Healers in 5.0

[Kyohei]

I liked the very differences that each jobs brought within the healer role. If i wanted to purely heal i was going to WHM, if i wanted to buff and heal i used AST if i wanted to dps and heal then i was using SCH. It made healing interesting and never boring because of the play styles being very different. The changes they brought to healers in ShB is messing that up if not destroying it. If balancing means closing the gap between differences then it's really disappointing and a lazy approach. Yeah sure "healers need to heal" but that doesn't mean they had to downgrade variety for the sake of healing more. I wish they did as much change to SCH and AST as they did to WHM. That is, almost none, which is a very desperate wish because WHM really needed something more (like maybe get the aoe esuna from Selene and such...).
Also, if healers are going to heal then stop adding heal skills to every jobs smh. PLD, and RDM both have a healing skill, now you add the two new jobs GNB and DNC, plus SMN which was also granted aoe heal.

[Melichoir]

The thing we don't know is that with more tools, maybe managing heals will be more complex and engaging, and maybe you wouldn't have time anyways to weave all the DPS actions anyways. Heck maybe we will be taking more damage overall requiring you to heal more.

If we end up just pressing the 1 single target damage, or aoe damage spell all the time then yes I'll agree with all the doom and gloom, but if I'm constantly juggling all my heals spells and weaving in a DPS spell once in a while, then I'll be just fine.

Pretty much this. Healing/DPS on the healers and how engaging that will be will be dependant on how the game handles mechanics and the like. Simply looking at the skills and saying "Gonna be boring" is basing your judgement on how its been in SB, and not necessarily how these skills will fit into ShB.

[Raiya]

WHM get Dia to replace aero III for 720 potency over 30 seconds and Glare for Stone
link here

Dia is replacing Aero II not III the aoe version which is been deleted needlessly.

I'll be honest these changes are pretty much being universally panned across the board atm across multiple forums, WHM changes arent all bad and is the job getting seemingly getting off the least worst here but arent all great either, I seriously wish the Dev team were to reverse the decision to remove Aero III altogether, its been there since Heavensward and there's absolutely NOTHING wrong with it expecially since WHM has the least amount of button bloat out of the 3 healers as it is. AST changes are bad they're removing the DPS from Lord of Crowns and AST already had bare minimum as it is, the card changes are far from perfect I'm not disagreeing with the need to change them but the current version is nearly a coin toss as others have noted there's barely any difference between them. As for SCH it's literally "here we go again" with them they've gutted their entire offensive setup entirely, the only thing SCH really lacked compared to the other 2 jobs was a proper GCD AOE heal like Medica (the current one only had a barrier effect which when having 2 SCH was conflicting which wouldn't have happened if SCH had their own medica). I really wish the dev team would reverse the miasma changes entirely, take miasma from SMN altogether and give them something else to replace it and make Miasma SCH exclusive it's bad enough were losing miasma II AGAIN (It would have been better for SCH to keep Miasma II and have it upgrade to Art of War instead with better pot) but now we have a hole where Miasma 1 and 3 is on SMN and it looks wrong. Taking Bane is really bad as well, taking Shadowflare is also awful and it was already nerfed from a recastable spell to a oGCD spell making it impossible to move it.

Honestly the problem with the balancing of healers is there doesnt need to be complete balancing, WHM should be the best Burst heal, AST should be the best Buff healer and SCH should be the best DPS healer, but instead of balancing the jobs they've literally gutted them entirely that they might as well nearly be all glamours of one another and they've destroyed their offensive capabilities by making them all 3 buttons on all 3 that's what's upsetting so many people.

[Liam_Harper]

Eh, I'd be OK with that, so long as I was given cause to use said defensive CD's, If that fights are fun, that's what I enjoy not how many buttons I press.

This particular line disturbs me because these are exactly the sort of statements that filled WoW's forums as they pruned classes almost down to a single hotbar. That game is a sinking ship now. The players who wanted engaging gameplay simply left.

WoW did not make the fights more complex to compensate. Nor would Enix. The servers actually wouldn't handle faced paced intense combat anyway due to animation lock, server delay and the slower gcd.

Don't get me wrong, I'm happy with the majority of changes overall. Many dps and tank classes look fun with only minor nitpicks on one or two skills. I heal on WHM and their defensive toolkit looks decent. I'm sure their dps will be good too. But there will be downtime and I'm baffled how anyone can defend pressing 1 for 30 seconds, then refreshing Dia as a positive change.

[GrimGale]

I've leveled the healers to max level each expansion, done the quests and raided with them and alognside them.

