Healers, then and now:

[Renathras]

But i think the biggest changes is "Healers need to gcd to heal" to "Good healer make few uses of healing gcd", and i'm not sure people would love to go back as using gcd for it. Personnaly I would dislike to.

Technically, WHM is still a GCD Healer, it's just not obvious since Lilies are damage neutral and instant cast, so it kind of "hides" it. WHM only has 4 oGCD heals, and of them, Assize is used on CD for damage, not held for healing, so Tetra is the only shortish one (60 sec CD) and is single target. Asylum is 90 and Lilybell is 180 sec/3 mins. There's not a LOT of healing required in the game right now, but there's a BIT more than THAT. Solace/Rapture fill the gap, and you get 3 of those per minute. They just made them not feel like GCD heals (no casts) and useful for your damage rotation and MP management, so people don't think about it, I think.

Ren stuff

Still don't think DoTs are terribly engaging and shorter is worse than longer...to a point. I think 30 sec is about right. Usually around 25 sec is when I start thinking "I haven't thought about Dia for a while...yup, about time to refresh". But that does work both ways, as 45 sec is a bit too LONG. That's about the time I've remembered to check it twice and it still not been up yet and I start to just totally forget it. If you want a high skill ceiling DoT, make it a 49 sec duration... <_<

9 sec? I don't THINK anything was ever that short, but I didn't touch BRD back then, so no idea. That's like...ever 3rd/4th GCD. o.O

Looks like only BLM survived all these years. Surely a coincidence, huh

I've said more than once that BLM is the Tardis of FFXIV, complete with anti-paradox shielding making it immune to changes in the timeline.

...somewhat ironic given the name of its level 90 capstone ability, but I consider that BLM just rubbing our faces in it.

I'm not really sure that the Monk fantasy is "striking like a piercing spear or arrow", but... I think it's more "offtank with meh defense but high health and a mix of offense and utility skills - not spells, we aren't dress wearing wizards! Oh, and we PUNCH people. With our BARE HANDS because who needs a weapon when you're a badass?"

Like, I tend to think of Monk (the archetype) as like Alya from Chrono Trigger, FFTactics Monks, Zell from FF8, or Amarant from FF9. Fist fighter, light armor, high HP pool, very high strength, abilities like Chackra (health and MP regen), line/aoe attacks, punch/kick techniques, and (rarely) a low % chance of working revive (FFT Monks actually had Revive, a lowish chance of success lesser Raise; Raise restored 50%, Raise 2 100%, Revive 20%). So a more physical, less magical RDM. Monks in MMOs alst have a history of being pullers (feign death) and/or off-tanks.

...FFXIV does none of that either, lol

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As for Medica vs Medica 2; it's more that you can spam Medica (not the best choice, but it makes sense mathematically if you need the healing) but doing so with Medica 2 is actually an inferior result since you'd be clipping the HoT and since it costs more MP (not massively more, though, so...) Though...hm...is Medica 2's first tick up front or after 3 sec/server tick? It doesn't seem to have an up-front tick when I spam it, but on the other hand, the tick seems to consistently go off before the follow-up cast registers and they do approximately the same healing anyway. It just seems odd to have something that does less as an "upgrade". If Medica 1 already had the HoT and was weaker...but then it wouldn't be as useful if you need to spam it below level 50. Though if the game just had Medica 2 and Cure 3, I suppose that covers those bases well enough, though Cure 3's 10y range is only half Medica 2's 20y. Medica 1 to Medica 2 is a range upgrade, though, from 15y to 20y... And Medica 2 does cost more MP to cast. Upgrades costing more MP made sense when we had variable MP pools, but not when they're fixed at 10000 from level 1 to level 90.

I dunno, the more I think about it, the more okay with it I'd be, honestly. It still FEELS weird, but in a practical sense, it's not so bad given WHM still has Cure 3 as its other AOE and that, at worst, Medica 2 is about damage neutral. Though maybe drop the MP cost down to 900 with Medica 1. Because. That's why.

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And I don't think Protect would step on AST's toes too much. First, because WHM had it FIRST anyway. Second, because AST already has 3 party mitigations per 2 mins between 2x CU and Neutral Sect. Temperance might be stronger than Neutral Sect, but if so, just give Neutral Sect a damage mitigation and call it a homogenized day. CI also does 10% reduction, which is why I specifically said that Pro-Plenary would do 5%. Still mitigation, but less so, as Temperance does 10%. And AST not being better than WHM at literally everything for once might not be a bad thing.

Why is something that doesn't automatically neatly align considered "clunk"?

