Healers Exist for DPS fun only?

[Sebazy]

Here is a historical overview of AST:

A couple of small corrections.

Regarding Heavensward:

Gravity was fine, I'm honestly not sure why you're hating on it so much? It's main downfall vs WHM and SCH aoe was actually the need to target a monster to cast it. It was pretty common to lose a GCD or two to your target mob getting killed right before the gravity cast went off if your group was stomping trash particularly quickly. Weaving with it really wasn't that big a deal, in dungeons you'd generally get the best results just pounding the trash to dust and then dealing with cards whilst running, you'd spam aero/combust/cards as much as you could whilst moving and then just mash Gravity once the Tank positioned things. Also note that Gravity was and still is at somewhat of an advantage vs trash pulls with lots of ground marker spam, the 4th trash pull in The Twinning is a great example of this where Holying through AoEs was particularly risky.

Regen works in the same way as dots in that it's potency snapshots depending on your buffs when you cast it. Dropping a regen on a tank and then hitting cleric stance had your regen continuing to heal for it's full amount. If I'm remembering it correctly, Earthly Star also healed it's full amount irrespective of if you had Cleric stance up or not.

Aero was 100% worth using on the condition that it was going to run it's full duration, 180 potency total over 18 seconds for one GCD. Stacking dots on everything you could was always fundamental to doing good healer damage irrespective of single or multi target. Also just incase it's not clear, Combust I and II both stacked. As an AST you'd use all 3 dots on a single target if you were trying to maximise your damage (assuming it wasn't going to die or go immune before the full dot duration that is). As a fun bit of bonus trivia, back in 2.0 WHM also had access to Thunder which was also well worth using.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLGUMzl2cV0 - Some Heavensward AST gameplay of mine in an A12S PF for reference.

Moving onto Stormblood:

You're mostly on point, light speed was primarily a mobility and MP conservation tool at this point. One fairly major point that is worth noting is that AST actually out AoE'd SCH by quite a significant margin in 4.0 initially. WHM was ahead of AST by a modest margin with SCH an insultingly distant 3rd through a perfect storm of nerfs to it's AoE kit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZ35BP-PEaI - Stormblood gameplay running Seiryu on AST again in a PF.

Not to mention that AST up until Shb had no access to AoE for any content in ARR. Their AoE was available at level 52. I would have probably never queued for leveling roulette. Can you imagine? Running Keeper of the Lake and not being able to AoE anything. The suffering must have been unfathomable. What else can you do besides AoE-ing? Circle your unspreadable DoTs? Give me a break. That gameplay was terrible.

Yep, AST's dungeon gameplay pre Gravity was absolutely horrible. Do you know the best part about this? Stormblood saw this exact issue being dumped on SCHs at the level cap. If there was ever a smoking gun that clearly demonstrated that SE's battle system team put zero effort into healers. 4.0 SCH was it.

Basically Shb AST with old card system with probably serious clip problems and terrible AoE.

Note that the cast time change for AST came partway through Stormblood with patch 4.3. I'd argue that this era was peak AST if you discount the 20% balance times during 3.4.

It is not completely accurate to say that DoTs were removed for AST.

It is 100% accurate to say that DoTs were removed for all 3 healers, AST included. AST used to roll with 3 dots in HW as can be seen in my replay that I've linked. Having dots with different cast mechanics and durations added an extra layer of complexity particularly if you were really trying to min max your efficiency.

There was no worth in taking any INT on healers that I can ever remember since you wouldn't see any benefit from it when Cleric was up, nor was it really worth spending GCDs on damage without Cleric stance going by the time you were level 50. If you were really chasing that last bit of damage you'd be cane/book slapping and throwing PPPs.

Lastly, it's fair to say that AST has lost the least depending on where you stand with the new vs old cards. Things don't look so peachy if you compare how SCH has been handled over the years though. And that's without mentioning the raid utility we've lost over time such as Eye for an Eye and Virus.

