A summary of healer issues

[Side-Eye]

Frankly, one of the reasons AST appealed to me when I first started playing, was that it seemed to focus on being a benefit to the party, more than being focused on its own DPS. A "pure healer" role would appeal to me if there was such a thing, but Squeenix has rarely created content which requires any heal job to spend 100% of its time on healing.

I wouldn't be upset at all, if changes were made such that AST lost most of its personal DPS, if its contribution to the party's DPS was visible without a parser and dps/tanks could appreciate the enhancements to their own damage and survivability by having an astro in the party.

Yeah, I realize that's an unpopular opinion... it seems everybody, even healers, want to see their names next to big DPS numbers on the ACT screen.. but I don't need that, if I know that what I'm doing is making the group as successful as it can be using my whole toolkit.

[ty_taurus]

Frankly, one of the reasons AST appealed to me when I first started playing, was that it seemed to focus on being a benefit to the party, more than being focused on its own DPS. A "pure healer" role would appeal to me if there was such a thing, but Squeenix has rarely created content which requires any heal job to spend 100% of its time on healing.

I wouldn't be upset at all, if changes were made such that AST lost most of its personal DPS, if its contribution to the party's DPS was visible without a parser and dps/tanks could appreciate the enhancements to their own damage and survivability by having an astro in the party.

Yeah, I realize that's an unpopular opinion... it seems everybody, even healers, want to see their names next to big DPS numbers on the ACT screen.. but I don't need that, if I know that what I'm doing is making the group as successful as it can be using my whole toolkit.

I don't think healers want to see their numbers be as big as DPS players. There is a divide between the players that want healing to be a 100% healing uptime responsibility and those that like that there's both the capability and the expectation that they are to perform some amount of DPS. I think most of us agree that regardless of our stance on that issue, we currently have too much DPS uptime and that uptime is reduced to mind-numbing simplicity because of our brain-dead DPS tools.

I think players like you should have a healer that works with your play style--a healer that contributes to rDPS through healing spells that either also do damage (like Earthly Star), or that add potency to the attacks of other players as you heal them and apply shields to them. I also believe that, if done correctly, you could absolutely have that be balanced with a "green DPS" healer who is all about maximizing their personal DPS. These concepts can exist harmoniously.

I see a lot of people expressing complete lack of faith in Square's ability to achieve this, and in their defense, the evidence that we've seen of their design philosophies regarding healers doesn't seem to paint a bright future for us. That said, I don't want to completely denounce the possibility of this happening because the devs will never do it based on their former changes. For all we know, their elongated silence on the topic is them trying to collect data on the healer community and try to actually do it right come 6.0, which would be fitting if we're seeing a 4th healer in a year's time. I don't want to promote false hope, but I also don't want to promote utter skepticism either.

Let's just say that I want to look at the future of healing with a cautiously optimistic perspective. I think a lot of good things can happen, and I want to believe the devs hear our pleas and want to do this role justice.

[Side-Eye]

I don't think healers want to see their numbers be as big as DPS players. There is a divide between the players that want healing to be a 100% healing uptime responsibility and those that like that there's both the capability and the expectation that they are to perform some amount of DPS. I think most of us agree that regardless of our stance on that issue, we currently have too much DPS uptime and that uptime is reduced to mind-numbing simplicity because of our brain-dead DPS tools.

I've played DPS jobs for the majority of my time since SHB release, and I've *seen* many healers let people die while trying to eek out as much personal DPS as possible. When playing RDM, 99% of the time if our healer is SCH or WHM, I'm the one who rezzes a fallen tank/dps. (Yes, I do know that people expect red mages to rez, but IMHO, that duty should be fulfilled first and foremost by the party's healer, not someone whose primary responsibility is damage.)

Let's just say that I want to look at the future of healing with a cautiously optimistic perspective. I think a lot of good things can happen, and I want to believe the devs hear our pleas and want to do this role justice.

