Do you want healers to be reworked from the ground up?

[NorthernLadMSP]

If that's what it takes to make healers fun again, then yes re-work them from the ground up. Because now, they're a boring chore to play.

[glamazon]

It sounds like you guys want the healers to all do the same thing the same way. Why even have three let alone four healers if they play the same way?

Whm is fun but needs a couple more damage abilities. In face healing is fine with all three healers. The problem is that we need something else to do.

I k ow someone poo pooed my idea of buffs to others to give ast his dmg but this is a mmo not a single player game you will have to rely on people. I guess you can just run trust for everything if you don’t want to encounter less skilled players. You’ve already found a way to deal with those people so it shouldn’t make my idea irrelevant. It’s a different way to play and that’s what we should want right? Different ways to play healer.

[Liam_Harper]

But why can't all the healers just have utility? Like it doesn't take gigabrain coordination to press Chain Stratagem every two minutes, I think even the bad WHM players could cope if they had to use an occasional buff on someone. Give them Bravery and Faith with some % damage increase and nerf their personal dps a bit.

I'm not sure that would make WhM more fun though. Not that I'd disagree with it, I just don't think it's a major fix. Selfish dps can work, especially now fflogs goes by rdps. SAM is in the best spot it's ever been.

One problem with WhM is, being the no-utility healer of the bunch, you'd expect it to be great at raw dps and healing. You'd expect WhM to be the one to say "I got this, you focus on buffs/dps, I'll take the bulk of the heals. That's my specialty." In reality WhM is arguably the worst at taking bulk healing, with AST being the king, having ample strong oGCD's it can smoothly weave in, the highest potency aoe heal in Star, shields and even being solid at on-demand heals with a much cheaper Cure II, Medica II and Regen. WhM pays high taxes to heal. Even using a lily to heal costs a precious weave/movement tool and unexpected oGcDs cost 100 dps potency each due to the clip.

WHM's identity is strange in that Enix are stubborn it must have the weaknesses of being the least mobile class in the game, no shields worth speaking of and no utility but gives it nothing in exchange but simplicity and being good in dungeons.

I don't think it needs a full rework and high complexity, it's the most popular healer in the game so there's probably something in that. People like straightforward and effective. There's no juggling redraws for the same seal 3 times or clunky ghosting pets to manage. But it falls off badly in endgame because it lacks depth and feels awful to optimize and ends up being the trap healer for people who aren't that great at healing. It does need changes and they need to ease up on this triple weakness design they've latched onto because it makes it impossible to make the class fun.

[Veis_Alveare]

...fun.

God yes, to all of this post.

My bad if what I was saying came off as me claiming the addition if some arbitrary damage buffs would fix WHM, they certainly wouldn't. Even if they made Glare 400 potency and therefore placed WHM ridiculously ahead of the other healers in dps contribution the actual act of playing WHM would still be a chore. I'd do it, because I heal with a SCH who won't flex, but I'd hate it still.

I think the idea someone mentioned a while ago (or in another thread? I'm unsure) about giving healers (but in this case specifically and perhaps only WHM) an instant GCD filler that was around the same potency as Glare but costed more MP would be a really elegant bandaid to the situation we're in right now. It would take the strong MP economy of WHM and aim it at the biggest weakness it has (it's lack of movement and mobility) with a fun, flexible result.

It could even be expanded in the future to become WHM's gimmick. Give it a full cast bar DPS spell with a base potency of let's say 300 for now, a reduced cast time version (a la Malefic) with maybe a slight potency and MP cost gain and then an even more powerful and expensive version that's instant but that if you literally spam you'll just go OOM. Like 1k mp or something crazy.

I hate thinking "I'd love to give him DB for this buster but... Dia has 8 secs left so *shrug*" but that's where I am right now on WHM.

[Semirhage]

One problem with WhM is, being the no-utility healer of the bunch, you'd expect it to be great at raw dps and healing. You'd expect WhM to be the one to say "I got this, you focus on buffs/dps, I'll take the bulk of the heals. That's my specialty."

That's one of the steps in the endless cycle. The others are:
-AST and SCH mains: but we should get more damage and healing as a reward for being more complex!
-WHM: benched because now they're just worse and have no advantages at all
-WHMs: can we have utility if we're not allowed more damage and healing?
-SE, AST, and SCH: NO WAY! We'll just change the tuning around it's fine.
-WHM: gets more damage and healing
-ASTs and SCHs: but but but that's not faaaaaaaair.......

And round and round we go.

