How would you feel if shields had no upfront healing?

[Semirhage]

Hey, I get excited when I hit that extra Broil! But your general point might be right. To be honest, I don't have enough experience playing non-healer jobs at a high level to judge this. I realise people find this hard to believe, but I actually have fun playing healer.

I used to. They kept stripping things off my favored job and replacing them with nothing. Generalizing my abilities into the role system. Slashing my already admittedly small, low-nuance damage kit not to build on anything, but just to make it smaller because other people were b*tching about it being either too haaaaaaaaard or complaining they "weren't getting healed", which as far as I'm concerned is code for "make those healbots only heal meeeeee and have no other responsibilities, only *I* can make mistakes!"

Eventually I got fed up with it and tried out a DPS for more than just questing and dungeons. It made healing feel a hundred times worse. RDM flows as smooth as butter. Its abilities all have clear uses you don't have to contort logic to invent a scenario for, even if they're niche. Even swiftcast. It doesn't require you to awkwardly fire off useless overheal casts just to move. It has a goofy damage buff that's still *way* better than Presence of Mind, because it at least aligns with everyone else's buffs, applies to the party, and it doesn't shift your GCD forward and misalign your weave windows even further.

When I'm playing one of the better-designed DPS it just becomes so much clearer how utterly ignored the healer role is. When I run Pagalth'an on WHM I just roll my eyes, spam lilies between pulls, clip my casts to use Assize because screw it, thaaaaat's how you play it, and spend 95% of my boss time tapping the 1 key like a zombie.

[ty_taurus]

They kept stripping things off my favored job and replacing them with nothing. Generalizing my abilities into the role system. Slashing my already admittedly small, low-nuance damage kit not to build on anything...

This sentence resonated with me so hard.

SE: We took away Miasma, Miasma II, and Shadowflare.

Me: So what are you replacing them with?

SE: I don't understand the question.

[Kabooa]

This sentence resonated with me so hard.

SE: We took away Miasma, Miasma II, and Shadowflare.

Me: So what are you replacing them with?

SE: I don't understand the question.

Art of War and Ruin 2 covers every functionality Miasma 2 did.

[ty_taurus]

Art of War and Ruin 2 covers every functionality Miasma 2 did.

Oh right, they just nerfed it.

[Rosa_Frandlia]

This sentence resonated with me so hard.

SE: We took away Miasma, Miasma II, and Shadowflare.

Me: So what are you replacing them with?

SE: I don't understand the question.

It is not just SCH:

Cleric Stance
Protect
Stoneskin
Stoneskin 2
Divine Seal
Shroud of Saints
Repose
Secret of the Lily 2 (no real loss)
Aero III.
Fluid Aura losing both damage and knockback

That is what WHM lost the last 2 expansions. Stoneskin sorta replaced at 66, Divine Seal at 80. The combining of Bio 1 and Bio 2 into bio also effected WHM and AST with Aero I and II and Combust I and II. You also forgot Virus and eye for an eye on SCH along with Bane. Both jobs are a shell of what they were in HW, especially at low levels especially on the DPS side where all 3 healers could cross class from THM for Thunder as another DoT too. That is why in another thread I said I hope they don't gut WHM and SCH like the last 2 expansions by taking away a lot of the oGCD's like Divine Benision (the type of shield this thread is about) and Whispering Wind.

I'd love to see SCH get an oGCD shield only similar to WHM with Assylum as an aoe regen on the oGCD. Maybe give them something like TBN off the fairy gauge to give it more use.

[Kabooa]

Oh right, they just nerfed it.

Art of War is a stronger AoE and Ruin 2 is a better weaving tool.

[BungleBear]

Art of War is a stronger AoE and Ruin 2 is a better weaving tool.

Yes.

Miasma II had 100 potency upfront damage plus a dot that ticked four times for 25 potency each. So 200 potency in total. Art of War has 160 potency upfront damage and no dot. A single cast of Miasma II out-damages a single cast of AoW after the dot has ticked three times. But you shouldn't compare single casts. In the time that it takes for the dot to tick, you could have cast three more AoW. If you were spamming Miasma II on a pack of mobs in a dungeon, for example, you were effectively getting only 100 potency per cast, compared to 160 potency per cast for AoW.

