Give your opinion on healer design!

Just a few questions regarding healers and your personal enjoyment of their gameplay.

-Are you happy with the current design of the three healers? Which one is your favourite?

-What keeps you engaged when playing a healer?

-Regarding healer identity, what gimmick or gameplay style would you give each of the healers? Both in terms of how the healing itself would work and what to do during healing downtime.

-Are you expecting a new healer job to be added in the next Expansion? If so, what job would you like to see and what type of gameplay would you like the new job to have?

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

-Are you happy with the current design of the three healers? Which one is your favourite?

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No. AST because it gives me more to do, even if it is mostly busywork.

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-What keeps you engaged when playing a healer?

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Trying to make up for other people's inadequacies when I'm in DF.
Seeing how close I can stand to untelegraphed aoes without getting clipped by them when playing with competent players

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-Regarding healer identity, what gimmick or gameplay style would you give each of the healers? Both in terms of how the healing itself would work and what to do during healing downtime.

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Make healing and damage components of the toolkit related to one another. Right now damage abilities feel like an afterthought that was tacked on to the healers' kits. Having damage empower or unlock healing and vice versa would unify the healers' kits' and would make the jobs more mechanically interesting.

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-Are you expecting a new healer job to be added in the next Expansion? If so, what job would you like to see and what type of gameplay would you like the new job to have?

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I suspect they will release a new healer next expansion because it has been so long since they last created one. It'll be full of half-baked ideas and hardly functional on release. The other three healers will be neglected as a result and remain in their uninspired state.

What I'd like (but will never happen) is for SE to hire some skilled healers to redesign the jobs for them. There are a lot of excellent players who understand the problems with healers and would love to fix them.

- Are you happy with the current design of the three healers? Which one is your favourite?
No, I'm not, definitly not. But I still prefer Astrologian because it's a more busy job with its card and ton of short oGCD.

-What keeps you engaged when playing a healer?
That's the role i've been playing since I started the game, and what I know how to do the best.
That's hard to say. I don't even know myself actually. I think playing with friends, specially with a co-healer make it less frustrating.

-Regarding healer identity, what gimmick or gameplay style would you give each of the healers? Both in terms of how the healing itself would work and what to do during healing downtime.
Time mage utility + old card system was fine on AST. Scholar DoT and Fairy oriented was fine. I don't have an opinion for WHM, even though having strong direct heal and hit looks to fit him the most.
But currently, just bring back some dots honestly. Encounters didn't change that much but I was less bored with maintaining DoTs than spamming a one dps button.

- -Are you expecting a new healer job to be added in the next Expansion? If so, what job would you like to see and what type of gameplay would you like the new job to have?
They'd better add one. I was expecting one this expac already.
As for what kind of gameplay, idk. Maybe a melee healer with other mechanic than what we have now ? Heal bomb ? Debuffing target ? Idk.

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

Just a few questions regarding healers and your personal enjoyment of their gameplay.

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-Are you happy with the current design of the three healers? Which one is your favourite?

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No. From a design perspective AST. I don't play it, as I personally don't like its aesthetic. I prefer SCH's theme.

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-What keeps you engaged when playing a healer?

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The prospects of finishing this Savage tier to get back to healing TEA.

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-Regarding healer identity, what gimmick or gameplay style would you give each of the healers? Both in terms of how the healing itself would work and what to do during healing downtime.

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SCH: Debuffs, Debuff manipulation, Aetherflow, Fairy
AST: Buffs, Buff manipulation, Diurnal/Nocturnal flexibility, Quirky OGCD heals
WHM: Raw power, efficient GCD heals, proc-based gameplay

Like in this rework I keep throwing around.

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-Are you expecting a new healer job to be added in the next Expansion? If so, what job would you like to see and what type of gameplay would you like the new job to have?

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Either:
1. SE finally listens to healer feedback and we get both a new job and good gameplay.
2. SE makes a new healing job just as bland as the ones we have right now.
3. SE somehow knows there's negative feedback, but still has no clue and we get a continuation of SB and ShB, so even more useless healing spells and no more DoT.

I'm expecting #2.

1) I am not happy with the design of any of the 3 healers, mostly because SCH and WHM bore me to tears outside of full-pulls and Savage, and AST's 'fun' comes from learning everyone else's rotation and carding the right person just before their burst phase (a hard thing to track without 3rd party tools and minimal buff-bar telegraphing).
I'd say AST is my favourite, if only because it has a higher opportunity for optimisation over 'stand still and broil/glare as much as possible'

2) Semi-unpredictable damage spikes in dungeons and planning out cooldowns in Savage. There's nothing else to be engaging.

3) Whew boy. This is a writeup.
First of all, I'd have all healers share similar opportunity costs for accessing their healing - either all have to give up damage to heal or none have to (I'm a fan of the latter personally). Healing spells would cost a lot of MP, but damage spells would either be free or cost little in comparison. MP regen would be done via a GCD skill - so overhealing would be punished by a lost damage GCD.
In addition, all healers' access to shields will be the same, and similar to Tanks (a single 90s cooldown each).

3) Cont.
WHM would heal with GCDs, all of them contributing to a damage return ala Misery. Most of the 'oGCD' (now GCD oGCDs) would also carry a +healing action buff, so that WHM supports their cohealer.
For damage, WHM would stay mostly unchanged, except adding in a skill akin to HW enochian (with charges, so you can save it for stuff) where WHM would gain access to stronger versions of its damaging spells for a time - similar to how Cleric Stance required you to preplan so that you could heal when necessary (except the cost here would be the buff on a damage spell rather than massively gimped stats)

SCH I'd have heal entirely through the fairy (Aetherflow reworked into entirely mitigation skills - so they support the Tanks), with the concurrent skill usage from ARR, HW, and StB returning. Eos/Selene would be split into 2 again, with an oGCD to swap them. Selene's heals would apply a status that increases Eos' healing done. (So efficient healing would be selene beforehand and Eos after)
For damage, SCH would have a suite of 4 DoTs, and have to cycle through Aetherflow skills to keep a crit buff up on themselves.

AST I have no idea. Really, they've been pulled in so many different directions that I have no clue. They'd use their infinite weaves for healing as well - all skills oGCDs. For mechanics, I like the timebomb heal that Earthly Star has, and the heal low HP of dignity though. More of those please.
Damage - again - no clue. Cards are a nightmare to balance, maybe if they go for a Corsair Blackjack system and left buff mixing to a new class, that'd be more fun to play with? Either way they'd need to support the dps in damage dealing.

4) Hell yeah I want a 4th healer. It's the role that has gone the longest without any fresh blood.
We currently have 3 'magicsparkles' healers, 2 with that as an identity (SCH's tactician stuff is cool as heck tho). I'd like to see a gun/tech-based healer just for a different aesthetic.
They'd bring back a fair amount of old MCH's reload and gun mechanics (also Dismantle's animation please - it was so great) and have a mix of the 3 healers' playstyles - some GCD heals with damage returns, a short-term deployable, and oGCD skills

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-Are you happy with the current design of the three healers? Which one is your favourite?

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No, they could be better. All of them could be considered my favorite, but AST due to it only having a healer job mechanic that fills up my attention other than one button spam.

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-What keeps you engaged when playing a healer?

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It's the only role I enjoy playing because I love healing people and keeping them alive. But I do love the job fantasies of each. DPS is fun too, but something about healing keeps me coming back.

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-Regarding healer identity, what gimmick or gameplay style would you give each of the healers? Both in terms of how the healing itself would work and what to do during healing downtime.

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Like Jaelommiss has mentioned, their kits need to correlate to their dps somehow. They've taken baby steps with the Blood Lily for whm, I'd like them to continue in that direction. Their entire fight design is very dps centric, and every job mechanic (tanks included) has related to their dps, I'd like healers to have the same. Reward dps with healing and vice versa.

AST should have it's SB iteration come back in some form if not all. I'd like to see the old card system come back, the current one is boring and a chore. I understand that it's made to be consistent for raiding, but raiding is not the core audience in ffxiv. Return the card effects and Royal Road, keep seals and Divination, change Balance to Direct Hit, Spire to Determination (or increased healing actions), and have Sleeve Draw fill out seals instead of cards during opener (swaps to 3 card stacks if seals aren't filled out).

SCH, I only started raiding with recently but I'd like for the fairy skill ghosting to stop for one. Make Art of War look visually interesting. SCH's dps consistent of rotating dots with Bane for AoE situations. Their healing is fine personally and Recitation was a great compromise for spread critlo.

WHM lost its charm after dealing with its lackluster kit and lack of movement. I would either make a lily spender that is shield related or dps related so that lillies are sitting waiting to be used. Alternatively they can increase the potency on Misery so that is truly is dps neutral.

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-Are you expecting a new healer job to be added in the next Expansion? If so, what job would you like to see and what type of gameplay would you like the new job to have?

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I am expecting a new one. IMO, if they can balance out the tanks and add a new tank in the same expansion, there is no excuse for why healers can't be treated the same. They also added DNC is that destroyed BRD's buff gig. Worrying about balance =/= adding new job. I do suspect it will the last healer they'll add which is fine.

It will likely be a problematic release for whatever this new job will be. It'll likely be to powerful or too weak (check AST release). I hope I'm wrong and that SE figures it out nicely.

As for job predictions, I suspect the potentials would be Chemist, Time Mage (lol), and Geomancer.

Chemist I can see, as its the most requested and it'll be the only other FF job that has a healer lore attached to it. Mixing could be like a Mudra situation but can be weaved inbetween GCDs would be cool.

Time Mage ideas has been thrown around. Although I personally believe that AST is a time mage since space and time are closely tied. I believe that Time Mage could work to some degree. Perhaps like accelerated regens (shortening the duration but increasing the potency per tick) or extend heals (stretching the duration but decreasing the potency per tick).

Geomancer I would say fits caster dps more but I can see it having a different elements attached to different mechanics. Like Earth is a ground AoE heal, Air regen, Water direct heal or shield, Fire for dps spells. It would probably the easiest to design for since it has no clear direction on a healer basis.

