Yoshi-P: "If you want more engaging content, go play Ultimate"

[MrSenriren]

What is ultimate?

[Ixon]

Here is how constructive criticism works for those that are entirely unaware. You start with the good. You say "These X things are good." and make sure to highlight why they are good. You HAVE to do this, otherwise if you say everything is bad, the client will scrap the entire thing, even the few good parts, and you have a 50/50 chance of getting even a worst outcome. So, you state the good, why it's good, then you state the bad. Though you don't just state the bad, you say WHY it's bad and give as many possible solutions to fix it. In this case we are talking about healing, and in my case I am referring to SGE. For instance, let's look at Phlegma. Phlegma is a high damage GCD good for bursts, and AoE GCD, an emergency movement GCD, and sits on a 45sec timer that requires you to NOT use on cooldown and not let sit on two stacks if you want to the most damage possible. It's all those things wrapped into one ability and is a great example of what COULD be, the healers just need more of it across all healers. By letting the devs know where they are getting things right, you give them a starting point and a baseline to go from when moving forward. Again, not saying SGE is perfect, just highlighting that there are aspects of the job that are goo, that if expanded on, could make the job great. Also Icarus is just flat out fun, even more so if you combo it with Rescue.

[SeverianLyonesse]

I did mention it. I just find it sad that it could have Pneuma and one or two other abilities like it is all. (Also why 90?)

Personally the only part of SGE I find fun is being able to dash to another player/boss. Its not to my playstyle and probably never will be, even if they make changes to separate it from the healer formula (aka make it less 1 button spammy).

That said I do like Pepsis and Toxicon as ideas. I feel like they could've been used more into SGE's playstyle though.

Ah my apologies, it is right there. I am tired.

[ASkellington]

snip

Fair, but no one person agrees with everything when it comes to the good and bad of a job. And to me, if I don't speak of it, its fine. Could it be better? Yes, but if it isn't broke, passible and doesn't need adjustments unless you change things I'd rather not mention it.

If you insist:

AST being a time based healer is a good idea. It has the most regen tools out of the healers and has unique ways to deal time based healing in not just hots but delayed healing such as Exaltation, Earthly Star and Macrocosmos. They should double down on that.

Here's where I have issues:

WHM and AST at the base level share too many abilities sub50 that make them one to one. Even just making WHM's hots more expensive but their burst heals cheaper and vice versa for AST would be a minor step in the right direction. But we don't use those abilities anyway so Cure1 - 2 and Benefic1 - 2 via trait upgrade is where I'll leave that hot take.

Synastry is a great idea but does little to interact with the kit for no reason as I've said multiple times over various threads at this point. I don't want the ability to be removed (as I wouldn't want Pepsis to be removed from SGE since I feel similar to it as I do Synastry) but if SE isn't going to have it interact with anything other than Benefic it may as well go.

Neutral Sect also falls under the same issue I have with Synastry and other things SE does to the other healers: we have oGCDs stop pretending they don't exist and let some CDs interact with them in interesting ways. When I played AST I thought it would give Noct aspects to Diurnal and the opposite to Nocturnal when we had it and no it doesn't. It only works for our GCDs. We didn't need the extra healing from it, and it would have been fun to use.

To sum all that up:
Make AST a regen healer by nerfing (increasing) the mana cost of its on demand heals (and reducing WHM's and increasing WHM's regens)
Let Synastry and Neutral Sect play into our oGCDs. Synastry is too niche without it, and Neutral Sect having it would bring back Noct Sect to those who missed it.

Aside from those pain points and how stupidly huge Earthly Star has gotten this expansion which is a personal hatred to rival that of how many despise Zenos the rest is of course with AST's card system:

I understand that the reason for the change was to 1. stop fishing and 2. because "everyone" prioritized Balance and no other card.

To point 1 - WE STILL FISH. In Shb it was for Seals for arbitrary 4/5/6% damage on Divination. In EW its for Astrodyne. You may as well accept we're going to redraw and really its apart of AST's LORE to see a fate and defy it!

