Lux Solaris, Star Prism, Etc

Am I the only one extremely frustrated that SE keeps doing this lol?

Casters keep getting completely random and powerful heals attached to skills that make 0 sense to have heals on them. This was already most apparent before with Summoner’s Phoenix. With absolutely no control over when Everlasting Flight is applied, you’d end up giving the entire party regen while they’re still at 100% HP lol. The window to use Rekindle is so microscopic there’s more chance of the planets aligning than of it actually doing something besides overhealing a tank.

Thing is, they’ve then made this exact same mistake twice on casters!

Lux Solaris is a party AoE available only after Solar Bahamut is summoned. Which means you only get to use it 120s, which makes sense, balancing etc.
Except you only have 30 seconds to use it lol . And as said above, though it’s a bit more easily leveraged then Lolkindle, you’re still going to be extremely hard pressed to find a time where you want to use an aoe heal in the middle of your burst phase lol.

Star Prism for Pictomancer has the exact same issue; the heal this time is attached to a literal burst attack lol, so there’s absolutely no way you could ever reasonably save it to use the healing component. Which begs the question, why the hell did they give it a healing component?!

My big brain ultimate fix: just make the buff that gives access to these skills indefinite duration. That way you can actually use the skills when they might be useful and not just randomly overhealing people during bursts.

Not sure if any other jobs’ skills work like this or if tacking on completely unnecessary healing to skills is unique to casters.

If they’re going to leave them the way they are just delete Lux Solaris, Everlasting Flight, Rekindle and remove the healing component from Star Prism.
Nobody wants skills that have random healing components for absolutely no reason that can’t ever be reasonably used to heal anyone lol.

Also increase the damage output of encounters by like 50% minimum, because there’s absolutely no need for dps to heal in a game where healing requirements practically do not exist lol.

Tl;dr: SE stop trying to pretend any of the jobs in this game are ‘supporters’, we all know it’s a lie. Giving random healing potencies on random skills does not make a job ‘supportive’ lol. Do something about these nonsense abilities

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Originally Posted by Connor

Lux Solaris is a party AoE available only after Solar Bahamut is summoned. Which means you only get to use it 120s, which makes sense, balancing etc.
Except you only have 30 seconds to use it lol . And as said above, though it’s a bit more easily leveraged then Lolkindle, you’re still going to be extremely hard pressed to find a time where you want to use an aoe heal in the middle of your burst phase lol.

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I’d really like it to activate with Sol, but then stay there until needed as long as you use it before the next Demi. It’s rarely ever needed when it’s up, and unlike Star Prism it doesn’t even do damage! At least Star Prism is still useful because of that.

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Originally Posted by Khryseis_Astra

I’d really like it to activate with Sol, but then stay there until needed as long as you use it before the next Demi. It’s rarely ever needed when it’s up, and unlike Star Prism it doesn’t even do damage! At least Star Prism is still useful because of that.

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I assume for PCT, its flavor. I would hope that no one on the balance team is looking at star prism like its utility.

The SMN one is a little more strange. It would make a little more sense if they could hold it longer.

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Originally Posted by Sequora

I assume for PCT, its flavor. I would hope that no one on the balance team is looking at star prism like its utility.

The SMN one is a little more strange. It would make a little more sense if they could hold it longer.

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It 100% is utility, PCT has a 5-9 GCD window they can put star prism in (as long as it consumes one stack of hyperphantasia and delaying it doesn’t push rainbow drip out of starry muse you can functionally put star prism anywhere during starry muse) and they like to put most mechanics during the burst window

If I was going to heal this expansion (I’m not) and my party had a PCT I would 100% be adding a indom potency heal the PCT is guaranteed to be using at a defined time into my healing plan

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

It 100% is utility, PCT has a 5-9 GCD window they can put star prism in (as long as it consumes one stack of hyperphantasia and delaying it doesn’t push rainbow drip out of starry muse you can functionally put star prism anywhere during starry muse) and they like to put most mechanics during the burst window

If I was going to heal this expansion (I’m not) and my party had a PCT I would 100% be adding a indom potency heal the PCT is guaranteed to be using at a defined time into my healing plan

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Isn’t that worse?

I don’t think it’s ok for them to tack healing onto burst skills then say ‘but it’s ok because we made an aoe go out the exact time you use your burst!’. Why even give us control over them at all in that case, they may as well be passive-auto-activate skills. It’s essentially creating an artificial reason to justify their uninspired and random design choices.

Personally I think if they’re going to add healing options for dps they should either give us actual control over when we use them or simply don’t bother with them. Not ‘here’s a window during your burst you can use this, better make sure you stand in an aoe beforehand so it’s not overheal!’

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Originally Posted by Connor

Isn’t that worse?

I don’t think it’s ok for them to tack healing onto burst skills then say ‘but it’s ok because we made an aoe go out the exact time you use your burst!’. Why even give us control over them at all in that case, they may as well be passive-auto-activate skills. It’s essentially creating an artificial reason to justify their uninspired and random design choices.

