[Sage] Fixing Toxikon

[RinaShinomiya]

The entire shift is actually much harder to make now that there is NO cost to oGCD healing. That was IMO, the biggest mistake they made this expac. It's fine if it's a niche thing on one healer, but now it's all of them.

I fully agree and playing WHM in dungeons makes that very clear. If you want to weave anything between Holy III spams you gotta do it the old ShB way of using Lillies or Swiftcast. Doesn't help ofc that between Thin air getting split to two stacks, Beni getting a second stack and getting aqua veil WHM got a whole lot more to weave now than in ShB but at least Afflatus is a double weave window and not DPS negative in dungeons. Still feels bad not being able to slidecast with Holy to dodge AoE's.
They really haven't updated the healers well for that GCD nuke change. It's a great change for mobility but now the previously dedicated Weave/mobility skills feel a little out of place.

Because oGCD's come with a cooldown, thus requiring some thought or planning on encounters with higher damage, while GCD heals can be spammed mindlessly as long as you have the mana.

So the solution is to just not GCD heal at all because its a hard DPS loss. Going oom in 10-ish GCD's would punish GCD healing spammers which already disincentives GCD spamming enough by itself. Besides i feel like you're overselling Cooldown management. If unavoidable raidwides come up every 30s people will just throw out Ixolche / Fey Blessing or Indom / Afflatus rapture / CO or Earthly on cooldown. If tank busters come up every 60s people will just use Exaltation / Aqua veil on cooldown. If Pushback mechanics come up every 120s people will just use Surecast on cooldown. Incredibly engaging gameplay. This might be more dire in Savage fights but 80% of content in this game isn't savage and only roughly 10% of the playerbase even does Savage raiding.

If Toxicon was optimal you might as well ignore half your single target oGCD kit and just EDiag whenever someone needs single target healing.

So it's better to make GCD healing not optimal so you can ignore 33~50% of your kit instead. I really wanna play a DPS where ignoring half of my rotation is optimal gameplay.

It's not engaging gameplay.

The same can be said about oGCD healing. Just pressing a button in between your Nuke to heal without consequences is boring asf. at least in ShB you had a rougly 75~90 potency to pay for that but not anymore. Giving us a more elaborate DPS rotation might fix this but right now both healing styles aren't engaging. Right now if you want to be a proactive healer your options are Damage mitigation oGCD or a 2m cooldown barrier oGCD. The main meat & potatos of proactive healing, applying Regen or Shields before AoE raid wides to mitigate damage is disincentivised even though it forces you to pay attention to what the enemy is casting, which you could argue is more engaging. And people have argued that since Tankbusters got a visual indicator. I'd rather GCD heals aren't dead weight in our toolkits and be usable without being punished so heavily than focus entirely on reactive oGCD healing. And i firmly believe that GCD heals being MP negative would be more than enough to disincentive people from spamming them by itself.

[Seraphor]

So it's better to make GCD healing not optimal so you can ignore 33~50% of your kit instead. I really wanna play a DPS where ignoring half of my rotation is optimal gameplay.

As opposed to ignoring all of your DPS GCDs?
It's one or the other, that's how healers work in this game, do you spend a GCD on a heal, or on damage?
Sage has heals VIA damage. literally the worst healer to favour GCD heals.

So which 33-50% of your kit do you want to ignore? Because it has to be one of them at any given point in time.

A DPS ignoring half their kit? Already happens. When you're against a single target, you ignore all of your AoE skills, and vice versa. Same thing, you apply the correct tool to the task at hand.

[Seraphor]

What I actually came here for an an idea for Toxikon.

There's the debate around it being sufficient as a movement tool, like Ruin II which of course comes with a dps tax, and about the 'trade off' of spending a GCD on a heal instead of damage and not being reimbursed for it.
Well for starters I still think you shouldn't be fully reimbursed for it, because you're not entitled to maximum dps uptime just through the nature of using your base kit skills to heal. They're an 'emergency' or 'last resort' option, because you have the tools in your oGCD kit to prevent damage first, then you resort to GCD heals after that.
E. Diagnosis and it's Addersting generation is the exception, because it's a powerful shield that prevents damage. So yes some dps reimbursement, but not total reimbursement.

