The Problem with Healer Feedback, and requested changes

[Renathras]

I guess my main concern...

I think at the end of the day, this depends mostly on us, the playerbase.

As I said, the super hardcore min-maxers are gonna min-max always. They do so now. A min-max, world first party's tank isn't a PLD main or a GNB main. They're a "tank main". They have all four tanks, they have all the BiS gear for all four tanks, and they even swap their materia (if necessary) between fights if they switch to a different tank or need to swap out something to get to a critical threshold of skill speed or whatever. That level of top play is like the World Series or Superbowl. Those people are doing whatever it takes to win. Split clears, omni-mains, whatever. There's no way to out-engineer them. They invented split clears to out-maneuver lockouts and have enough alts (also max level and well geared) to pull it all off.

...then there's the rest of us.

Most of the rest of us kind of go with what we have. If you have a SCH/SGE in your static or friend group...well, if you're more casual and more friends, you go with SCH/SGE. If you're in a more hardcore group, you probably include in your rules that you're recruiting "1 Pure and 1 Barrier Healer", and those are their jobs in the party. Maybe they work out among themselves that one will play AST if this fight needs it and the other might play WHM if that fight needs it, but the point is, your group establishes those guidelines when it creates itself.

As for PF, I doubt there will ever be a shortage of Dedicated Healers simply because most people will consider them easier. Again, look at those Lucky Bancho numbers. There are roughly (not QUITE, but roughly) as many WHMs as both SCH and SGE together. And SGE is arguably an "easy" healer (as contrasted with SCH and AST) and is the second most popular everywhere but JP where SCH is second and SGE third but pretty close behind it. Despite AST/SCH being meta, it hasn't taken over the game, and there are no shortage of WHM and SGEs (the non-meta picks) in PF. My FC's main Static that drafts me as a sub healer from time to time has a SGE and WHM, and when I sub in, it's usually for the WHM player, so I play WHM (since I hate AST) to fill the other sub-role.

I'm not saying it does nothing at all, but I don't think there will ever be a shortage of "the easier thing that more people play in the live game right now". And this has always been true. I think even in SB WHM was the most played healer, despite it very clearly sucking.

Though for the record - if you're challenging Week 1, isn't that the time you would actually enjoy flexing to a Dedicated Healer? When Healing is actually challenging to you and not boring?

Anything could happen, but given the game's history, how it's worked in the past, and how the playerbase plays now, I don't think that's really a concern. And after week 1 or 2, it wouldn't matter anyway, like as not. Groups that know the fight and avoid all damage that is avoidable could PROBABLY be 2x Support healed if their party really wanted to push that. Ones that want more of a safety buffer would keep the Dedicated/Support the whole tier. Again, what this allows is options for the party to choose how they want to do things, which I think is generally a good thing.

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Oh, I always use Recouperate (the self HP restore) on myself. If I need Cure 2 on myself because I'm out of Recouperate, Cure 2 is likely not going off in time and I'm dead anyway already. I've saved a lot of people with Cure 2. It's useful to find something like an ally DRK and follow about 30 yards behind them, using Cure 2 and Aquaveil on them and watching them destroy enemy packs. 10k heal instant cast already exists, I think, that's on AST with Benefic. I think it's 5k scaling up to 10k, and with a 4k HoT. And you can dualcast it since AST has that dualcast mechanic.

I don't play CC, just Frontlines, so melee range is OFTEN (though not always) a death sentence. The only time you can us Seraph and not get instagibbed is if a tank on your team pulled a lone enemy into your team's ranks, or on Shatter, you can sometimes get away with using it on the ice crystals (though sometimes the enemy will try killing you then, too). The problem is the healers have WAY too low HP in PvP for melee. SGE is the worst of them all. I think it has lower HP than any other Job, and I'm not sure why. The worst part about Seraph is the one time I would want to use it - when I'm Heavy/Bound - it can't be used. The one time it WOULD be useful, it CAN'T be used!

