Some 4.3 feedback from a healer

My main job is scholar, and I sometimes play (noct) astrologian. I want to provide feedback on how each of the jobs feels to play now that I've played as each, regarding the changes.

Scholar's fairy responsiveness change is great! Fey Union's change (can be interrupted with other commands) fixes my biggest problem that made its usability kinda trash to me. Overall, scholar's power went down but ease-of-play / QoL went up; fair trades imo. What I'd like to see in the future is a rework of Dissipation. I nearly never have a reason to use it and would like it to be replaced by another ability that uses the fairy gauge.

I have mixed feelings about AST. My personal damage has gone up significantly in 4.3, and I feel like it might be a bit overtuned. AST's clipping was so bad that they lost multiple GCDs over the course of a fight, which they now have back. If I had to pick between getting the clipping back, or having Malefic's potency reduced to compensate for the extra GCDs, I'd rather have the potency reduced. I don't have a strong opinion about the Lightspeed change. I have an odd side effect to the Malefic change, though. I'm used to the rhythm of my casts being "press the button when the previous cast finishes", but that's too soon now. The next Malefic won't queue if I press with that rhythm. I suppose I just need more practice to adapt to it, though, hopefully.

White Mage could use some help catching up to the other two healers. Their healing kit is mostly fine aside from a few things (job gauges should be interactive in some way to be worth screen real estate; lilies are not. also, their lv68 passive is very weak.), I think the other aspects of their kit need love though.

PS please remove protect and give everyone their esuna back

I adore the new AST changes. I would rather SE lowering potencies than reverting the changes back. It feels so much smoother now, though I’m still trying to get used to the having to wait for the GCD to refresh after hitting malefic. Cards are much easier to deal with now, and while I didn’t have much mp issues before, it’s more comfortable now as well. I also like how mobile I’ve been able to be.

The AST changes are nice from a playstyle viewpoint, but I think the Lightspeed change ended up being more of a buff than was realized. It's ridiculous how much damage I'm doing by putting up Lightspeed, extending it, and spamming Gravity to hell and back. There's absolutely zero reason an AST should do more DPS than a WHM. Lightspeed shouldn't be a DPS cooldown.

And yeah, Malefic feels a bit weird now when DPSing. I'm starting to get used to it, but like a player suggested in another thread, having 2 instant dots or something would have felt better to help manage the clipping.

The AST changes, from a QoL point of view, are fantastic. I'm actually having fun playing the job currently.
But they are just way overtuned. Either AST needs a Malefic nerf or WHM needs an overall DPS buff because AST doing this much DPS is a bit crazy with how mobile they currently are.

Also, and this is probably a combination of AST not clipping much anymore and SCHs fairy being so much more responsive, but actually healing on them feels a lot better as well. Being able to put Star down between Malefic and actually making frequent use of Fey Union feels fantastic.
This in turn though, has made healing on WHM feel kind of.... lacking. I'm not going to say they feel weak or anything, that's far from the truth, but I seem to have a far more enjoyable time on AST and SCH now. They just feel more fluid.

I dont understand the LS change but oh well.:p

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Originally Posted by Gravagar

What I'd like to see in the future is a rework of Dissipation.

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I really wish people would stop saying this. It always feels like a holdover from HW when it was (usually) bad.

Look at it now without that lens:
Embrace's potency has been lowered, reducing the drawback of not having the fairy.
Summon's cost and cast time have both been reduced, making Swiftcast no longer mandatory and no longer requiring 2 uses of Energy Drain just to break even on it's MP cost.
In addition to the 3 Aetherflow stacks it grants you, it also accelerates your Aetherflow cycle by 15 seconds every time it's used, thanks to Quickened Aetherflow.

I'm not saying that it's some amazing ability that should be used on cooldown, but... it doesn't need to be. SCH's entire thing is having a diverse set of tools with very specific optimal use cases, and Dissipation fits that perfectly.

Plays Sch but feels that Ast damage might be overtuned... that's kinda funny.

Anyway, I feel like the latest tweaks are amazing for the gameplay feel of sch and ast but I'm not yet convinced that whm will fall into obscurity because ast damage jumped up. Technically, whm has always offered the least damage for the raid group and yet there's apparently more sch and whm running around than there are ast in savage. It seems to me that there plenty of groups that do place value on that extra healing power -- or just like whm more than ast.

And outside of savage? Well, I don't think most are really that worried about playing the best class, especially when there's very little risk of failure.

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Originally Posted by Elamys

The AST changes are nice from a playstyle viewpoint, but I think the Lightspeed change ended up being more of a buff than was realized. It's ridiculous how much damage I'm doing by putting up Lightspeed, extending it, and spamming Gravity to hell and back. There's absolutely zero reason an AST should do more DPS than a WHM. Lightspeed shouldn't be a DPS cooldown.

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I agree. The MP bonus for lightspeed is great, but they shouldn't have removed the offensive debuff entirely. Maybe still kept a 'reduces offensive power by 20%' effect.

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Originally Posted by Elamys

Lightspeed shouldn't be a DPS cooldown.

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Yeah? Then tell me; why does Lightspeed shouldn't be a DPS cooldown and Presence of Mind should, if both were made, intentionally, to heal in a critic situation?

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Originally Posted by Seraphor

I agree. The MP bonus for lightspeed is great, but they shouldn't have removed the offensive debuff entirely. Maybe still kept a 'reduces offensive power by 20%' effect.

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But then, again, ASTs would use it to weave 1 or 2 oGCDs or heals and then gotta click it off making the ability clunky.
Seriously, people keep comparing AST to WHM so let's do it! Why does Thin Air (which has lower cooldown than Lightspeed) don't have damage penalty? Both, in fact, were made to save MP.
The Lightspeed changes were needed, not only because AST's ridiculous MP problems, but also because nobody ever used it in a fight more than 1 or 2 times. They don't have to change it back. I would rather have a nerf on Malefic 3 than reverting Lightspeed to the clunky state again.

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Originally Posted by Riyshn

snip.

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I think they should reduce the healing bonus duration to 15~20sec. 30s is just too long, it's an emergency skill, an emergency doesnt last 30sec.

Second,a core of the issue is that it grants you healing bonus, yet all spell using an eatherflow stack don't scale from such buff. This is more a core rework of the game, making abilities scale with buffs