Healers, then and now:

[Renathras]

Found a couple of old resources (SB era: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...NnE-zMHa4/edit and ShB era: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...kLDaOmZY8/edit ) and it got me to thinking, we talk a lot about how Healers used to be...but often without concrete, quantifiable data.

So let's have a look at that. See what was lost, what was gained, and what was more or less...the same.

And I don't mean this as an antagonistic thing. I think we should put objective terms and quantifiable measurements (DoT durations converted to casts per minute, etc) down and actually see how things really do shake down.

I suspect what we'll find is WHM and AST are comparable (in DPS kit terms) in EW/ShB to SB, and SCH, of course, losing a lot from SB to ShB/EW.

But let's find out.

[Renathras]

I'll start with WHM, since that's what I've always played and what I know.

Going from SB to ShB, WHM's DPS kit had the following setups and changes:

In Stormblood:

Stone IV - Standard nuke. Upgrade path from Stone, Stone II, and Stone III.
Aero II - Instant cast DoT, 18 sec duration. Upgrade path from Aero. [3.33... casts per minute on average.]
Aero III - Cast time AOE DoT, 24 sec duration. Separate from Aero II, still a single target gain over Stone IV. [2.5 casts per minute on average.]
Holy - AOE Spam, same as today.
(oGCD) Assize - Use on 60 sec CD for damage, slight delays for healing if it didn't cost a use over the encounter.
(oGCD) Presence of Mind - 150 sec CD to increase healing. lol, funny. Damage. To increase damage.
(oGCD) Cleric Stance - 90 sec CD to increase damage, Role Action (when you could only choose 5) that was sometimes not taken if fights required the other things instead (which were Protect, Divine Seal, Lucid Dreaming, Surecast, Swiftcast, Esuna, Rescue, Eye for an Eye, and Break; meaning this Cleric Stance wasn't even always a given.)

In Shadowbringers (and moreso in Endwalker with damage neutral Misery):

Glare/Glare III - Standard nuke. Upgrade path from Stone, Stone II, and Stone III, Stone IV.
Dia - Instant cast DoT, 30 sec duration. Upgrade path from Aero, Aero II. [2 casts per minute on average.]
Afflatus Misery - Once per 1.5 min (ShB)/1 min (EW) use ability after using 3 of Afflatus Solace/Rapture. [1 cast per minute on average (EW; 0.66... in ShB)]
Holy/Holy III - AOE Spam.
(oGCD) Assize - Use on 40 (EW post 6.3) sec CD for damage, slight delays for healing if it doesn't cost a use over the encounter.
(oGCD) Presence of Mind - 120 sec CD (30 less/more often than SB) to increase healing. lol, funny. Damage. To increase damage.
Afflatus Solace/Rapture - Instant cast, 20 sec (30 in ShB) CD. Heals used 3 times per minute to generate a Misery, which is a damage gain over Glare when placed in buff windows and is useful even ignoring that for an increase in MP economy (since it saves you 1,600 MP per minute by not having to cast 4 Glares to do the same damage.) [3 casts per minute on average.]

.

In practice, SB WHM cast Aero 2 3.333... times per minute and Aero 3 2.5 times per minute. This is a total of 5.833... GCD casts per minute that weren't Stone IV.

In practice, EW WHM casts Dia 2 times per minute, 3 Afflatus (Solace/Rapture) per minute, and 1 Afflatus Misery per minute. This is a total of 6 GCD casts per minute that aren't Glare III.

On balance, EW WHM is casting non-Glare damage (or damage-adjacent Solace/Rapture) spells on roughly the same average frequency as SB era WHM did.

The real difference, honestly, is on the HEALING side, where a proliferation of oGCD heals (even on WHM) and the healing done by Afflatus heals can largely push non-Afflatus GCD heals off of average use, resulting in more Glare casts. Afflatus spells are, of course, being cast, but as noted, these can be thought of as part of the DPS rotation equivalent to the lost Aero 2 and 3 casts, so the foregone casts are Medica, Medica 2, Cure 2, Cure 3, and Regens, resulting in more "dead" GCDs that are filled with Glare.

ONE additional note is that Stone/Glare took up the GCD, so weaving was far less of a thing in SB, and only became a thing for WHM in ShB due to Solace/Rapture/Misery allowing for it at need. SB Aero 2 refreshes were on the 18 sec cycle, so if you needed to heal 6 seconds after applying Aero 2, you had no option but to clip if you were doing so with an oGCD; note that using Swiftcast to create a window...would also be clipping since you'd be clipping to use Swiftcast itself. Solace/Rapture gave WHM 2 additional weave windows per minute, and unlike a DoT, using these is a lot more flexible. In EW, this was increased to 3 per minute, with the 4th, Misery, lining up with buff windows every 2 minutes, for a total of 3.5 averaged additional weave windows not locked to a hard timer like DoT natural refreshes...and, of course, EW Glare/Glare III just outright allow a weave.

But in a strict sense, the DPS rotation of WHM in EW is just as complex (arguably SLIGHTLY more complex) than that of SB WHM, meaning WHM in EW isn't any simpler in a DPS sense. If anything, it's that HEALING has been made simpler, leading to DPS being more bland since there are more "dead" GCDs that have to be filled with the standard nuke. (One might note here that the first line solution would be to restore the SB healing model rather than changing WHM's DPS model, since the DPS model is pretty close to identical, and the Lily based healing model of SB...sucked noodles, so the modern system is an outright upgrade in use and functionality.)

But in terms of DPS abilities, EW and SB WHM had the same number, and roughly the same use per minute of non-nuke (Stone IV/Glare/Glare III) spells.

