Concerns with Astrologian in Endwalker

[Gemina]

SCH and AST have more oGCDs and less costly GCD heals than WHM. The Lily abilities are not comparable to SCH and AST oGCD because they don't come at the cost of their damage, which is all WHM has to offer in a group environment and Misery will be even more of a DPS loss since Glare is getting a potency increase while Misery does not.

SCH lost the MP restore from E.Drain but Aetherflow got buffed to 20% MP restored to compensate
AST lost Sleeve Draw and 3% MP from Draw but got Astrodyne to compensate.
WHM got Thin Air nerfed and NOTHING to compensate for it. In fact, the buff to PoM is even more of a nerf to WHM's MP economy because now we burn thru our MP even faster.

To believe that WHM isn't going to go back to being the worst Healer in the game come EW is ludicrous.

SCH and AST have more oGCDS and a higher APM because of their respective mechanics. WHM doesn't have anything close to cards or oGCD spenders tied to fairy and aetherflow skills, and the skills tied to its job gauge are all on the GCD. In terms of MP economy, it isn't about who has more oGCDs; it's all about who has more free healing, and literally all of WHM healing save for Regen is free. Even the Solace skills which cost the GCD still have a good portion of that damage returned. Albeit not 1:1, but it still leads to a stronger MP economy than SCH and AST whom need to use their MP replenish skills on CD, whereas WHM can let Thin Air drift.

I am also not quite sure where you are getting at with what WHM brings to a group. Does Thin Air, the ability in question, and the greater MP economy of WHM somehow grant them advantages over SCH and AST in a raid setting?

MP issues, if an issue will be addressed in EW. We typically do run into them at the beginning of a new expansion, and they are quickly remedied. In terms of the issues healers have, there are much bigger fish to fry than the hit to WHM MP. It is still a hit, so I am not disregarding that fact; but it's not one that is going to handicap WHM. If the devs don't want WHM to take another backseat, they should probably start thinking about giving WHM some usable utility in a raid setting.

[Semirhage]

What? White Mage doesn't have the best MP economy out of the four healers. It has the worst. It was the best when Thin Air was introduced, sure. But it has the fewest ways to regain mana, its GCDs are just inexplicably more expensive versions of AST's GCD spells, it has the fewest oGCDs (and so needs to rely on GCD heals more often), and with the mana regain on Assize remaining untouched, it'll run out of MP just maintaining its cheapest spell spamming much, much faster than the other healers. White Mage has worse MP economy, it has far less free healing than AST does (especially considering that most of it is GCD, which costs damage), it has no offensive utility, very little defensive utility, and its personal damage just falls behind the others' raid buffs very quickly in an expansion.

WHM is basically always the worst healer. It has no material advantages over the others.

[Silver-Strider]

SCH and AST have more oGCDS and a higher APM because of their respective mechanics. WHM doesn't have anything close to cards or oGCD spenders tied to fairy and aetherflow skills, and the skills tied to its job gauge are all on the GCD. In terms of MP economy, it isn't about who has more oGCDs; it's all about who has more free healing, and literally all of WHM healing save for Regen is free

Medica 2 and Cure 3 say otherwise. They're the most expensive healing spells in the game so no, not all WHM healing is free. Secondly, oGCDs are free heals because come at the opportunity cost of wasting your GCD to heal and can instead focus on job mechanics and/or DPSing more. Yes, the fairy abilities are clunky to use but are still offering free healing and I fail to see why you're bring AST cards into the discussion about oGCD heals when the only card applicable for discussion is Lady of Crowns. I'm talking about Lustrate, Indom, Essential Dignity, Celestial Opposition, etc that are available to SCH and AST that are free to cast heals that SCH and AST can weave in between their GCD skills to prevent them from needing to use GCDs to heal with, something WHM is very far behind on because they need to use their GCD to heal more often than those other classes.

Even the Solace skills which cost the GCD still have a good portion of that damage returned. Albeit not 1:1, but it still leads to a stronger MP economy than SCH and AST whom need to use their MP replenish skills on CD, whereas WHM can let Thin Air drift.

WHM is using Assize on CD just like SCH is keeping Aetherflow on CD and AST is keeping Draw on CD so this is a poor argument to make, especially when you consider that of those 3 skills, Assize returns the least amount of MP at 5%, Aetherflow restores 10% and Draw restores 8%.

I am also not quite sure where you are getting at with what WHM brings to a group. Does Thin Air, the ability in question, and the greater MP economy of WHM somehow grant them advantages over SCH and AST in a raid setting?