[RinaB]

In response to the OP, it wouldn't feel like that if they made tanks and healers feel more important. Obviously you need tanks and healers but the skill cap for both roles is so low now and on top of that not even having to care about enmity is just blah. I've tanked this whole xpac like usual but I would just like the tank role and healing role to be changed somehow to make them more niche instead of "anyone can do it now!"

[FoxCh40s]

In response to the OP, it wouldn't feel like that if they made tanks and healers feel more important. Obviously you need tanks and healers but the skill cap for both roles is so low now and on top of that not even having to care about enmity is just blah. I've tanked this whole xpac like usual but I would just like the tank role and healing role to be changed somehow to make them more niche instead of "anyone can do it now!"

I think in general both roles want more relevance than that.

However, as an Omni Job player, one who gravitates towards healers, I would say right now that Healers are in the absolute worst of it right now.

[Sebazy]

My post above made me think of another way to clearly show how healer gameplay has changed over the years and patches. Here's some comparisons between HW and Shadowbringers healer gameplay in some Savage and Extreme encounters around the 9-10 minute length.

Log 1 - HW AST - A12S - Above average DPS whilst also carrying the HPS to a fair extent

This is the log from the HW A12S video I linked and IMHO, this is what our spread of casts should look like in optimised play. I'm not mashing a single button for extended periods. I've got a fairly even amount of healing vs DPS actions. This is enjoyable healer gameplay with a great amount of depth and optimisation potential despite A12S being clearly the easiest end of tier boss vs A4S/A8S.

Log 2 - HW SCH - A12S - World #2 Ranked DPS, minimal HPS

This log was my long time co healer landing the world number 2 dps ranking in one of our A12S clears. This was the absolute pinnacle of green DPS back in 3.x. Nukes are a little over 2x the next most used ability with the rest of the kit being close behind.

Log 3 - SHB SCH - E10S - Above average DPS, average HPS

Coming to the present in Shadowbringers, another log from my co healer, this time a fairly mediocre messy E10S clear with deaths and whatnot. 180 nukes, 40 ruin IIs, 19 dots, 15 Eds, there's that huge compression towards 2 hotkeys with Broil being pressed at a ratio of 4.5x to 1 vs Ruin II which in turn is just over 2x to Biolysis and Energy Drain.

Log 4 - SHB WHM - E10S - Below average DPS, significantly above average HPS

The same pull as above, this time my casts as a very HPS heavy WHM, except the numbers are even more skewed.... 131 Glares, 20 Dias, 13 Assizes and 12 Aff.Raptures, that's a ratio of 6.5x to 1 Nukes vs my second most pressed hotkey. And remember, this is below average DPS with a fairly good 97%+ active rate, so I'm not exactly sitting around doing nothing.

Log 5 - SHB WHM - Warrior of Light - Significantly above average DPS, below average HPS

Here's a Warrior of Light Extreme cast list from myself, a good DPS run but I wouldn't say I was excessively greedy. 140 Glares, 19 Dias, 12 Aff.Raptures. That's a 7.3x and that's still even close to as bad as it can get for some healers.

Log 6 - SHB AST - Average DPS, Slightly below average HPS

Lastly, as bonus content, here's a completely random recent AST run I plucked out from E10S for completeness. It was handily close to being perfectly average, they weren't slacking on the healing either so please don't consider this a cherry picked example by any stretch. 169 Malefics, 17 Combusts, 17 Draws. That's a hair off a 10x to 1 ratio.

A few things to add to this. If I did decide to cherry pick a log to push my case, the top ranked DPS 'healers' these days are pushing around 11x to 1 ratios. Granted these don't really count because to achieve these numbers, you're offloading work onto a single healer to the extent where you're likely losing overall raid DPS.

Which really leads onto my summary nicely. It really does need to be emphasised here, in the second log linked you've got one of the very best DPS minded Scholars (20th in the world for that tier) paired with one of the most HPS focused healers (2nd in the world for that tier) and the 'best' we could achieve back then was a skew of 2.3x to 1 with a close spread of abilities coming in behind that. I suspect this was primarily down to Fretty having 5 dots with various timers and priorities to maintain vs 1 30 second dot today and indeed, if you combine Bio II, Miasma and Aero into the nuke count you end up with 136 nukes which is much more akin to what we see these days.

