Making All Healing Spells DPS Neutral

I’m not a huge fan of feeling discouraged from interacting with a part of my job’s kit. Our baseline healing spells are something that many healers activity avoid using, often saving them as a last resort when survival would otherwise be impossible. Perhaps we can change that.

This is how it would work. Whenever a healer casts one of their healing spells during battle, they gain a stackable buff called Cleric Stance. This buff can stack up to five times (though it could be reduced to three if five is too much). Casting a damaging spell will then automatically consume a single stack of Cleric Stance, resulting in increased potency. The amount of potency gained is equal to the baseline potency of each healer’s single target or AoE damaging spell.

Here are some examples of what this would look like.

Benefic II
Restores target’s HP.
Cure Potency: 800
Additional Effect: Grants a stack of Cleric Stance when used in combat, up to a maximum of 5.

Fall Malefic
Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 250.
Potency increases to 500 when under the effect of Cleric Stance. Cleric Stance Cost: 1 stack

Combust III
Deals unaspected damage over time.
Potency: 55
Duration: 30s
Additional Effect: Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 250 when under the effect of Cleric Stance. Cleric Stance Cost: 1 stack

Gravity II
Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 130 to target and all enemies nearby it.
Potency increases to 260 when under the effect of Cleric Stance. Cleric Stance Cost: 1 stack

Note that not every healing spells needs to generate Cleric Stance and not every damaging spell needs to consume a stack. Lily spells, for example, could remain as a separate system.

Now it is worth noting that such a change would have a significant impact on the way healers play. Healers will be encouraged to repeatedly cast healing spells to build stacks during segments when a boss can’t be targeted, though that may not be a bad thing as it would be more engaging than doing nothing. This inclusion of Cleric Stance would introduce an avenue for skill expression as players could intentionally build stacks in preparation for burst phases. Adjusting the MP cost of certain spells may also be worth considering, though it may not be necessary in every case.

Some may be wondering, why even make this change? When reading the topic about what actions we wouldn’t mind being removed, there were those who expressed the opinion that some or even the majority of oGCD healing abilities should be removed. To a certain extent, I agree with that stance. When I look at healers like Scholar, I feel like the job was generally more interesting back when it was largely reliant on Aetherflow to fuel its oGCD healing and had to fall back on its healing spells more often once its oGCD options were spent. When people voice their opposition towards the removal of oGCD healing abilities, I get the impression that their stance is less to do with wanting to keep a plethora of emergency heals and much more to do with wanting plenty of tools to keep the party in good health while maintaining a steady stream of outgoing damage. But if our healing spells no longer compromised damage output, perhaps we could afford to cut back on the overabundance of healing abilities and have them replaced with utility or damage dealing actions that would make playing as a healer more varied and interesting.

Few things came to my mind as I read these:

• Priority will remain the same: I will still try to avoid GCD heals because oGCDs do not cost MP & are instants.
• Under specific niche situation where there are needed health to be patched up right before raidbuff window, in theory at least, can be beneficial by stacking the buff to fire off 1-5 stronger Malefics while ensuring those GCD heals aren't entirely wasted. Thanks to how buffs are calculated, successfully pulling this off would result in dps gain. Though this does mean all 4 healers will try to achieve this & doesn't really increase their engagement at all, let alone make them feel any different.
• My guts telling me these will bait less experienced players to lean even more toward their GCDs than ever.

I do agree we could use some culling toward the superfluous healing actions to relieve the bloat and of course, to create more room for more buff, debuff, utility, and/or even damage actions.

It wouldn't be baiting less experienced players, because it would effectively place all GCD heals on mostly even footing with OGCD heals. The only difference would be the MP costs, but that's negligible in the current way that MP is handled, for the most part.

The bigger issue is that it's a cureall solution not unlike conforming as many jobs as possible to the 2 minute burst meta. I believe the intention behind the suggestion is to make GCD healing not feel like a punishment and allow players to diversify their casting focus to support tools comfortably. On a certain level, this would work as using barriers as a barrier healer would now be something you actually do, but it creates far more issues. First, it creates a scenario where you feel obligated to build 5 stacks before each 2 minute burst window regardless of whether the healing is needed or not. Since it sounds like the suggestion is automated, and you can reserve stacks for later, this exacerbates this issue as you'd want to blast through 5 heals right before the buff window to turn those refund stacks into DPS gains. Outside of that, it otherwise eliminates skill expression as now you'll naturally hit mostly optimized DPS values without even trying. It almost doesn't matter what you cast at that point.

