What was so wrong with stormblood healers that required they be changed?

I just don't get it. They had more involved dps, the larger number of dots helped keep damage rolling even if there was a healing-intensive spot, selene, eos and sects were still a thing.

If the dev team's really this hard-pressed to balance the jobs, maybe they should stop adding new ones or hire more people. If they don't have a dedicated healer main on the job balance team maybe they should get one or at least be concerned that they don't have one.

If I were to give my two cents on healers individually from Stormblood:

All Healers - [Protect] was ass glad its gone, but the rest was cool. I miss [Eye for an Eye] and [Cleric Stance]. I also miss having to genuinely care for my MP when AOEing and using my MP management tools correctly. Right now, the only way I ever feel pressed for MP is when I had to literally spam Cure III / Succor for like 30 seconds or something.

White Mage - Aero II at 18s and Aero III at 24s dot duration were bliss. The shorter dot duration on Aero II also helped with weaving Assize, Tetra etc. early on before we had 1.5s cast on filler spells and Afflatus spells. White Mage was solid, just maybe for the time it lacked a bit of dps-efficient healing which is why it wasn't as favoured (Afflatus spells right now are like this).

Scholar - SB Scholar is probably labeled one of the best healer designs the game had, even when the Faerie had a bit of clunk tied to it. Between tossing 24s [Miasma], 30s [Bio II], an alternate instantcast for [Ruin II] doing more dmg (12s [Miasma II] with high MP cost), Bane for dot spread, shadowflare... you had a lot of DPS tools without having to resort to Energy Drain to express your damage mastery of the job.

Even mitigation and heal wise, Scholar was an absolute banger. The Faerie felt impactful and could be used even when you hard-casted [Broil II] or [Miasma], Quickened Aetherflow gave some nice leeway on your AF management if not straight up be a 4th AF and [Excogitation] felt absolutely busted at the time. I badly miss the 4.4-4.5 state of this job.

Astrologian - now, while I definitely liked the card system way more than any iteration of Shadowbringers onwards, I absolutely hated two things about it: 1.) AOE [The Balance] was borderline busted, considering with a bit of luck you could bring it out every minute. 2.) RNG aspect is fine for me, but having three DPS buffs and three non-DPS buffs tied to a single cooldown meant some awful inconsistency. But instead of axing it all for Divination they should have instead had something like "Diurnal/Nocturnal Draw" and split the card sets. Otherwise, job was a banger.

Input is from someone who mains tanks but liked SB healers a lot, so make of it what you will.

Tbh SB was the start of the decay in the job designs while some reached their pinnacle such as Bard, others such as Drk got gutted.

For healers. It was not rosy, but still far better than the current state at least for at least ast and sch. Whm had a better dps kit true but was even worse in many aspects than today

Whm got ruined in SB and did need changing as the devs made a completely worthless lily system and took 10+ abilities from it that should not have been taken away. It effectively needed to be rolled back to HW and the dev responsible smacked upside the head. That should not have got off the drawing board.

The other healers had a few issues, but they stemmed from the devs starting their horrible "pure healer" experiment the game is still stuck in. It was also when we started learning how poorly understood and cared for healers are in the job designers. "Whm doing less healing than sch" and logs proved it was doing more dps AND healing because whm was so badly torn apart.

Examples of other healer issues in sb: removing energy drain and ANY AOE from sch, Ast's unable to weave cards at all with the removal of stella and combust 1 until both got addressed in patches. Ast had 1 button spam unfortunately and I hated it.

This is why healers advocate for HW style healers. Because they were the overall best.

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Originally Posted by Recon1o6

Tbh SB was the start of the decay in the job designs while some reached their pinnacle such as Bard, others such as Drk got gutted.

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Forgive me going off-topic, but I want to say that everyone likely has their own take what was good and what was considered "gutted".

Personally I'm glad DRK ended the way it did in Stormblood, for the most part at least. The good things we lost were absolutely Blood Price optimisation for more MP, Dark Dance and some more active damage tools like Low Blow (that were also tied to a stun, though that's more of a bad thing).

