A summary of healer issues

[Fendred]

Yoshida mentioned in an interview that they get conflicting requests going both ways. Some players are adamant that they want healers to focus on healing and others want healers to have full on DPS rotations. In a separate interview, Yoshida mentioned that designing healers presented a particular challenge/barrier in that they couldn't really replace older healer abilities. They always had to add some new tool. I believe this is because healer toolkits are introduced to counter particular mechanics from different expansions and raid tiers. As a result, they can't just replace them without having to retest whatever they add against the mechanic the old ability was built to address. Additionally, this means its hard to make room on the UI for DPS abilities because they'd be replacing cooldowns meant to address something.

So, according to Yoshida,
1. The healer community is totally divided on the direction of healing jobs.
2. The healer toolkit is a backlog of abilities designed to address different boss mechanics introduced during each expansion.

Given what Yoshida said, I'd posit that if healers were rebuilt with DPS rotations we'd be in a scenario where healers are no longer built for the game they exist in (other than the current expansion). All the older raid content would have mechanics that the healers no longer have cooldowns to deal with because those were sacrificed to make room for DPS. They'd have to test four entirely new jobs against all the existing content just to do that. That's not to say we can't have quality of life improvements. Having the ability to designate two targets for card mechanics so we don't have to target swap on astrologian would be great. A one, two, three rotation could also work if they gave us the ability to cast while moving kind of like in PvP. Or just have the rotation built into one button. At least it would be visually different.

[ty_taurus]

Yoshida mentioned in an interview that they get conflicting requests going both ways. Some players are adamant that they want healers to focus on healing and others want healers to have full on DPS rotations. In a separate interview, Yoshida mentioned that designing healers presented a particular challenge/barrier in that they couldn't really replace older healer abilities. They always had to add some new tool. I believe this is because healer toolkits are introduced to counter particular mechanics from different expansions and raid tiers. As a result, they can't just replace them without having to retest whatever they add against the mechanic the old ability was built to address. Additionally, this means its hard to make room on the UI for DPS abilities because they'd be replacing cooldowns meant to address something.

So, according to Yoshida,
1. The healer community is totally divided on the direction of healing jobs.
2. The healer toolkit is a backlog of abilities designed to address different boss mechanics introduced during each expansion.

Given what Yoshida said, I'd posit that if healers were rebuilt with DPS rotations we'd be in a scenario where healers are no longer built for the game they exist in (other than the current expansion). All the older raid content would have mechanics that the healers no longer have cooldowns to deal with because those were sacrificed to make room for DPS. They'd have to test four entirely new jobs against all the existing content just to do that.

You keep saying that DPS would break healing as we know it but it still doesn't hold up. For starters, SCH existed in both ARR and HW having half a DPS's toolkit and didn't have any problems in its ability to heal through the content. It was and has always been the top performing healer both because of its damage output and its incredibly effective healing tools. And it still had a fairly decent DPS library in SB. How can content that was designed when healer DPS tools existed break for restoring the concept of healer DPS tools? It makes no sense.

Even if we move into ShB and EW content were healers are broken and unfun, why do you assume that adding in DPS tools can only result in the removal of core healing tools that content was designed around having available? You don't think there's bloat in other areas that can't be trimmed or consolidated? I mean I went through and theorycrafted my own wishlist of healer reworks with all updated GCD rotations to give healers a fun and consistent form of gameplay throughout all forms of content without actually removing any major healing buttons and still found ways to drop the button total, not raise it. My way is not the only way, it's just me doing what I like to do for fun, but a professional design team should not have issues working around that. Sure it takes effort, but so does any amount of job change. If the idea of spending time working on and improving jobs is seen as a hinderance then why even have a job design team at all?

[ForsakenRoe]

Given what Yoshida said, I'd posit that if healers were rebuilt with DPS rotations we'd be in a scenario where healers are no longer built for the game they exist in (other than the current expansion). All the older raid content would have mechanics that the healers no longer have cooldowns to deal with because those were sacrificed to make room for DPS.

This ignores the fact that, thanks to EW and the stat squish, things that are 'very hard and need these specific tools' are now 'don't need those tools anymore' by sheer potency creep. Mitigation plans for UCOB or UWU on release would look nothing like what we have now, especially considering Feint and Addle now work on their opposite damage type at 5%. When they announced EW changes for WHM my first thought was 'hang on, Thin Air only affects 1 spell now? How on earth would a WHM get through J-Waves in TEA without going OOM?' because I found that part very rough on my MP. Whether it's because I was bad, or because of EW potencies, people have cleared since, with that updated Thin Air. There are plenty of skills that are 'surplus to requirements' already in current content, let alone old content. Like, 95% of the time we don't actually need Exaltation as AST, it's just a thing we press cos it's there, but if it was removed tomorrow, we'd likely not notice.

still found ways to drop the button total, not raise it.

