Healer Queues are going to be different?

[LanFangHua]

Did I understand it correctly?
On the last live letter they said that they were "planing to create a different type of queue for healers, so that the healing composition was always made out of a pure healer and a shield healer (in raids and trials)

If I understood this correctly. What are you guys thoughts on that? Since most people will be very excited to play sage and it probably will be the most seen at the start of the upcoming expansion.

[Reiryuu]

To be honest? If people are excited to play Sage and it creates a problem for a lack of Pure Healers, that would be great. It means SE made a mistake and haven't given the "pure healers" enough attention to make them interesting enough for people to play and adjustments might actually be made. Otherwise... meh? It doesn't really hurt or harm. It just irks me that they are forcing this dichotomy in the game when there could be more diversity on all the healers. Variety is the spice of life, as the saying goes after all. And healers are lacking a lot of spice right now... aside from Sage.

[Deceptus]

To be honest? If people are excited to play Sage and it creates a problem for a lack of Pure Healers, that would be great. It means SE made a mistake and haven't given the "pure healers" enough attention to make them interesting enough for people to play and adjustments might actually be made. Otherwise... meh? It doesn't really hurt or harm. It just irks me that they are forcing this dichotomy in the game when there could be more diversity on all the healers. Variety is the spice of life, as the saying goes after all. And healers are lacking a lot of spice right now... aside from Sage.

What's worse is enforcing this Dichotomy when it pretty much doesn't exist.

Pure healers have shields, shield healers have regens.

What's the damn point of separating them now?

[KDSilver]

I bet they define pure(regen) and Barrier Healer if:

- You have a ST GCD Regen/Aoe GCD Regen
- You have a ST GCD Shield/Aoe GCD Shield

And... that's all.
Yeah. That the main biggest difference. These 2 GCD spammable heals.

Which is of course extremly ridiculous.

[AnotherPerson]

I bet they define pure(regen) and Barrier Healer if:

- You have a ST GCD Regen/Aoe GCD Regen
- You have a ST GCD Shield/Aoe GCD Shield

And... that's all.
Yeah. That the main biggest difference. These 2 GCD spammable heals.

Which is of course extremly ridiculous.

The problem of distinguishing between GCD 'pure healer' and GCD 'shield healer' is if all toolkits is inherently designed to be using the GCD for healing. This distinction really only applies to WHM - their healing gauge skills (Afflatus Solace / Afflatus Rapture) is on the GCD and they have a fairly diverse number of GCD heals (Cure II/Cure III/Medica II) that all gets powered up with their oGCD abilities (Confession / Asylum trait / Temperance).

AST has some concessions following this line of thought with GCD healing since their GCD heals can also be supercharged using 3 oGCD skills [Synastry / Horoscope / Neutral Sect]. However their main focus of healing is still done via oGCD heals. I'm not sure if the card system adjustment and skillset will change in Endwalker to fit the pure healer vs. shield healer duality though since cards are becoming a self buff instead.

However, shield healers don't follow the pattern of supercharging their GCD healing. Their healing output is done mainly through oGCD healing skills. It's better to say Shield healers are just more heavily focused oGCD healers with GCD shields + more frequent mitigation abilities at their disposal.

While SCH has Dissipation + Fey Illumination for skills that support GCD healing, they have 2 skills that uses GCD Healing - Succor + Adloquium (3 I guess if you count Physick... lol). The bulk of your kit doesn't work with GCD heals since healing magic potency only works on spells (GCD) instead of abilities (oGCD). At least in Scholar's case, they also have Consolation x2 + Sacred Soil + new AoE mitigation.

Sage seems to follow SCH's trend too, where a bulk of the healing is in oGCD healing skills, but they go about this differently. Support skills revolve around healing using DPS - such as "Cardia" healing a target and yourself every time you attack and "Soteria" supercharging Cardia's effect for a brief duration. However the good thing about Sage is having oGCD skills like "Haima" and "Panhaima" - which are support oGCD skills that work off your DPS. Both skills apply a weak shield to the party member (Panhaima is AoE shield), and grants 5 stacks of a status effect. The stack gets consumed to heal HP every time the sage uses DPS skills, so temporarily becomes like a temporary secondary Cardia target.

I do remember seeing Physis II giving a 10% healing potency buff, which should support GCD heals + GCD Eucrasia shields.... but that's about it for GCD usage. Truth be told, I'm not even sure if the 10% magic potency buff even works on Cardia's healing, but it seems to me that Pure healers have stronger GCD heals and shield healers are just oGCD healers with more frequent mitigation tools than their counterparts.

[MellowMink]

I thought that the further restrictions applied to Raid Finder but not Duty Finder.

[LanFangHua]

To be honest? If people are excited to play Sage and it creates a problem for a lack of Pure Healers, that would be great. It means SE made a mistake and haven't given the "pure healers" enough attention to make them interesting enough for people to play and adjustments might actually be made. Otherwise... meh? It doesn't really hurt or harm. It just irks me that they are forcing this dichotomy in the game when there could be more diversity on all the healers. Variety is the spice of life, as the saying goes after all. And healers are lacking a lot of spice right now... aside from Sage.

Agree with all of this!
Also find it personally ridiculous, specially in a pve game to give up creativity (which equals fun) for "balance". I say that because that seems to be their excuse for the apocalyptic homogenization we are having...

[Sebazy]

Agree with all of this!
Also find it personally ridiculous, specially in a pve game to give up creativity (which equals fun) for "balance". I say that because that seems to be their excuse for the apocalyptic homogenization we are having...

SE just seem to have some strange priorities.

Making Aetherflow clunky and often irritating to use in casual content such as dungeons for the sake of stopping savage raiders wait a minute between pulls? k =(

[Tranquilmelody7]

I just hope this isn't applied to the MSQ dungeons (Castrum Meridian and Praetorium)

[Liam_Harper]

I think it's ridiculous.

No MSQ, Normal mode or even EX content requires a Shield healer and Pure healer. Even all of Savage can be cleared with Diurnal + WHM. I have no reason to believe this will change in Endwalker, especially now we've seen that Sage has a huge pool of Pure heals and they aren't turning Shield into a separate playstyle at all. All this does is reinforce bad mindsets in the playerbase, like the current "must go Noct with a WHM" nonsense.

I expect AST+WHM or SGE+SCH to be perfectly viable in the majority of content and the majority of the playerbase to firmly believe that you cannot use those comps, because SE has almost stated that officially now.

It's so obvious none of the designers play healer.