To healers enjoying 5.0: a gil for your thoughts?

[Donnicton]

One of the re-occurring arguments I see against healer changes in 5.0 is that a lot of healers feel their job somehow became less complex or interesting because their DPS was consolidated to fewer buttons instead of being spread out over a bunch of different dots or single target affects. I suppose I'm in another camp regarding this as I actually would prefer if other jobs followed suite; It's silly to me that Paladin's Royal Authority combo needs to be spread out over three buttons that I am always going to hit sequentially in the exact same order when they could have very easily been a single button that I hit three times. Samurai's offensive Kit could only take up 3 spots on my bar instead of 9. Dragoon wouldn't have to be a mess.

What I'm seeing from healers is the initial shock (and sometimes anger) that so much of their kit appears to be trimmed down and assuming this means their DPS was neutered, and then coming to accept the changes as they stick with the job to find that the gameplay they were used too has not actually changed that dramatically. The finesse of a Green-DPS is not in needlessly complex combos like a Red-DPS, but in managing your DPS moves with keeping your party alive and responding to enemy mechanics. That gameplay is still there and so I'm still very much able to enjoy healers.

tl;dr: More buttons doesn't mean the job is more complex.

I've only started this game in the last couple of weeks, but my non-ast favorite so far is Gunbreaker which seems to have three separate buttons dedicated to a combo that's only available once every 30 seconds? Like, oookay Square is that really necessary

It's still not as bad as having 6 buttons dedicated to maintaining a 6% damage buff, but yeah there's some definite button bloat in this game and slimming some of it will certainly not 'dumb it down'.

[CountReavyr]

Saw this and typing up a response just to say I put my opinion out there on the internet.

Just started really levelling AST (75 now), it's always been the only healer I truly enjoyed and honestly?
I do miss the old card system, I do, BUT as skeptical as I was about this one, it's been strangely enjoyable hunting Seals. Imho a perfect world would be a snazzy combo of the two but I'm not even gonna pretend I know how they would and could be done.
AST's healing feels even more enjoyable, took me a sec to get used to the Regen durations (I have to play the game now ;; ) but otherwise it fills as fine as it did. Celestial Intersection is slowly becoming my favourite button cause it fills that small little desire I had.
I hope to see the Seals be used more in the future, near or far, and for the moment I'm happy enough. I will be pleased if the old system comes back, even in a shadow of itself, but I'm not gonna be miserable if this is how it is now.

AST still feels fun and unique, even if dumbed down a bit. I'm comfy with what's going on so far and I'll put my trust in Squenix.

[NorthernLadMSP]

Thus far, I have WHM at 80. I have always loved WHM, and I actually love it even more now. The changes they made to Indulgence and how lilies operate plus the addition of the new lily heals/attacks is great. I have no complaints at all other than the fact I wish the Afflatus skills were oGCD.

I have SCH at 77 and while I love the visual appearance of the Bio and Broil upgrades, plus all the new heals, I find there to be some glaring issues. As I suspected, throwing out DPS now is a bore. It's literally two buttons unless you are doing AOE and then it is one. Art of War is way too MP costly. Aetherflow only in battle is annoying for no apparent reason. And while I'm not level 80, I don't really understand the point of Seraph if her abilities are mostly exactly the same as the normal fairies.

As for AST, I do enjoy the new AST in PVP, but haven't touched it in PVE and I'm not sure if I will.

[Orbus]

I think misery, at the least, should be off the gcd.
Then using it really would let you break even instead of putting you 300 potency of damage behind.

But then WHM is already leading on healer damage and I think only the most hardcore savage raiders would *really* have a problem with losing one gcd of damage once every few minutes on the already lowest damage set of jobs.

[coppersloane]

I think the uptime on healers being the In-Demand role in DF speaks for itself, and I'd wager that some adjustments are incoming. I've seen a number of detailed responses explaining what people dislike and wish to change, but (from briefly skimming) I've mostly seen one-sentence responses in favor of the changes. I don't see a lot of discussion about the exact details of positives to our changes (SCH and AST in particular), just broad general opinions. I'm personally in the camp of feeling like my main job just dumped me and doesn't want me to play it anymore due to these changes, but I don't want to demand changes that make people who ARE enjoying the healer jobs to feel this way either. To that end, I want to ask people who're enjoying healing in 5.0 to give us the precise details, so that the rebalance of this rebalance gets better for everyone. So, those of you who are enjoying 5.0 healer jobs... What're the details that you most like and why?

