Healers, then and now:

[Renathras]

I won't speak for Semirhage but I do want to point out Aero 1,2,3 were all available for WHM during Heavensward. There was also the interaction between Cleric Stance and Assize that determined how potent the skill was in terms of healing/damage as well. Minor things to be sure but still an improvement to ARR.

One of the reasons I'm using SB is it's data I can actually FIND. HW I vaguely remember...but it's been a while and I was in the military at the time so had a lot less time to theorycraft (and remember everything from the time anyway). Though I'm again confused how DoTs "enable choice". As I've said, you're either refreshing them within 3 sec of their duration or you're doing it wrong UNLESS the boss is about to die or become untargetable, in which case refreshing them is doing it wrong. Where is the "choice"?

One could argue (as ForsakenRoe has) that it's still skill ceiling/expression (I disagree, but that's at least a debatable point), but I fail to see how it's a CHOICE expression, unless choosing to do it wrong is somehow a valid choice for optimization purposes somehow?

I'm not meaning to be snarky, I just don't think "choice" is the correct term here.

To show what I mean: Contrast New PLD.

A Holy Spirit is 30 less potency than an Atonement, but provides a 400 (Tank) potency heal and allows for more disengage. Obviously, using too many will screw with your MP, but an occasional second HS/non-Divine Might HS in place of an Atonement is actually viable. The difference in DPS is negligible, and if that 400 potency means a Healer could use another damage GCD, would potentially be a party DPS gain. Now this is an interesting choice. An ability that is very flexible in use that can allow to trade a small amount of damage for extra utility in the form of either positioning and/or sustain allowing an additional Healer DPS spell in some circumstances.

A LESS interesting example that's still a choice would be a WHM casting 4x Glare vs 3x Lily + Misery. The two are damage neutral, meaning the player can choose between them. Now, this isn't as interesting a choice since there's literally no reason to do the 4 Glares (even if you aren't using the Solace/Rapture Healing OR putting Misery under buffs, the Lily option is still saving you 1600 MP, not to mention the mobility), you CAN choose between them without any detriment if you aren't going OOM, which we almost never are since Glare is still pretty cheap and Lucid pretty powerful for what it is. It's not an INTERESTING choice (unlike the PLD case which is a "not quite equal but close enough that the utility could be argued to be preferable), but it is A choice where both options are valid.

Contrast DoTs. There is a right way and a wrong way. That's it. If you don't reapply the DoT and the boss stays on the field, your "choice" is objectively wrong. You're doing less DPS and not saving anything or making anything up by doing so. Unlike the Lily choice (where you're saving MP and providing party healing and possible damage buffed Misery) or the PLD choice (where you're sacrificing a bit of damage for some more sustain and mobility/positioning/disengage), letting your DoT fall off is getting you nothing. There's no trade-off where there are cases it could be the better option in a static boss fight. Indeed, the only time it IS the better option flips the coin over to the other side - the boss about to die or be untargetable? Well, now, REAPPLYING the DoT is the wrong choice. There's no trade-off for having done so. What did you gain by doing so? Not healing, not MP, not any utility. In the case of WHM, you can use it as a poor man's Ruin 2 (the up front damage means you can use it for movement; it's a DPS loss if you have a Lily to use instead, but it's a DPS gain over doing nothing in the case you don't have Swiftcast+Glare or a Lily up - its actually the ONLY Healer DoT that has the up front damage and CAN be argued to very rarely be a DPS gain to spam [briefly]). That is, there's no "Trade off" where you're losing something but gaining something (PLD case) or where you're not gaining anything but you're not really losing anything/anything meaningful (4x Glares instead of Lilies; you're technically losing 1600 MP, but that's not hyper-significant, so it's an ALLOWED choice, even if it's a BAD choice - it's inefficient, but not a LOSS in terms of DPS/etc)

...but having your DoT fall off and not refreshing it has no such trade. It's just the wrong option. Unless the boss is going untargetable/dying, in which case REFRESHING the DoT has no such trade. It's just the wrong option.

Get what I'm trying to say?

For a choice to be a choice, it has to be something that either (a) isn't a loss to do or (b) is a trade, losing some thing here to gain something there that MIGHT credibly be argued is equal or slightly greater in some situations.

DoTs - at least standard Healer DoTs - don't do this. The only one that AT ALL does this is Dia if you're using it as a spam movement tool. But that's not even that common. The only time you might do this right now is 4 man pulls (once you Dia all the first pack but aren't to the second pack yet and have already Regen'd the Tank and have no Lilies, you can spam Dia a few more times as you're still walking as you're still getting a slight DPS gain from the chip damage by doing so; again, ONLY Dia works this way of the Healer DoTs, and it's a pretty marginal gain). When it comes to a standard boss...

Well, I'm beating a dead horse/restating myself.

Hopefully somewhere in there I managed to explain what I mean well ENOUGH.

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I thought I'd been clear, but perhaps not.

Let me try to say it this way...

I feel the focus of Healers should be healing and support (mainly buffing/debuffing) as a general rule and don't enjoy complex DPS rotations. WHM's current DPS rotation is acceptable to me. I'd rather it not have a DoT because I find DoTs both boring, annoying, and horribly uninteresting unless they do SOMETHING other than "refresh on duration", but it's acceptable. I just don't want MORE of it and feel this has been the level of DPS buy-in of WHM since ARR, and definitely since SB, so I don't think that's asking a lot.

