5.2 Liveletter

[GrimGale]

1. We heal too well for the content we are given
2. Healing too well gives us a lot of downtime
3. That downtime would not be considered terrible, as in fairness, we have it in Stormblood too, but in Stormblood we had more to do in said downtime (though I prefer HW and ARR as an example of when healing was fun)
4. By stripping us of our DPS skills that down time can get incredibly boring
5. AST would be the one with a saving grace here in having their cards still but the changes to cards for many feel as though the system is now less impactful and mediocre


Those would be the core of the issues, there are other issues but the above is what has people's knickers in a twist.

On paper it looks like the design philosophy is that they wanted to move healers away from DPS and to focus more on healing. But by making healing pretty OP, they've made DPS a bigger focus and by stripping our DPS abilities our focus is dull as Heck.
It boils down to one of the following to be done:
1. nerf healing to push healers more (the Blue Mage solution, their healing is less significant, but is more engaging as a healer)
2. Adjust the content to make full use of our healing toolkit and reduce our downtime significantly
3. Fill our downtime with non-healer stuff to do like DPS


The 3rd option is the most popular as it doest raise the skill floor for less experienced healers, respects current playstyles, is the simplest for the devs to implement and is how things worked before. And at least it means when healers have to do solo content, it won't be dull. And the bonus, if they want us to heal more on certain content, they can just by making that content take advantage of our healing abilities. That's because the content and healing skills are what determines a healing or DPS focus, rather than the DPS skills you have.

I kept saying a good solution would be to implement the third point. It's almost there in fact.

We all agree Healers should have different identities when it comes to their gameplay, but require a similar basic set of abilites to manintain balance.

Now we have that but the often neglected part of healer identity is how they deal with healing downtime.

Ast fills it with cards, great! Now focus on making the card and buff system interesting again.

Whm fills it with dps, good! Now focus on making the dps interesting! Weave options, proper dps rotation, damage and healing effects tied together.

Sch should fill it with a debuff system that mirrors Ast buffs. Rather than enhancing allies, SCH would weaken enemies! AoE stratagems, Data gathering, weakness exploits, tactical advantages and so on.

[Saefinn]

I kept saying a good solution would be to implement the third point. It's almost there in fact.

We all agree Healers should have different identities when it comes to their gameplay, but require a similar basic set of abilites to manintain balance.

Now we have that but the often neglected part of healer identity is how they deal with healing downtime.

Ast fills it with cards, great! Now focus on making the card and buff system interesting again.

Whm fills it with dps, good! Now focus on making the dps interesting! Weave options, proper dps rotation, damage and healing effects tied together.

Sch should fill it with a debuff system that mirrors Ast buffs. Rather than enhancing allies, SCH would weaken enemies! AoE stratagems, Data gathering, weakness exploits, tactical advantages and so on.

Very much this. And as a SCH I feel they've missed a trick with this. 2.0 SCH had debuffs tied in with the DPS skills. I feel like they should have evolved from that point to make SCH better at it rather than remove the debuffs entirely. One thing I've already argued is that I think Blue Mage in dungeons has demonstrated how debuffs can be useful in a dungeon without being game breaking. One of the problems from 2.0 SCH's debuffs is they weren't always noticeable for the effect they're supposed to give and of course got resisted by bosses. But I think it'd still be accepted if bosses didn't resist them but instead it affected their autoattacks but not scripted mechanics.

The suggestion I had was to reutilise Selene as a utility faerie, but focus on her having debuffs or a new system of debuffs. But your talk of exploiting weakness makes me think SCH could have 'libra'. Thinking on my feet, perhaps when Selene is summoned "Libra" replaces "Summon Seraph" and we have access to additional and stronger debuffs themed around gathering data about weaknesses and exploiting them.

I think it would work, because if this is designed to be what we do in our downtime, then SCH isn't really needing to utilise these extra healing abilities and instead could be replaced with something more useful with the added bonus of not needing to add anything new to your hot/crossbar (except maybe 1 skill if you've removed one of your faeries)

And when you need that healing efficiency, back to Eos. New/less experienced/less skilled players could rely more on Eos as to not raise the skill floor.

And I agree with a proper rotation for WHM, WHM's advantage of providing DPS could be interesting. I feel it's appropriate for WHM given I feel it is the Black Mage of healers, powerful heals, powerful attacks to match the might of Amdapori in the war of the Magi. Dia and Glare should be separate skills as part of a rotation and not as upgrades of Stone/Aero. Maybe give WHM a proper water spell at last.