The problem with "almost half an HP bar" is (a) that depends on the Job (melee all have stubbornly large HP pools) and (b) unless LB is up, that's ALL of your damage potential, meaning if you don't get the KO, the enemy lives. Maybe CC is more coordinated, but in Frontlines, I can't tell you how many times I've gotten someone below 10% and my team just...lets them run away and potion. And if it's a NIN or something, no way I'm keeping up with them on WHM, lol Agree with Miracle, though, and that's how I use it. That or to just get some annoying enemy off my team. Like the enemy WAR that gapcloses into our party to stun and lock people down trying to attack the Ice on Shatter, slap them with a Miracle and they're unable to do, freeing pressure from the team (and often allowing people to delete the WAR)

The Regen on Purgation is HUGE. Man, if you aren't using that, you're missing out. That's like saying a SCH using Adlo on their party (or Bio on the enemy party) most wouldn't notice. You might be right that people don't actively notice it, but that's how force multiplier powers work. The sustain is actually pretty significant. Something like 1/4th to 1/2lf of your team's health over the duration, and it's AOE and passive. That's huge for survivability, which in turn means your allies having more staying power to kill more bad guys.

Problem is, CC (and PVE to an extent) is a very offense-oriented gamemode. So everything I think, I'm thinking about how it affects my offensive capabilities.

Agree we do think differently. Frontlines is offense-oriented as well, but like the PvE calculation of "Should I cast Glare or should I cast Raise on the dead DPS?", keeping allies alive means more damage to the enemy. And while Frontlines are offense-oriented, they are not always DAMAGE oriented. Take Seal Rock, for example. While kills get you points, the SS rank tomealith gives you more. If you can keep the tank at the base of the tomealth alive with healing and defensive buffs (or offense down from Spread-Bio), then your team is racking up points to win without necessarily even having to get kills. In practice, keeping your party alive DOES translate to more kills, too, mind you.

PvE is also offense-oriented, but also objective oriented. Every mechanic is an objective. Most content (not all, but most) does not have a super strict damage requirement - not one that makes any standard comp unviable, anyway. That is, if your DPS are all parsing green, you could probably clear fights even if your tanks and healers are parsing gray. Some things more than others (Ex5 has an especially lenient DPS check as long as you smartly prioritize adds in the add phase) such that, if you meet the general objectives (mechanics without deaths or damage downs), you can generally clear the damage check Enrages in this game without too many issues. A lot of PF wipes aren't people not doing enough damage. They're people with Weakness because of failing mechanics. It's why once PF groups stop having deaths and everyone does the mechanic right, you tend to get clears. Again, this isn't true in all fights, but it's true in most.

EDIT: Hm...I dunno, I just find it very limited being single target and SGE having no Deployment Tactics-like mechanic. Krasis, that is. SCH with Recitation and Protraction makes sense because I can Spredlo the super shield it generates with Adlo. SGE doesn't have that, so I tend not to think of it that way. Though I guess I DO use Zoe like that. I also often use Zoe with Pneuma because...it's a frankly absurd amount of healing. 600 + 50% is a 900 potency AOE heal for the entire party. It's like party-wide Cure 2 that also shoots a big flashy laser that...well...only does 1 Dosis worth of damage, but it still looks pretty. Party Cure 2 is just bonkers. It's actually stronger than that, since Cure 2 is only 800 potency (1/8th or 12.5% stronger). Pneuma is the same heal as Cure 3 (though DPS neutral), but with Zoe, it's probably the most powerful bulk heal in the game. AST may have something crazy, but I don't know that WHM or SCH have, under self buffs only, anything to match that level of raw healing. MAYBE Fey Illumination + Recitation + Indom on SCH.

WHM can provide more healing via sustain, and Cure 3 + Assize weave does a bit more (1,000 partywide), but requires Assize being up.

Needless to say, pairing Zoe with Pneuma can generate some nice results.

Though I didn't think Krasis boosted Kardia/Soteria healing. I guess I hadn't considered Dosis' healing to be classified as a "healing spell" as I thought the Kardion effect was kind of its own thing. But if so, that's amazing. Going to have to keep that one in my back pocket now.