Another patch, another 4-ish months of healer suffering.

[DBug]

They haven't however found a way to give healers a more engaging way to play our jobs. All they do is load us up with healing spells that become redundant. Especially with DPS and tanks now having heals/shields/defensive buffs for the party. Soooo what's left to do when the party isn't in danger? You press your dot, then 1 button nuke until someone takes enough damage to warrant your attention. Or you could stand there emoting I guess as well between waves of damage.

SCH during the Stormblood expansion was actually a great way to handle a healer who could also put up DPS. Most of SCH's damage skills place a DOT meaning they didn't have to decide between casting Miasma II, Shadow Flare, etc and accidentally letting the tank die because they only had to cast those skills once every 15-30 seconds. This allowed them to maintain both healing and DPS uptime and it made the class one of the best, if not THE best, healer during the Stormblood expansion as well as one of the best healing classes in any MMO.

The changes ShB brought absolutely destroyed any and all fun I had as a healer and single-handedly made me dropped healing as my main role. Being able to quickly spread your 2 main DOTs was also a huge quality of life over now having to cast it on each and every mob in a pull in a meta dominated by wall-to-wall pulls, which AST and WHM would still have to do even if they didn't gut SCH's skills. You can no longer mitigate damage with the slowing effect of Shadow Flare, their only skill had offensive and defensive benefit (ie. Assize, Stellar Explosion). WHM was meh before ShB and AST provided way more utility since it could do more than just give damage and to just 1 person at a time.

tl;dr - Before ShB, healers had way more to do outside of just healing people and that's why they were fun - yet ShB removed most offensive tools healers had to focus on this heal-meta is both incredibly dull and largely unhelpful as most end-game players optimize around mitigating damage to maintain uptime instead of just healing. Yet we still get changes like the Energy Drain nerf to punish people who want to try and break away from the mind-numbingly boring heal meta.

Healers feel worse now than any other expansion. You are just there to keep the party alive and otherwise contribute next to nothing the in most fights towards endgame. As long as people want to clear stuff quickly and repeatedly, the DPS meta is always going to be the preferred player choice outside of doing specific niche farms. Nowadays, I just play healer because I'm often in queues where there are *literally no healers* due to how most of everyone just doesn't find them fun to play anymore.

But none of that
None of it
Was as bad as losing Protect.

[ItMe]

But none of that
None of it
Was as bad as losing Protect.

Why is that?
In Stormblood didn't Protect only mitigate, like, 2% damage?
I don't understand how losing that is so bad.

[oblivion238]

Why is that?
In Stormblood didn't Protect only mitigate, like, 2% damage?
I don't understand how losing that is so bad.

It's mostly the flavor that protect had. I understand why they removed it though I would have preferred if they just made it into a shield instead (whm shield?).

[Rymi64]

It's mostly the flavor that protect had. I understand why they removed it though I would have preferred if they just made it into a shield instead (whm shield?).

If thats the case they could have just gave stoneskin back to whm. Though i prefer benison since it seems to be water and wind elemental based shield. Which reminds me of my theory on why they never gave us a water based attack spell. It's because of the war and the calamity that resulted from it. Because of the flooding they just said "yea lets not use water magic anymore for attacking" and thats why only villains and geomancers use water attacks (at least its my head canon).

[Laphicet]

If thats the case they could have just gave stoneskin back to whm. Though i prefer benison since it seems to be water and wind elemental based shield. Which reminds me of my theory on why they never gave us a water based attack spell. It's because of the war and the calamity that resulted from it. Because of the flooding they just said "yea lets not use water magic anymore for attacking" and thats why only villains and geomancers use water attacks (at least its my head canon).

Y'shtola has Water of the Seventh Dawn and has used other water spells as part of her elementalist/witch/FFXI scholar kit ever since SB, and the Conjurer boss in Bozja uses water attacks (She's more of an antagonist than outright evil and is very much a lawful character from her dialogue and backstory). Fluid Aura is also very much an offensive spell and is treated as such in the story (only ShB's gameplay considers it otherwise).

The only reason that there isn't more water spells for the player (outside of BLU) is because the devs just don't feel like adding them.

[DBug]

Why is that?
In Stormblood didn't Protect only mitigate, like, 2% damage?
I don't understand how losing that is so bad.

That 2% adds up over the course of a long fight where players are taking damage in 20k+ increments. It could be the difference between a player getting OHKO or surviving with like 200 HP.

Plus, it certainly didn't hurt anything by being there outside of the 2 seconds it took to cast it at the start of every instance/reset.

[HyoMinPark]

That 2% adds up over the course of a long fight where players are taking damage in 20k+ increments. It could be the difference between a player getting OHKO or surviving with like 200 HP.

Plus, it certainly didn't hurt anything by being there outside of the 2 seconds it took to cast it at the start of every instance/reset.

Eh, Protect didn’t matter enough in most content to warrant keeping, in my opinion. The only time I ever saw its mitigation worth was during Week 1 Savage prog (when everyone was basically minimum item level for the fights) and Ultimate. Ultimate the mitigation actually mattered. But in all the rest of content? It was irrelevant whether or not party members had it because incoming damage was so minuscule.

[MPNZ]

Eh, Protect didn’t matter enough in most content to warrant keeping, in my opinion. The only time I ever saw its mitigation worth was during Week 1 Savage prog (when everyone was basically minimum item level for the fights) and Ultimate. Ultimate the mitigation actually mattered. But in all the rest of content? It was irrelevant whether or not party members had it because incoming damage was so minuscule.

Or just a really bad or undergeared tank. It has always been a regular occurrence for me when using the duty roulettes and some players just don't care about mechanics either

[HyoMinPark]

Or just a really bad or undergeared tank. It has always been a regular occurrence for me when using the duty roulettes and some players just don't care about mechanics either

The mitigation Protect provided wasn’t enough to protect a paper tank. It would have needed to provide a far higher percentage mitigation to save a tank that had poor gear.

[Side-Eye]

They should have turned Protect into a 10s group 50% mitigation ability for all attacks both magical and physical, with a 120s recast time.