Healers and Blu

Blu in its limited job state with having access to only:
-a single target 500 potency cure(100 potency outside healer stance)
-an aoe esuna + heal
-white wind (your current hp = how much you heal)
-Gobskin (shield)
-raise with a 280s cd
-inherent healing potency u in healer stance

Has felt like a more rewarding experience and fun as a healer than any healer at max level since Shadowbringers launched. And these are expected to clear A4S, A8S sync'd with all Blus (so 2 tank Blus, 2Hlr Blus, 4 Dps Blus with decent overlap like diamondback and raise etc) with silent echo.

Blu is classed as a Dps so it would have more to do in a rotation but jeez louise i should not be wanting Blu as my healer for entering the same content as any actual healer, i feel like all the healers need to be brought up on the engagement front , they are currently the most boring dreary jobs i've ever had to play on FFXIV and they weren't always like this.

You goofed up by stripping and simplifying too much SE learn and give some stuff back.

I thought the first thing when I saw the BLU changes in the patch I was like "Wow, BLU seems like a better healer than actual healers." And man, does it. They actually have something to do when not healing, what an interesting concept.

I’ve yet to properly try it, but those were my first thoughts too, can’t wait to give it a go. I see the BLU complaints and I am hoping things aren’t as bad as the BLU thread makes out and that it has longevity this time around, if it does, it may be how I end up getting my healing fix.

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Originally Posted by Saefinn

I’ve yet to properly try it, but those were my first thoughts too, can’t wait to give it a go. I see the BLU complaints and I am hoping things aren’t as bad as the BLU thread makes out and that it has longevity this time around, if it does, it may be how I end up getting my healing fix.

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Naw, it'll die faster if anything then last time. Shame too, Blu as a healer is the most fun I had this xpac with healing. The mount is gonna be a rare sight to see.

While I do agree that healers have a problem, I really can't agree that BLU is better or more fun to play. Yikes.

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Originally Posted by Hysterior

While I do agree that healers have a problem, I really can't agree that BLU is better or more fun to play. Yikes.

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Fun is very subjective so i'll try to explain why i felt it was,

When i am healing well on any healer my reward is spamming that 1 nuke, my reward for good play is very very bad imo,
When i solo healed on Blu(others did WW only when out my Exervation range) i had,
-Ravana skill x4
-Sophia skill
-Garuda skill
-Ramuh skill
-Shiva skill and these were just my ogcds
Trying to upkeep boosted DoT was a challenge but felt better than trying to upkeep a healer DoT, and while blu has a lot of 220 potency spam buttons, you are not spamming them anywhere near as much your just not as powerful in the heal department so you have to devote more to heals/shields.

I know the playerbase(at large) wouldn't be able to handle a heavy enough nerf to healing to make the current reward for doing well feel actually rewarding rather than complete boredom so i just want SE to improve that reward/engagement of playing well. It is backwards logic that the worse your group is the more engaged you will be on healers.

I'll be honest. I was sort of thinking the same thing. BLU may not be extraordinarily in depth, but it at least has more buttons than any healer we have now. I feel it just has more to keep you occupied.

I´ll be honest too. I healed all HW dungeons and whiping city + Dun scaith as BLU. In the dungeons i can´t even count how often i let my poor tank die, because i had to concentrate on my dmg rotation and in the raids i had to spam heal almost nonstop.
I´m not the best heal out there, but i´m playing healers for years.

Don´t get me wrong, it was really fun to heal as BLU, but i really appreciate atm, that i don´t have a difficult dps rotation on my normal healers.

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Originally Posted by Laphael

I´ll be honest too. I healed all HW dungeons and whiping city + Dun scaith as BLU. In the dungeons i can´t even count how often i let my poor tank die, because i had to concentrate on my dmg rotation and in the raids i had to spam heal almost nonstop.
I´m not the best heal out there, but i´m playing healers for years.

Don´t get me wrong, it was really fun to heal as BLU, but i really appreciate atm, that i don´t have a difficult dps rotation on my normal healers.

