Healers need an overhaul

[Silver-Strider]

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?

If by overhaul you mean how much more they can kill the job as a warning to other healers. I don't see any possible future that won't end in the death of AST as we know it. I fully expect them to remove all 6 base cards and just leave Lord/Lady of Crown as the Melee/Ranged buff cards so that they can remove Minor Arcana/Crown Play; Wouldn't be the first time they destroyed AST's lore to make the job more "approachable".

[Raven2014]

If by overhaul you mean how much more they can kill the job as a warning to other healers. I don't see any possible future that won't end in the death of AST as we know it. I fully expect them to remove all 6 base cards and just leave Lord/Lady of Crown as the Melee/Ranged buff cards so that they can remove Minor Arcana/Crown Play; Wouldn't be the first time they destroyed AST's lore to make the job more "approachable".

To be honest with you, I kinda expect that, but I think it will be done out of necessity and not because the dev is lazy or incompetent.

I know a lot of people are not happy with the SMN change because it's too simple now. But if you look on the bright side, it means SMN has room to grow for the next 10 years, on a path that's more inline with its identity (actual summoner instead of a Warlock with pets). I don't think the dev expected FF14 to hit its prime 10 years into the game when historically that's where most MMO start dying off. But it means at this point most classes have suffered from power-creep and button-bloat. Without a total re-invention SMN style, I struggle to think how they can bring most of the current job forward.


Sure, people may say "just do this and that and it will be perfect" and let's just say SE listens and do just that ... it will be only a bane-aid for now, what gonna happen next expansion? It's fair to say the majority of players will definitely get mad if a job remain absolutely the same in a new expansion even if it was already perfect. So change for the shake of change and new abilities add just gonna repeat this vicious cycle.


In a way, SMN is like a testimony SE is willing to do a full re-imagination of a class. Yes, a lot of people will not be happy when it happens because it will naturally simplify the classes at the beginning. But like I said, it will be necessary for the classes to meaningfully grow for the next decade. And just like SMN who had an identity crisis, AST is right next on the list of having ill-defined identity. AST has never feel like a proper pure astrologist, but more like a mash up of an astro and a time mage. If it gonna receive a make over SMN style, I expect SE will strip away the "time mage" stuffs from it.

[Silver-Strider]

But if you look on the bright side, it means SMN has room to grow for the next 10 years

You'll have to forgive my cynicism but the brightside came and went. SE destroyed healers in ShB, gave them "room to grow" as you put it but left them to wilt instead.

Nothing about what Healers got in EW did anything helpful or even necessary for healers other than give them more bloat and reduce their systems even more.
WHM didn't get more Lily Skills or even a means of controlling Lily Generation.
SCH lost Fey Blessing as a skill that actually utilized the Fairy Gauge, making the system regress instead of expand.
AST lost flexibility with their cards and in return just got Lord/Lady of Crown returned back to their SB version but with AoE instead.

Waiting years for some sort of growth, when healers have been starved to death for since SB (or even sooner depending on who you ask) does not leave room for much hope.

[Raven2014]

Waiting years for some sort of growth, when healers have been starved to death for since SB (or even sooner depending on who you ask) does not leave room for much hope.

Exactly, depend on who you ask. And if you ask me, then I think healers have been growing, and I'm generally fine with things. It maybe hard due to the constant complains on here, but there exist people like me who the only reason we play healer for the last 8-10 years is because we "actually" like it. One of the biggest "milestone" in healer design is that they finally make the DPS and Healing channels neutral from one another (with SCH the very last straggler with Energy drain). There is no way I have been unsatisfy with healer for that long, because I would have left the job the moment I stop enjoying it.


Like I said, I think the role "does" hit a wall now, but it looks like the developers had recognize the right mindset for it, so I don't mind a hard reset and take it from there.

[Eisi]

One of the biggest "milestone" in healer design is that they finally make the DPS and Healing channels neutral from one another (with SCH the very last straggler with Energy drain).

Open your third eye brother!