Don't remember what thread it was in (they all blend together at this point), but I also found ways to knock the button total down, to keep them below 32 (4 X-Hotbars, for the controller players). This wasn't even with a big rework like Taurus posed, either, this was 'these two being seperate buttons is bloody stupid, let me fix that'. Taurus is right, the way they got the button count down is not the 'only way', but if they can find a way to do it, and I can find a different way to do it, SE doesn't really have an excuse when they are literally paying people to do that job, and they can't find either of the ways we came up with, or even a third way that also works.

Also, where do they get off saying button bloat is an issue, then having SAM in the state it's in? Make Shoha2 an upgrade to Shoha1 (aoe centered on target, not player), and change Senei/Guren from 'costs 25' to 'generates 25', make them grant 'Ogi ready', and remove Ikishoten entirely (of the 50 generated by Iki, 25 goes straight on Senei anyway). Wow, two buttons freed up just like that. Or what about RPR, why the heck do we need Shadow AND Whorl of Death? Why not just have damage falloff on Whorl, so it's 300p to the first target and 65% less for all others?

For example, with my current hotbar setups I could change the healers as follows:

-WHM, upgrade Cure to Cure2 at 30 (MP cost changed to 500 for both), Medica upgrades to Medica2 at 50 (just add the regen effect, base potency remains same), leaves 5/32 free

-SCH, upgrade Physick to Adlo at 30 (MP cost changed to idk maybe 700 for both), upgrade Lustrate to Excog at 66 (yes this means you can Excog 3 people, no it's not imbalanced because it's limited by AF stacks), 3/32 free, could get another by making EnergyDrain the AF generator, and removing 'Aetherflow' as a button. Also why the heck did Ruin 2 never get an updated VFX?

-AST, upgrade Benefic to Benefic2 at 30 (MP cost changed to 500), Helios upgrades to Aspected Helios at 40 or whatever it is now (same as Medica, just tack regen effect on), make Horoscope's heal a trait for Celestial Opposition, by making it possible to detonate the HOT from CO early to instantly grant all remaining healing from it, plus the 200 from Horoscope. Letting the HOT naturally tick out, however, grants the empowered Horoscope heal of 400 (skill expression? perish the thought!) 4/32 free, can make it 5 by deleting Astrodyne cos I hate it

-SGE, it's already at 3/32 free, and is fairly compact via Eukrasia system saving us space. Could still save space here and there, eg. Eukrasia on Dyskrasia becomes Toxicon, or just deleting Soteria and buffing the base heal of Kardia a bit. That'd make it 5/32

tl;dr surprisingly not difficult to condense healer toolkits, mostly as they have several buttons that translate to 'heals X potency in an AOE' in some way.

Exaltation is a better CI and I would rather CI be changed to something else or removed and it take its place because Exalt fits AST better thematically.

You can just tell when they don't know what to do for a healer, so they give it a copy of the skill the other healer has. Celestial Intersection being the AST answer to Divine Benison is one thing, but it's painfully obvious with a lot of Sage's kit, because not only does it function similarly, if not 100% identically to it's SCH counterpart, they're even learned at the exact same level. Ixo/Indom at 52, Pepsis/EmergencyTactics at 58, Physis/WhisperingDawn at 20, Holos/FeyBlessing at 76. It's so egregious, I used it as part of the logic of 'where should I put this Sage skill for my muscle memory' when the expansion first dropped. Other stuff I had to adapt based on its function but it translates fairly well, eg Taurochole and Excog work differently, but they're both 45s CDs that use 1 stack, same button. Soteria/Fey union both empower the 'passive healing' effect of Kardia/Embrace, same button.

[ASkellington]

snip

For AST/WHM I don't agree with you here simply because they already feel similar at 50 and below and I'd rather they not any more.

Benefic and Cure 1 can still be upgraded to their 2s if we want to keep them.

I'd argue removing Benefic and keeping A. Bene to enforce AST as a regen healer. If that seems too difficult, then keep Bene 2 but increase its MP cost.

Medica, Medica 2 is... I don't want to say remove Medica 2 because AST is regen healer. We'll say that.

For AST though, Helios can be removed in favor of A. Helios.

If we decided to introduce Noct Sect back into AST it would be interesting to play with the stance dance in combat where kinda like SGE now, you would shield to "heal" or at least buffer but would use your regens to actually increase health.

But yeah, you aren't wrong. There's plenty you can remove on the healers to make way for a few dps or support.

ASTRODYNE SAYS "HI" SE!