To point 2 - no one asked for all the cards to be a Balance clone. Not a single person. You made this change, you've heard for X years we don't like it, its about time to sit down and rethink your stance on "no they aren't coming back". Now that Divination is flat buff percentage and is decoupled from the cards we could think about bringing back some ideas for card diversity.

Undraw exists for what purpose? None. It shouldn't be a skill and should've been removed ages ago.

I am no tech savvy person. Never have been and never will be. I have 0 idea how hard it would be to make Draw/Play and Minor Arcana/Crown Play 1 button, but again, you knew this was a pain point in Shb. It shouldn't be one in EW. We're already bloated in skills as is. If it means that a card gets lost in 25s then a card gets lost in 25s. It is less than Draw's charge timer it should be long enough (30s would be fine for MA).

Astrodyne and the Seals system can go. I see little if anything they could do to salvage it in a way that I would like at this point. I'd rather have unique cards be our buffs than tie buffs to a Seals system UNLESS said seals system gives utility party buffs only: (all or 2 lunar seals give mana regen, all or 2 solar seals give mitigation/shield, all or 2 celestial seals give movement speed for example).

I have no perfect design to fix the cards. We cannot go back to the old ones without adjustments but there are not enough meaningful buffs outside of damage. We could keep the current melee/ranged split idea and break the cards into 3 different buffs (so 3 cards to be placed on ranged and 3 for melee, but you can put them on their opposites for half the effect), but what those buffs are is debatable. (not all classes like Skill/Spell speed for example).

Anything else is me being extremely nitpicky.

As for how AST could be more engaging? Fix the buff system tbh. Could we use another dps ability? If you fix button bloat, yes. Do we need one? Not as badly as the other 3 healers.

In short, AST is fine as a whole on the healer and design front (mostly). Its biggest issue to fix has and always will be its cards.

Edit: Also forgot to add this - You have now made me want to try Icarus + Rescue. That sounds hilariously fun.

[Deceptus]

Though you don't just state the bad, you say WHY it's bad and give as many possible solutions to fix it.

1) We've done this on the healer forum time and time again, over multiple expansions, and that feedback has been ignored. Multiple highly upvoted threads with TONS of great ideas.

A Summary of Healer Issues (208 upvotes)

Thoughts on why SE needs to hire a dedicated Healer job designer (168 upvotes)

The Healer Double Standard (139 upvotes)

These are going back 3+ years. Probably more I've missed. The job as a whole has been in the toilet for a while.

2) It's not our job to give solutions. We don't get paid to design this game, and our feedback is routinely ignored anyway.

[Mimilu]

LMAO SGE is the most braindead healer to play right now. It's literally below SCH in difficulty.

I wouldn't say it's braindead but I do think it's whole kit flows better then other healers' and that, even though it's the healer that has the highest level and expansion gating, it might be the easy healer to pick up.

[24spencer]

Master of troll threads shoo, this isn't one of yours.

Just because you don't like him doesn't make him wrong. Sage in current normal content can basically solo heal 95% of it by just hitting kerachole and physis II. Throw in an Ixochole if things look spicy. It literally just has an easier-to-use version of scholar's kit because you don't have to groundtarget the aoe mit regen skill or deal with pet AI, while their skills have like 90% overlap of doing the exact same thing.

If all you're doing when that's not going on is pressing Dosis, reapplying a dot and pressing a 45s cooldown, that's hardly engaging gameplay.

Phlegma might as well just be a gcd version of assize, so i don't see why people are praising sage as some kind of renaissance of healer DPS, it objectively isn't. Scholar literally has more to think about with ED/Aetherflow opportunity cost and dissipation. Astro has earthly and crowns, both of which also deal damage, and they're still both also plagued with the problem that healers who are good at healing do not have anything fun to do, and sage is no exception.