The problem with HW DRK, or at least I see it as such, was the Parry Engine. On paper sounds engaging, the problem is it requires DRK to have #1 enmity as much as possible so parries can start coming in. DRK was also reliant on the boss to have both physical attacks (for parry engine) and magical attacks (INT-down Delirium, Dark Mind) to get the most value. Stormblood boss design had bosses with dominantly physical busters and fights with no physical attacks at all, meaning Parry would have not worked there for the old Low Blow / Reprisal procs.

That's why TBN got created, both to make the Retaliation parts work regardless of enmity and regardless of damage type.

I also enjoyed the higher frequency of Dark Arts, though it was a tad much and skills like Syphon Strike having a DA modifier was a bit overkill for weave timing. The addition and interplay of Blood was a very welcome addition. Sad they shafted it this bad in Shadowbringers.

Too hard for the poor Sylphies to handle their One Major Nuke and Two Dots.

I started this game at Stormblood. Despite my financial troubles at the time, I got WHM to level 70 and SCH to level 50. Never really mastered either job, but I enjoyed both. Though the WHM lily system and Fluid Aura could've used a rework at the time. If we combined the WHM STB kit with the current lily system and a reworked Fluid Aura, I believe it would have turned out great. My opinion though.

I disliked SB healer at first.
But now, I think it was a correct middleground.

They only needeed tweaks here and there.

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Originally Posted by KDSilver

I disliked SB healer at first.
But now, I think it was a correct middleground.

They only needeed tweaks here and there.

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There are things SB did that were healthy and effective directions to move into from HW. Largely, it was the removal of old Cleric Stance that was the right move. It was too much of an ultimatum, and I don't agree that it created the engagement some players thought it did. Beyond that, though, AST was the only job that felt like it really grew. SCH's DPS tools were hit a little too hard, although they were still largely fine, and WHM felt stagnant.

In short, it was a mixed bag, but it ended up feeling good to play in the end for the most part.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

There are things SB did that were healthy and effective directions to move into from HW. Largely, it was the removal of old Cleric Stance that was the right move. It was too much of an ultimatum, and I don't agree that it created the engagement some players thought it did. Beyond that, though, AST was the only job that felt like it really grew. SCH's DPS tools were hit a little too hard, although they were still largely fine, and WHM felt stagnant.

In short, it was a mixed bag, but it ended up feeling good to play in the end for the most part.

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I think the biggest problem with the removal of Cleric Stance wasn't that the ability itself was well-designed. It had problems. It was sticky, it essentially locked you out of non-flat healing for two GCDs, we all know why it wasn't great. The problem with Square removing old CS was that they took something jank that added a little risk-reward and engagement, and instead of improving upon or replacing it, they just entirely deleted what little engagement was gleaned from it. I consider CS removal part of the downward spiral for the role because it was in the first "wave" of "don't improve engagement, just delete it!" horrible design philosophy that the role has eaten over and over ever since.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

I think the biggest problem with the removal of Cleric Stance wasn't that the ability itself was well-designed. It had problems. It was sticky, it essentially locked you out of non-flat healing for two GCDs, we all know why it wasn't great. The problem with Square removing old CS was that they took something jank that added a little risk-reward and engagement, and instead of improving upon or replacing it, they just entirely deleted what little engagement was gleaned from it. I consider CS removal part of the downward spiral for the role because it was in the first "wave" of "don't improve engagement, just delete it!" horrible design philosophy that the role has eaten over and over ever since.

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I don't look at CS as a part of that, but rather the statement on WHM's design from the developers. Transitioning into HW, Healers felt good. WHM and SCH both got good things that expanded upon their gameplay, mostly. AST was wonky at first, but they listened and worked on AST making it really strong by the end of HW. WHM fell behind, and the community had a good idea of what was needed to continue building on the healers. WHM needed a way to contest against the buffs that AST provided. SCH's Dissipation felt useless and counterintuitive to how SCH was supposed to play. And AST needed some of its card jank worked on, such as making it so you couldn't redraw the same card.

What I see as the downward spiral was the complete and utter rejection of these ideas largely starting with "WHM is a pure healer." It was the "you don't know what you want. We know what you want" mentality. That was the moment they decided WHM was the beginner healer and wasn't allowed to have anything that wasn't a flat heal, DPS button, or mitigation button, gave it the most laughably inconsequential gauge mechanic, and a terribly designed capstone in Plenary Indulgence. A chunk of it's unique tools were moved to role action tools and nothing took their place, and WHM now became the joke healer/baby's first healer.

