AST (and DRG) had their improvements pushed to 7.0 PLD are getting theirs in 6.3

[Archwizard]

A true Sylphie (which apparently I'm not, despite being accused of being one) might optimize healing and then sit on their hands to "regen MP" until more healing is needed. CLEARLY they aren't optimizing damage while they ARE optimizing healing. So, QED, that demonstrates that the two are NOT the same.

That is not optimizing healing, however. Ignoring for a moment that very few of the healer jobs actually struggle with MP concerns if they're not significantly overhealing (which again, is suboptimal behavior) since most oGCDs are free to cast and MP regenerating actions are part of their damage output... even without doing damage, there are tools like Lucid Dreaming, Aetherflow, Thin Air, and so on that will give you a surplus of MP such that stopping to "regen MP" is overcapping.

Moreover, I stated there were multiple factors that connected the two intrinsically, including:

Maximizing your damage output is a form of damage mitigation, as it reduces the periods in which the party is taking damage that needs to be healed.

Optimized healing is the most efficient use of your healing (and mitigation) tools, to minimize the amount of additional healing required for maximum group uptime.

At best, in some hypothetical encounter where the healer's damage has insignificant impact on the fight duration, your counterpoint is a mere excuse to do the bare minimum of the healing role while sitting on your thumbs.
In reality however, what you're actually doing is drawing out the encounter -- "sandbagging" the team -- thereby creating a self-defeating point as you will require more healing overall due to the extended fight duration. And this is without taking enrage mechanics and DPS checks into consideration, where your failure to optimize damage kills everyone.

The former of which, again, is failure to optimize healing... and the latter of which you'll agree, is a definitive failure in the healer's foremost charge to keep everyone alive.

[fulminating]

Brevity is the soul of wit. Please stop getting wrapped up in definitions and concisely express your point.

The fact that healer damage is expected by both players and devs in the content jobs are balanced around remains.

I don't really see the difference between casting stoneskin or temperance/divine benison/aquaveil.

I doubt that you get a lot of players who've optimised healing without optimising damage. I've had more survivability issues with hardcast heal only players than broil spamming individuals. I'm not going to suggest you're deliberately conflating general incompetence with a different priority, but it's quite difficult to understand what you're meaning. Could you define optimised healing so we're all on the same page?

[ty_taurus]

At best, in some hypothetical encounter where the healer's damage has insignificant impact on the fight duration, your counterpoint is a mere excuse to do the bare minimum of the healing role while sitting on your thumbs.

In reality however, what you're actually doing is drawing out the encounter -- "sandbagging" the team -- thereby creating a self-defeating point as you will require more healing overall due to the extended fight duration. And this is without taking enrage mechanics and DPS checks into consideration, where your failure to optimize damage kills everyone.

Not to mention, if you don't optimize your DPS along with your healing, you're going to extend the duration of a fight which also means the party is going to take more damage. But wait, that doesn't sound very healery at all! Letting the party take more damage!?

It was you all along, wasn't it, WHM!? You're not a healer at all!

[Renathras]

That is not optimizing healing,

YES, it IS. It's not optimizing DAMAGE. Which is my point - optimizing healing and optimizing damage are two distinct things. While the first is a means to an end if your end is the second, the first can exist in vacuum without the second, proving they are distinct.

I don't even know where to go with rebuttals at this point.

You're trying to argue a "but technically..." while not even getting it correct. You seem to very much want to win the argument, but the problem is, the argument isn't even relevant to the discussion.

At best, in some hypothetical encounter where the healer's damage has insignificant impact on the fight duration, your counterpoint is a mere excuse to do the bare minimum of the healing role while sitting on your thumbs.

Welcome to the joint strawman ad hominem fallacy.

Where did I advocate for people to optimize healing and then do nothing else?

I was pointing out one COULD do this to prove to you that optimizing healing IS DISTINCT FROM optimizing damage.

Instead of recognizing the point - and that it proves your technicality wrong - you chose to attack me for an argument you invented me making that I never made. I never argued anyone SHOULD play that way. I argued that by fact a person COULD, it proves optimizing healing is not optimizing damage, it's just an additional requirement if one DOES want to optimize damage, but is a distinct action that can exist without it.

Shadows cannot exist without a light source, but in vacuum, light sources can exist without shadows.