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I'll look at the others later (or some of you may do so), and suspect that we'll get a pretty different picture in the case of SCH (obviously), though with AST...it'll look a lot like WHM given that they've only ever had Combust, Malefic, and Gravity spell lines, augmented by Lord of Crowns, though at the time it was limited to once per 30 seconds (Draw's CD) if and only if you were willing to burn the Card you had at the time. AST's differed complexity was in having two stances, its Card systems, and its generally more complex healing kit (vs WHM's)

In the case of WHM, objectively speaking, the current kit is roughly comparable to SB's in terms of non-spamnuke use on average. The only real distinction is you don't have the fire and forget Cleric (which you didn't always have at the time anyway), that it's a bit smoother in terms of DoTs, and that you have far more weave spaces and less non-Afflatus GCD heals that are needed, leading to more Glares.

That is, you don't cast more Glares because you have less DPS abilities in WHM's kit (treating Solace/Rapture as DPS since they contribute to Misery and are both a DPS gain and MP management system), it's that you cast fewer GCD heals that don't start with Afflatus, and those ones are more part of your DPS rotation (though variable in placement) than strictly heals at this point. (You use them for healing and move them for healing, but you also ensure you use them, even if overhealing, to keep that Misery rolling.)

.

Anyway, we TALK about this a lot, so I think it IS instructive to actually break it down and see if it's factual talk or rose tinted goggles talk.

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Oh, one MORE thing:

I'll see if I can find HW notes as well, but the main change for WHM there is we still had Stone 1 and Stone 2 (though you didn't use Stone 1), and we had Aero 2 as a separate DoT with a cast time instead of Aero 3. Outside of that, we had Cleric Stace as a toggle rather than CD (though, as always, I contend that's the most rose tinted goggle ability in MMO history). But in practice, the DPS kit ITSELF was equivalent. There might be slight variations depending on what those DoT durations were (e.g. if they were 18 and 24, no difference, but if they were 15 and 18, that would average out to slightly more casts, probably ~6.5 per minute, vs SB's 5.8 and EW's 6.0), but this will still be pretty close to equivalent.

So there will still be PRETTY close parity even there for WHM.

Note this is SPECIFICALLY for WHM - SCH had more in SB and I THINK even more in HW (will have to look at Cross-Class abilities on top of their own native ones), though I honestly have no idea what AST was doing at the time...so that's going to be a fun history lesson for me as well.

[ForsakenRoe]

yes it's me hello hi

I think the issue is less one of 'maths' and more one of 'feel'. We can look at the concrete maths of how many GCDs are spent on one thing or another, but maths can't explain everything. Take the WAR issue, by the end of SHB there were a fair few people that were getting concerned that, in EW, they'd add another button that the Fell Cleave button would turn into, so as to have even more 'press this button over and over'. Five Fell Cleaves, two Inner Chaos, potentially something else added to the mix, it was getting very same-y for a lot of players. Now we have 3 FCs every 60s instead of 5 every 90, which, for some, doesn't solve the issue, but for others, it does help to break the monotony a bit. I personally swing both ways on that one, I never liked 'press 5 FC' when it had no thought behind it, but I DID like 'press 6 FC, after spending the previous 90s setting up to have those 6 FC all land in your burst window', because then the ungabunga was a reward rather than just a freebie thrown my way just for being alive at the 90s mark

Back to healers, if we look at these two rotation charts I quickly mapped out (Stone is the Nuke, Dia is the short DOT, Aero is the 'long AOE DOT' as they removed it from the rotation maker. Did it this way because looking at so many Glare and Dia icons was getting hard to read and they were blurring together)





Replace any three 'Stone' casts with Solace/Rapture in that second one, based on where the healing is needed. I am not trying to pick fault with what you say, I agree that the numbers show that we cast roughly the same number of Non-Glare casts per minute as the past. The problem, I think, is that Rapture is doing a lot of heavy lifting and padding the metrics for the second picture. The problem to address, in my opinion, is not the 'number of times we press Nuke' overall, but the 'consecutive Nuke count' for each picture. In the first, the longest string of 'Stone' casts without interruption is 6. In the second, it's 12, before considering where to place Raptures. If, for whatever reason, you had to back-to-back three Rapture casts, that would still be 9 Glares in a row. Or you could ration them out and have it as exactly 4 per string, but damage doesn't really work that way in FFXIV raiding, it's pretty 'all or nothing'. And with stuff like Plenary, I find myself using two Raptures back to back, for that juicy 200 bonus potency per cast

All this is to say, it might really be as simple as just, 'bring back the SB rotation (the first pic), and put the new Lily system on top of it':



Again replace any 3 casts of 'Stone' with a Lily spend (provided you're using 3 before the next Misery). Now we've got the first pic's amount of non-Stone/Glares as a baseline to work off of, while also having the versatility of where to place Rapture/Solace as needed to heal with. I might be biased, but I can't really see how that'd be objectionable gameplay. Just have Aero 3 upgrade if we really want to get rid of every elemental theme that WHM has, we even Lost Banish as a 'target enemy, do AOE around them' spell in Bozja, with the VFX in the game ready to go.