[ForsakenRoe]

Medica, Medica 2 is... I don't want to say remove Medica 2 because AST is regen healer. We'll say that.

Ah, see my thinking is that AST could move over to being more a 'delayed effects healer' in the vein of Star, Horoscope, Exaltation, rather than regens. Regen is a staple of White Magic from previous games, and it makes sense for there to be an AOE version, hence I'd keep Medica2 for that reason. Medica2 already is equal strength to Medica1 after just one tick though, hence why I want 'em combined. I'd rather we see HOTs as a focus on a 5th healer, with proper kit dedicated to it, rather than keeping it on AST, especially since they removed the time manipulation stuff from AST and refuse to give it back. Instead, I'd make AST all about 'predicting the future', with it's cards, its delayed heals and new 'delayed damage skills', it's a fortune telling class after all. Make a new healer class dedicated to HOTs and DOTs, and manipulation of them. Extend them, Quicken them to instant detonate in raidbuffs, Rewind them to refresh duration, this is sounding almost like... a mage that works with Time Magics. A Mage of Time if you will

Or we could keep AST as the regen healer, but then IDK what SE would come up with for a 5th healer, if they even add one. Considering how copypaste SCH/SGE seem to be already, it's debatable if they even added a 4th...

Also you say WHM/AST feel similar below 50 and I'd argue that yes, true, but that's by design. This is because A: pre-50 some classes dont even have their job gauges (cough WHM, DRG) so I'm not sure 'homogenisation bad!' is a consideration at such low levels. I look at it more as 'these are the pure healers, they need these base tools because they're both pure healers, so they are here early so people get used to them being there'. I don't think I've ever heard anyone complain about how the tanks get their 30%s at 38, or their invulns at 50. Nor have I run across anyone saying 'I love how WAR breaks the homogenisation at low levels, by having it's invuln at 42!' But also, B: to me at those levels, WHM feels like 'Wish.com AST'. WHM doesn't have Medica2 until 50, AST gets it at 42. WHM doesn't have any instantcast OGCDs to panic with, AST has Essential Dignity. WHM has zero options for mobility outside of 'lmao stop casting', AST has Lightspeed. WHM doesn't get it's job gauge til 52, AST starts playing cards at 30, starts being able to influence the draws (lore translation: bend fate to their will) at 40, and use 'epic cool raidbuff' Divination at 50. The only thing WHM has going for it at these levels is Holy's stun, and that only works for the first 3 GCDs. After that, some would argue AST actually has the advantage again, because Gravity doesn't force you to stand in the middle of every add's poop puddles!

Disagreement aside though, I also dream of the day Astrodyne stops saying 'Hi' and finally just says 'Bye', bloody waste of a hotbar slot

When I unlocked SGE to try it out, I just did /hotbar copy SCH 1 SGE 1 etc and replaced <exact same ability> with <exact same ability>. Muscle memory shifted about 10% maximum.

Oh, I found out the names of the skills somewhere (think it was via a YT vid from MrHappy or someone about the skills and their effects), and wrote 3 macros, one for each hotbar, that would set the slot to X skill, and I wrote them with my SCH layouts in mind. For example, my Whispering Dawn bind is hotbar 2, slot 6, so I did /hotbar set "Physis" 2 6, etc for the rest. The only thing that I had to do manually was place Rhizomata, because in the vid I saw, it was spelled 'Rizomata' and so the macro couldn't find the skill lmao

[ASkellington]

Ah, see my thinking is that AST could move over to being more a 'delayed effects healer' in the vein of Star, Horoscope, Exaltation, rather than regens. Regen is a staple of White Magic from previous games, and it makes sense for there to be an AOE version, hence I'd keep Medica2 for that reason. Medica2 already is equal strength to Medica1 after just one tick though, hence why I want 'em combined. I'd rather we see HOTs as a focus on a 5th healer, with proper kit dedicated to it, rather than keeping it on AST, especially since they removed the time manipulation stuff from AST and refuse to give it back. Instead, I'd make AST all about 'predicting the future', with it's cards, its delayed heals and new 'delayed damage skills', it's a fortune telling class after all. Make a new healer class dedicated to HOTs and DOTs, and manipulation of them. Extend them, Quicken them to instant detonate in raidbuffs, Rewind them to refresh duration, this is sounding almost like... a mage that works with Time Magics. A Mage of Time if you will

AST is Time Mage is the issue though.

Delayed healing and regens to me = that. Macrocosmos especially since it seems to Rewind health. (the effect even looks like a clock) And they're called Heals over Time. Quite frankly you could remove the cards from AST and it would be Time Mage the Healer.

