What are things you ENJOY about Healers right now?

"No, what makes AST a Healer I already readily defined - it is the only one of the five (since I'm including RDM; I suppose we could include SMN and some others in here, too) that has consistent and ready access to heals (up to 5 in total, to be exact, and the only AOE one that can be used at one's discretion with no prior DPS spell required first or as part of it), and it also has the lightest direct damage kit and the only kit that does not require melee range attacks on enemies, or, indeed, any enemies around AT ALL to produce effective healing."

You can define a "healer" however you want, you can also play any of the healing jobs however you want in PVP now, your degree of success may vary- but you do you. I disagree with your definition, I would say that each of the healing jobs is a viable support job in its own way, and each of them as such is designed to provide various types of CC, DPS and heals based upon the fact that each job has its own heals , and can sometimes provide party heals, mitigation or buffs as well. Not to mention that as a healer, depending upon the content you may be the squishiest and most targeted person in the party given DR (looking at FL) - so casting a heal on a specific party member like the old mode is less useful than your CC/damage/ party utility on any healer.

Honestly, should people even be surprised that jobs like DRK 'does more healing' in Frontlines as shown in its scorecard? The one job that often jumps into the fray and presses their Recuperate & uses Elixir way more often than...say... whoever standing in Narnia because they're too afraid/cautious to get closer to use their kits effectively at proper timings? WHMs tend to have more heals but a good portion of those heals comes from their use of Afflatus Purgation that gives their party regen, which... tend to not be too useful with that much burst happening within 3s or it's overhealing whoever's sitting outside harm's reach.

I wouldn't be surprised if the scorecard also counts your Recuperate (also buffed by BH) and elixir uses as your 'healing done' then watch as those DRK/WAR/Melees/whatever job heals more because they actively engage with their kits. If you're not getting attacked, you're not going to heal yourself either.

Unsure about shield absorption though.

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Originally Posted by Rein_eon_Osborne

Honestly, should people even be surprised that jobs like DRK 'does more healing' in Frontlines as shown in its scorecard? The one job that often jumps into the fray and presses their Recuperate & uses Elixir way more often than...say... whoever standing in Narnia because they're too afraid/cautious to get closer to use their kits effectively at proper timings? WHMs tend to have more heals but a good portion of those heals comes from their use of Afflatus Purgation that gives their party regen, which... tend to not be too useful with that much burst happening within 3s or it's overhealing whoever's sitting outside harm's reach.

I wouldn't be surprised if the scorecard also counts your Recuperate (also buffed by BH) and elixir uses as your 'healing done' then watch as those DRK/WAR/Melees/whatever job heals more because they actively engage with their kits. If you're not getting attacked, you're not going to heal yourself either.

Unsure about shield absorption though.

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I don't get the DRK comparison. Sure it has a high healing score, but that's exclusively HP they restore to themselves. You wouldn't describe Sion in League of Legends as a healer just because he can be a lifesteal tank.

well. it would be interesting then to look at a job like summoner and see their healing score , given that they should be able to restore HP to party members through the LB.

Thank god I went to bed when I did because holy moly. I think the disconnect is partially because Ren does not play CC much, the gamemode the PVP kits are specifically balanced around. Of course the numbers and effectiveness will be different in Frontlines, there's more targets to hit. That doesn't change the fact that the healers are in fact healers, regardless of whatever 'aesthetic' or 'healing/damage ratio in kit' rubbish. This is not like the EX1 EX2 thing, because that is a fan-made definition where no official sorting structure has been given. If the devs came out and said at fanfest 'these are the two new trials we'll have, this one is EX1 and this one is EX2' then even if 'EX2' was the one we saw first in the story, the playerbase would refer to it as EX2 because the devs did. Here, we have four jobs, and they're 'healer role' as dictated by the devs of the game. So they're healers.

And you've got it backwards Ren, using Gravity twice does not eat into your healing kit. Using Asp.Benefic twice eats into your damage kit. If you aren't saving one charge of Double Cast for each Gravity, you're losing 8000 damage to pile into a burst, and a bind effect. If you want to burn up such a powerful catch tool for a heal that can be burned off by a single Wyrmwind or Hyosho, you do you, but I doubt you'll be getting anywhere against an assassin type like a Monk or RPR when you're down to just Malefic spam. 5000 damage per cast is not going to do much to deter them from hitting you. But 8000+heavy, plus 8000+bind, plus 12000 from Macrocosmos, will halve their HP and put them low enough for an ally to jump on them and finish them off. Well, assuming you're actually near your allies, instead of Narnia. Do you also wait until the regen would be useful from Purgation?

There are cases where Aspected Benefic from Doublecast is worth using over Doublecast Gravity in Frontlines. It's just really dependent on the AST to be able to determine whether the situation calls for it or not. Similar to how Holy works in PvE as a CC, binding an enemy has a lot of advantage as well due to jobs having a range on their skills. Sometimes though, you might want a spot heal instead if you think the heal can be worth saving someone. It's ultimately dependent on how the fight progresses. In CC, usually damage is better because everyone's damage is at 100% and the number of players is equal, unless that extra aspected benefic can guarantee someone living through a mechanic (ex: blocking enough damage to prevent NIN LB from activating, ensuring someone stays alive long enough to recuperate and get out, ensuring someone has enough HP to get their LB out, etc.). In Frontlines, it depends on a lot of variables: distance, number of enemies, location, target's role, objective, etc.

Having decision-making with Double cast and choices is more of a player's expression on how they want to tackle the situation to decide whether Doublecast is worth Aspected Benefic, Malefic, or Gravity. It's why I like PvP AST a lot; it's such a simple mechanic and skillset, but it has answers to a lot of different situations due to this flexibility.