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I think that hits the nail on my head for me

Blu healer - weak heals way more to do and manage
Whm/Ast/Sch - powerful heals barely anything to do or manage

I think there can be a middle ground here just whether SE sees it or thinks it is worthwhile.

I have no stake in Blu so gonna have to find out how this heals as I've been wanting to find time to level and try out the different fights. But if I learn they cut corners, skills, arcanists and faeries for 5.0 so the skill development team could put all that time into making skills for Blue insteading of SCH skills to surpass 3.0 I will have the self-discovering journey to find out if it is possible to more disappointed than I already am.

I think it's a response to the vacuum left behind after StB and ShB showed no regard for non-current expansion content, where the drip-feed of skills is horribly paced and the still refuse to budge from shoving 15 skills (Broil I II and III baby) in the far end of the leveling experience. But then Blu isn't free to use in MSQ or DF, which means if you hoped to do your dailies in on a care-free job you get to eat pant, again. How they can keep on pushing this job while refusing to acknowledge how frustratingly boring the game gets when you run out of MSQ and the smell of new dungeons wear off.

But this debacle has shown itself to maybe be a solution. They don't want to let BLU into DF because they might lack skills (and they can't be arsed to have something akin to an ilvl / spell requirement level) and that might upset people. I guess ast, whm and sch don't get a pass already being upset, but then the answer is obvious: Release the seperate skillset from expansions ago and restrict it's use to overworld, pf and premades. Everyone on the current set can sign up to DF no problem.

You'll get a big red debuff on you head, marking you as a pariah and you'll have to first confirm "this changes your skillset to one from previous expansion", and "this is from an UBALANACED time, are you sure you want to do this?" and "Abandon all hope, this job had so many dps skills you might pop a fuse playing it" and "this skillset has the dangerous Cleric Stance in it, you could WIPE with this!" and "are you sure you don't want to not leave the safety of Broil III and Biolysis behind and stay in the warmth of this skillset we spent entire minutes on" and I could not have smashed those buttons fast enough and endured hours wait in DF just to do Expert if it meant I could step back into the comfertable shoes when the focus was on satisfying moment to moment decisions on a a mmo class that felt complete and not shoehorned into a role because it's creators are creatively broke stuck changing permille values.

What do you say, SE? Let's do it. You're already a fan of and subscribe the same thought no idea is a bad one until you try it. Thought you need to work on that if an idea turns out bad you're not supposed to let it fester and mold like a dish in a resturant, and as the poor Scholar who ordered pasta full of spices instead got six month old bread desperately trying to get the attention of community managers as they instead zip right past and instead wants to know if smn's steak is up to standards, the smn complains its too hard and is giving them cramps trying to carve and chew, the cms massage the customers hand assuring they will get them a brand new meal and of course they wont have to pay for it as they refill the wine, not so subtly spilling red on scholars suit as they swing the bottle around.

BLU healer is more fun than AST ever been in 5.0

Excuse me while I go try out this new healer called BLU. /Logs into the game

Not really surprising, as a BLU healer solves the 2 biggest issues of the healer role:

1) lack of a dps rotation: despite being very simple, BLU currently has a DPS rotation, so at least dpsing when there's nothing left to heal is more interesting than the 1 button-spamming we have on other healers;
2) overpowered oGCD/instant heals: I've already said this in the past, but 5.0 healers have too many powerful instant healing spells at their disposal. This, coupled with fight design based on burst aoe damage and tankbusters, makes healing with oGCD abilities (and, in WHM case, afflatus spells) too easy and too MP efficient. On the other hand, BLU only has a couple of AOE heals, one of which is very inefficient in terms of mana, and a ST heal (no oGCD healing abilities). In a sense, the current BLU provides a 2.0 healing experience, where precasting healing spells and thinking several GCDs ahead was actually a thing (now it's mostly "see damage->big oGCD heal").