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

-Are you happy with the current design of the three healers?

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No.

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Which one is your favourite?

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WHM seems the least butt to play...

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-What keeps you engaged when playing a healer?

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A healer in general, or a healer in XIV? Since in XIV, nothing currently keeps me engaged. Heck, now that I have WHM and AST to 80, I don't plan on playing healer again this expansion.

In general, I like to manage cast priorities and targets. Picking the right heal to keep the person alive without costing too much MP, picking the right target to heal based on how important they are to continued survival of the party (I.e. Self > Tank > DPS)

You know, all the things that XIV doesn't do. Since MP management is not a thing even without stacking Piety. Damage is predictable and easily healed with 0 cost oGCDs and avoidable damage is often instant-death so its only recourse is Swiftcast Raise not an actual heal...

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-Regarding healer identity, what gimmick or gameplay style would you give each of the healers? Both in terms of how the healing itself would work and what to do during healing downtime.

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WHM - Cure, Regen, Protect, Shell, Esuna, Haste, Berserk etc. Using the iconic White Magic spells to heal and buff allies. Downtime would consist of throwing out damage spells while ensuring people are buffed up with relevant buffs.

SCH - Focus on working with Lily and employing different strategies, with a stance shifting gameplay similar to that of Holy Priest in WoW, where they can empower either ST or AoE skills. Uses shields to prevent damage. Downtime will focus on debuffing enemies to make them weaker and/or more susceptible to damage.

AST - Uses delayed healing effects. Things like Horoscope and Excog where you apply it and its effect can come later. Allowing them to have "oGCD-like" effects when it comes to reacting to damage. Downtime is spent playing with cards, no RNG though, just simple reading the fortunes of different allies providing different cards to use. I.e. Tanks give Bole, Healers give Ewer, physical ranged gives Arrow, melee gives Spear, magical gives Balance... Uhhh... Self gives Spire? Allies get buffed when you read their fortunes, allowing the cards to be more utility focused. Lord/Lady will be new CD's from reading the boss's fortune that either buff up allies or debuff the boss for burst phases.

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-Are you expecting a new healer job to be added in the next Expansion?

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Nope. I expect another year of "We need to focus on balancing the healers"

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If so, what job would you like to see and what type of gameplay would you like the new job to have?

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Some kind of Atonement Priest style healer could be interesting. Healing that is fueled by dealing damage. Though, I don't have high hopes that such a healer could be designed for XIV, as either it'd do too much damage compared to other healers or could find itself lacking agency/identity if it's damage is too low or if it has to rely on direct healing skills.

I've got all three healers leveled, but I usually focus on using WHM because it's pretty... for lack of a better word, brain-dead. My usual main is DPS rather than healing. I love that the Lily system gives it both mobility and weaving tools, and a little kick of damage too.

I find AST to be a lot of aesthetics with poor execution. Frankly its problem is that it still has too many moving parts; you're expected to use Lightspeed for mobility, card weaving with heals, and the vital cost-reduction AST lacks compared to other healers (so you have to use it both on-cooldown and as needed?), on top of having to cycle Seals on cooldown for Divination, all while trying to DPS and heal at the same time. It's exhausting and terribly unrewarding, and I would say the job isn't quite done.
I'm also somewhat annoyed at the fact that SCH has two fairies that are functionally identical, why not just give them the Glamour ability SMN gets? (They should anyway, just because Carbuncles have traditionally been a healing summon and even Alphinaud's do, but what do I know!)
Hell if anything, SCH should be the one with "too many moving parts", since they're mathemagicians who constantly parse all variables. On the other hand though, they're the only healer where I have every button on 3 action bars filled up, so... they could use a bit of consolidation. Not necessarily trimming, just figuring out which skills are redundant, y'know? Like, turn Seraph into Consolation when the former's active, fuse Summon Eos and Summon Selene into a sort of instant toggle ability, that sort.

I know a lot of people were hoping to see Chemist or Time Mage make appearances as the next healer, and frankly I say... no thanks. The attempt to make Chemist back in HW is why we have AST now, and the failings of AST's previous card system would continue through a Mix system. As for Time Mage, aesthetically it's the same as AST, and the unique elements of it that the devs would be willing to give a healer could just as easily be given to AST. If you replace Repose with Stop, what's the difference really? They already have Gravity, Regen, two delayed AoE heals, damage buffs and their own personal Haste...
If I were to give them new spells, I'd lean into the Time element heavily. A cooldown that snapshots the target's current HP/buffs and resets to those values when the timer runs out, for instance, as their own version of Benefic or Excogitation; or a spell that staggers out incoming damage taken into a weak undispellable DoT to make it easier to manage and heal through, as a variant on mitigation. Hell, add Slow to Gravity like Urianger gets.
Some quality of life stuff too. More refinement on Redraw so you don't end up with the same seal twice in a row, and better options if you keep drawing a card for a role your group doesn't really have. Damage effects like "chance to grant a charge of Stella/Comet Ready" where the spell is instant, to make it easier to weave without Lightspeed. Minor MP Regen on drawing cards so they're not MP starved and they're encouraged to keep dealing. That sort of thing.

Scholar, I want the fairies to be unique from each other once again; having options makes sense for the so-called Tactician job. One idea I had was for Selene to be more offense-oriented than Eos, so you can either choose to use Eos and focus on dealing damage yourself, or swap to Selene to output more damage as you heal, or vice versa. I don't mean for Selene to get a basic attack like a SMN Egi -- just that her unique skills could apply effects like damage countering. Cast Fey Union on the tank to apply Spikes that deal extra damage to each enemy hitting him, or maybe on a DPS to increase their output for a duration.
I also want to see the Scholar get some of the "weirder" classic spells that border on Black Magic -- which fits with their roots. Again, lean into being a Tactician, including being underhanded to the enemy and exploiting their weaknesses. Drop a cooldown version of Reflect on the tank right before a Tankbuster. Add Blind to their AoE skill. Swap Repose out for Toad.
Lastly, I'm somewhat surprised Scholar really doesn't have much in the way of medical practice in its healing? Like, of any of the three healers we have, you'd expect the one called a Scholar to know things like basic anatomy and biology, especially when their DoT spell is literally called "Bio".

Basically, for damage: WHM as the direct dealer, SCH as the counter-attacker, AST as the team buffer.
For healing: WHM as the recovery specialist, SCH as the damage negator, AST as the damage staggerer.

What kind of new job? Easy, Battle Healer. A job whose gimmick is literally weaving healing into their damage output.
One suggestion I've made many times is Necromancer: Drain health from enemies with their main attack to build the unique resource that can be used for oGCD healing or shielding (A loop that we notably do not have! And could easily be balanced to match other healers' resources like Seals, Lilies and Aetherflow!), give allies Vampire or Reverse statuses, summon and sacrifice minions or even their own health in order to burst-heal allies. If SCH is the mixed Black/White Magic healer, Necromancer would go full Dark.
Mix that in with some thematic effects like curses to reduce enemy damage output or increase their vulnerability; inflict Pain (paralysis), Fear and Zombie on crowds; a Phylactery as their response to Benediction; a cooldown to pull allies into the spirit world to evade damage; maybe even some traits to aid the act of resurrection. (What? RDM can chain it instantly, WHM can cast it free, AST can reduce the cost AND cast time, it's not really out of place!)
A necromancer would absolutely make sense to get a resurrection-based Limit Break, and Urianger already proved there's nothing keeping a healer from getting Death as an execute skill...

Nope. I haven't been happy with healing for a long time. Used to main healing up through HW. It was fun. I'm not even sure I can put it into words why, it feels like ages ago. I remember how I felt at the time though and, at the time, I could never have imagined giving up healing. I've always gravitated towards supporting roles in games (and arguably in life lol) and healing always fit that nicely...

...until SB. Whatever they changed - might be one thing, maybe a hundred little things - just killed the role for me since then. To me, it just feels less thoughtful and less rewarding, but somehow more busywork. Like you went from being a sous chef in ARR-HW to standing at the end of the line, holding a napkin and wiping down plates making them look presentable in SB-ShB. You don't even get to actually put anything on the plate. Quite literally, your only job is to hold that napkin and keep wiping. It kinda killed my enjoyment of the game as a whole. I played religiously through most of ARR and all of HW, but then came SB and I didn't really have a job I loved playing anymore. I played and leveled everything, but nothing ever quite stuck with me anymore.

I'm sure someone will vehemently disagree with me and that's fine. I'm just saying what the role felt/feels like to me.

I find in general the "healing" mechanics for this game to be rather boring. Mostly because it comes down to finding ways to not heal without wiping the group. That means no matter what "new" job they add, I'll still be bored using mostly DPS abilities unless they overhaul healing design. I feel like an idiot when I use a GCD heal in this game. The one exception is perhaps necessary shielding which can be eventually dropped with help from mitigation skills or just gear level/HP increases.

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

Just a few questions regarding healers and your personal enjoyment of their gameplay.

-Are you happy with the current design of the three healers? Which one is your favourite?

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Yes, it could be better but I dont hate what they currently are. Scholar is my favorite aesthetically, but I also enjoy playing AST whenever I want extra to do. Scholar, ironically enough tends to be my go too when learning fights or going harder content.

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-What keeps you engaged when playing a healer?

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It depends, with scholar it\\'s the feeling of being a combat medic that always has a trick up its sleeve, while older expansions did have some boons in this regard, I personally dont find the current design so detrimental as to take away that fantasy.

With AST I love the feeling of building up to something big over time with setting up Divination, and I tend to prefer it over white mage for healing with regens. And its ability to single weave makes me feel nice and flexible to take advantage of. Especially with large pulls and Gravity.

WHM is my least played healer, tbh the only real excitement I get with it is when I get to blast a large mob with a Misery or two.

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-Regarding healer identity, what gimmick or gameplay style would you give each of the healers? Both in terms of how the healing itself would work and what to do during healing downtime.