DPS refund is the way to make GCD healing more valuable and create more opportunities for healers to actively choose healing over DPS, but it should be executed with more thought in mind--that it's something you have to actively manage with resources, MP, cooldowns, or any combination of the like in order to perform successfully. Heals that fall out of that range--that do not refund your DPS, should be stronger and more effective panic buttons because that's essentially what they are. You can drop your optimization for safety, in other words.

What if they made some-or-all of the vanilla healing spells oGCD? (*´∀｀*).。o○ ?
Remove their cast times and increase their MP cost to compensate (and to help teach players to not only spam healing spells).
Maybe they could do it for WHM and AST's regen spells but I'm not sure about the shield spells.
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Originally Posted by Blueyes

I’m not a huge fan of feeling discouraged from interacting with a part of my job’s kit. Our baseline healing spells are something that many healers activity avoid using, often saving them as a last resort when survival would otherwise be impossible.

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If you feel bad about using a GCD heal when it is necessary to ensure survival, then you shouldn't be playing a healer.

If you're unwilling or unable to grapple with the question of whether a GCD heal is necessary, then you also shouldn't be playing a healer.

That basic question -- should I cast this heal now instead of dealing damage? -- is the only thing that makes healing interesting in the current combat design. There's no need to dumb it down by trivializing the question.

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Originally Posted by AmiableApkallu

If you feel bad about using a GCD heal when it is necessary to ensure survival, then you shouldn't be playing a healer.

If you're unwilling or unable to grapple with the question of whether a GCD heal is necessary, then you also shouldn't be playing a healer.

That basic question -- should I cast this heal now instead of dealing damage? -- is the only thing that makes healing interesting in the current combat design. There's no need to dumb it down by trivializing the question.

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The issue is moreso that the shear volume of OGCD healing has rendered GCD healing almost never necessary for party survival. Back during ARR and HW particularly, OGCD healing was extremely limited. Even back then, the goal was to try and limit your need for GCD healing as much as possible, but because you never truly could even in casual content, it created a healthy balance where skill expression allowed you to push damage while still needing to rely on your heals on some level. This meant it felt good to use your necessary GCD heals thoughtfully and effectively to ensure you were getting the most out of every one, rather than bad that you had to use them at all. But since OGCD healing has gotten so plentiful, it's now incredibly easy to completely eliminate GCD healing from the equation in almost every piece of content, even some tiers of savage on SGE. SCH too, though the utility of a spread crit adlo does hold value that can be worth an occasional DPS drop for certain mechanics, especially in PF where your familiarity with your teammates is limited or nonexistent.

I think Healing GCDs should feel a bit punishing Playing healer for me is generally all about using your resources maximising your damage output while effectively healing the party, If healers can just spam GCD heals when they want it takes a lot of what makes healer "fun" I think.

I'd argue healers don't need to be anymore simple I'm more for making them slightly more complicated if anything by giving them more attacking spells (not to the extent of a tank/dps) would make them more fun for me I don't think we need to remove the balancing act of using your healing OGCDs well. I feel like this change would water down healer even more then they need to be.

For everyone considering difficulty in healing being dumbed down... That's kind of necessary to making healers get better dps kits. Let me put it this way:

-We know the balance team balances around average skill level.
-We also know that they want heals to be easy. Currently the main factor of difficulty in healing is when to cast GCD heals vs. waiting for ogcd heals which comes entirely down to knowing every mechanic in a fight.
-They don't want a huge gap between people that throw heals after every raidwide and those that coordinate and perfectly map out their ogcd heals, so they dumb down healer damage to two buttons and minimize healer impact on dps when possible.
-By vastly closing this gap between unskilled healers and skilled healers, this enables the devs to create more interesting dps kits for healers to re-widen that gap.

