So, what's your opinion on current healer jobs

[Synaesthesia]

Healer balance is very, very good right now.

AST + SCH has a slight lead, but AST + WHM is so close it's very, very viable.

Now, you can say the gameplay/'fun' factor is lacking and I can agree, and some QoL changes could help.

But the balance is not really a problem. AST is the strongest healer by far so you could argue for a bit of a nerf, but right now all 3 healers can be used pretty equally as long as one of them is AST. Granted it's not ideal to have one healer be required, but it's about time the required healer isn't SCH for a change, and as long as all of them are desirable - I call that pretty good.

Unfortunately you can't buff WHM or SCH because if SE did that, one of the top two combos would become drastically better and become the 'required' raid composition. There's room for QoL changes, but nothing that would directly increase their potencies, etc.

Yes, numerically you're absolutely correct that they're at the most level playing field they've ever been in! I think healer balance is in the worst state it has ever been in regardless.

The point of the healer balance changes wasn't to get them numerically balanced, it was to stop white mages from being left behind in raiding and let healers feel like they would be able to raid on the class of their choice without any issues.

At this point though, participation numbers are more skewed than ever. Astrologians left their class in droves and basically stopped playing it, and the population only rebounded a little bit lately solely by it being the current most powerful healer.. If you nerfed it, it would instantly drop back into obscurity.

They created a class that a lot of players just literally don't want to play and are only playing for the effectiveness, which means that in order to keep up their goal of giving all of the healers representation they literally *cant* nerf it right now.

They just made 2 healers less fun, messed up the representation and locked themselves into this situation.

[Vespar]

I dislike the 10k MP change.

I also dislike WHM's changes. For some reason revamping the lily thing again just killed WHM for me. I hate the "30secs" to gain a lily thing. Its annoying and just makes WHM feel so much less fun than it used to.

I swapped to AST and while I dont necessarily love AST, I like it better. I only started it because its AF was pretty... I'm shocked they butchered the card system they had, though its a bit less cumbersome than it was. The seals needing to be gained "in combat" is annoying as it often screws me out of a seal when the tank pulls but I DO NOT YET HAVE HATE and I apply a card thus jinxing me out of a seal.

The same can be said for SCH's Aether Flow stacks. Needing to be in "combat" to use it is frustrating. Granted I don't play SCH as I'm a reactive type healer and not "proactive" as much.

Much of my dislikes with healers right now is simple things that add up and compound on one another. I pretty much used to main WHM and now I cant even stand it due to small changes that just break it somehow for me.

[fumofu]

I'm only playing SCH and I'm quite happy with how it is now. I don't miss anything that was removed as I'm in favor of it being simpler to play. I have also leveled AST and WHM to lv80, but haven't touched AST beyond that cos I don't like it's complexity, and WHM on the other hand feels quite powerful and isn't too difficult to play with.

[Zarkovitch]

I feel like the balance is on point compare to SB bye bye WHM.

[Risvertasashi]

-snip-

Population balance will never happen. SE going "Well tons of people are playing WHM so it must be fine" is exactly what, in past expacs, lead to out of control buffing of AST and SCH that then left WHM in the dust, as all but the most diehard WHM fans leave the job to reluctantly play the others because otherwise they get frozen out of raid parties and statics.

Mind you, we're not out the woods yet either. around x.3 is, historically, about where SE messes it up like so. If they buff the already-grossly-overperforming AST and the weaker-indivually-but-very-strong-with-AST SCH in the next patch or two...

Well, heavensward and stormblood will repeat once again. WHM will be left in the dust, and become the healer no one wants to take if they can at all avoid it.

It could happen. SE has a tendency to do this. But I really hope ShB marks a change in the trend and they don't.

[Lilseph]

Played all three healers for both Savage and Ultimate and am satisfied for the most part. Could use a few tweaks to their damage kits but moreso to complement the current damage cycle rather than unnecessarily adding buttons and dots to manage. From personal experience, the amount of stuff to cycle through (especially in Ultimate) really does start to show why they simplified the damage kits. I'll acknowledge that healing content outside of Savage and Ultimate feels a tad bit more simpler to me, but I really appreciate that I can relax a bit for casual content.

[Synaesthesia]

Population balance will never happen. SE going "Well tons of people are playing WHM so it must be fine" is exactly what, in past expacs, lead to out of control buffing of AST and SCH that then left WHM in the dust, as all but the most diehard WHM fans leave the job to reluctantly play the others because otherwise they get frozen out of raid parties and statics.

Mind you, we're not out the woods yet either. around x.3 is, historically, about where SE messes it up like so. If they buff the already-grossly-overperforming AST and the weaker-indivually-but-very-strong-with-AST SCH in the next patch or two...

Well, heavensward and stormblood will repeat once again. WHM will be left in the dust, and become the healer no one wants to take if they can at all avoid it.

It could happen. SE has a tendency to do this. But I really hope ShB marks a change in the trend and they don't.

