Can we stop punishing shield healers for playing together?

[Semirhage]

useless to you not to me i love seeing a big 0 on me or others which may even nullify knock backs or block some mechanics2. Judging someone for something they use just cause you dont like it does not entitle you to assume a person is bad or good.

Do what you want but just stop assuming things you know nothing about a person. You always have such a nasty attitude to anyone who dont see your way. Its not burger king.

Dude, pot meet kettle. You're allowed to enjoy inefficient things. That's never been in question. That's an entirely separate conversation from whether inefficient things are, well objectively inefficient. I enjoy the ability to Vercure myself. If it turns out I didn't need to do it in order to save myself from a near-death experience, then I did something objectively inefficient. I felt cool anyway, so it doesn't matter.

You don't need to get offended every single time someone calls Nocturnal A. Benefic or E. Diagnosis inefficient uses of a GCD. Because 9 times out of 10 they are. Nobody's forcing you to be as efficient as possible.

[ty_taurus]

useless to you not to me i love seeing a big 0 on me or others which may even nullify knock backs or block some mechanics2. Judging someone for something they use just cause you dont like it does not entitle you to assume a person is bad or good.

Do what you want but just stop assuming things you know nothing about a person. You always have such a nasty attitude to anyone who dont see your way. Its not burger king.

Pot calling the kettle black, I see.

You can, in fact, measure performance, and from that we as a community are capable of understanding what tools are and are not good to use in a given situation. E. Diagnosis is almost never a good tool to use. Just because you're seeing a big 0 doesn't actually mean anything if the damage that would've been sustained would've been handled easily otherwise. Tankbusters, especially in casual content, are entirely manageable by the tank and the tank alone. Using something like Taurochole, Benediction, or just healing them up with Kardia after is more than enough to take care of literally every tankbuster in the game. That's not an opinion. It's fact. E. Diagnosis is an utter waste of MP and a loss of otherwise useful DPS.

You can use it all you want without it causing a wipe. Just because it's entirely irrelevant and unnecessary doesn't mean it's going to hurt your performance so much that you'll wipe, at least not in casual play. Using it on every tankbuster actually could cause your team to fail a DPS check in Savage if your team is barely scraping by on the DPS check if not failing it at 0.1% or so.

But like I said, it doesn't matter. No one is asking you to be performing your job as a SGE at 100%, especially not in dungeons and regular trials. My point is that it's unnecessary, and that's a measurable fact. Whether or not you like to use it anyway is your business. It's not being rude, it's stating the obvious.

[IceBlueNinja]

Dude, pot meet kettle. You're allowed to enjoy inefficient things. That's never been in question. That's an entirely separate conversation from whether inefficient things are, well objectively inefficient. I enjoy the ability to Vercure myself. If it turns out I didn't need to do it in order to save myself from a near-death experience, then I did something objectively inefficient. I felt cool anyway, so it doesn't matter.

You don't need to get offended every single time someone calls Nocturnal A. Benefic or E. Diagnosis inefficient uses of a GCD. Because 9 times out of 10 they are. Nobody's forcing you to be as efficient as possible.

same thing with succor or alco then right? they are ineffecient too?

[ty_taurus]

same thing with succor or alco then right? they are ineffecient too?

Yes. On SCH, Succor is the worse of the two because deployment crit adlo is a better way to shield the entire party if you're in a situation where barriers are helpful. It's the reverse for SGE where E. Prognosis is better because you can't spread E. Diagnosis.

When you use something like E. Diagnosis on the tank, and you see that they took 0 damage, or next to 0 damage, that feels really good. That said, had you not used E. Diagnosis, the tank would not have died from that attack. Casual content tankbusters are nonlethal even if the tank fails to mitigate. It might be lethal in harder content, but tanks have all the tools they need to survive the mechanic without your help as the healer. The best way to handle a tankbuster statistically is either do nothing at all and let Kardia top them off, or toss them something like Taurochole instead which has no opportunity cost other than its own cooldown and 1 Addersgall--a resource that SGE already produces more than enough of.