Don't ever tell me you haven't played with a shield healer that doesn't bother to cast shields which lets some minimum ilvl guy die to the next hard hitting mechanic. Or maybe the regen healer clearly can't keep up with the DoT tankbusters, but still refuses to cast regen to stabilize tanks because damage. This pisses me off. This also pisses 7 other people off when they see a healer barsing over trying to ensure a smooth run. Eventually the groups outgear this content and said healers don't reflect, they feel validated that people weren't doing things correctly and repeat the mistakes for the next tier.

Dumbing down healing in this way makes 8 people in the party happy because the healers can't read each-others minds and are basically going "ugh why isn't the other guy casting a heal so I can dps." We already have this problem where it's super obvious when barsing SCH never puts down Sacred Soil for more energy drains and their co-healer has to make up for it because they actually want to clear and the barser isn't punished because lack of healing is easily made up by either healer casting gcd heals.

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Originally Posted by Atmaweapon510

For everyone considering difficulty in healing being dumbed down... That's kind of necessary to making healers get better dps kits. Let me put it this way:

-We know the balance team balances around average skill level.
-We also know that they want heals to be easy. Currently the main factor of difficulty in healing is when to cast GCD heals vs. waiting for ogcd heals which comes entirely down to knowing every mechanic in a fight.
-They don't want a huge gap between people that throw heals after every raidwide and those that coordinate and perfectly map out their ogcd heals, so they dumb down healer damage to two buttons and minimize healer impact on dps when possible.
-By vastly closing this gap between unskilled healers and skilled healers, this enables the devs to create more interesting dps kits for healers to re-widen that gap.

Don't ever tell me you haven't played with a shield healer that doesn't bother to cast shields which lets some minimum ilvl guy die to the next hard hitting mechanic. Or maybe the regen healer clearly can't keep up with the DoT tankbusters, but still refuses to cast regen to stabilize tanks because damage. This pisses me off. This also pisses 7 other people off when they see a healer barsing over trying to ensure a smooth run. Eventually the groups outgear this content and said healers don't reflect, they feel validated that people weren't doing things correctly and repeat the mistakes for the next tier.

Dumbing down healing in this way makes 8 people in the party happy because the healers can't read each-others minds and are basically going "ugh why isn't the other guy casting a heal so I can dps." We already have this problem where it's super obvious when barsing SCH never puts down Sacred Soil for more energy drains and their co-healer has to make up for it because they actually want to clear and the barser isn't punished because lack of healing is easily made up by either healer casting gcd heals.

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Only that SE had the opportunity to creating more interesting DPS kits for healers the last two expansions, they decided not to.

And your scenarios really depend, who many vulnerability stacks did the minimum ilvl guy have and did the shield healers already placed their mitigation regen spell which is an OGCD on the tanks during poison busters.

In this tier right now, casters and healers will die 100-0% from a poison puddle on p8s snakes without mitigation on minimum ilvl. This is the most relevant because the only thing that *can* help here are raidwide mitigations, but the timing on anything but shields is super strict to get both puddles. Even before this, things like Proto-carb can 100%-0% with stuff like double dash, but enemy targeted mitigation works on that.

Edit: Now that I think about it, are there any actual vulnerability stacks this tier? I think I only see damage down for failed mechanics.

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Originally Posted by Atmaweapon510

In this tier right now, casters and healers will die 100-0% from a poison puddle on p8s snakes without mitigation on minimum ilvl. This is the most relevant because the only thing that *can* help here are raidwide mitigations, but the timing on anything but shields is super strict to get both puddles. Even before this, things like Proto-carb can 100%-0% with stuff like double dash, but enemy targeted mitigation works on that.

Edit: Now that I think about it, are there any actual vulnerability stacks this tier? I think I only see damage down for failed mechanics.

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Savage pretty much always gives damage downs rather than vuln stacks since promise, for two reasons, one it stopped the shield cheesing of some mechanics (because poor WHM was left out) and because melee would greed get a vuln stack then just force the healer to heal them harder rather than punish the person greeding the mechanic

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Originally Posted by Atmaweapon510

For everyone considering difficulty in healing being dumbed down... That's kind of necessary to making healers get better dps kits. Let me put it this way:

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(Reached limit so OG post is above).
I see this in blaming bad plays instead of blaming the job design, Healers being greedy and expecting another healer to catch up for their slack is fine, Scholar is a bad example because their current energy drain sucks, because it's a tiny bit of damage it should be removed to encourage scholars to heal a bit more, this isn't a problem with Sage for example even if the player is a bit greedy at least they wouldn't be punished for using any of their OCGD heals, maybe fix energy drain lol.