Toxikon as it is fulfils that role in a multi-target scenario, as it's more damage than Dyskrasia. But not in single target. In single target it is JUST a weaving/movement tool, and to be fair it fulfils that function well too. It has stacks that you can save to use it when needed. But you should have a choice, to use it either for movement/weaving, or to reimburse some of the dps tax for using your GCD heal.
That's where Eukrasia comes in:

Eukrasian Toxikon
Deals unaspected damage to target and all enemies nearby it with a potency of 450 for the first enemy, and 60% less for all remaining enemies.
Additional Effect: Restores HP to targets under the effect of Kardion granted by you
Cure Potency: 170
Addersting Cost: 1
Cast: 1s
Recast: 0.5s

Basically, you use 1s on casting Eukrasia, 1s casting Eukrasian Toxikon, and then jump straight back into your next GCD after that.
You sacrifice that weaving window for 120 additional potency. You're choosing between using your Addersting resource for damage or mobility.
It's not a full 330 potency reimbursement, so you're not forced to use Eukrasian Toxikon over regular Toxikon every single time, but if you don't have anything you need to double weave or any forced movement, then you can squeeze some extra dps out instead.
It also expands the uses of Eukrasia to boot.

[RinaShinomiya]

As opposed to ignoring all of your DPS GCDs?
It's one or the other, that's how healers work in this game, do you spend a GCD on a heal, or on damage?
Sage has heals VIA damage. literally the worst healer to favour GCD heals.

So which 33-50% of your kit do you want to ignore? Because it has to be one of them at any given point in time.

A DPS ignoring half their kit? Already happens. When you're against a single target, you ignore all of your AoE skills, and vice versa. Same thing, you apply the correct tool to the task at hand.

DPS is just 1 button not 33-50% of our kit plus you can absolutely make mechanics that return the DPS spent on healing so you dont have to choose. WHM is already designed like that Square just refuses to make it DPS neutral.

Sage GCD healing for 300 potency + 540 potency shield instead of nuking for 170 potency heal is also not an argument for why Sage shouldnt GCD heal when Square cleary wants to incentive it with Toxicon but the pay off just isnt worth it which is why people argue it should be oGCD and not a movement tool on the most mobile healer without even using it.

Also DPS AoE rotations arent half their kit.

[Seraphor]

DPS is just 1 button not 33-50% of our kit plus you can absolutely make mechanics that return the DPS spent on healing so you dont have to choose. WHM is already designed like that Square just refuses to make it DPS neutral.

Also DPS AoE rotations arent half their kit.

It's like you're intentionally missing the point.
It doesn't matter if it's half their kit, or 31.7% of their kit, or 12.8% of their kit. You don't use all of your kit all of the time.
(Although for the record, Sage has 4 DPS GCD's and 2 healing GCDs, and if we extrapolate to Eukrasians, 5 DPS and 4 healing)

And I covered returning dps spent on healing GCD's above.
There is no point in DPSing at all if healing GCDs reimburse 100% of your lost damage. It should not be 100% return.
So you don't have to choose? It SHOULD be a choice, otherwise what is the point in there being one?

[RinaShinomiya]

It's like you're intentionally missing the point.
It doesn't matter if it's half their kit, or 31.7% of their kit, or 12.8% of their kit. You don't use all of your kit all of the time.
(Although for the record, Sage has 4 DPS GCD's and 2 healing GCDs, and if we extrapolate to Eukrasians, 5 DPS and 4 healing)

And I covered returning dps spent on healing GCD's above.
There is no point in DPSing at all if healing GCDs reimburse 100% of your lost damage. It should not be 100% return.
So you don't have to choose? It SHOULD be a choice, otherwise what is the point in there being one?

