Healers Exist for DPS fun only?

[Grimoire-M]

...Scholar had quickened aetherflow trait which means Aetherflow was 45 second cool down. It was basically just more Energy Drains for being aggressive but it was more choice and apm which got shattered completely when Energy Drain and the Quicked Trait got removed at ShB launch. The pace of the job went from blazing fast to a dead halt. The fact we heal and dps with more potency than ever before DOES NOT make these ridiculous kits enjoyable.

While your take is generally true to a point Noble, I disagree on Quickened Aetherflow specifically because it removed tension from Scholar's oGCD kit. Even if you used every heal (apart from Lustrate) we have now on CD, QA + Dissipation would still give you excess Aetherflow stacks for Energy Drain/Lustrate. I didn't find it any more engaging for it. It just felt overloaded on top of the already overwhelming capabilities Scholar had at that point. I'm glad we got Recitation over it, personally. Resource Management matters way more than speed to me on a healer. That said, eroding much of all three healer's DPS kits in the Shadowbringers transition overwhelmingly did more harm than good. Particularly with the hardclipping meta SCH and WHM are stuck with. I'd rather have smooth gameplay than degenerate options, so while Scholar's changes hurt, I'd rather keep most of the ones they got on the healing side (though I'm predicting Whispering Dawn/Fey Illumination being merged into an AoE Fey Union given SE's track record, and I'm not sure how to feel about THAT yet), and fix Ruin II while giving WHM more instant-cast DPS actions, and ideally something for them that compliments lily heals as well. I dislike the idea of making Assize a GCD as it'll erode WHM's DPS over time without extra tuning, but maybe that's part of the way forward.

[Roeshel]

..... what?

Ok first off, why are cards even a concern here? If you're mashing gravity, chances are you're in a dungeon. It typically takes around 30 seconds from the tank planting to the bulk of the mobs dieing in most trash pulls (unless the DPS is absolutely awful at least). So again I state. Why care about cards? Deal with them whilst running, dotting and regening the tank as applicable. Once the tank is planted, it's time to drop the star and start mashing gravity. In most cases, pre regen + star + ED is plentiful.

Thirdly, why do you have to stop casting Gravity? Just queue the ED and then carry on mashing Gravity. You'll clip sure. Welcome to a small taste of the horror that other healers have to deal with. Hope it's not too salty.

Why wouldn't I care about cards and divination in dungeon pulls? It is the only reason I would take ast over whm or sch since their AoE is superior and their sustain is better.
FYI, in level 70+ dungeons in most of the cases of the first gate to gate pull, you can have divination activated with the 4th gravity cast without any clipping and that's assuming you started playing your cards after the tank's planting for maximum efficiency. Trash pulls taking 30s to kill doesn't excuse you from not using your buttons. The only thing that's stopping ppl from having buffed 3/4 of the party with 12% dmg buff is laziness, lack of skills, or unlucky RNG.

Also, the SFX of that ability are gorgeous. Why won't you use it on cd? I play ast to see its effects.

Scholar has no clip issues. It is only WHM and the only abilities you would want to clip for while smashing Holy are Assize and Benediction. Both of them are relatively impactful oGCDs unlike cards for which you don't want to clip since you are losing more than gaining.

People don't look back at Heavensward because they think that healers were balanced. They look back at Heavensward because healers were so much more rewarding to play.I wasn't happy with the fact that I couldn't viably play WHM for Creator Savage because I flat ran out of MP playing in the way that I did back then. But I'll take the AST gameplay from then over anything we have now. It had depth, finesse and variety. Now it just boils down to how many nukes I can squeeze out in 10 minutes whilst minimising everything else.

As far as raiding is concerned, the AST card system was incredibly simple:
Royal road: 1 variable, 3 types: 1 correct answer: Spread
Draw - 1 variable, 6 types, 1 correct answer: Balance
It was a no-brainer when it came to optimization. It had a great variety of mistakes that you can make whose damage loss was masked by "restores MP" "restores TP" "20% Damage taken reduction" which were the most punishing cards that you can play. The less punishing mistakes were "10% crit increase" and "10% skill&spellspeed increase".
There is nothing wrong with having utility, but locking useful utility behind another not so useful utility is a bad design. Damage reduction is valuable on-demand. The Bole was unreliable. You have access to it but you can't rely on it when you actually need it.