In reality however, what you're actually doing is drawing out the encounter -- "sandbagging" the team -- thereby creating a self-defeating point as you will require more healing overall due to the extended fight duration. And this is without taking enrage mechanics and DPS checks into consideration, where your failure to optimize damage kills everyone.

This would be an AMAZINGLY good response...if I was actually advocating for a course of action.

Can you show me where I'm doing that?

[Renathras]

I don't really see the difference between casting stoneskin or temperance/divine benison/aquaveil.

Stoneskin was a GCD, meaning it broke up Stone 2 spam (which also wasn't a thing at the time at-level, as those videos proved), which proves the point that there are ways to design healers to break up Glarespam gameplay that don't involve more DPS buttons/kits.

I doubt that you get a lot of players who've optimised healing without optimising damage. I've had more survivability issues with hardcast heal only players than broil spamming individuals. I'm not going to suggest you're deliberately conflating general incompetence with a different priority, but it's quite difficult to understand what you're meaning. Could you define optimised healing so we're all on the same page?

Read above where I pointed out the difference AND pointed out I'm not advocating for that as a gameplay style. I'm pointing out because that IS distinct, it proves optimizing healing and optimizing damage are distinct actions, they are not "the same thing". I was proving the point they're distinct, not advocating for a specific type of gameplay. And no, healing is not "damage mitigation". Once a fight is over, a fight is over. You don't count the time it's ended against alternatives.

Note that I'm not advocating for healers not to deal damage, and never HAVE.

That's a gaslighting strawman folks like attacking because you THINK it defeats my arguments, despite the fact it isn't part of any of my arguments, and never has been. People do it because the reason people use strawmen in any argument - because they can't actually contest the arguments their opponents are ACTUALLY making and refuse to admit that.

Brevity is the soul of wit. Please stop getting wrapped up in definitions and concisely express your point.

Would love to. Tell these people (and yourself) to stop arguing technicalities and strawman/gaslighting/invented arguments I'm not making and we might be able to do that. I wouldn't have to spend so much time slapping down strawmen and vacuous arguments if people weren't making them Indeed, in a few places, I have stated my point more concisely (cross-posting from that other thread, here's my "soul of wit" version):

.

Healers are not perfect right now, but they also aren't terribly broken or horrible, and I think the best solution is to change up healers since we have four of them to where they are distinct in their DPS kits and less homogenized in their healing kits, and to where there are four levels of complexity of their kits in the same way Tanks have an easy (WAR), moderate (depends on who you ask, but DRK and GNB), and complex (PLD) options, and then we can let the players choose which they like.

WHAT ABOUT THAT STATEMENT do you find so offensive?

.

As I've said numerous times (and as the "general you" have IGNORED numerous times) my ideal course of action would ultimately be for SCH to be returned to its SB kit - AT THE VERY LEAST CAN YOU AGREE WITH ME ON THAT? - SGE should have a DPS kit more akin to RDM's Caster kit, or the Water/Earth kit that was presented in that thread a few posts prior and deal damage leveraging Kardia instead of Aetherflow 2.0 that made it a SCH-lite/clone, AST should...actually I honestly have no idea what AST should do other than the Cards need some kind of major overhaul and, imo, should be the key part of its gameplay and rotation, not a side game, and finally, that WHM should shift to a more GCD healing model flexing the Lily system to allow it to deal damage with a simple damage rotation (basically what it has today) but where it's actually getting more varied GCDs in by casting things other than endless Glare as its filler.

I honestly LOVE the Lily system because it ENCOURAGES GCD USE ON HEALING and allows the Job to still perform just fine in the damage department. Instead of 4x Glare, you have 3x Solace/Rapture + Misery, which I find VASTLY more enjoyable. The thing I'd really like to see is for more varied Lily abilities and for Lilies to be generated at a rate that they comprise more healing and you can use Misery more often. I'd love it if, for example, Regen (or hell, all WHM heal spells) generated a stack of Blood Lily so that every three casts you could use Misery. It would make spells like Regen and Medica 2 not DPS losses that way, and I'd love that. Refund that healing with damage and give me a reason to cast all those GCD heals instead of do 100% of healing with oGCDs and fill in the gap with Glare for 100% of GCDs that aren't Dia refreshes.

...in other words, yet again, I'm arguing for THE EXACT OPPOSITE of what you think I'm arguing for.

