Shadowbringers Healer Role: Complaints, Feedback, and Suggestions

[Side-Eye]

AST, I still at least felt busy on.

While I understand why that's appealing, feeling "busy" does not equate to job satisfaction, especially for those of us who remember playing with a full deck (sorry couldn't resist) and having "time" abilities to manipulate fate --which was a big part of AST's lore and appeal.

Honestly, I feel entirely capable of healing any content, so this isn't about sheer power or healing potential, but about the entertainment and QOL value of the job. If Squeenix had revamped the entire game to require 95% of our attention towards healing, some of the changes would make sense, even if they didn't add to the above factors. However, yanking variety from cards and simplifying damage will never be well received when most of our time is spent trying to contribute to DPS.

[VentVanitas]

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.

DoTs can be made more interesting when they're not nothing more than an obligation to keep up for extra damage, as you said. I like to think HW MNK's Touch of Death as a fine example of a DoT not needing direct mechanics to make it worth using, but rather the kit surrounding it that indirectly shaped its usage and feel on the job.

There is something there that can be done with skills like Shadow Fang/Sonic Break if built upon, hence why I call them interesting. Whether they're involving or whether SE can realise that potential however, is a different discussion.

[Saefinn]

While I understand why that's appealing, feeling "busy" does not equate to job satisfaction, especially for those of us who remember playing with a full deck (sorry couldn't resist) and having "time" abilities to manipulate fate --which was a big part of AST's lore and appeal.

Honestly, I feel entirely capable of healing any content, so this isn't about sheer power or healing potential, but about the entertainment and QOL value of the job. If Squeenix has revamped the entire game to require 95% of our attention towards healing, some of the changes would make sense, even if they didn't add to the above factors. However, yanking variety from cards and simplifying damage will never be well received when most of our time is spent trying to contribute to DPS.

Oh I fully agree. I much preferred the old card system and the timey-wimey moves AST had. And this what they've done to all 3 healers and healing in general is just a snore fest.

I guess my preference of AST ATM is, well, making the most of a bad situation. I was a SCH main, from that perspective, being busy is a step up from that stand point because it's more engaging than spamming Broil/Ruin II or Art Of War.

[Ultimatecalibur]

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.

Tanks tanking in dps stance with Str Accessories was bad design because it was more about increasing tank dps by forcing others to work harder without really changing what the tanks were doing. There was no real skill difference between a Vit Tank with Tank Stance always on and a stance dancing Str Tank. The gigantic gap in dps output between the two created an illusion of skill.

Cleric Stance was bad design because it became more about locking out spells and abilities due to how big the gap between Int and Mind got after DoM gear split into Healing and Casting. The difference before the split was about a 31% difference in Int and Mind and that grew to a 200% difference by i130. In HW the gap grew to a 600% difference by i270. What started out as a minor damage buff/healing debuff became a massive output gap.

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.

My Guess is that Sonic Break and the Continuation combo being weaponskills with skill speed influencing cooldowns is because they were attempting to make a job that scaled better with Skill Speed but failed due to No Mercy having a fixed 60s cooldown. In theory, Sonic Break would go from 1200 potency a minute at 380 skill speed to ~1522 per minute at 3706 skilll speed and the Continuation combo would go from 2 uses per minute to 2.3 usages per minute over the same timeframe.

[QooEr]

Tanks tanking in dps stance with Str Accessories was bad design because it was more about increasing tank dps by forcing others to work harder without really changing what the tanks were doing. There was no real skill difference between a Vit Tank with Tank Stance always on and a stance dancing Str Tank. The gigantic gap in dps output between the two created an illusion of skill

this is just false. a GOOD main tank in dps stance would know how to use their defensives to not screw the healers over.

Cleric Stance was bad design because it became more about locking out spells and abilities due to how big the gap between Int and Mind got after DoM gear split into Healing and Casting. The difference before the split was about a 31% difference in Int and Mind and that grew to a 200% difference by i130. In HW the gap grew to a 600% difference by i270. What started out as a minor damage buff/healing debuff became a massive output gap.

so would cleric stance be bad design too if the difference stayed at ~30%?

[Ultimatecalibur]

this is just false. a GOOD main tank in dps stance would know how to use their defensives to not screw the healers over.

Not really. Good tanks were doing that even out of dps stance. The cooldowns were still used to mitigate the same attacks and mechanics. The major differences were that dps stance tanks took 25% more damage from the same attacks while Str Accessory tanks had about 80% the max hp. Tank skill had no influence on that: Bad tanks would fail to mitigate while good tanks would mitigate. All the dps stance meta did was make it visible which tanks were not mitigating properly because their mistakes were amplified.

On the other hand, the increased damage necessitated the use of Shields for survival in higher tier content which increased Shield Healer engagement.

If anything, the game would likely be more enjoyable for both tanks and healers if ShB fights were tuned around the relative damage amounts taken by tanks in dps stance during HW/StB rather than the amounts tanks were taking in tank stance. A 50% increase in the damage taken by the tanks is a major influence on the full usage of cooldowns and amount of downtime healers end up having.

so would cleric stance be bad design too if the difference stayed at ~30%?

Healers would likely just end up keeping Cleric Stance always on and only disable it in emergencies. So, yes it would still be bad design but bad design for a different reason.

[Kabooa]

I'm of the opinion that old cleric stance can stay gone.

However, Seraph Strike is so natural fitting into the White Mage's kit that I would be hard pressed to argue against its inclusion, even if it were just 1:1 translated from Bozja into the main kit.

It makes MP management matter. It completely solves the issue of Potency Return on Misery while putting that control into the player's hands instead of being a passive potency adjustment, or instead of giving a Lily DPS skill. The gap closing component doesn't...make a ton of sense, but ultimately does not matter - It could stay or go.

Seraph Strike, a DoT Detonator, and a back-end burst option that applies your buffs on activation instead of on cast, and I'd argue that would be a fitting kit for White Mage.

[JisKing98]

hey can I get a tl;dr please?

[elioaiko]

As someone who played from Stormblood, I will agree that SB 4.0 was the best version of AST. It had a mix of interesting abilities that felt good to use. Time extending buffs and regens and Sleeve Draw felt great to use and it made you feel like an actual support.

The devs won't listen because healer role simply doesn't matter to them. Just look at what happened to tanks. They made them all defensively the same with minor quirks. They've done the same to healers (sorta).

I agree 100% about the movement and weaving on SCH and WHM. Clipping does not feel good and is very punishing. It's not good design and frankly a slap to our faces that they haven't resolved this.

I feel like the only reason they gave AST 1.5s Malefic was to weave cards, not actual movement.

Sage, while I'm excited for, am caution about. I feel like they'll run over SCH completely or be useless.

They really need to embrace the green dps because they sure as hell are no making things require more healing. They've proven that casuals/bads can't handle it. And it's equally boring to spam healing GCD spells. I'm certainly not excited to spam Medica, Cure 3 over and over again, my MP surely doesn't agree either.

[KDSilver]

While I understand why that's appealing, feeling "busy" does not equate to job satisfaction, especially for those of us who remember playing with a full deck (sorry couldn't resist.

Indeed, I regret old AST deck.
But for me, being busy with the current iteration of AST is what make it appealing to me (because i feel so bored on WHM and SCH)