To look at it at a different angle. In that world #2 A12s clear, Broil accounted for 26% of Fretty's total casts. Nowadays I can jump into a PF and assuming it's not a complete clown shower, I'll readily hit a ratio of 50%+ nukes and indeed to confirm this, the random average AST clear above hit 53%, my Warrior of light clear above was 57%. Meanwhile at the very top of the charts healers are hitting ratios over 65%.

If this doesn't clearly show that SE have taken healing in entirely the wrong direction, I'm not sure what else I can say.

[Acece]

Log 2 - HW SCH - A12S - World #2 Ranked DPS, minimal HPS

This log was my long time co healer landing the world number 2 dps ranking in one of our A12S clears. This was the absolute pinnacle of green DPS back in 3.x. Nukes are a little over 2x the next most used ability with the rest of the kit being close behind.

Log 3 - SHB SCH - E10S - Above average DPS, average HPS

Coming to the present in Shadowbringers, another log from my co healer, this time a fairly mediocre messy E10S clear with deaths and whatnot. 180 nukes, 40 ruin IIs, 19 dots, 15 Eds, there's that huge compression towards 2 hotkeys with Broil being pressed at a ratio of 4.5x to 1 vs Ruin II which in turn is just over 2x to Biolysis and Energy Drain.

To make another point, Broil in Hw (at least in these logs) Did only 28.35% of the total damage while in Shb it does 69.86% of the total damage. That means not only did they simplified sch rotation, they also made it a lot more punishing to miss a broil rather then let dots tick.

[ForteNightshade]

To make another point, Broil in Hw (at least in these logs) Did only 28.35% of the total damage while in Shb it does 69.86% of the total damage. That means not only did they simplified sch rotation, they also made it a lot more punishing to miss a broil rather then let dots tick.

It's actually remarkable when you look under the hood just how completely misguided their healing direction is. Keep in mind, this is at the height of Yoshida making comments about fights not requiring DPS; even specifically telling Mr. Happy to relay this sentiment to his audience in 4.1. It's baffling how they can even make a statement like that yet go ahead and buff each healer's nuke to the point they don't ever want to miss a single one due to the now massive damage loss.

[Kraniel]

snip

Well yeah, i mean, no one in their right mind is going to say "things were better when we had Cleric Stance".

It's easy to have a more fluid healer gameplay when you take no risks at all with their design. I am not going to give SE any credit for this. If they didn't standardize all 3 healer classes to make them so similar to play, then sure, i'd have been more willing to praise their effort.

As you said, it's clear that healer gameplay is being optimized for DPSing, and that's exactly the issue at hand. We should be healing first, and DPSing second, not the opposite.

Also, as an AST main i have to say the best version of AST to me has always been the one from SB.
Now, i'm one of these people who much preferred the old card system to the current one, and i'm aware it's a matter of personal taste, so i'm not going to argue with those who like the current system since it'd be counter-productive.

BUT, even with the card part out of the way, i think we can all agree that the fact we used to be able to spread any card effects to the whole team, extend them, etc ... made the job much more fun than what it currently is.
We were also able to save cards to use them at a later point, which i think was an interesting idea.
Also LS made sense at the time since AST had a harder time to manage MP (which is totally not the case now ... current AST is a beast when it comes to MP management).

I agree that sometimes, some skills/concepts have to go, but they really went overboard with the changes they made to AST imo.

Right now, it's just a "fancy" WHM that has one individual damage buff and one group damage buff, that's hidden behind the falsely complex arcanum mechanic.
You can even tell that SE themselves aren't convinced by the whole arcanum mechanic with the changes they brought to Sleeve Draw. They are trying to give as many tools as possible to AST to nullify the impact of RNG on the Divination buff.
The truth is, current cards and the whole arcanum system are completely useless. By the time Divination CD is over, in 99% of cases you will already have drawn all three arcanum and be ready to buff your party with maximum efficiency.
It's effectively the same thing as having only one card that buffs every class for the same amount, and no arcanum mechanic at all.

