Shadowbringers Healer Role: Complaints, Feedback, and Suggestions

[Eorzean_username]

General overview

"Will this post add anything new to the Healer discussion?"

No.

"Then why are you posting it?"

I don't know. Maybe some delusional part of me thinks that if 100 apes bang 100 pots with 100 spoons in 100 different forum posts, then maybe 1 Job or Encounter designer will actually receive and comprehend the feedback.

"Have you previously enjoyed the Healer role in FFXIV?"

Yes. I joined FFXIV during Heavensward Patch 3.05, and I very much enjoyed the Healer playstyles at that time. I felt that there was a good balance between party damage to heal, and personal DPS activities to manage and focus on. It wasn't perfect, but everything since Stormblood Patch 4.00 has been a steady, constant, and dramatic decline in quality and enjoyability.

"Do you enjoy the Healer role in Shadowbringers?"

No. This is the worst that Healing as a Role or as individual Jobs has ever been. This is the first expansion for FFXIV in which I have pretty much refused to use any of the three Healer Jobs for pretty much any content, at any level of the game. They just aren't fun any more.

In Heavensward, playing through an encounter as a Healer was much more interesting, satisfying, and fun.

"Cleric Stance"

• All Healers juggled "Cleric Stance", which was actually a fascinating and rewarding feature to master, and gave FFXIV Healing a distinct style compared to other MMOs.
• Now, FFXIV Healing doesn't feel distinct or interesting at all. It feels like a very bland, generic imitation of stereotypical MMO healing, except with less to do, less reward, less interesting situations, and basically it's like if you looked at a World of Warcraft healer at level 10, and declared the entire class was finished.
• Maybe "Cleric Stance" itself was too punishing for too many players, or something, I don't know, but I miss having that level of attention and engagement with the Healing Jobs.

Simple and elegant healing designs

• In Heavensward, Healers mostly had enough CDs / OGCDs to do their role. It was efficient and interesting, and the tools received — like "Indomitability" and "Assize" — felt unique, satisfying, and like they were filling interesting new places in the toolkit, and serving distinct new purposes.
• Now, Healers are flooded with redundant, superfluous, annoying CDs / OGCDs — like "Fey Blessing" and "Celestial Opposition" — that mostly just do the same thing over and over and over again, cluttering keybinds with actions that really don't matter, and exist just to visually fill up your Actions list.

Interesting rotations

White Mage...

• Balanced maintaining "Aero 1", "Aero 2", and "Aero 3", and these offered a variety to the combat cadence with their different timers and cast-times, and also caused a visual variety in the rotation that was fun to watch.
• Could also position to exploit "Fluid Aura" for extra damage, and get to see Water magic on their screen.
• Now, White Mage just slams its forehead against "Glare" and sometimes presses "Dia". It's such a huge step down in interest, and satisfaction, and even just visual entertainment and flavor.

Scholar...

• Balanced maintaining "Shadow Flare", "Bio 1", "Bio 2", "Miasma", and even cross-class "Aero 1", and these offered a variety to the combat cadence with their different timers and cast-times, and also caused a visual variety in the rotation that was fun to watch.
• On top of this, Scholar could aggressively "Energy Drain" for a sense of payoff that is distinctly lacking in the current design. Furthermore, even if a Scholar was hypothetically pouring all "Aetherflow" into healing actions, the base rotation was complex and interesting enough to still feel engaging.
• Now, Scholar just slams its forehead against "Broil 3" and sometimes presses "Biolysis". "Energy Drain" feels limp and unsatisfying, and in situations where "Aetherflow" needs to be diverted into healing actions, the emptiness of the base rotation becomes glaringly obvious. It's a dramatic step down in interest and satisfaction, and doesn't even feel like the same Job any more. It just feels like a White Mage wearing a mortarboard.

Astrologian...

• At least still juggled "Combust 1" and "Combust 2", with their different timers and cast-times, as well as managing "Cleric Stance", optionally adding in "Aero 1", and having a more engaging and interesting "Card" system.
• However, I think Astrologian probably has the best case for not wanting to time-warp back to Heavensward, since it suffered from an awkward and crippled toolkit for a long time, and additions such as "Earthly Star" in Stormblood , aggressive improvements to its ability to solo-heal (such as "Celestial Intersection" in Shadowbringers) and its ability to sustain MP, and the addition of easy weaving with a 1.5s-cast "Malefic", have overall made Astrologian more comfortable to play over time.
• At the same time, Astrologian's core rotation has become worse and worse, its OGCDs have become increasingly cluttered with superfluous junk, and its "Time" elements and Buff/Support design have either been deleted entirely, or turned into a limp and unsatisfying obligate chore.