SCH got gutted, though had some of that gutting restored quickly into SB. Dissipation was not changed or removed, and they added Dissipation 2 in the form of Aetherpact. Chain Strategem is good, but SCH was not the healer that needed party buffs. It was already the strongest healer and was supposed to be the attacking healer who otherwise doesn't need to supplement offensive with buffs. Excogitation was the only really good thing SCH got.

AST felt like it actually grew, but still hand clunk. I believe Redraw still could result in the same card. It took a few patches before The Spear got updated from the hard to use and kinda messy cooldown reduction buff it used to be. The Spire felt more useless than ever because TP management become far more consistent, other than royal roading it. Minor Arcana was a great tool, but the inconsistency of pulling The Lady meant it largely felt unhelpful. Sleeve Draw was unique but created problems when you'd end up with cards you didn't want in your Spread specifically since you couldn't Minor Arcana them. It felt fun to play, but it was wonky at the same time.

The real problem is the devs care too much about the vocal minority, so they change things to please the "crowd", but the silent majority actually enjoy the current design.

The result of this, as in every other popular MMO, is the constant "dumbing down" as time goes on.

Just look at the last WAR change, why did Upheaval need its resource cost removed? Because managing 20 points was too difficult for some. It was considered clunky.

I watched a few videos from heavensward about scholar and white mage. I understand their motivation even less, surely they must be able to tell the difference between then and now, to see what they’ve inflicted on the role? HW scholar looks like it’s what they should be aspiring to, and they were already there. HW white mage is more coherent too.

Could it be any more obvious that the lead dev wants to stand in the bad and be catered to? I don’t think it’s particularly healthy that the media tour people are so sycophantic either, surely one of them could have voiced concerns?

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Originally Posted by Halfgeeek

The real problem is the devs care too much about the vocal minority, so they change things to please the "crowd", but the silent majority actually enjoy the current design.

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I'm sorry but no, that's just not the case at least not for the major expansion changes.

You tell me who asked for WHM to get more raw healing throughput in Stormblood. Please link me one thread that suggested clicking AST's cards off be removed and that we get undraw instead.

Meanwhile: We've had threads practically begging for WHM to get some kind of raid buff pretty much since HW - Ignored.
Requests to change dissipation into something less jarring for years - Ignored.

I could go on for days with various suggestions that have gained significant traction but fallen on deaf ears.

Importantly though, there have been occasions where SE have seemingly listened to the 'vocal minority' and at least in the case of healers, it's generally worked out well:

Lilys (eventually)
Plenary
Cleric Stance
Lilies potency bump for Endwalker
SB AST launching with no way to remove cards nor click them.

Again, there's tons of examples but these are the sorts of things that people have asked for and SE have responded. For healers at least, these cases have generally worked out well even if they shouldn't have happened in the first place.

The core issue here isn't that SE are listening to the wrong people. It's just that they seem to either be oblivious to how the role actually plays in game, or they are just so understaffed that they don't have the manpower that it needs to properly flesh out and tune the role. (My assumption is the latter fyi)

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Originally Posted by Reinhardt_Azureheim

If I were to give my two cents on healers individually from Stormblood.

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basically agree with most of this. I would say though that Asts cards could have been so much better if they were just tweaked slightly.

If TP was actually a finite resource to be managed instead of borderline infinite for example Spire would have been a much more usefull card than just aoe fodder.

the same could be said for Ewer if it actually worked.. but what it was was an mp refresh that had zero effect on blms drks or any job that could actually use it... had it actually worked it could have opened up jobs to more flexibility. extended a blms fire phase for more damage. allowed a dark to be more agressive with dark arts or whatever it was,, it could have made jobs play just a little bit more dynamicly and less rigid.

would have been much more fun..

4.0 SB healers (well most 4.0 jobs) were probably the best theyve ever been.

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Originally Posted by Dzian

basically agree with most of this. I would say though that Asts cards could have been so much better if they were just tweaked slightly.

