Limit Break for PVE as well as a lvl1 or 2 DRG limit break to use in battle.

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Originally Posted by OogaShaka

The problem is not everyone can dodge everything every time and when your group is at half hp and a mistake happens usually dps die now you rez and they have less damage, keep everyone topped off and usually it goes better. Bottom line is you are there to heal not dps if you need to dps to stop feeling "bored" roll a dps.

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yeah healers, learn your place. you're not there to have fun, you're there to babysit other people as the party's janitor. now go keep raising that DPS player that stands in everything so they can have more fun than you.

If they transferred the current healer gameplay to Tanks there would be massive uproar. Imagine pressing like 2 damage buttons and having 20 mitigations as Tank.

Healer kits are bloated to hell too, they could easily combine and shave a good deal of buttons to make them matter more to make space for something more interesting, be it buffs or damage.

Personally I would love them to just overhaul the healing into cyclical gameplay of Healing builds damage buttons and dealing damage builds juicy healing buttons. This way the game would automatically teach healers to deal damage and reward it and likewise encourage to actually use multitude of your healing buttons to get rewarded with BIG explosions.

Scholar Button Bloat kind of drives me up the wall, I rarely ever play that job.

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Originally Posted by Kaliesto

Scholar Button Bloat kind of drives me up the wall, I rarely ever play that job.

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SCH really isn’t that bad, in modern healing design (not saying I like modern healing design) it really doesn’t have any redundant buttons because they all serve the design of SCH being the layering healer (fey blessing is probably the closest to redundant with protraction after that but even they have uses)

I’d probably argue SCH while being the healer with the most buttons actually has the least true bloat, AST for example could lose minor arcana, astrodyne and one out of exaltation and celestial intersection, WHM doesn’t need ~~stoneskin 1~~ divine bension and aquaveil and tetra is near useless, SGE’s entire toxicon mechanic is bloat and krasis doesn’t interact with its kit near as well as protraction does on SCH

This is outside of the fact that the healer kits are bloated on healing actions in general but SCH has the strongest intention of actions so to speak

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Originally Posted by Aravell

The main problem with it was the server ticks where you can't actually tell when you'd reliably overheat and so you can waste time accidentally, also the immobility caused problems in the opener of certain fights *cough*O7S*cough*. I honestly believe that Flamethrower would've been so much more usable if it was an instant overheat GCD.

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You're right that it would have made it less finicky, but it wouldn't have fixed the latency issues. Fact of the matter is the low latency rotation was generally not playable above 50-75ms of ping (unless you were into other types of instances like housing, at least for me, where it kinda worked even at 200ms... tells all you need to know how latency isn't even the problem, the problem is their spaghetti netcode). Fortunately we had a high ping rotation, unlike in shb, which was a true eyesore until they introduced the holy heat stacks (finally after all those years).

And I actually LOVED the quirks in O7S. Having to ask the shield healer to preshield you was strategy, and it was cool. I liked it a lot. Even how we griefed parties because our dps was so anemic outside of burst that we wouldn't kill our plane add on our own at release unless tanks came to help. Bard better here? So what? It was fun anyway and gave identity and purpose and adjustments and it made us veer away from mechanical script vomit (which on top of the randomized patterns of O7, was pretty nifty not gonna lie). Also one of the fight where the walls weren't an instant kill abyss. Imagine that today...

But I think i've hijacked the healer thread enough...

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

SCH really isn’t that bad, in modern healing design (not saying I like modern healing design) it really doesn’t have any redundant buttons because they all serve the design of SCH being the layering healer (fey blessing is probably the closest to redundant with protraction after that but even they have uses)

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Agreed on Blessing, Protraction would go from 'a bit questionable' to 'instant god tier cracked' if it were Deployable so they should do that (no bias)

Rather than remove buttons that suck to make room for things that suck less, I feel it'd be better to just... make the current buttons suck less? Might be a tall ask from SE, I get it, but ASTrodyne, for example, I think could be really quite an interesting part of the kit, if we had faster access to Seals, so that it was a 100% maintained buff, turning it into an AST Huton of sorts. AST would become the 'fast paced' healer, even in terms of GCD speed. Would it be accepted by the community? I dunno, but I think it's probably going to be 'more accepted' than what it currently is (basically ignorable)

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Originally Posted by ThaCa

Personally I would love them to just overhaul the healing into cyclical gameplay of Healing builds damage buttons and dealing damage builds juicy healing buttons. This way the game would automatically teach healers to deal damage and reward it and likewise encourage to actually use multitude of your healing buttons to get rewarded with BIG explosions.