As weaving tools, Miasma II and (current) Ruin II have the same total potency, but Ruin II has the added advantages that (a) it can be used at range, and (b) the damage is all upfront.

Having said that, you might think that comparing potencies between expansions is misleading. There was general potency inflation in Shadowbringers, e.g. Broil II (240 pot) was replaced by Broil III (280 pot on release, 290 now). You might say that Miasma II potency was 83% of Broil II, whereas Ruin II is now only 69% of Broil III. Single weaving under Miasma II was clearly preferable to clipping Broil II, whereas single weaving under Ruin II is roughly comparable with clipping Broil III.

Still, I would say that overall, the combination of AoW and (buffed) R2 is an improvement on M2.

ETA: Even if we allow for potency inflation, AoW still comes out ahead of M2. Suppose that M2 was kept in ShB and the potency was increased comparably to Broil II/III. Then it would have around 120 potency upfront, compared to 160 for AoW.

[Shurrikhan]

Yes.

Miasma II had 100 potency upfront damage plus a dot that ticked four times for 25 potency each. So 200 potency in total. Art of War has 160 potency upfront damage and no dot. A single cast of Miasma II out-damages a single cast of AoW after the dot has ticked three times. But you shouldn't compare single casts. In the time that it takes for the dot to tick, you could have cast three more AoW. If you were spamming Miasma II on a pack of mobs in a dungeon, for example, you were effectively getting only 100 potency per cast, compared to 160 potency per cast for AoW.

If we're going to be that careful not to look at M2's max potency in isolation, are we not also going to look at how AoW was given in place of multiple DoTs and Bane?

[BungleBear]

If we're going to be that careful not to look at M2's max potency in isolation, are we not also going to look at how AoW was given in place of multiple DoTs and Bane?

Well, I was only addressing the one-to-one comparison between M2 and AoW. If you want to compare SCH's entire dungeon DPS toolkit between SB and ShB, that's another question. It might be interesting to math that out. But it would be tricky, because the SB calculation would depend on how long it takes the mobs to die, and perhaps also on the number of mobs (I vaguely recall that Bane had a falloff). AoW is giving you an extra 60 potency per mob per GCD, compared to M2. Would the dot potency from Bane and Shadowflare oughtweigh that deficit? I don't recall the details of these abilities well enough to answer that.

[Absurdity]

While AoW is an improvement over Miasma 2, atleast potency-wise because the animation is contentious. I would however also look at the aoe spells that SCH lost with ShB which got no replacement. Bane to quickly spread your dots to all surrounding enemies and Shadowflare.

Yes AoW does more damage in aoe situations than you would've done by just spamming M2, but when you include Misma 3 and Bio 2 on all targets + Shadow Flare then the question of whether or not you're doing more damage now becomes a lot more complicated.
Add to this the fact that you only lose 100 potency whenever you need to use your GCD for healing instead of 160 and it becomes even more complicated.

You would most likely end up with more dps on the old spells than you would with AoW but I honestly can't be bothered to do the math right now because you have to factor in the 3 second dot ticks, <2.5 second GCD, casts spent on applying your dots, length of encounter, amount of enemies, etc.

Well, I was only addressing the one-to-one comparison between M2 and AoW. If you want to compare SCH's entire dungeon DPS toolkit between SB and ShB, that's another question. It might be interesting to math that out. But it would be tricky, because the SB calculation would depend on how long it takes the mobs to die, and perhaps also on the number of mobs (I vaguely recall that Bane had a falloff). AoW is giving you an extra 60 potency per mob per GCD, compared to M2. Would the dot potency from Bane and Shadowflare oughtweigh that deficit? I don't recall the details of these abilities well enough to answer that.

The potency of Shadowflare was 50 per tick for 30 seconds, the potency for Bio 3 was 45 and the potency for Miasma 3 was 45 as well. Assuming that those all run for their entire duration we would have 1400 potency per enemy.

You would most likely not have Shadow Flare up for every trash pull so that muddles the water even more.



In my entirely subjective opinion, regardless of which does more damage, the old spells were vastly superior to spamming Art of War. Not only was it slightly less monotonous but you also had more flexibility exactly because you didn't need to spam Miasma 2 every GCD.
You would set up your dots and then could throw out an Adlo here and there with a loss of maybe 75 potency per enemy.