[Anhra]

I made a similar post like this on another thread already but i think it is worth mentioning here.
I think that a reworked System with Role Skills would be best for most, if not all jobs. The idea itself was good but i think it was poorly executed to the point where they simply just took the "why not just give the players all of them at once and be done with it?" solution. I am suggesting that Skills should be divided into 2 cathegories, Role and Job exclusive skills:

(using healers as reference for this)
-Job exclusive is self explaining, its about the Skills which are UNIQUE for their job. This is where the scholar keeps only his shields/fairy abilities (or maybe even utility spells which compliment other spells in a way like deployment/emergency tactics work), the AST maybe his HoT effects/time magic/geomancy (?) and the WHM his high level white magic (maybe even something like wind/water/earth based spells as well which would compliment the lore of the Conjurer class). The Skills in this Tab should have enough potential to keep the player alive in most situations and make every Job feel of what it is suppoest to be, instead of just having the same "cookie cutter" over and over again.

-in Role exclusive skills, every healer job in this case, should have access to skills which CAN be taken if it suits the playstyle, like low- to mid-tier White magic skills and some quality of life utility or even attack spells like mentioned earlier. You should'nt be able to pick them all for obvious reasons but a fair amount of them according to your level (maybe one slot every few levels?). Those Skills selectable in this Tab should have a good selection to choose from so that it allows players to experiment arround a little and discover their favorite job in new ways. Maybe even in the form of Skill Trees (similar on what WoW for example had back then)? maybe passive skills could work in a similar way or even be inplimented into role skills.

I am not saying that every Job should simply become a red mage here, but i think that having variety to choose from could be quite the benefit on the long run.

[Rai_Takara]

That's one of the steps in the endless cycle. The others are:
-AST and SCH mains: but we should get more damage and healing as a reward for being more complex!
-WHM: benched because now they're just worse and have no advantages at all
-WHMs: can we have utility if we're not allowed more damage and healing?
-SE, AST, and SCH: NO WAY! We'll just change the tuning around it's fine.
-WHM: gets more damage and healing
-ASTs and SCHs: but but but that's not faaaaaaaair.......

And round and round we go.

Exactly.

This is why we got the healers we got. 5.0 was the rebalance and 6.0 is going to build off it. Any new healer is virtually going to now play similar to the other 3 and will only majorly differ in aesthetics. This is by design so they don't have a headache trying to balance the existing bunch. The game's encounter design and battle systems (which are solidified and can't be changed this far into the game's life) do not allow much else besides the current style of healing if they want to preserve balance. Currently all healers are fairly balanced with maybe SCH being slightly behind but not by much.

[Laphicet]

Currently all healers are fairly balanced with maybe SCH being slightly behind but not by much.

Go look at clear rate statistics for endgame content and come back and tell me that same thing. AST and SCH both having significantly less usage than WHM and AST being used half as much as scholar.

The classes may be balanced but they sure has hell aren't fun or worth it to play to the community at least. and I don't think anything they could build onto this simplified system could fix it, either start over from scratch or revert SCH and AST to SB and go from there.

[Recon1o6]

The classes may be balanced but they sure has hell aren't fun or worth it to play to the community at least. and I don't think anything they could build onto this simplified system could fix it, either start over from scratch or revert SCH and AST to SB and go from there.

Correction: May be balanced on paper, in practice they aren't. Both in healing and damage, the amount of effort needed to do damage consistently as a sch/ast is easier on account of the weaving opportunities afforded by the latter. The former meanwhile has no effort on healing.

Addendum: Whm should also build on its HW kit and fix the flaws it had during that era (no utility, still piss poor mobility) and combine it with the current shb lily system. The current kit has no mechanical depth to it, at least in HW you had self buffs to juggle and a few dots and, shocker, you had to use mp as an actual resource rather than it only being low after rezzing the alliance

[Rai_Takara]

Go look at clear rate statistics for endgame content and come back and tell me that same thing. AST and SCH both having significantly less usage than WHM and AST being used half as much as scholar.

The classes may be balanced but they sure has hell aren't fun or worth it to play to the community at least. and I don't think anything they could build onto this simplified system could fix it, either start over from scratch or revert SCH and AST to SB and go from there.

I've looked at them. You make the silly assumption that: Usage =/= balance. Just look at DPS, NIN and SAM are top dogs, yet there are twice as many SAMs as there are NINs. Go look at the last expansion when AST was always better than WHM, yet you saw the same amount of WHMs as you did AST or even more WHMs than there are ASTs. Better yet look at HW where WHMs were dominant even though AST was better from 3.2 onwards. Only in 3.4 with Creator did ASTs jump in popularity because they were made overpowered and because it was the rise of parsing culture and AST was required for it.

The reality is when someone wants to play healer, WHM is the one that comes to mind. It's the simpler and less complex of the healers so it's a wise decision to start as WHM than it would be as the other two.

Anyone who played healer worth their salt in the past two expansion realized that the old healers had to be fixed and homogenized or we would never see a fourth healer.