Healers need an overhaul

[Shurrikhan]

Now, before anyone gonna jump and pick apart the above proposals, save the effort. What I have just said is nothing more but an illustration of the kind of rework that I would like to see.

Ok, I'll bite, in good faith.


A - Turn "play" into a GCD instead of an oGCD.
Reasons: One, reduce the excessive weaving that AST has to do comparing to other healers. Two, make play easier for people who on controller or don't play with macro (targets switching). Three, allow draw to be weaved with play instead of over 2 GCD or risk double weaving (QoA for high ping).


B - Each time a card is played, give AST 1 stack of buff that makes the next Melafic hit for twice potency. Cap this stack at certain # so AST has to manage it instead of just stack it infinitely for buff window.
Reasons: one, reduce the #of Melafic spam with an equivalent number of card play while has no DPS loss. AST can strategically manage their stack for optimization. This is somewhat similar to WHM Lily.


C - Astrodyne will give a timed and stack-able buff up to 3 stacks. A 3 seal astrodyne will increase the stack value (up to three). 2 Seal astrodyne will simply extend the timer of the current stack but not increase its value, otherwise the stack will decrease by 1 each time the counter reach zero. (Think about the old MNK Gease Lighting, but with a twitch). Adjust timing of cards so that AST has to pace out Astrodyne, save and pump out 2 Astrodyne back to back will risk not have enough seal to refresh the stack in time.
Reason: reward good effort without being too punishing on bad RNG. Allow AST to has their own mini-window without clutch play.


D - Astrodyne stack can give 1 of these 2 buffs: a haste buff that allow more cast, or a % damage buff to melafic but also increase its MP cost. The math should be worked out that while it improve output, it can not be sustained with a zero piety build.
Reason: One: I had said it before, when the role ignore its supposed main 2nd stat (piety) in favor of a non-relevant stat (DH) then there is something really wrong on a fundamental level of the design, that has to be fixed. Two: provide an alternative option that make DET/PIE a viable competitor to the CRT build- similar to how the SpS vs Crit option on BLM. For example: a CRT build would favor to maintain a 2 stack Adstrodyne while a DET/PIE built would prefer a full 3 stack up time. Or, high level of play can have AST juggle the stacks throughout the fight to find the ideal sweat spot between output and MP regen ratio ala ram up for buff window, drop down to conserve MP. (This is my idea of active MP management, not just pressing some buttons).



Now, before anyone gonna jump and pick apart the above proposals, save the effort. What I have just said is nothing more but an illustration of the kind of rework that I would like to see. I do not claim these will solve the issue, or if they are even good fixes. I simply want to show (per request) why I don't believe the fix to be simply adding one or two more DPS button. I had worked on a few total conversion mod in the Total War series, that's why even though I'm not a dev, I'm not naive enough to think a complex problem can be solved by just throwing around some on the spot suggestions, be it mine or yours.


For me, engagement start from the planning, to approach, and deliberation, not just merely how many button to press. I also want it to remain accessible to new healers, but provide enough depth for the veteran to optimize (not unlike Yoshi's vision for BLM). The last point is more about my own personal issue that I had raised a month ago about the role identity. You can not have a "proper" healer with a flaw design at the very first and basic step.

I will attempt to approach it as such. I hope you will consider my comments likewise, as roughly illustrative.

So that you can double-check my interpretation, from which my later comments are based:

It seems to me that you are more or less following two goals (or, a primary goal and a constraint):

• Reduce the GCD time (or, more broadly, the perceptible attention) spent on offensive (or at least, repetitive filler) actions, replacing them with more "healer-like" uses thereof.
• Attempt to realistically meet the constraints of present systems (Piety as a lackluster/shit stat, difficulty is basically limited to predominantly-single-target encounters anyways, relative healing requirements cannot be increased, and no new technical innovations/affordances are likely).

I will continue from that interpretation, but if that interpretation has been made in significant error, feel free to simply stop me there and ignore what follows.

Comments:

First, I would recommend that you consider how large of changes you want to make and what arbitrary constraints that goal would already outstrip. You seem to be accounting for constraints that are just far more negligible than the sum or trend of what "pennies" would be necessary to get your "dollar" of healing changes. [See C and D, especially, and their seeming to try to salvage Piety.]

Most rehauls requested here --even limiting that survey to those offering more illustrative examples-- would be so much larger of changes than the likes of adjusting or removing Piety that it would not be worth anchoring those suggestions around something like Piety unless its current implementation, or one given even just a very small tweak, would be desirable. Whether those rehauls be the likes of <siphon excess healing tools towards non-healing uses> or <make us feel more like actual healers™>, they're still pretty big changes even before touching on any sort of encounter redesign.

Consider Piety, for instance. You seem to be going out of your way to attempt to give it relevance through small changes elsewhere, perhaps on the hope that it could allow for meaningful MP management in some new way, but if the stat itself is terribly designed, efforts made around that stat will be that much less effective. Unless the problems with the stat are precisely the issues you wish to fix on a larger scale (and I suspect you may believe so, but I would offer a warning, in mirror, shortly), I'd recommend you first instead treat Piety as if it didn't exist. You'll need to later account for the threat of the stat's existing, but unless it offers a unique advantage to gameplay for existing, tentatively axe it.