SB SCH + benefits,
SGE that actually plays like a WoW Disc Priest or RIFT Cloromancer,
AST that actually uses Cards meaningfully,
WHM that is more like an ARR WHM but modernized with the Lily system.

THAT is my actual position.

A BID more on AST:

Honestly, I don't main AST and it's the only Healer I neither care for the Job fantasy of - I love the time/space magic visuals, but I'm not into occult, astrology, tarot cards, etc - nor the gameplay of the card side game + oGCD kit out the wazoo + WHM GCD non-Lily heals but better/cheaper. But that said, I liked the FF13 Saboteur class.

...I know what you're thinking, "What? What does that have to do with..."

The Saboteur's main goal was not dealing damage. It used spells like Bio and enfeeblement spells/debuffs. BUT, each of those spells also did direct damage, though lesser than the Commando/Ravager (DPSer) kits did. While the Synergist (buffer Support) didn't do this (nor the Medic, which had no damage spells nor attacks), I remember thinking it would be interesting if the Synergist's buffs also harmed the enemy, and I loved that Saboteur existed as a not-exactly-DPSer kit, but that could still do token damage while performing its support role.

I've though before it might be neat if there were Cards that had no CD other than the GCD, so were "spamable", gave short-duration buffs to the party/party members, but also did damage to the enemy. Basically replace Malefic spam with buffing party members that deals a bit of damage to be their "filler" game instead.

But this is literally just a "I think there's an interesting idea there...", but I have no idea how to make it work in practice AND I'm not an AST main, so I won't speak for AST players. I'm sure they have way better and more educated - on AST - ideas for improving the Job, and I'd leave it to them.

[Archwizard]

Where did I advocate for people to optimize healing and then do nothing else?

This would be an AMAZINGLY good response...if I was actually advocating for a course of action. Can you show me where I'm doing that?

Where did I say you were advocating anything? I was noting that the counterpoint you offered doesn't hold the water you think it does.
Because again, just because someone "could" do that doesn't mean they're "optimizing" anything.

To be honest, I haven't been assuming you were trying to "advocate" anything. I've just been approaching this particular point that you latched onto before as if you were merely being contrarian. Because if bringing up that you don't believe the two are intrinsically connected (as we've been arguing) isn't actually connected to your point, then why are you even arguing it at all?

[Payadopa]

I don't really see the difference between casting stoneskin or temperance/divine benison/aquaveil.

I got to disagree there. The satisfaction of healing comes from healing. But I'll happily DPS if I got the time. What else is there to do? Though, I'm not using my OGCDs on CD. Especially not in PF. For me that's just asking for trouble. xD

I wish SE would do more with the 4 healers we have to accommodate more play styles. I mean, why even have more than one if they are doomed to play the same 'cause balance.

I have to say, I'm impressed with Xenoblade Chronicles 3. Every healer feels good to play and seems distinct enough considering the game is very MMOy.

Maybe give every healer their own DPS gauge that only fills if you do _their_ specific healing and as a reward you get some deeps. But since we have no elemental wheel, hardly any debuffs and buffs are usually [increase DPS] it's like SE programmed themselves into a corner. It's time for a paradigm shift, if you ask me.

[T-Owl]

Dun dun duuuuun!

Have you ever heard the tragedy of Kungen the Thunderer? He was basically the best Tank in all of early WoW, a true and tried legend who other Tank Players would look up to, the top of the mountain. He stopped raiding for a while and when he returned he kinda sucked ass.

My point is, have you considered that the players back then where kinda bad? According to Mr. Happy, who I would consider a fairly respectable source when it comes to develpments of the game, healer dps started to come around and become more of a thing around the time of second coil savage.

You shouldn't lie.
.

Can you verify that somehow? Because as I see it, all I hear from healer players who express themselves in any plattform is dissatisfaction over the current design of the class, with the most common demand being more dps buttons to push. Or are you yet again the voice of the silent majority nobody but you can hear and see?

FFXIV 2.1, 2.3, and 2.5 were "very very oldschool mmos"?

FFXIV is the game we're talking about playing!

I would argue that it was closer to older WoW than current WoW at the time of its release, especially with enforced downtimes like the TP System, which just served to artificially slow the game down. And it was fairly slow, just looking at the toolkit of most classes at 50 back at the time.

