Do you want healers to be reworked from the ground up?

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Originally Posted by Almagnus1

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The problem with having skill caps like this is competent groups would only want the "best" healer. We had those issues when AST was really good, and when WHM was in a bad spot.

I think a lot of it has to do with the shield vs regen dichotomy and only having 3 healers. Currently you can't have 2 shield healers and 2 regen healers. It also doesn't help that Regens stack but Shields don't. 2 WHM's is perfectly viable but 2 SCH's or a SCH and a Noct AST are hindering themselves.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

White. Mage. Is. Not. Conjurer. It's not a class that caps at level 30. I promise having buffs/debuffs isn't too bigbrained for stoopid white mages to handle. How about WHM sees actual growth in its kit instead of having their ARR kit shuffled around and sold back next expansion? Monks hate it too, and they're getting a rework.

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I'd love to have healers based on Buffs/Debuffs vs shield/regen. AST can Buff, New Healer can Debuff.

But yeah why we don't have a short group defensive CD in Protect or Shell is beyond me.

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

Imagine a WHM Enochian, as a parallel to BLM. You press the Enochian button and your Stone IV turns into Glare, Aero III into Dia and your Fluid Aura into Flood of Light.
WHM Enochian is maintained by using Flood of light or Lily-Based spells.

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Yeah after posting that, i thought a better idea might be what you just posted, but ran out of posts per day lol
Obviously, im just joking, but perhaps maybe some might like the idea. The reason i liked CS besides its initally terrible turn off and then back on by accident with a cd to turn it off again, was that it kind of gave you a mode, where your heals werent as strong but your damage was stronger. It was pretty skill based, so obviously they wont go back to that. What do they really have left to do? Seems like people want enochian or blood of the dragon tacked onto their healers for even bigger deeps. We know thats what they thought was going to make bard a major damage turret in 3.0, and nobody liked that crap. The only thing left really is what? 3 part spell combo's? My absolute most hated thing with the DPS classes, random procs that have a random chance proccing on top of that.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

I'd love to have healers based on Buffs/Debuffs vs shield/regen. AST can Buff, New Healer can Debuff.

But yeah why we don't have a short group defensive CD in Protect or Shell is beyond me.

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I know, right. There's an entire series of games related to this one the class designers may have heard of. Reflect, Bubble, Bravery, Faith, Bar-spells, Berserk, Silence, there's a mile long list of spells to take inspiration from. And yet 14's forums are filled with "Uhh, WHM is the one with Holy and Cure right? That's been their entire identity for all time and they never had any complexity, why would you shake that up?"

So responding to some of the points raised, we're at a bit of a crossroads with healers, as the concept of a pure healer in FFXIV needs to be basically thrown out of the game, as the only way forward for healer diversity is for all three to just embrace being a DPS/healer hybrid and have their healing capacity normalized between the three - similar to how all tanks can hold agro but there's enough other stuff going on with the tanks to make them feel unique and each has their own personality.

So bringing this back to the healers, I'm all for giving WHM something like Enochian, or some other buff based around lilies, where the WHM has to figure out how to do enough healing to maintain the DPS state, but if they can stay in the DPS state they will do the most DPS of the the three as WHM is already leaning towards being a selfish DPS healer. That gives enough room for AST to keep their buffs, but be balanced so that their buffs compensate for their lack of personal DPS. SCH should sit somewhere between the two as far as DPS goes, and a good dichotomy to draw might be letting WHM be the stronger single target DPS while SCH becomes a stronger AoE DPS. That also allows for better possibility of giving us additional healers as you pick different points on that line between buffs and personal DPS to drop newer jobs.

Hybrid is good but how they do dps is what should be different.
Whm gets more damage abilities for personal dps

SCH gets more debuffs which would make the whole party do more damage indirectly

AST gets buffs which make the whole party do more damage

All three would be viable

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Originally Posted by glamazon

Hybrid is good but how they do dps is what should be different.
Whm gets more damage abilities for personal dps

SCH gets more debuffs which would make the whole party do more damage indirectly

AST gets buffs which make the whole party do more damage

All three would be viable

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The issue with this is that to balance it between 4/8man is very difficult because dungeons and raids are very different.

When you only have one healer in a dungeon you'd want it to be a WHM because if the other two are tuned around buffing party dps in what would be a single target, 8 player situation they aren't going to hold up in the jumps between AoE and ST in a dungeon nearly as well as raw WHM numbers.

