Healers, then and now:

[Renathras]

Aura Fluid wasn't the only CC ability to have some dommage pack in, WAR, DRG, NIN also got theses kind of tools, and all dommage from them was cut with SB, which is something I agree with : CC should be used for CC and not for dommage. And somehow player thinks the same as todays there is an ambiant topic on dash abilities which do dommage and people want them to not to.

We cannot expect to have another class huge work before the 7.0 which dev have already started. I would love to see some healer changes, but cannot say anything else than Wait & See.

Agreed on both points. It's so weird to me that the gap closers are treated as parts of burst - entirely because they're "extra damage". Especially the ones with charges where you CAN hold one charge if you need it for movement, but that's suboptimal compared to just blowing it all at once. It's such an odd way to remove player choice since it's effectively telling players they're wrong if they don't stock them for burst windows and then blow them in burst windows.

Also agree with huge reworks. AST was considered for 6.2/6.3 or so, but they pushed it (and DRG) back to 7.0. I was pretty surprised they went ahead and did PLD, though I guess the change was ultimately "safe" (from a design/mechanical perspective) and/or was just SO needed they couldn't put it off any longer.

I can agree with you there Renathras lol. Despite SCHs toolkit is lame, yet pretty powerful shield healer. I was at the point, “fine I’ll sacrifice DPS, just give SCH better shields and mitigation.” I get what you are saying about needing another DoT tool. Either that or buff ruin 2 enough that it doesn’t cause DPS loss. I’m pretty sure….SE have to know that the pure healer and shield healer are in-balanced, both DPS and healing.

Well, Ruin 2 was a DPS loss before EW but was still used for weaving since it was a less (on paper) DPS loss than clipping weaves after Broil. Since Broil took up the full 2.5 sec of the GCD window, weaving an oGCD would push the next one and cause DPS loss, but Ruin 2 was instant, so it allowed for 2 oGCDs to be weaved in that GCD without any issues (technically 3, but there's some weird clipping due to animation lock unless you have 0 ping). Just making Broil 2 sec instead of 1.5 sec base cast would change this (since 2 sec casts still SLIGHTLY clip, but it wouldn't be as big of a skill cap as the prior situation while also still making Ruin 2 weaving the clearly optimal choice)

But yeah, agree the Pure/Barrier thing hasn't worked out at all. Barrier Healers have basically as much healing as Pure Healers via oGCDs, and AST specifically is basically a Pure/Barrier hybrid. The whole dichotomy there completely broke down within like one patch.

I suppose the fun of Fluid Aura was finding ways to utilize it. There isn't really anything to healing oGCDs since whether I heal with Tetra, Solace, Lustrate, Excog, etc the result is more or less the same. Fluid Aura, on the other hand, was always experimental in if it would actually affect the boss in relation to the knockback effect and while it certainly could cause things to go pear shaped if used incorrectly, there were times when it was worth the minor inconvenience it caused as the skill also acted as a pseudo-interrupt skill that would stop certain actions from being cast.. IIRC, the 2nd boss of Sunken Temple of Qarn was affected by the knockback and it could be used to interrupt his room wide AoE attack. Same thing with Final Sting in the same dungeon and in Neverreap in HW. Sure, it wasn't perfect by any means but it was still a nice ability to have in case it could ever be useful. The fact that we can even point out an instance within the last 2 years where it would've been useful is both remarkable and bittersweet really.

Perhaps, but then we end up with the Cover and Passage of Arms arguments - two thematic, iconic, and unique abilities that people are constantly demanding be changed or removed instead of "finding ways to utilize it". Can you imagine the hate now if you used Fluid Aura and punted the boss while the Melees were in the middle of their burst phase, causing them to lose 1-2 GCDs from their burst? The game and community - for better or for worse - aren't the same as they were in ARR. Hell, in ARR, we wouldn't even be having this conversation about damage or rotational complexity, especially not for Healers. Like, people complain SMN has just a level 50 Job rotation...but that was EVERY Job in ARR! Optimal WHM play was to refresh two DoTs instead of one DoT, and be in Cleric when doing so if healing wasn't required. SCH's was a slightly more smooth sit in Cleric using Lustrate for spot healing while refreshing three DoTs and spamming one filler spell, dropping out of Cleric if there was some major healing needed that Lustrate and Stoneskin couldn't cover. Take any DPS Job in the game that existed in ARR and its rotation was only about 1/3rd as complex and involved. Some Jobs could fit all their abilities on a single crossbar set, even.

The fact you can point out ONE mob in ONE pack in ONE instance within the last FOUR years that I don't think I've ever thought of nor seen anyone else point out as noteworthy (or even remember) anywhere else isn't EXACTLY a strong argument. I'm not sure remarkable is the word I'd use to describe that.

Doing a Google search, I can't find one mention anywhere - these forums, Reddit, the entire internet - of people saying they wished they had Fluid Aura for that one encounter. I think that's far more worth remarking on how few people cared about it. I did find threads about Fluid Aura being "worthless" and needing "fixing":

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...-Useless-Skill

Here's the second post in that thread:

Have it reduce the damage the target deals
Make it into a ground base AoE regen that turns into Asylum later on via trait so its useful in low level content and just evolves with natural progression
Make it a Palisade-esque buff we can throw on an ally to have them take reduced damage from X seconds
Make it an oGCD damage ability that generates Lilies once the Lily System is unlocked via a trait.

Literally any one of these will be better than a single target bind that is immediately broken upon anyone hitting the target.

Ironically, they DID one of those - "Make it a Palisade-esque buff we can throw on an ally to have them take reduced damage from X seconds" - in the form of Aquaveil. A case of "be careful what you wish for", I suppose, but you literally got what you wanted. They changed the name, but not so much that they didn't keep the water theme: Fluid Aura -> Aquaveil

Aside from that, a thread on Reddit where the vast majority seem to think it's worthless, and even those talking it up are often countered by people saying it was annoying: https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...lities_on_whm/

Except I only saw a handful of WHMs ever actually do that and most just randomly used it to make melee mobs fly off to the side and get rooted out of range of DPS' AoE. As someone who was maining DRG around the time of the change, I was so fucking glad they gutted it so that bad WHMs wouldn't annoy the hell out of me (and every other DPS and tank) in EX roulette.

So...I'm not sure how to take this other than Fluid Aura was not generally seen by the community as a particularly amazing ability overall (even before its nerf), and when it was removed, most seemed to be either okay with it or actively asking why it hadn't been already. Basically the same general "I don't get why you guys love X when it seemed at the time, everyone hated X". I genuinely am curious, if they removed Repose and/or Rescue in 7.0, how many of you would start talking up how useful Repose and/or Rescue were and how it was a travesty for them to be removed, even though most people today consider Repose to be a niche Deep Dungeon ability and Rescue to be active griefing. Would be an interesting experiment to see how people kinda tick on this sorta thing.

NOTE: This isn't to say missing things being removed is bad or wrong or anything like that. There are some abilities lost that I personally miss or think shouldn't have been removed - to this day I don't know why Miasma 2 wasn't kept other than maybe button bloat fears, nor why Aero 3 as a concept was abandoned (maybe they didn't want it to be a single target DPS gain, but they could have just tweaked the potency down to make it just an AOE tool in that case) - but it's more I'm consistently surprised by WHICH abilities the forum here, collectively, consider to be the big losses. Sometimes they make sense, like Miasma, Bane, Royal Road, etc. But other times...they kinda make me scratch my head.

I do believe if Repose or Rescue was removed, people would legitimately be in here complaining about it.