If TP was actually a finite resource to be managed instead of borderline infinite for example Spire would have been a much more usefull card than just aoe fodder.

the same could be said for Ewer if it actually worked.. but what it was was an mp refresh that had zero effect on blms drks or any job that could actually use it... had it actually worked it could have opened up jobs to more flexibility. extended a blms fire phase for more damage. allowed a dark to be more agressive with dark arts or whatever it was,, it could have made jobs play just a little bit more dynamicly and less rigid.

would have been much more fun..

4.0 healers (well most 4.0 jobs) were probably the best theyve ever been.

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*4.1

4.0 SCH was arguably the worst state any job has ever been in to the extent that was pointless even in fluff content like dungeon roulettes.

Healer aoe was so strong that they did more than most DPS big reason why it got gutted
Holy,assize,Aero 3
Gravity and Earthly star
bane and Miasma 3
all insane in SB

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

*4.1

4.0 SCH was arguably the worst state any job has ever been in to the extent that was pointless even in fluff content like dungeon roulettes.

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SB in general would have been a better choice than 4.0 I guess

overall yeh i'd say that 'SB in general' was the peak, because on the one hand i think WAR 4.1 was the pinnacle of 'tank gameplay', but at the same time DRK got 'actually kinda playable' fixes in 4.3 like making shadow wall 120s instead of 180

and yeh, SE does seem to listen to certain crowds too hard for stuff. Like again, 4.2 WAR changes (IR now gives 5 guaranteed crit fellcleaves), because people complained that 'its not fun when you do your opener and nothing crits'. like yeh no shit, that's how openers work, sometimes you pop off and sometimes you hit like pool noodle. the constant move towards 'make stuff guaranteed to crit/dhit' to reduce crit variance is going to sterilize the fun from the game i fear, i feel nothing when i hit primal rend or fell cleave and it direct crits, because i know it's guaranteed to. but if i'm on DRK and my shadowbringer dhit-crits, or double down, or confetior, my monkey brain goes 'ooh big'.

imo we should have never have even had dhit as a stat, they should have seperated crit into crit rate and crit strength, that way they could have opened up build diversity for some classes. SB BRD procs are based on when your dots crit? 'crit rate for more procs vs crit strength for harder hitting crits but less of them' becomes a potential playstyle choice. yes some math eggs would work out that 'oh well you see if you use this build over this one you actually get 0.4% more damage on this fight' but does a game really have to be designed around that? SB SAM was great because you could build zero skillspeed or like 2800, and both builds were within like 1% of each other

oh right this is the healer section, uhh yeh i made the mistake of levelling WHM first in SB before moving on to become a tank main and getting into raiding, lilies bad, many dots on sch good, balance fishing bad but the 'fix' of making every card 'balance but crap' is not the play, #JusticeForFluidAura, healers having SB dps kits with EW healing toolkits would probably be close to the ideal situation. not perfect but we have to work with what we're potentially able to get here. any concerns about 'what about button bloat' can be solved with 'why do we need 14 tools to do 'heals in an aoe' on each healer' and some clever application of combining similar tools as upgrades. for example, why not just add medica 2's regen effect to medica 1 as a trait instead of having 2 seperate buttons? why are cure1/2 not traited upgrades? for AST, same for benefic and helios/the aspected variants. why is horoscope a skill instead of just a trait that upgrades, idk celestial opposition to also 'heal at the end of it's regen effect for 400p' would be my suggestion? assuming you dont use a GCD to power it up because that's a dps loss, horoscope heals for a measly 200 potency, its sad.

if we were given a number for each healer of 'here is how many skill slots we need to reclaim via deleting skills, combining skills, etc', i reckon i could get 4 spaces for each healer sorted easy. if we assume the devs are comfortable with the amount of buttons SAM has now, my hotbars have 32 keybinds used for SAM and role skills (LB and pot are on seperate bar to side, they wont be counted in this example as this is true for every class for me) PLD also has 33, but that includes Shield Bash. So i'll assume 32 to be the 'comfortable amount'. So:

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-WHM is currently at 29 for me, meaning adding up to THREE more actions would be possible without even deleting anything else. having cure1 upgrade to cure2 at 30, and medica1 into medica2 at 50 instantly buys us two more slots, for a total of five. also can we get lower level stuff back as low level versions of current things, like divine seal > temperance, or protect > aquaveil? this would help newer players to build the habit of throwing out aquaveils at later levels

-SCH is currently at 31 for me, but the fairy summon button is off on a seperate hotbar because i click it once and it's done, no need for keybind for it. this one is a little harder to condense, but the obvious thing is to have physick upgrade to adlo. i think i'd have lustrate upgrade to excog at 66, meaning excog would have a 1sec CD. this should be fine because it's gated by aetherflow, and if someone wants to spend it all on excog, more power to em i guess. i'd also personally say it might be time to retire energy drain, as it's been kneecapped into oblivion and is such a pathetic potency, if we can get shadowflare back by sacrificing energydrain, i'm making that trade. so that'd be 3 more slots, bringing us to 28/32, meaning we can add 4 skills

-AST is at 31 too. No, Undraw is not on the bars. this one has the whole card thing to keep it busy though so im guessing SE will justify keeping this one's dps rotation a bit less stressful due to that. regardless, benefic > asp.benefic and helios > asp.helios are 2 easy slots. horoscope as a trait on something else is another. for example, change CO's regen from 5 ticks of 100 to 3 ticks of 150, and after pressing CO have the button change to a 'detonate' button like how earthly star works. Detonating the HOT while it's ticking instantly heals for the remaining amount of HOT healing. Letting the HOT expire naturally will proc the additional horoscope heal of, say, 300 (halfway between base and primed horoscope is now). we could also remove synastry if needed, but even without doing that, the 3 suggestions above would bring me down to 28 like SCH, meaning we can add 4 skills comfortably.

-SGE is at 29 like WHM, but the idea i have for it is too long for this already-an-essay post

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tl:dr sorry for long i dont know how to make a collapsible quote window, but the point is, 'but the hotbar space' issue is fairly easy to solve

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

tl:dr sorry for long i dont know how to make a collapsible quote window, but the point is, 'but the hotbar space' issue is fairly easy to solve

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I mean if we're talking about Hot bar issue for AST I can honestly say: there is nothing added in EW that I needed.

Now, that isn't to say that I hate Exaltation or Macrocosmos. I love them and would actually like to keep them. But did they needed to be added? No. (I would also like to add here Neutral Sect didn't need to be added in Shb and arugably shouldn't and the Sects should have been an in combat toggle but I am enamoured with the idea of stance dancer AST so... take this with a mountain of salt) and on that note don't know why they didn't do it anyway because isn't that technically what Kardia is for SGE?!

That said, I am more in favor of removing other skills from AST's kit to keep them because I like the theme of delayed healing they have. (regen/delayed healer if I can't have stance dance diurnal/noct)

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Originally Posted by Halfgeeek

The real problem is the devs care too much about the vocal minority, so they change things to please the "crowd", but the silent majority actually enjoy the current design.

The result of this, as in every other popular MMO, is the constant "dumbing down" as time goes on.

Just look at the last WAR change, why did Upheaval need its resource cost removed? Because managing 20 points was too difficult for some. It was considered clunky.

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It wasn't clunky, it simply messed up their rotations. Wouldn't have if Heavy Swing generated 5/10 beast gauge instead of 0

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Originally Posted by fulminating

I just don't get it. They had more involved dps, the larger number of dots helped keep damage rolling even if there was a healing-intensive spot, selene, eos and sects were still a thing.

If the dev team's really this hard-pressed to balance the jobs, maybe they should stop adding new ones or hire more people. If they don't have a dedicated healer main on the job balance team maybe they should get one or at least be concerned that they don't have one.

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I ask myself this all the time. Ast was perfect in stormblood days. The job was so busy managing migi or regens, mp management, combust 1 and 2 dots and playing around with all 6 cards. I was not that ast that just gonna aim for balance cause entitled people only wanted that card. When mp management was a huge thing ewer was nice for me when I wanted more mp after lucid. Bole was nice in light pt stuff to help dps trash. blm love u for arrow to save ley lines. spire was ok for ninja but garbo when they remove tp. spear was godly as it actually buff crit base. Balance that all love meh ok.