YES!!! Because of WHM's lack of oGCD heals, WHM need to use its GCD heals more often, Medica 2 and Cure 3 being prime examples. Thin Air allows WHM to offset the cost of those skills when continuous raid wide damage is occurring that the WHM needs to use these skills repeatedly to compensate for the incoming damage, while AST and SCH are able to plan out their oGCD usage in such a way that they don't need to expend their MP in a similar harsh fashion. Not only that but because SCH and AST have skills like Chain Stratagem and Divination, the lower potency of their attacks in comparison to WHM is offset by the party making up for that damage difference and every time the WHM has to stop and use their GCD to heal, it means that their only contribution to finishing an encounter, their higher damaging spells, isn't being utilized, drawing out encounters and putting more strain on the MP economies of healers, which WHM can currently power thru because of its superior MP economy.

In terms of the issues healers have, there are much bigger fish to fry than the hit to WHM MP. It is still a hit, so I am not disregarding that fact; but it's not one that is going to handicap WHM. If the devs don't want WHM to take another backseat, they should probably start thinking about giving WHM some usable utility in a raid setting.

The Devs have ignored Healer issues for years and have stated they don't want to give WHM raid utility because they have higher potency spells. It's very much handicapping WHM because they can't sustain themselves in fights longer than 7 minutes and that's assuming there isn't any deaths or issues that require the WHM to heal more than Lilies/oGCDs can alleviate. Damage means nothing if I'm OOM though so it needs to be addressed sooner rather than later.

[Semirhage]

Lily Bell gives WHM an Earthly Star-like ability during sustained damage sections of the fight. A WHM would typically use Cure III or Medica in these scenarios if they do not have (or want to use) Lily stacks. That is the likely reason behind the Thin Air "nerf." Thin Air can be used every 60 seconds now instead of every 120 seconds, which means using a Cure III, Medica II, or Raise will be free. You could Thin Air > Swiftcast > Raise every minute now. You lose MP economy from old Thin Air, but the trade off is a shorter cooldown which is arguably better.

WHM still has Divine Benison every 30 seconds and Aquaveil (15 percent damage mitigation) every 60s. WHM has so many skills for healing that do not cost MP.

MP has not really been an issue for any healer since patch 4.0 Stormblood launch Scholar. If WHM is theoretically the worse DPS of the healers, it will not be a significant issue. Healers are too homogenized (like tanks) for it to matter.

Lily Bell is an Earthly Star like ability...that's on triple the cooldown for no reason.

The loss to MP economy is significantly worse than putting Thin Air on a 60 second cooldown, because without adjustments to WHM's other MP recovery tools (or adding any new ones), WHM will run out of MP casting its basic damage spells far faster than the other healers. And its damage spells are cheaper than its healing kit.

White Mage has a lot of healing skills that don't cost MP. It's just that AST has far more, for no reason. It also has cheaper GCD heals that are just as strong as WHM's GCD heals, for no reason. AST is just a superior White Mage, and has been for a long time. Their free heals are better, their MP economy is going to be infinite in Endwalker, they have busted raid buffs that WHM can't even hope to match, and they trade all of this ridiculous overpowered flexibility for slightly less personal damage (which their raid buffs more than overwhelm WHM on anyway).

If WHM has the worst DPS of the healers, it only "won't matter" in the sense that it'll be viable and can clear content. Damage is the only thing WHM brings to the table. The other healers have more impactful free heals on shorter cooldowns. They have raid utility. WHM doesn't have those things. If WHM does less damage, it's just worse than the others for no reason.

[CrimsonGunner]

...

i agree but it has alot more meaning then just that in term of raid viability.

i will try to sum up the points you,me and others said about thin air nerf:

1) you don't get compensate for mp ,in fact because thin air had a duration it could have easily allow mp replenish fast due to thin air + lucid. making it able to manage his mp when dying or when needed to do multiple raises.

2) during a long aoe raid wide duration like near enrage in savage white mage could pop thin air and spam cure3 and medica/medica II (if he did not have lilies) ,which have the highest mp costs among the 3 healers ,allowing him to keep going and power through but without it whm no longer have that safe net.