I'd be okay with numbers like, going from 60/60 per tick on Dia (660p), to say 100/50 per tick for 18s (400p), Glare3 going from 310 back down to 300 (rescale all previous forms if needed, and Misery goes to 1200). This, according to my very quick maths, leaves us with this 'new' Aero 3 needing to do around 610 potency over it's duration, to keep WHM roughly equal with it's current potency output. 130/60 per tick puts it at 610, job done. But WHM's kinda behind on damage, so I'd propose the Banish upgrade bump that to 150p on cast, and 75 per tick, for a total of 750 over it's full duration, and see where things land. Reintroducing Cleric might accidentally make WHM way better than AST though. Might be ok if Cleric were once per 2min instead of 1min, but it'd be a lot less interesting a skill if that were the case

So to summarise (TL;DR):

- Rescale Dia to be 18s
- Bring back Aero3 (or Banish) as a 24s AOE DOT, or a 25s CD GCD that does burst damage if the debuff cap is going to be a problem (debuff caps, what is this classic wow)
- Give back Cleric as a 5% 60s selfbuff (to steer people towards 'hey use Misery once a minute') or a slightly stronger, 2min selfbuff. Knowing SE, it'll just be added as a trait to POM
- Eye for an Eye should come back IMO, but not on WHM, but instead on SCH, where it originally got stolen from
- Protect can come back but as a lower level version of Aquaveil
- Divine Seal can come back as a lower level version of Temperance, without the mit effect
- lmao Break
- Most SHB/EW stuff remains the same, only Misery's potency needs to adjust to compensate for Glare's potency change

So we'd only need 2 more hotbar slots (for A3/Banish, and Cleric). I think that'd solve most people's issues. Emphasis on 'most'. This whole 'feel' thing tracks with what I'm pretty sure I said at some point about AST. We play the same number of major arcana cards now as we did back then (four per 2 mins), but because we throw three of them at the same time during 2min windows now, the 'feel' is very different. Though, I guess we had 'the old Sleeve Draw' back then too so it was more like 6. SCH is it's own beast, GL with that one. Anyway, if anyone wants to come in here and complain that this (SB DPS skills, with SHB and EW additions) isn't enough for them, that's up to them. I'd be up for this, and I'm sure most would be, and it may well be the closest thing to a 'compromise' we'd get

[Semirhage]

I still maintain that Heavensward was a step in the right direction for WHM, after which has been an agonizing slide down the trash chute. The color of the trash chute walls changed from brown to blue-white. The ventilation changed from green to white. They painted some flowers on the walls. But unfortunately, this horrible gameplay has been around for a long time, in several different flavors, for longer than that glimmer of promise in Heavensward.

Interesting abilities that enable choice? Naaaaaah. Spam spam spam spam, that's WHM's design.

[IDontPetLalas]

I still maintain that Heavensward was a step in the right direction for WHM, after which has been an agonizing slide down the trash chute. The color of the trash chute walls changed from brown to blue-white. The ventilation changed from green to white. They painted some flowers on the walls. But unfortunately, this horrible gameplay has been around for a long time, in several different flavors, for longer than that glimmer of promise in Heavensward.

Interesting abilities that enable choice? Naaaaaah. Spam spam spam spam, that's WHM's design.

I agree, I just wanted to add - as pointed out by ForsakenRoe it isn't only WHM

[AnotherPerson]

- Bring back Aero3 (or Banish) as a 24s AOE DOT, or a 25s CD GCD that does burst damage if the debuff cap is going to be a problem (debuff caps, what is this classic wow)

Alternatively, if they want to keep DoTs as still a Soft-cap GCD skill like a DoT does without increasing debuff caps, they could just make the potency ramp up power the longer it's not being used, gaining full potency at 24 seconds. Still a worse solution compared to just extending the debuff cap itself.

[Renathras]

ForesakenRoe - Oh, I agree it's one of feel. I'm about to sit down and read your comments, but I just wanted to say that up front. It's why I talked about GCD healing being the real change here. If you're casting more Cure 2s and Medicas, it breaks up the Stonespam. Where if you have 3 Solace/Raptures built into your "DPS kit", then you're now pressing more Glares. For example, imagine if, in SB, every Aero 3 cast was an AOE Medica 2. Like it did the Aero 3 damage and DoT, but also did the party heal. That's more or less what we have now.

Semirhage - Other than Cleric, what did WHM have in HW that was "a step in the right direction"? (I say "other than Cleric", because it had Cleric in ARR, so that wasn't a change). In ARR it had 2 DoTs, a spam nuke, and an oGCD damage spell (Fluid Aura). In HW, it had 2 DoTs, a spam nuke, and an oGCD damage (and healing) spell (Assize - which also had a far longer CD). What...changed? How was it "a step in the right direction" given it had the same damage kit? In terms of the healing kit, it was getting incidental healing form Assize, deliberate healing from Asylum, and had Tetra as a oGCD spot heal. Everything else from ARR was static into HW on WHM. The Job didn't change other than getting three oGCDs, one replacing Fluid Aura's damage, one on a semi-longish timeline in Asylum, and Tetra was a less available Lustrate. And because Stone was a 2.5 sec cast, you could only weave it after Aero 1 casts, which were instant. I don't remember for sure, but I think Aero 2 casts at that time were still actual casts (not instants), so didn't provide weaving opportunities without clipping.

I'm...not trying to be snippy. I'm just confused what you think changed that was a step up.

Also found a period resource (for WHM) for HW with the tooltips:

FFXIV: Heavensward - White Mage Guide (Patch 3.07)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w06vuUAJWoQ

Oh, recall that Aero 3 was actually a 3 sec cast. So a LONG cast ( > 1 GCD) with, obviously, no weave window. Still a DPS gain over Stone, but...

I'm just curious what "interesting abilities that enable choice" you think WHM had in HW that was a step up from ARR...?

[Renathras]

[NOTE: Posting this in reply, but going to try and continue what the thread was doing - look at the past. Next up SCH...should be fun. I might let someone else do AST, since I didn't play it seriously before ShB.]