Also, I can't say it would sit well with many people who played AST who HAD Time Dilation for it to be removed and then given to a mage who technically could fill AST's role. Espeically since people want a Time mage with delayed damage. Uh... you could literally drop that into AST with 0 problems since Earthly Star exists...

AST unfortunately is bloated with concepts from fortunetelling to time magic.

As it stands right now, without Noct Sect, you'll hear me double down on AST being regen/delayed healer based. It literally fits all of its heals outside of its base lv50 kit: CO - regen. CU - regen + mit. Horoscope - delayed heal. Macro - delayed heal. Exalt - delayed heal. Earthly Star - delayed heal.

AST is a manipulator of fate and arguably time. May as well keep it.

If we wanted to make room for a 5th healer (which considering SGE I don't think SE could even DO), make AST stance dancer between Di/Noct and have the final healer be a HoT based one I guess.

[AmiableApkallu]

In a separate interview, Yoshida mentioned that designing healers presented a particular challenge/barrier in that they couldn't really replace older healer abilities. They always had to add some new tool. I believe this is because healer toolkits are introduced to counter particular mechanics from different expansions and raid tiers. As a result, they can't just replace them without having to retest whatever they add against the mechanic the old ability was built to address.

If that's the case… What pray tell are the particular mechanics that WHM's kit is built for? Because by my count, it has 13 buttons that are essentially, "Restore HP," of which only one is obviously tailored to a particular style of mechanic (Liturgy of the Bell).

I suppose it's possible that I haven't been playing long enough or haven't done enough content to know.

[ASkellington]

2. The healer toolkit is a backlog of abilities designed to address different boss mechanics introduced during each expansion.

Ok. I'll bite.

In Shb and EW as an AST I gained (healing abilities/augments only):

Celestial Interestion
+1 charge of Essential Dignity
Horoscope
Neutral Sect
Exaltation
+1 charge of CI
Macrocosmos

Now charges of CI and ED I do not need at all outside of W2W pulls or mess ups. Which, if I didn't have them, I'd dip into GCDs breaking up the monotony of Malefic spam.
Macrocosmos and Horoscope I do not need when Earthly Star, Collective Unconciousness and Celestial Opposition can easily cover raid wides and I have ASPECTED HELIOS as a back up along with Helios.
Exaltation is a better CI and I would rather CI be changed to something else or removed and it take its place because Exalt fits AST better thematically.

Neutral Sect was ok when we still had Noct. We don't have it any more and I'll die on the hill the reason they thought it was ok to remove it instead of properly balance AST with it is because of its existence.

The point is I can 100% heal just fine without these tools. Their excuse of "addressing mechanics" kinda falls flat. I can 100% address boss mechanics without these new tools. Its just harder to do so and takes extra thought which, HEY, IS WHAT WE WANT!

[Deceptus]

Ok. I'll bite.

In Shb and EW as an AST I gained (healing abilities/augments only):

Celestial Interestion
+1 charge of Essential Dignity
Horoscope
Neutral Sect
Exaltation
+1 charge of CI
Macrocosmos

Now charges of CI and ED I do not need at all outside of W2W pulls or mess ups. Which, if I didn't have them, I'd dip into GCDs breaking up the monotony of Malefic spam.
Macrocosmos and Horoscope I do not need when Earthly Star, Collective Unconciousness and Celestial Opposition can easily cover raid wides and I have ASPECTED HELIOS as a back up along with Helios.
Exaltation is a better CI and I would rather CI be changed to something else or removed and it take its place because Exalt fits AST better thematically.

Neutral Sect was ok when we still had Noct. We don't have it any more and I'll die on the hill the reason they thought it was ok to remove it instead of properly balance AST with it is because of its existence.

The point is I can 100% heal just fine without these tools. Their excuse of "addressing mechanics" kinda falls flat. I can 100% address boss mechanics without these new tools. Its just harder to do so and takes extra thought which, HEY, IS WHAT WE WANT!

Or as a WHM, Asylum has such a short CD that it can be used every single pull, same with Divine Benison

When was the last time you actually used Liturgy / Temperance / Aquaveil in a dungeon? Hell the only reason I use Afflatus is between pulls to build up misery stacks

Same with SCH.

Fey union is pretty pointless, Seraph is too.

[AFuzzyMu11in]

Or as a WHM, Asylum has such a short CD that it can be used every single pull, same with Divine Benison

When was the last time you actually used Liturgy / Temperance / Aquaveil in a dungeon? Hell the only reason I use Afflatus is between pulls to build up misery stacks

Same with SCH.

Fey union is pretty pointless, Seraph is too.

Fey union is actually amazing so is seraph both can be weaved with AOW, and fey union lets your tank soak up all the hate while u have to worry less about healing and can focus on dps to clear trash. This is just a bad take on sch.