I can see this. Maybe even saw it coming. I can even admit that I would probably have fun healing as BLU, and would love to give it a go in Dun Scaith in particular. It doesn't address or take care of the problems we have with our actual healers though. The kind of problems that were there, and still are even when SCH had all of its DPS skills.

I am too winded to get into those issues today though, nor would it bring any positive spin to this thread. I much rather express that I think it's pretty neat that players are enjoying this aspect to BLU, and I believe it shows how limited jobs can be beneficial. Perhaps the feedback can be used to improve both BLU and healing in the near future.

BLU is much more free than the healers are, even if your playing as a BLU healer, you can still do lotz of things on your downtime when your not healing, like: stunn locking enemies, using damage buffs or weakening enemies defenses, removing, or adding status to enemies, or really just throwing out fun amounts of dps -- and this is...well, fun.

I agree with many of the point made in that it looks like BLU address 2 of the big issues about why people don't find healers fun anymore. Too many OGCD heals and too few spells to use in my downtime.

Actually I might experiment by removing some of them off of my crossbar and see if there is a good balance that can be met, though it won't address the issue with DPS variety, but it may lessen it by reducing downtime.

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Originally Posted by P0W3RK1D

BLU is much more free than the healers are, even if your playing as a BLU healer, you can still do lotz of things on your downtime when your not healing, like: stunn locking enemies, using damage buffs or weakening enemies defenses, removing, or adding status to enemies, or really just throwing out fun amounts of dps -- and this is...well, fun.

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I am glad somebody else picked up on this. My argument for addressing the SCH downtime has been along those lines, originally their DPS moves gave status effects, if the game embraced this kind of mechanic more, it could be good, and if DPS balance is such an issue for a healer, enfeebling and buffing seems to be a better way to fill that down time. I think they'd have to make debuffs hit on more occasions too, even if they can't stop specific important mechanics (unless necessary to so as part of the mechanics, like stunning in E1S).

Okay, I've since been giving BLU healing a go. I was lacking Pom Cure and Aetherial Mimicry, so I grabbed them this morning and have just done a BLU run of Aetherochemical Research Facility. And I'm totally seeing the argument here, as I thought I might.
Limited to 3 GCD heals, a 5% defense buff (via Cactguard) and nothing else as I don't yet have Angel Whisper or Gobskin and the positives are:
- My downtime is reduced
- The downtime I've got has me being able to do plenty, without it even being complicated, just varied. I can debuff, I can stun, I can DPS. I have good single target stuff, good AoE stuff, and because stuff builds resistance, my opening DPS abilities are different to what I might use to sustain DPS.

And I had to pay more attention and plan a little more, because I couldn't use an oGCD to save us in a tight spot, meaning I had more incentive to be a little more pre-emptive.

Whilst there are things I would improve about Blue Mage content as I feel once people have cleared their logs and got the rewards, for the large part people will shelve it again. But I also think BLU has made positive steps in the right direction, I feel it is a job concept with the potential to revitalise old content, but feels like a work in progress. I'm not sure I entirely agree with the big complaint thread in general chat on it, but I do agree as far as I think it'll get shelves by people after a while.

But at least it has addressed half of the complaints I had on it when BLU was released, which is why I am able to enjoy running it in dungeons.

They need to remove the cooldown on Angel Whisper while you have Healer aetherial mimicry imo.

Okay, I've spent a bit more time playing with BLU healer. What's funny is, every time I go into a party I ask to heal, I am actually enjoying this. Healing wise I agree the cooldown on Angel Whisper needs to be lesser. Maybe one oGCD heal could be added and that's it.
But let's look at running stuff as a BLU healer:
My healing aspect is simple, spam between Pom Cure, Exuviation, White Wind and I don't yet have Gobskin, but that's fine. I also Cactguard. I am on my toes watching people's health because I need to leave enough time for me to cast a spell whilst also react to damage taken. This is engaging from a healing aspect because I am thinking more about my healing than normal. Although there is not a huge variety of healing spells that I can use, I conversely find myself have more of a healer focus than I do on my SCH or AST who have tonnes of healing spells.