I like that there's nowhere to go but up now. That's pretty much it. And if they leave us where we are instead of improving us, the number of healers is going to drop so low they'll really be up a creek with balancing the experience.

[Marianno]

My stocks on clusters have been brimming to full since these healer changes. I've been able to stockpile clusters and gil to my greedy hearts' content. So am I enjoying the healer changes, well...yes. I can get more clusters to satiate my greed >...muahahaha! Not too mention, I've been making a killing on the market. This is great for someone who doesn't craft.

[Gravagar]

...It's silly to me that Paladin's Royal Authority combo needs to be spread out over three buttons that I am always going to hit sequentially in the exact same order when they could have very easily been a single button that I hit three times. Samurai's offensive Kit could only take up 3 spots on my bar instead of 9. Dragoon wouldn't have to be a mess.
...
tl;dr: More buttons doesn't mean the job is more complex.
...

The first point is something I've been enjoying about RDM. The first thing I thought when I unlocked (pre-Shadowbringers) Impact was "wow! this job had great flow, and this unnecessary proc button totally ruined it. Well, I'm not planning to do anything serious, so... I'll just macro Impact onto Jolt II, because there's literally 0 reason for me to use Jolt II when Impact is up" (<- Experienced RDMs, correct me if I'm wrong, that's just my educated guess.) I'd love to see more changes like how Verflare and Verholy stopped wasting hotbar space, as did Scorch. I hope, moving forward, they do give static combos like Paladin's or Dragoon's combos single-button condensation like you mentioned. I like it in PVP, I'd like it in PVE.


That does sort of bring me to something I consider with healer button removal. Complexity vs Depth. Complexity is how much work you have to do to do something, depth is how many (valid) possibilities you have to choose from. For example, a DRG combo has complexity (you have to press numerous different keys, it's "harder" than pressing one key), but low depth (there's 2 possibilities, the disembowel combo and the full thrust combo). If you start your full thrust combo then pull out a random WS from the disembowel combo out of nowhere... You played poorly and got poor results. In some cases, I think it's using needless complexity to mask a lack of depth. To bring it back on topic, combining SCH's dots does (I begrudgingly admit) make sense in terms of decreasing complexity while maintaining (most of) the depth. I can't say the same about Aero 3's loss, though... Something I would like to complain about, however, is that Bane added a little more depths to maintaining your dots, and that bit got removed.



Energy Drain's a great example of how complexity AND depth have both been lost by having fewer buttons. Now that it and Bane are gone, your aetherflow stacks are for HP management only. That's a lot of complexity gone- all your choices pertain to a single goal, but you have some depth in which option you choose. However... What do you do when you've satisfied your party's HP management needs by using other tools, like spells and the number-one identity marker of a scholar, the fairy? We definitely lost depth, because the answer to that is "sit on 'em". I think that's losing more than just complexity, especially since they're on a time-limited use-it-or-lose-it system. I felt similarly to the fairy gauge having only a single use in the last expansion. It didn't feel good to sit on it. I'm glad that we have an alternate use that covers a different, interesting situation's needs. I'm just disheartened that other parts of the kit got the opposite treatment.

[Warkupo]

@Gravagar

I think you get my point very eloquently. I find DPS jobs to be kind of boring after their initial impression because a lot of them do just boil down to "hit this sequence of buttons in this order" but never ask me to really make a decision. I could quite easily write a script to play most of them and I'd probably parse higher just because my script wouldn't get bored and stare at my television instead of playing the game. Healers and Tanks by comparison often make decisions about when to utilize their abilities, which I find more engaging even though their rotations are much simpler to execute.

I find Energy Drain an interesting point of conversation; My assumption is that SE decided to remove Energy Drain and Bane as it encouraged Scholars to make sub-optimal decisions: 'Good' healers do respectable DPS after all, and so they shouldn't need to waste free damage unto healing. I know from experience that the "common" scholar gets into this habit of just blasting through their Aether with Energy Drain (and maybe a Bane if we're lucky) and then not having adequate healing later on when they need it. SE seems to have originally thought to give Green-DPS options for when they are soloing, and then correcting when they realize we are a DPS by nature and we are only really keeping people alive because it allows us to hurt things. They removed Cleric Stance because of that lack of foresight, and it looks like Bane and Energy Drain are gone for the same reason.

