Healing going foward

I'm surprised no one has asked this, but since Tanks are losing Rampart & ShadowSkin for generic CDs could it be possible Healers will lose Physick and Benefic for Cure? So AST would get Cure and would retain the insta cast/crit Cure 2

We actually have been discussing this, but it's been in the existing multipage threads.

Personally, I think it's less likely that spells like 'cure' are candidates, but buffs/utility could be. For example, instead of Scholars having Fey Wind and Astrologians having Arrow, maybe each healer can have a haste-type buff they can use under the Role Shared Actions system. And I wouldn't be surprised at all if Virus/Disable are merged and moved into this system.

That said, we don't know. Comments have only hinted at how it could look for DPS and the rampart/shadowskin merge is the only firm detail they've given. Healers haven't really been mentioned.

It could be amazing for putting the healers on equal footing. It could be the worst thing we've seen yet. Time will tell, but there is not much to actually discuss just yet.

I believe the idea is to eliminate the need to level other classes in order to progress another. For healers this would be abilities like protect, cleric stance, and swiftcast (tho SC is a caster DPS ability). Spells like Physick is the ARC's version of cure, so I don't believe it pertains to abilities like those.

Basically, if it is role-specific rather than class-specific, then chances are the current class it belongs to is going to lose exclusivity to it.

We have been talking about this occasionally, though it's nice to have a thread on the subject.

I'm pretty sure it's going to be things like Protect, Cleric Stance, Stoneskin, Virus, Repose, Eye for an Eye and possibly Disable going into the shared role system. Cure, cure II and medica could technically all be bundled together with their Helios/Benefic counterparts since they're literally exactly the same spells with different names, but I doubt it.

What I'm worried about is what is going to replace all these abilities. Just looking at what I named, WHM is going to lose much more than both healers combined to this shared role system. I'm wondering if they're going to simply take but not give (like they did with Stoneskin and Protect) or give us some new toys to play with.

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Originally Posted by Exiled_Tonberry

We have been talking about this occasionally, though it's nice to have a thread on the subject.

I'm pretty sure it's going to be things like Protect, Cleric Stance, Stoneskin, Virus, Repose, Eye for an Eye and possibly Disable going into the shared role system. Cure, cure II and medica could technically all be bundled together with their Helios/Benefic counterparts since they're literally exactly the same spells with different names, but I doubt it.

What I'm worried about is what is going to replace all these abilities. Just looking at what I named, WHM is going to lose much more than both healers combined to this shared role system. I'm wondering if they're going to simply take but not give (like they did with Stoneskin and Protect) or give us some new toys to play with.

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The abilities I bolded will likely stay with their respective classes. Both SCH and AST have their own damage mitigation tools to substitute for stoneskin. Virus is possible, but I doubt it since there is a trait enhancement tied to it with the ACN class. Repose is seldom used and might be replaced with another ability. Eye4Eye, again is a trait enhanced ability and will likely still need to be crossed until they completely do away with the cross class system. It's all about those mandatory cross class skills that make you go and level that class in order to progress your job. So the selective abilities like Aero, stoneskin, virus, etc. will remain as is.

However I do question abilities like Swiftcast which are mandatory, but belong to another role.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

Spells like Physick is the ARC's version of cure, so I don't believe it pertains to abilities like those.

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...To further add to this. So AFAIK right now, they aren't making tanks 1-2-3 combos the same. The rampart/shadowskin merge, those are oGCD buffs. Similarly with healers, I don't think we'll see cure/physick merged, those are the staples. oGCD buffs/debuffs, on the other hand, there's a much better chance of that. Or anything that seems more 'utility'.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

Repose is seldom used and might be replaced with another ability. Eye4Eye, again is a trait enhanced ability and will likely still need to be crossed until they completely do away with the cross class system.

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While seldom used in PvE party content, repose is very strong in pvp and solo content. I wouldn't be so quick to consign it to the chopping block.

As for E4E and Virus, SE hasn't let traits get in the way before. I wouldn't count on it now, especially when SE has said they're going to be making stronger changes this time around (and an expac is the perfect time for it)

Stoneskin and protect, perhaps not, since those have already been detraited. OTOH, for all we know, they might actually be getting rid of the cross class system entirely in favor of the role shared actions system. Since every healer is going to want protect and cleric, existing and future... it would make sense to move those into it.

In regards to the healing balance issue, If storm blood does not address the issue with AST, we will most likely be seeing double AST in the Omega raids. If you really want to raid as a healer, then you'd better start leveling AST due to the community enforcement that will ensue

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Originally Posted by Jhett_Magnum

I'm surprised no one has asked this, but since Tanks are losing Rampart & ShadowSkin for generic CDs could it be possible Healers will lose Physick and Benefic for Cure? So AST would get Cure and would retain the insta cast/crit Cure 2

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No idea, will have to wait. On one hand the potency for them are all the same. But they have different traits attached to them. I guess they could give each job their own traits for the cures. It's possible, but a bit of micro managing to make it work. Depends if they find it worth the effort.