But sometimes things are going well. People are together, just like the Sophia party I've just come out of. People were together and I had my moments of downtime.

What I've had is variety. First downtime, I might pop Off-guard and dump my Surpanakha in quick succession and drop an Eruption. In trash pulls, the next might be Whistles, Fazes and Sharpened Knives until stun resistance builds (obviously not effective for bosses) and then I could swap to do Whistle + Drill Cannons. If in an AoE situation, everything I've used on single target except Sharpened Knife is applicable and I can also throw in my Ram's Voice and Dragon's Voice combo. And now that I've got Quasar, it's another oGCD that's not shared with Eruption I can weave. Most of these skills as a healer BLU get weaved, as in most cases I am more compelled to heal damage more than I do on other jobs.

Now the variety I have in my current set up isn't based on "do what I feel like" either, because Surpanakha needs time to build 4 charges, Eruption and Quasar have a recast, mobs build resistance to stun and freeze so those types of attacks become less effective to spam, so I move around what I've got available that's sensible for me to use. I still have plenty of skills to learn, so with time, I'll end up refining a good balance.

Whilst I get people are disappointed with Blue Mage content, but it's this experience here in the dungeons I've got in PF that I've been enjoying and kind of makes me miss the experience I had healing back in 2.0.

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Originally Posted by Saefinn

Whilst I get people are disappointed with Blue Mage content, but it's this experience here in the dungeons I've got in PF that I've been enjoying and kind of makes me miss the experience I had healing back in 2.0.

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Thank you Saefinn, based on your tales of Blu I decided to set aside time to level up and get some spells for it. And I'm very glad I did, as you said, this is as close to the fun I had in 2.0:

Have yet to go in as a healer, mostly tank, but it carries all the same: I've got choices, options, versatility. And it just busted every myth I had about limitations in the game and narrow game design that plague current iteration of Scholar: There really is no reason for why we couldn't have interesting debuffs, wide array of gcd spells both for restoring, damaging and support, pet hotbars and skills usable outside of combat. Sure, when tanking I can just spam Reflux and noone catches up to me, but at the same time I can choose not to be boring and use:
* Mimic a player for tank
* Mighty guard stance that actually sacrifices personal offence for personal defence.
* Eruption and Surpanakha while moving to grab mobs.
* Aqua breath and High Voltage for dot, aoe and paralysis.
* Bomb toss for stun
* Song of Torment for dot
* Bad Breath for every debuff imaginble
* Veil of the Whorl for counterattacks
* Devour for hp buff
* Toad oil for evasion buff
* Toad Tongue for grabbing ranged mobs
* White wind and Exuviation for support and cleasning (and a ton of emnity)
* Flying frenzy to jump all over the place
* Sardines for interuption and throwing fish at mobs.
And maybe many more I haven't checked out.

Doesn't matter that this was as tank, because I have the exact same availble if I had picked healer to mimic. This just blows current Pld iteration out of the water aswell in terms of tanking and is more reminiscent of 3.0. This is the kind of toolset jobs used have, and should have when leveling up and just have fun with.

Crux being: "Power and variety at your fingertips" is what I try to sum up 2.0 Scholar with and Blu is exactly that. Everything is on a gcd, and every gcd unique, what cooldowns there are short, like on one minute or less and you barely notice it for everything else you can do meanwhile. Spending time with it, talking to others about aquiring these spells, just seeing every debuff imaginable on mobs and everything available is just fun. I can chose not to just spam the same spell because I have options. As mentioned above aswell, when everything goes well I find I can look over and see which of the many different spells I want to use.

If anything Blue Mage raises even more questions how current iteration of Scholar even came to be. Here's hoping 2020 becomes the year of revelations and they look to Blu for inspiration cause I haven't looked this much forward to fighting a regular mob or dungeon pack as so much since end of Heavensward.

