Healer dps is unfairly boring

[Saefinn]

How is SCH's niche the fairy. Like, I guess I get it, we have a totem that we can place and it sorta helps us heal but its not exactly a key part of our gameplay. Fairy Gauge barely matters as it is and we could essentially get the fairy skills as regular skills and SCH would not be different gameplay wise from any of the other healers. (Well maybe we'd have less delay on those fairy abilities)

Truly, the only exclusively unique thing that SCH can do that the other two healers can't do are Chain Stratagem, Recitation and Deployment Tactics.

I'd say what made SCH unique were her debuffs. Virus, Eye for and Eye and Chain Stratagem. And I think its a part of its identity that has been forgotten.

I mean, why not both?

I feel faeries are as much SCH's niche as their former debuffs. Micromanaging them mid cast to try to maximise your efficiency to patch the fact SCH's healing potency was low for me was very much a part of what Scholar was to play, you could AI, sure, but micromanaging was pretty important for efficiency because AI couldn't maximise your potential here. Other jobs don't have and didn't have that kind of micromanagement, but now it feels less important because they're treated more like oGCD's.

Granted these are 2 things that are now lost. But one of my suggestions was to integrate some debuffs into Selene instead and make her more of a utility faerie, as she was intended to be but instead of deleting her, give her more uses. Heck Selene's version of Seraph could be different and themed around it (I suggested 'Libra' in the post I said this in for a system about finding and exploiting weaknesses).

And like Selene, I feel like instead of deleting, they could have improved the debuffs instead.

[GrimGale]

I mean, why not both?

I feel faeries are as much SCH's niche as their former debuffs. Micromanaging them mid cast to try to maximise your efficiency to patch the fact SCH's healing potency was low for me was very much a part of what Scholar was to play, you could AI, sure, but micromanaging was pretty important for efficiency because AI couldn't maximise your potential here. Other jobs don't have and didn't have that kind of micromanagement, but now it feels less important because they're treated more like oGCD's.

Granted these are 2 things that are now lost. But one of my suggestions was to integrate some debuffs into Selene instead and make her more of a utility faerie, as she was intended to be but instead of deleting her, give her more uses. Heck Selene's version of Seraph could be different and themed around it (I suggested 'Libra' in the post I said this in for a system about finding and exploiting weaknesses).

And like Selene, I feel like instead of deleting, they could have improved the debuffs instead.

The thing is, given how healing is designed in this game and how often healing downtime occurs, micromanaging a healing fairy while spamming broil and biolysis would essentially be as boring as what we do now. If anything it's exactly what we do now.

Debuff management could fill up those moments with more interesting mechanics especially if revealed debuffs were random (or enemy type dependant) and we had to adapt our damage around it to maximize our potential. Sort of how FFXI SCH used to work but adapted to FFXIV's rigid system.

I agree the fairy could share part of those mechanics, but I'd rather not have to chose between two fairies if that were the case. Leave the healing to the fairy while the SCH focuses on mitigation and debuffing.

[Saefinn]

The thing is, given how healing is designed in this game and how often healing downtime occurs, micromanaging a healing fairy while spamming broil and biolysis would essentially be as boring as what we do now. If anything it's exactly what we do now.

Debuff management could fill up those moments with more interesting mechanics especially if revealed debuffs were random (or enemy type dependant) and we had to adapt our damage around it to maximize our potential. Sort of how FFXI SCH used to work but adapted to FFXIV's rigid system.

I agree the fairy could share part of those mechanics, but I'd rather not have to chose between two fairies if that were the case. Leave the healing to the fairy while the SCH focuses on mitigation and debuffing.

It is boring now, yes. But it didn't used to be. Faerie micromanagement was rewarding because of the handicap Scholar used to have, which is long gone. My suggestions in a way bring some of that handicap back at will as a trade off for other uses.

And sacrificing healing potential for utility was the whole point behind choosing between Eos and Selene. It was also a mark that you were healing competently because you didn't need the extra heals from Eos.

But one thing we love complaining about is how much downtime we get. By reducing our healing potential on demand we can also reduce our downtime at will, bear in mind too once the debuffs are all applied, we're going back to single spell rotations. So to me, doing it this way works twofold. Arguably, if you have the downtime, you don't really need Eos's heals, you already have oGCD's to weave for a start.

But I don't think killing faerie healing potential is enough for many cases, so I also took it one step further with my suggestions to make it so Deployment and Emergency Tactics could be applied to DPS abilities with their own benefits (so you might trade in that healing potential in for DPS potential instead) and the Selene version of Fey Union would be tethered to an enemy as a DoT rather than to an ally as a HoT. Fey Blessing would have its own Selene specific version too.

So in effect, we could have a system that: allows us to reduce our healing downtime without raising the skill floor, it gives us more to do in that downtime, it makes faerie choice mean something again (whilst respecting its original purpose) and a Scholar can be tactical in how they enhance their skills with their self buffs and not just with their faerie choice and they get debuffs back. They could do all this and SE would not have to worry about a complex DPS rotation that's harder to balance against other healers.