Part of this is offset right now by WHM having the weakest potency AoE ability and even with that in mind the max dps contribution of WHM in Hero's Gauntlet is 3k above SCH and 4k above AST. If you grow that gap too far you'll be back in ARR dsys where they were kicking SCHs from dungeons because WHM was that much better.

Buffs/debuffs are just really unreliable. I say this as essentially an AST main at this point. The crux of part of your own contribution being reliant on that of other players is that the other players be... like at the very least not dumpster fires.

I dunno if you're aware but a good portion of players, especially in DF content, are kinda dumpster fires. No real rotation, dps below a tank or healer... it hurts to be spending cards on myself and the tank in expert roulette but more often than it should be that's the efficent choice for me.

So no, I dont want to exacerbate the current personal dps v rDPS contribution thing. It leads to bad places.

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Originally Posted by Veis_Alveare

So no, I dont want to exacerbate the current personal dps v rDPS contribution thing. It leads to bad places.

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Fair, and that circles around to my point earlier: so if we've (relatively) normalized damage output, and normalized healing output, and returned to something approximating earlier AST and SCH design......... why would you ever bring the red headed stepchild who at this point has zero utility for no reason? I realize you didn't make this point, but I think it illustrates what I was saying before. The moment WHM personal damage enters the chat, the other two healers complain. WHM has to get a specialty that's actually useful. If it's not utility of any stripe or doing more damage, it's going to be exactly what it was before. Overhealer of the year.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

Fair, and that circles around to my point earlier: so if we've (relatively) normalized damage output, and normalized healing output, and returned to something approximating earlier AST and SCH design......... why would you ever bring the red headed stepchild who at this point has zero utility for no reason? I realize you didn't make this point, but I think it illustrates what I was saying before. The moment WHM personal damage enters the chat, the other two healers complain. WHM has to get a specialty that's actually useful. If it's not utility of any stripe or doing more damage, it's going to be exactly what it was before. Overhealer of the year.

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But why can't all the healers just have utility? Like it doesn't take gigabrain coordination to press Chain Stratagem every two minutes, I think even the bad WHM players could cope if they had to use an occasional buff on someone. Give them Bravery and Faith with some % damage increase and nerf their personal dps a bit.

Boom, now each healer is somewhat reliant on the party for their dps.

I think people are way too caught up in job "identity" as if everyone needs a whole gimmick or they're all the same. No one needs to be "the buffer" or "a shield healer" especially since (as we learned from the HoT/shield dichotomy) that just doesn't function in practice.

AST has a very similar kit to WHM with exact spell parallels for most of its GCD heals... but playing AST feels nothing like playing WHM and a lot of that doesn't come from it's "identity" being cards but rather from the actual way it plays - faster cast times for greater mobility, more and more frequent oGCD heals as you level... those are the things that make AST feel good to play.

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Originally Posted by Veis_Alveare

But why can't all the healers just have utility?

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You'll get nothing but thunderous agreement from me.

But Square Enix and generous portions of this forum think giving WHM utility is rocket surgery beyond the feeble minds of poor overworked White Mages. One of the three "has" to have no utility. It's WHM's "identity" to have no utility. It's a design corner the healer dynamic is painted into through nothing more than sheer, total refusal to give WHM an identity. I've said ever since Shadowbringers dropped that THIS is the ugly elephant in the room that will prevent healing design from leaving the trap it's entered as long as it goes unaddressed. Because current healing design is the only logical conclusion to the contradictory paradigms that go into current healing design.

If A) All healers must be reasonably balanced with respect to healing and damage contribution, and B) WHM cannot ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever have utility because reasons, what conclusion is there to be had except stripping all other healers down to a level as simplistic as the one we've defined as the mandatory lowest common denominator?

If WHM bringing the uncontested most damage (like BLM and the caster DPS hierarchy does it) isn't acceptable, and WHM can't have utility (for...reasons only clear to Square Enix), then the healers are fundamentally unbalanceable unless they're all three boring healbots. *shrug*

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

... then the healers are fundamentally unbalanceable unless they're all three boring healbots. *shrug*

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I mean not that I find AST as boring as WHM right now, but the Sleeve Draw nerf has definitely made it more accessible. I'm not wholly against that in theory but I think doing things like giving more oGCDs earlier, or even Sleeve Draw earlier, could just better prepare people for complexity instead of simplifying at cap because people havent managed to learn how to use an ability over the course of their whole ShB leveling process.