To be clear:

Not everything was better in Heavensward. There were plenty of weird gaps in toolkits, bizarre design issues like the Accuracy stat, or clunky actions like "Stoneskin" that were interesting, but so awkward to use that they didn't really need to exist in the form that they did.

But despite all of that, I actually enjoyed playing a Healer in Heavensward, so... overall, I think that it was a much better period of design.

Healers are functionally annoying to use. Even at the mechanical level, it's just irritating to Heal.

Movement

Movement is obnoxiously punishing to White Mage and Scholar, necessitating annoying exploitation of the "slidecasting" pseudo-mechanic.

"But you have Ruin 2"

Yes, and Melee DPS Jobs can technically stand at 15y range and spam their 100-potency ranged attack. But that's not a satisfying or fun way to play. I'm talking about what it feels like to try to play a Healer that is trying to maximize their performance on a given encounter.

"Just reapply your damage over time effect"

In many cases it is literally more DPS to just cast nothing while moving, than to waste a GCD overwriting a DOT that was recently applied, especially if it was on-time and caught various party damage buffs. Also, deliberately overwriting a DOT early feels awful from a gameplay perspective. This is not a solution.

OGCD weave space

White Mage and Scholar are also overloaded with OGCD actions at this point, many of which are superfluous, extraneous, or redundant clutter. But they lack the ability to comfortably weave all of these actions in the very limited available instant casts that their rotations now have, being dominated heavily by hard-cast "Glare" or "Broil 3" spam.

Targeting clutter

Astrologian, on the other hand, spends way too much time micro-managing annoying generic support buffs that require constantly de-targeting and re-targeting the enemy.

White Mage and Scholar also suffer this on a lesser level, due to FFXIV's clunky targeting system, and hostility to functional macros.

In all cases, Healing feels like an immense, tedious, sluggish, chore. It feels like it has more in common with making Excel spreadsheets at a desk job, than playing a game for enjoyment.

FFXIV is hostile to Mouseover macros and has a primitive, annoying targeting system for Friendly actions

FFXIV doesn't allow Mouseover macros to utilize the action queue system, making them completely pointless or counter-productive for GCD actions, and most actions in general.

This feels awful coming from other MMOs, such as World of Warcraft, where you can easily and effortlessly cast on Friendly targets by mousing over their Party frames, and thus not need to constantly drop your primary target by clicking back and forth to the Party frame to apply beneficial effects.

As FFXIV continually increases the number of party-targeted effects given to Healers, and the frequency of their use, this is becoming more and more clunky and awkward to deal with, and it's another factor that puts me off playing Healer. I would much rather just say "Forget it." and go play a DPS, so I can keep the enemy targeted the entire time, instead of constantly having to click away, retarget, click away, retarget... It's a terrible user experience.

This also contributes to Astrologian being an absolute mechanical chore to play, especially when the player is sometimes pressured to double-weave OGCD actions targeted on two different party members while also making decisions about randomized aspects of those actions.

Actual Healing is frustratingly uninteresting.

In a game like World of Warcraft or Star Wars: The Old Republic, I don't really care if a lot of my time isn't spend doing damage, because the GCD Healing rotations are actually interesting, and Healing itself is challenging. I feel like my presence as a Healer, and my action choices, make dramatic differences, and if I choose my Healing GCDs wrong, there are obvious negative consequences.

Therefore, "Healing" is an actual game in other MMOs. In FFXIV, "Healing" is a pathetic afterthought that's tacked on to encounters to remind players that they have an HP bar... sometimes. It feels awful.

"But if we make Healing too demanding, then players will be sad when something goes wrong!" ...Yeah... that's... what happens when you lose at a game?? It's okay. The "Healing" logic in FFXIV's design is similar to arguing that all Pure DPS Jobs should only have 2 buttons in their rotation, because it's too upsetting to players when an encounter Enrages. Like...

