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

[Mithron]

Like I said, I could see that being hard to keep track of while healing...but it sounds interesting and potentially fun. Even having "worthless" cards means you have strategy and decision points. I get that on some level, the problem was there was always a "best" card (or two), so if people got bad RNG it could suck (though I don't think any of them were WORTHLESS, even budget Goad - the NIN thing that gave TP), but the way you could stock a card, convert to a minor arcana, or burn a card to enhance another seemed to let you play around with that and twist fate at least a LITTLE bit.

Yep, exactly. Balance was best in all cases always, so it was what you always wanted, and there were definitely times all you'd draw were Ewers and Spires. But man it was fun. Sure every pull didn't have a guaranteed Expanded Balance in the opener, sometimes your rotation didn't line up with Trick Attack or Battle Litany because of Arrows, but it was fun. The new cards since SHB are indeed more reliable, especially with EW's new Divination simply being a 2 minute, but it's not as fun. AST feels so soulless now. I just can't enjoy it because I got to experience what it felt like to have super omega GCD speed as NIN with an Enhanced Arrow. I don't care if it wasn't as good as a Balance, it was fun. OR A RAPID FIRE MCH WITH ENHANCED ARROW HAHA 10/10

[Supersnow845]

Guys guys guys, please stop turning every thread remotely about healers into constant walls of text

[Cygnia]

Guys guys guys, please stop turning every thread remotely about healers into constant walls of text

Constant walls of text is the dosis/glarespam of the forum. Don't hate the playa for our muscle memory during game downtime.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

Constant walls of text is the dosis/glarespam of the forum. Don't hate the playa for our muscle memory during game downtime.

I doubt. If any, straddling in healer subforum is way more engaging than puking Glaroilfisis in-game!

[T-Owl]

Guys guys guys, please stop turning every thread remotely about healers into constant walls of text

good, then I just want what Y'shtola, originally the most iconic white mage in FF14, has.

[ty_taurus]

This will be long...but I have said on more than one occasion I'm Entish, and your post was a well presented and laid out effort, so it's deserving of a response in kind (in summary up front - I don't hate this, and there are parts I like, with caveats.)

Been working today so haven't had time to respond, but I will definitely go over some of these thoughts with you. For starters, one thing I will mention is that I didn't want to dig too deeply into a full on Theorycraft (and between the active threads right now, this was clearly the worse of the two threads to post on given title. It would've made more sense to post that concept on the other thread, but oh well. The damage is done). Anyway, my point is we could certainly dive deeper into the specifics of actions. For example, and I was discussing this with Rillifane a bit, but one idea on ways I'd expand on the lilies would be to cut Regen and Medica II and make Afflatus Propagation: a lily buff that adds a regen effect to your next GCD heal. 200 potency on single target heals, and 100 on AoE heals. It would cut down slightly on button bloat and also create a unique "heal combo" type of interaction. It does slow down your ability to apply regen a little, but it also creates more flexibility too. I imagine some of your concerns could be addressed going deeper into the specifics of each action, which stay, and what is cut.

As for some input on the suggestions and your responses...

On Misery at level 30: As long as the potency remains consistent with your current iteration of Stone/Glare, I see no issue, but I think the lily system needs the promise of Misery to feel worthwhile. Otherwise, Solace on its own is just a free Cure II, which doesn't feel particularly interesting, especially with how insignificant MP management currently is. If it's deemed too powerful, what we could do instead is increase how long it takes to generate a lily from 20 seconds to 30, or perhaps even 40, and then later decrease that timer through traits. It would slow down your access to Misery at low levels, but still allow you to engage with it.