Now comments:

I am not trying to pick fault with what you say, I agree that the numbers show that we cast roughly the same number of Non-Glare casts per minute as the past.

Believe it or not, I actually DO like it when we agree. And I somewhat agree with this (and what you said right after about the strings). I think it KIND of depends on the way you look at it. Let me...try to say it this way, then you can tell me how you think I'm wrong:

Abilities with set timers (e.g. DoTs) are not skill in the sense they don't allow meaningful choice IN MOST CASES. You refresh them about as they fall off or you're wrong, not counting edge cases where the boss is going untargetable or whatever. There's no real skill expression there other than "being wrong or not", which is binary. I know you often talk about how you feel healing/tanking are binary things, and this is the problem with them; I see DoTs as binary things. There's no "you're not refreshing it on duration but you're doing something right somehow by not doing so". Your DoT ability doesn't increase its potency the longer it's not applied or something where you could have an optional rotation that still competes with keeping 100% DoT uptime. You're either right or wrong, and that's binary.

On the other hand, abilities that you can move around allow choice. It may not always be MEANINGFUL, but it is more likely to allow skill expression, even if it's minor. For example, one of my arguments related to New PLD (for the record, just as with SMN, I feel they should have kept the old Job for people that liked it but added the new one as a separate Job, because I always hold the position of "don't take away from people"; what I said in that thread you didn't reply to about Additive vs Subtractive magic) is that New PLD actually IS more flexible. Since disengages are seldom more than 1-2 GCDs, a single use Holy Spirit that you can move forward or back within a 5 GCD window is far more flexible than the old rotation, which crammed 4 of them into a Requiescat window, but you couldn't use them otherwise without a DPS loss and possibly having to push your burst if you went below 80% MP. But the new rotation, while being nominally simpler, actually allows MORE skill expression. And, of course, HS has a healing component, meaning a skilled PLD can move it around for both disengage needs and for healing/sustain needs. Tankbuster coming up? Hold your Divine Might HS until after it hits. The old rotation was rigid and you were, again, either doing it right or doing it wrong. There was no choice. The choice was doing it right or doing it wrong. But the new one actually allows you to move some abilities around, which allows for meaningful skill expression.

To me, this is more valuable (play experience/feel) and actually a higher skill cap (since skill is based on active decision making, not muscle memory with a target dummy after reading an online guide where theorycrafters did all the work for you in determining what was optimal). Skill is still needed for execution, but there's actual choice, and those choices aren't DPS losses, they're - when made well - things that allow you to either match DPS while doing things differently (choice) or even allow you to be slightly more optimal than a standard rotation (meaningful choice).

In this sense, Lilies allow meaningful choice whereas Aero 1/2 and later 2/3 did not allow meaningful choice. The ability to move them around - spacing them out or cramming them together - seems to me to be better because it IS skill expression and flexibility/choice. Where before, you had to use the Aeros at set times or you were wrong, it's not necessarily "wrong" to use a Rapture after 3 Glares or 7 Glares. It's up to the fight and up to you. And doing it well means you can save yourself some other healing resources (granted, this compounds the problem of casting so few GCD heals, but still...it's skill expression/optimization), which makes it meaningful choice that you can tailor to your playstyle, your party's strats, and the fight mechanics and cadence. To me, that seems BETTER than an upkeep DoT, not worse.

I'm curious why you think the opposite?

And, again, I mean no slight by this. I'm curious why you find a rigid, muscle memory (sorta...) DoT to be more engaging gameplay than abilities you can shift around and optimize to increase your performance. Why is the first a greater measure of skill and complexity to you than the latter?

I guess this is what I mean by it depending on how you look at it.

All this is to say, it might really be as simple as just, 'bring back the SB rotation (the first pic), and put the new Lily system on top of it':

Honestly, I don't entirely disagree. Though note bringing back the SB rotation would have to be modified. 24 seconds technically fits into 120 by 5 (e.g. Aero 3 would work with the modern 2 min meta), 18 does not, however. So assuming Aero 3 became Banish, Aero 1/2/Dia 1/2 would need to be 30 second or 15 second, preferably 30 sec since we DO have those Lilies to use in our rotations. So that wouldn't be too terrible. We'd need to free up a button or two. So what abilities are we dropping to achieve that?

Though I feel again I must ask the question: Why are DoTs so prized? DoTs, particularly ones with no ties to any of the rest of the kit (Thundercloud procs, Bardsongs, etc) are boring and uninteresting. I genuinely don't understand the drive to those over...something - literally anything - else that could be more interesting.

I might be biased, but I can't really see how that'd be objectionable gameplay.

I think it's more a question of "Why?" As I say, I'm not sure what the value of another DoT is other than "just to have one", as DoTs with no kit interactions are just...there. They aren't a skill metric, they're just a "if you don't do this, you're bad" metric. Which isn't skill expression, it's a binary pass/fail mechanic. That is, it's like taking a pass/fail test rather than a test where you actually get graded from A to F. In mechanical practice, a DoT is identical to a CD GCD. Imagine Plegma 3 on SGE wasn't a direct damage spell with a 40 sec CD but rather was a DoT with 45 potency and a duration of 40 seconds. In practice, the use would be almost identical. In fact, being a direct damage spell with a charge system, the skill expression is higher since you can choose between using on CD or pooling for burst windows, which is actually MORE skill expression than the DoT version would be.

