The Healer Double Standard

[LariaKirin]

Great questions. I speak of SCH because it is my favorite job of the three, the one I played most and the one I know best.

Is a kit with more buttons and lower potencies better than a kit with higher damage and fewer buttons?

How many DPS options are required to make an entertaining kit?

Neither, because I don't think a small or big number of buttons makes the kit "better".

Let me give an example: let's say we give SCH 5 new dps buttons - five different dots (let's say 30 sec duration each - but make them variable if you think that's more interesting), each adding up to a total of 290 potency to make them preferable over Broil. Are you pressing more buttons? Yes. Will you play SCH?

How many DPS options are required to make an entertaining kit?

Not an arbitrary number of abilities, but specific types of abilities. What I think is actually more entertaining - real options, choices and trade-offs.

Examples:
- Energy Drain was good - option between healing potency and damage potency, a trade-off. You would actually choose to exercise this option depending on the circumstances.
- HW Cleric stance was good - option between healing and damage, a trade-off with a punishing refresh timer. Obviously the MIND/INT internals were stupid - but say you nerfed potencies accordingly and reworked it into a +X% damage/-X% healing stance.

- Miasma was bad. You didn't get to choose whether you used it or not - it was simply better than Broil and acted as an occasional Broil replacer. The dot tracking point is moot, because after enough play time you would simply refresh it without thought. I think one dot is fine, because it has neat interactions with buff windows and boss phase transitions. More than one I think is just button bloat.
- Shadow Flare was bad. On-cd maintenance ability, barring few circumstances. It had a neat interaction with Soil, but it made no difference. It could be good if it were reworked to an actual choice between Soil and Shadowflare.

With that in mind, let me give you an option. Take our current kit and add either HW Cleric Stance or the 5 dots in my previous example. Which would you choose? Which gives you more options?

Would people accept a kit that required more work, if it gave us generally the same DPS output as now?

It depends. I'd personally say yes, if it means actual choices and trade-offs. Energy Drain? Yes, please. Something that interacts with the fairy gauge or Aetherflow? Yes, please. Miasma back? No, thanks. The 5 dots? No, thanks.
It'd also say no in the case of one healer requiring more work than the others for similar results. I noticed alot of preference for complexity, but just take a quick look at the state of SMN and AST. AST is a special case at the moment because it's undertuned, but I don't see the majority of players jumping on the AST wagon if optimal card play would merely bring its contribution equal to that of SCH.



The following are just some points I'd like to make related to the issue:

SHB SCH is in a much cleaner state if your goal is to balance the healer jobs and expand upon them in the future. The ACN relics we had before were an obstacle for the long term future and I'll gladly take the changes (except Energy Drain, it needs to come back in some form) if it means there's a chance we get meaningful choices in the future.

Content is interesting, not the number of buttons. You could have 100 interesting buttons, but Sastasha will still be a chore. So will each and every dungeon.
And eventually, so will Savage. 2 buttons or 100 buttons, once you know the content so well that you mapped your GCDs for the entire fight, you are on auto-pilot. Content is designed to keep you entertained for a while - your 100th auto-pilot clear will continue to be a chore so long as content continues to lack randomized elements that actually make a difference. To give an example: what if the tethers in Titania would randomly pair any two players regardless of job?