On Water/Banish: the idea is it being on a 20 second cooldown on the GCD, like Phlegma, but with 3 total charges giving you essentially a softer version of Triplecast. You can use them one at a time if needed. Staying as is in my suggestions, Tempest could also be used as a mobility button, not to mention lily healing would stay instant, so you'd have quite a few options to keep mobile even if Stone/Glare did shift to 2.5 seconds. I do understand the point about considering 2 seconds instead, and perhaps that's the right move to keep WHM still feeling more forgiving, but you've got lots of different options in this concept. The 1.5 second GCD on Water/Banish is interesting, and it would make Water/Banish a slight DPS gain and thus worth avoiding overcapping on, though I worry the sudden and consistent 1.5 second GCDs wouldn't feel great to constantly adjust to as odd, 1-off shifts in your casting speed, and it would lessen the spell's value as a tool for weaving as well. WHM doesn't need much weaving, so that's a possible argument.

On Aero III and Holy: the idea is it would gain its AoE functionality then, at whatever level Aero III would be learned. And Dia would just maintain that. The DoT on secondary enemies would probably be weaker than the DoT on your initial target, but as I said, I think it would be nice if healers had a way to spread their DoTs, and just making the DoT naturally AoE is the path of least resistance, which I think is fine on WHM since a lot of its focus would be directed elsewhere anyway. Having SCH get Bane back, and creating an AoE version of SGE's DoT through Eukrasia would be enough for those jobs. AST perhaps something as well, though I've mentioned before that I don't think every healer needs a DoT, and AST feels like its in the best spot to swap it for something else, though that's another topic. I recognize you're not the biggest fan with DoTs or upkeep buffs as you said, but I'm glad you feel content with the Holy idea. You have to admit the spell animation is worth a little extra effort.

Personally, how you feel about DoTs is kinda how I feel about segregated AoE buttons. FFXIV is just not a game that prominently features encounters where making choices based on single target or AoE matters, so jobs having 2 buttons for essentially 1 function is just unnecessary in my eyes, like Foul and Xenoglossy, Burst Shot and Ladonsbite, Shoha and Shoha II, etc. I'm largely alone on this viewpoint, but I'd want to either consolidate these actions into 1, or add single target functionality to the otherwise exclusively AoE buttons, even standard 1-2-3 combos on jobs like MNK, or the Tanks, as with this Holy example.

On the Lily Spender and Arcane Ward: Realistically it would just come down to testing myself if the Afflatus Propagation suggestion I made earlier would feel like enough of a spender by itself. You certainly can waste a regen if there's no HP to regenerate, which even on a tank is quite true in casual content, but this could in theory give you that potential regen, but you're saving it for when it is more necessary. The issue was also giving a way to take advantage of Arcane Ward without feeling like you need to overheal. I would really want to make Arcane Ward work personally. It looks incredible, and I think it would feel great to use. Maybe what we could do is give Arcane Ward a relatively short duration, such a 10 seconds on 90 second cooldown with 2 charges? That gives you 3 lily heals + 1 DPS action to regenerate 1 lily while on the ward, and the charges gives you more flexibility to use it for healing needs. Since Misery has a 20 second recast timer in this concept, it doesn't really work like a burst window tool also, meaning it's allowed to give you DPS gains without being pressured to use it as much at a specific time. Perhaps some changes like that might make it viable without a dedicated spender.

On Tempest: The more I think about this idea for Tempest, the more I kinda love it. It's weird, but that's kind of a cool thing. The idea was that you could hold onto your Tempest ready indefinitely. Maybe it needs some slight restriction, like a 30 second duration, but I don't really like that. Again, I think WHM should be forgiving and relaxed on timers like this. There's an optimal way to do things, but you're not heavily punished if you don't do things that way.

Moving onto some other aspects...

Why doesn't WHM Work: You brought up the question of why can't I or others of us accept letting WHM stay as is if the other healers improve. The WoW combat model of using a GCD for your abilities comes with a number of structural rules to how you design gameplay effectively within those constraints. A major aspect that makes the GCD concept work is having a priority system within your selection of actions. The goal is to ask the player to consistently be making choices with their actions every few seconds. It's what makes the combat system work, what gives jobs flow, and what allows those jobs to be built upon over time. Jobs need rotations or they stagnate, creating an environment that most players will either not enjoy or grow tired of very quickly. There's a reason why the old old style of MMO healers who exclusively heal and otherwise wait for MP to regenerate over time has gone extinct--because far too few people would ever play that. Most people want engagement. They want something that requires them to think, adapt, and change. FFXIV's healers do this only when you're unfamiliar with the content, the job, or both. As you master the content and the job you're playing, it stagnates rapidly, and the point all of us here are trying to make is that we want every job and every healer to offer a consistent gameplay loop regardless of whether you're challenging the newest savage or simply going through the MSQ.

