Healers need an overhaul

[Shurrikhan]

What don’t you like about the counter suggestion?

(For thread context, this was the suggestion given in counter to Deceptus's that heals should be potency-neutral.)

My personal take is removing the barrier break aspect and removing passive Addersgall generation over time. Toxikon stays the same Potency as Dosis, but grants 3 stacks of a buff that enable 1 use of the OGCD attack: Toxikosis, which is 1/3rd of Dosis' potency each. This not only gives you a net DPS neutral reward for Addersting, but also gives SGE gameplay, which it currently lacks like the rest of the healers. Addersgall is instead generated through a new DPS spell that has a 20 second cooldown and 2 charges, and that also grants 1 Addersting as well, giving you a "combo" of sorts into your Toxikon and Toxikosis stacks. Then, the meter part of SGE's gauge is converted into a gauge that increases by 2 to a maximum of 100 every time a Kardia effect triggers. Once the gauge reaches above 50, casting either Eukrasian Diagnosis or Eukrasian Prognosis will consume 50 gauge and generate 1 Addersting.

This allows you some DPS neutral healing roughly once per minute, allows Toxikon to feel like a proper reward, reduces SGE's potential crit variance since Toxikon's power is broken up across 4 actions, discourages dumping Addersting as you need to spend time using each Toxikosis stack before your next Toxikon, and expands SGE's gameplay by the Addersgall/Addersting generator as well on top of the new Toxikon "combo."

My main issue is that it seems an unnecessary overcomplication (or, more "convolution" than identity- or depth-adding). And overall it would seem to have a net negative effect on SGE's kit.

The primary purpose of Lily-Misery is just no-opportunity-cost healing, the same as any oGCD heal. It loses a ceiling on burst healing (since it can't stack with GCD heals) for a higher ceiling on damage window exploitation, and adds more mobility and weave space, but for the most part it's just another ability. It's not that its resource is gated behind time so much as that it and all other abilities are thus gated. This one just happens to have 3 charges instead of 1 or 2. That's all. And that's fine.

The same can be said for Addersgall. It's nothing fancy, it's nothing new... and that's okay. I neither think it needs nor would particularly benefit SGE's flexible Aetherflow-lite resource system being removed in favor of a no-cost Energy-Drain-lite locked behind deploying and breaking Eukrasian Diagnosis casts. That's sounds less fun to me than the earlier flexibility, as, like Deceptus's suggestion, would far more concentrate the kit around just those couple actions (EuD and Toxicon+oGCD_bonus_damage).

Similarly, if I were just looking to increase SGE apm, a one-third-of-filler-spell damage oGCD to be spammed, 3 at a time between EuDs, would be one of the absolute last ways I'd think to approach that.

Meanwhile, the change to lock SGE shields behind a Kardia-based gauge means that you're generating nothing during downtime, are further punished for direct-healing (can't even use your shields without enough Dosis/Toxicon spam), all atop fetter a core mechanic (Eukresia).

I just have to wonder... why do any of that? It seems more "convoluting" than "complicating" -- a net loss.

SGE may lack for gameplay, but creating purposely anti-synergic, downtime-punishing, and slow-to-ramp systems designed to constrain its existing actions doesn't seem the way to go to instill it. The net healing+damage might end up equal to what we have now, but it seems to me like it'd be a far more sluggish kit while still offering no real advantage over SCH (doubly so once stuffing it with SCH-levels or greater of clunk).

I'd far rather just approach SGE improvements from two paths together:

1. Replace or retweak a handful of its especially basic or lackluster abilities (Rhizomata, Holos, Krasis, Pepsis, and maybe Panhaima) with something a bit more synergetic (though not so greatly so that action A would only ever be used with action B).
2. Consider what actual button-flows or variations on pacing and/or considerations might feel especially good on SGE and find where all they might be included.

No need necessarily to complicate its basic gauges or funnel so much of a kit's significance through a forced cyclical relationship (between EuD and Toxicon, which seem merely to have been designed to provide a bit of extra mobility or a smidgen of burst AoE as its small bonus effect opposite Adlo's uber-crits, in keeping with SGE's overall intended fluidity). Just, take what's there and find spaces to make that more interesting and offer a bit more advantage.

...At least until such time as we're rehauling all jobs, though I'd still veer far away even then from anything that makes SGE clunkier instead of exploiting its fluidity for all that's worth.