Yes, true, there are times when the double heal is 'the right decision' but those are few and far between. In fact, the NIN LB example is a good one to bring up. I've probably had more times where I 'try' to save someone with a heal before the NIN LB kills them (and it kills them anyway because of the snapshot), than times where it's actually bloody worked. I've had plenty of times where I've tried to save someone with the doublecast heal, only for the person to die anyway, and their killer to escape with sub5k HP left, low enough that the doublecast of a Gravity or Malefic would have at least equalized the scorecard. More often than not in fact, I've noticed that when there's, for example, a 2v1 and my ally is the 1 running away trying to live through the onslaught, the 2 get hardcore tunnelvision on trying to get the kill, and stop paying attention to their own HP. Thus, by going Doublecast Gravity > Macrocosmos, I can drop them low enough to easily turn the tide on them, or even kill one without them realising how low and out of position they were.

My point is that it's fine, good even, to have the player have the option of what to spend doublecast on. The issue is that the design of the gamemodes means that the 'option' decision is almost always made for you. Especially considering two of the options are damage and one is a heal. If they made it so you could Doublecast Macrocosmos, doing no extra damage but applying a second copy of the heal-compiling buff, which would pop at the same time as the original (effectively doubling the heal from Macro), would that doublecast option get used? Maybe sometimes, sure. How often would it be used in comparison to Gravity? Absolutely tiny fraction, because Gravity gives you burst damage, and burst damage leads to setting up kills. And if the enemy player is dead, then they don't do damage to your team anymore, or push the crystal, or cap the points in FL.

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Originally Posted by IDontPetLalas

I disagree with your definition, I would say that each of the healing jobs is a viable support job in its own way

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This...is what I've been saying all along, though?

Except AST, it's actually a Healer (or close enough Support-Healer)

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

And you've got it backwards Ren, using Gravity twice does not eat into your healing kit. Using Asp.Benefic twice eats into your damage kit.

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Do you ever wonder, for even a moment, why I sometimes tend to think you prefer non-Healer gameplay? /sigh

No, of course you don't.

Your focus is LITERALLY always on damage. Even when there's an interesting decision where Healing MIGHT be favored, your first instinct is to use the resource towards damage and consider it a DPS loss to use it for healing rather than an HPS loss to use it for damage. (Granted, I'm not the one that says that of you - you are - but I do wonder about it given your fixation on damage dealing first in essentially all discussion contexts...) Anyway, moving on.

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Originally Posted by AnotherPerson

There are cases where Aspected Benefic from Doublecast is worth using over Doublecast Gravity in Frontlines...

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Agreed with all of that post.

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

Yes, true, there are times when the double heal is 'the right decision' but those are few and far between.

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In CC, maybe. In Frontlines, they are many and close together.

Maybe it's because you play CC instead of Frontlines, you don't understand this. In CC, you may be attacked by few enough people you can out DPS them, but in Frontlines, there are often cases where the enemy team will pounce on one person and crowd control them to death. They can use Purify but get CCed again instantly, unable to use Recuperate, because Pruify is somehow bugged or SOMEthing where it often doesn't activate the status effect resistance. However, teams are ALSO often not SUPER coordinated, meaning they blow those abilities but don't necessarily coordinate their burst.

Using a bind isn't going to save your ally, since the enemy has several melee and ranged on them. BUT, a heal to get them through the CC CAN save them, especially AST's rapid fire ones, especially Tanks and Melee (which have SUPER boosted defense stats in Frontlines). I've kept Tanks alive with entire enemy teams wailing on them for precious seconds. Sometimes they do die, but the enemy has to blow a lot of damage resources, making them weak to the rest of my team's counterattack. Sometimes the person survives, and the enemy is denied the kill points. These are things that Gravity would not do, since there are too many enemies and many out of range of the Gravity spell, but my heals augmenting the Tank/Melee's natural defenses means my team not losing points/the enemy not gaining points AND BATTLE HIGH from the KO.

Maybe in CC, you're right, but in Frontlines, you're often...not going to be right.

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Originally Posted by Rein_eon_Osborne

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DRK just has so much self-healing. Eventide, Salted Earth, Quietus, and Souleater. Even not using Recuperate or Elixir at all, it has somewhat insane healing. I'm kind of surprise it hasn't been nerfed. It must somehow be weak in CC, because in Frontlines, it's arguably the most OP Job right now - a frequent topic of discussion in Alliance chat during Frontline matches where the enemy team has several. 3-4 DRK's blowing Salted Earth + Salt and Darkness at the same time seems to delete entire teams, especially if you get something like a DRG LB to land in the now tightly gathered entire enemy team. It's pretty brutal and there's seemingly no defense against it if they're coordinated.

SMNs were doing this with Bahamut LB nukes being dropped all at once on enemy teams, and that got nerfed somewhat, but the DRK thing isn't even their LB, so it's far more spamable.

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Originally Posted by IDontPetLalas

well. it would be interesting then to look at a job like summoner and see their healing score , given that they should be able to restore HP to party members through the LB.

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I've been in some matches where SMNs get pretty high on the healing charts. They never get to the top (unless everyone else is slacking) because it's not spamable, but Phoenix does a pretty massive amount of healing.

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Originally Posted by fulminating

Maybe it’s escaped your notice, but damage is the only meaningful way to contribute.

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NARRATOR: Damage was not, in fact, the only meaningful way to contribute...

Maybe it’s escaped your notice, but damage is the only meaningful way to contribute.

Aesthetics mostly. I always play healer/support roles in any game I play, in the good and the bad. The only way to make me drop healers entirely is if they take away our one dps spell (technically 2, tho I can see them removing the dots by 7.0) while simultaneously give tanks even more self sustain. Because playing spectator mode is peak game design /s