LL impressions pre-patchnotes: healers still garbo it seems

[elioaiko]

Surprising they didn't buff SCH, the pet ghosting is pretty much ignored at this point. I would say that for once that SCH is not OP healer now which is such a weird thing to say.

Until the patch notes are up, I wouldn't hold my breath. I'm not expecting anything more than the things they've mentioned.

I'm on the boat that AST needed MP help, playing both WHM and AST is a bit frustrating since there's times I want to raid on AST but the MP issues are present and would force me into remelding piety. Yes there needs to be something makes AST harder to play than the other two since AST is the strongest (although dealing with that opener is probably enough), but MP problems feels so trival.

Sleeve Draw changes....not sure what that entails but hopefully make controller openers less painful. But I can see them just making it Sleeve has the missing seals.

[Videra]

The Blizzard thing is to smash everything that worked well or was fun with a hammer...

That's the hypothesis. If SE did that, but with something boring as sin, it'd become fun again.

[Torunya]

I think healers have pretty unique healing kits though?

I would agree with this, to a certain extent, yes. It is definitely the healer dps toolkits that is more in question here.

Sacrificing balance just for the sake of it is obviously not a good idea. A plan is always preferable. However, I am just worried that the cheap "balance" the devs have attained now at the cost of job diversity is a rough rut they won't be able to get out of easily. Doing so carelessly would mean upsetting the portion of the playerbase that feel accomodated by this homogenisation, and I personally think it's vital that the devs strive to make both parties in this issue feel included. As has been made clear by myself and numerous others: achieving the correct type of balance does not involve killing fun. I am by no means an expert, nor a game designer, but maintaining job identity and distinctiveness whilst simultaneously ensuring job synergy across the board -- to the greatest extent that it is possible, is what I would call balance. I, at least, think that forsaking diversity so readily is a step in the wrong direction and a cheap means to an end.

[Yani-Madara]

I'm genuinely sorry you've experienced being unwanted because of the job that you play. The devs' decision to homogenise the jobs is meant precisely for avoiding cases like what you've experienced, so I can understand your viewpoint if that is the case. I wouldn't want anyone to experience that kind of exclusion either, believe me. Players should be weighted by the merit of their own skill level, not by the job that they play. (Yet it is important to also understand that people will be people. Some will look at the job played rather than the player, regardless, and this is unfortunately unavoidable.)

But I personally just cannot endorse a system that achieves that end at the cost of fun.

Fully agree. It's better to buff a job that's being excluded rather than bring down others.

[Crushnight]

AST has MP issues across the board, not just nocASt. Once a fight drags on for ~6+ min, even with constant uses of Lightspeed and Lucid, your MP will go dry if you didn't stack ridiculious amounts of piety. And that is for Malefic/Combust casts only! With GCD heals that becomes even worse.

I myself are by no means a pro AST, so I might miss my Lucid or Lightspeed just by a few seconds. But even then, my MP shouldn't be dry out that quick. At first, I thought I didn't manage enough, but even the records of some speed kills in E5s show ASTs at less than 1k MP at the 6-7 min mark. And as you can imagine, they didn't use a single heal, so they were just spaming their spells with lowest MP cost (aside from Esuna ofc).

In comparison: WHM doesn't seen to ever fall below 6k MP, SCH barely get their MP lower than 2-5k, so they are still save. (Unless ofc, they start GCD healing that are not lily heals.)
AST shouldn't need to go for high piety gear, just because their MP management tool ain't that effective. Even more laughable, Lightspeed is most effective when your GCD is lower than 2.41s, so you get 7 GCDs into its window, and for most people who don't play in SE server basement (higher ping), sometimes 2.38s is not enough. At the same time, higher SpS screws with your CDs (e.g. Draw). Imho not a good concept. (And yes, getting 1 more GCD in Lightspeed with higher SpS saves you more MP than lower SpS, and only 6 GCDs in Lightspeed.)

I've not said Diurnal doesn't need mp but that I want mp stuff to be exclusively for Noct Sect because it is far behind even Diurnal.

I'll explain why I want that, Noct Sect is worse than Diurnal in every aspect at lv80 barring the rare occasion you need constant shields being applied. I want Noct to have something over Diurnal, better mp economy for less hps is a way to do it.

I also believe Ast needs to have a reign on their output especially Diurnal Ast(Ast is already strongest healer with mp issues it needs a negative or you'll have a repeat of SB/HW where 1 comp dominates) and mp is the best, least jarring way(at least with current design).

Also if Ast loses dependency on piety, what the hell was the piety change for(other than the devs not wanting above 10k mp) if no healer wants it, it will send that message to the devs that the change was pointless no one wants piety, which will make them do 1 of 3 things, reverse piety change or, make every healer want piety by giving them mp issues to validate the healer only sub stat or, do nothing keeping a worthless sub stat, I don't know about you lot but I don't trust the job designers that well(hello tenacity) to not choose either of the latter options giving everyone worse mp economy just so they don't have to admit they dun goofed or keep redundancy because I can't make cube go in circle hole.

[Recon1o6]

Fully agree. It's better to buff a job that's being excluded rather than bring down others.

Indeed fun is most important, then balance or accessibility
The problem with the buff the shit job is that SE themselves caused this mess in the first place in sb with WHM's destruction (by ignoring player suggestions to improve WHM) then decided to double down on it instead this expansion by destroying Ast and Sch (once more, by ignoring playerbase). If they had brought WHM up in SB to ast/sch instead of turning it into a "pure healer" cure 1 spammer then SHB could have become a golden age for healers. Or at the very least we wouldn't have the role in such dire straits given the status of the rest of the jobs

Unfortunately we got this timeline where devs refuse to listen or even acknowledge healer issues and instead focus on two goals
1. Does the job have enough healing to solo heal everything?
2. Is it so simple even idiots who fail hall of the novice can play it at level 80?

They wanted healers more accessible, sure more healers are always good. But sacrificing fun, uniqueness and all the other factors is not the solution. Its no good getting people in if they are wanting to leave immediately.
The main barrier to healing in this game is not and never was complexity, it was nerves and fear. We have an introductory healer- its conjurer. Anyone new to healing should pick up conjurer as it gives the basics and you can level it sufficiently to get the grasp of things between guildhests and dungeons.

[althenawhm]

I just wish they cared enough to give us just one new skill to spam, making our "rotation" 1212121212 instead of 1111111.
It would be super easy to balance, and they could just reuse deleted skills for the animations.
Or YoshiP could just say he cares about healers, that would help too.

[elioaiko]

I just wish they cared enough to give us just one new skill to spam, making our "rotation" 1212121212 instead of 1111111.
It would be super easy to balance, and they could just reuse deleted skills for the animations.
Or YoshiP could just say he cares about healers, that would help too.

Very that, their silence is so messed up. They could just give us some type of acknowledgement. Or even "we hear you."

[MintnHoney]

Can't wait to see if this patch totally repeats expansion history by boosting the overall power of AST's kit to undeniable levels.

[ItMe]

Can't wait to see if this patch totally repeats expansion history by boosting the overall power of AST's kit to undeniable levels.

Why?
What happened with it historically?
All I know is on release it's DPS was really bad? Or something?