Because Spread and Balance was the primary thing that was used, now you have both of them secured. but at least now you are required to think a little bit before spreading party-wide damage buff:
Draw - 2 variables - each of them affecting different aspects of your kit:
The first variable affects the Type of Target and has 2 types.
The second variable affects Divination and has 3 types.

Divination - 27 different alignments, 3 right answers, 24 wrong. This boils down to 1:8.
Right - 6% damage buff
Wrong - 3% damage buff
That is how it was when Shb launched. They later changed the 2 different arcanum seal alignments to give a 5% damage buff and they buffed the wrong option to a 4% dmg increase. So the ratio between, right/not so right/wrong became 1:7:1
Like it or not, Draw is more complex than it was in HS from a mathematical point of view which is the logical way of seeing things. The depth of gameplay actually increased for those concerned about optimal gameplay.

[Sebazy]

Why wouldn't I care about cards and divination in dungeon pulls? It is the only reason I would take ast over whm or sch since their AoE is superior and their sustain is better.

Again I ask...

Why are you writing paragraphs complaining about clipping with the old 3 second cast gravity when anyone with any sense just did their cards before the tank planted the pack and the gravity spam commenced.

Why are you talking about Divinity and clipping issues with Gravity? Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong here but Divinity was introduced with patch 5.0, Gravity's cast time was reduced to 2.5 for patch 5.0 and then 1.5 in patch 5.05.

At the risk of being supremely harsh, our opinions on whether the new or old card systems were better have less than no bearing on the topic that's trying to be discussed. What matters here is the simple fact that the old cards gave the illusion of choice. It was a more interesting system for a wider range of players and situations. I refuse to believe that you can seriously think that the average healer in this game gives two hoots about 1:8 vs 1:7:1 ratios on cards? It's about as exciting as the medals podium in today's school sports day, everyone's a winner now, the only difference is how quickly you get given your medal.

And again, I'm failing to see which one of your points tackles the core issue where it's not out of the ordinary to see a healer spend 180 GCDs pressing the same button in a 10 minute Savage encounter.

Heavenswards healer GCDs were like playing a piano, Shadowbringers GCDs are like playing a cowbell.

[Roeshel]

And again, I'm failing to see which one of your points tackles the core issue where it's not out of the ordinary to see a healer spend 180 GCDs pressing the same button in a 10 minute Savage encounter.

It's because offensive GCD uptme was brought to 100% for all healers, not only SCH.

Being able to achieve 100% offensive uptime while also healing is a core requirement before getting a decent rotation.

We already saw that we are not getting nuke upgrades in the benchmark of Endwalker. We are most likely getting a rotation in November.

[FoxCh40s]

It's because offensive GCD uptme was brought to 100% for all healers, not only SCH.

Being able to achieve 100% offensive uptime while also healing is a core requirement before getting a decent rotation.

We already saw that we are not getting nuke upgrades in the benchmark of Endwalker. We are most likely getting a rotation in November.

Based off of what evidence?

[Sebazy]

It's because offensive GCD uptme was brought to 100% for all healers, not only SCH.

Being able to achieve 100% offensive uptime while also healing is a core requirement before getting a decent rotation.

We already saw that we are not getting nuke upgrades in the benchmark of Endwalker. We are most likely getting a rotation in November.

Eeeh, I'll accept being called jaded at this point, but I'm not convinced that the current situation is down to any kind of a long term direction in place by SE. I'm firmly of the opinion that we've ended up here because they just don't know what to do with healers and have been throwing half baked and highly rushed ideas at the wall to see what sticks and what causes a riot.

As for what Endwalker holds. My guesses in order of most likely to least likely are as such: Little to nothing changes, Sage is more copy pasta >>>>> We get a 1 button auto rotation akin to NPC quests > The 1 button dps stays but we get some utility back >>>>> We get a legitimate multi button dps rotation >>>>> We get a branching multi button dps rotation.

Whilst it's always a possibility, I just can't see SE going down the proper rotation route without pruning some of our healing kit to keep the hotkey count somewhat stable.