I'd feel iffy about it but I can see how it can work. Rampart and Shadowskin made some sense, but now I hope we don't loose that nice shadowskin animation..being given only a taste can't say for sure what will happen.

I think Stoneskin should be a WHM exclusive, it'd not hurt AST and SCH to lose access to it as much. Virus could also not end up being cross-classable anymore either, if they give WHM something like a physical apocastasis, all healers have something powerful to mitigate with, but different in nature.
About E4E, I'd think it could just be removed entirely, it doesn't even always do something at all. Protect could also be removed if they want to cut buttons, considering protect has no real gameplay value aside from making recovery from death slightly more expensive for healers.

I'd not be surprised if healers get their own variant of swiftcast, so that SE can tweak the cooldowns of each version separately for casters and healers.


Anyway, I don't think merging of skills that do the same thing but couldn't be cross-classed anyway makes much sense, it'll be removing animations for no real gain. You're not freeing a button by doing this, and you're removing options to change those abilities in terms of potency or other effects later on as well.

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Originally Posted by ToasterMan

In regards to the healing balance issue, If storm blood does not address the issue with AST, we will most likely be seeing double AST in the Omega raids. If you really want to raid as a healer, then you'd better start leveling AST due to the community enforcement that will ensue

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I can only hope SE sees where this is going and fixes it before it happens.

But most likely we'll just have healers unbalanced on arrival once again...

@Stoneskin being exclusive to WHM: I would like to think they'd be nice enough to let WHM have something for themselves, but these are the same people that saw fit to nerf Stoneskin because it would "make WHM mandatory", then proceed to give AST 170% shields.

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Originally Posted by ToasterMan

In regards to the healing balance issue, If storm blood does not address the issue with AST, we will most likely be seeing double AST in the Omega raids. If you really want to raid as a healer, then you'd better start leveling AST due to the community enforcement that will ensue

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I agree if they nerf sch to as it will be double ast

well if they truncated physik,cure,benefic to a cross role ability similar to rampart/shadowskin it might do several things

remove that type of utility from dps like blm/smn, especially if virus and e4e go to the wayside of cross role,
i guess it depends on how ballsy this cross role thing is going to get... even potentially having raise/res be a cross role skill would change things.

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Originally Posted by Exiled_Tonberry

I can only hope SE sees where this is going and fixes it before it happens.

But most likely we'll just have healers unbalanced on arrival once again...

@Stoneskin being exclusive to WHM: I would like to think they'd be nice enough to let WHM have something for themselves, but these are the same people that saw fit to nerf Stoneskin because it would "make WHM mandatory", then proceed to give AST 170% shields.

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I hope so too, but I don't have my hopes up. These are the same developers that thought it was a good idea to make it so that any member of the FC that's given the promotion privileges could promote themselves to a rank that is higher than their own.

My prediction: No new healing spells 60-70, 4 New dps focused ability, and one support option that'll be either useless because it doesn't buff dps, or mandatory because it buffs dps.

It's unlikely they'll be doing things like giving cure spells to the other healers, it's not needed because each healer has their equivalent and it doesn't make sense lore wise either. From what i understand they want to consolidate certain cross class abilities and remove unused ones.

So regarding healers some things come to mind. It's highly likely stoneskin 2 will be given to everyone, personally i'd like it traited so whm can use it in combat. Swiftcast will probably be given to everyone without having to level thm, and surecast will probably be removed.

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Originally Posted by Vulcwen

About E4E, I'd think it could just be removed entirely, it doesn't even always do something at all.

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You take that back! Sssh, don't worry, Eye, she didn't mean it.

Okay but seriously now.

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Originally Posted by Vulcwen

Anyway, I don't think merging of skills that do the same thing but couldn't be cross-classed anyway makes much sense, it'll be removing animations for no real gain. You're not freeing a button by doing this, and you're removing options to change those abilities in terms of potency or other effects later on as well.

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This is what I think. It makes far more sense for existing cross-class options that are seen as mandatory to be moved into the shared abilities list. Things like Swiftcast, Cleric Stance for healers; Provoke for Tanks, etc.

I don't know what was meant by merging Shadowskin and Rampart but I'm a little worried that they missed the point.

Though come to think of it, if cross-class abilities are the source of the new role-shared abilities then we'll end up with some more button bloat as it would free up CC slots that we could then fill again... unless the shared abilities will require CC slots, or if it's replacing CC entirely?

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Originally Posted by DarthVella

Though come to think of it, if cross-class abilities are the source of the new role-shared abilities then we'll end up with some more button bloat as it would free up CC slots that we could then fill again... unless the shared abilities will require CC slots, or if it's replacing CC entirely?