WHM is designed in such a way that drives players to heal less and less and rely on Glare more and more the better they get at managing the job and learning the game. This reaches a point where Glare consumes upwards of 80+% of your rotation, and for most people, that is not at all enjoyable as it is antithetical to the core system of GCD RPG combat. This is currently true for all healers. No job should exist this way. Every job should offer some form of a gameplay loop all the time, and healers just don't. They may up to a certain point before you reach a certain skill threshold, but they will stop providing that once you pass that threshold. That may not bother you, and if not, then that's an opinion you're allowed to have. But like with the example I gave, giving it a gameplay loop so that more players can enjoy the job doesn't have to mean it becomes difficult, tedious, or busy.

Another big reason why WHM can't stay in this state is because it has very limited ways to grow and change in the future. Where do you go from here on WHM? What more do you add to it? FFXIV doesn't increase healing requirements as new expansions come out, and each healer already has more than enough healing resources to work with for most content. What's the point in creating more and more healing when the game isn't giving you more damage to heal? What else do you add to WHM when we hit 7.0? 8.0? You might argue, well at a certain point we can just stop adding to it. But that's not realistically how a living game can thrive. The designers need to constantly add new tools and rework jobs that don't have room for new tools to keep people excited and looking forward to something. Whether or not you or anyone agrees or disagrees with that mentality, it's the reality of a live service game.

So I don't think asking for WHM to stay as is is reasonable. I don't think it has to be challenging, busy, or punishing, but it deserves to offer a wider array of skill expression and development like every other job deserves to.

[Renathras]

Stuffs

Will think on this and read it again later to see what my feelings are on it overall. Let it percolate some. Though I did want to respond to...I guess three things? (And full disclosure, I'm listening to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aPaIRK6CF4 , so please forgive the introspective mood it engenders, if you can.)

1) You say "No Job should exist this way", but that's a statement more than an argument. You DID make an argument, but...

2) ...the argument was more "Why we should change (at least one) Healer". Remember that things relating to enjoyment are subjective. I honestly DO like casting Glare (largely because I honestly love the animation), and while you can argue few people do, we don't really have numbers for that OTHER THAN (we SHOULD be able to agree on this, I think) that it's a number greater than zero. This is why I argue to leave but one Healer alone. Which to me seems like a small thing to ask...

3) Regarding what to add - this isn't a Healer/WHM problem. What do you add to WAR next expansion? Another animation for super-ultra Fell Cleave? What do you add to GNB? Triple Down? What do you add to BLM? Zetaflare (since, apparently, we don't get to play with Ultima)? What gets added to MNK? RDM? Does PLD get a 4th hit of the Unlimited Bladeworks combo? But how's that work when the third hit applies the DoT and the 1-2-3 nature of it slots into the rotation replacing the first Goring combo? This argument could be made for any Job in the game right now.

...and regarding WHM specifically, I already have an answer or two. Each expansion, Jobs seem to gain two abilities, though one is often an upgrade of a prior ability, and something(s) in their main spell list bread and butter stuff upgrades, be it GCD or oGCD. GNB got an upgrade to Heart of Stone, another Continuation button, Double Down, and a third charge of their powder gauge. WAR got an upgrade to its Nascent abilities, a 3rd charge of its gap closer, a HoT on its self-heal (these were all upgrades), while getting an AOE oGCD that shares a CD with its single target (e.g. if it had just been a straight upgrade that has an AOE falloff, no one would have noticed), and Primal Rend.