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Been saying this for over a year now: Make WHM this. Give it a reverse Misery, where dealing damage (or healing with non-lily heals, in case of Harrowing Hell moments) generates a 0-100 gauge, spend that gauge on a heal, that heal then pays for itself by making your damage spells into Quake, Flood, Tornado, with the total gained from the empowerment being equal to the Glare you lost casting the heal. Then with that, optimization would be that you rig your healing rotation in such a way that you go into your POM window with 2 Quakes, 2 Tornadoes, 2 Floods, and a Misery. WHM becomes the 'bank all your damage, and dump it all in raidbuffs', massive ADPS healer. Losing damage during the filler section (eg to movement) would also be less punished, by the fact that more is inside the raidbuff window. The 'ADPS-heavy 2min Burster' design worked for DRK in Abyssos so well, some groups ran 2 of them even in spite of the LB penalty. And the damage gained by doing so (getting 2x Elemental bursts + Misery into raidbuff windows), compared to current WHM, would be 'the difference between a Glare inside raidbuffs, vs outside raidbuffs, times 2', absolutely tiny gains that matter only to the most optimization-minded of players (this is a good thing, low skill floor high skill ceiling)

oh also because I think it's a cool side effect, Holy would generate gauge in AOE, meaning the heal can be used in trash pulls in dungeons, meaning Quake/Flood/Tornado can be used in AOE (as they would have the standard '50% damage falloff' effect like most AOEs do), turning our AOE rotation from 1 button to 4 buttons (and the gauge can be pooled at the end of a dungeon's boss fight, so you go into the next wall-to-wall with your Elemental skills ready to blast)

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

Right, but are you using Toxikon because it’s genuinely useful to you and allowing you to accomplish things you otherwise couldn’t? Or are you simply using it just because it’s there and you might as well? How different is your performance with Addersting vs your performance without it? If you didn’t use Toxikon, what would happen? Would you lose fights that you could’ve otherwise have won? Are you saving time by speeding up the length of a fight?

What you described I could also have said about Stormblood lilies, that they aren’t that bad because hey, maybe I’ll get an extra Assize out of it. That’s, what? An extra 0.2% of my total damage maybe? It could be worse right?

I’m not trying to be antagonistic. My point is just, is this actually a useful system, or are you simply making the best out of something that is ultimately accomplishing nothing that you wouldn’t really accomplish without it?

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No, I agree with you. I'm just saying it's one step above useless instead of totally useless, lol.

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Originally Posted by OogaShaka

the problem with giving healers more dps buttons is that they will use them and not heal, hell we have 2 buttons now and healers wait till the group is at half hp or less to bring everyone back up. The problem is not everyone can dodge everything every time and when your group is at half hp and a mistake happens usually dps die now you rez and they have less damage, keep everyone topped off and usually it goes better. Bottom line is you are there to heal not dps if you need to dps to stop feeling "bored" roll a dps. These healer dps posts really take me back to the idiocy of the strength stat stacking tanks that was so bad SE had to step in and change the way tanks work to save people from themselves.

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You're kind of missing the point. Those moments when a bunch of people are taking damage and you need to heal are when healer's actually fun. This discussion is about the 90% of the time where healing is completely unneeded.

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Originally Posted by ThaCa

If they transferred the current healer gameplay to Tanks there would be massive uproar. Imagine pressing like 2 damage buttons and having 20 mitigations as Tank.

Healer kits are bloated to hell too, they could easily combine and shave a good deal of buttons to make them matter more to make space for something more interesting, be it buffs or damage.