Of course population balance will never happen, there are more popular jobs throughout every role type. But if you drive away like 40% of a population it's a sign you've done a really bad job.

I don't think they should do anything to increase Astrologian's power, they should possibly remove stressful and undesirable aspects of the job like the huge disparity in mana efficiency between the 3 healers and smoothing out the opener because it's simply driving controller users away, but..

What do you mean by "grossly overperforming" though? There's like a 3% difference between AST and WHM.

In order to achieve that difference, an Astrologian has to manage 3 extra cooldowns involving constant target switching and micro decision making in between casts, an extremely hectic opener, slide cast and weave constantly, pre-plan earthly star, panic about their mana, and generally put in a lot more effort than a White Mage. When I do savage runs on White Mage compared to AST it's like taking a vacation.

There's a small power difference between the two classes that isn't enough to keep players from bringing WHM but is enough to incentivize players to keep doing AST, and WHM is still the most popular healer right now in Savage. If you removed that advantage Astrologian carries in output, you'd go back to killing off the class like in 5.0. In order to remedy that situation, they'd need to literally give Astrologian an overhaul to make it a more desirable class to play, which is partly why I think they've done such a terrible job at achieving balance.

I do agree with you that they really don't need to give AST more output in order to bring up its numbers. If you're creating an undesirable class and then buffing its power to obscene levels in order to get people to play it that's also an awful situation, because those players *don't even want to be playing that class*

[Leareaux]

I'm in the unpopular camp of enjoying AST atm. A couple of reasons include:

Intersection: oGCD shield for TBs in Di and a Regen to keep the tank's hp healthy feels amazing.

1.5sec GCD casts for dps spells is a nice touch to assist with card weaving and when I heal on sch I feel slow now. (And having to ruin 2 when I want to weave feels gross for a class that constantly has to)

All cards have value and make me feel just as busy if not more so than previous iterations. I didn't like that Bole, a mitagation tool, was tied to RNG. And if consider cards a part of your dps rotation (because it is) it has way more to offer than a DoT/damage spam that other healers suffer from.

I do wish that horoscope would pop on its own like excog and earthly star. But overall I'm pretty happy.

[ElazulHP]

I stopped healing with 5.0 because I didn't like what they did to SCH. Have not tried healing since. All leveling post 5.0 was done with Trusts.

[Seraphor]

I also enjoy the new AST, and don't think the new cards offer any less variety of choice while resulting in a more consistent output for the good of the party. Choosing whether to give a ranged or a melee is no different to choosing to give the old Arrow to a BLM/SAM or Spear to BRD/MNK or Balance to your best dps, it's still just being presented with an option and choosing the correct target. It's just different options and different targets.

However, the way in which cards are dished out is too cumbersome, with having to switch targets more often, because there's now no Royal Road.
The solution is to bring back the effect of Royal Road, in that you only actually need to play every other card.


Individual cards need to be more effective, and we need to reduce the amount of times we’re targeting different players. Which I would do as so:

Card Effects:
Play Effect: Increases damage dealt by a party member or self by 10% if target is [melee/ranged] DPS or [tank/healer], or 5% for all other roles. Duration: 15s
Minor Arcana Effect: Grants a [Lunar/Solar/Celestial] Seal when used in combat.
The same as they are now, but at just under double potency and without the seal on regular play, because Minor Arcana no longer grants the more powerful effect, instead it only applies the seal, and therefore does not require a target.
So you are choosing between the buff, OR the seal, you don't get both.

Minor Arcana: Grants the drawn card’s associated Seal and triggers the effect of Lord of Crowns when Balance, Arrow, or Spear, or the Lady of Crowns when Bole, Ewer, or Spire.
Lord of Crowns: Restores 400 MP +400 more MP if in Nocturnal stance (because Nocturnal is more MP intensive)
Lady of Crowns: Restores 400 MP +10% of your own HP if in Diurnal stance

So you do get something more than just the Seal from Minor Arcana, mostly MP. This leads us to…

Divination: Increases damage dealt by self and nearby party members. Duration: 15s
Can only be executed after obtaining three Seals of Arcana by playing at least three arcanum. Effectiveness is determined by the number of different types of seals in play.
1 Seal Type: 6%
2 Seal Types: 8%
3 Seal Types: 10%

Sleeve Draw: Draws a card (arcanum) from your divining deck and grants one stacks of Sleeve Draw.
Because if you use it right after using a card, you still get your three seals out.

Basically, just under double potencies, because you’re now missing out on half of your single target card buffs, and the bonus of the current Minor Arcana increased buff.
The result of this is that you're not necessarily targeting player characters every 30s to grant them a tiny buff, and you're making a choice between single target buffs and AoE buffs, similar to the old Royal Road system. This choice is more valid than the choices you currently make and restores some agency to the card system.

Over all it is a slight DPS nerf when averaged out, however as you have more powerful buffs, albeit less frequent, then in high end play by timing them around burst windows correctly, it may actually end up being a DPS gain overall.