Personally I think if they’re going to add healing options for dps they should either give us actual control over when we use them or simply don’t bother with them. Not ‘here’s a window during your burst you can use this, better make sure you stand in an aoe beforehand so it’s not overheal!’

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Oh I don’t like it having a heal just to be clear I’m just refuting the idea that it’s not utility because it 100% is

Reply with quote is broken but yeah I do think the devs see this kind of thing as ‘utility’ rather than ‘damage’.

Frankly I also believe the devs have an extremely misinformed conception of what a ‘buff’ is. Like, for them, Regen or delayed healing is ‘buff/utility’; they honestly think Whispering Dawn and Excogitation are ‘buffs’ and not ‘just healing but takes longer’ lol. Which would be comical if true (that someone could misunderstand their own game so much lol). The fact they think Astrologian cards are ‘buffing the party’ and not ‘healing with extra steps’ kinda supports that though…

I feel like these abilities are mostly useful for soloing and if they happen to contribute positively in group content, great but not it's not going to negatively affect the rotation either way.

I think my most common theme on these forums is that not all abilities need to be useful in all situations.

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Originally Posted by Korbei

I think my most common theme on these forums is that not all abilities need to be useful in all situations.

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See, I personally disagree with this. I mean, obviously no ability can have absolute versatility and be perfect in every situation. But at the same time with such heavy limits to the amount of abilities jobs can have, I really don’t think it’s effective or efficient for them to create ‘support’ skills that have extremely limited uses in very limited windows, especially when they provide very little (Lux Solaris) or have an entirely different intended function (Star Prism).

Skills in FFXIV can’t be ‘niche but beneficial’; it’s very much very black/white ‘good skills’ and ‘bad skills’. Skills that provide healing that players have very little control over are simply bad. I just don’t see the point in them giving us abilities to support the party then making us pray someone happens to take damage at the same time you have to use it because of all the short time-limits on the access buffs.

I feel the same about Bard’s Warden’s Paean. Tf would anyone ever want Esuna on a Cool-down for? . Imagine if there was a cool-down on the actual Esuna spell - people would rightly call it incredibly stupid. I mean, what if someone fails a mechanic, someone fails, you Esuna them…then someone else fails. ‘Oh sorry guess you have to die’ lol. I don’t find that very fun personally. Because the entire point of it is to help recover from mistakes, but that point is rendered entirely redundant if you’re locked out of it by cooldowns after a single use. If they want it to work the same way it is they can either make it a gcd or just rework/remove it for something else. Likewise for Lux Solaris, either give us actual agency over when we can use it or just delete it for something else

And if we’re going to pull out the ‘they’re dps they shouldn’t have control over their heals’…. why give them any in the first place then? lol. If they think DPS need that much restrictions around that sort of thing why even bother with them in the first place? At that point just stop pretending ‘utility dps’ exist and just make them all pure dps

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Originally Posted by Korbei

I think my most common theme on these forums is that not all abilities need to be useful in all situations.

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Maybe not all situations, but they should be useful enough to justify their existence. (Can we mention Physick still being a shared SMN/SCH skill while our version of it is not linked to our main stat? lol)

Lux Solaris’ most useful moment is if I make a mistake and die, I get back up with Solar and then have Lux Solaris to help the healer top me off. Which isn’t really useful in solo situations either. lol

I constantly see moments where it could be useful if it hadn’t expired, like the multiple raidwides in a row in something like the current Ex1. But the raidwides that happen when Lux is available? The healers have those covered, and/or Picto just did Star Prism so everyone is already topped off.

I'm satisfied with Lux, but only because of how low phoenix sets the bar. 30s of wriggle room is better than none at all, and it's a more impactful heal with a stronger upfront component. It's a slightly more sensible decision than the thought process that went into the garbage EW rework, so I'll take the small win. Summoner healing went from 50% of your demis having heals (phoenix), to 75% of your demis having them (2 solar bahamuts and a phoenix), with the newer heal being much stronger and more controllable.

It's something I don't mind summoner having as they are already being taxed for raise. As long as that exists, they were never going to compete with real dps jobs anyway, so any extra utility beyond raise is stuff you're getting for free.

With picto on the other hand, I'd be concerned about the heal on star prism too. It competes directly with black mage, so any amount of dps you end up paying for that utility is too high a price to pay. Raise is the only utility in the game strong enough to be worth paying a tax for.

i made a post about the lux heal too its just very weird. should be able to hold the spell longer than now,

I don't mind as much because usually during burst windows there's damage going out, and at least for PCT, there's some strategy in when you'll actually use Star Prism based on where you can heal, which is kinda fun to figure out.

HOWEVER, the healers already have a lot of tools to use during those burst windows, so it makes Star Prism's heal a bit redundant unless your healers are really lacking. That being said, as far as support healing is concerned, I wish instead of Star Prism healing, we'd have a Cure in White ogcd with a 30s cooldown that consumes White Paint for AoE healing. You usually have spare white paint to potentially use for that anyway.