In other words, if we math that out, you've lost an additional 500 MP and 330 potency damage for that GCD, and what you got instead was a barrier that ultimately didn't matter because the tank would've been fine without it.

Now, using that E. Diagnosis is honestly more fun to do even if it's entirely unnecessary. That opportunity cost of 500 MP and 330 potency is very small, and if you're not in EX or Savage, then it's not like there's an enrage timer you're trying to beat anyway. So if you prefer doing that, then do it. Yes, it's technically an inefficient way to play, and it is important to understand that. But it's not like standing there and not DPSing at all. If you'd rather enjoy using barriers that way, then do it.

Those of us who keep bringing up how inefficient it is would much rather healers be redesigned in a way that using your barriers like that is optimal. We're angry that it's not. I want your way of using E. Diagnosis to be the right way and hate that it's not.

[Deceptus]

Yes. On SCH, Succor is the worse of the two because deployment crit adlo is a better way to shield the entire party if you're in a situation where barriers are helpful. It's the reverse for SGE where E. Prognosis is better because you can't spread E. Diagnosis.

When you use something like E. Diagnosis on the tank, and you see that they took 0 damage, or next to 0 damage, that feels really good. That said, had you not used E. Diagnosis, the tank would not have died from that attack. Casual content tankbusters are nonlethal even if the tank fails to mitigate. It might be lethal in harder content, but tanks have all the tools they need to survive the mechanic without your help as the healer. The best way to handle a tankbuster statistically is either do nothing at all and let Kardia top them off, or toss them something like Taurochole instead which has no opportunity cost other than its own cooldown and 1 Addersgall--a resource that SGE already produces more than enough of.

In other words, if we math that out, you've lost an additional 500 MP and 330 potency damage for that GCD, and what you got instead was a barrier that ultimately didn't matter because the tank would've been fine without it.

Now, using that E. Diagnosis is honestly more fun to do even if it's entirely unnecessary. That opportunity cost of 500 MP and 330 potency is very small, and if you're not in EX or Savage, then it's not like there's an enrage timer you're trying to beat anyway. So if you prefer doing that, then do it. Yes, it's technically an inefficient way to play, and it is important to understand that. But it's not like standing there and not DPSing at all. If you'd rather enjoy using barriers that way, then do it.

Those of us who keep bringing up how inefficient it is would much rather healers be redesigned in a way that using your barriers like that is optimal. We're angry that it's not. I want your way of using E. Diagnosis to be the right way and hate that it's not.

And this would all be a moot point if they simply made Toxikon a DPS neutral action or near enough.

Make the initial hit 660 potency and it would cover the 2 GCDs needed to cast E Diag, and Toxikon, or keep it at 330 and make it an OGCD.

[Colt47]

The problem with the really stupid direction the went on healers is that shield healers have to jump through several hoops of fire to do what a normal healer can do. Not only does it make the class incredibly annoying to play, it makes them decisively worse without having a pure healer with them. It even shows up in normal dungeons later on in the game when they start kicking up the damage scaling and you have to start using more abilities to do the same exact thing. Pure healers don't suffer the same way because in the end there isn't anything that hits hard enough to one shot someone, so they can just heal someone in reaction to taking damage rather than pre-emptively having to guess they are taking damage.

I mean I'm so glad they think this is a great plan in end game to make healers "unique", but it ended up gutting astro, made this abomination of a class called sage that is basically a freaking scholar without a fairy...

Edit: Also thanks for whoever pointed out toxicon is a complete waste of time. I was noticing that in dungeons and was like "why would I ever do this?"

[ty_taurus]

And this would all be a moot point if they simply made Toxikon a DPS neutral action or near enough.

Make the initial hit 660 potency and it would cover the 2 GCDs needed to cast E Diag, and Toxikon, or keep it at 330 and make it an OGCD.