Imagine Aero 3/Banish being not a 24 sec duration DoT but rather a 2 stack GCD with a 24 sec CD on stack generation. That's already more interesting and has a higher skill expression than it being a DoT. That is, I don't see why people love DoTs so much, when DoTs are not only the most boring kind of spells possible, but also have the lowest actual skill expression. They're a "can you see tiny icons/do you set a timer to go off at set intervals/do you use an add-on to track DoTs" check, not an actual skill or choice check.

So to summarise (TL;DR):

- Rescale Dia to be 18s

120 isn't divisible by 18. It needs to be something divisible by 120. 12, 24, and 30 all work. I'd stick with 30, just because that's what it is right now AND that we're adding more buttons to push and still have Solace/Rapture to work in.

- Bring back Aero3 (or Banish) as a 24s AOE DOT, or a 25s CD GCD that does burst damage if the debuff cap is going to be a problem (debuff caps, what is this classic wow)

Again, why a DoT? Why not a 2 stack direct damage CD instead?

- Give back Cleric as a 5% 60s selfbuff (to steer people towards 'hey use Misery once a minute') or a slightly stronger, 2min selfbuff. Knowing SE, it'll just be added as a trait to POM

How about just lowering PoM's CD to 60 sec (and balancing the duration or whatever instead)? You can't argue "that'd be a nerf because less burst window" since Cleric would already require us to reduce overall potencies of the kit since it would be making WHM too strong on the burst end anyway. Might as well just make PoM more useable, like NIN's Trick Attack. Adding Cleric as you say here is just button bloat for the sake of button bloat.

- Eye for an Eye should come back IMO, but not on WHM, but instead on SCH, where it originally got stolen from

Honestly, looking at Eye for an Eye...it was a GARBAGE ability. 10 sec duration only 10% chance to activate. Given 3-4 boss attacks in that timespan, you only have something like a 25% chance it would activate at all. It was just a worse Arm's Length. A better idea might be to take either the E4E or Arm's Length effect and give it to SCH as an ability that they get at lower level and then it can upgrade later. E.g. suppose you get "targetable Arm's Length" (or whatever) at level 40-60ish, then at level 86, it upgrades to Protraction, giving Protraction its current abilities plus that. Little less button bloat and makes Protraction a little more interesting of an ability to use for something other than just "making even more absurdly huge spreadlos".

- Protect can come back but as a lower level version of Aquaveil

Alternate suggestion: Protect comes back as a party mitigation CD (think Magicked Barrier) on a 60 sec CD. Reduces all damage for the party by 5% for 6 seconds. At level 70, it upgrades to Plenary Indulgence, which reduces party damage by 5% for 10 seconds + its current 200 bonus potency on AOE healing effects. I've said many times I think the ONE change I would really make to WHM right now is give it a 60 sec party mitigation, as literally every other Healer (even AST) has one. And there's no reason to add more button bloat, since we already have Plenary which is mainly used for high AOE damage anyway. This would mean you activate Plenary before the hit, then use its effect to aid in healing the (slightly reduced) damage. And Plenary is already one of the least used WHM abilities, so this would give it a more practical use on a more consistent basis. Win-win-win.

- Divine Seal can come back as a lower level version of Temperance, without the mit effect

Agreed. I've even proposed this myself. It's basically the first half of Temperance's effect, so why not just have it at lower level then have it upgrade to the damage mitigation at 80? Again, win-win-win.

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One more thing I'd do that you didn't:

Cure 2 MP cost reduced to 500 MP and cast time reduced to 1.5 sec, direct upgrade of Cure 1. Why?

...there's literally never a reason to use Cure 1 or keep it on your bars other than you might fear doing synced content. This would "fix" that issue of having to hot swap your hotbar. But more than that, WHM is supposed to be a strong throughput healer, but all its spells cost more than AST's for identical effects. Since WHM is already using Solace/Tetra to minimize Cure 2 use, this wouldn't REALLY change much, but would free a hotbar spot and make WHM slightly preferred for "single target heavy damage fights"; which, as they don't exist, would change nothing in a practical sense. In other words, this would change literally nothing except we'd need to retire the FreeCure trait.

...oh nooooooo... /sarcasm

So we'd only need 2 more hotbar slots (for A3/Banish, and Cleric). I think that'd solve most people's issues. Emphasis on 'most'.

0.

By reducing PoM's CD and NOT adding Cleric (I know some of you guys - and I genuinely don't mean this as a slight, I think it's just a psychological thing or...something - REALLY want SOMETHING that is "Cleric Stance" related, but we don't need it. Hell, rename PoM "Cleric Stance", I don't care), and by merging Cure 1 into Cure 2, we need no new slots since Aero 3/Banish would take Cure 1's slot and PoM is just hit twice as often.

This whole 'feel' thing tracks with what I'm pretty sure I said at some point about AST. We play the same number of major arcana cards now as we did back then (four per 2 mins), but because we throw three of them at the same time during 2min windows now, the 'feel' is very different. Though, I guess we had 'the old Sleeve Draw' back then too so it was more like 6. SCH is it's own beast, GL with that one. Anyway, if anyone wants to come in here and complain that this (SB DPS skills, with SHB and EW additions) isn't enough for them, that's up to them. I'd be up for this, and I'm sure most would be, and it may well be the closest thing to a 'compromise' we'd get

I agree with most of this, though.

So in summary:

- Dia stays the same
- Aero 3 (upgrades to banish) as something of a 24 sec duration (either a 2 charge ability with 24 sec CD or an AOE DoT with 24 sec duration - the former is clearly better than the DoT...)
- PoM CD reduced to 60 sec. Possibly renamed "Cleric Mind" or something...
- Protect as a lower level 5% damage reduction, 60 sec CD 6 sec duration, upgrades to Plenary Indulgence at level 70 adding the AOE heal boost effect and increasing duration to 10 sec.
- Divine Seal as 20% healing magic boost for 10/15/20 sec (whichever), upgrades at level 80 to Temperance
- Cure 1 upgrades to Cure 2, which has Cure 1's cast time and MP cost. FreeCure trait removed. And literally no one will care.