MCH got a straight upgrade of its AOE spam attack (cool animation and sound effect, but mechanically just an upgrade), a second charge on its "next ability buff", another stinger attack on the very end of Queen, a cast time reduction on an existing ability (Tactician), and Chain Saw. Not counting Acceleration's rework (or any reworks) as a "new" thing (since presumably it would have this ability in one of the two forms either way), RDM got upgraded animations/spells of Verthunder and Verflare, an upgrade Accelration to 2 charges, another stinger on top of the ShB stinger of its melee combo for a capstone (and Manification one more charge to accommodate that), and Magick Barrier - two new abilities on paper, but one of them is basically "Scorch 2: The Sequel".

BLM got upgrades to this AOE bread and butter Fire/Blizzard spells, a lower CD upgrade to Manafont, an upgrade to Enochian's damage boost percentage, a second charge upgrade to Sharpcast, with the new abilities of Amplifier to grant one free Polyglot stack and Paradox as a more exciting SORTA-upgrade to Fire 1 and Blizzard 1 simultaneously (so whether you consider this a new ability or an upgrade depends on who you ask). PLD got an upgrade to Shelltron and Intervention, an upgrade to Holy Spirit and Holy Circle and Confiteor to self-heal, an upgrade of Spirits Within to a new animation, an upgrade to Divine Veil to also have a basic cure, and Confiteor Jr, Confiteor Jr Jr, and Sir Regionald Confiteor the IVth. While visually cool, this is, mechanically, Confiteor four times that effectively applies Goring Blade's DoT.

While I don't have every Job at max level nor familiarity with them (and we did get some complete reworks like SMN vs some more minor ones like RDM), but looking at the general trend, it seems most Jobs ultimately got 3-6 upgrades of existing abilities, a "new coat of paint" spell/ability upgrade for 1-4 abilities, and 1 truly new button (that in MANY, though not ALL, cases didn't overmuch change how the Job is played) and one pseudo-new button that is REALLY an old button pressed another time or in another way.

.

But as for what I'd add to WHM, right now, another mitigation, either Protect and Shell separately or Proshell as either an ability itself or as an added effect to Plenary Indulgence (a 10% or even 5% damage reduction Proshell would make sense as PI is designed for healing major damage and so having a reduction component would make it a poor man's second Lilybell (which has a longer CD than the other mutli-hit tools like Panhamia and Seraph/Consolation), and 5% on a 60 sec CD would hardly be overpowered considering how much mitigation all three other healers have. An upgrade to Dia III (because Amdapori apparently forgot the number 2 existed when they banished it after a tragic Sylphian accident) to make it...flashier or AOE or something, and an upgrade to Afflatus Misery III on similar grounds. Probably a long awaited second charge on Tetra and possibly Aquaveil, and that Cure 4 we read about in Gubal Library 7 years ago. Who knows where we go from there - hopefully they'll actually realize the 2 min thing is bad by 7.0 and we'll get a top-down rework across Jobs, because if they break free of THAT stupid thing - that I think we all more or less agree FFXIV needs to drop into the dustbin of history - it could open a good deal more possibilities.

I don't see WHM as being any more "there's no where to go" than any other Job, honestly, and probably less than some. The Devs are honestly going to have to start getting REALLY creative and/or we're going to see all Jobs getting major and alienating reworks - SMN's rework was explicitly because they said they weren't sure where else to go with it, something they've now also said is the basis behind the planned DRG rework.

.

I guess we just disagree on what Jobs "deserve" - or "need".

Pure healers didn't go extinct because no one enjoys that gameplay. Pure healers aren't allowed in most MMOs by designs, so they can't engage with that gameplay. It remains to be seen if it will be a success or not, or even launch, but Pantheon likely will have tens of thousands of them (or maybe into the 100,000s, but it depends on how big the playerbase as a whole gets), and a lot of those people seem very eager to play Everquest with modern graphics, essentially - whether it comes to fruition as that or not, there's very clearly a desire.

But note I'm not even asking for that. Current day WHM doesn't function that way.