[Semirhage]

Here is how constructive criticism works for those that are entirely unaware. You start with the good. You say "These X things are good." and make sure to highlight why they are good. You HAVE to do this, otherwise if you say everything is bad, the client will scrap the entire thing, even the few good parts, and you have a 50/50 chance of getting even a worst outcome. So, you state the good, why it's good, then you state the bad. Though you don't just state the bad, you say WHY it's bad and give as many possible solutions to fix it. In this case we are talking about healing, and in my case I am referring to SGE. For instance, let's look at Phlegma. Phlegma is a high damage GCD good for bursts, and AoE GCD, an emergency movement GCD, and sits on a 45sec timer that requires you to NOT use on cooldown and not let sit on two stacks if you want to the most damage possible. It's all those things wrapped into one ability and is a great example of what COULD be, the healers just need more of it across all healers. By letting the devs know where they are getting things right, you give them a starting point and a baseline to go from when moving forward. Again, not saying SGE is perfect, just highlighting that there are aspects of the job that are goo, that if expanded on, could make the job great. Also Icarus is just flat out fun, even more so if you combo it with Rescue.

This process applies if you believe the thing you are criticizing is fixable via a series of discrete, identifiable steps. Even if you don't know what the exact content of those steps are, you give a dead reckoning consistent with the direction you want to head.

This process doesn't work as well when you believe the entire role is arguably so horribly designed that it's impossible to succinctly explain *why* they're so horribly designed without spiraling into a five page essay on their wretchedness. I think a major contributing factor as to why healer feedback is so unfocused is because they're this badly designed. We've degenerated to the point where healers with any level of skill above having a pulse press Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare an overwhelming majority of the time. This is boring. It's awful. There are about a hundred reasons that contribute to why it happens to be that way, with varying degrees of influence. I've played horrible boring pay-to-win Korean grinder MMOs with clunky, weirdly designed kits of abilities that **still** managed to capture my attention more successfully than spamming one button over and over and over and over and over again in Ultimate difficulty content. That's harsh criticism, I know. And it's warranted. I want Square's job design team to get it through their impenetrable skulls that bad slapdash free-to-play cashgrab MMOs have healer design that's orders of magnitude more engaging than every single one of the jobs in their healer role.

I don't think the healer role is possible to salvage with potency tweaks. It's -that- bad. And it's going to remain that bad as long as people think a few small bits of feedback about an extra charge on Assize or a little MP economy bump is going to somehow bring
Dia Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Dia Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Dia Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Dia Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Dia Glare Glare Glare Glare
with some occasional hiccups tossed in into the same galaxy as acceptable gameplay.

[WaxSw]

I didn't say it was perfect did I? I didn't say it was every healers dream did I? But can you argue that it is't MORE fun to play than the other healers? Generally speaking, the newer jobs feel better and are more fun to play. This is still true even with SGE. All I'm saying it's a step in a better direction. You can be an over-exaggerating stick in the mud, cherry-picking whatever you want to cry about, or you can try to lend to a thoughtful discussion to try and make things better.

Its not, only casually played in dungeons can be remotely interesting at lv90 because the pulls die so quick that you dont spam dyskrasia much compared to the rest of AoE stuff, past that is the exact same shit every healer is

[SeverianLyonesse]

In short, AST is fine as a whole on the healer and design front (mostly). Its biggest issue to fix has and always will be its cards.[/U][/I][/B]

If a lot of these changes were implemented, I would strongly consider picking up AST. As it stands, it doesn't have enough of a job fantasy anymore. But if they brought back some time-manipulation gimmicks like better HoTs, recreated some uniqueness in card effects, and removed some clutter like Undraw, I would actually *want* to play it.

I also still think something as simple as having a "coin-flip" would be a good way to introduce some attack variety into AST. Sun side, moon side. Either a successful flip has a chance to proc the next part of a combo. Or they could be a callback to the sects where say day side does an attack but night side makes a shield.