If a player plays bad and doesn't want to help heal for their own damage that's their problem not the way the job is designed... I just don't understand why we need to simplify healers even more around bad players.

Lets give a example Rotation of something I want to see I'll go with White Mage
Combo: Stone 3 > Stone 4 (Simple 1, 2) Dot: Areo 3 / Proc: Aeroga (When using a Stone Spell while Areo dot is in effect) OCGD: asize / Aoe: Holy 3 / Afflatus Misery: Rewarded for 3 lillies Presents of Mind: Speed boost, Maybe can give a "holy" aspect to your normal spells with a small damage and healing buff.

It doesn't need to be Complicated but it can be a bit more engaging, We can make room with removing stuff such as Cure 1 or Benefic ect, having a small rotation with some procs would be fun healers shouldn't be super complicated another example is I'd like to see more Dots on Scholar.

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Originally Posted by Rithy255

(Reached limit so OG post is above).
I see this in blaming bad plays instead of blaming the job design, Healers being greedy and expecting another healer to catch up for their slack is fine, Scholar is a bad example because their current energy drain sucks, because it's a tiny bit of damage it should be removed to encourage scholars to heal a bit more, this isn't a problem with Sage for example even if the player is a bit greedy at least they wouldn't be punished for using any of their OCGD heals, maybe fix energy drain lol.

If a player plays bad and doesn't want to help heal for their own damage that's their problem not the way the job is designed... I just don't understand why we need to simplify healers even more around bad players.

Lets give a example Rotation of something I want to see I'll go with White Mage
Combo: Stone 3 > Stone 4 (Simple 1, 2) Dot: Areo 3 / Proc: Aeroga (When using a Stone Spell while Areo dot is in effect) OCGD: asize / Aoe: Holy 3 / Afflatus Misery: Rewarded for 3 lillies Presents of Mind: Speed boost, Maybe can give a "holy" aspect to your normal spells with a small damage and healing buff.

It doesn't need to be Complicated but it can be a bit more engaging, We can make room with removing stuff such as Cure 1 or Benefic ect, having a small rotation with some procs would be fun healers shouldn't be super complicated another example is I'd like to see more Dots on Scholar.

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Energy drain itself is not a problem, it is pretty much the last shred of complexity left on a healer that isn’t pointless weave button bloat (AST playing yuguoh says hi) it’s the fact that only SCH has energy drain while the other three have boatloads of free healing, SCH should be the model since you aren’t punished in prog for using aetherflow but then optimisation is about removing them, not the other way around where SCH is the problem, healing priority should be a core facet of healer design but only SCH (and to a very small extent WHM) have it

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

Savage pretty much always gives damage downs rather than vuln stacks since promise, for two reasons, one it stopped the shield cheesing of some mechanics (because poor WHM was left out) and because melee would greed get a vuln stack then just force the healer to heal them harder rather than punish the person greeding the mechanic

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I feel like Bozja handled this better. Twice/Thrice Come Ruin is a good system in it allows mistakes to be made, but continued mistakes/greeding is punished in a way the DPSer doesn't want, with both reduction in damage and in KO if they do it multiple times. It prevents greeding in MORE cases, and if the person gets the second/third stack and dies, they can't blame the healer for just not healing them enough.

I think this needs repeating:

The devs balance a very specific way. Take a good look at Machinist, it's undertuned because despite being the lowest theoretical rdps, it's easy and straightforward enough that casual players and parties will do significantly better with it than with the other ranged that want coordination to burst into 2 minute windows. There are vastly more players than just the pool of high-end savage content clearers and the devs seem to be balancing around the mean. This means that an environment where a healer's expression of skill is based around how much time they aren't spending healing means that that's the only skill expression that healers will ever get because adding more complex things creates an even bigger disparity between the average and top healers. This is compounded by the fact that a healer that's not healing can cause people to die, even when they're otherwise doing everything correctly.

