What was so wrong with stormblood healers that required they be changed?

I just don't get it. They had more involved dps, the larger number of dots helped keep damage rolling even if there was a healing-intensive spot, selene, eos and sects were still a thing.

If the dev team's really this hard-pressed to balance the jobs, maybe they should stop adding new ones or hire more people. If they don't have a dedicated healer main on the job balance team maybe they should get one or at least be concerned that they don't have one.

If I were to give my two cents on healers individually from Stormblood:

All Healers - [Protect] was ass glad its gone, but the rest was cool. I miss [Eye for an Eye] and [Cleric Stance]. I also miss having to genuinely care for my MP when AOEing and using my MP management tools correctly. Right now, the only way I ever feel pressed for MP is when I had to literally spam Cure III / Succor for like 30 seconds or something.

White Mage - Aero II at 18s and Aero III at 24s dot duration were bliss. The shorter dot duration on Aero II also helped with weaving Assize, Tetra etc. early on before we had 1.5s cast on filler spells and Afflatus spells. White Mage was solid, just maybe for the time it lacked a bit of dps-efficient healing which is why it wasn't as favoured (Afflatus spells right now are like this).

Scholar - SB Scholar is probably labeled one of the best healer designs the game had, even when the Faerie had a bit of clunk tied to it. Between tossing 24s [Miasma], 30s [Bio II], an alternate instantcast for [Ruin II] doing more dmg (12s [Miasma II] with high MP cost), Bane for dot spread, shadowflare... you had a lot of DPS tools without having to resort to Energy Drain to express your damage mastery of the job.

Even mitigation and heal wise, Scholar was an absolute banger. The Faerie felt impactful and could be used even when you hard-casted [Broil II] or [Miasma], Quickened Aetherflow gave some nice leeway on your AF management if not straight up be a 4th AF and [Excogitation] felt absolutely busted at the time. I badly miss the 4.4-4.5 state of this job.

Astrologian - now, while I definitely liked the card system way more than any iteration of Shadowbringers onwards, I absolutely hated two things about it: 1.) AOE [The Balance] was borderline busted, considering with a bit of luck you could bring it out every minute. 2.) RNG aspect is fine for me, but having three DPS buffs and three non-DPS buffs tied to a single cooldown meant some awful inconsistency. But instead of axing it all for Divination they should have instead had something like "Diurnal/Nocturnal Draw" and split the card sets. Otherwise, job was a banger.

Input is from someone who mains tanks but liked SB healers a lot, so make of it what you will.

Tbh SB was the start of the decay in the job designs while some reached their pinnacle such as Bard, others such as Drk got gutted.

For healers. It was not rosy, but still far better than the current state at least for at least ast and sch. Whm had a better dps kit true but was even worse in many aspects than today

Whm got ruined in SB and did need changing as the devs made a completely worthless lily system and took 10+ abilities from it that should not have been taken away. It effectively needed to be rolled back to HW and the dev responsible smacked upside the head. That should not have got off the drawing board.

The other healers had a few issues, but they stemmed from the devs starting their horrible "pure healer" experiment the game is still stuck in. It was also when we started learning how poorly understood and cared for healers are in the job designers. "Whm doing less healing than sch" and logs proved it was doing more dps AND healing because whm was so badly torn apart.

Examples of other healer issues in sb: removing energy drain and ANY AOE from sch, Ast's unable to weave cards at all with the removal of stella and combust 1 until both got addressed in patches. Ast had 1 button spam unfortunately and I hated it.

This is why healers advocate for HW style healers. Because they were the overall best.

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Originally Posted by Recon1o6

Tbh SB was the start of the decay in the job designs while some reached their pinnacle such as Bard, others such as Drk got gutted.

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Forgive me going off-topic, but I want to say that everyone likely has their own take what was good and what was considered "gutted".

Personally I'm glad DRK ended the way it did in Stormblood, for the most part at least. The good things we lost were absolutely Blood Price optimisation for more MP, Dark Dance and some more active damage tools like Low Blow (that were also tied to a stun, though that's more of a bad thing).

The problem with HW DRK, or at least I see it as such, was the Parry Engine. On paper sounds engaging, the problem is it requires DRK to have #1 enmity as much as possible so parries can start coming in. DRK was also reliant on the boss to have both physical attacks (for parry engine) and magical attacks (INT-down Delirium, Dark Mind) to get the most value. Stormblood boss design had bosses with dominantly physical busters and fights with no physical attacks at all, meaning Parry would have not worked there for the old Low Blow / Reprisal procs.

That's why TBN got created, both to make the Retaliation parts work regardless of enmity and regardless of damage type.

