Healers need an overhaul

[BRVV]

I wish healers had job gauges that tied to dps. I don't need a UI element to tell me if that one SGE skill is active. It already shows the combo lines or how they are called. Scholar's job gauges are really boring. Use skill for points -> use heals -> maybe use big fairy...

Tanks have dps combos and mechanics tied to them. Why not healers?

[Shurrikhan]

I wish healers had job gauges that tied to dps. I don't need a UI element to tell me if that one SGE skill is active. It already shows the combo lines or how they are called. Scholar's job gauges are really boring. Use skill for points -> use heals -> maybe use big fairy...

Tanks have dps combos and mechanics tied to them. Why not healers?

To be fair, most of those tank gauges aren't much more interesting for it. DRK's gauge doesn't need to be on one's screen. WAR's gauge is just a Fel Cleave charge counter. PLD's gauge is just a Shelltron charge counter. GNB's is a GF-if-available-else-Burst/Fated counter. Let's face it; Shadowbringers and especially Endwalker has done all gauges dirty.

But yes, having more to do with our gauges could be a boon. (Not necessarily, as tying things behind something else has as much chance to be a change for the worse, but it certainly could help out.) That'd apply even if we ultimately went a whole different direction with some of them.

To take SCH, for instance, I'd love to actually bring back Eos/Selene distinctions and go deep into that. I don't care if that means bringing back Attack Speed as a Selene buff and certain people getting pissed at having received it just because "Oh, no, what will I do with this extra GCD?!" (Though, I'd prefer that raid fights strayed back away from easily having 100% continuous uptime even for melee or BLMs and that we had more than a single raid buff timing, so I'm clearly just a sadist.) Give us more active control, more to do, more to capitalize upon. And then see what the gauge might have in store for/from that.

[Nizzi]

To take SCH, for instance, I'd love to actually bring back Eos/Selene distinctions and go deep into that. I don't care if that means bringing back Attack Speed as a Selene buff and certain people getting pissed at having received it just because "Oh, no, what will I do with this extra GCD?!" (Though, I'd prefer that raid fights strayed back away from easily having 100% continuous uptime even for melee or BLMs and that we had more than a single raid buff timing, so I'm clearly just a sadist.) Give us more active control, more to do, more to capitalize upon. And then see what the gauge might have in store for/from that.

I'd love to see a distinction between Eos and Selene come back as well, doubly so if they made it to where we could swap between the two in battle to actually use them tactially... because SCH is supposed to be a tactician of sorts, right Square? It's a shame that there's so many good ideas present in the healers, and instead of figuring out a way to make them work, the developers would rather just remove them from the game.

[Shurrikhan]

I'd love to see a distinction between Eos and Selene come back as well, doubly so if they made it to where we could swap between the two in battle to actually use them tactially... because SCH is supposed to be a tactician of sorts, right Square? It's a shame that there's so many good ideas present in the healers, and instead of figuring out a way to make them work, the developers would rather just remove them from the game.

What? Tactician? I thought these themes were based on color palette or whether their central resources always generate over time, only in combat, or via ability-press?

To be fair, we can to some degree blame (arguably shortsighted) player preference for some of those reductions, such as in the removal of Attack Speed (the likes of Arrow or Fey Light) or Ability Recast Speed (original Spear) as buffs. Now, that's not to say that those buffs were all decent as is and players just didn't know how to utilize them. ARS acceleration, for instance, was quite poorly designed in that it could only snapshot, and only by percentage, which would then force desync or (especially in the context of a single Card charge) ability holding for its optimal usage (which even then fell short of just giving someone Balance). Somehow, though, that became seen first and foremost as a "wrench in the works," rather than something most wanted to possibly improve and reiterate upon. And from there came the idea that the best solution to this was not to increase jobs' rotational flexibility or the control/precision with which buffers could apply those buffs, but rather to just remove any such wrench (gameplay-affecting buffs, all but one form of crit proc, pacing variance the likes of Stormblood Riddle of Fire or Tornado Kick rotations, and finally any raid downtime altogether). It's... kind of embarrassing.

But let's also consider: People would stomp about and jump up and down in insistence that new Spear was better than Arrow, just because Spear affected all throughput and Arrow only some 60-90% of it... despite Spear's increased crit chance being no higher than Arrow's Attack Speed increase (and crit, as we know, being only a .4 to .6x damage modifier). A kit-wide effect of only half potency is still worse than a full effect on a mere majority of one's kit (100% of a .48x bonus is still less than, say, 78% of a 1x bonus). So, maybe I shouldn't be surprised by any of this.