I almost felt had 0 time to even use a malefic when it was 2.5 seconds with how much i had to do with dots hots or migi and card playing. Now yeah since shb..barely would accept ast since this seals garbage we have. they buff noct stance nicely which was why i kept on ast but ofc ew killed it now making it another better whm clone and as a noct lover sage fits me as i love instant migis. I barely play the game atm and do other games if not working and am just waiting on re4 remake ff7 remake part2, crises core remake and finally star ocean 6 lol.

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Originally Posted by IceBlueNinja

snip

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While I dearly want my cards and noct sect back and agree with most of what you say here, I do have a slight disagreement on perfect

Ast in SB had the major problem of it being 1 dot 1 nuke dps (plus no weaving until 4.3) It sucked and it was the one thing I hoped for going into shb on ast that would be improved other than making noct equal to diurnal. I wanted ast to get another dps button or 2. Nothing strenuous, but enough to stop me finding every damn fate a chore.

Playing as Ast in a solo duty, overworld or potd/hoh sucked because all you could do was spam malefic between card draws.

Remember combust 1 and 2 were combined in SB, stella and cross class were gone.

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Originally Posted by Recon1o6

While I dearly want my cards and noct sect back and agree with most of what you say here, I do have a slight disagreement on perfect

Ast in SB had the major problem of it being 1 dot 1 nuke dps (plus no weaving until 4.3) It sucked and it was the one thing I hoped for going into shb on ast that would be improved other than making noct equal to diurnal. I wanted ast to get another dps button or 2. Nothing strenuous, but enough to stop me finding every damn fate a chore.

Playing as Ast in a solo duty, overworld or potd/hoh sucked because all you could do was spam malefic between card draws.

Remember combust 1 and 2 were combined in SB, stella and cross class were gone.

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AH sorry didnt got to experience HW ast so may have missed some stuff here and there. I started playing this game on SB release. But yeah playing solo with ast... in solo instance is pretty miserable, where I had no choice at times but to use whm in stormblood days before sbh since it had aero 2 and 3 at least with assize to boot.

Stella wasn't used though. I didn't even have it on my hotbar for the most part. The only instance where I remember actually needing it was A3S. Heavy was and could be a really unique form of utility that could be used to greater effect, but the utter lack of commitment to making it important meant there was no need for Stone I, Stella, and the like. CC in general has a lot of completely under utilized potential, and I feel the fear is that people won't know to use it properly, but how could they when the designers refuse to integrate it into fight design?

We have Repose, for example, and there's not a single instance of it being useful outside of what... deep dungeons? Repose seemingly is stuck on our hotbars because one Shadowbringers healer role quest demands you put enemies to sleep and it's easier to just ignore it than rework that quest. Why not have adds in bosses that are invincible for 20 seconds and putting them to sleep allows the party to ignore them until the invincibility wears off? Or stuff like that? Attach a buff dispel to Repose and allow it to work double duty as a way to remove defense buffs Savage bosses apply to themselves. I'd be down to see Heavy return as well if we actually took advantage of it, but they just won't do something like that.

SB? Nah, it's been downhill ever since HW which was peak healer gameplay.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

Stella wasn't used though. I didn't even have it on my hotbar for the most part. The only instance where I remember actually needing it was A3S. Heavy was and could be a really unique form of utility that could be used to greater effect, but the utter lack of commitment to making it important meant there was no need for Stone I, Stella, and the like. CC in general has a lot of completely under utilized potential, and I feel the fear is that people won't know to use it properly, but how could they when the designers refuse to integrate it into fight design?

We have Repose, for example, and there's not a single instance of it being useful outside of what... deep dungeons? Repose seemingly is stuck on our hotbars because one Shadowbringers healer role quest demands you put enemies to sleep and it's easier to just ignore it than rework that quest. Why not have adds in bosses that are invincible for 20 seconds and putting them to sleep allows the party to ignore them until the invincibility wears off? Or stuff like that? Attach a buff dispel to Repose and allow it to work double duty as a way to remove defense buffs Savage bosses apply to themselves. I'd be down to see Heavy return as well if we actually took advantage of it, but they just won't do something like that.