World of Warcraft is brutally more demanding on Healing requirements in its content, yet the Healer role is still popular and in abundant supply. So, I do not think that Healing requiring actual attention, and frequent, active GCDs, and having a chance for actual failure, is actually a detriment or deal-breaker or turn-off for the vast majority of players that gravitate toward playing a Healer Role.

The problem with making a system where GCD heals are unnecessary and everything is crammed into bloated and overloaded OGCD Healing Ability arrays, is that GCDs are the "heartbeat" of a player's rotation. If there's no or low reason to use Healing GCDs, then you don't feel like a "Healer", you feel like a "DPS with Some Support Heals". You're spending most of your rotation's "clock time" casting... not Heals.

In the past, that was "okay", because FFXIV took the "DPS with Some Support Heals" idea, and really ran with it, with "Cleric Stance" and actually somewhat-complex Healer DPS rotations. It felt engaging and rewarding, even if it was weird. And the weirdness felt good, too, because it was something different in a sea of standardized MMO healing designs.

Now... it's just... it's nothing!! Ahhhhh, it's so frustrating!! How can you not see this as developers?? JACKIE CHAN MEME You took away almost all of the aspects that made filling time with Healer Damage interesting. And then you still didn't design GCD Healing to be interesting... or even necessary!!

So now Healers have nothing interesting to do with their GCD time. They still don't need or want to use GCD Heals. And if they're not using GCD Heals, then... they're... spamming "Glare" or "Broil 3". So all you did, was take away the one thing that made Healers interesting, and replace it with... nothing. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!

Like!! Okay!! Practicing and mastering an encounter as a Healer, used to be rewarded by opening up more and more time to fit all your Damage GCDs into the rotation, trying to tighten it up to be completely clean and not drop any DOTs or miss any refreshes or lose any unnecessary "Cleric Stance" time. So, as you got better as a Healer, and better at judging where you could safely drop Healing GCDs, you were rewarded with more fun and satisfying Damage gameplay pay-off.

Now, your reward for figuring out where you don't need Healing GCDs is... you can cast "Broil 3" seventy-two times, instead of sixty-seven times. It's like completing a complex spreadsheet, sending it off to your manager, and being told "Great job, congratulations, as a reward, you can go get an extra styrofoam cup of water from the water cooler".

Whereas, in Heavensward, you'd complete your spreadsheet, and then your manager would break open the door of their office with a somersault while wearing nothing but a fundoshi, as confetti and a mirrored Disco ball descended from the ceiling, and he would scream at the top of his lungs "GREAT JOB, CONGRATULATIONS, AS A REWARD YOU CAN GO RIDE JET SKIS THROUGH SHARK-INFESTED WATERS WHILE RE-PLACING 'SHADOW FLARE' EXACTLY ON TIME".

...okay... I'm done having a breakdown, but seriously, this design direction frustrates me so much. You can't decide what to do with Healer Jobs, so you just... don't do anything at all. And make their players barely get to do anything at all. It's like amputating all of someone's limbs because you "love" them, and don't want them to risk bumping into a sharp corner.

No wait, actually, I also want to point out the irony that many Healer Classes in World of Warcraft and Star Wars: The Old Republic, despite having much more demanding and engaging GCD Healing requirements and rotations, also have more complex, depthy, and rewarding GCD/OGCD Damage rotations than any Healer in Shadowbringers.

Heal Actions are becoming bloated and over-loaded. It's not exciting to level up as a Healer any more.

You keep pumping more bland, "pure" Healing actions into the Healing Jobs. I don't like this.

I liked in Heavensward that Healers received a lot of new tools that either directly improved their damage capabilities (such as "Aero 3" and "Assize"), or gave them new ways to avoid wasting GCDs on healing (such as "Indomitability" and "Asylum").

This felt really satisfying, and it felt like the devs understood and respected Healer playstyles, and were tailoring improvements to make these Jobs feel cooler and stronger and more fun to play.

Then, from Stormblood onward, it's been a downhill slide, and I find myself feeling completely disappointed every time I see new Healer Action lists, as it is just a list of things that I obviously don't need (Stormblood's "Plenary Indulgence"??????) that are being tacked on for no reason other than the Job designers having absolutely no idea how they can possibly add anything new to Healers that already have all of the Healing tools that they actually need.