3) lilybell is only good when the caster (aka whm) going to get hit, which makes it bad cause whm will almost never want to get hit by anything meaning lilybell will rarely proc and makes matter worse not many mechanics are long phase hitting outside of high end content like savage/ultimates and even then lilybell is good for 1 part of that entire run and not in every savage run there is such a long aoe phase.
so if you compare it to earthy star, earthy star can be manually triggered(unlike lilybell), gain more potency as time goes on(unlike lilybell) and has a shorter cd(unlike lilybell who has triple the cd), and can function as a dps tool making it versitile and usable in most scenarios in case you dont need heals. to sum up lilybell is far far worse then ast earthly star and much more redundant and cater to much smaller content with a much rare phase in said content.

4) whm bring pure dps to the table in contrary to ast who brings too much utility(damage buffs, stacked shields, regens). one of the ways whm was able to compete was no piety builds but with thin air nerf, his overall damage will go down and without dps, there is less incentive to bring whm compare to his now direct competitor ast in regards to pure healers.

5) in terms of managing his mp ,whm has less ogcd heals, his lilies generate 1 every 30s for a free mp gcd, have assize every 45s that give him 5% mp back, and now may cast 1 free mp spell every min while he retain the highest mp cost gcd healing spells among the 4 healers.(while also have PoM that makes him cast more spells)
compare to ast. ast have a lot more ogcd with a rather short cd, ast has draw that restore 8% every 30s, has astrodyn which is like lucid dreaming , and his gcd spells have less mp cost then whm.
making ast far better at managing his mp then whm(which means during a fight if you try to heal you will reach oom faster then any of the healers as well even while casting only dps spells you will run out of mp).

to sum it up, nerf thin air without changing how he manages his mp is fatal to whm gameplay and viability in hard content. if you play whm you know that until he gets thin air ,his gameplay is the worst by far, all level 50 and below content are the worst for whm. so doing such a big change to his core ability without much refunding or giving another mp management tool to replace such a thing is pretty much balance breaking and near ruining the game. you have people said it before about hw when thin air did not exist, you saw how being stuck only with lucid dreaming nearly killed ast in 5.0. basically SE dont learn from their mistakes and quit literally setting them selves up for a huge explosion of complains about whm gameplay, and a repeat of past mistake .

[Semirhage]

to sum it up, nerf thin air without changing how he manages his mp is fatal to whm gameplay and viability in hard content. if you play whm you know that until he gets thin air ,his gameplay is the worst by far, all level 50 and below content are the worst for whm. so doing such a big change to his core ability without much refunding or giving another mp management tool to replace such a thing is pretty much balance breaking and near ruining the game. you have people said it before about hw when thin air did not exist, you saw how being stuck only with lucid dreaming nearly killed ast in 5.0. basically SE dont learn from their mistakes and quit literally setting them selves up for a huge explosion of complains about whm gameplay, and a repeat of past mistake .

Additionally, I'm not a fan of "let's be glad they're making the healers less homogenous" being code for "Let's make White Mage weaker and more frustrating to play and AST stronger and more flexible and better in basically every way. Variety!"

[Gemina]

WHM is basically always the worst healer. It has no material advantages over the others.

I wouldn't go that far. That is most certainly not the angle I am going by. WHM is a fine healer. Out of the three, it is the healer I have the least amount of problems with. It just doesn't bring anything to increase raid damage. That is it. That is what has kept WHM inferior expansion after expansion.

In terms of MP economy. I'll tell you what. I'll yield. It's Friday, and has been a long week. That doesn't mean I've changed my stance, but for the sake of argument, let's just say you're right. So now what? The thing about MP economy is the healer who has the best MP economy doesn't have a material or a statistical advantage over another healer. The reason for this is because in about 90% of situations in this game, Lucid is going to cover your MP needs, and this is also taking into account the occasional screw up from your teammates during prog. Any other MP recovery tools are niche, but those situations do happen so I am not dismissing their importance.

There is one advantage WHM has. Thin Air does allow them to just hop right back to action after being raised. It's just a bit unfortunate that for this advantage to be exploited, the WHM has to die.

[QooEr]

So now what? The thing about MP economy is the healer who has the best MP economy doesn't have a material or a statistical advantage over another healer. The reason for this is because in about 90% of situations in this game, Lucid is going to cover your MP needs, and this is also taking into account the occasional screw up from your teammates during prog. Any other MP recovery tools are niche, but those situations do happen so I am not dismissing their importance

i made this post detailing how the bad mp economy is relevant
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...54#post5693054

lucid isnt enough if you have good gcd uptime. Whm will need a lot of piety to just stay afloat in optimal scenarios ( now imagine progging) , and that will cost it even more dps. any other healer investing in that much piety will get more mileage out of it, especially in prog

[Gemina]

Medica 2 and Cure 3 say otherwise. They're the most expensive healing spells in the game so no, not all WHM healing is free. Secondly, oGCDs are free heals because come at the opportunity cost of wasting your GCD to heal and can instead focus on job mechanics and/or DPSing more.