Personally I would love them to just overhaul the healing into cyclical gameplay of Healing builds damage buttons and dealing damage builds juicy healing buttons. This way the game would automatically teach healers to deal damage and reward it and likewise encourage to actually use multitude of your healing buttons to get rewarded with BIG explosions.

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There was a healer in an MMO that did something like the dps for heals thing it was a "tempest of set" in "Age of Conan" a melee damage healer with some ranged if memory serves me correctly been a while tho, not to digress but in AoC i did like the fatalities you could do and the screen blood splatter.

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Originally Posted by Bibine_Bine

No, I agree with you. I'm just saying it's one step above useless instead of totally useless, lol.

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Which is why I think it's so imperative to address mechanics in a direct manner. Like I get what you're saying. It could be worse. It could be literally functionless like Repose. It could be actively detrimental to Sage's gameplay like Gunbreaker's Double Down. Instead, it's simply nothing. It's at worst a noob trap that tricks you into playing Sage poorly, and at best, a button that you could take off your hotbar if you're wanting for hotbar space.

But so what if it's not worse? It's not good either, and that's the problem. I don't think "inoffensive" is good enough, and I'm not trying to say you do either, but I just don't believe that going "well, it's not that bad, right?" is really helpful, because the fact that it's not good makes it "that bad" anyway simply for being a waste of potential.

Toxicon encouraging over shielding on SGE is argue falls into the “actively detrimental like double down” especially after they added toxicon to prognosis which now just has DF SGE’s encouraged to keep e prognosis up 100% of the time and reapply them as soon as they crack or expire for stacks that don’t actually help them do anything

Heaven help if you are a SCH in a party with a SGE considering e prognosis overwrites critlo

At absolute least if they refuse to retool the system then need to revert that change that e prognosis gives toxicon stacks because anytime I’ve tried to explain to someone that we don’t need 100% uptime on shields I always get “but I need toxicon stacks” (they never explain what for though)

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

Toxicon encouraging over shielding on SGE is argue falls into the “actively detrimental like double down” especially after they added toxicon to prognosis which now just has DF SGE’s encouraged to keep e prognosis up 100% of the time and reapply them as soon as they crack or expire for stacks that don’t actually help them do anything

Heaven help if you are a SCH in a party with a SGE considering e prognosis overwrites critlo

At absolute least if they refuse to retool the system then need to revert that change that e prognosis gives toxicon stacks because anytime I’ve tried to explain to someone that we don’t need 100% uptime on shields I always get “but I need toxicon stacks” (they never explain what for though)

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Or they could also just have shields make more sense and not have a weaker shield overwrite a stronger one.

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Originally Posted by Aravell

Or they could also just have shields make more sense and not have a weaker shield overwrite a stronger one.

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I mean 1000 potency critlo being overwritten by a paltry 320 potency E prognosis is the least of the problems I have listed there even if it is damn annoying for SCH players

Even if critlo wasn’t overriden by e prognosis the useless toxicon system still doesnt justify the amount of pointless shielding your average SGE does; even medica 2 spammers at the very least don’t have an in game system justification for the pointless overheal they do, SGE does

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

I mean 1000 potency critlo being overwritten by a paltry 320 potency E prognosis is the least of the problems I have listed there even if it is damn annoying for SCH players

Even if critlo wasn’t overriden by e prognosis the useless toxicon system still doesnt justify the amount of pointless shielding your average SGE does; even medica 2 spammers at the very least don’t have an in game system justification for the pointless overheal they do, SGE does

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I'm not denying that Toxikon is worthless and encourages bad play, I just don't think that reverting the E.Prognosis proc is enough.

I'd honestly rather ask instead for them to give SGE an identity and design that isn't 'easier SCH with no fairy and a scuffed Ruin II'.

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Originally Posted by Bole

I am generally against the idea of changing jobs so that bad players can’t play badly. There are other scenarios where your cohealer can poorly influence your gameplay, for example when you are cooking a star but your cohealer spams cure 3 to waste the star. I think it is okay for these situations to exist, because it greatly improves your experience in a coordinated group (and for sure SCH/SGE is a very rewarding comp).