If devs were listening to players, there wouldn't be 50+ pages of posts from people discussing their leaving the healer role behind because of what was done to their favorite jobs in 5.0+... just sayin.

[AnotherPerson]

There's one option you're forgetting: A support tool that contributes flat potency instead of a % DPS increase.
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I'm assuming the potency scales off of healer potency and not the character receiving the potency. The GCD buffs would also need potential to scale as many DoTs as a SCH has in potency. Assuming no one missed GCDs, this can fix the issue of balance. Assuming SCH gets their DoTs for debuff, AST does the opposite - good for job identity. Time Dilation being 10 second cooldown is also fair and can be used on defensive utility.


Making a GCD star and having it become a "theoretical star" which affects your card's divination effects sounds like a great idea. It's like combusting an enemy with a "theoretical sun". Haha! I love the idea.

Though, I'm having a bit of a tough time understanding what how you would want it dynamically applied. From what I understand, ASTs won't be spamming it so... the AST won't be spamming malefic, but mixing Malefic with this GCD buff? Or is there multiple GCD buffs? Or is buffing going to be a complex thing? Sounds tricky to implement imo.

The are a couple of unknowns when giving AST back it's Time Mage identity though - exactly how much of it is it getting back, and what is the job development direction going to take from that point forward? ASTs would always want this buff up. Naturally, upkeeping a defensive buff on the tank is key so it would be best to Time Dilate onto the tank. However, both SCH and WHM have clear solutions to outgoing raidwide damage. ASTs as a Time Mage does not. How much burst healing will ASTs trade for Time extension abilities (looking at Time Extended AoE Stun Celestial Opposition vs AoE Heal Celestial Opposition)? I'm not saying it would be a bad thing, but ShB made it clear that certain fights require a lot of AoE burst healing. A Time Mage with only regen ticks cannot achieve that level unless they took a more mitigative stance with defense buffs being applied to everyone nearby. It's a difference in healing potential & healing style for sure and sounds a bit more hectic for balance and future content depending on how the job proceed forwards. Just food for thought.

Alternating Crowns without consuming a card sounds good provided it has 2 charges in case you can't Lord at the moment and Lord/Lady shares the cd in order to always get the CD up as soon as possible. That way you can depend on the oGCD heal without planning the next x CDs in advance.

MHO, that duty should be fulfilled first and foremost by the party's healer, not someone whose primary responsibility is damage.

A healer's responsibility is to heal unavoidable damage, not adjust to people who don't do mechanics. Healers manage mana and time. RDMs have quick raise. I'd adjust but there's a limit to how much I can adjust because I have to take into consideration of the party's survival rate too.

[ty_taurus]

I'm assuming the potency scales off of healer potency and not the character receiving the potency. The GCD buffs would also need potential to scale as many DoTs as a SCH has in potency. Assuming no one missed GCDs, this can fix the issue of balance. Assuming SCH gets their DoTs for debuff, AST does the opposite - good for job identity. Time Dilation being 10 second cooldown is also fair and can be used on defensive utility.

Yeah, the attack would technically be coming from you but it would be triggered by other players. I think that's the best way to handle it balance-wise. Having it scale off the target means you're bias toward DPS players, and that's probably not healthy for encouraging you to use your card effects on the best target. The added benefit of Time Dilation as a GCD action and allows you to always have a card effect in play so you're never in a bind where no one has card effects and Draw is on cooldown so you have to Malefic if you don't have time to heal. It's possibly you could let your cards fall off and find yourself in this situation, but it would just mean AST would be a bit more technical, which I think is fair considering this design would be about making them as passive as possible. There's the risk that a passive healer is a low-skill healer, but elements like this help make it so that you have to work to stay passively applying your flat potency buffs to allies.

Though, I'm having a bit of a tough time understanding what how you would want it dynamically applied. From what I understand, ASTs won't be spamming it so... the AST won't be spamming malefic, but mixing Malefic with this GCD buff? Or is there multiple GCD buffs? Or is buffing going to be a complex thing? Sounds tricky to implement imo.