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I think I\\'m on alot of people\\'s side in wanting there to be a synergy with the dps and healing toolkits. Another big thing, although this is for all jobs across the board, is that they really need to reevaluate the leveling progression of skills and not be afraid of giving classes weaker versions of mechanics they want to add later. For example WHM could get Divine Seal at level 40 to introduce them to popping cooldowns for buffing healing then at 80 it upgrades to Temperance. Or AST gets a "balanced sect" that introduces them to having a cooldown for both sects, then it upgrades to Nuetral Sect at 80.

With Scholar as much as I wouldnt mind having Miasma and Bane back. I\\'d be more interested in creating a system where your dps and healing bounce back and forth with building up resources. Essentially have your dps skills help build fae guage and have more of your heals spend it. And introduce a dps skill that serves to help shave off excess resources. However, it needs to have restrictions in place that clearly define it as a tool for shaving off excess fae guage to offset the increase gaining of it.

WHM my biggest complaint is mainly aesthetic. WHMs having earth and wind spells made them feel unique for the series. I\\'d rather Quake and Tornado then Glare and Dia. However. One concept I\\'ve seen thrown around I love the sound of is them getting a cooldown that causes them to "ascend" and heal off their dps for that time period. As far as mechanics go one idea I have is the idea of allowing your regens to heal rewards you with dps procs. Like upgrading fluid Aura into something useful.

AST I believe has a very solid design. The biggest thing I can think of is that they need to come up with a way to make the card system more friendly to controller players without completely automating it.

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-Are you expecting a new healer job to be added in the next Expansion? If so, what job would you like to see and what type of gameplay would you like the new job to have?

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Yes. Personally I want to see a gun slinging chemist healer or a melee "cleric" style healer who uses a basic melee combo to build a resource they spend their ogcd heals on, or to make their gcd skills instant cast. And have a stance system where while they\\'re rewarded with more efficiency by dpsing in melee. If a fight mechanic forces them away from the group they can build the resource at a slower pace with say a gcd nuke or gcd heals.

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

Just a few questions regarding healers and your personal enjoyment of their gameplay.

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-Are you happy with the current design of the three healers? Which one is your favourite?

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Not happy.
My favorite is AST due to its flexibility and party support.
SCH used to be my favorite but this patch make me hate it.

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-What keeps you engaged when playing a healer?

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I just like the feeling when you heal/save someone from their mistake.

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-Regarding healer identity, what gimmick or gameplay style would you give each of the healers? Both in terms of how the healing itself would work and what to do during healing downtime.

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WHM
- Keep it identity as GCD healer.
- Keep developing on lily. Maybe add a mitigation spell that consume 2 or more Lily.
- Add a new skill that letting us deal more damage/healing by increasing MP cost.
SCH
- Turn SCH into a debuffer. Decrease enemy damage, expose enemy weakness, and more dot/poison based damage.
- Give fairy identity. Maybe make Eos focus on direct healing and Selene focus on shielding.
- Make Seraph more impactful?
AST
- Keep its identity as flexible healer + party support buff.
- Rework card system, less target switching. Give it back the feeling/sensation of playing a card (redraw, spread, royal road, etc.).
- Give us back a time manipulation skill. Maybe change Horoscope into time manipulating skill (the skill animation already feels like it).

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- Are you expecting a new healer job to be added in the next Expansion? If so, what job would you like to see and what type of gameplay would you like the new job to have?

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Yes please. Its been so long since we have a new healer.
I think chemist is a good job to fill this position.

No, I'm very unhappy with current healer design.

I find SCH/WHM very boring with almost nothing to do either when healing or DPSing. With healing you press 1 button, watch health bars go up, and you're done. While this was also the case for Stormblood, there was at least enough to do on the DPS end, as well as fairy end, for SCH that I didn't mind this. With the gutting of SCH's dps identity and their fairy, everything I enjoyed about the class was basically thrown away. For AST, I don't mind every card being a DPS card, I was never a fan of the RNG, but I still think it's bad design because of the groups of people that loved the class for the RNG. The current system I still find worse though because of the excessive amounts of target swaps, especially in the opener.

The biggest things I want back for SCH are 1. I want more DPS buttons, and I'd also like the DPS to feel much more important. Healers spend the vast majority of their time DPSing, if you're doing it right anyway, and, tbh, I love that design. In my head, you're a combat medic, a solider with every other soldier, you should do damage, but I don't like that DPS is that thing you do because you have nothing else to do, I want it to feel like I have to do it to get the most out of my kit. 2. I want both of my fairies back and I want them to actually feel impactful. Fairy was nerfed so heavily on top of having to weave in the abilities, it just feel like a glorified oGCD that doesn't work half the time. I loved being able to use the fairy while casting, it went into the idea that you are a combat medic, use your tool wisely and you can deal more damage without stopping. Now my tool is so gimped I have to stop to use it, and even then, it doesn't work half the damn time because of the stupid delay they decided to add ON TOP OF making it an oGCD. Either make the thing an instant oGCD like every single other oGCD in the game, or put it back on the pet hotbar.

Do I expect another healer next expac? I say it can go 50/50, honestly. With how poorly they handled healers this expac, I don't want another one next expac. I'd rather have 3 poorly designed classes over 4 poorly designed classes.

As for why do I still play it? outside of savage in my static, I really don't. Right now the plan is to clear TEA and then cancel my sub. Maybe find an MMO that has what I'm looking for.

I have always healed in MMOs and I never thought one day, I would quit.

-Are you happy with the current design of the three healers? Which one is your favourite?
I dislike all of them but the one I can say is my "favorite" is AST because it's the only healer I don't fall asleep playing on. I was SCH main until SB came.

-What keeps you engaged when playing a healer?
Nothing hence why I am now playing Dancer.

-Regarding healer identity, what gimmick or gameplay style would you give each of the healers? Both in terms of how the healing itself would work and what to do during healing downtime.
I am horrible at giving ideas and I feel like I am the worst person to answer this question but I just want my SCH to be back to the HW days, god I miss those days.

- Are you expecting a new healer job to be added in the next Expansion? If so, what job would you like to see and what type of gameplay would you like the new job to have?
Yes, I was actually expecting one this expansion, I hope we get either Chemist or a Battle Healer.

-Are you happy with the current design of the three healers? Which one is your favourite?

I do not feel like they did a good job in this expansion. They actually designed classes that could flow really well in a different encounter design than we have now, where healing is more intense and less predictable. If we were forced into situations where GCD healing was required to cover the predictable damage and then the large amount of ogcds had to be managed around and used for less predictable things it would feel much more engaging, but the ogcds we have now are what cover the vast majority of healing leaving huge amounts of downtime with very little diversity in the downtime.

I also feel is that FFXIV is also a game with a lot of single player elements and things you'll go do alone, and the narrative is that you're supposed to be the warrior of light, a master of martial disciplines except that if you play as a healer you're really just kinda a one trick pony.. If you do the story, story duties, go and grind fates, or explore around in the world on a DPS or tank it feels great. You have attacks, counters, movement skills and things that make it fun whether it's actually very hard or not. But as a healer you gather up a bunch of them and spam your one aoe over and over, or feel like the encounter you're doing is a joke because the scripted single player duty isn't dangerous to you, all you can do is spam your single target attack on this boss until it slowly dies. It ruins the story experience, and makes playing a healer very dull in so many situations.

This carries through to older group content too, which is still so much of the game! Things get much easier as the item level of players gets above the content but on healers it has terrible consequences. Like if I get Void Ark on DPS I don't really mind so much. Everything is a moving target dummy and that's 20 minutes of practice ^^

On a healer it's literally so dull that withdrawing and going to work on a house for 30 minutes is a much more enjoyable experience. Casting a regen on your main tank overpowers the final boss tankbusters.. This situation applies to huge, huge amounts of older content. When you can solve the healing problem for an encounter by just casting Medica II once in a while, it's not fun.

I don't feel like it's fair at all that 2 of the 3 role types have enough stuff they can use to feel engaged in what they're doing whether it's Savage or just zipping from Fate monster to Fate monster taking them down with attack combos and finishers while the third role type only engages you in a select number of current, end game fights.

-What keeps you engaged when playing a healer?

When both the fight is dangerous enough either you or you and your co-healer have to actively cycle through your kit and use varied skills and there's an incentive to start mapping and using that kit properly for the encounter.

-Regarding healer identity

CLASS GIMMICKS SHOULD FEEL GOOD.

Samurai's Gauge feels good. Building up into Midare Setsugekka and being rewarded with a huge number feels great..

Red Mage? It changes your gameplay for a few seconds with another huge number!

Scholar.. The fairy isn't fun now. Making it so that she casts while moving just removes an incentive to place her with caution and makes it less interactive, and the sluggish response speed generates frustration more than elation. This just feels bad.

Astrologian? The cards aren't really fun now. There's no high feeling of reward when you get a good combination, it's super frustrating when you're soloing and realize that you're getting a lot of half power cards because you have a class identity based around remaining competitive to White Mage when you're raiding now. You build up into Divination but it just feels like "okay I guess that will show up on someone's log report later at least"

I don't really have any suggestions for new spells or anything, but I know that Scholar's fairy used to be more fun, cards used to be more fun.. White Mage moved forward with a much better gauge system that you can take advantage of in any situation, which is nice. They need to go back to making class mechanics feel more interesting and rewarding to use properly.

-Are you expecting a new healer job to be added in the next Expansion? If so, what job would you like to see and what type of gameplay would you like the new job to have?

I really do not know, but I hope that they can improve the role as a whole.

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

Just a few questions regarding healers and your personal enjoyment of their gameplay.

-Are you happy with the current design of the three healers? Which one is your favourite?

-What keeps you engaged when playing a healer?

-Regarding healer identity, what gimmick or gameplay style would you give each of the healers? Both in terms of how the healing itself would work and what to do during healing downtime.

-Are you expecting a new healer job to be added in the next Expansion? If so, what job would you like to see and what type of gameplay would you like the new job to have?

