A serious suggestion in lieu of punishing all healers.

[Cyrocco]

What though - Give WHM what
I know you weren't being serious but you make an interesting point. Basically all 3 healers are currently WHM baseline - only 2 of them have added extras.

And coming up with what could make White Mage unique is probably going to be the biggest step in actually balancing the healers. I'd briefly like to refer to another thread:

Kei Sato, Takashi Kawamoto, Hikaru Tamaki, Tsuyoshi Yokozawa

And last but most certainly not least. FFXIV's battle system design team.

As it is now, we have a total of four people who need to work on each Job for each expansion, a big question like "How do we fix an entire role?" is probably very difficult to answer with such a small team, at this point, I feel pressuring SE to increase this roster would lead to a far happier outcome than continuously suggesting healer changes.

--

If this is true, this is the best and easiest compromise that would require the least amount of development time to not only create a "basic healer" for these people but also separate the WHM SCH and AST jobs as those for people who do want different mechanics and interesting things to do instead of just heal. Each one could then have their own flavor.

While I could get behind the idea of making Conjurer a more traditional healer, doing so wouldn't actually fix anything for White Mage, which is likely why people are bringing up the balance between the three healers. If recreating Conjurer puts SCH, AST, and WHM in a state similar to what they are now in Stormblood, Scholar and Astrologian come out very much ahead, given that nothing has really happened to shift White Mage up or down in power, and SCH and AST have been very much brought in line.

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Honestly, SE's interpretation of AST is exactly what brought these balance issues up in the first place. The fact that they could do either, Shield or Regen, as well as buff virtually assured their spot in the raid.
Then the question is, which is weaker, WHM or SCH? The weaker of the two gets replaced. This design failure is 100% on SE and they have no real plan on how to fix it.

This is where trimming should have happened first really, Astrologians changes shouldn't have focused on changing and revamping the card system. By leaning so heavily into the Sect system, it makes it -much- harder to detangle what each healer should be. And with the new skills we're left with what- a buffing White Mage that can cast shields? A buffing Scholar that can cast large Regens?

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Let's be honest everyone, right now Astrologian is playing with everyone elses toys, and isn't sharing its own. Astrologian needs to seperate from the other healers, and White Mage can't just continue to be Astrologian without buffs, and Scholar without shields or a fairy.

[Ilyrian]

Presence of Mind giving a group wide haste when used.

Ok. Which is better: damage buff from AST or Haste from WHM?
Numbers will be crunched. I'd say it would be the AST buff.

[Deceptus]

Ok. Which is better: damage buff from AST or Haste from WHM?
Numbers will be crunched. I'd say it would be the AST buff.

That's the thing with numbers, they can be adjusted for balance.

WHM desperately needs some sort of raid utility.

The next discussion would be: Would the damage from Ast and the Haste from WHM be better than the crit from SCH.

Consistent damage is always better than RNG damage

[Cyrocco]

Ok. Which is better: damage buff from AST or Haste from WHM?
Numbers will be crunched. I'd say it would be the AST buff.

And this would be the case, if Astrologian still had access to a Spread Balance and if Divination weren't on a three minute cooldown.

It was very tough to beat Astrologian when you could possibly pull a full minute of +5% raidwide damage.

[althenawhm]

Ok. Which is better: damage buff from AST or Haste from WHM?
Numbers will be crunched. I'd say it would be the AST buff.

Yeah, there would be some attempt at balancing it, it is disingenuous to not say that they would try.

[Ilyrian]

That's the thing with numbers, they can be adjusted for balance.

WHM desperately needs some sort of raid utility.

I agree - but in the unlikely event that one of those buffs doesn't emerge just flat out better (and I'm pretty sure it would be the straight damage buff) that only brings WHM up to equal with AST, it doesn't tackle the problem of a fixed place for Scholar in the party makeup.

It would be a start *if* it was balanced but, again, it is very unlikely unless it is exactly the same as AST which would kind of make the argument a bit moot.

[Ceasaria]

This is where trimming should have happened first really, Astrologians changes shouldn't have focused on changing and revamping the card system. By leaning so heavily into the Sect system, it makes it -much- harder to detangle what each healer should be. And with the new skills we're left with what- a buffing White Mage that can cast shields? A buffing Scholar that can cast large Regens?

--

Let's be honest everyone, right now Astrologian is playing with everyone elses toys, and isn't sharing its own. Astrologian needs to seperate from the other healers, and White Mage can't just continue to be Astrologian without buffs, and Scholar without shields or a fairy.

And this is why SE really gave us a bad excuse about no 4th healer.
They added a 4th tank for better balance, but they can't for healers ?

So they have chosen 3 healers to embrace the pure & shield form (and they failed again because WHM has no shields) instead of doing 2 healers pure and 2 healers shields.
They completely gave up on their initial idea of ARR where their was complementary between pure and shield type healer.

Because we have seen it for years, Nocturnal AST is far from SCH.
Their exist solutions, and it's not evident for Noct AST to exist, but the best move would have been to remove it honestly.

We would have 2 pure healer (WHM, AST) and 2 shield healers (SCH, ??)
It would have been really easy to balance that and keeping fun + identity of these jobs.

[Sanctify]

Taking this to the extreme you could just remove WHM.
Balance nightmare over. Shields and HoTs for days. Give them both a fancy Wings cooldown - job done - ty ty.

Get rid of the staple healing job since FF conception lol yeah right xD

[Bahati]

Some people just want to heal, how is that controversial? If you want your opinion to be respected, you should respect the opinion of others.

[Deceptus]

Some people just want to heal, how is that controversial? If you want your opinion to be respected, you should respect the opinion of others.

Because

1) Before ShB you were ignoring a significant portion of your kit (DPS). WHM's especially. Holy is an on demand, zero CD Hallowed Ground that is available every single trash pull that does significant damage.

2) And in doing so you were losing out on mitigation. Dead mobs do no damage. The faster they die, the less overall damage they do.