Macrocosmos completely invalidating the P3S heal check is stupid

[HyperiusUltima]

So, just skimming through here…a lot of the arguments I’m noticing revolve around saying that “AST MACROCOSMOS AOE BENEDICTION TOO OP PLS NERF!”

I believe this stigma is because the average PF player always gravitates towards the path of least resistance without considering the difficulty.

Yes, Macrocosmos can destroy HP = 1 MECHANICS. I believe this was intended at high level. The one thing that really annoys me is the narrative that AST deserves this heavy handed nerf when in reality if you play the job, it’s a lot harder to manage compared to SCH, SGE, and WHM.

Just because WHM is literally in the ground doesn’t mean it can’t clear said mechanic. This is why you have TWO HEALERS. Every healing pair has healing tools to fix the problem along with the other DPS and Tanks when you make a comp. It’s a matter of figuring out what healing combo you need to do after said mechanic resolves to recover damage.

Also, for damn good measure, realize Macro IS NOT AN AOE BENEDICTION. It’s HP Storage - a mechanic we haven’t seen before until this expac. It’s a good mechanic. We shouldn’t erase GOOD JOB DESIGN because of one mechanic in an entire raid tier.

The real narrative we need to drive is WHM is too weak in terms of healing upkeep and needs MP Buffs, a change to LotB to be useful ANYTIME, not just during times the WHM is getting hit; stronger healing overall, and lastly making Misery DPS neutral.

[Semirhage]

Also, for damn good measure, realize Macro IS NOT AN AOE BENEDICTION.

Distinction without a difference. The amount of healing it stores makes it effectively an AOE Benediction with very little effort. It's like saying Essential Dignity isn't Benediction in ARR dungeons- yeah it technically has a potency, that potency just happens to full heal its target 99% of the time. Being spoiled for choice isn't a "downside". "I have so many busted strong abilities that it's hard to juggle all of them" is not an actual weakness.

The real narrative we need to drive is WHM is too weak in terms of healing upkeep and needs MP Buffs, a change to LotB to be useful ANYTIME, not just during times the WHM is getting hit; stronger healing overall, and lastly making Misery DPS neutral.

That's a secondary discussion. WHM needs a lot more than a few changes to its MP economy and lilies. The way its entire kit is designed encourages bad play. Its cooldowns are WAY too long for how comparatively strong shorter cooldowns are on the other healers. Its kit doesn't support its supposed "selfish healer" identity. Its design is stuck in ARR. It needs a redesign.

[HyperiusUltima]

I get what you're saying, but I still think that being good at everything isn't "good design". It's overpowered design that creates role imbalance because it warps the whole role around itself. Everyone else has to be just as overpowered, or be left in the dust.

AST isn’t good at everything. It lacks the mitigation that our Barrier Healers have(and yes even if Neutral grants an advantage, it’s slight in hindsight), It also is heavily reliant on spacing its healing CDs properly, more so because you’re having to wait on 60/90s timers half the time. I’ll agree AST does a lot that overshadows WHM every step of the way - but I’ll disagree that it stigmatizes an entire role for a raid tier given it’s probably because the community loves to bandwagon off World First and Balance Discord since Stormblood.

[ty_taurus]

I'm too cynical for that. I mained WHM from ARR through Stormblood. I've seen competition from two busted overpowered healer jobs claiming that being extremely good at everything is just "good design". I healed through 20% Balance and Scholar doing as much damage as Ninja, while being told those things were "just good design", "WHM just needs to be brought up a little to compete". I've also been around when WHM dares to have a patch where they do more damage than the other healers and the screaming that entails. The thing is, WHM is never, ever going to be a well-designed job so long a Square keeps hammering this awful "pure simple straightforward no frills" fake identity onto it, and the good-at-everything overpowered healers are going to say "there there, I hope they fix you someday" until the heat death of the universe. Square has already demonstrated they'd rather topple the entire design they set forth for both AST and SCH than EVER give WHM anything interesting or fun to do.

I had a point in there somewhere, but it got lost in my being angry about how terribly Square has treated WHM since 3.2. I get what you're saying, but I still think that being good at everything isn't "good design". It's overpowered design that creates role imbalance because it warps the whole role around itself. Everyone else has to be just as overpowered, or be left in the dust.

WHM's design made a lot more sense during ARR where it and SCH traded strengths and weaknesses and complimented each other very well. WHM had a significantly easier time healing the party where SCH just couldn't. Your only way to recover from heavy raid-wide damage as 2 SCHs was to Succor spam, which was just not very effective. It also had Enmity control in Shroud of Saints where I can't actually remember whether or not SCH had any way of lowering their aggro, which was actually a big deal back then. In exchange, SCH's had more mitigation, damage, and better MP management. The reason why these trade offs made sense was because you only had 2 healers, but once we threw in a third wheel into the ring, suddenly that changes.

WHM's identity of being the one that can comfortably heal big damage now can't be exclusively true otherwise it becomes mandatory. This became more apparent over the course of HW, because as AST's utility got buffed, suddenly WHM's ability to do better something the others could comfortably do anyway was no longer a legitimate strength, and rather than adapting to this revelation, they just dug their heels in the sand in SB stating that it would be sacrilegious to WHM's job fantasy from the rest of the series--a statement that I will never understand for a number of reasons. First, because WHM has offered offensive support many times in the series previously in the form of spells like Might/Bravery, Faith, and Haste. Second, because the design team seems to pick and choose when a job's fantasy from the series is worth defending so much so to the point of turning an entire job into a gimmicky minigame in Blue Mage, but they're also perfectly fine trampling over others like Bard who is absolutely nothing like any Final Fantasy Bard ever in the series anywhere.