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1) Not at all, AST is just painful and tiring to play for extended periods and WHM is just not fun to play in general (EXAMPLE: PLD in 2.0). And, SCH has never really kept my interest outside of the tonberry storyline, but that was always OK since it was designed to appeal towards a different niche

2) Largely, how the jobs play, which is way lower in qualtiy than StB, the toolkit, and helping. They literally could replace every HLR with automated healers and improve the experience overall atm

3) WHM - a repetitive robotic assembly line machine playing cow-clicker
AST - carpal tunnel with an adaptive pace of casting

4) Um, they need to/have to, but the existing healers are in need of complete remakes at this point which may not make it until after the main story of the final expansion

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

-Are you happy with the current design of the three healers? Which one is your favourite?

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No. AST, by a slim margin, since it gives me more to do.

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

-What keeps you engaged when playing a healer?

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1. Necessary events that are difficult to achieve and are usually recoverable but highly punishing if failed. A must be at B level by C time, or else D.
2. Necessary gambles to meet the necessary events. This can be as simple as applying a HoT at a time when every spam heal seems necessary on the hopes that the tank won't be finished off before your oGCD comes up again in the next GCD, allowing you to survive otherwise overwhelming damage several GCDs later, or can be a result of internal mechanics or interactions with your tank.
3. Necessary shifts in output and/or perspective. These are the times where more effective healing/survival can be provided by CCing or dealing damage. These should be integral and frequent enough, but far from the majority of GCDs in content tuned to require a full-fledged healer.
   
   Sadly, much of what I want for healers would require stricter scaling and a greater variety of play available to all roles, such that they can better compensate for lower healing output through CC, sabotage, "turtling", hit-and-run tactics, or just about anything else you could think of.
   The classic 'trinity' experience will remain simplest and often the most efficient, but not greatly superior so long as the party is able to make full use of their kits and change their style of play around reduced healing output available to their party. A strong healer allows for their tank to pull higher numbers and their DPS to play in a more straightforward and more purely damage-centric manner, while a strong tank and/or DPS who are highly flexible and aware can allow for a weaker healer, etc.

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

-Regarding healer identity, what gimmick or gameplay style would you give each of the healers? Both in terms of how the healing itself would work and what to do during healing downtime.

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WHM: If we get an eventual Geomancer, I want to see split jobs have split experience as well and for the Geomancer to require a base in Conjurer, even if it may retroactively replace almost everything about it. If not, I want WHM to play more to its CNJ roots, making use of Wind, Earth, and Water magics for both offense and support. Its support outputs should be the least direct in terms of increasing damage numbers by some amount (and arguably the most varied in terms of actual uses of its toolkit) but the most direct in terms of smaller functions such as moving allies or enemies. WHM has a mode called Soulfont which converts formerly elemental spells and effects into raw white magic with far more power but slightly less varied effect. This mode makes it a true powerhouse, but should be set up and around. Time one can spend in that mode gradually increases until becoming relatively unlimited, though with further synergy to and from the surrounding elemental kit, in Shadowbringers, at which time one spends the majority of time in that mode and many former gambles and complex macrorotational concerns become more direct utility, retaining their full complexity only in the context of optimizing output.

SCH: I want SCH's AST roots to be more interesting than "I DoT things, and my glowing rodent acts like a further DoT", but I also want SCH to pursue its own direction much further. I'd like to find a core mechanic, such as the idea of storing and imbuing aether, from which to draw many more. I also think the fairy should be a powerful tool -- an adviser and partner capable of highly useful combo play --, but still an optional one, consuming mana upon creation, faintly over time, and per spell in a way that neither feels "taxing" nor "free". It probably shouldn't be the only mana construct SCH can make, either. I'd like to build further on traditional skills and concepts like Libra and light/dark magics, perhaps through Stratagems (party-affecting modes that act like a far stronger and more mechanically significant version of Bard songs and more flexible timing) or the like.

AST: I'd replace AST's Nocturnal and Diurnal sects with a mechanic behind each that can source their gameplay (among far more in keeping with the idea of hastened and regenerative/reiterative effects or slowed but banked--and thereby fortified--effects) while leaning seriously into Time-Space magics. Would probably include Theoretical Mass as a mechanic, and maybe even build further upon that with Slingshot. I want them to be badass foretelling users of Time-Space and Abstract magics.

Ultimately, though, working on concepts for any three of the healers really makes clear just how bare-bone the undermechanics of this game are. We can't bank buffs onto players that can be consumed as they're used, allowing for more consistent usefulness on short but potentially very impactful buffs. There's no place for informational buffs and systems as could be provided by Libra; the most we could do is provide a generic Crit buff and pretend it came from being more informed about certain things. There's no point in altering an enemy's mass, since we can neither launch it skyward nor adjust the durations of status effects against the target when we stun or topple it. Mob movement in general is finicky. Almost any really cool but intuitive effect that could be written in all of a term and a number ("Additional Effect: Grants Wind at 30% of potency") if there were a greater breadth of underlying systems is instead forced to come as overly complicated, while a tremendous amount of enjoyable play that Supports could otherwise allow for just aren't possible.

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

-Are you expecting a new healer job to be added in the next Expansion? If so, what job would you like to see and what type of gameplay would you like the new job to have?

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Honestly, I can't get myself to care until there's more interesting stuff going on among our existing healers. So... probably and no idea, respectively.

Am I happy with the current state of healers? Absolutely not. They're the most bland and boring they've ever been.
But SE will probably release a 4th healer anyway despite the healers all playing and feeling like crap. Just because it's been too long since the last one.

I wish so bad that they'd just go all in and reassess the way fights are healed really, because we all have these amazing healing kits, but since dmg is so scripted and spaced out, you never focus on it. At this point it's not only just the jobs that needs looking at. But I know SE won't go that far. New healer will be something with the base WHM spells and then some gimmick.

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-Are you happy with the current design of the three healers? Which one is your favourite?

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Nope. Favourite would be Ast

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-What keeps you engaged when playing a healer?

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Right now, the most engaging thing about playing ast is trying to keep my ogcd healing as concise as possible in raid so I can sit there and mash my one dps button for 8 minutes

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-Regarding healer identity, what gimmick or gameplay style would you give each of the healers? Both in terms of how the healing itself would work and what to do during healing downtime.

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- WHM already has it's gimmick of big heals/big damage, should just expand more on the lily system

- SCH should have debuff mechanics again, and Selene shouldn't just be a "reskin".

- AST, Divination payoff doesn't feel worth it, dmg buff difference between no. of seals is so minimal, the amount of fishing required for a perfec div isn't justified. Ast also needs Noct specific changes, Diurnal is fine

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-Are you expecting a new healer job to be added in the next Expansion? If so, what job would you like to see and what type of gameplay would you like the new job to have?

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Whatever the job will be doesn't really matter, only it's appearance & aesthetic will be new. over the past 2 expansions, they've removed alot of the other 3 healers abilties (disable, lumineferous aether, time dilation, eye for an eye, Selene's buffs etc.) and I'm betting that whatever the new healer is, it'll just be loaded with our stolen abilities

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

-Are you happy with the current design of the three healers? Which one is your favourite?

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No currently the worst healers design I've experienced in an MMO. The content design does not take into account healer design and vice versa. Healer design is the more flexible of the two when in the 3rd(4th) expansion. Healer design has also run counter to their intended goal of healers heal more as people are Dpsing more than ever.

Aesthetically Ast, playability Whm, whm is the only one that got noticeable improvements despite also having stuff stripped from it AGAIN, Sch got straight worse, Ast moved from 1 set of issues to another (the current issues I find are worse due to the controller aspect alone say what you will about old card system it at least was way more controller friendly)

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

-What keeps you engaged when playing a healer?

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People being idiots standing in bad, dying, or anything fully unexpected happens to break up 1,2,2,2,2,2,2,2 etc

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

-Regarding healer identity, what gimmick or gameplay style would you give each of the healers? Both in terms of how the healing itself would work and what to do during healing downtime.

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Sch: debuff machine with more fairy interactions, weak gcds decent ogcds
Whm: straight forward powerhouse healer with some more Lily and party interaction
Ast:Buffer with all the ways to manipulate then back, that was the big crime of ShB to me the removal of Time Dialation, Royal Road and old Celestial Opposition.

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

-Are you expecting a new healer job to be added in the next Expansion? If so, what job would you like to see and what type of gameplay would you like the new job to have?

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Yes as been way too long since last healer.

I've been having thoughts on a Spiritualist as a healer with the Dead guiding and protecting the living while also soothing angry spirits that were hurt in life to move on.

My answers would be as follows. Bearing in mind, I've been a Scholar main most of my time playing, Astrologian is still new to me as I didn't play a lot of it prior to ShB and sometimes used WHM to mix things up, but not played it as heavily as SCH. So my views on AST/WHM might not be as fair, but put out how I see them regardless.

Are you happy with the current design of the three healers? Which one is your favourite?

I am not satisfied.

Prior to ShB Scholar was my favourite and had been since 2.0 but 2.0 and 3.0 are my favourite iterations of SCH. 4.0 was when it started to feel ‘meh’ but had enough to keep me occupied and not complain. 5.0 has made my favourite job in the game boring to play for the vast majority of content, 4.0 was the start of it. Naturally, I'm disgruntled by it.

Astrologian is now my favourite healer. This is because there’s more variety to do and now that I’ve stopped treating like a SCH/WHM hybrid and seeing how it’s supposed to work, it’s good for content that makes better use of what I’ve got. To me, it’s closer to where healers should be.

What keeps you engaged when playing a healer?

A mix of things. So I will list a few:

• Feeling you always have something to do. If things are going well, I need to have something other than healing to keep me busy. It shouldn’t feel like a 1 or 2 button spam, that gets monotonous.
• A healing kit & healing mechanics that has me thinking about what I am using and why.
• A healing kit that allows me to adapt to a situation, rather than spam the same thing over and over or for it be easily mitigated with 1 or 2 spells
• A healing kit that has weaknesses you must accommodate for (and have the ability to do so), but strengths in other areas. EG. Scholar is a great shield healer, whereas White Mage is great at topping up health, Scholar might struggle more to top people’s health up, but rocks mitigation. I’d rather something like Scholar’s mitigation tools be viewed as part of the healing experience and not just as a buffer for damage.