It probably would be tricky, and like I said, it would probably get written out and then thrown to the wolves, figuratively speaking. There would be a lot of discussion points regarding this concept, and we would probably be prototyping it aggressively in private servers. Basically, though, what makes it dynamic is a bit about what we mentioned. Your best DPS comes from this healing buff that you can apply only to allies with card effects on them, so we ideally want to create a "rotation" of healing and shielding perhaps that allows the AST to keep their buff up, possibly on multiple allies at times like after Sleeve Draw and keeping up defensive buffs with Time Dilation. There would probably be moments where there's nothing you can do to keep this cycle going, which would be the best time to apply Combust, use GCD healing, and perform a cast or 2 of Malefic if nothing else is needed, but ideally this would be minimized as much as possible without making the build unforgiving for when you need to stop and GCD heal.

The are a couple of unknowns when giving AST back it's Time Mage identity though - exactly how much of it is it getting back, and what is the job development direction going to take from that point forward? ASTs would always want this buff up. Naturally, upkeeping a defensive buff on the tank is key so it would be best to Time Dilate onto the tank. However, both SCH and WHM have clear solutions to outgoing raidwide damage. ASTs as a Time Mage does not. How much burst healing will ASTs trade for Time extension abilities (looking at Time Extended AoE Stun Celestial Opposition vs AoE Heal Celestial Opposition)? I'm not saying it would be a bad thing, but ShB made it clear that certain fights require a lot of AoE burst healing. A Time Mage with only regen ticks cannot achieve that level unless they took a more mitigative stance with defense buffs being applied to everyone nearby. It's a difference in healing potential & healing style for sure and sounds a bit more hectic for balance and future content depending on how the job proceed forwards. Just food for thought.

What about healing or mitigation tools that slow down the rate at which you actually receive damage so that your regens can keep up? You could have something that mitigates the damage you receive by, say, 90%... but the 90% that you don't take is instead spread out in the form of a DoT over 9 seconds, or so. These are all just random numbers, so adjustments can be made of course, but if the issue is that they can't burst heal... slowing down or dividing up burst damage is both a thematic and interesting solution.

Alternating Crowns without consuming a card sounds good provided it has 2 charges in case you can't Lord at the moment and Lord/Lady shares the cd in order to always get the CD up as soon as possible. That way you can depend on the oGCD heal without planning the next x CDs in advance.

That's a good point. Charges would make this version of Minor Arcana perfect. You both know when you're getting the Lady and can hold onto her for a few moments while you find the best time to use her. There are a lot of changes I don't expect to see regarding the healers that have been talked about, but this is one that I think isn't too unreasonable and makes a lot of sense. I really hope this shows up in 6.0

[AnotherPerson]

Yeah, the attack would technically be coming from you but it would be triggered by other players.
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This is all speculation, but I do believe there may be a couple of instances where cutscenes and timing of the effect can cause the effects fall off assuming the timing is ~15 seconds. The current one that pops into my mind is Eden's Verse: Refulgence and its savage-tier counterpart. Funnily enough, the timing of the remaining buff timer and Time Dilation may be too spread apart if it can't be used again right before and after cutscene. These instances should be few and far in between though... I think?

That sounds like an interesting concept. Relativity of a time - essentially a multi-layered compressed barrier effect reduces/changes the speed at which an attack lands, breaking it into multiple chunks before it goes through the "barrier" and reaches you. It's basically extreme time dilation within the isolated barrier happening at different levels it acts as if it's slowed down when it hits us. That, or the barrier acts using a gravitational time dilation effect.