[Semirhage]

it's clear that healer gameplay is being optimized for DPSing, and that's exactly the issue at hand. We should be healing first, and DPSing second, not the opposite.

What does this even mean? Gameplay has been optimized to make sure that healing is as childproof as possible. So a low-skilled healer has a minimized chance of wiping a party. As a side-effect, this provides more downtime. The current role designers don't seem to get that consequence, so they think that making healing childproof makes the role more "healing focused".

Of course you heal first and deal damage second. That's your role, to ensure the party survives. You just end up spending a ton of time dealing damage because that primary responsibility is so easy. But that's one of the huge differences of opinion between players in the healing role. I'm a dirty Green DPS. I believe the primary job of a healer is to keep the party alive. This is the goal no matter how you get there. Gaining skill with doing so means that you minimize the amount of time spent healing, because that's just how the definition of efficiency works. I want to keep the party alive, not spend as much time spamming Cure as possible. Unless everyone takes a heavy penalty for being lower than 100% HP, there's no reason to keep everyone full all the time.

I'm in a decided minority when it comes to opinions on healer design here. I think attrition healing is boring. The idea of spending 80% of my time spamming uninteresting healing spells sounds just as boring as Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare. I'd rather be bolstering my party's defense, blinding my enemies, hexing them, slowing their attack speed, rooting them in place, debuffing their defense, increasing the warrior's strength, and blasting enemies when that's the most efficient thing to do. Healing allies happens when it needs to. For me, healing is a means to the end goal of helping the party. Spamming healing spells isn't the end goal in itself.

[Kraniel]

What does this even mean? Gameplay has been optimized to make sure that healing is as childproof as possible. So a low-skilled healer has a minimized chance of wiping a party. As a side-effect, this provides more downtime. The current role designers don't seem to get that consequence, so they think that making healing childproof makes the role more "healing focused".

Of course you heal first and deal damage second. That's your role, to ensure the party survives. You just end up spending a ton of time dealing damage because that primary responsibility is so easy. But that's one of the huge differences of opinion between players in the healing role. I'm a dirty Green DPS. I believe the primary job of a healer is to keep the party alive. This is the goal no matter how you get there. Gaining skill with doing so means that you minimize the amount of time spent healing, because that's just how the definition of efficiency works. I want to keep the party alive, not spend as much time spamming Cure as possible. Unless everyone takes a heavy penalty for being lower than 100% HP, there's no reason to keep everyone full all the time.

I'm in a decided minority when it comes to opinions on healer design here. I think attrition healing is boring. The idea of spending 80% of my time spamming uninteresting healing spells sounds just as boring as Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare. I'd rather be bolstering my party's defense, blinding my enemies, hexing them, slowing their attack speed, rooting them in place, debuffing their defense, increasing the warrior's strength, and blasting enemies when that's the most efficient thing to do. Healing allies happens when it needs to. For me, healing is a means to the end goal of helping the party. Spamming healing spells isn't the end goal in itself.

"What does this even mean ?", you ask ?
Well i was replying specifically to the post that i quoted, so if you want to know what i meant by that, no need to look any further.

As for the rest of your response, i have already explained my general views on the topic with enough details. I can't blame you for not checking the previous pages of this thread, but if you did you'd know that we pretty much share the same opinion

Tldr : Either we get more busy with healing (and i don't mean by pressing frantically the same button by the way), or we get busy with buffs/debuffs/DPS, but the current way boss fights make us use our toolkit is boring as can be.

[Lyth]

One reason why healing is so simplified now is because the devs have effectively removed resource management and resource attrition from Stormblood onward. They don't want you to mismanage your MP and stand around watching your teammates die as you are unable to cast anything to save them. That's why most of your toolkit consists of free, instant cast defensive spells, whereas in other games healing cast time and resource cost are inversely related. There's actually a lot more timing involved when you have actual cast times to work with, simply because you have to precast so that your heal lands just after the damage goes off.