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

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

Toxikon is a poorly designed skill. It could be decent if the numbers were higher but it's simply not, and the FFXIV devs are loath to increase healer damage.

That I can agree with. It's one of the reason I dub Toxicon II as "Poor Man's Afflatus Misery" in the past.

Personally, I have a mixed feeling toward its current iteration. On one hand I am disappointed it just means that E.Diagnosis will get a similar treatment like Adloquium; avoided like plague (so much for being a 'barrier healer' but actively avoiding your GCD barriers lol). On the other hand I'm also relieved it's not a straight DPS gain because beyond that point I'll feel pressured to burn any addersting stacks within raidbuff windows.

[technole]

That I can agree with. It's one of the reason I dub Toxicon II as "Poor Man's Afflatus Misery" in the past.

Personally, I have a mixed feeling toward its current iteration. On one hand I am disappointed it just means that E.Diagnosis will get a similar treatment like Adloquium; avoided like plague (so much for being a 'barrier healer' but actively avoiding your GCD barriers lol). On the other hand I'm also relieved it's not a straight DPS gain because beyond that point I'll feel pressured to burn any addersting stacks within raidbuff windows.

That's exactly it, Toxicon is a poor man's misery. Anything that takes it out of a boxed-in skill will change a lot more than just adding another free damage button, the pressure of burning addersting for damage instead of just in-time healing.

YoshiP made his stance rather clear at the end of SHb and flat out said he preferred Scholars use Aetherflow for healing over damage, and that was why in the final balance patch they nerfed energy drain 50 potency and made Bio and Broil more potent. That design element is apparent with Toxicon.

[HyoMinPark]

That's exactly it, Toxicon is a poor man's misery. Anything that takes it out of a boxed-in skill will change a lot more than just adding another free damage button, the pressure of burning addersting for damage instead of just in-time healing.

YoshiP made his stance rather clear at the end of SHb and flat out said he preferred Scholars use Aetherflow for healing over damage, and that was why in the final balance patch they nerfed energy drain 50 potency and made Bio and Broil more potent. That design element is apparent with Toxicon.

If that’s his preference, perhaps he should re-evaluate his stance on not increasing the amount of incoming damage that needs healing. Since he wants SCH to prioritize healing over Energy Drain. Might help to actually have stuff to heal. Just saying.

[Banriikku]

Yoshida'S stance is from the perspective of a DPS and not a player as if a healer is nothing more like a healing buff than a player having fun. As HyoMinPark already said he should change something if he wants the "healers should heal".

[technole]

If that’s his preference, perhaps he should re-evaluate his stance on not increasing the amount of incoming damage that needs healing. Since he wants SCH to prioritize healing over Energy Drain. Might help to actually have stuff to heal. Just saying.

At the time he made the statement, E12S had just been released, and he was sort of right that fight was serious at minimum ilevels on Scholar.

It was pretty optimal to Indom at key points to not make the other healer go nutty and prevent another Succor use. Later on they would cut the MP cost of Succor because apparently PF people struggled with low PIE builds.

Finally, no 2nd ultimate like they promised put a big egg on the face.

[HyoMinPark]

At the time he made the statement, E12S had just been released, and he was sort of right that fight was serious at minimum ilevels on Scholar.

It was pretty optimal to Indom at key points to not make the other healer go nutty and prevent another Succor use. Later on they would cut the MP cost of Succor because apparently PF people struggled with low PIE builds.

Finally, no 2nd ultimate like they promised put a big egg on the face.

Somehow, I don’t think his stance has changed since. Mostly, I’m just annoyed that it comes off as the developers want healers to do more healing—between comments like that and every new skill we get being some type of shiny healy button—but they continuously refuse to increase the amount of healing required because they want to cater to baby healers.

I don’t necessarily think dungeons need more healing, nor do I expect that to happen. If they want to make them faceroll, then fine. I can accept that with one caveat: that this same mentality really shouldn’t apply to higher tier content like Extremes, Savage, and Ultimate where these baby healers are not going to be as prevalent.


As a clarification, I don’t consider a healer that is new to Extremes or raiding in general a “baby healer”. If you’re going into high-end content, you should be expected to have an understanding of your job and some basic competency. That the idea healers in any content seem to lack both is what is causing the role to suffer for any healer that is halfway decent. The dev team really need to realize that they cannot—nor should they—apply their mentality that all healers will have a low skill to all types of content.