That is, I don't mind simple damage rotations - on par with what WHM already has - on Healers. I just don't desire anything more complex. I don't mind SOME Healers having more complex rotations (as I've noted before) as long as not all of them do, and I don't mean "how about a complex buffing rotation instead?" I wouldn't find a SMN level rotation too terrible if the Healer was specifically designed for it (SGE with Kardia; I've pitched this idea several times), but WHM is not, and so shouldn't be.

The problem with buff gameplay is that FFXIV isn't well built for it. The combat system is too rigid. I mean, this is a combat system where old Arrow had to be changed because giving players a Haste buff was, for most Jobs, either almost not beneficial at all, or for a few, actively detrimental. Where any other game would have haste buffs universally (or nearly universally) a damage buff, in FFXIV, it could actually be a DEBUFF. This leads to really narrow options for utility and buffing, unfortunately. And the high paced combat style doesn't work well with things like camps and party buffs that you'd get from old school MMOs, which is honestly probably why they removed Protect and Stoneskin (the one you could actually cast on people not in your party)

I get what you're going for, but if it was me, I wouldn't make some contingent "activate" spell. They should just be buffs, and they should be GCDs, if that's what you're trying to make.

But that's in a general sense.

If you're talking just AST, as I said, it's the Healer I'll never play outside of hyper-casual tinkering around (I've healed Experts and current 24 mans with it and I like to know how all Healers work so I can work with whoever I get paired with in roulettes or PF, but I probably won't do much else), so I have no strong opinions since it's not a Job I'll main unless I have legitimately no alternative.

...and if such was the case, your idea there is pretty "complex". So I wouldn't be a fan of it, honestly. Seems too burst focused as well (something I don't like at the best of times anyway). That is, it's JUST about everything I'd hate in a Job other than having a DoT. Except it also would have a DoT anyway. XD

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Nah, I like WHM and will probably keep playing it. I like SCH from time to time, and SGE is alright when I want to think a little less, I guess...but WHM is the Job I started with, it's been more or less the same all these years, and I like it now as much as I liked it back when Syrcus Tower was released (2.3 when I started playing). And I loved it then, as it was then, too. Loved it then, and I love it now. It's still fun to me after all these years, and it has (as I've demonstrated) APPROXIMATELY the same general playstyle it's had since SB. Just better (seriously, SB WHM really sucked due to the Lilies being AWFUL; EW's is just as GCD active and more flexible.)

But none of that was the point of this thread.

The point of this thread was more to look back at WHM, SCH, and AST and see how they, today, compare to their historic versions going back as far as I can find good data for, which is SB. Considering with the ShB changes, many people complained and said they wanted SB back, and most people think SB (not HW) was the height of Healing (and arguably Tanking and possibly DPSing) in the game, it seems the most logical place to compare against.

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The short versions are:

WHM today is roughly equal in complexity and slightly greater in flexibility and meaningful choice than SB (shares the Healer overpowered oGCDs and the 2 min burst issues of the present game as detriments afflicting all Healers and, indeed, all JOBS; but actually does a lot of healing with GCD Lily abilities which replace its extra DoT casts in SB)

SCH today is SIGNIFICANTLY nerfed in terms of main rotation, with 2.5-6 (or more) "dead/empty" GCDs that now must be filled with Broil, and worse, without Ruin 2/Miasma 2 for weaving breaking it up, that's even more Broils since you no longer need to use a non-Broil ability to weave oGCDs. This has led to SCH actually being the most Glarespam of the Healers, not WHM. It seems like it definitely needs some of its SB kit back, but the biggest change actually seems not to be the Miasma 1 removal, but rather that Broil is now not 2.5 sec cast, meaning less Ruin 2s (Miasma 2s when close to the boss) to break up the Broilspam.

AST today...actually has the exact same DPS kit as it did in SB. But its Card have been gutted to hell and back, and it traded some more interesting oGCDs (Time Dilation and Celestial Opposition as an AOE Time Dilation) for several oGCDs that are more or less clones of WHM (or SCH/SGE) abilities (Divination vs Plenary, Celestial Opposition is now Assize without damage, Neutral Sect is Holos I guess...etc). In other words, it did what New PLD did. (I've described Tanks as that they were a three sided pyramid and now they're a triangle with WAR, DRK, and GNB being the points and PLD just being a dot in the very center; AST is now this for the Healers)

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Collectively, this indicates the focus of Healer Job changes right now need to be on ASTs having...SOMETHING to make up for all they lost out of their kit that gave them a reason for not having anything other than Malific, and SCH having either Broil go back to 2.5 sec CD and probably re-add Misama or...well, SOMETHING that would give SCH a reason to use Ruin 2 more and/or something else to break up the Broilspam.

WHM, on the other hand, is oddly complete by comparison; its SB incarnation with the major issues it had at the time (MP economy, competitive damage with the other Healers, and a viable GCD healing model) all fixed.

My normal "4 Healers" pitch aside, I think what I explained above about the three Jobs leaves no doubt that SCH and AST both need some serious looking at (even if you disagree with me on WHM, I think it's undeniable the other two need serious help in terms of kit/gameplay)