By slowing down the damage in the form of a DoT, how will that transition when multiple hits increase? Assuming there is a skill or status effect that mitigates incoming damage but spread it out over a DoT - Will the DoT just get stronger, will it lengthen, will all the incoming damage be transferred over the remaining duration of the skill's time period, or will it create a separate DoT per attack? There is a possibility that a DoT tick being too strong due to an Akh Morn-type of attack will inevitably kill a character from accumulating too much damage if DoT just gets stronger in the period it was used, so depending on the type of burst - long duration burst periods could also be too much (though this should be highly unlikely). There is also the possibility that too much mitigation meant the need for 2 healers in a raid doesn't feel needed. Mitigating a certain amount of damage based on healer's potency itself per tick could be a solution, like GCD buff damage but on the enemy's damage instead. Can't say if it would actually work in practice or if it will be too powerful though.

The bigger question is - how will Nocturnal Sect work in relative response to this? Shields are naturally more inefficient than healing regen. The duration increase on a shield doesn't refresh the power of a shield either. I don't think the idea of shields will be removed entirely because of how the AST's SB storyline goes, but mitigation with the current AST's Nocturnal sect doesn't seem to work well once you take into account of the effects of DoTs on a Nocturnal sect shield. The eHP aspect of the shield will be whittled away by continuous DoTs first. As a result, this time delay will make Diurnal sect always more beneficial due to regens.

[ty_taurus]

This is all speculation, but I do believe there may be a couple of instances where cutscenes and timing of the effect can cause the effects fall off assuming the timing is ~15 seconds...

If we're talking about long cinematics, you'll likely have your Draw off cooldown, so you can just reapply a defensive buff as soon as you regain control. The whole Time Dilation concept is there so that you aren't restricted from using your DPS buff/heals for 15 seconds after any given card falls off since Draw is a 30 second CD.

The slowed DPS barrier idea was kind of a sudden thought to address the issue you brought up. Honestly, Id want to just toss in the effect as-is to the private server and just experiment with how it impacts various attacks and circumstances. I imagine each instance of damage would be converted to a different 9 second DoT. Perhaps the effect itself is even shorter, say 5 seconds or so, that way you're not accumulating a laundry list of DoTs. I imagine though that as long as you could survive the initial attack without the barrier, you should be able to survive the entire DoT even without healing. it's only when you're mitigating attacks that would otherwise be lethal that you need that additional healing, not that you wouldn't set up regens and/or barriers anyway.

[FoxCh40s]

Exceptional write up, but guess what, SE isnt going to f***ing respond. They dont respond to Monks, Dark Knights, or Bards; they DEFINITELY wont respond to us.

Anyone remember the original ShB livestream? They spent 2 hours talking about Dps, like 30 minutes on Tanks, and a SINGLE SLIDE on Healers, and at the bottom it said "Healers damage skills are being reconsidered" they legit SKIPPED IT. When the stream called them out on it, they said "Uh we had difficulties with that slide, so we moved on, we didnt skip it." But then never returned to the topic of conversation, and f***ing haven't since.

Any questions that have been asked for Live Letters have been flat out ignored or completely dismissed, and when they feel like answering it, it was "Sucks for you, moving on?"

If 6.0 comes and it's more of the same, it's going to completely DESTROY the healing community, and people will legit leave the game over it and stop playing. Theyve artificially changed the "In Need" to Tanks so they cant be seen having our point proven. Even when it says Tank in Need, you sit and wait for 5 to 10 minutes, Healer - INSTANT QUE. It's obvious they dont care, and have no intention of saying anything, Yoshi P will be stepping down after ShB, so it's not his problem anymore, out of sight out of mind.

[Side-Eye]

Theyve artificially changed the "In Need" to Tanks so they cant be seen having our point proven. Even when it says Tank in Need, you sit and wait for 5 to 10 minutes, Healer - INSTANT QUE. It's obvious they dont care, and have no intention of saying anything, Yoshi P will be stepping down after ShB, so it's not his problem anymore, out of sight out of mind.

We're not supposed to notice the queue "irregularities"

But yeah, I haven't had to wait more than 3 seconds queuing as a healer, even though a vast majority of the time, 'tank' is the role-in-need. (And honestly if it wasn't for sometimes simply wanting to play without waiting, I probably wouldn't load healer at all. DPS classes are way more enjoyable in the game's current state.)