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Idk about anyone else but I got a lot of mileage out of stella in POTD, especially on my single attempt at a solo run on ast (and in 3.1 to boot...it was a mistake)
I also used it for weaving since ps3 and how the game handles lag meant my cards were clipping very hard.

I wanted it to get a buff tbh

as for repose, I still wonder why its not a duty action since they are so determined to remove crowd control and instead get silence or something idk. Its useful in delubrum savage i suppose

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

We have Repose, for example, and there's not a single instance of it being useful outside of what... deep dungeons? Repose seemingly is stuck on our hotbars because one Shadowbringers healer role quest demands you put enemies to sleep and it's easier to just ignore it than rework that quest. Why not have adds in bosses that are invincible for 20 seconds and putting them to sleep allows the party to ignore them until the invincibility wears off? Or stuff like that? Attach a buff dispel to Repose and allow it to work double duty as a way to remove defense buffs Savage bosses apply to themselves. I'd be down to see Heavy return as well if we actually took advantage of it, but they just won't do something like that.

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Repose annoys me so much because it's just Sleep but worse. It offers literally no benefit being ST except being 200 MP less, which is a complete nonfactor. A healer cannot even use Repose to attempt to salvage a large pull gone wrong, so literally what is the point? Get rid of it and rework that one SHB healer role quest. Free up a slot for the healers.

What was wrong with White Mage in Stormblood? This trait WHMs got sums it up I think:

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Secret of the Lily II

Grants a 20% chance that Asylum or Assize recast time is reduced by 5 seconds upon healing critical HP with Cure or Cure II.

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RNG behind RNG for casting a spell you try to avoid to reduce the cooldown of Assize by a whole 5 seconds...

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Originally Posted by Tint

What was wrong with White Mage in Stormblood? This trait WHMs got sums it up I think:



RNG behind RNG for casting a spell you try to avoid to reduce the cooldown of Assize by a whole 5 seconds...

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"How can we give WHM a gauge without giving WHM a gauge? WHM players can't handle gauges."

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Tint

What was wrong with White Mage in Stormblood? This trait WHMs got sums it up I think:



RNG behind RNG for casting a spell you try to avoid to reduce the cooldown of Assize by a whole 5 seconds...

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Zoinks. And I thought Freecure was a bad deal…

Indeed, it such an issue that in 4.5 which they actually buffed whm, something they noted they usually try to not do before a new expansion. Assize was basically super buffed there, healing and damage from 300 to 400 and then cd reduced from 60 to 45 seconds. There also their old traits from arr and hw.

Overcure was Grants a 15% chance that after casting Cure II, your next Cure III will cost half MP. Buff duration: 15 seconds.

Esuna had a 20 percent chance that it would be free.

And Medica had a trait where each cast Grants a 20% chance that Medica will cost half MP.

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Originally Posted by Nizzi

Repose annoys me so much because it's just Sleep but worse. It offers literally no benefit being ST except being 200 MP less, which is a complete nonfactor. A healer cannot even use Repose to attempt to salvage a large pull gone wrong, so literally what is the point? Get rid of it and rework that one SHB healer role quest. Free up a slot for the healers.

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same with esuna 95% worthless until a few dungeons like troia and that dungeon where meteion talks alot

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

I think the biggest problem with the removal of Cleric Stance wasn't that the ability itself was well-designed. It had problems. It was sticky, it essentially locked you out of non-flat healing for two GCDs, we all know why it wasn't great. The problem with Square removing old CS was that they took something jank that added a little risk-reward and engagement, and instead of improving upon or replacing it, they just entirely deleted what little engagement was gleaned from it. I consider CS removal part of the downward spiral for the role because it was in the first "wave" of "don't improve engagement, just delete it!" horrible design philosophy that the role has eaten over and over ever since.

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but also they gave us a 5% dps buff cleric stance in stormblood and people litterally did not use it. I remember static members of mine telling me it wasn't worth taking. That says something to the devs also.

edit: Yes I was the person who didn't take esuna or protect but did take cleric stance. not sorry about it.

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Originally Posted by Zolvolt

but also they gave us a 5% dps buff cleric stance in stormblood and people litterally did not use it. I remember static members of mine telling me it wasn't worth taking. That says something to the devs also.

edit: Yes I was the person who didn't take esuna or protect but did take cleric stance. not sorry about it.