I'm glad I spent time with Blu mage and still have whole Carnival and half the spells to go. Might not even need a quarter of them, but it's so much more fullfilling grouping up, talking strats with people and having so many ways to fight than spending another roulette with Broil III. Now all Blu is missing is the pet hotbar and a Cleric stance.

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Originally Posted by Sloprano

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Heh, no worries and glad it's working out so far for you.

But I think this is also the beauty of it. Much of this stuff works a lot on trash pulls and normal mobs, but big bads and bosses have a resistance to much of it as to not screw with the scripted mechanics of fights (and stuff that does, wouldn't be missed if taken out). That said, I think if added to other jobs there'd be argument for including them as part of scripted mechanics of fights, taking an existing fight for comparison, Eden Resurrection Savage, the two adds have to be stunned.

What if there were more fights with this kind of thing and a plethora of CC effects that are useful. More of them existed in the game in the earlier days, but seem to have been treated as bloat. Whereas my argument would have been "make them more useful". Especially as it'd be appropriate for a Final Fantasy game and other similar styled MMO's have pulled it off like SW:TOR, the Dirty Fighting Gunslinger build, for example, was a fun one to play.

I'm actually hoping that Blue Mage has been used as an experiment on SE's part to see how well some of this stuff actually works without worrying about balance. And if not, that there's good lessons learned from it regardless. Unfortunately, Blue Mage is also getting its share of complaints, so I don't hope that reflect bad on the parts that have been enjoyable.

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Originally Posted by Sloprano

I'm glad I spent time with Blu mage and still have whole Carnival and half the spells to go. Might not even need a quarter of them, but it's so much more fullfilling grouping up, talking strats with people and having so many ways to fight than spending another roulette with Broil III. Now all Blu is missing is the pet hotbar and a Cleric stance.

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Heh, if you really want a challenge, try optimizing Moon Flute as a Healer (or even Tank) BLU. It'll feel like Cleric Stance, but even more punishing for screwing up, considering you can't do anything for 15 seconds afterwards. :P

On a serious note, I implore anyone who isn't feeling all that great towards the current healers to actually give Healer BLU a try. It's quite the refreshing change of pace.

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Originally Posted by Saefinn

*good stuff about jobs.*

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Indeed, Carnival is already testament to that SE can make fights that can work with status effects and are more than training dummies on wheels. Playing Blu more both solo and in groups I descend into further madness trying to see what thought process they were going through when they decided on 5.0 SCH. Because what is still the reason for losing skills when syncing down? Damage? Here we have four blu mages stunning, paralyzing, blinding, dotting, petrifying, silencing, knocking back, knocking forward, knocking 50% health off in one spell, but other jobs aren't allowed the same pleasure for reasons unknown. Not that it matters much on SCH, there's still only Ruin/Bio be it Satasha or Hadex.

Yes! In SW:TOR what enjoyed more than the Imperial Agent storyline was playing as IA Operativ as medic. You actually had a wide variety of skills both for damaging, healing but also support: Stuns, heals, dots, hots and even stealth. It's a really good example because it feels like something on it's own and you identified clearly the skills you'd use to keep a party alive when it came to it, you know like 3.0 Scholar, not the 5.0 Healer. And blu is that again:
* Lots of skills with unique effects, be it damage, status effects or element.
* No flashing combos just skills with effects that compliment each other.
* Everything a gcd and except some cooldowns, always available even in lower levels.

There is the chance that Eureka and BLU is SE's stepping stones to make combat jobs fun everywhere, from level 1. Exploiting a mobs vulnerability to a status effect or element feels so much more fullfilling trying to mash some spells in lit up order. Minus the elments, everything else was how I was introduced to the game via Arcanist and set the tone for how fun it could be. I also like to think that this means we could go back to having more skills than there is room for, and just swap around like with the Blu Spellbook and make dungeons more than two gates and one boss rigmarole. Early ARR was laden with dungeons with interesting bosses and Im seeing that same glint in the Carnival, just imagining what a Deep Dungeon with this kind of imagniation could produce when not tied to making dungeons a fiften minute button spam but instead stop and look for a moment because the mob you usually Interrupt now is immune to it.