SE's game design goal aside, I also just don't really consider Energy Drain to be much of a DPS gain, and I would argue that it is often a DPS loss. If you consider every GCD spent healing as a GCD you could have been using to cast Broil, Energy Drain could either be a 100 potency attack or a 600 potency heal. You're essentially sacrificing 2 GCD down the road that could have been Broil to have a 100 potency attack NOW. Obviously the decision of when to use it is a quite a bit more nuanced, but generally speaking in content that matters it was usually better to hold onto Aether stacks for healing... so that you can hurt people more, which is our true purpose. I do like Energy Drain as a concept of course; The decision to use your charges for damage or healing is an actual decision with actual consequences that rewards knowing a fight and knowing the capabilities of your job, I just don't think the numbers made it a good trade-off most of the time, so removing it doesn't feel like a great loss to me.

[Schan]

@Warkupo, @Gravagar
Yeah... i can tell you two don't really main DPS if you think it's just pushing a sequence of buttons, there's no decision making and your definition of "depth" is RNG. Every job has some form of decision making to it. They are all different types of decision making though.

In a way I like the fact they want healers to heal more. On the other hand I don't like the way they decided to do it so far.

Energy Drain isn't just about the dps it was also MP management. now your mp management decision making has been reduced to... press lucid when it's out of cooldown. only WHM has another direct way to manage their mp. AST has lightspeed but i don't think people really use it for the mp management... it's more for the fact that it makes most of your casts instant.

The card system is growing on me. Again... it's a different type of decisions you have to do with this one. However, I don't like how sleeve draw literally forces you to sit there and play with cards for way too long that it acceptable for a healer. if you have a paper tank that paper tank will die while you're fiddling with the cards.
Personally Sleeve Draw gives me tunnel vision and I forget the tank exists. That single skill literaly debuffs the player.

If they want us to use more GCD heals they need to move the OOMPH heals to GCD. stop making every oGCD heal the OOMPH heal. give us one for the "oh s---" moments and that's it. The way things stand now our GCD heals are like a drop in the ocean that is the Tank's HP. Seriously the amount of times i have to resort to Benefic 2 spam after blowing every oGCD up is too high (granted that's the tank's fault). Benefic 1 feels useless and Benefic 2 heal spam is not good for your MP.

With that said I don't personally mind that AST's way of playing right now which is stacking all the weak heals over time. It's a nice concept... just wish they were a bit stronger so i didn't have to stack LITERALLY EVERYTHING so the tank can live / I feel comfortable healing or making the switch to dpsing.
They do need to do something about nocturnal AST though. the potencies are pitiful across the board and it's even more noticeable on nocturnal stance

[Cherub]

Okay so I got my WHM and SCH to 80 and I am currently in the progress to get my AST to 80 as well. Just reached 75. So here are my thoughts so far.

WHM: I don't think WHM changed much from its previous incarnation anyway. It feels the same in its core gameplay, nothing really was taken away but Aero III (Which is sad still). The new lily system is way more amazing than I thought it would be, I love afflatus nuclearbomb. Plenary Indulgence, I thought I would hate it, turns out I don't. I did like the old Plenary a lot and I think I still prefer the old Plenary, however I am also really liking this Plenary indulgence so I dont really mind at all. WHM just feels good to play, healing with Afflatus specifically feels rewarding and DPSing feels rewarding too. Finally I feel like WHM can make up for that no offensive utility that they do not provide unlike AST and SCH with their toolkit. It feels good and rewarding. Would I change anything on WHM? mhhh not really. I see people asking for Afflatus spells becoming oGCD. I'd take that yea. Don't think it's neccessary though.

SCH: Oh boy SCH. I know many people are dissatisfied with SCH. Hear me out. I love the way SCH can heal now. There are so many oGCD options SCH can use, it just feels great if you can actively plan your CD's for heals and so on. What does not feel so great is that 1) that healing mostly isn't required anyway and 2) it sometimes feel clunky. There are specific things that shouldn't be.