And right now you dont choose. There is no use for 8-12 buttons mid fight on each healer because GCD nuke + oGCD heals is more than enough. And as i said Countless of times GCD healing reimbursting DPS would be MP negative, that by itself is enough to disincetivise spamming it and casuals wouldnt care since they build piety due to not caring. If GCD heals keep being DPS negative then pls do everyone a favor and just remove them from the healer design because having 8-12 buttons we actively try to avpid is not good gameplay design

[Seraphor]

And right now you dont choose. There is no use for 8-12 buttons mid fight on each healer because GCD nuke + oGCD heals is more than enough. And as i said Countless of times GCD healing reimbursting DPS would be MP negative, that by itself is enough to disincetivise spamming it and casuals wouldnt care since they build piety due to not caring. If GCD heals keep being DPS negative then pls do everyone a favor and just remove them from the healer design because having 8-12 buttons we actively try to avpid is not good gameplay design

Again, GCD heals still get use, when you've ran out of cooldowns. In the early game you have fewer or even no cooldowns, so you're constantly using GCD heals.

Which healer has 8-12 GCD heals?
Sage has TWO

[RinaShinomiya]

Again, GCD heals still get use, when you've ran out of cooldowns. In the early game you have fewer or even no cooldowns, so you're constantly using GCD heals.

Which healer has 8-12 GCD heals?
Sage has TWO

Im not just counting GCD healing buttons but also GCD healing related buttons. Stuff like Esuna, Egeiro, Swiftcast, pesis, Zoe and Repose. Granted Repose shouldnt even exist but thats still 8 buttons that you end up not using because its better to just oGCD heal and nothing is stopping the devs from changing early game healing to be oGCD centric. In that vein its also not good game design to design a healing system that gets outdated with each expansion released. Youre teaching new players the wrong healing style

[Liam_Harper]

The same can be said about oGCD healing. Just pressing a button in between your Nuke to heal without consequences is boring asf.

The consequences are the cooldown. If you waste all your oGCD's on small scratches and a big mechanic comes up before they're back up, you're screwed. Healing by oGCD alone on a fight with actual damage requires planning. Whether that's "boring asf" is subjective and down to opinion.

GCD heals don't. You just throw them out blindly and they'll always be there. This is why most bad healers are Medica II spammers. MP isn't a good limiting factor either, because it rewards bad cast uptime and stacking silly amounts of Piety.
...Unless we want to put a cooldown on GCD heals too. I'd be up for that.

[Semirhage]

The consequences are the cooldown. If you waste all your oGCD's on small scratches and a big mechanic comes up before they're back up, you're screwed. Healing by oGCD alone on a fight with actual damage requires planning. Whether that's "boring asf" is subjective and down to opinion.

GCD heals don't. You just throw them out blindly and they'll always be there. This is why most bad healers are Medica II spammers. MP isn't a good limiting factor either, because it rewards bad cast uptime and stacking silly amounts of Piety.
...Unless we want to put a cooldown on GCD heals too. I'd be up for that.

Eeeeeeeeeh is the cooldown *really* a consequence anymore? We've gone so far down the content design rabbit hole that I think we're seeing the limits of that "consequence". Outgoing damage is so infrequent that oGCDs cover (nearly) all healing requirements by themselves. We're at the point where content's outgoing damage rewards the hell out of a healer designed around oGCDs, especially considering the fact that (at least on SGE and AST) they do something even more important: they don't cost you any damage. Maybe in an ARR from yesteryear where you'd actually have to rely on your slow MP-hogging GCD healer to handle the heavy phases that was more true, but now you have a pretty clear delineation: healers that can fart out enough healing to cover whatever needs to be done instantly with zero cost and never interrupt their damage, and (ignoring the Energy Drain tax) WHM; the healer that has to rely on GCD heals, which actually cut into both damage (which is universally useful) and MP (which WHM has the least of already).

It's hard to justify oGCDs cooldowns as a cost when the content so blatantly goes out of its way to minimize that cost down into nothingness.