And no, getting "Broil 4" and "Biolysis 2" is not going to make me any more excited. That's lame, and you know it, devs. Don't try to pretend this is interesting at all. If a Dragoon saw that their next action was "Chaos Thrust 2", and it's just "Chaos Thrust" but it does 50 more potency on the initial attack and shoots out slightly brighter flowers, they're not going to be excited, they're going to be disappointed. Apply that same logic to Healers.

"What do you want from future versions of the Healer role?"

Well, first of all, you could basically raze the current Healer designs to ash using Allagan Nuclear Weapons or something, and I would miss... barely anything. They've become so bland and awful that it's becoming difficult to follow the "say something nice" rule. But I'm trying to be constructive here, so:

Significantly more interesting rotations.

Add back something like "Cleric Stance".

• I'm not saying that you need to literally add back "Cleric Stance", with its Healing penalty and so on, if you think that's too traumatizing for some players.
• Instead, I'm saying that I want something with a similar level of depth and planning and reward. This doesn't have to be super-complex, but please... something.
• For example, you could have an OGCD. Let's call it "Pope Stance".

• "Pope Stance" has a 30-second cooldown and a 10-second duration.
• While "Pope Stance" is active, your primary attack spell (eg, "Glare") deals 50% more damage, but you can't cast Healing Spells (ie, healing GCDs; Abilities are still allowed).
• This rewards you for knowing when you can safely stop and turret for a little bit, and also rewards you for not popping "Pope Stance" when you're about to reapply a DOT and waste some of your "Pope Stance" on an unbuffed GCD.
• (Look, this probably sucks and has lots of issues, I'm just trying to provide an example of something that adds gameplay interest and some minor amount of decision-making and a sense of encounter mastery).

Give Healers significantly more interesting Damage GCDs.

• Okay, so maybe the FFXIV Combat System doesn't handle having every player applying 3-5 DOTs to the target constantly. Maybe you think that's too much clutter in players's HUDs. Maybe you think this gameplay feels too much like annoying maintenance. So maybe we don't need to go back to maintaining 5 dots on Scholar.
• ...But you have to give Healers more than "spam Glare/Broil 3 and press Dia/Biolysis sometimes".
• In the past, DOT timers served as an effective "cooldown" on GCDs. But with Shadowbringers, you now have GCDs with direct cooldowns. So you could bring back a lot of interesting actions, or their spiritual equivalents, as direct attacks:

  • "Shadow Flare". Make it a GCD with a 30-second cooldown. I liked casting "Shadow Flare". Give it back. Or something equivalent. And no, not as an OGCD, like in Stormblood. That was less fun. I want to cast a dark puddle onto the floor. I liked doing that.
  • "Aero 3". You could bring back the satisfaction of the cast and animation, but as a 25-second cooldown instead of a DOT.
  • "Stella" could return as an analog to Machinist "Drill", something Astrologian launches every 20 seconds to cause a satisfying spike of damage.
  • ...etc...

• Or, you could just give some DOTs back. Summoner still has two DOTs. Perhaps Healers could actually handle such a heavy burden, as well.

Give Healers significantly more interesting OGCDs.

• OGCDs that I like pressing: "Fluid Aura", "Energy Drain", "Earthly Star", "Assize". I like shooting magic into the darkness. I like pressing a button and seeing damage numbers pop up. I like actions that feel like I'm interacting with the enemy, and contributing to the conflict on-screen.
• OGCDs that I don't like pressing: "Fey Blessing", "Celestial Opposition", other stuff that's blatantly just filling space on my hotbars as redundant clutter that all does basically the same thing, because the Job designers were afraid that the Action panel looked too empty after slaughtering most of a Healer's DPS tools. But here's the thing: my Actions list still feels empty, it's just empty in more annoying ways.
• I would like Healers to be much more like Tanks, where the rotations are overall quite similar to Pure DPS Jobs, with a healthy mix of "CD GCDs" and "CD OGCDs", but streamlined and simplified SLIGHTLY to allow mental bandwidth for their obligated "support" tasks.

Reduce or remove annoying, redundant "Healing clutter" in Healer Job OGCD space.