BLM: Exists.

And it is one of the hardest classes of the game due to its turret style of dpsing. But I think we agree on this point, White Mage should be the BLM equivalent, one that is pretty cast heavy in both its healing and its ideally dps inspired rotation and is just more chunky in everything it does at the price of decreased mobility.

Also, have you ever considered that everybody hear just finds your ideas horrible and you are not entitled to us bending backwards to accomadate you? What you want would leat to White Mage effectively being perma-locked out of the Partyfinder.

Thing is, you've been playing the role since SB, as you say.

I've been playing the role since ARR.

On WHM, no less.

And in the matter of like a month I managed to reach the point where I am stuck with spamming a single button most of the time and burned out of healing because it is just not fun or rewarding to play. So I don't see where you playing since ARR is a point to brag about, old man.

And your demand basically boils down to demanding that the most iconic healer job of the bunch should be reduced to appealing towards players who don't like healing in FF14, which is kinda crass. Why not design a limited job Healer, like the Onion Mage or so, who can only be played in duty rouletty and story content and appeals to that style of healing? One that maybe doesn't even need leveling, so that people just can jump into it.

YES, it IS. It's not optimizing DAMAGE. Which is my point - optimizing healing and optimizing damage are two distinct things. While the first is a means to an end if your end is the second, the first can exist in vacuum without the second, proving they are distinct.

Optimizing healing leads by itself to optimizing damage as well, due to the fact that healer optimization works in a way that you will spend less time healing the more you optimize it, especially since the additional healer damage, which is fairly significant in FF14 compared to for example WoW, leads to decreased healing requirements over the course of an entire encounter.

[ty_taurus]

Listen, I feel bad on a personal level. It feels like the entire healer forums has been at war with Ren for literally weeks now, and regardless of anyone's stance on the game, I imagine that's frustrating, stressful, and disheartening. I don't want to create enemies, and I don't want someone feeling like ass because of video game debates. So I just wanna say, before anything else, I hope it's not taxing you as a person in real life. I want to try and find some middle ground.

You've made your stance on SCH, AST, and SGE clear, and I think everyone is content with that. There is, however, disagreement on WHM. What the majority of us here want is for WHM to offers a consistent gameplay loop and reasons to avoid Glare spam. I'm not entirely sure what your stance on that is. Previously, it sounded like you wanted WHM to possibly lose its DoT and just stick with Glare, but you've also said maybe expanding on that or returning more toward what ARR WHM had which was marginally more than what we have now. That said, adding more depth to WHM doesn't have to mean that WHM needs to become hard to play, nor does it mean WHM needs higher APM. BLM has very low APM yet has consistently been one of the most fun and engaging jobs in the game for many. WHM, I think, should still be a relatively forgiving healer with low APM, but offers more opportunities to do more than just Glare and use a lily heal on occasion.

We largely agree on the lily system and expanding upon it because, yes, being incentivized to use lily healing on the GCD with Misery as your refund is better than 4x Glare. The issue with the lilies now is that it's still a fairly uncommon occurrence as you have no way of generating more lilies, and sometimes the healing gets spent when no healing is needed due to the game's overall lack of damage. So I want to discuss some lite WHM change ideas and see if something along this line would feel more engaging for others yet satisfy your desire to keep WHM feeling simple:

New WHM Direction Summary

1. I'd like to, in general, take some inspiration from BLM when thinking about a WHM rework, as WHM is meant to be a foil to BLM in many ways. With this in mind, I'd start by increasing the cast time of Stone/Glare to 2.5 seconds. Like BLM, WHM also is more immobile, but I'd like to give it more answers to that immobility.

DPS Adjustments
- New Spell: Water/Banish. This is the same potency and MP cost as Stone/Glare, but is instant cast, and has 3 charges with a 20 second cooldown on the GCD. It also deals AoE damage with 50% fall-off. It gives WHM a more interesting way to engage with mobility and weaving, and the lily heals stay instant as well, giving WHM mobility options for both DPS and healing. It also foils Triplecast in a more unique way.

- Aero II now upgrades into Aero III, and Dia gains AoE properties. I'd like all healers to have ways of spreading their DoT to multiple targets, such as restoring Bane on SCH. But rather than give WHM some way to try and spread Aero/Dia, it instead spreads it passively, being an easier and more direct way of handling AoE DoTs. Not all healers need a DoT, of course, but Aero is a major part of CNJ's earth, wind, and water dynamic, and I don't think it should be cut. It also foils against BLM's thunder.