I'm honestly not even talking about raid buffs, I'm more talking smoothness of play. I guess it depends on what you consider good cadences, but a lot of wonky numbers are weird to remember and disrupt rather than enhance play. Ever play a game where the controls were so clunky, every time you died, you could LEGITIMATELY blame the controls? That's what I mean when I say clunk. Stuff that just...doesn't work well and feels bad.

I've messed with the HUD a lot but never found a good way to have it show just the things I want it to show. And there are sometimes things besides my own that I do want to see, like Mug and Chain Strategem. I'm with Roe that they should have it on the "engaged target list" on the right hand side. That might honestly be the best way to do it. But in general, I've never seen a good MMO UI for DoT tracking. It's one of (not the only, but one of) the reasons I hate DoTs so much. I've seen add-ons that do it SO much better, though..."better" to the point of braindead and annoying "CHECK YOUR DOT! IT'S FALLING OFF!" type sound ques that ALMOST play the games for you (again, WoW abounded with these, and the community expected most players to be using them anyway, but especially players of DoT classes like Warlock)

I don't mind bleeds in a game like Remnant: From the Ashes, but it's also blatantly obvious when you have them on the targets because you see the string of damage numbers of a tick per 0.5 sec or whatever, so it's super easy to see when they've fallen off because the number string stops. No timer tracking, no add-ons needed; the game actually makes it apparent when your DoTs ARE and ARE NOT on the target. Also helps that a lot of DoTs actually change the enemy's model (e.g. progressive frost covering, coated in green if poisoned, little fires on their clothes/body if burning, etc)

HW seemingly ended on a very different development direction compared to how it started, I guess in reaction to how the average player took difficultly spikes seen in the likes of ThordanEX and Gordias.

I more or less talked this out as did Roe, so I'll kind of leave it for now other than to reiterate what I said above, more or less. As I said, 4.0 to present is essentially "A Realm Reborn, Reborn", and as Roe said, the Devs have already indicated they don't want to go back to 3.X. So using 4.X as the baseline makes the most sense.

As far as WHM itself goes. Yeah for sure, WHM is the best it's ever been in terms of relevance. I don't think anyone with any sense is going to deny that? I can think of 2 times in past expansions where WHM was a must pick for Savage (Gordias and Deltascape), on both occasions it wasn't because WHM was a powerhouse, but rather it was because one of the alternatives was just plain bad (AST for Gordias prog was a struggle right from A1S, SCH wasn't as bad but it still fell noticeably behind Noct AST in 4.0).

Right, but this is the first time it's kinda good in its own right, not just because its competitors were garbage. It may even be meta on some fights, I dunno, but it's definitely holding it's own well and is in the best shape it's ever been in both rotational and functional and feels ways, imo

Even so, it's still not perfect.

Nothing is, but I think it's close. I think the real thing it's lacking right now is that, while having no buff utility game, it ALSO has (almost) no mitigation game. This wouldn't be a problem if it wasn't the ONLY Healer this is true of. AST being a Pure Healer with 3x mits kind hurts, but this more affects the feels. Even 4 man bosses use big attacks at a rough cadence of needing 2-3 mitigations per 2 minutes or so, and even though it's "irrelevant", WHM is the only Healer that can't provide them. The Plenary change is honestly the only thing I think WHM absolutely needs at this point.

It's too mindless to play below Savage.

I mean, every Healer is. But that aside, I never understand this argument because I play it the same way I play it in Savage. The only real distinction is that I never have a need for Medica 2 or Regen, and only use Cure 2 situationally (mainly if I have 3 Lilies, a Misery ready to go, but it's the second wall to wall and a boss is about to come up and they're almost dead; would rather go into the boss full on resources and open with a Misery, so I'll Cure 2 the Tank in that very specific situation). But in terms of using oGCDs and mitigation and such, I do that (on all the Healers) even if I'm doing 4 man content. I make it a game to myself to go through dungeons not only using only oGCDs (Lilies aside) for healing, but also using most/all of them at least once to kind of cycle through them. I do the same thing on the other Healers, and it actually made me better on them, particularly SCH, since it got me more used to using the CDs I was much more rarely touching.

For sure part of it is a content design problem, but job design has to take a part of the blame as well.

I really don't think so, honestly. I think the problem is that content design has shifted, and Jobs were shifted partly with it, but not completely, leading to the disconnect. But I think that IS a combat systems and encounter design problem.

Taking away healer utility from ARR and HW was an awful decision.

I'm trying to think, but what utility do you mean? Protect? Stoneskin?

