Role ability selection

Looking at it currently we'll only be able to choose five role abilities, so here's the problem; of the ten, eight of them are routinely useful.

Cleric Stance: Now a mini-raging strikes for healers, 5% damage up for 15 seconds with 90 second cooldown. Not great, but decent. At least I think it's decent? Honestly that's pretty weak.

Break: 50 potency, 2.5 second cast, adds +40% heavy. Usually worthless, only required in very rare situations where a healer might need to kite, and can also be used by caster DPS (includes RDM). Very low priority.

Protect: It's Protect! You always want someone with this. The only saving grace is you can rock-paper-scissors with your raid healing partner and make one of you the protect-slave so the other can free a slot, but otherwise you want it.

Esuna: The absolute worst choice for a role ability since every class already had this ability under one name or other. Almost mandatory for all healers unless the game suddenly drops bad status, so they basically just reduced the number of role-buy skills to four unless you like swapping selections in between fights (and no one likes that!).

Lucid Dreaming: Useful. WHM and AST rely on it, SCH will probably want it now, too, due to the Aetherize nerf. You will almost certainly want this in primal and raid encounters.

Swiftcast: Useful... but annoyingly so. Healers want it for swiftres in general. WHM and AST can use it for long-cast heals as well and it's just a really useful ability for clutch situations. SCH used to use it for Shadowflare since that was literally their only spell cast over 2.5 seconds other than res, but since that's no longer the case... It's just for res, though it's also really handy for fairy resummoning if it happens to die. I don't want ot give this one up.

Eye for an Eye: A nice buff to have, but... Is it worth the limited role slot? Can only be used by healers, as caster DPS can no longer get it (SMN included).

Largesse: Divine Seal. Pretty sure everyone is going to take this as a quality of life buff.

Surecast: Now buffed to make you ignore stun, knockback, and other interrupting mechanics while casting, which sounds really useful in certain situations (especially since it prevents knockback), but is most likely going to be something to swap in for specific encounters.

Rescue: No one is ever going to take this except to mess with people. We just don't have enough slots for it.

I honestly hate the idea of having to swap abilities dependent on the encounter, so help me out here. What's my priority? Esuna, Protect, Largesse are solid, will probably have to keep Swiftcast unless the meta changes. Not sure about the 5th; if Aetherize's reduction is as bad as feared then LD will probably trump Cleric, or maybe I'll drop Swiftcast just for self-hate, but I personally want it for fairy resummoning in case it dies. I also mourn Eye for an Eye, but it doesn't measure up all that great against the other options.

First world problems.

Tier A: Lucid Dreaming, Swiftcast, Eye for an Eye
These should be on all healers all the time. LD is for MP regen, and Swiftcast for instant Raise. E4E is a damage reduction buff that can be applied throughout a fight by both healers, so both carrying it is helpful.

Tier B: Esuna, Largesse, Protect
Esuna and Protect are both useful, but are only needed by one of the healers. For this reason, players that want to plan out their skills with their co-healer can run without. For SCH, Largesse is basically a version of Dissipation that doesn't suck, which I find hilarious. But ultimately, for the same reason people dislike the concept of a pure healer, the added healing of Largesse is never necessary if you're on top of your healer game. Take it if you're ilevel is still low for the fight you're going into, and you feel like you're struggling to heal enough.

Tier C: Cleric Stance, Break, Surecast, Rescue
These are all too weak to warrant a spot on your cross role actions list. CS is now too weak and too short to make a good enough difference on a healer. Heavy was only useful for PvP, but since it has its own actions now, I cannot see any purpose to this unless we get more mechanics like A3S's add phase. Surecast's knockback immunity (assuming it will work on raid mechanics) will only be useful for the players who aren't properly handling mechanics. I suppose if your latency is pretty bad, you could take it as a safety net, but you shouldn't need this if you're doing the fight right. Rescue's a tool designed to try and fix your teammate's mistakes, but again, you shouldn't take this if you're following mechanics.

I hate that Esuna is a Role ability now. Like you said, each healer had its own cleanse and I really didn't see a problem with that. Gonna miss Leeches </3 Most picks are obvious: Protect/Swift/Esuna and for me personally, E4E. 5th slot...well, if Aetherflow IS only 10%, it'll be Lucid Dream - surprise! -.-

And yeah, discussing with co healers what to take for raids/primals will allow some wiggle room, but that's only for premades/PF etc. Using DF you're going to want to take Prot for sure. And for roulettes...better take Esuna just in case you get that ONE dungeon that has that ONE debuff that has to be cleansed. Until we figure out what new dungeons have what mechanics, we're going to be taking Esuna as we level - can't risk a sneaky Doom!

I'm willing to see how this all plays out once we can actually get our hands on it all, but on paper I'm kinda hating the Role abilities.

I will also miss Virus an incredible amount.

P.S It's nice having both healers with Prot/Esuna to cover eachother.

Break is such a terrible role action I can't even fathom. 50 potency on a CAST?

One use that Rescue probably can be used for is synergy with the new PLD skill Passage of Arms, either pulling the tank toward you or a party member behind the PLD. Might be interesting to test out.

I feel like Divine Seal is the only reason we can't take every single cross-role skill with us. In which case just give it back to WHM please.

I hope there is no cooldown on changing role actions, because I'm going to select protect at the start of 4-man duties and then change it for something more important e.g. Esuna or Cleric... I really think protect (and to a lesser extent esuna) should've been given their own slot lol

I really don't like Esuna/Leeches/Exalted Detriment being combined into one skill...It was one thing each healer had in the kit already and now it costs us a role action slot to use it. I'm also going to miss the different look each one had as it was part of the job identity. I mean the sch job quest makes you use leeches on NPCs for example.