Take a look at fflogs, see the difference between average and max dps of MCH, then see the difference between average and max dps of any healer. In every case, you get a bigger difference between the healer average/maximum output over the MCH output. They do not want to further inflate this gap which is what adding even slightly more complex healer rotations would do. A system like cleric stance, which is really just the damage recapturing effect already put in place by Afflatus Misery, is the only way to close this gap and thus, add room for a more involved dps rotation. The proposed Cleric Stance effect might not even be 1:1, it could be 1:4 to make sure you space your healing spells while giving more leeway for GCDs.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

Energy drain itself is not a problem, it is pretty much the last shred of complexity left on a healer that isn’t pointless weave button bloat (AST playing yuguoh says hi) it’s the fact that only SCH has energy drain while the other three have boatloads of free healing, SCH should be the model since you aren’t punished in prog for using aetherflow but then optimisation is about removing them, not the other way around where SCH is the problem, healing priority should be a core facet of healer design but only SCH (and to a very small extent WHM) have it

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I disagree I don't think ED should punish scholars damage for healing, If you use your healing resources right in my opinion it shouldn't punish your damage, shouldn't punish your cohealer if a scholar wants to get max damage out, Maybe a reduction in OCGD healing would be better instead of punishing jobs for using OCGD healing correctly with less damage, healers should be about using your resources optiomally so you don't have to GCD heal.

Although your free to disagree and I understand where you're coming from I just dislike the idea of SCH being punished in comparison to other healers, I don't think a good solution would also to be punishing, Recent fights I've heard have been bringing out and testing healers with managing their OCGD's (I'm not a healer main so my opinion might not be great this is just how I view healers)

my main point is The punishment for healing badly should be making the healer use GCD heals Instead of punishing healers for using Resources, even if it's harder to optimize I don't always think that's a good thing, Arguably you can make it harder for all healers to optimise by boosting the healing requirements or removing some OCGDS (making scholar/sage timers longer ect.), reducing strength ect.

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Originally Posted by Rithy255

I disagree I don't think ED should punish scholars damage for healing, If you use your healing resources right in my opinion it shouldn't punish your damage, shouldn't punish your cohealer if a scholar wants to get max damage out, Maybe a reduction in OCGD healing would be better instead of punishing jobs for using OCGD healing correctly with less damage, healers should be about using your resources optiomally so you don't have to GCD heal.

Although your free to disagree and I understand where you're coming from I just dislike the idea of SCH being punished in comparison to other healers, I don't think a good solution would also to be punishing, Recent fights I've heard have been bringing out and testing healers with managing their OCGD's (I'm not a healer main so my opinion might not be great this is just how I view healers)

my main point is The punishment for healing badly should be making the healer use GCD heals Instead of punishing healers for using Resources, even if it's harder to optimize I don't always think that's a good thing, Arguably you can make it harder for all healers to optimise by boosting the healing requirements or removing some OCGDS (making scholar/sage timers longer ect.), reducing strength ect.

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Energy Drain is a "punishment" only if you choose to look at it that way, Energy Drain accounts for around 5% of SCH's total rDPS in optimized environments, and if you're trying to optimize in environments where you could potentially have to use Aetherflow on things you didn't account for, it's probably not an optimized environment then. Energy Drain optimization is fine IMO because you do not have to interact with it AT ALL to do very well on SCH.

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Originally Posted by Nizzi

Energy Drain is a "punishment" only if you choose to look at it that way, Energy Drain accounts for around 5% of SCH's total rDPS in optimized environments, and if you're trying to optimize in environments where you could potentially have to use Aetherflow on things you didn't account for, it's probably not an optimized environment then. Energy Drain optimization is fine IMO because you do not have to interact with it AT ALL to do very well on SCH.

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Just to add to this, SCH’s rDPS in optimised environments is still higher than SGE’s even if you use absolutely zero energy drain

Energy drain is just a skill ceiling the other healers don’t have

It's a punishment to lose a bit of damage from my perspective, using a GCD heal or two isn't going to lose a lot either but it's still damage and doesn't always feel good, I actually enjoy Scholar it's one of my favourite healers alongside Astro, so it's not something that majorly bothers me but I'd personally Prefer if energy drain didn't exist, I don't play healer as much so I'm not a big expert on how healers are balanced.

