Healers need an overhaul

[Sebazy]

So they've delayed an AST overhaul until 7.0 because of "extensive changes" needing a new expansion and not just a patch or something.
Is there any chance that this could portend an eventual overhaul of the healing role?

I can't think of a single x.0 patch healer overhaul that has gone down well TBH.

3.0 AST was a disaster
4.0 SCH was a train wreck, AST was a nuisance
5.0's great healer reboot ended up being a gutting
6.0's was comparatively minor but it's neat additions were overshadowed by oversights and mistakes

Forgive me if I'm not terribly confident here =(

[RyuDragnier]

It's sad how easy it would be to fix the card button bloat problem, but SE refuses to do it. Remove Undraw. Draw becomes Play when a card is drawn, and Minor Arcana becomes Crown Play after that is drawn. Right there, 3 buttons down off the bat, opening space on the hotbars. I still don't understand why they even added those buttons to begin with, everybody could tell immediately that it would cause button bloat.

[Deceptus]

I can't think of a single x.0 patch healer overhaul that has gone down well TBH.

3.0 AST was a disaster
4.0 SCH was a train wreck, AST was a nuisance
5.0's great healer reboot ended up being a gutting
6.0's was comparatively minor but it's neat additions were overshadowed by oversights and mistakes

Forgive me if I'm not terribly confident here =(

Forgot:

4.0 WHM was a disaster with the way the Lily system was implemented.

Grants a 50% or 100% chance that a Lily is added to your Healing Gauge upon the execution of Cure or Cure II on self or a party member while in combat. Lilies will lower the recast time for Asylum, Assize, Divine Benison, or Tetragrammaton by a percentage corresponding to the number of Lilies stacked at time of action execution (at which time the Lilies are removed)

And Divine Benison required Lilies to use.

[Shurrikhan]

And Divine Benison required Lilies to use.

This effectively just meant you had to cast a Cure II once per 30 seconds.

Back then, there was actually damage to heal, however, nor did we yet have Afflatus spells, obviously; it wasn't nearly so asinine then as it would be today.

Also, the Lily requirement was removed before Stormblood's end.



That's not to say the way the Lily stacks were designed or spent back then was at all decent, nor that Benison should have continued to require any stacks to be used if that old SotL system remained, but the fundamentals weren't awful. It was simply variable potency recovery on every GCD heal, allowing one accelerated use of whatever ability they pleased per GCD spent on healing, rather than only on certain forms of GCD heals (Cure II or Medica) only once per 30 seconds (now per 20).

Had its cap been higher, its effect buffed to be truly noticeable, and flat CDR added atop the percentile CDR to make shorter-CD abilities, too, competitive choices, then aside from mobile GCDs, it would have been more a flexible and lower-bloat version of what we have now, assuming the increased free healing potency per minute since increased across all other healers would likewise have graced WHM oGCDs (in place of Solace/Rapture).

Or, to put it more simply...

Revised Stormblood Lily System:

• "Free healing" included as oGCDs (nearer to SGE/SCH/AST potency), rather than as Solace/Rapture -> Misery.
• Fewer instant-cast CDs (unless, say, Aero/Dia remains at a lower duration, or a new instant-cast CD-GCD is added).
• Potency recovery added on any and all GCD healing, without any cooldown attached to such options, but to lower effect (most free healing being given over to empowered oGCDs anyways, this only recovers a portion of potency lost to uptime costs of GCD casting, similar to Toxicon's best use scenarios). This potency recovery is done by allowing you to spend gauge to "rush" a currently cooling ability, at scaled gauge cost.
• WHM has faintly less free healing in pure offensive uptime situations while having greater combined healing+damage in healing-intensive situations (assuming gauge is spent primarily on Assize).
• No extra buttons required.

Current System:

• Would-be oGCD potency and their free healing instead become CD-GCDs of healing with recoverable potency (ultimately free, but only if the fight times evenly to a Misery cast, with no excess would-be Lilies).
• Extra mobility (4 GCDs per minute).
• Potency recovery attached to certain CD-based heals only.
• Faintly higher healing doable even in 100% offensive uptime scenarios. Lower combined healing+damage in more healing-intensive scenarios.
• 3 extra buttons required.