I would love for Toxikon to not be the shitty action that it currently is, however, just boosting the damage to 660 potency creates a very different issue where suddenly E. Diagnosis becomes a tool you want to use aggressively because, for an additional 100 MP, you get some healing, a barrier, and equal damage to 2 casts of Dosis III every time the barrier breaks, and it will break very quickly in harder content because of auto-attacks on the main tank. It probably wouldn't quite be E. Diagnosis spam, but it also gives SGE a significant advantage over every other healer because of the shear volume of free healing it receives.

Toxikon absolutely needs to be reworked, but it can't be constantly available, it needs to respect downtime exploitation, and it needs to respect buff windows, because these are things that the community will 100% exploit if not considered.

The problem with the really stupid direction the went on healers is that shield healers have to jump through several hoops of fire to do what a normal healer can do. Not only does it make the class incredibly annoying to play, it makes them decisively worse without having a pure healer with them. It even shows up in normal dungeons later on in the game when they start kicking up the damage scaling and you have to start using more abilities to do the same exact thing. Pure healers don't suffer the same way because in the end there isn't anything that hits hard enough to one shot someone, so they can just heal someone in reaction to taking damage rather than pre-emptively having to guess they are taking damage.

I mean I'm so glad they think this is a great plan in end game to make healers "unique", but it ended up gutting astro, made this abomination of a class called sage that is basically a freaking scholar without a fairy...

Edit: Also thanks for whoever pointed out toxicon is a complete waste of time. I was noticing that in dungeons and was like "why would I ever do this?"

What are these hoops you speak of and how on earth do you see any value in the "Pure Healer" archetype? SCH/SGE is the strongest healing comp that enables 100% uptime on party mitigation, SGE benefits greatly from Chain Stratagem, offers the highest total healer DPS output, and has so much free healing that their "lack" of burst healing is negligible. Quite honestly, because of the shear volume of low-cooldown OGCD pure heals and regen heals Barrier Healers have, they are better Pure Healers than WHM. AST is still good because its tools are ludicrous, but WHM has nothing on SCH or SGE, and AST, while still amazing, really lags behind in damage that it offers even with its buffs. AST is much better at the beginning of a raid tier where healers are often forgoing gear drops in favor of letting the DPS gear up first, something that hurts SGE and WHM since they rely entirely on personal damage.

[Colt47]

I would love for Toxikon to not be the shitty action that it currently is, however, just boosting the damage to 660 potency creates a very different issue where suddenly E. Diagnosis becomes a tool you want to use aggressively because, for an additional 100 MP, you get some healing, a barrier, and equal damage to 2 casts of Dosis III every time the barrier breaks, and it will break very quickly in harder content because of auto-attacks on the main tank. It probably wouldn't quite be E. Diagnosis spam, but it also gives SGE a significant advantage over every other healer because of the shear volume of free healing it receives.

Toxikon absolutely needs to be reworked, but it can't be constantly available, it needs to respect downtime exploitation, and it needs to respect buff windows, because these are things that the community will 100% exploit if not considered.



What are these hoops you speak of and how on earth do you see any value in the "Pure Healer" archetype? SCH/SGE is the strongest healing comp that enables 100% uptime on party mitigation, SGE benefits greatly from Chain Stratagem, offers the highest total healer DPS output, and has so much free healing that their "lack" of burst healing is negligible. Quite honestly, because of the shear volume of low-cooldown OGCD pure heals and regen heals Barrier Healers have, they are better Pure Healers than WHM. AST is still good because its tools are ludicrous, but WHM has nothing on SCH or SGE, and AST, while still amazing, really lags behind in damage that it offers even with its buffs. AST is much better at the beginning of a raid tier where healers are often forgoing gear drops in favor of letting the DPS gear up first, something that hurts SGE and WHM since they rely entirely on personal damage.

I figured that someone would ask about that. The problems are really about skill cap vs skill floor during leveling up. I purposefully chose to avoid doing healer for a few months to try and see how hard it would be to pick up sage and use it properly compared to say, whm and use it properly. Everything sub level 50 is basically brain dead since you can just kardia heal the tank like a fairy. 50-60 you start doing things with the shielding but overall it felt manageable between both whm and sage.

