LL impressions pre-patchnotes: healers still garbo it seems

[QooEr]

I'm surprised they want to touch Ast of all healers.
[...]
Sch and WhM definitely deserve much more attention than Ast.

im not surprised they touched ast, since it's the least played healer in shadowbringers. in fact its been in a worse spot on that front than whm in stormblood even, if the number of parses on fflogs are a good measure.

in edens gate, it was BY FAR the least played healer.
White Mage 25,478
Scholar 20,250
Astrologian 10,897

this tier, ast has gotten more play, but its still quite behind scholar (and this tier has had a lot of people doing speedkills since it has been so long, so one would expect AST to have more play)
whm 46,351
Scholar 32,193
Astrologian 22,772

in TEA this is even more pronounced
White Mage 813
Scholar 639
Astrologian 270

only in extremes does AST not lag as much behind sch
White Mage 10,976
Scholar 5,865
Astrologian 5,627

to make it easier to visualize ill express these numbers in terms of the middle healer.

lets begin with alphascape, just to give people an idea how "bad" whm had it in stormblood.

sch 1.38x
ast 1x
whm 0.94x

what this means is that as bad as whm was, it saw 94% of the play ast saw in alphascape. lets look at this expansions numbers.

Eden's Gate
whm 1.25x
sch 1x
ast 0.53x

Edens verse
whm 1.43x
sch 1x
ast 0.7x

TEA
whm 1.27x
sch 1x
ast 0.42x

extremes
whm 1.87x
sch 1x
ast 0.95x

what all of this is saying is that people just dont want to play AST, even if its the highest rdps and hps healer. since ast has the most glaring issues regarding gameplay that dont involve adding a whole rotation, its not surprising they adressed ast.

[Loki]

They just buff the AST instead of really adjusting ALL the 3 healers! It proves that SE doesn't know what to do and doesn't know how to balance them once again. None of them play healer it can't be possible with all those mistakes patch after patch.

[SweetPete]

Honestly I’m so happy that they are changing sleeve draw. I love Astro. It’s my main job. I don’t like the cards but that’s a different story. Sleeve Draws opener is such a turn off to me. Takes so much target switching. As a controller player it sucks and my wrist will definitely thank SE if the change is worth it once patch notes drop.

[Rilifane]

Though I wonder, are they a good measure?
I know the numbers but at the same time, classes like Blm also have a noticaly lower amount of parses although they have the most fluent and well-designed gameplay while others who are in a worse spot get played more often.
And one of the most common reasons people state for not playing Ast anymore is the changed card system but overhauling that would be much more work than adding a button or two to all healers. At the same time, MP issues are so easily alleviated by just melding Piety.
I doubt SD will see a major overhaul but more likely a tweak to make it less punishing and a bit easier on controler players.

[SweetPete]

They just buff the AST instead of really adjusting ALL the 3 healers! It proves that SE doesn't know what to do and doesn't know how to balance them once again. None of them play healer it can't be possible with all those mistakes patch after patch.

Maybe they are waiting for the new expansion before delving deep into the healers role rework. They let WHM go the entire SB expansion with little to no changes and people complained all the time about whm. It was only in ShB that we saw Whm finally climb the ladder. Since I’m sure we getting a new healer in 6.0; they might actually give the healer role the rework it needs. I guess we will see.

[SweetPete]

Though I wonder, are they a good measure?
I know the numbers but at the same time, classes like Blm also have a noticaly lower amount of parses although they have the most fluent and well-designed gameplay while others who are in a worse spot get played more often.
And one of the most common reasons people state for not playing Ast anymore is the changed card system but overhauling that would be much more work than adding a button or two to all healers. At the same time, MP issues are so easily alleviated by just melding Piety.
I doubt SD will see a major overhaul but more likely a tweak to make it less punishing and a bit easier on controler players.

What kind of tweak are you thinking? Something very minor? I mean they say revamp. Usually that means it’s completely changing from what it currently does now. I wouldn’t call that a minor tweak. I think. They said the same thing about CU and it’s effects changed majorly. I guess we shall see August 10th.

[QooEr]

At the same time, MP issues are so easily alleviated by just melding Piety.

its really not that simple. you need to have an entire other gearset for ast, and figuring that gearset alone is quite a struggle. even if it was as "simple" as melding piety, remelding your sets every time you want to play something else is a pain.

i use a low piety set for ast to maximize the damage i do and if i have to raise anyone or die im gimped the whole run and i might just run out of mp just from doing malefics, so the mp problems are important and im glad they're getting adressed.

[Loki]

The fact is they don't communicate with us on this subject so we don't know if they work on it (once and for all) or if they just ignore the problem, they asked us to be patient and they were working on balancing healers during stormblood that's why they haven't added a 4th healer for shadowbringers.

They have made changes that no one wanted and simplified everything with no reasons, it took them 2 years for doing this and healers are still not balanced properly. They will add a 4th healer, great, it will be > to the all 3 others cause it will attract people and it will be nerfed few patches later. I'm maybe pessimistic but i don't trust SE anymore for this task ^^'

[althenawhm]

Maybe they are waiting for the new expansion before delving deep into the healers role rework

I get that this is what they are doing, but I still think it is a terrible decision.
If they wanted to tear down healers to balance them, then they should have done that on private test server instead of letting us deal with terrible design for a whole expansion.

[Crushnight]

Maybe they are waiting for the new expansion before delving deep into the healers role rework. They let WHM go the entire SB expansion with little to no changes and people complained all the time about whm. It was only in ShB that we saw Whm finally climb the ladder. Since I’m sure we getting a new healer in 6.0; they might actually give the healer role the rework it needs. I guess we will see.

I do not trust the current designers for healers to do a good enough job, their silence is testament to that.

Whm were complaining all throughout latter HW and all of SB, not once was I seeing complaints about Aero 3, yet that was removed, plenty of complaints about buffing fluid aura, yet that remains as weak as it is, plenty of complaints about making respose more useful, made it a role action yet never have anything need it despite it now is in 100% of df parties so they can design with a group having a sleep. Lily system was a good change but it is an expansion behind in its execution, things are missing from it.

I can tell you now not many people were complaining about pet management, they were complaining about making both useful but in different circumstances, their response, selene turned into glorified glamour. No sch wanted that to happen to selene they wanted fairy glamours for Selene and Eos not turn one into a glamour. No sch was asking to remove energy drain, it is one of the stupidest design decision to do so, yet they did, they had to reverse course on that decision, I ain't going to praise them for something they should've had the foresight to see(like getting sick because you haven't washed your hands after touching poo, you asking for it if you don't).

No Ast wanted the time aspects of their job taken out, no Ast wanted their 1 stun every 2 mins taken away, no Ast wanted to give their dps rotation to the other healers, yet that is what the designers did, they don't take care when they do expansion reworks, it is the hammer they use not the chisel, healers just got hit the hardest this expansion.

If we get a new healer in 6.0, it will start off as the most basic healer in the game because it has to, because it will start at lv70, and SE will try to account for the people who jump on it straight away never healed before. If it gets any complexity it will be lv80-90, you know not even 10% of content in the game at that point, would be most relevant. Over 70 levels of 1 nuke, 1 DoT is not fun, healers should've evolved to be better than that after 70 goddamn levels.