When the Seraph timer is about to run out, say 4 seconds left, and you press Whispering Dawn, there is a high chance that Whispering Dawn will go on CD and Seraph will just vanish without executing it. This shouldn't happen ever.
Seraph not being able to utilize the gauge, she can't use Fey Blessing or Union. I get that she has consolation but yikes.
After you use dissipation, any aetherflow stack usage doesn't build fairy gauge and we have nothing most of the time to use those stacks on anyway. The 20% heal buff also doesn't affect Aetherflow spells so it's very underwhelming.
Fey Blessing, lowish potency, 1 minute cooldown and 10 gauge cost? Could you possibly restrict this more?
Fairy needs a gods damned potency buff. 4 years ago the average embrace was like 2.7k and now it's at 3.1k. I get that they're not supposed to be too strong but at this rate the embraces feel like they do the utmost minimal. No wonder, the embrace barely changed but the tanks HP pool is now at 110k.
It'd be nice if Recitation would make adlo instacast too but thats minor. The tooltip is also misleading, it says the next heal will be ensured to be a critical hit but indom nor excog are not guaranteed to crit. It doesn't specifically state that they won't crit and only the no resource cost part applies to them.
Broil III sfx are too much for me to handle. Also, Energy drain needs to come back.

I like how Aetherflow charges are now used for healing only HOWEVER there is like no damage to use them on. What do I do with them then? I need the MP from the next Aetherflow but I still have 1 or 2 stacks left. Give me something to use them on please.

AST: I have troubles keeping the tank alive in dungeons when they masspull. MP management seems bad, even in single target DPS situations my mana bar seems to deplete super fast. Healing potencies are low, the heal nerf to Collective (bubble, dont remember the name) was unneccessary and uncalled for. The change to the other Collective spell (the one that used to stun) does a minor group heal. So underwhelming, they absolutely destroyed an amazing spell and made it something really mediocre at best. It just feels so weak, celestial interaction is pretty cool but the potency is so so low. The new card system, yea I get that the balancing here is nice but for the first time ever I find myself wanting old Ewer and Bole. Do I want the old card system back? Not really but I am sad about the lost RNG utility that we'd pretty much only use in emergencies (Ewer after a death). Do I like the new card system? At first I hated it, now I don't mind it. it's simple and easy to use and also feels rewarding. I think 3 minutes for divination is kinda long but at the same time I highly welcome that CD because it allows me to just minor arcana the cards and use them rather than forcing me to actually think about it.

Generally: There is one thing I didn't mention up until now and that is DPS. Now let me elaborate, I don't afk, in fact, you can look up my logs and you'll see I did fairly well on WHM in Alphascape savage. I don't mind DPSing. Am I one of those people that say healers should heal and not DPS? Yes kinda but also no. Healers should heal and not DPS but there is another layer to it. I heal what is neccessary to be healed. The rest I DPS and that is 100% fine with me. If there is an AoE going out and no other incoming damage, I put up an Asylum and let it tick and DPS away. And it feels great to do that because it feels great using the minimal amount of resources required to fully heal everyone up while adding to the DPS. That is what a healer is to me. I wish we would be forced to heal more but right now we aren't. That doesn't mean I don't DPS. So what exactly is my problem you may wonder? It's a bit weird to explain.
I feel like DPSing on a healer has gotten out of hands at this point. There is no variety in our DPS toolkits anymore and since I played WHM before, I don't even really minded it too much. I do heavily miss Energy Drain on SCH though now that I am actually playing it more again. My problem is the insane mad focus on DPSing. Previously I felt like it's okay to sacrifice Stones for healing GCD's but now apparently most healers don't even want to clip their GCD's anymore with oGCDs. I was told that the perfect SCH rotation is that you only use oGCDs only after Biolysis which is twice in a single minute. AND ITS TRUE. I feel pressured into DPSing more than ever and using healing skills feels bad because they hurt my DPS. We can now keep up with Tank DPS and that's great, don't change that, buff Broil III pls thanks but this adds another layer of keeping up with the DPS. They said healers will become more healing focused and right now the absolute opposite of that happened. Taking away our other DPS tools narrowed down the possibilities and ways of us doing damage. DoTs in particular were powerful here because the DPS loss for clipping or simply using GCD heals wasn't terribly high. This has become more DPS focused than ever before. The level of it being too extreme. The DPS """"rotation"""" is braindead and simply consists of spamming 1 button and another button twice in a minute. And that is what you will not press most of the time but actually all the time, like nearly 100% now. Healing doesn't feel good anymore, it feels like I'm doing something wrong because I clipped my Broil III with an oGCD.

Anyway, please don't jump me, I wrote this at 3 am and I may regret this post right after I post it but I do want my thoughts to be heard even if it's just one person reading this.