Each Healer has way too many unnecessary and superfluous Heals that just clog up the OGCD weave space with annoying buttons that didn't need to be added. Please compress and streamline this pointless clutter, like (mutilated) "Celestial Opposition", and "Fey Blessing", and so on.

Make a decision about whether FFXIV Healers are "True MMO Healers", or "DPS with Supporting Heals".

The current system tries to put its feet in both wash-basins simultaneously, and the result is that it's terrible at both of them. (this metaphor failed, but you know what I'm trying to say)

If you want FFXIV Healers to be "True MMO Healers", then actually look at the way games like World of Warcraft, Star Wars: The Old Republic, The Elder Scrolls Online, and so on, handle Healing Roles and Classes. Look at the depth and variety of their GCD actions, look at their OGCDs, look at their Traits and Effects and Buffs and so on, look at the way Encounters are designed and the way that Healing classes interact with them.

If you want FFXIV Healers to be "DPS with Supporting Heals", then click the "Undo" button several hundred times on what you've done to their DPS rotations since Stormblood, and allow Healer players to actually feel engaged and challenged and interested during the long, looooooooooooooooong lull periods in-between relevant damage events in FFXIV encounters.

"You are a very negative person, and I don't like you!"

Yes okay that's fine, however, I used to enjoy playing all three Healer Jobs, and now, I don't, and you would literally have to pay me money to log in and spend my free time playing any Shadowbringers Healer Job, because they feel like boring desk work at this point, not a fun game.

If I come across as overly negative here, it's because I'm extremely frustrated and disappointed with the state that you have allowed the Healing Jobs to decay into, and the seeming complete lack of understanding on the developers's part about why players don't like this design.

And now, you're adding a fourth Healer in Endwalker, while not signaling any overt understanding of the problems with Healers in Shadowbringers. This... genuinely worries me, because I feel like the current state of Healers does not give me confidence about the design and gameplay that Sage will receive.

If I see the press previews for Sage in August or September or whenever, and I see that Sage has exactly this as its DPS actions:

• "Stab You With Nouliths", 2.5s cast, 2.5s recast, 100 potency.
• "Stab You With Nouliths Mastery 1". Upgrades "Stab You With Nouliths" to "Stab You With Nouliths 2".
• "Stab You With Nouliths 2", 2.5s cast, 2.5s recast, 200 potency.
• "Stab You With Nouliths Mastery 2". Upgrades "Stab You With Nouliths 2" to "Impale You With Nouliths".
• "Impale You With Nouliths", 2.5s cast, 2.5s recast, 300 potency.
• "Ow, I'm Bleeding From Being Stabbed By Nouliths", Instant, 2.5s recast, 50 potency. Additional effect: Damage over time. Potency: 30. Duration: 18s.
• "Ow, I'm Bleeding From Being Stabbed By Nouliths Mastery 1". Upgrades "Ow, I'm Bleeding From Being Stabbed By Nouliths" to "Ow, I'm Bleeding From Being Stabbed By Nouliths 2".
• "Ow, I'm Bleeding From Being Stabbed By Nouliths 2", Instant, 2.5s recast, 60 potency. Additional effect: Damage over time. Potency: 60. Duration: 18s.
• "Ow, I'm Bleeding From Being Stabbed By Nouliths Mastery 2". Upgrades "Ow, I'm Bleeding From Being Stabbed By Nouliths" to "Seven Hells, I'm Hemmorhaging From Being Stabbed By Nouliths".
• "Seven Hells, I'm Hemmorhaging From Being Stabbed By Nouliths", Instant, 2.5s recast, 120 potency. Additional effect: Damage over time. Potency: 60. Duration: 30s.

...then I'm probably just going to "Imma Head Out" Spongebob Meme for Healing in 6.00, because you're not listening at all.

[AnotherPerson]

Goanna have to poke at some stuff here.

Cleric stance is BAD design - it was mainly removed because Scholars who had % heals could stay in cleric stance and create a DPS disparity. When Cleric Stance was changed to just a DPS buff, it still meant to just throw all your high damaging skills in that opener. For the most part, Cleric stance offers nothing to the table besides the mentality that you have to be more careful when DPSing if you can't heal.
The pope stance you suggested would work terribly for white mage since they mainly rely on GCD actions as well (Lilies being on the GCD and used for Heals, weaving and Afflatus Misery). Removing it in ShB is better since it frees all players and encourages them to DPS when healing isn't needed, breaking the mindset of a 'dps stance' and 'heal stance' when in reality there isn't one set in stone as a fight is constantly changing when your party members eat mechanics.