I also enjoyed the higher frequency of Dark Arts, though it was a tad much and skills like Syphon Strike having a DA modifier was a bit overkill for weave timing. The addition and interplay of Blood was a very welcome addition. Sad they shafted it this bad in Shadowbringers.

Too hard for the poor Sylphies to handle their One Major Nuke and Two Dots.

I started this game at Stormblood. Despite my financial troubles at the time, I got WHM to level 70 and SCH to level 50. Never really mastered either job, but I enjoyed both. Though the WHM lily system and Fluid Aura could've used a rework at the time. If we combined the WHM STB kit with the current lily system and a reworked Fluid Aura, I believe it would have turned out great. My opinion though.

I disliked SB healer at first.
But now, I think it was a correct middleground.

They only needeed tweaks here and there.

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Originally Posted by KDSilver

I disliked SB healer at first.
But now, I think it was a correct middleground.

They only needeed tweaks here and there.

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There are things SB did that were healthy and effective directions to move into from HW. Largely, it was the removal of old Cleric Stance that was the right move. It was too much of an ultimatum, and I don't agree that it created the engagement some players thought it did. Beyond that, though, AST was the only job that felt like it really grew. SCH's DPS tools were hit a little too hard, although they were still largely fine, and WHM felt stagnant.

In short, it was a mixed bag, but it ended up feeling good to play in the end for the most part.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

There are things SB did that were healthy and effective directions to move into from HW. Largely, it was the removal of old Cleric Stance that was the right move. It was too much of an ultimatum, and I don't agree that it created the engagement some players thought it did. Beyond that, though, AST was the only job that felt like it really grew. SCH's DPS tools were hit a little too hard, although they were still largely fine, and WHM felt stagnant.

In short, it was a mixed bag, but it ended up feeling good to play in the end for the most part.

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I think the biggest problem with the removal of Cleric Stance wasn't that the ability itself was well-designed. It had problems. It was sticky, it essentially locked you out of non-flat healing for two GCDs, we all know why it wasn't great. The problem with Square removing old CS was that they took something jank that added a little risk-reward and engagement, and instead of improving upon or replacing it, they just entirely deleted what little engagement was gleaned from it. I consider CS removal part of the downward spiral for the role because it was in the first "wave" of "don't improve engagement, just delete it!" horrible design philosophy that the role has eaten over and over ever since.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

I think the biggest problem with the removal of Cleric Stance wasn't that the ability itself was well-designed. It had problems. It was sticky, it essentially locked you out of non-flat healing for two GCDs, we all know why it wasn't great. The problem with Square removing old CS was that they took something jank that added a little risk-reward and engagement, and instead of improving upon or replacing it, they just entirely deleted what little engagement was gleaned from it. I consider CS removal part of the downward spiral for the role because it was in the first "wave" of "don't improve engagement, just delete it!" horrible design philosophy that the role has eaten over and over ever since.

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I don't look at CS as a part of that, but rather the statement on WHM's design from the developers. Transitioning into HW, Healers felt good. WHM and SCH both got good things that expanded upon their gameplay, mostly. AST was wonky at first, but they listened and worked on AST making it really strong by the end of HW. WHM fell behind, and the community had a good idea of what was needed to continue building on the healers. WHM needed a way to contest against the buffs that AST provided. SCH's Dissipation felt useless and counterintuitive to how SCH was supposed to play. And AST needed some of its card jank worked on, such as making it so you couldn't redraw the same card.

What I see as the downward spiral was the complete and utter rejection of these ideas largely starting with "WHM is a pure healer." It was the "you don't know what you want. We know what you want" mentality. That was the moment they decided WHM was the beginner healer and wasn't allowed to have anything that wasn't a flat heal, DPS button, or mitigation button, gave it the most laughably inconsequential gauge mechanic, and a terribly designed capstone in Plenary Indulgence. A chunk of it's unique tools were moved to role action tools and nothing took their place, and WHM now became the joke healer/baby's first healer.

SCH got gutted, though had some of that gutting restored quickly into SB. Dissipation was not changed or removed, and they added Dissipation 2 in the form of Aetherpact. Chain Strategem is good, but SCH was not the healer that needed party buffs. It was already the strongest healer and was supposed to be the attacking healer who otherwise doesn't need to supplement offensive with buffs. Excogitation was the only really good thing SCH got.

AST felt like it actually grew, but still hand clunk. I believe Redraw still could result in the same card. It took a few patches before The Spear got updated from the hard to use and kinda messy cooldown reduction buff it used to be. The Spire felt more useless than ever because TP management become far more consistent, other than royal roading it. Minor Arcana was a great tool, but the inconsistency of pulling The Lady meant it largely felt unhelpful. Sleeve Draw was unique but created problems when you'd end up with cards you didn't want in your Spread specifically since you couldn't Minor Arcana them. It felt fun to play, but it was wonky at the same time.