Paired Threads: What would it take to make Heaker kits "complex/interesting"?

[ForsakenRoe]

That’s a question the post have to answer themselves. What’s the limit of hot bars a job needs for it to make it fun to play. Solutions are a lot, but becomes bloated. Solutions are little, but becomes boring.

Personally, I look at some tools healers have and think 'wow we really didn't need to add this'. Stuff like Fey Blessing, which was added as a second gauge spender. It only cost 10 gauge though, why not at least make it 'uses all gauge, scales in potency', or 'uses 10 per tick, pulses aoe healing as AOE version of Union'? Instead they REMOVED the gauge cost in EW, and it's now functionally identical to Indom, just it comes from the fairy instead of the SCH. Protraction, Exaltation and Aquaveil are the biggest offenders of the expansion, requiring the massive bump in mit required in the current tier to even justify their existence for a lot of us. Physick, Cure1, Cure2 to a certain extent, Cure3 (cos Rapture exists), Benefic 1/2, all are basically never used because we have better stuff we can use in their place.

We have the question of 'okay but how do you avoid button bloat' a lot, and the answer I'd offer is, 'because we HAVE button bloat already, just it's bloat caused by having too many healing tools compared to how much we actually need to heal'. AST has CO, CU, Star and Horoscope. They all function slightly differently to each other, but the end result is the same, they heal for X potency, some having a 'over Y seconds' HOT component, and they're all 60s CDs. CO and CU are the worst offenders for this. CO is 200p instant, then 5 ticks of 100. CU is 100p instant (via the 'application tick'), then 5 ticks of 100p. So if one's 600p, one's 700p, both are 60s CDs, why have them both? Why not remove one (my vote is the stupid bubble), and give the other one two charges, or reduce it's CD? Why not combine Medica and Medica2 since Med2 only requires ONE SINGLE TICK to be equal to Med1? (same with AST's Helios) Why not combine Physick and Adlo, and adjust shield potency multiplier to keep Adlo's shield strength the same as it is now?

Why do we, as healers, need 15 buttons dedicated to doing 'healing'? WAR has the smallest button count of the tanks, and it's got 8 buttons that are 'tanking' related, the rest are damage stuff. No doubt someone will go 'well ackshually that is because they need those damage tools to maintain aggro' Yeh no they don't, aggro stopped existing when SHB launched with it's 'lmao tankstance is now a 25x multiplier', you could probably keep aggro with just pressing Provoke on CD at this point. Meanwhile, looking through Sage, the 'healer for people who enjoy doing damage as healer - Yoshi-P', there's 17 buttons that are 'healing' related, and only FOUR that are damage related. Partially because of Eukrasia, sure. But if those Eukrasian versions of things were made seperate buttons and Eukrasia removed, Healing would actually gain more hotbar bloat than Damage, as it's Diagnosis and Prognosis vs Dosis.

We don't need to have 17 buttons for healing and mitigation. Do we need Druochole and Taurochole (or Lustrate and Excog) to be seperate buttons, instead of trait-upgrades? They're capped by Gall/Flow so it's not like '3 Excog's in a row' is going to be OP. Or did SGE absolutely 100% NEED Pepsis? SCH's been fine without 'a way to break their shield', and they don't have a throughput AOE GCD, where SGE has Prognosis (regular), instead they made do with Emergency Tactics and it's 15s CD. And do we really need Soteria, a 90s CD that affects FOUR Kardia procs? If it were reworked so that you could use it more often, at a price, then it'd be justified in existing but as it stands it's kinda just... there. I hit it alongside Krasis and watch as I do roughly the same healing as the WAR can give themselves via Bloodwhetting, for 4 GCDs. Wow. Zoe's on thin ice too, being as we use it on Pneuma 96% of the time (the other 4 is for a scuffed Deployment Tactics by boosting E.Prog)

[ty_taurus]

We don't need to have 17 buttons for healing and mitigation. Do we need Druochole and Taurochole (or Lustrate and Excog) to be seperate buttons, instead of trait-upgrades? They're capped by Gall/Flow so it's not like '3 Excog's in a row' is going to be OP. Or did SGE absolutely 100% NEED Pepsis? SCH's been fine without 'a way to break their shield', and they don't have a throughput AOE GCD, where SGE has Prognosis (regular), instead they made do with Emergency Tactics and it's 15s CD. And do we really need Soteria, a 90s CD that affects FOUR Kardia procs? If it were reworked so that you could use it more often, at a price, then it'd be justified in existing but as it stands it's kinda just... there. I hit it alongside Krasis and watch as I do roughly the same healing as the WAR can give themselves via Bloodwhetting, for 4 GCDs. Wow. Zoe's on thin ice too, being as we use it on Pneuma 96% of the time (the other 4 is for a scuffed Deployment Tactics by boosting E.Prog)

Eukrasia is also right there, and yet so little takes advantage of it. You could very easily consolidate buttons on SGE and get more engagement with SGE's toolkit without adding a single button:

Merge Physis II and Holos: Holos is a GCD heal with a cooldown that applies a regen and increased HP recovered buff normally, or a barrier and 10% mitigation under Eukrasia. Both versions also deal 330 potency to all nearby enemies, 50% less for secondary enemies, since it has to be on the GCD to work with Eukrasia.

Merge Krasis and Taurochole into a single target GCD spell that provides the increased healing received or 10% mitigation under Eukrasia and damages enemies nearby your target for the same potency. This can also be on a cooldown.

Remove Soteria and have a GCD DPS spell that's the same potency as Dosis and grants 4 stacks of Soteria normally, which doubles your Kardia heals, or 2 stacks of a new buff that extends your Kardia to all allies nearby your target under Eukrasia. This doesn't have a cooldown, but has a higher MP cost and would be your main way to heal.

Even if we do literally nothing else, you've trimmed 2 buttons, and made both healing and attacking more interesting for SGE and also better capture the SGE brand.