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What's also horrid is that WHM didn't have Ruin 2 or the fast GCD Malefic during Stormblood. Clipping your GCD to Cleric Stance was a loss on the job that originally had it. *shakes fist*

What was wrong with HW/SB healers ? they were different jobs and SE had to balance them. The guy that did that probably left and nobody wanted to do it.

ShB was supposed to be a reset of healers to "build upon". So far with EW it was not.

Unless you want to be hopeful that all healers were 1 job, now they're like 2 (kinda), so maybe 7.0 will have them split again into 4 distinct jobs ; but the ShB "base" seems so flawed and almost no feedback went anywhere.

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Originally Posted by Calysto

What was wrong with HW/SB healers ? they were different jobs and SE had to balance them. The guy that did that probably left and nobody wanted to do it.

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We've had 1 person leave the job design team at some point around 2019/2020 (Tsuyoshi Yokozawa) who was replaced to keep the team at 4. Outside of that the team is still essential the same 4 people we've had since ARR.

I'm pretty firmly of the opinion that what enthusiasm this team had for the healer role is long gone. Thus we get little but cut and paste abilities with very little effort made to synergise or reinvigorate our core gameplay loops. Name some completely new and original healer specific ability that truly hit the ground running without requiring multiple painful reworks to shape it into something decent? It's surprisingly tricky really... Earthy Star? Macro Cosmos? Expedient? Excog?

There are plenty of abilities like Lilybell that come close as well, but for these almost the entirety of the rest of our kit either feels like a cut and paste of something prior (With some being particularly egregious such as Temperance) or launched in a laughably dismal state and required an extended game of hot and cold before they got to the point of being somewhere between usable and decent.

This stark lack of attention to detail and polish across the role has been a running theme since forever really. It should have been painfully obvious that 3.0 AST wasn't going to work in Gordias. It should have been painfully obvious that 4.0 SCH wasn't going to work in anything outside of the solo MSQ and so forth.

SE keep making these mistakes and promptly refusing to learn from them or take steps to ensure a better standard. IMO the blame lies squarely at Yoshida's feet by now. He has no time for healers and it's shown for years in his interviews. I'm confident that healers will remain in this weird state until he stands down as lead.

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Originally Posted by Zolvolt

but also they gave us a 5% dps buff cleric stance in stormblood and people litterally did not use it. I remember static members of mine telling me it wasn't worth taking. That says something to the devs also.

edit: Yes I was the person who didn't take esuna or protect but did take cleric stance. not sorry about it.

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I am the opposite loved protect but did no use cleric stance at all in stormblood or esuna tbh lol. 14 is the only ff where esuna only has like 5% use. Blue mage healer stance exvu makes it such a meme which is like old selene of sch heard she had a haste and aoe esuna. I wonder why healers dont get a haste spell . I dont really count lightspeed or presence . I mean a haste for all the healers even if it must have a 2 min cd like rescue.

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

SE keep making these mistakes and promptly refusing to learn from them or take steps to ensure a better standard. IMO the blame lies squarely at Yoshida's feet by now. He has no time for healers and it's shown for years in his interviews. I'm confident that healers will remain in this weird state until he stands down as lead.

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I've never seen developers that are simultaneously too unaware of glaring issues yet too eager to overcorrect something that isn't broken or particularly problematic. They waste a lot of development time and resources "fixing" easily avoidable problems that they've created themselves.

I'd want another major change to overall job design if we were to bring back a haste buff tbh. There are so many jobs that -really- don't want skill/spell speed. A temporary speed up out of the blue just screws up their cooldown alignment. This is even more true now that we're on Mr. Two Minute Burst's Wild Ride.

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Originally Posted by VentVanitas

They waste a lot of development time and resources "fixing" easily avoidable problems that they've created themselves.

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'lets make it so everything lines up at 2mins'
'oh bother, now PLD doesnt do good damage because it's built around doing sustained damage, how do we fix this'
'uhhh make it burst at 2mins like the rest of them by reworking it a bit'

if we didnt have such a strict 2min fiesta, more 'sustained' damage could be a viable damage method for healers. say, a healer that has several dots?