Which is why I don't mind bosses having some immunities: We can roll over and have fun playing with regular mobs, but then bosses come along and tell you to roll up your sleeves or you're not getting past. You know, like video game bosses being the challenge for the cumulative exam for everything you've done up to that point.

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Originally Posted by Arcari

Heh, if you really want a challenge, try optimizing Moon Flute as a Healer (or even Tank) BLU. It'll feel like Cleric Stance, but even more punishing for screwing up, considering you can't do anything for 15 seconds afterwards. :P

On a serious note, I implore anyone who isn't feeling all that great towards the current healers to actually give Healer BLU a try. It's quite the refreshing change of pace.

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Thanks, have tried it and have led to more memorable moments in Carnival and dungeons running around for fifteen seconds after the plan backfired than the thirty-seventh time I ran Amaurot and managed to hit one extra Art of War on the third pack. I find it more akin to the old Berserk and now I miss that too: Spells with clear advantages with also massive downsides that always makes you do moment-to-moment decisions if it's worth it or you got a plan that might just work. Like tank's stances and Cleric Stance as you said.

Aye I think they both show potential for what can be. Annoyingly, I don't think Eureka or Blue Mage have been given the justice those ideas need. They claim they learned lessons from Eureka and the latter half of Eureka was much better than the former from what I understand (I didn't get that far, as I decided it wasn't worth the grind of the first 2 areas). So I hope they take a philosophy of improving good ideas that were poorly done rather than discarding them. I know some are like "please don't add more Eureka content" but there were good ideas in there and makes sense to improve on them.

But one thing BLU has had me thinking about is, how many of my healing skills are bloat? I've not had much chance to experiment, but I'm looking to see if I can come up with a SCH set up that has said bloat removed from my crossbars and see if it's a viable way to get enjoyment from the job outside of Savage (as I figure self-nerfing in Savage might be a point of controversy).

However, if you take something like Indomitability, it's a really useful skill that makes getting people back to health really easy and you barely have to think about it. Making the one simple change of removing it, I'd have to make use of other stuff in my toolkit that's less effective. Fey Blessing does the same basic thing as an example but has a longer cool down and is less powerful, so I might plan those more than I might Indom. Then I might make more use of Emergency Tactics + Succor. It may free up more Aetherflow to spend on Energy Drain to make DPS marginally less boring.

Though this is hypothetical as I've not really played with it yet.

I really like BLU healing as well, I try to do that every time I play... My only real wishes for that aspect of the job:
- An insta cast or OGCD heal. BLU got no emergency button to save the (very fragile) blu tanks if you used your swiftcast;
- Rez with 3 min cooldown seems a biiiit too much. Maybe reduce that to a 60s or remove it altogether?

OP you also forgot Cactguard. While it's something that should be cast by the offtank, in 4-mans is a nice little mitigation tool for the healers.

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Originally Posted by Raikai

I really like BLU healing as well, I try to do that every time I play... My only real wishes for that aspect of the job:
- An insta cast or OGCD heal. BLU got no emergency button to save the (very fragile) blu tanks if you used your swiftcast;
- Rez with 3 min cooldown seems a biiiit too much. Maybe reduce that to a 60s or remove it altogether?

OP you also forgot Cactguard. While it's something that should be cast by the offtank, in 4-mans is a nice little mitigation tool for the healers.

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5 min cooldown for BLU raise actually.

Angel Whisper is balanced around the assumption that all 4 and/or 8 BLUs have it, so if it worked like a normal Raise... it'd be just a tad ridiculous. :P

That being said, I wouldn't be opposed to having the Healer spec have a bonus of reducing its cooldown to like a min or so.

(Of course I'm also of the mind that caster Raises are too much of a crutch in general and that RDM/SMN should have then removed or given the BLU treatment but that's another discussion altogether lol)