The Problem with Healer Feedback, and requested changes

[Renathras]

I didn't fish for Balance, I used every card and made due with what I had.

A lot of people didn't (fish, just made due). The issue was that the "serious" people did, and made a big deal about it. I've heard it said that all the homoogenization and all the simplification in FFXIV (or almost all of it) is because the playerbase asks for it. Not the whole or a majority, but some very vocal people. In the case of AST, I think the argument was that cards other than Balance sucked (I think there were two that were useful if you could do the AOE or whatever of them, but the standard version people also avoided) and "Devs, make these other cards more useful!" type stuff was said. So the Devs went path of least resistance and just made all cards Balance.

I thought I read AST was getting a rework but I don't see anything new.

I think this is slated for 7.0/the next expansion. They consider it an expansion-level rework. Which could be good or terrifying, we'll have to see in a year or so when they preview stuff in the media tour which...I guess happens with the Japan Fanfest or round-abouts?

I think a better solution for Assize is removing the heal from the initial use. Assize is just damage at first, but they while it's on cooldown, you can reactivate it to perform the heal. This acknowledges how players use it on cooldown while the heal now has more room to be used as needed if needed without creating friction between the heal and the DPS.

So sorta like Lilybells/Star having a release button for the heal but the GCD starts ticking on initial use? I kind of like this idea.

I think the relationship healers have between healing and damage is not a bad one, but just having a wealth of OGCD heals has not boded well for the experience of healing. While I do want wider DPS libraries, I like feeling like there's a decision I must make between my attacks and my heals. I liked playing as a SCH in ARR, HW, and SB, and feeling like Adlo and Succor were a regular part of my gameplay, not just a last ditch effort for survival.

Didn't they remove Energy Drain in ShB initially because they thought having heals and damage fight over the same resource was bad because (in optimization) damage always wins?

The odd thing to me about that, though, is I feel if they were really worried about that, they'd make all GCD heals generate a damage neutral resource. GCDs are effectively a "resource" that we trade between healing and damage, too, but I guess the Devs don't see it that way. One could argue it's to make a higher skill ceiling, but the Devs have thus far shown they want the skill ceiling on healers to be lower, so it just seems odd they are unwilling or unable to grasp that GCDs and damage are part of that calculation with at least a good chunk of the most vocal components of the playerbase, and it's one change that wouldn't hurt the 70+% or so that are casual and never run high end content. If Jonny Casual generated more Misery stacks by casting Cure 1, it's not like that would hurt the game or his play experience.

I don't think "dealing damage" should be tied to healing generated (except maybe on SGE, though this would also require a more extensive rework of the Job). I hate that in PvP. It's okay as a playstyle for a healer, but I don't think it would work well with the general community. But having standard healing tools generate resources to normalize damage shouldn't honestly be a problem other than it would lower the skill ceiling, I suppose. But that's technically the Dev's intention anyway. And the thing is, at least two (WHM and SGE) healers already have the basis for such a mechanic. Having any non-damage GCD generate a Blood Lily 1/3rd or making SGE GCD heals generate an Addersting when cast (not when the shield is consumed) and making Toxicon damage neutral (2x a Dosis cast) would outright solve that for both of those healers. Granted, there's be some weird optimization in burst windows, but that shouldn't substantially change the skill ceiling, I wouldn't think. And the rotations wouldn't really increase in complexity or number of abilities, either.

Honestly, Kardia is a good system imo, they just need to flex it more.