Regarding healer identity, what gimmick or gameplay style would you give each of the healers? Both in terms of how the healing itself would work and what to do during healing downtime.

Scholar

For me it has a layered identity. It’s a strategist, so it needs to feel adaptable to any situation, therefore it might potentially alter how it uses different spells. Its a “planned” healer, hence all of its mitigation tools it has had over time, which lends to its strategist nature too. The fact it has 2 spells that can modify the effects of another I think is a good “strategist” approach and is a nice throwback to their strategems in XI. I’d be game for more of this approach, it allows the existing toolkit to have it use better expanded. EG: Emergency Tactics make Biolysis deal all of its damage at once instead of as a DoT. Meaning you make use of Emergency Tactics when you don’t need it for Succor or Adlo.

And it is also a faerie healer, having faerie choice adds to a strategic approach and better micromanagement IMO should make you more efficient as a healer. Eos is great in situations you need more healing, whereas Selene to me should be where Scholar gets its utility. My view on this is instead of removing Selene would have been to give her more utility. In this approach I am in favour of the concept of “sacrificing healing for utility” or “sacrifice utility for healing”, this can also work in reference to other abilities and not just faeries (I put out a suggestion in a previous thread about how I’m make this philosophy work).

And finally, it is a DoT mage & is about sustained damage, it infects its foes and spreads the infection, it can also debuff (or used to) as part of the debilitating effects of the infection. I’ve felt this approach lends well to a Scholar that has less down time versus others (like it did in 2.0) and feel with it having more down time its DoT aspect became more OP (meaning maybe some of those Holy nerfs were unnecessary?), but it was a good weave between healing.

White Mage

For me is the “burst” healer, which requires Scholar and Astrologian to not only be less effective at pure healing, but for it to be a meaningful difference, as WHM can shine with topping up people’s health better. But it still needs some mitigation but that should be inferior to SCH or AST (as it is currently).

From a DPS aspect to me it’s still about bursting damage (and why I was less of a fan of the 1000 nerfs of holy). It is supposed to be the counter-part to Black Mage, like it was in the War of the Magi. So whilst there is the Astral and Umbral aspect split between them, Black Magic still has use of thunder, fire and ice magic, meaning White Mage should still have access to Stone, Wind and Water magic, but they’ve been replaced with holy magic as an upgrade in later levels, whereas I think holy magic should be an addition to the toolkit than replace it (I miss big rocks). But it should also mean its DPS rotation should feel big and powerful compared to SCH or AST (but they each have their own thing too to balance it out). Whilst I think it should favour burst DPS, I wouldn't see Aero abolished, because in a sense it's their equivalent to Thunder. Each healer would keep DoT's (and I see no harm in the return of an AoE Aero either). WHM and SCH I feel should have more variety in DPS overall.

Astrologian

To me it has always been the most technical and versatile of the healers. Not quite hit on the “strategist” of Scholar, but being adaptable in the sense of manipulating fate, the stars and time itself. So the stars, time and space all feel like the important thing here, so Astrology plays in with how cards work, Horoscope and Divination. Time plays into how Celestial Opposition used to work, Time Dilation, The Arrow (basically haste) and Earthly Star. In it being adaptable it can help substitute Scholar’s or White Mage’s niches but not to their level (because AST should keep its own thing rather than suffer an identity crisis). In a way it should satisfy both our desire for a time mage and for a geomancer (as it is an Astromancer, essentially).

Then from a DPS aspect, Astrologian feels like it should be the support role here. So it is fine to have a bare bones DPS rotation (whereas SCH and WHM should have a lot more to do) because in its DPS time it will be managing its system of cards. But for me the identity of the card system is that the constellations can determine different fates and when the fates aren’t playing to your favour then you manipulate them to work in your favour (which I think is missing). Each of the cards have their own lore tied to them, which I think exists as part of the identity here (and lost in the new system). The old card system I think could have been adjusted so that if you get a card you can’t use then you have a means of making a use of it when Royal Road is not an option and you don’t want to hold it (I suggested using the current Minor Arcana system but adjusted for the idea that you turn the card into a weaker version of ‘Balance’ as your ‘fail’ scenario).


Summary

I feel each still to a degree respect each of their identities, but IMO are not where they should be in making them significant, Scholar’s strategist aspect cannot work if it’s too good at healing and can just oGCD stuff back to health. White Mage’s burst aspect means nothing if the other healers are easily getting people’s health up and not being smarter/working for it.
I guess you could tl;dr to: Scholar should be the smart healer, White Mage should be the powerful healer and Astrologian should be the manipulative healer.


Are you expecting a new healer job to be added in the next Expansion? If so, what job would you like to see and what type of gameplay would you like the new job to have?

I am expecting one because I think adding one could be an opportunity to rebalance how healers play. But my cynicism says if they add one then we just get a 4th healer with more problems.
One of the big divides over the current healer situation is over how complicated/involved healer DPS should be. SE’s answer to this problem was to still have DPS be integral and important yet simplify it so it’s a lot easier for people. In my opinion the beautiful thing about a system that offers multiple jobs per role is that those who found current healers to be inaccessible for whatever reason could have had a new healer that ticks more of those boxes. And this game has loosely held that principle, the strong example I felt was in HW where DRK was technical & could be challenging to play as a result (when not played well, they were flimsy), WAR was in the middle and PLD beefy and played like a traditional tank (and made it nice an entry level for people new to tanking).
If they do this with a new healer, then my expectation would be to rework the existing healers to return some of the aspects they’ve lost.
But for a new job, I think I’d like to see a Garlean variation of the Chemist job.

But I'd put in support for things like:
- Devout
- Time Mage (maybe, but I'd still prefer more time stuff put back into Astro)
- Geomancer (but IMO I'd rather see it as a support DPS mage)
- A Shamanistic healer to go with the Azim Steppe or another tribal culture in the game
- Any kind of technological healer (my support was for Garlean version of Chemist, but I'd back other techie healers too).

[edit]

In addendum to this, I feel one of the problems facing the above is how all of these jobs need to be balanced for Savage and Ultimate, meaning the requirements are greater and may mean they are pushed better in those circumstances to shine in what they are good at. I feel it has a detrimental effect to healing all other content. As one who doesn't touche savage that much and has never tried ultimate, this is detrimental to the overall experience of being a healer. And if I did more Savage or try Ultimate, I'd still want to enjoy healing outside of those scenarios because they're only a small part of the game. So this I expect is all a part of the challenge here, which I have thought of ideas for in other threads.

-Are you happy with current design? Which is your favourite?
No, and have stopped healing as a result outside of rdm. Least shit is whm and that's because I like the pretty wings and blood lily sacrifices
Previously AST was my favourite though I did find whm in 2.0 to be decent enough. Sch had good downtime but I never really felt comfortable with it though that might be just not being able to grasp the dot focused gameplay and shields.

-what keeps you engaged as a healer

• Mechanics and outgoing damage that require clever use of my healing tools (shinryu heads for example, or cloud of dark when she was new, thunder cid pre nerf) not repetitiveness or spam
• Varied and unique healing tools that give each healer their own flavour of healing and synergise appropriately to prevent clunkiness or redundencies with other healers
• Individual indentities in downtime with enough buttons fleshed out for meaningful solo play and downtime.
• Proper identity between each healer so they feel different when I swap to one from the other

-Regarding healer identity, what gameplay style would you give each healer both in terms of how healing itself and downtime?

In general, something I have always felt is that the game needs both higher incoming damage and difficulty in most content to make the use of healers good healing kit and downtime in equal measure. fundamentally, dungeon/alliance and solo gameplay need to be as important as the highest tiers of savage and ultimate as that is where the majority of the playerbase spends its time. The focus on balance to the exclusion of all else and the kits seemingly designed by people being healed rather than healers themselves needs to be scrapped asap
Furthermore, any buffs must be noticeable without a parser. It needs to FEEL like its doing something. Its a key component of any passive effect.

Another thing I believe is that the basic damage button should not consume any mp in any job, to provide fairness given physical jobs dont have any restrictions after death.

White Mage
The identity of the white mage in ff14 is 3 things. Nature elements (wind, water, earth), high potencies with gcd and regens. Currently though, it feels not so much potencies are high (though whm should be), but incoming damage is appallingly low or infrequent enough that a regen on the tank and medica 2 is enough to top everybody off, medica 1 isnt even on some whm hotbars because medica 2 is superior in almost all instances.
As whm has practically infinite mp (as well in direct contradiction to the lore to boot), their recovery ability needs a serious nerf I believe, however not to complete removal like poor AST currently is.

White mage as a whole I believe should continue to follow the lily system it has in place. Their healing kit I think could scrap cure 1 and tweak medica 1 and 2. Furthermore plenary indulgence I think could be tweaked to resetting and buffing any regens on allies. Its healing kit I also believe should receive some more of the classic white mage buffs from final fantasy such as bravery, protect/shell etc to couple with this- I'd suggest whm could go either big potencies and party buffs OR self buffing for bigger numbers.

Its downtime kit I believe needs to go back to being about earth wind and yes actually include water. White mage I'm thinking should follow what Yshtola does and rotate through the elements in order to access a holy magic attack (Holy pre nerfs, Glare, Dia, afflatus X) and either use or gain a lily as a result. The whm at this point should be able to cast Flood, Quake and Tornado, perhaps as a result of a buff gained through the blood lily. Aero 3 and Water should be added at least.

I'm making a whm rework idea so ideas are abound as it stands.

Astrologian
Astrologian identity is made up of Time magic, Buffing, celestial/spacial themes and flexibility. It is faster than the others, but not as strong yet it gains more weaving. It should be a high skill job given its potential. Its healing aspect in lore is all about reversing major damage and speeding up the natural healing of the body for minor injuries. Its constellations tie into changing fate to give the most appropriate action.