That could work. My preference for Aero 3/Banish is obviously as a ranged Plegma, since that actually has a higher skill ceiling and is more interesting/less annoying. CDs are far easier to track than DoT debuffs on bosses. The game's UI is just TERRIBLE about showing you DoT information, but really good at showing you when abilities are close to coming off CD/getting another charge since those are actively on your bars as long as you have them on a bar that's visible on screen.

Though note that these changes (either of mine or yours here) would be White Mage being the most complex it's been in the game's history. That may be a "that's not saying much" statement, but it would actually be true that it would be the most expansive and complex DPS kit in WHM's entire history in FFXIV.

[Renathras]

Next up, SCH:

In Stormblood, SCH's DPS kit consisted of the following:

Broil II - Standard nuke. Upgrade path from Ruin, Broil.
Ruin II - A stand-alone side-grade from Ruin, potency equal with Ruin, so DPS loss vs Broil I/II. Lower MP cost than Broils (higher than Ruin 1) but instant cast. Useful for movement or OOM periods. Could be used as a oGCD weaving tool. [0/situational casts per minute]
{Bio (I) - Instant cast DoT, 40 potency over 18 sec duration. [3.33... casts per minute on average.] } (Directly upgraded into Bio II, from all I can tell, as of 4.0)
Bio II - Instant cast DoT, 35 potency over 30 sec duration. Standalone in HW, but now direct upgrade. Lower potency, longer duration. [2 casts per minute]
Miasma - Cast time DoT, 24 sec duration. [2.5 casts per minute on average.]
Miasma II - AOE "spam" spell...but only just. 100 potency + 20 over 12 sec (4 ticks) 5 yard AOE instant cast, but cost 1680 MP. DPS loss vs Broil on single target (so not part of the standard rotation/situational casts per minute), but DPS gain over Ruin 2 if you were close to the boss and needed movement and also had an overabundance of MP (if you did not, Ruin 2 was the preferred choice). Mainly shoehorned into an AOE damage spamnuke since SCH didn't have Art of War at the time. [0/situational casts per minute]
(oGCD) Shadow Flare - Free, instant, oGCD, ground targeted, 15 sec duration field effect DoT with a 60 sec CD. NOT A GCD, so did not change the GCD button use.
(oGCD) Bane - 1 AF cost, instant, oGCD, spread existing DoTs from target to enemies within 8y. 10 sec self-CD. Obviously not used in single target fights.
(oGCD) Energy Drain - 1 AF cost, instant, oGCD, 150 potency attack. Used for MP management or AF stack dumping.
(oGCD) [Debatable] Dissipation - 180 sec CD, increases cast time healing spells and grants 3 AF.
(oGCD) Chain Strategem - 120 sec CD, increases crit chance against the debuffed target by 15% for 15 sec.
(oGCD) Cleric Stance - 90 sec CD to increase damage, Role Action (when you could only choose 5) that was sometimes not taken if fights required the other things instead (which were Protect, Divine Seal, Lucid Dreaming, Surecast, Swiftcast, Esuna, Rescue, Eye for an Eye, and Break; meaning this Cleric Stance wasn't even always a given.)

Selene also had 3 abilities that have somewhat been lost, all oGCDs:

(oGCD) Silence - 1 sec Silence, as noted in the write-up, this was essentially never ever used anyway.
(oGCD) Fey Caress - AOE Esuna on a 20 sec CD. Also essentially never used.
(oGCD) Few Wind - 3% attack, cast, and recast speed for 30 seconds. Generally used pre-pull and then not touched again (Eos and Selene had different AI, and Eos's was so much better people almost never used Selene), but potentially useful for speed kills. I thought this was folded into ShB's Fey Illumination, but I can't find that ability tooltip at the moment, so I'll have to dig more later. In any case, an extra DPS buff, but haste wasn't always considered useful (just like today) since it messes with people's rotations and alignment. Still, this could be thought of as ROUGHLY equivalent to New SMN's Searing Light, I suppose?

I also like this description of Dissipation from the author of what was clearly a VERY pro-"Green DPS"/Healers should do damage author, kind of amusing considering our discussions here recently of the ability and that, even back then, pro-damage SCHs were poo-pooing it:

Ruthlessly murder your fairy in exchange for 3 stacks instantly. Also grants you a 30 second buff that increases your healing by 20% for the next 30 seconds. However, you are unable to summon your fairy during that time.
I would say this skill is debatable. I personally do not know a single Scholar that uses it, and I do not use it myself. I would say it’s good for that extra tiny amount of damage if you don’t need the fairy for the next 30 seconds, or if you ran out of stacks for some reason and absolutely need one right now. That second scenario shouldn’t happen unless something went terribly wrong though. Trading the fairy just doesn’t seem worth it to me.