You guys act like it's a sad and pathetic thing for any of the healers to be as they are today...but answer me this question:

Of the 3,000,000+ people who play this game, of which something like 1,000,000+ play Healers...

...do you really think NONE of those people, or even a super small amount, enjoy healing/Healers as it is/they are in the game right now?

Out of over a million people playing the role, do you really believe that less than 250,000 (that would be 1/4th, btw) enjoy the current Healers?

Everyone points to big names, but while you have the likes of Momo pointing out shortcomings in healer design, I can point you to Cole Evyx who seems to be absolutely in love with the current healers. While the people that love it definitely seem in the minority in terms of online expression, they very clearly EXIST. And the best you're willing to offer them is "Well, we get it all, but we'll get a little less in one case so you can be somewhat less upset"? If you were trying to compromise with someone and they were demanding everything, and you offered a compromise that was giving them everything they want except one thing, and they demanded that thing as well, would that seem fair or reasonable to you?

And as I said, it wouldn't even have to be WHM - WHM is the logical choice because of both branching from the level 1 CNJ and based on its existing kit, but ANY healer being converted into WHM 2.0 would be acceptable. I'm not sure how that's asking for a lot, and you haven't been able to give me an explanation other than it's bad design - a point I contest and I think we SHOULD BE ABLE to agree is at least somewhat subjective - and that we CAN'T possibly love it and would HAVE to like your version better if we gave it a try. It could be SCH, it could be SGE. The thing is, WHM is already well designed to accommodate current WHM gameplay, so if we made one of the other healers (or added yet another as a 5th), it would require both shifting WHM away from it only to shift this new healer or SCH or AST or SGE to being what WHM is today. None of which makes any sense. Maybe if they added Geomancer as a healer you could have that instead as it would have the Earth/Air/Water motif, but I'd wager even if they added a 5th healer explicitly for this purpose you guys would complain that it needs to be changed, too.

Can you see how those reasons ring a bit hollow when I'm already asking for so little in exchange? How they MIGHT seem just a LITTLE bit selfish?

You may think you're doing people a favor by giving them something "better" than what they have, but what if they don't want it? And if you're already getting the other three, then if it really IS better, those people could switch and SE would just change the last one in 8.0. But I suspect we all know that many would not switch and wouldn't like the new healers.

I don't want to suppose bad faith or ulterior motives, but there is a part of my mind that wonders if at least SOME of the pushback against my idea is it would provide a live experiment - if people DID have the choice, which would they pick? - and a small part of my mind wonders if some on your side of this argument (not you, specifically, but SOME) realize that many would not pick the new healers, which would put proof to my position that many people don't, in fact, want that and wouldn't, in fact, find it enjoyable.

Can you submit for the sake of argument and sanity that you realize if we DID have that choice - if we DID have a WHM as-is carried over into 7.0 while changing the others - that many people, and we're talking tens if not hundreds of thousands and probably a good 10-25% (or more) of our current healer playyers, would opt for it?

Like just for the sake of argument, suppose we made a copy of WHM and called it "Whiter Mage" or something, and changed WHM to what you want, changed SCH and AST and SGE, do you really believe that Whiter Mage would have 0 people playing it?

I feel like we both know the answer is that people WOULD choose Whiter Mage, even with the smorgasbord you've laid out before them. You'd be Gordan Ramsey, laying out four gourmet dishes, and these uncultured swine would be picking the McDonald's cheeseburger instead.

...but if that IS genuinely what they want...who are you to demand then put the cheesburger down, just because you deem it lesser? If that's what makes them happy and they're ordinary people doing ordinary things and not being evil or criminals or anything, why should you feel compelled to tell them no?

Why not just lay out the table and let people pick what they want, and just be happy that people are happy with their individual selection, whether it's to your taste and standards or not?

.