These are my two cents regarding their treatment in the new expansion:

-WHM: White Mage has always been the simplest yet the most effective- Their class lore is about nature, healing and growth. This is mirrored in their abilities that allow them to restore health reactively by slowly building up stacks of healing. They are potent yet lack any utility besides healing and damage. As per 5.0 (and in 3.0) basically, this is no longer consistent.
-SCH: As counterpart of the White Mage, Scholars had the unique ability to prevent damage. They had unique mitigation skills in Sacred Soil, Adloquium and Fey Covenant. Scholar are by lore, Tactitians. They support their troups through careful observation, positioning and damage prevention. They are a preventive healer, reducing damage before it can even be dealt. Their fairy was charged of the reactive healing, topping off wounded allies that the shields could not protect compeltely. (In 3.0 this was somewhat consistent, though AST resulted to be a better mitigator.) In 5.0 Scholar seems to have shifted to a more reactive healer, being given a lot of regens and heals while reducing her shielding capabilities in terms of potency.
-AST: The one that threw the other two healers off balance. WHM and SCH completed each other in terms of gameplay- Astrologians had their own unique flavour with the cards. They were the one that had the least in terms of damage spells, but could supply that with its potent party buffs with her cards. The problem was, she could play both as a reactive and preventive healer. In fact, it seemed to dethrone SCH as a preventive healer with higher potencies on her shields. AST had its own gimick in the buffing aspect yet it was decided to have healing still be linked to shields or regens.

TL;DR :Basically, with the addition of Astrologian (who lacked its own healing identity) a problem arose: Identity vs Balance- How to make healers different yet equally as capable. In my opinion Astrologian still lacks its own healing identity and 5.0 has not yet solved that problem, if anything it has made it worse by removing healing uniqueness and simply stapling gimmicks ontop of the healers.

[BlitzAceRush]

This particular line disturbs me because these are exactly the sort of statements that filled WoW's forums as they pruned classes almost down to a single hotbar. That game is a sinking ship now. The players who wanted engaging gameplay simply left.

WoW did not make the fights more complex to compensate. Nor would Enix. The servers actually wouldn't handle faced paced intense combat anyway due to animation lock, server delay and the slower gcd.

Don't get me wrong, I'm happy with the majority of changes overall. Many dps and tank classes look fun with only minor nitpicks on one or two skills. I heal on WHM and their defensive toolkit looks decent. I'm sure their dps will be good too. But there will be downtime and I'm baffled how anyone can defend pressing 1 for 30 seconds, then refreshing Dia as a positive change.

Here's the difference, I was asked if I was OK with losing DPS options and just have defence CD's to use, I said yes, same as I'm fine with losing DPS options to gain healing options that's why I'm fine with the changes.
Your WoW example is flawed as in WoW they pruned EVERYTHING and it was across all classes not just healers.

Using healers as an example your "down to a single hot bar" claim doesn't hold as while they all lost skills it was all DPS/untility none of their heals which make up the bulk of their kits. SCH lost the most but that's only because of all the pets skills (They still lost the most but that makes the list look way longer) point is, trying to say "14 is pulling a WoW oh no!" Is disingenuous at best, flat out lying at worst, pruning some things and streamlining others dose not equal reducing all jobs to single hot bar wonders.

As for them not being able to change up the fights, we don't know yet, unless you have a crystal ball you'd like to share with the rest of us, but ultimate already shows they can make content more demanding, I'm not expecting or want normal content to be that hard, but it shows they can make it so.
So if they up the difficulty even a little, with us now having limited MP we could see healers simply focusing more on healing, of course we'll still have down time, but it's just that, moments to do some DPS and I'm fine with having a filler skill to throw in the time, again DPS is not what I play healers for, but will gladly throw my dot and dps spell when able, I don't need or want more than that in that department.

[Melichoir]

This particular line disturbs me because these are exactly the sort of statements that filled WoW's forums as they pruned classes almost down to a single hotbar. That game is a sinking ship now. The players who wanted engaging gameplay simply left.

WoW did not make the fights more complex to compensate. Nor would Enix. The servers actually wouldn't handle faced paced intense combat anyway due to animation lock, server delay and the slower gcd.

Don't get me wrong, I'm happy with the majority of changes overall. Many dps and tank classes look fun with only minor nitpicks on one or two skills. I heal on WHM and their defensive toolkit looks decent. I'm sure their dps will be good too. But there will be downtime and I'm baffled how anyone can defend pressing 1 for 30 seconds, then refreshing Dia as a positive change.

It dpeends on how they handle things. As a tank, if they pruned everything down to 3 skills, and it was just Press a button for a flat damage mitigation, that would be a problem. If they prune everything, but there are more indepth mechanics with how I handle mitigation, that wouldnt be a problem. It also depends on how the game handles content.

The issue, as I pointed out above, is a lot of people are looking at teh skills and screaming how boring its gonna be. They reach this conclusion because they assume how content will be handled will be identical to how it is currently. Until we actually play the classes in current content, losing your cool about how boring it will be is pointless.

[spf1200]

Yay another thread of people over reacting!

[SturmChurro]

Don't get me wrong, I'm happy with the majority of changes overall. Many dps and tank classes look fun with only minor nitpicks on one or two skills. I heal on WHM and their defensive toolkit looks decent. I'm sure their dps will be good too. But there will be downtime and I'm baffled how anyone can defend pressing 1 for 30 seconds, then refreshing Dia as a positive change.

As opposed to pressing 1 for 20 seconds and refreshing Aero?

[Rubiss]

Yay another thread of people over reacting!

Remember when healers were overreacting about WHM Lilies and SCH's lack of an AoE move and higher MP costs in Stormblood? How silly of them!