We can't know which ones, if any, are mandatory until we get our hands on the new content. It could depend on the healer's skillset and the encounter they are in. I believe when swapped, even inside a dungeon, there is no cooldown penalty. I am not that affected by this because I was already doing it with current tier spells such as stone 1/2 and ruin/broil in order to save a slot on my crossbar. We have to take into consideration that previous mandatory abilities may no longer be so.

Here are my thoughts:

Cleric Stance: Until brought up to 10% damage increase, this is collecting dust. 5% + 90second CD? It is nearly worthless

Break: Replaces Blizzard 2 if you want it. It has the same potency and does not scale down according to number of mobs. WHM doesn't need this at all since they already have so much burst AoE. SCHs might want to really consider bringing this along, and I can't speak for AST since I don't play it.

Protect: I believe this is no longer mandatory. Only the meta makes it so now. So little healing is required in 3.0 that you really don't need this outside of EX/savage. The only reason why I use it now is so I don't slow down the run with players demanding for it, and also because there is nothing to better to replace it. For WHM, since we need to figure out how to cast cure 1 and 2 without overhealing, you may want to ditch this completely.

Esuna: There are few encounters I know of that actually need this to survive it. Scorpion boss in Sastasha hard is one that comes to mind. It almost serves the sole purpose of helping to fill the LB gauge. We will have to keep our eye out on how often detrimental effects that can't be ignored are being given to you and your party members.

Lucid Dreaming: Almost seems meant for RDM. SCH may have had their Aetherflow cut in half, but I believe they are going to be ok. They literally would never have to worry about MP unless raising multiple players. Their potencies has been increased across on many abilities which I believe will help balance this out. For WHM, with Assize being reduced to 60 seconds, and the addition of thin air, they may need this more for the enmity reduction than the MP refresh. Again, we have to wait and see.

Swiftcast: Still mandatory. It is just too good in clutch situations.

Eye4eye: Great for trash mobs, sucks for bosses. Especially magic based ones, which are many. SCHs still need it for deployment tactics in the situations they feel it will benefit. My WHM will very likely be leaving this one behind, again due to the fact that mitigating damage is no longer their game, at least not through direct means.

Largesse: Again, WHM may no longer need this, but it was the one ability that I felt they truly lost as a job specific ability. I'm guessing this will only be needed for EX/savage content for all three healers.

Surecast: This went from zero to hero from what I can tell. I get stunned, A LOT. I get knocked back, A LOT, and I can think of a handful of bosses with draw-in effects. I don't think this is mandatory, but it has guaranteed a spot on my crossbar. I am really excited about this one.

Rescue: This deserves its own thread after we've have seen the tooltip and know that it does not decrease enmity. All it does is draw a player to your side. It kind of defeats the purpose of the name "Rescue", but I believe the best time to use this is after a player has been raised to immediately bring them in your range. I think we need to consult with DPS mains to let us know when, if any time they would like this done to them. Until we learn more, this too will collect dust.

tl:dr? The only mandatory role skill I see for all three healers is swiftcast.

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Originally Posted by Kalinas

I really don't like Esuna/Leeches/Exalted Detriment being combined into one skill...It was one thing each healer had in the kit already and now it costs us a role action slot to use it. I'm also going to miss the different look each one had as it was part of the job identity. I mean the sch job quest makes you use leeches on NPCs for example.

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Agreed. It is no different than how each healer has their own resurrection spell, and this remained intact. Hopefully in a future patch, they give this back. There is no reason whatsoever to be required to use up a slot for this.

I thought the role skill was going to be implemented to make things easier? Making it so you wouldn't have to level a class you don't enjoy to play a job that you do. Spells like Esuna need to go back to where it was to make room for more interesting and unique role related skills.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

Break: Replaces Blizzard 2 if you want it. It has the same potency and does not scale down according to number of mobs. WHM doesn't need this at all since they already have so much burst AoE. SCHs might want to really consider bringing this along, and I can't speak for AST since I don't play it.

Rescue: This deserves its own thread after we've have seen the tooltip and know that it does not decrease enmity. All it does is draw a player to your side. It kind of defeats the purpose of the name "Rescue", but I believe the best time to use this is after a player has been raised to immediately bring them in your range. I think we need to consult with DPS mains to let us know when, if any time they would like this done to them. Until we learn more, this too will collect dust..

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Just to point out, Break is single-target, a 25 yd range and no AoE radius. Also no one actually liked having to use Blizzard II; it was just literally all a SCH had available. If there was one thing they would like replaced, it was having to rely on a trash move that even BLM removed completely from their bar as being one of our best AoE options. Also there's no reason to homogenize healer AoE and we don't need to carbon-copy direct-damage-spam spells such as Holy like AST did. Even just an aetherize stack consuming spike attack on a cooldown would be enough, perhaps something like Exterminate from Bravely Default's arcanist class, like an AoE fester that only hits enemies effected by your Bio II. Something unique to the class design that isn't along the philosophy of "all healers should be mostly the same" (that's not fun design).

Also in terms of Rescue, from the tooltip it has a 30 yd range, so if they're close enough to rescue they're already close enough to heal.

While the tooltips may have changes since the San Francisco thing, you can see them as they were in a video here: https://youtu.be/3MqlCEiT-04
You can see the Japanese tooltips in the Famitsu article at the top here as well: https://www.famitsu.com/news/201705/...4.html?page=11

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Originally Posted by LegoTechnic

Snip..

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Ahh, thanks for the correction and the links! I thought break was AoE. So this can go in the 'collects dust' category for now. Rescue I did know about the 30yalm range, which is pretty big, but I was thinking more along the line of ripping them from the action rather than being able to draw them in from anywhere on the field. None of them are going to enjoy having their rotations interrupted, so after a raise is the only time I can think of where you are guaranteed to not do this.