- Holy now grants WHM a buff that increases their damage dealt and healing magic potency by 5% for 45 seconds. It gives Holy a reason to be used in single target situations, allows Glare to be further broken up, but the gain is small and it's not a huge deal if you drop uptime on it at times. Holy III also just has a really cool animation, and it's a shame we don't get to see it very often.

Lily Adjustments
- I mentioned this before, but I believe Solace and Misery should be brought down to level 30. Introduce this core aspect of WHM gameplay early and simply update Misery's potency with each upgrade to Stone and Glare. Additionally, the system should expand with more tools, possibly reworking some existing tools into lily actions instead. I also think it would need some type of supportive spender, something like an Afflatus spell that places a mark on an ally that increases the healing you give them with your next spell, so when you have excess lilies, you can instead set up stronger healing in the future when you don't need any healing currently.

- Additionally, Afflatus Misery gains a cooldown of 20 seconds, and you're allowed to accumulate a second blood lily. This helps give you a bit more control over holding onto Misery, but doesn't let you spend all of them in a short span of time.

- I'd also like to see a new GCD spell that consumes a fair chunk of MP to both generate 1 lily and nourish the blood lily. This would give you a way to generate extra lilies in harder content at an MP cost while still being on the GCD, taking away from Glare spam, and giving a more valuable way to engage with MP, which is also more BLM-like.

New Mechanic
Lastly, I want to create something that foils against BLM's Ley Lines as that's a core aspect to BLM's gameplay, and also, I want to pull some ideas from FF7R's Aerith as her abilities look and feel perfect for XIV's WHM. So I want to suggest a take on her Arcane Ward:



How I see this working is that Arcane Ward would exist instead of Presence of Mind, and it would sit on perhaps a 120 second or 180 second cooldown. While standing in the ward, for its duration, your DPS spells generate 1 lily, and your Healing spells, including lily healing, nourish the blood lily 1 additional time, making your healing and support tools here a fair DPS gain, ultimately. This is also why I think a lily spender is necessary, like how I mentioned above. I also think it would be interesting if Arcane Ward were tied to Liturgy, Liturgy was usable while Arcane Ward was on cooldown, and would sprout from where you originally placed that ward, though this part is unnecessary if it creates too many problems.

Now, because I mentioned adding a cooldown to Afflatus Misery, I also want to discuss adding in Aerith's Tempest as an action with a unique function designed to help you avoid overcapping on the blood lily and also giving you another way to take slight advantage of burst windows.



Tempest would be a GCD spell that, when first used, consumes your Blood Lily and grants you Tempest Ready. When you recast Tempest, it delivers an attack that's twice as powerful as Glare, deals 50% less damage to nearby enemies, and restores the Blood Lily it initially consumed, essentially allowing you to store a theoretical third blood lily within the otherwise DPS neutral Tempest action. Both readying and using Tempest could also both be instant cast, allowing you another source of mobility if needed. Or we could make it even stronger and give it a cooldown to make it a part of your rotation, though that might make things too complicated for when you don't have a blood lily to ready Tempest with.

In Conclusion
This is where my general headspace is at on WHM--trying to give it a bit more depth to work with in terms of DPS while trying to create more reasons to rely on its lilies to make Misery a more significant part of WHM's gameplay. It's still not particularly difficult and would be fairly forgiving, but would just feel a bit more unique and offer WHM a bit more complexity at a higher skill level when trying to take advantage of burst windows. which would be especially nice if we end up seeing the 2 minute burst window see a reversion (maybe that's copium, but we'll just have to see).

So I ask if something like this would be satisfying for all parties or not?

[T-Owl]

New WHM Direction Summary

To be honest, I'm personally not sure on the instants. I feel like WHM should become the counterpart of BLM. Being generally hard hitting in what they do, but with the most casting involved of all healers. Make them a turret healer, having less weaving involved than other healers in both their damaging and healing and in turn shift their complexity and mastery towards mastering movement and uptime, with tools like present of mind being more widely available and more importantly thin veil being more readily available for casuals who can use them as their movement tools while more experienced players can move towards utilizing them as optimization tools.