With this in mind, the Astrologian's healing kit needs to be weakest of the 3 healers but the most adaptable and the fastest. That said, the sects must be equal and not able to swap mid battle- a reader of fate should be able to forsee which one to prepare in advance, Nocturnal sect must be able to stack with sch shields and its aspected benefic and aspected helios need to be 1. buffed back to their previous levels and 2. stack appropriately and 3. equal cost to mp
Astrologian's horoscope and earthly star fit quite well in this instance. However Horoscope needs changing to auto detonate or only detonate manually and never time out. Collective Unconciousness and Celestial opposition need changing back to their previous incarnations. I would also suggest readding the healing potency boost back to the sects and changing minor arcana to OGCD shield/regen with a small cure.

Downtime for Astrologian is key- they will be spending a lot of it buffing and manipulating status effects and as such their healing will be quite fast and their dps buttons low number. However the downtime needs to be of use and interest in solo and dungeon gameplay otherwise AST's are gonna be bored senseless.
To begin with, time magic needs to be returned and expanded upon- time dilation, some sort of cool down reduction and the like. Disable should be reintroduced and as a niche it could stun, silence and bind as an ogcd and Celestial Opposition should go back to stun and boosting durations of status effects.CC can be a good part of all healer gameplay and Ast's is in the status effects and if that means pausing them in time so be it.
Astrologian's cards need to be returned to stormblood but spire and balance need to be changed to something less fishing based if that was such a problem or redraw could be scrapped to prevent it somewhat, lore wont be affected as spread is still around. Undraw can be scrapped since nobody has ever used it (most aren't even aware it exists) and play MUST be scrapped. Cards not running out is a good thing they introduced. Royal road I would suggest changing to making the cards automatically affect all party members as the base option- further sacrificing cards to gain additional effects.

In terms of Ast's damaging abilities there are a total of 6 in all its history. Malefic, Combust, Combust 2 when it was separate, Gravity, Stella and Lord of Crowns. Given Ast's solo and dungeon gameplay wont have as many cards thrown about, the downtime needs to be filled with a simple but fun system of damage. I think stella could do a similar thing to synastery's fate tying but in reverse- you damage one target and the other target takes it as well, if you attack the stella target you get a stella burst which does additional damage to them. Gravity needs reverting back to 230 ish potency given its slow cast and high cost and malefic needs to be stronger at its first level.
Finally I would also suggest a capstone damaging attack- almagest: doing damage, a dot and resets benefical effects of allies by a few seconds.

Lastly Astrologian needs a way of regaining mp, I would suggest luminaferous aether from HW reworked to give a personal dps buff as a composite of it and the cleric stance. An equivalent but functionally different Assize if you will


Scholar

I haven't played Scholar very much in HW and not at all in Shb so I'm not as informed about it.

Identity of Scholar- its a tactician with DOTS, pet based healer, shielding heavy as part of the trio of WHM and AST. It also had some debuffing.
I personally would also want a carbuncle and feo ul options for fairy glamour

In terms of healing, Scholar is about resource management while Eos/Selene handles the heals or status effects. Often led to jokes of Eos being the healer and SCH being a dps
Sch needs to be built around eos and selene as pets that assist and can support autonamously or on command. Sch also has heavy shields it can put up and its tactician based playstyle should be built around adapting to the flow of battle- in other words changing skills to heal hp as emergency, getting allies to focus on a target or strike weakpoints, shield up together etc.
Eos should be built around hp and cleansing of debuffs, but Selene could be designed either as a support focused, or a damage focused pet. Either way there must be a reason to choose the fairies and unlike Ast, the seraph using both fae abilities makes sense and would work well as a capstone.

As for downtime, a Sch should be throwing dots, crowd control and debuffs as and when they are needed. Sch should have at least one ground based dot like salted earth, bane plus several dots like its arcanist roots as part of its tactical effects and methods of weakening the enemy (lower damage, mp sapping, slow etc)

-Are you expecting a healer job next expansion? If so what job would you like to see and what type of gameplay would you like it to have

I am about 50/50 on a new job given how much the devs hate healers or at least appear to. If it is a new job I would guess Chemist given popularity and how the Ast seal system doesnt work as an Ast but it would work very well as a Chemist system (different seals- different results make different concotions?)
I would want its gameplay to be like that or alchemist from ffx-2 where their individual items go well together- they have slow but super strong abilities they can use to do damage or heal as of when they are needed. They could also have some scrapped but fun or niche abilities like Erase (heal and scrap a dot) or Fluid aura (knockback, damage and bind. Would work as a garry's mod esque discombobulator)

On the other hand, I'm expecting further butchering of the healer role and more healer shortages plus lessons not learned. Or perhaps they will do both- add a new job thats functional and fun while simultaniously destroying the healers further like they did with the tanks this expansion. (gnb is fun and unique, drk and war are almost copies of each other)

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

Are you happy with the current design of the three healers? Which one is your favourite?

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My favorite healer is WHM due to its holy aesthetic (and wings !).

Design wise, I would be if this design were actually used in content. Lets assume for a moment there is a need for healing.

Each healer has an amazing healing toolkit:
-Multiple OGCD for emergencies
-Different spell for AoE healing with either a HoT to maintain or shielding + classic healing AoE spells (SCH has tactics + succor)
-Multiple single target spells with mana tradeoff
-Group mitigation

Also spell cost are expensive enough for AoE and cureII like spells to only be usable once every ~10s even with high piety (2540 pie = 100mana / second), so we would need to only use our expensive spells when necessary.

Returning to reality:
The number one issue is that fights require so little healing that all that toolkit is thrown out of the window. almost all damage can be healed solely by oGCD abilities, making us GCD starved instead of resource starved, so to optimize the gameplay we will try to use the less healing actions possible (so high manacost and inefficient spells), and have enough mana to do it even with low level of piety. This has the secondary effect of having an useless stat on our gear (piety only increase the max number of raises possible per fight).

And whats left to do during the 95%+ of the fights we're not using GCD to heal, press a single button and maintain a 30s dot. AST got lucky there and they can press 4-7 more buttons per minute managing cards.

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

What keeps you engaged when playing a healer?

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I like optimization, and figuring out how to do one less GCD for the fight, or precise positioning to slidecast a specific mechanic is enough to keep me awake.

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

Regarding healer identity, what gimmick or gameplay style would you give each of the healers? Both in terms of how the healing itself would work and what to do during healing downtime.

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For me fixing healing as a whole is more important than small gimicks. This can be done 2 ways:

1) Have encounter designed to match our currently quite wide healing toolkit. That means frequent damage (at least every 10s if not more frequent), not always in AoE form but also targeted on non tanks. The goal would be for us to spend most of our time healing, while only maintaining our DoT in term of damage, and occasionally weaving our dps GCD (less than 1/3 of the time). And before you speak of difficulty, of course this would be targeted at the population expected to do the content, so yeah on extreme fight I expect good healer to still dps 75% of their GCD, but for the last savage boss or ultimates, players will need to step up, as thats the goal of difficult content to push yourself to get better (and in case of savage, a weaker healer could probably get by by not dpsing at all).

2) Embrace the fact we're currently DPS class with supportive healing actions. I'm not speaking here about increasing our damage output, but changing our gameplay to perform it. The goal would be here to have a fully fledged DPS GCD rotation that makes us heal one way or another.
-It could give us resources to use OGCd healing abilities.
-Some dps abilities might directly heal (think assize), or provide an extra healing effect on say the tank (think atonement from another game)
-Result in either buffing allies or debuffing enemies (like technical step or old HW tank abilities that reduced boss stats)

And only after a design direction is taken for all healers should we find thematic spells for each one that match this general goal.

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

Are you expecting a new healer job to be added in the next Expansion? If so, what job would you like to see and what type of gameplay would you like the new job to have?

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We badly need a new healing job.
I really hate the basic idea we have currently of WHM for heals SCH for shields and AST can do both.
We need either like they did with tank this expansion so that any combination of the 4 healers can work together, or for each healer to only have 1 role in a party to avoid the case we have with AST currently that really don't want to play noct as its so much weaker.

But considering the backlash happening from the release of shb on the healer side, I expect SE to do something, sadly I also expect them to do it badly and double down on the current non functioning healer design.

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

-Are you happy with the current design of the three healers? Which one is your favourite?

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No. SCH is definitely my favorite due to the "tactical" nature of it.

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

-What keeps you engaged when playing a healer?

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Actually having to heal.

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

-Regarding healer identity, what gimmick or gameplay style would you give each of the healers? Both in terms of how the healing itself would work and what to do during healing downtime.

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In terms of healing identity, WHM and SCH are fine, though I'd like more support type things to do during downtime, since just casting Broil/Glare is boring.

AST's downtime is fine, but it's GCD healing is...I'm sorry, it needs a rework on its Sects and Aspected heals. Give its base Aspected heals the Neutral Sect treatment (shields and regens, adjust the potentcies as needed), turn Diurnal and Nocturnal Sects into a 20s buff with a 90s cooldown they both share that thrown all their Aspected heals towards either full Regens or Shields, and buff the output of both to match/surpass WHM/SCH while those are active.

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

-Are you expecting a new healer job to be added in the next Expansion? If so, what job would you like to see and what type of gameplay would you like the new job to have?

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I am, and I want it to be Chemist. Mix system, though for healing having them focus on damaging enemies to heal allies, not that I"m sure it's possible with this game.

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

-Are you happy with the current design of the three healers? Which one is your favourite?

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I am not. My current favorite is WHM, though I play SCH more often (Most of my friends prefer WHM and I don't like to overlap)

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

-What keeps you engaged when playing a healer?

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Bouncing back and forth between offense and defense as the situation demands. It's the one role where my "rotation" isn't static.

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

-Regarding healer identity, what gimmick or gameplay style would you give each of the healers? Both in terms of how the healing itself would work and what to do during healing downtime.