[ForteNightshade]

The sad thing is, I doubt it. All over Facebook and Reddit people say that healing and tanking is fine while maining a DPS. People who have recently just come in and it's their first mmo think it's fine. I feel like the original player base is the minority at this point. We've either moved on to another game, or just quit the role entirely. I've checked several original posters whom I know to be previous Healer mains, and they are just that now. They are DPS; at this point, the game will merely continue to become brain dead until it hits a bursting point.

Which is my concern as well. We saw a massive healer exodus at the beginning of Shadowbringers, and I do believe the devs being so quiet on the topic is at least partially because of the poor reception. Even JP is upset at the oversimplification and boring gameplay. JP being vocal on public forums is exceedingly rare. So there is definitely a sizable amount of players upset. On the other hand, I could very easily see the devs chalking a lot of this up to their not being a new healer in Shadowbringers. And thus hoping Sage shuts everyone up.

It's definitely going to be interest since Endwalker will really set the tone for the game going forward.

This is true probably tbh. I think that’s how out of touch they are with the playerbase though. Idk of anyone that hated the enmity in SB, or at least anyone that wanted to dumb it down. Yeah that’s my big problem with 14. No complexity or choice in jobs. No uniqueness. As for the complaints, at this point idk. Unfortunately SE uses twitter and reddit for feedback, and those are the social media sites that have the loudest portion of the playerbase that is fine with whatever SE does.

Ehh. I honestly don't mind the enmity. There was never much thought to aggro generation in the first place. You either forced your comp to run Ninja or occasionally let DPS take autos. In pugs, I cannot tell you the number of times DPS would rip of the tanks and eat a buster. It was a foregone conclusion they were going to change enmity once that started to happen since there was nothing they could do to keep tanks in tank stance.

That all side, it's more they're prioritizing new and casual minded players over everyone else. They don't necessarily care if you or I enjoy Astro or White Mage but rather if little Timmy and Sarah who spam Cure I for the freecure proc isn't getting overwhelmed by too many buttons. Not to say accessibility isn't good. It definitely is. But too much accessibility is no better than too much complexity. Neither make for pleasant gameplay long term.

[NobleWinter]

While your take is generally true to a point Noble, I disagree on Quickened Aetherflow specifically because it removed tension from Scholar's oGCD kit. Even if you used every heal (apart from Lustrate) we have now on CD, QA + Dissipation would still give you excess Aetherflow stacks for Energy Drain/Lustrate. I didn't find it any more engaging for it. It just felt overloaded on top of the already overwhelming capabilities Scholar had at that point. I'm glad we got Recitation over it, personally. Resource Management matters way more than speed to me on a healer. That said, eroding much of all three healer's DPS kits in the Shadowbringers transition overwhelmingly did more harm than good. Particularly with the hardclipping meta SCH and WHM are stuck with. I'd rather have smooth gameplay than degenerate options, so while Scholar's changes hurt, I'd rather keep most of the ones they got on the healing side (though I'm predicting Whispering Dawn/Fey Illumination being merged into an AoE Fey Union given SE's track record, and I'm not sure how to feel about THAT yet), and fix Ruin II while giving WHM more instant-cast DPS actions, and ideally something for them that compliments lily heals as well. I dislike the idea of making Assize a GCD as it'll erode WHM's DPS over time without extra tuning, but maybe that's part of the way forward.

I enjoy Ninja for the pace of the burst phase and that's what made Stormblood Scholar my favorite. Miasma 2 and Energy Drain where spicy; keeping me in melee range with great damage and no worries about Aetherflow stacks for healing. Resource management is definitely fun too but I need way more tension than anything Scholar ever had to call it compelling. We have always had more Aetherflow than we need for healing. It's a safety net. Giving us even more was clearly a push to dps which had the added benefit of more mobility since we were using Ruin 2 and Miasma 2 to weave. I miss the guiltless movement so much.