Just a small correction, WHM absolutely did not have MP issues in SB,

Hm...I may be thinking of HW, then. I remember some point WHM having REALLY bad MP economy. Other than 6.0, that is.

Thin Air did absolute wonders for the job

Okay, make that TWO things I think need to be changed about WHM: Old Thin Air I liked a lot. New Thin Air is growing on me as a Raise tool, but it's kind of clunky to double weave Swiftcast + Thin Air + Raise, especially if you have a macro on any of the three to try and prevent the other Healer from blowing Swiftcast (it never works, but, we do it anyway with the hopes SOMEONE reads /party...)

If you dropped the current EW Lily/Misery system onto SB WHM, it would have been highly competitive.

Fair enough. And more or less what I've said about how good WHM is right now.

The only real difference between SB and EW WHM is Aero 3 vs Lily/Misery and that our DoTs don't have wonky timers. Of those, readding Aero 3 and having it upgrade to Banish if they want to keep the Light/Umbral theme could work, especially if they combined Cure 1 and Cure 2. Though I still think it as a blast CD with 2 charges would be the better option than another DoT.

Quick correction,
Miasma II did 25 potency per tick over 12 seconds, giving it a total potency of 200 (only 30 potency less than Broil II) and making it a lot more useful as a weave tool (even for single weaves) provided you could afford the MP cost.

Was that a buff sometime during the expansion? I think it was 20 early on...but either way, you still end up with the same use-case - Miasma 2 if you were close to the boss and had ample MP for a DPS gain and needed movement or a double weave/unclipped weave / Ruin 2 if either of those conditions weren't met.

or a smooth alliance raid run at all given how gentle and infrequent damage taken happens,

I kind of scratch my head whenever people say this. People die in 24 mans all the time, so healing kind of IS needed. You can meet it with oGCDs most of the time, true, but it's definitely not "gentle" when attacks deal over half a party member's HP in damage. Standing in bad often isn't fatal but it's CLOSE ENOUGH to fatal that if they aren't healed they'll die to the next raidwide, or if they weren't healed from the prior one they'd die. And some of the unavoidable damage does hit rather hard. Halone's 3 hit AOE will knock a lot of players down in the 10-20% health range, and I'm not sure passive generation will heal them up before the next raidwide or not. Haven't tried it...

I don't disagree with making GCD healing useful. I very much agree with that, in fact. I think WHM is basically there, just that their non-Lily heals need to be brought into the fold. It's one reason I suggested before to remove Rapture and Solace and just make all their GCD heals generate 1/3rd a Blood Lily like that. SGE could do a similar thing with Toxicon, they just...don't want the barrier to be damage neutral for whatever reason. Probably to encourage more oGCD only healing. But both of them EFFECTIVELY have a solution to the problem, they just need a bit of a nudge.

SCH and AST, on the other hand...I don't even know how to begin. Maybe for AST every GCD heal generates a stack of Lord of Crowns up to 3 stacks or something? But maybe that'd be too boring and require them to rework Minor Arcana...

Though, strictly speaking, it's probably not BAD if there's an oGCD focused Healer. SCH in ARR and HW was quite popular for this reason. SGE could be today if it actually...had a DPS rotation to make that its actual core identity.

This sort of thing continually happens to Scholar, it seems.

I mean...you aren't wrong. It seems to just be "The Scholar Curse", since FFXI also had some weirdness with SCH. It's somehow (almost) always powerful, yet at the same time, always just has weirdness with it. And yeah, for all the talk people have of WHM being the boring one, the data and feels seem to show that SCH actually is. When we don't count oGCDs (which we don't for WHM, so... ...but we do for AST..........so....... /shrug)

One SLIGHT correction, though: SCH also got Miasma 2 in...HW, I think? It doesn't have it NOW, mind you, but it DID receive at least that. I think it was because the direction for SCH early on was damage based, but its damage was shunted to oGCDs instead.

One other thing: Afflatus doesn't really do ED for the simple reason ED is a competition between using a resource for healing or damage - something the Devs haven't liked since they first tried to remove it in 5.0. Some players love it, some hate it. For those who hate it, WHM is a more perfect version of that system. For those that love it, SCH's version they prefer, but there's no AOE version since Bane was removed. Oh, and you do have breaks. Exactly two of them, like clockwork, per minute. Riveeting, I agree. <_<

It really goes to show how you can have oGCD focused Healers, but they need to actually have their play centered around that - SCH did up until SB then got it wiffed - or alternatively, you can have a GCD centric focus, but you have to lean into that fully to make it work - ShB and really 6.1+ EW WHM for that example.