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I think SE needs to embrace that DPS is a part of a healer's kit. We can't really go to the "pure healer" route without drastically changing the battle design as a whole (This is a big topic, but long story short it's not as simple as "more damage"), but one thing we CAN do to likely appease both crowds is to make our DPS kit either power up or enable our healer kit (Thinking of Dragalia Lost where your attacks are required to gain SP to cast heals), or make our heals also play a support role in debuffing enemies or possibly buffing allies that are also attacking them.

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

-Are you expecting a new healer job to be added in the next Expansion? If so, what job would you like to see and what type of gameplay would you like the new job to have?

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I really hope so, but SE really needs to learn how to design a healer in the first place. I sometimes get the impression they have absolutely no idea how players play healer, or why they do so.

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

Just a few questions regarding healers and your personal enjoyment of their gameplay.

-Are you happy with the current design of the three healers? Which one is your favourite?

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No, as it is right now healers are in their worst state, their design is very bland and boring. SCH

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-What keeps you engaged when playing a healer?

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The shorter queues, job identity resonating with myself irl and the savage fights, the only place where I can find those jobs remotely enjoyable thanks to the optimization

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-Regarding healer identity, what gimmick or gameplay style would you give each of the healers? Both in terms of how the healing itself would work and what to do during healing downtime.

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I'd like to see more fairy interactions with sch, more dots and debuffs and more offensive options for aetherflow (with maybe quickened aetherflow back) and an actual offensive rotation that is not press 1 button.

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-Are you expecting a new healer job to be added in the next Expansion? If so, what job would you like to see and what type of gameplay would you like the new job to have?

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They should add a new healer even if its just as apology for what they have done in shb and I'd like to see a more offensive/debuff oriented healer

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

Just a few questions regarding healers and your personal enjoyment of their gameplay.

-Are you happy with the current design of the three healers? Which one is your favourite?

-What keeps you engaged when playing a healer?

-Regarding healer identity, what gimmick or gameplay style would you give each of the healers? Both in terms of how the healing itself would work and what to do during healing downtime.

-Are you expecting a new healer job to be added in the next Expansion? If so, what job would you like to see and what type of gameplay would you like the new job to have?

---

-Not really no. I think WHM is in the best position it's been in in a VERY long time but I still feel like they are trying to figure out what to do with it. AST is my Favorite.

-Engaging? I love playing support and healing plays a very big role in that regard. I like being able to help those around me, benefiting the party as a whole.

-WHM- I think they should lean more heavily on the "holy" aspect of WHM and push lean more on the pdps aspect of the job. I think the Lily system has a lot of promise and adds some much needed mobility to the job.

-SCH- I think that SCH should either scrap summon 2 or bring back a second type of fairy play style. Something is missing from SCH and I can't quite put my finger on it, it just doesn't feel engaging at all anymore.

-AST- I was pretty devastated by the new AST to be honest. It feels like a shell of it's former self. That being said there are some new parts of current AST that I really think should be expanded on. I really think the "set and forget" play style works incredibly well for it. I would absolutely love to see less emphasis on pdps and more emphasis on time. I think the card system should be a mix of the old and the new and feel like a hard pressed gcd rotation of cards with cds would work rather well, especially if you used Time Dilation/Divination to extend the duration of said effect. Celestial Opposition should be reverted to how it was in 4.0 and the job should focus more on setting itself and the party up for success in the future whilst using it's downtime to enhance the party through it's cards and time extensions.

-Expecting a new healer... honestly no. I'd love to see a fourth, but at this point SE has made it pretty clear they can barely balance three healers and that was only done by homogenizing everything into the ground and stripping the flavour down to the point where the lore doesn't even make sense anymore when held next to the playstyle/abilities.

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

Just a few questions regarding healers and your personal enjoyment of their gameplay.

-Are you happy with the current design of the three healers? Which one is your favourite?

-What keeps you engaged when playing a healer?

-Regarding healer identity, what gimmick or gameplay style would you give each of the healers? Both in terms of how the healing itself would work and what to do during healing downtime.

-Are you expecting a new healer job to be added in the next Expansion? If so, what job would you like to see and what type of gameplay would you like the new job to have?

---

- I am satisfied with the current design, in that it is still good enough for me to keep playing WHM and AST. But i wouldn't go as far as saying that i'm happy with it. My favourite one has to be WHM, since it is what i played since the very beginning. When i discovered AST during SB, i started leveling it up as it was just such a blast to play, and i knew it was about to replace my WHM as main. However now i still enjoy playing AST, but it just isn't as much fun as it used to be. I have to see how it goes once i reach 80 with it, but i understand how it plays, and by looking at the few skills i'm missing i don't see it becoming that much more engaging. So, yeah, i would still say that for now, WHM is my favourite.

- (Just copy-pasting this from another post with a similar question) The reason i love healing is because, for example, when i know by heart the strat for a Savage trial, and do everything perfectly, and when i raise fallen party members while dodging AoEs, or use Rescue on a DPS who's just about to get kicked out of the platform, it feels SO good.
I just live for these moments as a healer, the moments where you know that the fight is going smoothly because YOU know how it works and YOU are making sure that the team will get to the end of it.
Every role is important, but personally only healing has been able to provide me with such a sense of accomplishment, and contribution to the group.

- I am not familiar enough with SCH gameplay, so i can only talk for AST and WHM. I think WHM is in a relatively good position, but i would give it a couple more buffs, maybe with interesting/uncommon gimmicky effects (pushback immunity for the whole team/that kind of stuff). However i know that if SE ever gives buffs to the WHM, it's going to be boring, standard ones, because they are too worried about the balance of the game. I would also like to see maybe one more shielding ability on WHM.
As for AST, just bring back the SB AST skills/mechanics and we're good.

- It would be logical that there's one, but i'm not sure if i would really get into it so deeply. I am still a bit salty with how they changed AST and to be honest, i don't want to invest myself in yet another healing class unless i know for sure that they won't change it completely in the coming months.

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

Just a few questions regarding healers and your personal enjoyment of their gameplay.

-Are you happy with the current design of the three healers? Which one is your favourite?

-What keeps you engaged when playing a healer?

-Regarding healer identity, what gimmick or gameplay style would you give each of the healers? Both in terms of how the healing itself would work and what to do during healing downtime.

-Are you expecting a new healer job to be added in the next Expansion? If so, what job would you like to see and what type of gameplay would you like the new job to have?

---

-Sadly no. AST feels great but it's card system is at an all time low. I don't complain as much now as I used to but my feelings for it haven't changed. There's too much fishing in the system while trying to perform at your best with it. AST is my favorite so far because of how smooth it is to weave your attack between your OGCD's.

-How beautiful my character looks in healer glamour. Striving to be a better AST, I'll never be top tier but at least I know I'm pretty decent at it.

-I'd give WHM more damaging combo than just glare spam. I'd give SCH their DoT's back, AST needs the cards changed regardless of how long it takes. I never really played much WHM so I honestly can't give a good answer to it.

-If I were to see another healer I'd like to see Chemist. Would be pretty neat having a gun styled to heal people with. I'd honestly love that.

-Are you happy with the current design of the three healers? Which one is your favourite?

Not really, I think they shouldn't have moved towards making every healer a WHM reskin with super dumbed down kits, I still prefer scholar but I'd take bane anyday over art of ground slap.

-What keeps you engaged when playing a healer?

Micromanaging and split second decisions, and also an engaging/fun rotation that isn't overly complex but takes more attention than apply dot, now spam damage skill.

-Regarding healer identity, what gimmick or gameplay style would you give each of the healers? Both in terms of how the healing itself would work and what to do during healing downtime.

WHM: More regen oriented with a few options to decrease damage by a % but not actually shield, give them an extra dot but otherwise keep their damage rotation simple

SCH: Give them more pre-healing options like excog and critlo, and when they're not pre-healing give them more dots also GIVE SCHOLAR FRICKIN BANE BACK because losing bane and getting art of war in return feels like when someone takes your ferrari and gives you a toy model of a Honda Civic in return.

AST: Admittedly I don't know much about AST, but I'd rather they have their old cards back, and replace their tp card with something else, maybe something that makes a person's dots tick faster, it would also be nice if they added crit chance and dh chance cards instead of all just flat damage cards.

-Are you expecting a new healer job to be added in the next Expansion? If so, what job would you like to see and what type of gameplay would you like the new job to have?

It's 50/50, they might make another excuse for balancing healers, or they'll look at the healers that they neutered into WHM clones, but in a way that's "Copy my homework but don't make it too obvious" and decide things are balanced enough for a 4th healer. I'm hopeful they make healers actually fun again, but at the same time I won't be surprised if the new healer is also a WHM clone.

That being said, I want a ranged healer with no cast times or a healer that does healing through damaging enemies, that would be fun.

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Are you happy with the current design of the three healers? Which one is your favourite?

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Gutting whatever few damaging skills we had was a bad call, I still deeply miss Aero III. AST was my favorite healer because of the tarot and star themes, but I do not enjoy the 5.x changes at all - I don't care if it was broken op regarding numbers, it just feels blegh to play as a literal Balance Bot.

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What keeps you engaged when playing a healer?

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It's the role I play in every game ever.

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Regarding healer identity, what gimmick or gameplay style would you give each of the healers? Both in terms of how the healing itself would work and what to do during healing downtime.

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If I'm being honest, as much as I feel comfortable with WHM...it's painfully generic. Ideally it could, idk, be given a stronger focus on healing over time and/or being the 'green DPS' healer - it is, afterall, the BLM of healers.

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Are you expecting a new healer job to be added in the next Expansion? If so, what job would you like to see and what type of gameplay would you like the new job to have?

---

The most popular choices seem to be Chemist or Geomancer. I'm a little biased so I'd go for Geomancer. CNJ started as a "druid" archetype but completely abandons it later on, so there's space for a true nature-themed healer.
That said, Chemist can also be a fun idea - I always imagined they could be like Anna from OW and snipe heal people, skillshots are kinda rare in this game, or have a button mash mini game like NIN/DNC where the spell they cast is based on the buttons they press, that would certainly be more different than a second not-WHM.