Plenary Indulgence does have its uses, you pop it between lilies and it helps in high damage fights (not in normal content usually since unavoidable damage is low) or when healers die a lot and lack the healing power to get people up quickly (think prog and new players running SoS or E12N for the first time when it came out, and everyone has been eating mechanics nonstop)

If SE needs to redesign healers for more interesting DPS options, it should have some more interactions with the gauge rather than just one extra DoT or 1 oGCD attack used every 60 seconds unless everything about the jobs aligns up with it (Ex: AST's divination burst with cards, except Sleeve draw's cd aligns with every other divination). Pressing one button doesn't leave much interaction unless the button is used with other buttons (Bane being good example of DoT spread interactivity - but this can't be the whole DPS mechanic, since you really just spread DoTs once and forget).

Scholars can get faerie management back. It'll give them more healing interactivity and fluidity when the faerie can heal rather than be a really slow way to activate an oGCD heal from giving the order to the faerie's windup animation and then casting it. This is just reverting to old SCH gameplay, not introducing anything new.

White mages can get Fluid Aura turn into a more useful skill - 1. AoE upgrades into Assize with also healing, 2. A shield buff that upgrades into Divine Bension for early WHM gameplay, 3. Buff that speeds up the generation of lily/blood lily.


As a healer, you are always going to be inevitably busy - dodging mechanics, actively fighting (be it dps or healing), AND watching HP bars. This is just what a healer entails since you split your focus on both the boss and your party members. You are meant to be multi tasking a lot and this is partially what creates this engaging gameplay aspect. It's just the multi tasking aspect starts to get easier when you know how an encounter works because you know what the next raidwide damage will be, how much damage it does, how much time you have until then, etc. This is why AST feels great when you know when to plan and use Earthly Star's upgraded heal to get the most out it.
However, fight encounters like these acts as a 2 pronged sword - once healers understand the fight, they will start worrying less about the fight and have planned healing tools to cover the damage. This reduces the amount of focus needed on the boss / party members and moves DPS to the forefront when trying to add more engagement to the gameplay. For ASTs, they have cards, malefic, and combust. For SCH, they can be moving resources into Ruin II and throwing excess into Energy Drain, Bio, or Broil. For WHM, it's just Glare more or Aero/Dia. And in some ways, that's fine - but it just creates a difference in gameplay that people need to understand. Not all the healers should be played the same, but there is also different amounts of APM people play at.

AST is meant to be a very busy healer - you have to constantly be doing something - whether it is the cards, dps, etc. This is a job mainly meant for people who like that high APM while multi tasking a lot and that's fine - we have plenty of jobs that cater to people like that too - MNK and NIN being prime examples of high APM DPS. For healers who want that ability to drastically affect the field in various ways, AST is the way to go because you are supposed to target swap a lot to aim for specific players (which is what I'm assuming the Devs were aiming at when they introduced the card system here with all the fate manipulation and card reading lore). Personally, I think that's why AST's oGCD heals are all AoE heals for the most part - less focus on single target healing but more focus on targeting specific players to time their big dps buff window. Removing more target swapping is actually a bad thing in multiple ways since healers will be homogenized more in that way - just press one button and forget.

WHM is a lot slower in pace since they are mostly glaring or using GCD heals so it plays like BLM in a way - slower but more calculative. It's a good thing for people with slower APM because there's less target swapping to do other than healing people. Glare & Dia is still the strongest single target attack and DoT out of the healers. The problem is that they lack so much extra things to do that the feeling of glaring is magnified too much when the party understands the encounter because there's nothing else to do besides Glare and Dia since they are able to avoid mechanics that require healing. It just means they need a couple more actions to minimize the feeling of excessive glaring.
SCH is the job that plays right between both of them, a decent APM because you're moving resources around a lot as well as target swapping to heal others, but also mainly using Broil III (2.5 sec cast time). The pacing is more evened out. If reverted to Stormblood version, it'll have the idea of working in parallel since it'll feel more like controlling 2 characters. A very different change in playstyle and still a decent APM.

