[Opinion] Why I'm disappointed by most changes to healers.

[Taika]

At least, if you could provide some link that "we are not even supposed to be clearing any OS yet", I would be glad.

Here:

Yoshida: Yes. Since all DPS jobs will be increasing up through level 60, it makes sense to have the white mage's DPS extend by a proportional amount as well. For development, such as with Bahamut's Coils, the development team assumes what the item level should be for general equipment on players when they clear a raid. They sum up the basic DPS for four DPS and tanks at that assumed item level and cut that by about 10-15% for the minimum clear DPS. Healer DPS is not taken into account when this is set.

Certainly for people who are at world's first level, their goal is to clear it at as low an item level as possible, lower than the one assumed during development. So if you look at the fight and figure out that if it's not numerically possible to clear with four DPS and tanks, you'll need to make up the gap with DPS from healers.

Source: https://www.bluegartr.com/threads/12...-Event-5-19%29

So when you're saying "fights aren't balanced for healer DPS", remember they're not also balanced to be beaten without it at the item level available to players when they are released, and by Yoshi's own admission this gap has to be filled with healer DPS.

The healer being at the top of their game means that they should be dealing with as many allied mistakes as possible, following the outline I laid out above.

But this play style you're advocating means the healer is playing extremely ineffectively, not using or even throwing away all the resources they have to boost the party DPS (through not boosting their own healing with cooldowns so they can DPS more, and also not doing DPS themselves and not boosting their party members' DPS either, causing the fight to last longer). How much wasted DPS does this play style cause, and how many team members and how many times would the healer have to rescue (in a way that wouldn't be available for the healer if they hadn't been saving their resources / not DPSing) to make up for it in a situation when things would go wrong (when they often won't or at least shouldn't)?

[Sebazy]

As you start moving away from perfection, Spear becomes less and less useless. Eventually, you reach a point where it changes from negative to positive.

You're neglecting to address the elephant in the room here.

Namely that the content you're tackling needs to either have an enrage timer generous enough to allow these kind of artificially prolonged encounters (Aka your RM 4 mans) or that you overgear it sufficiently to the point where it's utterly trivial for even a couple of good players to carry the run whilst you raise spam the rest.

In the case of the first example, that's even more niche than the old PI, and frankly, in the 1 or 2 situations where old PI was good, it was significantly more impactful than old Spear could ever be, but that usage case was far too narrow to be acceptable in the end.

In the case of the second example, I'll argue that you're putting lipstick on a pig here. If you've thrown away all your MP on raises and HPSing squishys through tank busters, you'll get a more immediate hit of MP pocketing an enhanced Ewer. If the content hits hard enough that you need healer or tank cooldowns back sooner then it's a pretty safe bet to assume that it's also got an enrage timer that you're not likely to be able to beat in this situation (Not to mention, most tanks will quickly settle into a routine of pacing out their CDs rather than mindlessly mashing them as they pop, there's a very good chance they will flat out ignore your spear to carry on with their trusted CD rotation).

Lastly as a side note, as you slide that mistakes slider further to get 'value' out of your spears, I'm inclined to suggest that by that stage, the people in that group quite simply don't deserve the clear. 'Rewarding' them with a clear for play that bad is doing both the community and those players a disservice, frankly it'd be better for all if they endured a couple of wipes in order to get their level of play up to a more acceptable standard. This is where I'd be looking at coaching rather than carrying TBH.

I don't know if somehow my writing is just prone to misunderstandings, or if people just aren't reading carefully enough. Maybe a combination of the two.

In my case, it's because whilst I dabbled in AST for Gordias, 50/50'd it for Midas and played it almost 100% of the time for Creator, as well as countless primal farms, kills for a friend, quality traps and comedy PFs, I never once saw a situation where I felt that spearing myself for a cooldown reduction offered more value than the alternatives on offer.

It also doesn't help that you come out with some choice clangers:

However, many healers will sacrifice MP sustain, either direct (Lucid Dreaming, Lightspeed -25%, etc) or indirect (buffing allies, etc), in order to increase their own DPS.

Using Lightspeed to increase your own DPS? The only way I can see this working is to pop Lightspeed and do your healing on the hoof allowing you to click it off and start DPSing the moment you're in position I guess? That'll gain a GCD, maybe 2 in some cases? That's a pretty minor gain for such an important cooldown and it'd make a lot more sense to use swiftcast. Please tell me that you realise that DPSing with Lightspeed up is a very significant DPS loss?

On AST, I have virtually never encountered that issue. Or didn't, when Spear was still -20% cooldown. If I fished for Spear/Ewer constantly, I could keep my MP up through insane usage rates.

You'll get significantly more MP return from fishing for Ewers than you ever will from a Speared Lucid Dreaming. It's also critical to note that you'll get the Ewer MP almost immediately, whereas you won't see the benefits from that early Lucid until a minute and a half down the road. Spearing Draw is a false economy as you'll see better gains across the encounter by simplifying and streamlining your card process so that you can consistently draw and then use or dispose of a card either side of a GCD. Spearing CO is also a false economy IMHO, COing Lucid+Ewer will get you a full MP bar from pretty much nothing, whereas COing Lucid+spread balance and a tank regen is pretty much the holy grail of healer utility as things stand.