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From what they have told us, the implication is this new role-shared abilities will be replacing the whole cross-class system. The skills that are considered necessary for your jobs will no longer be a part of the job/class they are associated with and will now become part of this system. Thus, any tank job has access to things like provoke without leveling the job associated with provoke (gladiator)

As for merging Rampart and Shadowskin, it's simple. They are essentially removing both abilities and creating a new skill with a new name with the same (or similar) effect and putting it into the role-shared system for all tanks to use, let's call it RampForeSkin (unattractive play on words intended), if you like and assume that foresight will be removed and put in this skill too just for the name effect =p

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Originally Posted by DarthVella

Though come to think of it, if cross-class abilities are the source of the new role-shared abilities then we'll end up with some more button bloat as it would free up CC slots that we could then fill again... unless the shared abilities will require CC slots, or if it's replacing CC entirely?

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It's going to replace the CC system entirely, they already stated so. It might however only affect jobs, and leave classes untouched so people can still mess with the old system for stuff like PotD, and they then dont need to change anything for crafting either.

The basic idea I perceived was:
- Remove the requirement to level other jobs.
- Remove the design restriction that you can only cross-class from 2 classes.
- Allow for new skills to be designed that can be shared among all jobs in a certain role.

Merging of rampart and shadowskin only makes sense if they're having trouble filling all the slots with skills, which means, they're too lazy to design new ones in there.

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Originally Posted by Vulcwen

About E4E, I'd think it could just be removed entirely, it doesn't even always do something at all.

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E4E is pretty great actually and an underrated ability, it's just a lot of people don't understand how it works. When the target is hit by physical attacks (like autos) they have a 20% chance to basically use reprisal, which can also be refreshed. That's quite powerful but it needs to be used preemptively so it has time to proc before the damage you're trying to mitigate. It's far from useless and i'm hoping they don't take that away from whm, because after swift it's the next best cross class imo since virus on whm is purely physical.

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Originally Posted by ChiiSoSeriouz

E4E is pretty great actually and an underrated ability, it's just a lot of people don't understand how it works. When the target is hit by physical attacks (like autos) they have a 20% chance to basically use reprisal, which can also be refreshed. That's quite powerful but it needs to be used preemptively so it has time to proc before the damage you're trying to mitigate. It's far from useless and i'm hoping they don't take that away from whm, because after swift it's the next best cross class imo since virus on whm is purely physical.

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As far as I'm concerned, E4E works on any kind of damage. That's why it's useful to deploy it along with Adloquium when you know raidwide damage is coming, you get 20% chances of activation on 4/8 different people. It was p good on the starting phase of Sephirot EX, for one example.

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Originally Posted by Fernosaur

As far as I'm concerned, E4E works on any kind of damage. That's why it's useful to deploy it along with Adloquium when you know raidwide damage is coming, you get 20% chances of activation on 4/8 different people. It was p good on the starting phase of Sephirot EX, for one example.

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Well spreading it there actually isn't doing anything extra for you, it's only being activated off the tank that's taking the physical cleave, tiferet, the raid damage is magical so its not going to activate off the other party members.

E4E is indeed 20% chance on physical damage only. Physical AoEs are rare, so spreading it has limited uses, certain fights have magical auto-attacks which means it can only proc on tankbusters. I just feel that with all the RNG, you can't rely on it to help mitigate stuff. The same is there for reprisal, but reprisal has a damage component working for it, so it's always useful, and it also has a reactive component, so it impacts gameplay.

I do think that E4E is one of the first candidates of healer abilities to remove in order to prune skillsets.. it can be replaced by something that's more rewarding to use.
But then, the cross-role system needs skills to slot, so I think E4E is there to stay, then the devs don't need to design new stuff :P

E4E, before Alex, was pretty essential to progression. You might look at it and say "It's RNG!", but the trigger event generally happened often enough that it's actually pretty helpful and reliable mitigation. Not reliable enough that "Oh this is what we need for that tankbuster", but it lowered the healing requirements and softened up the raid hits a bit. magic auto attacks do make it pretty useless, though.

Surecast is far more niche...

I think E4E is more of a skill that high end players use. But just because casual players forget about it or don't see the use, doesn't mean that it's bad or unimportant. I mean... back around HW release, we also had a few people with the notion that Asylum was useless xD

You're right it's only physical. IDK why I had the impression that they had changed it after Deployment Tactics was added. Talk about delusional wishful thinking, lmao.

Well, making it activate off of magical damage would be a nice buff to Deployment Tactics, hahaha.

About Surecast: I often forget it even exists, cause that would imply putting it on my hotbars. I think it only fills a CC Skill on my WHM because there's literally nothing else to take.

My impression was some lesser used buffs will be removed and their effects will be added to another buff so that buff now boosts you in two ways. I imagine some will just be removed entirely.

They should work on Stoneskin for White Mage.
While we all agree on the fact that White Mage isn't here to be the mitgation healer, we see how powerful it is to migate damages in any kind of content.

Imo, Stoneskin should remains a cross class, but WHM should get the 18% back.
They should also do something about Stoneskin II. WHM has it, but can only use it before the pull... making it ""useless""
I think it should be with a 90s or 120s CD so that, at least, WHM has a mitigation skill on his toolkit. Maybe the only one, but it could definitly help him a bit.

Well,that's my analyze so far for that skill.