Where things go off the rails is when you hit levels 65-80. It gets bad. It gets really bad. So, the problem is that there are fights where you need to know to use something pre-emptively to get the most benefit. If a boss is using an AOE, you need to know that the attack is an AOE and then you use the aoe shield heal ahead of time to deal with it. However, new players are going to miss that a lot so what really happens is that they heal after the attack hits and the shield does nothing. The sages base heals are weaker than the whm base heals and the astro as well. They also make it so sage has to use Zoe to boost base heals in many cases before they get holos.

This isn't saying shields are bad, just that from an ease of use deal they really shouldn't make pure shield and pure HP healers. They probably need to refactor into something like Regen healers and Shield healers, where both have base heals that are the same, but one provides shields where the other does regen. I mean the healer design is pretty bad right now regardless, but what they did this expansion feels like a big step back.

Oh, and the fact that Zoe only effects spells and not spells and abilities feels bad, since there were times when I was learning and realized that the only thing zoe impacts is prognosis and diagnosis.

[ty_taurus]

I figured that someone would ask about that. The problems are really about skill cap vs skill floor during leveling up. I purposefully chose to avoid doing healer for a few months to try and see how hard it would be to pick up sage and use it properly compared to say, whm and use it properly. Everything sub level 50 is basically brain dead since you can just kardia heal the tank like a fairy. 50-60 you start doing things with the shielding but overall it felt manageable between both whm and sage.

Where things go off the rails is when you hit levels 65-80. It gets bad. It gets really bad. So, the problem is that there are fights where you need to know to use something pre-emptively to get the most benefit. If a boss is using an AOE, you need to know that the attack is an AOE and then you use the aoe shield heal ahead of time to deal with it. However, new players are going to miss that a lot so what really happens is that they heal after the attack hits and the shield does nothing. The sages base heals are weaker than the whm base heals and the astro as well. They also make it so sage has to use Zoe to boost base heals in many cases before they get holos.

This isn't saying shields are bad, just that from an ease of use deal they really shouldn't make pure shield and pure HP healers. They probably need to refactor into something like Regen healers and Shield healers, where both have base heals that are the same, but one provides shields where the other does regen. I mean the healer design is pretty bad right now regardless, but what they did this expansion feels like a big step back.

Oh, and the fact that Zoe only effects spells and not spells and abilities feels bad, since there were times when I was learning and realized that the only thing zoe impacts is prognosis and diagnosis.

One thing that I've been saying for a while is that GCD heals in general are just shit design. They're a huge loss of MP and DPS and offer barely any actual healing in contrast to OGCD heals that cost no MP, don't take away your DPS, and heal just as much as GCD heals if not more.

What would help every healer would be to create proper "safety net" heals that casual players can rely on and progging parties can fall back on when the situation gets ugly--heals that are suboptimal because of lost DPS, but are cheap, fast, and powerful to give people an out.

Meanwhile, other GCD heals should instead offer ways to make them optimal or good forms of utility worth using in certain situations. i.e. more DPS returns like with the lily system or something like crit adlo spreading which, while largely unnecessary across the game, does come in handy during prog and specific mechanics.

[Deceptus]

I would love for Toxikon to not be the shitty action that it currently is, however, just boosting the damage to 660 potency creates a very different issue where suddenly E. Diagnosis becomes a tool you want to use aggressively because, for an additional 100 MP, you get some healing, a barrier, and equal damage to 2 casts of Dosis III every time the barrier breaks, and it will break very quickly in harder content because of auto-attacks on the main tank. It probably wouldn't quite be E. Diagnosis spam, but it also gives SGE a significant advantage over every other healer because of the shear volume of free healing it receives.

Being at 660 literally makes it equal if you had cast 2 Dosis GCD's vs an E. Diag > Toxikon. Right now you're punished for needing to heal. Even if you think that might be ok, a little extra damage never hurts healers.

Oh, and the fact that Zoe only effects spells and not spells and abilities feels bad, since there were times when I was learning and realized that the only thing zoe impacts is prognosis and diagnosis.

And Pneuma, where it really shines.