But I think the out come would be a Scholar that is adaptable to the situation, which I would argue is at its core, Scholar's thing. 2.0 Scholar felt more adaptable than it is today and the whole thing about FFXI SCH was that it was incredibly adaptable, which is why it was so complex, but their theme is that they are strategic mages in both games. It feels more strategic for your choices to have benefits and downfalls, you sacrifice one thing for the benefit of another. And that's exactly what FFXI Scholar was, from having been a Scholar main there too. And I liked that's what faeries used to be and also what Cleric Stance used to be (like swapping from Light Arts to Dark Arts and applying addendum...just without all of the extra complexity FFXI SCH has).

[Videra]

So you want healers to have to worry about a DPS rotation on top of being responsible for keeping the party alive? Making one of the most stressful roles in a party into one of the most complex to play at a baseline level would not be a good idea design wise.

Healing in FFXIV is majority DPS downtime.

As to the topic at hand, a return to the more classical style of Scholar is evidently in order. And healers in general, does anyone remember heavensward when Scholar had about seven? Six dots? And also unique utility that could debuff bosses or buff other party members like virus? SE had it right at one point. They just need to push the wheel -back-.

On top of that, a proper DPS rotation for AST (and disable back) would be nice and I want aero 3 back on WHM.

[Sloprano]

The thing is, given how healing is designed in this game and how often healing downtime occurs, micromanaging a healing fairy while spamming broil and biolysis would essentially be as boring as what we do now. If anything it's exactly what we do now.

I find it more worth to look at how the fights and jobs are, what's been constant are the fights, what's changed is what we have available at any moment on the jobs. And it's true, giving back manual embrace and increase it's potency would mean maybe more Broils. But thats because that is just one little thing. Like how Energy Drain was a little thing. And how Miasma 2 was a little thing. But both meant a lot in the grand scheme of playing.

Scholar was a little universe of little things and I couldn't give you one single thing that made or broke the job, only that in it's current form have instead a little group of big things that won't be of much use when healing isn't needed. As almost every change with 4.0 and beyond, we've seen them pick at SCH to reveal the healer beneath, removing pieces by pieces, replacing with cooldowns in the form of Excog, Fey Blessing, Seraph and Sacred Soil after the trait. Cooldowns are powerful, but leaves us with less in the moment to moment decisions after the cooldown is on cooldown.

A debuff management system would be cool something that expanded on what we had in form of Malady, Heavy, Slow, Blind, Virus, E4E, Silence. Idea thats been floating here is stratagmens or plans combo system you mix and match with to produce a debuff or attack.

If the fairies stayed as they were: One healing one support, it wouldn't be more a problem than just settle for Eos to help out healing. This is something can could be reasonably expanded to aswell, not just healing/support but also give various effects to existing skills to expand our repetoire depending if we have our Sun or Moon out without increasing the amount of buttons.

[testname]

Healing in FFXIV is majority DPS downtime.

As to the topic at hand, a return to the more classical style of Scholar is evidently in order. And healers in general, does anyone remember heavensward when Scholar had about seven? Six dots? And also unique utility that could debuff bosses or buff other party members like virus? SE had it right at one point. They just need to push the wheel -back-.

On top of that, a proper DPS rotation for AST (and disable back) would be nice and I want aero 3 back on WHM.

SE scans - beep ... fun detected .... beep .. action - terminate -

Those days will never come back:/

[Videra]

SE scans - beep ... fun detected .... beep .. action - terminate -

Those days will never come back:/

I know it's obvious my bias is towards Scholar, but I -want my six dots back dammit-.

[Kraniel]

I've mained WHM since the game was out in 2013, and i have to admit that DPS has never been more boring than it currently is.
I mean, it was already bland as you like before, but at least we had two DoTs. Now, we only have one ...

Now, i have to say that i find the healing part really fun, so i would hate to lose some of that just to get back a bit of fun on the DPS side. I just think WHM should at least get back their second DoT. There was literally no reason to remove it.

Ultimately, i do think that this is only relevant to solo content and 4-men dungeons.
As soon as you're in an 8-men party, there's almost always enough healing/rezzing to do to keep you somehow busy.

[deadman1204]

In order for SCH to realistically get more offensive abilities, WHM and AST also need to. Otherwise it just makes SCH the defacto OP healer.

[Billythepancake]

In order for SCH to realistically get more offensive abilities, WHM and AST also need to. Otherwise it just makes SCH the defacto OP healer.

You can increase DPS options without increasing damage. They could literally split Bio's damage in half and put the other half on another dot. Easy, now you have more to do AND your DPS is relatively the same.

That's not to say I'm against the other healers getting more damage options, but the idea of "you can't have more DPS buttons without having more DPS" is dumb.