I just in general want healers to have more to do especially in easier content, I heard the new tier is really good for healer players in healing requirements. I just think Healer should be given more to do outside of that the ED point wasn't really related to the whole argument, I don't really mind ED that much it doesn't ruin enjoying scholar for me.

5% is pretty big in this game, unironically.

I think it wouldn't be such a bad idea to add something similar to some healing spells, but not so that you can collect stacks for the next burst phase. It would need something so you can't spam it during downtime, and work either only for the next spell or only last for a few seconds.

For example, for SCH, only on Adloquium. And the next Broil in the next few seconds will have increased potency. So spamming it wouldn't be DPS neutral, but you could cast one GCD shield that's either DPS neutral or doesn't cost you so much DPS.

And make it different for each healer so that they aren't all the same.

I actually had a thought about this a few days ago and made a note on my phone. Here's my take:

White Mage: PvP skill seraph strike is now in PvE. It can be used whenever you have at least one stack of sanctity. Any non-lily GCD heal grants a stack of sanctity. 1 stack of sanctity, SS deals 280, 2 stacks 560, and so on up to four stacks.

Sage: Toxicon's potency is now 660. E. Diag still grants a sting as it does now. Diagnosis grants a sting if used on a party member below 60% HP. E. Prognosis grants a sting if four of the barriers applied by E. Prog break. Prognosis grants a sting if at least three party members healed were below 60%.

Astro: New effect on combust. Any time you use a GCD heal, your combust explodes on the target and deals damage to them equal to one cast of malefic.

Scholar: Miasma 3 is back. Any time you apply shields you get a buff which increases the damage of your next miasma 3 equal to the potency of the broils you didn't cast. So if you used two adlos, you'll get two stacks, your next miasma 3 will deal extra damage equal to two casts of broil. If you use adlo, you'll only gain a stack if the person you shielded didn't already have a barrier from you. If succor, only activates if four or more party members didn't already have a barrier. Stacks 3 times.

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Originally Posted by SargeTheSeagull

White Mage: PvP skill seraph strike is now in PvE.

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God please no! I hate Seraph Strike in PvP. "Yes, let me the squishy healer with NO MOVEMENT ABILITIES WHATSOEVER AND ONLY ONE ONE MITIGATION WITH AQUAVEIL rush into melee range in a combat mode that lets people 100% - 0% healers in 3 GCDs!" It's the single dumbest ability in PvP and I'd honestly rather it not exist or be a ranged Holy or something instead.

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Sage: Toxicon's potency is now 660. E. Diag still grants a sting as it does now. Diagnosis grants a sting if used on a party member below 60% HP. E. Prognosis grants a sting if four of the barriers applied by E. Prog break. Prognosis grants a sting if at least three party members healed were below 60%.

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This, on the other hand, I like.

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Astro: New effect on combust. Any time you use a GCD heal, your combust explodes on the target and deals damage to them equal to one cast of malefic.

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I kinda like this, too.

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Scholar: Miasma 3 is back. Any time you apply shields you get a buff which increases the damage of your next miasma 3 equal to the potency of the broils you didn't cast. So if you used two adlos, you'll get two stacks, your next miasma 3 will deal extra damage equal to two casts of broil. If you use adlo, you'll only gain a stack if the person you shielded didn't already have a barrier from you. If succor, only activates if four or more party members didn't already have a barrier. Stacks 3 times.

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I feel this might be a bit too complex in both programming and in execution. But you could do something akin to a Thundercloud proc on BLM, where casting Adlo/Succor/Physic (heh...?) makes your next Miasma 3 instant cast, have no DoT, but do full damage all at once, and the buff can stack 2-3 times or something like that. Good SCH's could use this for both burst and to set up movement opportunities.

EDIT: ...actually, I guess that would depend on Miasma 3's damage vs Broil IV or whatever. If, for example, Miasma 3 did 4x Broil's damage (making Miasma 3 damage neutral at 4 ticks vs Broil), then you might make it where GCD heals cause a stacking buff. When the buff stacks to 3 (hence damage neutral with Misma being cast as the 4th GCD), the SCH is granted the buff "Enveloping Miasma", making Miasma 3 instant cast, full damage, all that stuff.