So that was then, time for now:

Endwalker SCH:

Broil IV - Spam nuke, now only 1.5 sec cast allowing for weaving Upgrade path of Ruin, Broil, Broil II, Broil III.
Ruin 2 - Same as before, situational use instant cast movement tool. Same MP cost as Broil (but 100 more than Ruin I), so no longer an MP conservation tool. No longer needed for SINGLE weaves, as Broil IV allows single weaves. [0/situational casts per minute]
Biolysis - DoT with a 30 sec duration. Unlike WHM's, doesn't have up front damage so is NOT a movement tool. Directly analogous to Bio II in SB. [2 casts per minute]
Art of War II - Instant cast AOE spamable centered on the caster. Actually does more damage than the other Healers' AOEs (vs Holy's 140/150 and Gravity's 120/130, it does 165/180); Miasma 2 replacement, does NOT do more damage than Ruin 2.
(oGCD) Energy Drain - 1 AF cost AF dump, does 100 potency of damage (50 less than SB), does some healing but does not generate MP (it did in ShB, but that was folded into the Aetherflow button itself)
(oGCD) [Debatable] Dissipation - 180 sec CD, increases cast time healing spells and grants 3 AF.
(oGCD) Chain Strategem - 120 sec CD, increases crit chance against the debuffed target by 15% for 15 sec.

SCH had some "intangibles" change, like better pet AI and more responsive pets, and gained additional healing tools like Seraph and a magic damage reduction on Fey Illumination, making it the undisputed king of mitigation and oGCD healing. However, it's clear it lost things from its kit. UNLIKE WHM, though, which substituted more frequent DoT reapplication for Afflatus GCD casts, SCH got no Lily abilities to fill dead GCDs with, creating a net change. Let's have a look:

Bio II had the same cadence as Biolysis today, so we can consider that in parity. 30 sec duration vs 30 sec duration, nothing really to discuss. The big changes (to the GCD cadence) were the following:

Miasma 2.5 casts per minute were removed.

Ruin II at least 1 cast per minute was removed (I say "at least" since even with 2x natural Bio II refreshes for AF oGCD weaves, you'd need one more. Remember that Broil at this time did not allow weaving without clipping. It would be more than 1 per minute if you were needing to weave more things). Ruin II was also niche useful as a MP management tool owing to the lower MP cost vs Broil III, something that is not shared with EW's Ruin II vs Broil IV. "At least" 1 is due to needing to burn at least 3 AFs per minute (for Faerie Gauge - lol - if nothing else, and obviously burning with ED since you don't want to leave that potency on the table), though this could be higher depending on whether or not you were able to use natural Bio II refreshes for oGCD weaves and that SCH also has a lot of OTHER oGCD weaves besides just AF.

Miasma II was a single target loss against Broil III and only situational as a replacement for Ruin II for movement or weaves. So we can say it's here, but it kind of also wasn't EXACTLY part of the GCD cadence and is more properly looked at, in a general sense, as a wonky version of Art of War. Still, you could trade that "at least 1 cast per minute" from Ruin 2 down here for hyper-optimization. The MP cost was so prohibitive that this would often be passed up for Ruin II anyway.

...short list, but actually more significant than it seems. As I noted above, unlike WHM, there were no replacements for these "at least" 3.5 GCDs per minute, so they were shunted to additional Broil casts. Broil IV allowing oGCD weaves also removed Ruin II/Miasma II's use in single target situations away from being optimal parts of the rotation and an MP management tool for Ruin 2 into being situational for heavy movement (in the case of Ruin 2) or high levels of oGCD weave needs, and in the case of Miasma II, being shunted to a strictly AOE role in the form of Art of War. So while "at least" 3.5 stands, in practice, it was probably closer to 6 assuming weaving 2-3 oGCDs per minute.

Note that this is largely an EW change, not a ShB one, since using Ruin II for oGCD weaves was still commonplace in ShB due to Broil's longer cast time. Broil's shorter cast time today is what really changed things for SCH honestly more than anything else, since Miasma I's removal aside, it altered how many Ruin IIs were used in the standard/general rotation for BOTH weaving AND movement - a 1.5 sec Broil IV allows for a lot more slidecasting, which can handle all but the longest distance and longest duration movements.

Unlike WHM, which filled those "dead" GCDs with 2.66... Afflatus abilities in ShB and now 4 in EW, SCH not only replaced the missing 2.5 Miasma casts with Broil IV, but it also replace a lot of the situational Ruin II and Miasma II casts with Broil IV, compounding the problem even more. And unlike WHM, which got better from ShB to EW, SCH actually GOT WORSE.

I'm not even sure I need to go into the oGCD kit, since I think the above already shows an outright massive change and glaring problem, but for the sake of completeness, SCH also lost (in short summary):

(oGCD) Shadow Flare - 1 weave per minute even on single target (free damage).
(oGCD) Bane - AOE/trash packs only, approximately 1 weaves per minute.
(oGCD) Few Wind - Highly situational, but an option for speed runners or optimizers. 1 cast per minute/60 sec CD.

It only actually lost one use on CD 1/min oGCD, one optional 2 (ish) per min oGCD (in practice, Bane was "the AOE Energy Drain" if you REALLY think about it), and a highly situational and largely unused 1/min Fey Wind. And sure, Cleric, whatever (at this point, recall it's just a slight buff once per minute used on CD...riveting...)

But if we are thinking in terms of "breaking up the monotony of Broilspam", the actual culprit here ISN'T any of that.

.

The actual issue seems to be the removal of Miasma, Miasma 2/Art of War no longer having any use (even situational) in single target fights, and Ruin 2 having a MUCH reduced presence with Broil's shorter cast time.

oGCDs don't affect GCD cadence (for obvious reasons), and since collectively everyone discounts oGCDs (no one counts Assize or using Tetra as "breaking up Glarespam", so the only time ED or the like should count is if Broil has to be substituted with Ruin 2/Miasma 2 to cast them; that substitution is the actual break in the GCD Broilspam, not the oGCD weave), isn't the actual issue.