[Semirhage]

I also feel that there's some obnoxious disconnect between what they think (or don't spend time thinking, as the case may be) about healers and reality. Based on the way they talk about healing, grudgingly, reluctantly, in live letters and so on. I've never seen anything close to an examination of outgoing damage, or a discussion about tool usage. Now to be fair, it's not like they talk about most things in depth. There's too much to cover. But based on Yoshi's damage numbers, you -know- he understands how to play Black Mage at a level where he understands being a Blizzard Wizard isn't how you play the job. Healing? Not once. Ever. From Squeenix headquarters, all I've ever heard is "healers should heal", "if you want to deal damage play a DPS", "you should have fun with the healing portion of your job".

These are all things that can only come out of the mouth of someone who doesn't understand how healing works in FFXIV. Who's never even considered sitting down and mapping out cooldowns or discussing anything with their cohealer. Damage comes out, oh shit better use Plenary and Cure 3 to save everyone! It's the approach of someone who's RPing as a healer instead of playing it like a class they'd like to master.

There's no indication I've seen that they get the disconnect between their combat system and their healer design. If you are bored with healing just...like...heal more or something, I don't know. They're so lost in not giving a crap about healers that it hasn't even occurred to them that you can't just spam more healing like you can with damage.

Yeah yeah, whatever. Healers should heal. They like wearing white dresses or something right? Find a new pretty dress to wear. Can I get back to my DPS job now?

[WaxSw]

At the time he made the statement, E12S had just been released, and he was sort of right that fight was serious at minimum ilevels on Scholar.

It was pretty optimal to Indom at key points to not make the other healer go nutty and prevent another Succor use. Later on they would cut the MP cost of Succor because apparently PF people struggled with low PIE builds.

Finally, no 2nd ultimate like they promised put a big egg on the face.

He made that statement regarding the whole game not only E12s (fight that even at min ilv the most used Aetherflow action still was energy drain) which showed a complete lack of understanding of how Sch was played, we used ED because the heal filler spender (lustrate) was rarely worth it while Ruin2+ED was still a gain, the cd of the skills (45s and 30s) limited how much ED could actually be useful to heal, we could cheese AE heals with recitation and the rest of our kit was strong and cheap.

If he knew and really wanted us to use our Aetherflow to heal they should have made it dps neutral, because back then we had to pay a tax for weaving (outside biolysis and swift optimizations) and a tax for ED but I guess that to do that and not butcher Sch completely one must have knowledge past physick spam and that may be considered "too good".

[SeverianLyonesse]

They probably assume said addersting is generated during downtime, which yes, it makes Toxicon II casts dps neutral.

I think my problem with Addersting/Toxicon is that it's an extremely narrow and situational mechanic for being so central to SGE's gauge and "mini-game". It is triggered with only *one* ability and only enables *one* ability (neither of which interact with other abilities aside from the even more situational Pepsis), so it doesn't really interact with most of Sage's kit. And it should only be built up during downtime, so it's fundamentally not engaging with or improving *uptime* gameplay (i.e. actual combat).

I'm not opposed to having a "downtime bonus" ability in E.Diag/Toxicon, but I think that should be on top of more DPS options that Sage is completely missing. And it probably shouldn't be tied to Addersting, which feels like it has far more potential for an actual DPS system/rotation than what we presently have.

[Rilifane]

As a clarification, I don’t consider a healer that is new to Extremes or raiding in general a “baby healer”. If you’re going into high-end content, you should be expected to have an understanding of your job and some basic competency. That the idea healers in any content seem to lack both is what is causing the role to suffer for any healer that is halfway decent.

This.
Nobody is or should be considered a "baby healer" that us doing Ex and above, not even if they just started. At least if we're talking about current content.

They leveled to max level, they did all the trials/ raids in their normal version or chose to do an optional questline for them. They had plenty of time to get familiar with their toolkit and the basics of decent gameplay like "always be casting", weaving, slidecasting, understanding the scripted nature of fights, rotating their cooldowns and dpsing as much as the fight and the party allows.
And using third party resources or looking to other players when going for endgame content to get that understanding shouldn't be considered unreasonable.

Yet healers are treated like they can't understand anything beyond Cure II & Medica II, mitigation will make their brains explode and dpsing is too stressful to have more than 2 buttons for it.