The following spells are all in the same channel as your basic DPS GCDs -the GCD- and are a DPS loss whenever cast unless every single other resource is already spent and you would let someone die 100%:

-Cure
-Cure II
-Cure III
-Medica
-Medica II
-Regen
-Physick
-Adloquium
-Succor
-Benefic
-Benefic II
-Aspected Benefic
-Helios
-Aspected Helios
-Diagnosis and Eukrasian Diagnosis
-Prognosis and Eukrasian Prognosis


There are three damage neutral abilities in the GCD channel that heal at the same time (excluding Kardia heals):

-Afflatus Solace and Afflatus Rapture (both require a lily, a limited resource)
-Pneuma

These are the only spells for which your statement holds true. If you see an issue with Energy Drain for sharing a resource with healing abilities, you must take issue with this as well!

Keep the GCD rolling!

[Raven2014]

These are the only spells for which your statement holds true. If you see an issue with Energy Drain for sharing a resource with healing abilities, you must take issue with this as well!

Keep the GCD rolling!

No, what you said is right if we're talking on "paper". What I'm talking is right when taken into the realistic context. Currently you have enough oGCD that most of the time you don't need GCD heal and thus incure a DPS loss. If you make a heal a DPS gain, than people just use it on cool down as a DPS ability and not a heal. Make it a DPS loss and people just refuse to use it. The fact they made Lily DPS neutral, Macrocosmos and Pneuma are the 2 biggest heal also a DPS neutral, is like I said an important milestone in the design mindset

Also I have a feeling you're missing the point, the reason I said it's a milestone is because it's only now we reach this point, the majority of the healers toolkit are still legacy carried over from 10 years of development. If anything, your post just re-enforce my point about the healers job may go through a complete revamp like SMN did.

[Silver-Strider]

No, what you said is right if we're talking on "paper". What I'm talking is right when taken into the realistic context. Currently you have enough oGCD that most of the time you don't need GCD heal and thus incure a DPS loss. If you make a heal a DPS gain, than people just use it on cool down as a DPS ability and not a heal. Make it a DPS loss and people just refuse to use it. The fact they made Lily DPS neutral, Macrocosmos and Pneuma are the 2 biggest heal also a DPS neutral, is like I said an important milestone in the design mindset

Also I have a feeling you're missing the point, the reason I said it's a milestone is because it's only now we reach this point, the majority of the healers toolkit are still legacy carried over from 10 years of development. If anything, your post just re-enforce my point about the healers job may go through a complete revamp like SMN did.

If it took them 10 years to notice that healers have GCDs that are DPS negative, that doesn't exactly instill a lot of confidence that Healer adjustments are coming any time soon, despite the fact that we've been providing detailed feedback in regards to those problem for almost as long as they've existed.

[Sebazy]

The fact they made Lily DPS neutral, Macrocosmos and Pneuma are the 2 biggest heal also a DPS neutral, is like I said an important milestone in the design mindset

It's a solid point. Hopefully they noticed the positivity towards the 6.1 Lily tweaks and have learned a lesson in design from that feedback. The last caveat is of course the concern that if healers will get allocated sufficient dev time in the oven for them to do a reasonable job of it without us getting another incomplete mess on expansion day.

[Eisi]

No, what you said is right if we're talking on "paper". What I'm talking is right when taken into the realistic context. Currently you have enough oGCD that most of the time you don't need GCD heal and thus incure a DPS loss.

I can't even say you're wrong, because I don't understand what you mean. Do you view spells that are rather meaningless in a realistic context as nonproblematic and inoffensive as opposed to Energy Drain which more frequently confronts you with the same choice?

They are not. They clutter the spellbook with so much boring and highly situational bs that gets introduced at lower levels as your basic healing toolset to get basically completely dumpstered at a later point because of them being DPS-negative, not only unneccessarily confusing players but taking up a significant chunk of buttons that would be needed for actually useful, interesting and fun abilities. Viable healing GCD options no less!

Also I have a feeling you're missing the point, the reason I said it's a milestone is because it's only now we reach this point, the majority of the healers toolkit are still legacy carried over from 10 years of development.

This milestone was reached by Shadowbringers, I assume Pneuma and Macrocosm are hysterically cautious steps in the same direction as the lily heals, we will probably get another spell in the same vein in the next expansion at this rate.

If anything, your post just re-enforce my point about the healers job may go through a complete revamp like SMN did.

Well I hope you're right, they should!