Though this sounds a bit like Misery, it's a twist on it, and SCH would have the non-buffed Miasma 3 (an extra DoT) to upkeep in general, so it's more giving SCH another DoT and letting that button pull double duty for periods of high damage requiring GCD heal casts.

...though I can't think of many times on SCH I have to cast 3 Succors in a row...I CAN think of a few in which I COULD do it (e.g. ZodEx's stack multi-hit mechanic), but using GCD heals on SCH is honestly rather rare and niche as it is because their oGCD kit is just so amazing.

(Bleh, I'm not mathing this right at all. But whatever. Point is just giving SCH Miasma 3 back and letting them use the button in conjunction with GCD heals to make casting GCD heals damage neutral, I guess is my point.)

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Originally Posted by Renathras

God please no! I hate Seraph Strike in PvP. "Yes, let me the squishy healer with NO MOVEMENT ABILITIES WHATSOEVER AND ONLY ONE ONE MITIGATION WITH AQUAVEIL rush into melee range in a combat mode that lets people 100% - 0% healers in 3 GCDs!" It's the single dumbest ability in PvP and I'd honestly rather it not exist or be a ranged Holy or something instead.

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This isn't supposed to be a diss, but wouldn't you in PVE encounters actually preferably stick close to the boss so that you are in a central position to reach everyone with your aoe heals, which would make the melee range of this spell actually preferable in PVE because it would immediately teach sprout healers to not stand far far away at the back of the arena where their aoes will be wasted on maybe the occasional cowardly bard?

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Originally Posted by T-Owl

This isn't supposed to be a diss, but wouldn't you in PVE encounters actually preferably stick close to the boss so that you are in a central position to reach everyone with your aoe heals, which would make the melee range of this spell actually preferable in PVE because it would immediately teach sprout healers to not stand far far away at the back of the arena where their aoes will be wasted on maybe the occasional cowardly bard?

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The problem is when you're forced into melee at bad times.

RDM and SMN (to a lesser extent) have this problem, too.

Suppose Seraph comes off CD as you have a party spread mechanic. Now what? Do you kill the Melee by hitting it, or lose uptime on the CD and a use over the course of the encounter?

My personal position is that casters, baring EXTREMELY rare exceptions (RDM, basically, because in FF lore it's a hybrid jack of all trades that does melee, casting, and healing equally and can wear medium armor and use moderately powerful melee weapons), should never HAVE to come into melee range to use any abilities. They should be free to move into and out of melee range, since that's the point. There's no reason to have a Caster Tax, for example, for Caster Jobs if they can't stay at range, since that's the entire point of them having said tax in the first place.

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And no, this wouldn't teach Sprouts anything. All they'd do is never use the spell, so it would make them even worse at clearing content if their overall damage was based around it. Not to mention an ability like that would never be given at low level. Not to mention considering how often Ranged and Casters, particularly BLM, like to stand out in Narnia, the Healers doing the same is actually the smarter play.

Healers should be able to freely move into and out of melee. SGE having a 6y Plegma is already something I hate. If you want PvE Seraph Strike, you have to play Bozja.

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EDIT: That said, I actually like Icarus (which is far more flexible than a gap closer attack on a boss), so I'm not opposed to movement TOOLS. But forced movement into the boss's hitbox that your DPS is balanced around is a big no.

Now, Seraph strike as an instant cast GCD that is damage neutral with Glare and has no additional effects (e.g. no healing like Pneuma or anything) where it's just a side option that can be used as a movement tool for situations the WHM wants to move that way? I'd be fine with that. It'd be like how RDM has Engagement and Disengagement or NIN has Forked and Fleeting Raiju and simply uses the one they need based on their situation.

But something like Icarus or Aethereal Manipulation would be better options, imo, and don't interrupt the normal damage flow to use, as well as are more versatile tools.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

because melee would greed get a vuln stack then just force the healer to heal them harder rather than punish the person greeding the mechanic

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As a healer I’m fine with it.

More things to heal for me and we get more overall dps as a team.

You can pool stacks of sanctity, so you’d just hold it then dash in to aoe heal everyone from the spreads.