I suppose in the end, it may not matter. The Devs are going to do what they're going to do. If healers become DPSers, then I'll probably quit the game, which sucks because it's one of the few consistent things that...well, that's neither here nor there. But it would be sad. If the story stays good, maybe I'll become one of those "once every four month subs" on WAR or something...or just watch let's plays on YouTube. Or just give up on the whole thing. I guess, apparently, that would be for the best, eh? In the end we'll see what they do. Well, here's hoping, I guess...

Setting everything else aside, as one Human to anther, looking at our "proposed trade" in a vacuum, can you see how "You can have 3 out of 4" "No, I want them all, but I'll take 3 and a half leaving you with one half of one; that's a good compromise, right?" might not be attractive OR a compromise in the end?

If 5% of healers wanted this, would you give it to them?
If 10% of healers wanted this, would you give it to them?
If 25% of healers wanted this, would you give it to them?
If 50% of healers wanted this, would you give it to them?
If 75% of healers wanted this, would you give it to them?

How many would it take before you would let them have one of their own?

If 99.9%, every healer player in the game but you, wanted this, would you still deny them?

If someone asks for something so little, and logical given the request, that makes many people happy...

I dunno. I'm being too introspective and sleepy.

Good night, friend. I hope you have a pleasant day tomorrow. o/

[Archwizard]

Honestly, my idealized hopes about AST are just that they fold back in Time Manipulation for the job.
Not just the "delayed effect" heals like Earthly Star, Horoscope, or Exaltation (which we have far too many of, frankly), but things like accelerating DoTs on enemies and HoTs on allies, slowing/stopping enemy attackers, staggering incoming damage by turning it into DoTs on allies, etc.
Macrocosmos is theoretically one such example, in essence "snapshot everyone at a given moment and restore them to that health later"... though the particular execution just ends up being yet another delayed healing bomb.
There are plenty of things they can do with time magic -- particularly for a healer -- besides "extend timers" and "buff speed". Though it's particularly odd that they refused to give AST any sort of speed buff for years on the grounds of being "too powerful" only to give one to SCH, but okay.

(They could even have AST and SCH play around with DoTs in different ways, with AST getting some Thundercloud-like proc out of theirs and accelerating their DoTs to tick additional times to proc the effect, and SCH creating, spreading or even detonating Miasma clouds for AoE damage. A simple expansion to each of their combat rotations.)

Of course at this point, I can understand that that would be muddled with the emphasis on Cartomancy that's already signature to AST. The devs truly bit off more than they could chew by choosing to have a card for each element plus Minor Arcana, given that they would have realistically struggled to balance even 3 such effects even if The Balance wasn't on the table (Crit vs SkS/SpS vs ???).
Part of the problem with the old system was it pitted damage boosts against utility effects, with some of the damage effects being imbalanced against each other (Balance naturally jumping ahead and others becoming fodder for Royal Road) while the utility effects were unreliable due to the RNG involved in obtaining them, unless you held them indefinitely.
The other part was that so many abilities were spent on just controlling the cards and mitigating the RNG aspect (usually so that you would eventually just cast AoE Balance) that it bloated the job and made the entire system overwhelming. And now, of course, the job has virtually no control over the cards anymore, is still bloated with new tools that have little to do with the cards, and is still overwhelming from all the double-weaving expected.

Like, I fully understand that people want the old card system back, and I agree 100% that it was better than what we have now, but I would also acknowledge the flaws that led to its removal, and that we can't realistically expect the old system to come back undigested. It would require significant changes to avoid creating a bunch of "fodder" cards, the bare minimum of which would require a separation of Damage vs Utility cards. And given how bloated the job already is, it would also require stripping several of the tools AST has obtained since just to make room.

... though in fairness, Synastry makes little sense in AST's hands anyway, given its reliance on GCD heals. Probably could cut that and give it to WHM or, with some adjustments to be Kardia friendly, SGE.

[Zolvolt]

Having a thundercloud-esque proc on any of the healers would honestly be so fun until parsing was all about whether rng liked you or not.

[Archwizard]

Having a thundercloud-esque proc on any of the healers would honestly be so fun until parsing was all about whether rng liked you or not.

So, the AST experience in every expansion?