Medica 2 and Cure 3? ...
... You mean those outdated ARR skills? I mean, I could bring up Free Cure procs, but...

I know what oGCDs are and how they work. But when you're oGCDs are dependent on GCDs such as Deployment Tactics, Emergency Tactics, Dissipation, Horoscope, Light Speed, Synastry, Neutral Sect, etc. etc. etc. It starts to reduce the number of valid oGCDs available for your argument. It also doesn't change WHM healing, which again is nearly entirely MP free, especially if you add Thin Air into the mix. WHM has an oGCD answer for everything it needs: Big ST heal (Tetra, Bene), AoE regen (Asylum), MP recovery (Assize), ST shield (Benison). And while the Solace skills are technically on the GCD, they are still MP free and grant access to Misery.

It doesn't matter one bit even if another healer has a larger threshold than WHM. All that matters is that the skills are available when needed, and for WHM in particular a lot of wrong needs to happen before they have to start spending MP and GCDs on heals. The larger amount of oGCDs by the other two healers actually create a constriction WHM does not have to worry about, and that is they have to hard cast non offensively sooner than WHM in order to access some of those oGCDs you're referring to.

WHM is using Assize on CD just like SCH is keeping Aetherflow on CD and AST is keeping Draw on CD so this is a poor argument to make, especially when you consider that of those 3 skills, Assize returns the least amount of MP at 5%, Aetherflow restores 10% and Draw restores 8%.

You do realize that SCH and AST having greater MP returns on these skills mean their MP needs are greater, not lesser; yes?

YES!!! Because of WHM's lack of oGCD heals, WHM need to use its GCD heals more often, Medica 2 and Cure 3 being prime examples. Thin Air allows WHM to offset the cost of those skills when continuous raid wide damage is occurring that the WHM needs to use these skills repeatedly to compensate for the incoming damage, while AST and SCH are able to plan out their oGCD usage in such a way that they don't need to expend their MP in a similar harsh fashion. Not only that but because SCH and AST have skills like Chain Stratagem and Divination, the lower potency of their attacks in comparison to WHM is offset by the party making up for that damage difference and every time the WHM has to stop and use their GCD to heal, it means that their only contribution to finishing an encounter, their higher damaging spells, isn't being utilized, drawing out encounters and putting more strain on the MP economies of healers, which WHM can currently power thru because of its superior MP economy.

Like I said in the example I stated for the other poster, the healer with the greater MP economy doesn't have an advantage over another healer. This invalidates Thin Air as raid utility for WHM. WHM does not lack oGCD heals. There are such few situations in the game that warrant that kind of sustained healing, but in even the situations that do, which I have been in; what is usually going on is the group is taking more damage than can be recovered by the healers. This is very rarely an OoM situation as wipes typically happen when mana bars are all well over 50% full across all job in the comp.

The Devs have ignored Healer issues for years and have stated they don't want to give WHM raid utility because they have higher potency spells. It's very much handicapping WHM because they can't sustain themselves in fights longer than 7 minutes and that's assuming there isn't any deaths or issues that require the WHM to heal more than Lilies/oGCDs can alleviate. Damage means nothing if I'm OOM though so it needs to be addressed sooner rather than later.

So Thin Air is raid utility, or it isn't? You can't just switch back and forth to fit which every argument you're stating. I mean all these issues you're saying WHM has, I am not encountering the problems during PvE combat. I play all my healers very regularly, and like I said before, WHM is the one I have the least amount of issues with.

[Silver-Strider]

Snip

I'm just going to call you out and say you have NEVER set foot in a savage raids, much less an Ultimate fight, because there is no way that you are not aware that unavoidable raid wide damage is commonplace in those setting and is not just the result of someone taking unnecessary damage. J-Waves in TEA, Terminal Relativity and Shiva Junction in E12S, the list goes on where unavoidable damage is happening that absolutely facilitates the need for WHM to use it "outdated" ARR healing skills because it just doesn't have the oGCDs required not to and your ignorance on that topic pretty much invalidates anything you say in regards to WHM going forward so I will not waste my time with this back and forth.

People have shown you the math, people have given examples contrary to your claims and people have given you several valid reasons for their concerns and you ignore it all, so maybe people should do the same and just ignore your arguments as well.