Take into account I'm a filthy casual that has never done nor plans to do EX/Savage content and this is just my opinion based on...literally everything else there is to do in the game, which is apparently irrelevant for class balance.

-Are you happy with the current design of the three healers? Which one is your favourite?
No. Though I should say that current healer design doesn't fit well with current encounter design. Healer downtime is a big issue right now. SCH continues to be my favorite healer, and the one I feel has the least amount of issues in terms with how it melds with my own playstyle.

-What keeps you engaged when playing a healer?
I am most engaged when my primary function in a party is called upon. IOW, I have to heal people and correct mistakes. If someone has a vuln stack, I need to make sure they are topped up until it falls off otherwise the next AoE will likely kill them. If someone needs to be cleansed, or to be raised. That is why I chose this role, and that is what I want to do when in a party.

-Regarding healer identity, what gimmick or gameplay style would you give each of the healers? Both in terms of how the healing itself would work and what to do during healing downtime.
Their current gimmicks are fine in terms of being part of their identity, but each of their gimmicks have problems. The AST cards need to be reworked completely... again. SCH fairy is really needed for two things: Union and Seraph. These are truly interactive skills that should not be on the pet hotbar. The other skills being taken off of the pet hotbar just make those skills feel like additional ogcds for the SCH. Lily gimmick for WHM only has two skills to use blue lilies up, which means Misery cannot be used optimally if players aren't taking enough damage to break the ogcd threshold which is quite thick for WHM already.

-Are you expecting a new healer job to be added in the next Expansion? If so, what job would you like to see and what type of gameplay would you like the new job to have?
No, and don't even want one at this point. But I think the devs will have to deliver in 6.0 or it's going to be riot in the streets. What this means is the time they have to get healing and encounter design ripe for a new healer is quickly cutting itself short, and I just don't see huge changes to either happening. I expect more of the same in 6.0 (encounter design never calls for the healing power FFXIV healers are capable of, downtime filled with lackluster DPS skills, and very questionable decisions that make little sense).

The main thing I want to see that would probably make me jump through the ceiling is to see the potency on OGCD heals reduced, and the potency on GCD heals increased. That would be a very positive indicator that the devs are finally starting to 'get it'.

Until they change how encounters actually exist within the game it really doesn't matter how they design healers. As current design exists it will always be "ogcd AoE on raid wide dmg" once per 30 secs+, spam dps in-between dmg phases and repeat.

As long as emphasis on "green dps" exists and there is not consistent (semi) unpredictable damage coming out from bosses, then healing will always be a gimped version of a tank trying to do damage. Healing as it now exists is literally no different or difficult than a tank using a 1 button cd for a tank buster.

The only thing they can implement design wise is a complex (or at least varied) dps rotation w/ AoE healing during raid dmg , or change encounters as a whole.

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

Just a few questions regarding healers and your personal enjoyment of their gameplay.

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-Are you happy with the current design of the three healers? Which one is your favourite?

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Yes and no - AST/SCH

Yes : I really like the current design for healer whereas we have really potent ogcd and with some proper optimisation, we can spend a lot of time dpsing. In a sens, being a good healer in ffxiv isn't just "keeping people alive" but "keeping people alive while dpsing as much as possible". It offers quite a lot of satisfaction and the fact that healer can actually do more than tanks makes for a great reward for our effort

No : Fight simply don't require enough heal overall. There are some moments where a lead of clutch heal is required but overall, most raid burster can be healed through ogcd and hot (fairy, asylum etc).
I think encounter should have more frequent damage, for instance it isn't normal that a SCH can heal with 100% ogcd the first phase of E6S Furor without breaking a sweat. The whole fight can easily be solohealed spare a few moments where, in fact, 2 healers are recommended. I would just like the same design but overall more damage to make more use of both healers tools. A savage encounter shouldn't be easily solo healed 90% of the time.
Also increasing damage on tank would be a solution, and could also open the door for lv 81-90 new healing spells. It isn't normal that every boss but Shiva and TEA litterally tickle tanks. Tanks on Ramuh can litterally keep themselves alives and thrive with AoE heals only.
I'm not trying to be an eletist jerk, but there's a fine line between "my fairy + period AoE heal from raid burst are enough to keep tanks alive" and "you need to spame cureII everysecond of the fight or the tank dies (aka WoW)

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-What keeps you engaged when playing a healer?

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As said above, the optimisation.
I really like seeing how the first time I heal an encounter I don't know what's coming next and then, as we go through pulls, i skim my healing and increase my dps.
I also really like the fact that DPS and Tank can contribute to the overall "keeping the raid alive" effort.
As a side note, I really like that most mistakes are punished by instant death (or at least sever injury+weakness as a proof of your mistake). In the sens that's it's really hard to blame a healer for your death if you died alone. Because when healer fail, usually it means all 4 dps+2healers die, not just 1 person. I like the fact that staying alive is everyone's job and not just "healers adapt" (which is actually a meme, you can't adapt a oneshot... and since almost everything oneshot in this game)

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-Regarding healer identity, what gimmick or gameplay style would you give each of the healers? Both in terms of how the healing itself would work and what to do during healing downtime.

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I personally really like the current direction
WHM : mostly GCD heals with lilies. (I would however add charges to Assize + Tetra). I don't want any more ogcd with the WHM unless those are related to gcd (like Plenary) or are some sort of utility like Temperance

SCH : During SB I really thought there wasn't enough fairy skills. ShB brought 2 new fairy skills so I would definitely go along that direction. Regarding Aether Flux I really think we've reach the end with that. I don't see what could be added that wouldn't overshadow current skills. However more fairy skills would be nice, and if possible a better way than Ruin2 to weave. A fairy gauge dump would be nice, Aetherpact doesn't feel adequat I often end up with a full gauge because there's just not enough healing needed (ofc increasing damage on tank would solve the issue)

AST : My favorite! However I am struggling with the card design. I like the new design, less potent buff (it was broken anyway), I like the seal system and I like the fact that they just bring dps. That was one thing that annoyed me in SB, the fact that 95% of the time, anything but balance was bad. However pulls are just too intense and Sleeve Draw is just a nightmare on controller during the opener.
I'm also a bit sick of AST eternal mp issue. Beside reducing mp cost, putting 2 charges on LightSpeed and reducing its CD + duration would help a great deal. I don't need 15s of instant every 90s. I just need 6-9s every 45-60s. That would be much much more useful, both in term of weaving, dps and especially mp management.

I really like the fact that spells change depending on the stance, and while I understand it brings its own share of balancing issue, I really would like more spells having 2 versions.
I love the visual and overall how the job plays. If anything I would like more spells akin to Earthly Star and Horoscope, (basically delayed spelled). Too bad Excogitation would have fit the bill perfectly.

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-Are you expecting a new healer job to be added in the next Expansion? If so, what job would you like to see and what type of gameplay would you like the new job to have?

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I am definitely expecting a new healer job in 6.0.
I would love to have the Potion Master. Many people proposed the geomancer but I don't want 2 healers based on earth/water/wind (altough, we can argue WHM strayed away from that path...)
In term of gameplay I would like some sort of mec where we mix stuff for various extra effect on spells (a bit like mudras). But yeah I would definitely like some sort of healer who add extra effect on current spells. Either by consuming ressource, using mudra-like charges, wathever.
Like they could use "infusion", with Astral infusion adding a Shield and Umbral infusion adding a HoT as a baseline. Then we could have some ogcd which add new effect like "Thunder Infusion" reduce the cd of your next infused ability by 30% or make it instant.


I don't think giving it 2 stances would be the way to go, since it would rob some of the AST identity. But they would need to be able to do both Shields and Hots (altough we can argue that SCH/WHM got a lot of regen/mitigation respectively. Perhaps adding an extra mitigation to WHM future toolkit to help make every healer able to both mitigate and apply hots effectively.

However I obviously do want all healer combination to be viable. I also want lines to be blurred between "shield healer" "hot healer", all healers have hot now, all have mitigation (WHM maybe would need a new lily AoE shield spell...).
I'm fine with some having stronger point, like if we give WHM a lily-succor, just add a 30s CD so that no matter what SCH would always be able to shield more, but at least WHM could do it. (the same way SCH could see a buff to emergency tactic so that if they need to dish out a bit more gcd heal, they could...)
I don't think "shields and hots" are good defining traits of a job, those are so... "old". Like, a SCH isn't a "shielder", i mean heck he has 2 shields. if anything AST has more shields. to me SCH is more about making good use of powerful ogcd with limited use (Aether flux) and fairy. For me, that's a SCH, Aetherflux ogcd+fairy. Not shields (I mean I don't even shield until E7S, and even there i barely shield, there's no need for it)

Each healer should have a dps kit. I like the idea of the AST getting a dot/debuff/dd nuke set, the White Mage getting the best nukes, and the SCH weaving dots like a boss. The idea that I'm supposed to struggle through content/quests without being able to dps adequately needs to end--it's just not fun at all. This needs to be understood by Square Enix. Once that's been acknowledged, I'm quite flexible with all other choices they make regarding class design.

-Are you happy with the current design of the three healers? Which one is your favourite?
Scholar looked like it used to be fun in Stormblood. Unfortunately, I took a several years hiatus back in HW and came back in Shadowbringers, where the healers were gutted. Scholar is still my favorite.

-What keeps you engaged when playing a healer?
Hard to say. I'd like more offensive abilities, and more closely tying those abilities to healing.

-Regarding healer identity, what gimmick or gameplay style would you give each of the healers? Both in terms of how the healing itself would work and what to do during healing downtime.
SE needs to understand that there is healing downtime, so either radically rework combat to get rid of that or give healers more DPS options.

-Are you expecting a new healer job to be added in the next Expansion? If so, what job would you like to see and what type of gameplay would you like the new job to have?
I doubt we'll be getting a new one next expac, bu I'd like to see Green Mage. Albeit it's the last of my choices, as I'd rather that class as a Tank first DPS second.

Things I learned in this thread. Nobody likes healers as they are. Oh wait I knew that already, nvm.