[Lyth]

It's definitely more common in MMO's nowadays. Big clutch saves used to be the moments you lived for as a healer or tank in MMO gaming and the driving motivation to really master your class. Just the vision alone of saving an entire raid with your skill and your group cheering you on would push you forward. But game designers are more and more often designing for the lowest factor. The players who can't be bothered to put in the effort, but will get jealous of the ones who did and achieved anything impressive. The guy doing half of his potential in bad gear saying "what's the point of dps if tank/healers can do more than me or solo the boss?" because of that one time out of a thousand that an exceptional player pulled off a save.

FF14 in particular has carefully designed a game around no one feeling bad. There's very little visual impact from being a great player compared to a mediocre one. Raidwides are predictable, tanks aren't that self-sufficient and many mechanics are instant death or wipe-if-enough-people-aren't-alive so you don't get as much opportunity to save the run. Heal lb3 is designed so any sprout healer who got lucky by not being hit can get that feeling of having saved a run effortless with one button.

It's worth remembering too, that outside of fights which are trivial for your current gear level, early progression, and the odd gimmick mechanic, you generally don't want to be using Healer LB3. The cost of using it is the loss of a DPS LB3, which has much more value.

One reason for this is that the standard raid encounter formula has every fight jump straight into a hard enrage when you get to a certain timestamp. So the bottom line comes down to a fixed dps value that your group needs to meet while doing the mechanics correctly. It's a necessary evil because otherwise fights can drag on endlessly. But what if you placed a soft enrage first? T1 had a really well designed soft enrage at the time, simply because you could relax the dps requirements of the fight by doing the mechanics properly (reducing the rate at which the boss gained stacks) and by having really good tanks and healers who could increase your survival time as you headed towards 10 stacks. I think you still need to tack on a hard enrage at the very end of this sort of fight design, otherwise a sufficiently geared tank/healer combination can trivialize the check and drag the fight on endlessly. But it creates a scenario where efficient use of your resources and cooldowns might extend the fight duration up to a certain preset value, allowing for some cross-compensation on the overall dps check. It also creates another incentive to doing mechanics properly.

It's always strange to go back and do really early content (ARR, Heavensward) because it feels so experimental in compared to the very formula driven encounters that we get now. Even for it's rough edges, it feels like it was designed by an actual person and not an AI with a raid mechanic library. There's a certain charm to it. I wish they would just break their own rules more often even for the sake of trying things out.

[Ultimatecalibur]

I think the lack of enjoyability pretty much boils down to lack of complexity and the absence of any meaningful decision making. Healing basically plays like a caster but with less mobility and you have to stare at health bars and hit an OGCD whenever you need to heal, oh and you only spam 1 button the rest of the time. Now instead of being the control center of the party you're just a health babysitter who's bored

Which is more because of how much healing is now covered by ogcds. Benediction has gone from being WHM's only ogcd with a 300s cd to one of 4 ogcd heals/shields and a 180s cd with the rest having 30s, 45s and 60s cds. Why hard cast a heal every 30s when you can cover it with a cd or instant cast.

Tanking also suffers to a degree because threat management is nonexistent since tank stance doesn't decrease your damage, and you also take the same amount of damage regardless of if stance is on or off, so there's less risk factor involved in turning off stance. The role has basically devolved into a blue DPS that pulls and presses buttons to take less damage.

Threat management was pretty much never an actual problem. Many a high end fight in HW and StB could be done with less than 30s worth of tank stance uptime and healers had little trouble keeping tanks up in dps stance.

Your enmity rotation in tank stance and your dps rotation in dps stance were pretty much identical. The major difference when toggling stances was how much damage you dealt and how much you received.

What has changed is that most ShB fights do not have or require tank controlled positioning/facing, fewer tank busters/tank soaks and fewer add spawns so tanks tend to be doing the exact same tasks as melee dps.

SE really needs to do something about keeping each role's experience unique, tanking shouldn't feel the same as DPSing, and healing shouldn't be boring because you're doing nothing 90% of the time except spamming 1 button

Both factors are the fault of fight design not class design. Healer healing output has increased by a massive amount but healing requirements have not increased in parallel but stayed stagnant. Tank mitigation has increased by massive amounts but the relative amounts of incoming damage has actually decreased. Both the Tanks and Healers are designed to handle much more damage intensive fights but those fights do not exist at ilevel in ShB content.