[HyperiusUltima]

Distinction without a difference. The amount of healing it stores makes it effectively an AOE Benediction with very little effort. It's like saying Essential Dignity isn't Benediction in ARR dungeons- yeah it technically has a potency, that potency just happens to full heal its target 99% of the time. Being spoiled for choice isn't a "downside". "I have so many busted strong abilities that it's hard to juggle all of them" is not an actual weakness..

Yeah? Then perhaps consider Zodiark. He has an HP = 1 Mechanic which we Macro. It DOES NOT HEAL TO FULL, about half as it should be. Also, since when are we talking about “weaknesses”? That sounds like a straw man out of a hat that isn’t very lucrative to this discussion.

I’ll repeat what has echoed through this thread for sake of brevity though: Macrocosmos only does this on one mechanic. ONE.

It’s more of a problem for the community at large refusing to learn alternatives to Macrocosmos - which tends to be a trend every expansion when it comes to raid strategy with 1000 different ways to solve a Rubix Cube.

[QooEr]

i play astro and macrocosmos absolutely is an aoe benediction. but unlike benediction, macro requires tight timing for you to truly make the most out of it. thats why i think its fine.

i really rather they make lilybell not garbage (along with the rest of whms kit tbh) instead of busting asts kneecaps to be on level with conjurer 2 like they did in shadowbringers.

[Silver-Strider]

i play astro and macrocosmos absolutely is an aoe benediction. but unlike benediction, macro requires tight timing for you to truly make the most out of it. thats why i think its fine.

i really rather they make lilybell not garbage (along with the rest of whms kit tbh) instead of busting asts kneecaps to be on level with conjurer 2 like they did in shadowbringers.

I wonder how many people have died because of Benediction's animation delay? That is tight timing.

[eagledorf]

Yeah? Then perhaps consider Zodiark. He has an HP = 1 Mechanic which we Macro. It DOES NOT HEAL TO FULL, about half as it should be. Also, since when are we talking about “weaknesses”? That sounds like a straw man out of a hat that isn’t very lucrative to this discussion.

You see, I know this post is total nonsense because Macrocosmos has 200 potency on top of 50% so what you describe is literally impossible. It will always heal for 50% + half a Helios (or 50% + more than a Succor). If a mechanic brings you down to 1 HP it's healing the party to near 70% unless you have a level 1 weapon or something.

[Mansion]

You see, I know this post is total nonsense because Macrocosmos has 200 potency on top of 50% so what you describe is literally impossible. It will always heal for 50% + half a Helios (or 50% + more than a Succor). If a mechanic brings you down to 1 HP it's healing the party to near 70% unless you have a level 1 weapon or something.

200 potency isn't a lot. Half a Helios is like.... 7K on a good day? Anyway, it surely does not make around 20% HP of one average player.
Which is even beside the point of this argument because you are not putting it in perspective with other similar CDs on the very same mechanic; where a full Lilybell or a Zoed Pneuma would do a better job that Macrocosmos. Macrocosmos works great on sustained damage, which isn't the case in most 1HP + incoming raid buster situations.

[Cheremia]

--

I used it on every single normal aoe i could in NORMAL Mode Pandemonium and it healed almost full in every single aoe.
Also checked in dungeon, where i got 17-ishk, damage and healed 13-ishk back.

Also ast can absolutely shield heal?
Neutral sect
Exaltation
Celestial Intersection
Collective Unconscious
And all of it has a verily short cooldown, too and nice sideeffects.

I think they are talking about weaknesses because sage, whm and sch sort of have weaknesses.
Whms are different than SCH and Sage, but all 3 of them do, ast... doesnt.

It's a little bit bloated button wise (i hate minor arcana... so so much, hated it in stormblood where it was ONE button, hate it even more now...), otherwise its fine. People dont actually want a lot of things to do as healer, so they dislike being a bit busy with cards and pretend like delaying heal/cards for one gcd will end the world sometimes.
WHm needs to either dps or heal, can't really do both other than assize and lilybell, which has a mega cooldown. And maybe Asylum but thats too slow most of the time.
Sage and SCH aren't THAT good at panic healing, as i mentioned before. They can? Sure, but they can't do it super mega ultra well for a longer period.
And that is fine since they SHOULD be the healers preventing much damage, not doing what the "pure" healers do.

It's not perfect since these 2 also heal too much but they can struggle more in certain situations because of it.

i play astro and macrocosmos absolutely is an aoe benediction. but unlike benediction, macro requires tight timing for you to truly make the most out of it. thats why i think its fine.

i really rather they make lilybell not garbage (along with the rest of whms kit tbh) instead of busting asts kneecaps to be on level with conjurer 2 like they did in shadowbringers.

Tight timing?
See a big aoe coming?
Use it.

It has a 15 second duration, if you use it before the cast time of the enemy is done, it will work.
Used 90 ast for the first time yesterday and i play from EU on an NA server and i had not a single problem using it in time since it also has a 15 second soak duration.

Benediction is still stuck in the past and has a 1-ish? seconds Animation delay of where its only after the whole twirl and staff lifting where the target actually gets healed.


And yeah... poor lilybell...