Note: Piety essentially exists to increasingly remove active MP management, replacing it instead with a pre-fight gamble. Essentially, it's a commission, alike to Enmity when that was sort of a mechanic. One "wins" by guessing as nearly as possible, without falling short, how much MP they will need over the course of the fight and swapping gear out accordingly (within their limited means). That much is fundamental to Piety. No small tweak will replace that function. Piety's gains are finnicky and rather obscure, likely falling short of its issues (outsized tryhard pretensions/gear-spotting, a "waste" stat, and/or reduced engagement with future/possible MP management in gameplay). Is that worth keeping?

(If not, consider also whether Direct Hit and Tenacity actually improve the game at all, or likewise make it worse in their current form. Remember also that you can also later add back what functions, or the desired parts thereof, these stats actually meet as you wish. It's just easier to build upon a blank state than a marred one.)

Second (though it's partly connected to the first), I have to wonder why [in parts A and B] you'd pigeonhole the rDPS-recuperation from Cards into ST damage, rather than simply putting that value into the Card itself.

I get the intention in turning cards into GCDs, but you will have two sticking points:

1. By being turned into oGCDs, the Cards will feel that much less responsive.
2. The oGCD Cards, and the APM and 'rush' they provide, have always been iconic to AST. Removing that may feel like removing something of the "essence" of AST.

Moreover, the GCD paired with a card was previously variable. Now, you have forced it into a bundle with Malefic, specifically. This can make it more difficult to find space for in healing-intense situations, should they ever arise, and can make the Cards feel in some ways less "healer-like," as they may feel like a 30s damage "Malefic+" CD first and a card second.

Why not simply buff the cards nearer to their old value? That would make them more sensitive to party dynamics, of course, but (A) as they are on a fixed timer, they would not disproportionately bleed into a 2-minute meta and (B) awareness of one's party's dynamics is iconic to supportive gameplay, and of course to AST.

I do not ask this in hopes of some sort of "gotcha!" I am not even certain the choice was wholly deliberate on your part. I just hope these questions may, on answer, clarify your intent.

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For me, engagement start from the planning, to approach, and deliberation, not just merely how many button to press. I also want it to remain accessible to new healers, but provide enough depth for the veteran to optimize (not unlike Yoshi's vision for BLM).

I think you and I, and probably most here, are in agreement on that. Adding more buttons has always seemed, across more suggestions here, to be a means to an ends, not an end in itself, and most are wary of overburdening new healers in terms of their immediate responsibilities / more vital capacities.

The contrast has simply been on whether less immediately essential aspects, like an increased ceiling on damage optimization beyond improving effective healing efficiency, would increase learner stress more so than an excess of tools that are difficult to find a (especially, non-redundant) place/slot for (as per our glut of oGCD heals). The general consensus seems to be that an excess (variably defined, ofc) of healing tools both makes healing less intuitive and makes healing capacity harder to balance (since it creates that much larger a gap between those familiar with each of those tools and those still learning).

:: Moving away from just what thoughts I'm seeing here to my own takes:

In short, for there to be any seemingly "significant" healing to be done at the high end (let us very tentatively define this as a combination of cognitive load [depth and count of decision made and/or tracking/tasks which inform those decisions] and palpable impression [such as from portion of uptime or actions spent on healing]), there has to be a smaller gap in ability to meet relative healing requirements between those who have become familiar with those healing tools and those who have not yet done so.

On the other hand, tools for shared and/or uncapped throughputs (in XIV's case, damage dealt, be that directly or indirectly) are far more forgiving to those gaps; a single healer who has only become familiar with a small part of their offensive tools and therefore underperforms in damage still has 7 other players to buoy their performance, and --filling an uncapped need-- familiarity with those damage tools does not render lower level tools (those that are earlier and more easily learned but are less efficient) redundant.

An 8-way, uncapped responsibility [here, damage] --the failings from which will almost never wipe a party through a short-term check-- is simply far more capable of allowing for sophistication without negative effects (inaccessibility, redundancy, etc.) than a mostly 2-way responsibility [healing] that acts only through short-term checks. As such, siphoning some of the gap in throughput from mastery of healing tools to other areas would probably both help the feel of healing (less redundancy while still having about roughly equal ceiling just by returning relevance to lower-level tools -- or even increasing that ceiling once permitted by that lower relevant throughput gap, such as through returning a space for pre-cast healing, by finally introducing MP management, etc.) while also improving the skill ceiling of healers' collective tasks (damage and utility also included) without asking too much of healers in their most immediate/iconic/assumed responsibilities.

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Similarly, I don't think anyone here is claiming that "simply adding one or two more DPS buttons" would fix everything, only that it would have an outsized positive impact given the constraints we're working under and the largest present pain points.