Imo, ASTs have been under a lot of criticism, but I think the current AST is actually fairly good in comparison to its previous iterations if you can look beyond the card variety. Different, but not bad that it can't hold its own place. It can certainly be improved, but the current iteration works well to cater to people who want specific gameplay too. Here's to hoping the new healer Sage will create another gameplay addition for people who don't like the current 3.

[Saefinn]

Out of the 3 I like AST the most at the moment because I think it is closer to where they should all be. But I'll only take AST to raid now and refuse to play the others. I took SCH to Titan Savage after clearing it on AST and it felt like I wasn't doing much by comparison. AST, I still at least felt busy on.

But I feel as though the best iteration of AST was Stormblood's because it still kept much of what it had in HW but addressed some of its problems too (like Minor Arcana taking care of 'useless' cards), whereas for WHM & SCH it's probably as mix up between ARR and Heavensward. I say a mix up because Heavensward balance made SCH OP and WHM didn't come off so great from that and from the addition of AST but there were some cool/useful additions in Heavensward (like Assize for WHM).

With regards to Cleric stance. I get that it was a clunky implementation and meant there were issues with it. I liked it because it was something that seemed to be an FFXIV friendly approach to a concept I loved when playing SCH in FFXI. But its appeal was the concept of risk & reward, which we've seen taken out of healer & tank design. In reference to tank design there was stance dancing and for WAR, how berserk used to work or DRK's MP management. I feel like tanks got the short end of the straw too, but tanks at least get a DPS rotation to keep them engaged. However, I lament how DRK used to be more technical to play and now plays in a very similar manner to WAR and watered down in that respect.

I think there are ways of implementing that principle without necessarily making a new version of Cleric Stance, I used the concept in one of my suggestions of how to make SCH more interesting to play. SCH to me has always has a "tactician" identity, so I played with the idea of how Selene could be repurposed for that and to expand the use of Emergency Tactics. Because what you could do in effect is trade off some of your healing potential for utility & DPS. The concept I had wouldn't add any new buttons to SCH either but would make it more dynamic. It'd not be as risky as Cleric Stance, but you'd consciously self nerf in trade off for something else. You over do it, then you'll struggle because you'll have spent up your oGCD's. But at least your GCD's aren't nerfed and you're healing with a wet noodle like with Cleric Stance. That said, would Cleric Stance be so detrimental these days when we have so many oGCD's now?

[Recon1o6]

This was simultaniously an comedic post to read and a good one. Sadly you are right, SE is likely not going to listen otherwise they'd have addressed anything in my summary of healer issues thread

Cleric stance is a weird one. I personally liked it and hated it at the same time depending on the encounter. Your idea of it locking out certain spells/abilities is quite a good one.

dps spells. full agreement.

culling of ogcds. I can't believe someone says they like fluid aura, its useless! I used to like fluid aura but then its been nerfed to uselessness and i deleted it from my hotbar like cure 1, cure 3 and plenary

[Anhra]

Snip

I completely Agree with your take on Healers. The role of a Healer in MMO is that of a specialist Job that under normal circumstances, is more difficult to play than the rest because of the Healing responsibility and the impact any error could make, that's why in most MMO's, encountering a Skilled Healer usually had quite the impact performancewise when you compared it to a new player or other Classes that have a rather basic Healingkit on the side that just barely keeps themselves alive at some point.

But as for your suggestion on to return to the way it was before, i do have to disagree here, while healing itself was, compared to now way better in every way, i'd say it was okay at best in terms of gameplay. If Healers were to be reworked in a way it feels rewarding to play, they would need a rework from the ground up. I mean, just look at how FFXI designed their Scholar and White Mage for example (if youre too wary about the Links, just google them instead, it shouldn't be too hard to find them, especially since they're pretty much the first Link shown):

https://ffxiclopedia.fandom.com/wiki/Scholar
https://ffxiclopedia.fandom.com/wiki/White_Mage

For references sake, here are also some examples on how some other MMO's designed their Healers (the games i've mentioned are only one's i had positive experience playing at some point, so the choice might be a bit biased), try to compare those with the Skillkit we got for our Healers and you start noticing some things:

Tera Online:
https://tera.fandom.com/wiki/Priest_skills
https://tera.fandom.com/wiki/Mystic_skills

World of Warcraft:
https://wow.gamepedia.com/Priest_abilities
https://wow.gamepedia.com/Druid_abilities (Druid is a jack of all trades, that can specialize himself into being either dps,tank or healer)
https://wow.gamepedia.com/Shaman_abilities (Shaman is a similar take like druid, but instead has a melee dps, ranged dps and healer specialisation)

Rappelz Online (a old MMO that is currently more or less a walking corpse of a game in its current state, to put it mildly, but it is interesting for comparing reasons since it launched in 2006 where MMO's used to be somewhat...different). Reading into this might be a bit more of a chore because Jobs could branch off, instead of posting the Link for every Healer, ill post the Link that lists all Jobs at once (including their skills).

https://rappelz.fandom.com/wiki/Jobs

[ItMe]

OP before you go off and make a 3rd thread like this about how you don't like tanks or casters or whatever, would you be able to respond in some of these threads you're starting?

[Deceptus]

Goanna have to poke at some stuff here.

Cleric stance is BAD design - it was mainly removed because Scholars who had % heals could stay in cleric stance and create a DPS disparity. When Cleric Stance was changed to just a DPS buff, it still meant to just throw all your high damaging skills in that opener. For the most part, Cleric stance offers nothing to the table besides the mentality that you have to be more careful when DPSing if you can't heal.
The pope stance you suggested would work terribly for white mage since they mainly rely on GCD actions as well (Lilies being on the GCD and used for Heals, weaving and Afflatus Misery). Removing it in ShB is better since it frees all players and encourages them to DPS when healing isn't needed, breaking the mindset of a 'dps stance' and 'heal stance' when in reality there isn't one set in stone as a fight is constantly changing when your party members eat mechanics.

And I take issue with your blanket statement that Cleric Stance was Bad Design.

It was about as egregious as letting tanks sit outside of tank stance to do more DPS. It made them more squishy.

Cleric Stance and Tanks outside of Tank Stance was all about risk vs reward.

[VentVanitas]

In the past, DOT timers served as an effective "cooldown" on GCDs. But with Shadowbringers, you now have GCDs with direct cooldowns. So you could bring back a lot of interesting actions, or their spiritual equivalents, as direct attacks:

I agree with this. They've shown with jobs like GNB's Sonic Break or NIN's Shadow Fang that they can make interesting DoT attack GCDs without them feeling like a bother to 100% maintain, but still giving the satisfaction of the damage a DoT effect can give by warranting a higher potency by being on a cooldown. (And are definitely more interesting to use than hit and forget filler OGCD attacks) It would be interesting to see a skill like Sonic Break (SCH's Miasma 2 anyone?) on a healer and hell, I'll do just about anything to get Shadow Flare and Aero 3 back.

[QooEr]

And I take issue with your blanket statement that Cleric Stance was Bad Design.

It was about as egregious as letting tanks sit outside of tank stance to do more DPS. It made them more squishy.

Cleric Stance and Tanks outside of Tank Stance was all about risk vs reward.

honestly they could give back cleric stance but only as an optimization tool. like if it gave 10% more damage done and 50% less healing, casual players would not feel pressured to use it, and it would make higher play more involved.

[Kabooa]

I agree with this. They've shown with jobs like GNB's Sonic Break or NIN's Shadow Fang that they can make interesting DoT attack GCDs without them feeling like a bother to 100% maintain, but still giving the satisfaction of the damage a DoT effect can give by warranting a higher potency by being on a cooldown. (And are definitely more interesting to use than hit and forget filler OGCD attacks) It would be interesting to see a skill like Sonic Break (SCH's Miasma 2 anyone?) on a healer and hell, I'll do just about anything to get Shadow Flare and Aero 3 back.

Calling them interesting is brow raising.

There's literally no difference between Sonic Break and Blasting Zone other that one's a GCD and one's an OGCD. You use them under the same circumstances with the same considerations. I'd wager the only reason Sonic Break is on the GCD is because otherwise, the basic rotation might shift just a bit too much.

DoTs by themselves are not interesting. They require outside mechanics to interact with them, otherwise they're just maintenance skills in the same vein as Storm's Eye, Jinpu and Disembowel.