Indeed, it seems Broil's shorter cast time and Art of War not having single target applications are actually the big changes here. Broil's shorter cast means no need to switch up spells for oGCD weaves most of the time, and slidecasting is a stronger movement utility, removing as much need for casting Ruin 2 instead of Broil. Add in Art of War not being a single target gain over Ruin 2 and you basically eliminate everything other than the two natural Bio refreshes per minute.

Huh...

SCH's Broilspam is actually worse than WHM's Glarespam?

....

Checks out. Top SCH on Proto-Carbie has 148 Broil casts (with 14 Bios, 2 Ruin IIs, and 1 Adlo GCD heal) vs the top WHM having 141 (with 15 Dias and 6 Misery just under 7 min fight, 18 Raptures and no other GCD heals). SCH uses more oGCDs, but if we're talking about the Broilspam/Glarespam, Broilspam is actually...worse.

And doubly so since SCH before had more non-Broil buttons it was hitting (even ignoring oGCDs) than WHM had non-Stones...

.

Funny, but looking at SCH actually makes me think EVEN MORE that WHM in EW is actually the best WHM has ever been... o.O At the VERY least, EW WHM is a step up from SB WHM and from ShB WHM.

[ForsakenRoe]

about to sleep so i'll keep the response brief-ish (ok ill try to, no guarantees)

- dots and management of them is often one of the highest skillcap mechanics in a game like this. the choice of when to refresh them is not as binary as you might think, enemy count, time before they die, when they will go invuln, relative potency of the dot's expected output in that timeframe vs just using another glare, all have to be considered. if the dia is about to fall off, but the boss is going to jump away in about 10s, you would potentially be better off just using glare instead of dia. or if you're able to, prime and fire a misery so you can take advantage of the downtime. 'when to refresh thunder' is a HUGE part of BLM skillcap. and as for BRD, you missed the part where dot management WAS BRD's gameplay. their song effects only triggered when their dots crit back in SB, widely considered to be 'peak BRD gameplay era', so snapshotting them with an IJ refresh inside the raidbuff window to maximize their crit rate was an important factor in the gameplay

- which takes us to WHM. TBH i don't actually care much if aero3/banish were to be a dot or a phlegma-like, i just lean toward dot because it was a dot in the past. if they wanted to make it a 2charge burst GCD like phlegma, that's fine by me. others might complain about 'homogenization' though. i do think WHM doesn't really suit the idea of 'dots', i feel like it's aesthetic is more about burst so i can see it going either way

- the dots dont have to be a divisor of 120 do they? we don't exactly have many examples left, but BRDs are 45, MNK's is 18, PLD's was 21 before they axed it. we don't 'have' to refresh everything inside raidbuffs every time, in fact the idea of 'well we could clip the dot to snapshot raidbuffs, at the cost of X ticks, how many ticks is low enough to make that decision worth it' sounds suspiciously close to optimization. on a real though, i've been very upfront about wanting dia to be rescaled to 12s. the issue with that is though, you'd end up with a new rhythm of 'dia every 5th gcd, banish every 9th'. unless banish was made into a phlegma then it might work out ok

- yeh, the point of cleric in the suggestion actually was to be like trick, i even had nin in mind when i thought about it. a mini burst at 1min, and a bigger burst for the 2min window. trick and mug. lancecharge and dragonsight/litany. riddle of fire and brotherhood. cleric and POM. the stuff DRK does where it uses some of its stuff at 1min like BW and carve, then dumps eveything on the 2min like 2 shadowbringers, all its mp, BW, carve, delerium, living shadow. if POM were made a 1min CD it'd be kinda boring, the duration would be too short for it to feel good as is. maybe if they made it into like, 'next 5 spells are cast instantly and have 1.5s recast time' it'd be interesting. like MCH hypercharge speed

- Eye into Protraction is actually a really good idea and im angry i didnt think of it, rescale it so it's effect is guaranteed on the first strike but cannot be refreshed by subsequent strikes, and change it's potency/duration to compensate for it's guaranteed effect. or balance raid damage output around it's existence, either or

- Protect evolving to Plenary also works, though i'm not sure about the 6s duration you listed at lower levels, 10s would be fine, by the time you hit content where that level of 'being picky about pinpoint balancing' matters (so, ultimate), you would already have the upgrade. unless we shuffle stuff so we get Rapture at 70 and Plenary at 76, which would be real nice for UCOB/UWU because WHM has like, zero mobility in them, very rough. if this were to make it in, i'd expect the mitigation of CU on AST to get bumped up in duration. i 100% disagree with the assertion that Plenary is one of the least used WHM skills, at least for personal experience, if i have to press Rapture, Plenary's getting hit too. if anything is 'underused' for me as WHM it's Cure3 and it's not even a competition. why Cure3 when i can lose no damage by using PI Rapture

- not mentioned it in this thread, but i did in another one or three, yes i'd also have cure1 upgrade to cure2, same with benefic1 into 2, and physick into adlo. i'd also have medica1 upgrade into medica2, and helios into aspected helios, for extra space saving. pretty sure they'd find a way to keep freecure though, they always do. though freecure isnt even the stupid one, no i'd say that honor goes to the 'benefic has a 15% chance to make next benefic2 guaranteed to crit' on AST. how did that survive until now

oh yeh one more thing to add on, a lower level version of Misery earned in the 50-60 range, and does the damage of 4 casts of Stone3, so people can get into the idea of 'prioritise lily heals first, they make the big damage'. think i called it afflatus tragedy in my pitch, maybe some other negative sounding word could work. move stuff around to make room for it if needed, we don't need thin air at 58 move that back into the SB levelling zone where it came from, there's a gap at 62 it can go in