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Still in a scenario like that you are still rewarded for the damage star does and it’s really no loss to you, overwriting critlo wastes a massive amount of SCH’s resources and its largest source of truly free healing

I agree in concept with the “bad players are going to play bad so attempting to protect good players from them is near pointless” but critlo is a specific exception

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Originally Posted by Aravell

I'm not denying that Toxikon is worthless and encourages bad play, I just don't think that reverting the E.Prognosis proc is enough.

I'd honestly rather ask instead for them to give SGE an identity and design that isn't 'easier SCH with no fairy and a scuffed Ruin II'.

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Oh I don’t disagree I just have my expectations on the floor for healers

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

Toxicon encouraging over shielding on SGE is argue falls into the “actively detrimental like double down” especially after they added toxicon to prognosis which now just has DF SGE’s encouraged to keep e prognosis up 100% of the time and reapply them as soon as they crack or expire for stacks that don’t actually help them do anything

Heaven help if you are a SCH in a party with a SGE considering e prognosis overwrites critlo

At absolute least if they refuse to retool the system then need to revert that change that e prognosis gives toxicon stacks because anytime I’ve tried to explain to someone that we don’t need 100% uptime on shields I always get “but I need toxicon stacks” (they never explain what for though)

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The thing that I think differentiates Toxikon from something like Double Down is Double Down is optimal and "forces" you to play by its rules, at least if you want to play Gunbreaker optimally. Toxikon is smarmy in that it tries to deceive you into playing Sage wrong, but if you have the smarts to realize its numbers don't add up, or have at least learned from other people talking about it like on here, The Balance discord, or a Sage guide video of some sort, then you can avoid falling into that trap.

That's why I compare it to Stormblood Lilies. Back then, someone made the argument of why the SB lilies were so inconsequential by stating that if you removed the gauge from your UI, virtually nothing about White Mage gameplay would change. The same is true here. If you took Toxikon off your hotbar, your performance would be virtually the same if you are otherwise playing Sage correctly.

But that also brings up the question of "Is Toxikon actually worse than Double Down?" You aren't forced to use Toxikon the wrong way, as we established. But does the fact that it's a noob trap make it worse? Because while in practice it is at best an unnecessary button that otherwise don't hurt you, does its negative impact on new or learning Sages make it a detriment to the game as a whole? Is its poor design hurting new players, teaching them bad habits, tricking them in to healing in the worst way possible? Perhaps that means Toxikon is far worse than Double Down.

I think it also hilarious to think about how much they had to do in order to try and make toxicon more worth it. First, they had to make it where you started the fight with all three stacks instead of gaining them. Then in 6.3, they made it to to where you could gain them from e. Prognosis. Sadly it doesn't change the fact that this is still a dps loss and a minor mp loss as well.

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Originally Posted by Maltothoris

I think it also hilarious to think about how much they had to do in order to try and make toxicon more worth it. First, they had to make it where you started the fight with all three stacks instead of gaining them. Then in 6.3, they made it to to where you could gain them from e. Prognosis. Sadly it doesn't change the fact that this is still a dps loss and a minor mp loss as well.

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Toxicon gain on P1 was hilariously bad because what’s his face didn’t do a raidwide as his opener and had zero downtime so you literally got one stack from toxicon’ing the tank and that was it

And you still didn’t need it because that fight was a joke

SGE was a wreck of a job from launch, all you have to do is look at the long list of buffs they had to get for the community to accept them as a suitable alternative to SCH.

It's just unfortunate that they weren't designed with a proper identity and a niche of their own in the first place.

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Originally Posted by Aravell

It's just unfortunate that they weren't designed with a proper identity and a niche of their own in the first place.

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If you look at how various cutscenes depict a Sage Doing Their Thing(tm), their identity is clear: blocking incoming attacks via barriers. The implementation of the job simply doesn't embrace it fully.

(And as a related observation, Kardia gets essentially zero screen time. Alphinaud stops attacking to heal Allisaie in the opening trailer... Not to mention the comic absurdity that would be Sharlayan running its medical wards by sending doctors out into the local fields to laser wildlife to death.)