Healer Suggestions Megathread

[Renathras]

I will never for the life of me understand people's fascination with DoTs...

Anyway, let's have a look.

36 abilities - some seem to modify from things, so maybe fewer Hotbar spots? My general rule in life is that a Job should have ~30 abilities, give or take, 25-35. 29 is EXACTLY how many you can fit on your bars and still have three spots left over for Sprint, Limit Break, and Potion (Mount in the field) and fit comfortably on two crossbar sets (32 total buttons) on controller. While Keyboard users have some more flexibility (and those people that swear about "press and hold" controller toggles, but I hate those personally and apparently so do a lot of other people), it still stands to reason that 30, or three times 10, is a lot of buttons, so a videogame class should generally not NEED more than that.

It looks like Bio, Miasma, Adlo, Succor, Leaches+, and the Faerie Abilities seem to have a lot of combining, so the total is probably around 30?

Likes:

- I LOVE modifier buttons, ESPECIALLY on SCH, which seems to play into the tactician class fantasy. While most people have hated it, I've loved Emergency Tactics since the time we got it. I like the idea of buttons that get more mileage out of other buttons, and de facto give you several more abilities for the price of one. For example, ET gives you a Cure 2 version of Adlo and a Cure 3-ish version of Succor. Eukrasia gives SCH three more abilities for the price of one hotbar slot.

- I KIND of like that you reworked Aetherflow to be more your "Tactics Gauge" that enables use of various strategems (said modifier abilities)

- I somewhat like the Grimoires. I think (and am guessing this was your inspiration) that it was how SCH worked in FFXI, which a lot of people seemed to generally like. In essence, a Red Mage that leans itself more towards either Black or White Magic at any given time. On the one hand, this could be Cleric Stance problems, but it doesn't penalize your healing, per se, as you still have the base version of your healing spells and have your Faerie heals. And it has a really short CD, so it generally won't be too damaging if you use it at the wrong time as you can still use Physic 1/2 while waiting to swap over to White, and Black doesn't affect anything other than your base two DoTs, so you don't have any real reason to need to sit in it all the time such as for general Broil Spam, so it doesn't have the Cleric "you need to be in this all the time" issues. Overall, a good take on that system that's much more thematically consistent and pays homage to Scholars of Final Fantasies Past.

- This version of Broil IV is much like the Ruin 1/2 interplay in ARR where Ruin 2 did the same damage and was more trading MP for mobility. Personally I'd make it AOE that spreads DoTs, but you have Deployment Tactics doing that and it doing more damage than Art of War would make THAT ability meaningless.

- Button Bloat, while initially seeming to be there, may actually not be bad at all considering how much double-duty various buttons are getting/giving to others and how the Faeries work.

Neutral:

- I like Chain Strategem as a name (comes from Sun Tsu, very fitting for the tactician class fantasy), but I also like Libra. I'd rather have them both as separate abilities, but I'm neutral towards this change.

- Kaustra does 2x Broil 3's worth of damage? Seems like Energy Drain now, but meh, I don't hate this, just kinda neutral about it. It does have non-Deployment required cleave, which I suppose is nice.

- While the Aetherflow modifier effects are interesting, it might be TOO MUCH to put on AF, and like you say, I'm not sure if they're balanced against each other. I do like them in general (the abilities) as I said above, though. Just not sure if they should all be AF spenders.

- You didn't include levels, but I have to wonder how this will feel to play in synced content or while leveling up for new players. Right now, it's a little weird, but you have Whispering Dawn for low level content and Eos generally will heal dungeons below level 20 with just a rare Physic for touch-up healing. Without Embrace and Whispering Dawn...how's that work? Granted, Physic and Physic 2 could fix that problem if they were gained at low levels like Cure and Medica, but...I dunno, just something to consider.

- This may have one of those things like SMN where it feels too intimidating to new players since there SEEM like a lot of buttons, but once worked out, it's actually far simpler. That's not inherently a bad thing, just something to note.

- I like that you work both Eos and Selene into the mix, although a part of me likes being able to Faerie-Glamour. Though SMN allows that for the Egis, so maybe that could work here as well where you could make them have whatever appearance but it's "officially" Eos and Selene, respectively. Again, I like the Grimoires, so that's cool they're tied to them AS LONG AS you can have them up all the time...and they still both have Embrace...but.........well, I'll get back to that.

Dislikes:

- You removed several abilities that I actually like - Emergency Tactics (as I said above; though I do understand why), Whispering Dawn, Sacred Soil (WHICH IS ICONIC), and Expedient. While you replace SOME of these, I don't like how they were done. For example, I don't like Expedience's movement speed being tied to Black Grimoire and split up.

- It also appears that you've removed Embrace/Faerie auto-heals? I kind of dislike that...a lot. That's ALSO been iconic to SCH, and is one of the things that makes SCH enjoyable to play in things like solo Deep Dungeon runs or even general field content like Maps or Eureka/Bozja exploration content. It's useful if you're stunned/frozen, since she can still act independently, which has some niche uses (like if you get frozen by the big tree Hunt Mark in Garlemald, she will continue healing you and party members), and plays into SCH working differently than WHM/AST (which have to cast a Regen spell in advance) or SGE (which has to actively cast damage spells to generate Kardia). Likewise, cases where you need to heal someone from afar, like standing on the Atamos platforms in Crystal Tower where you can send Eos forward to heal the Tank out of your range, and where you can do this in general encounters NOT ONLY for her abilities to be where they'll hit party members, but also to heal people outside of your own normal reach. Embrace is one of the cool things about SCH that people often overlook, but has a lot of neat uses, and I wouldn't want to lose that.

- Removing iconic abilities and mechanics is not going to go over well with everyone (SEE: SMN rework), and I don't think I'd like all of that as a result, either.

- While I like the idea with GCD heals/raises/shields refunding damage (2x Broil 3 means it is damage neutral as long as you aren't overwriting it early), the shield breaking bit seems just a bit TOO homogeneous with SCH. It might work better as just "when cast" instead of "when the shield breaks".

- You didn't fix the problem of 1.5 sec Broil 3 cast making Ruin 2 redundant. Might have been before you started posting here, but in the "Healers: Then and Now" thread, I pointed out that making Broil 3 1.5 sec cast removed Ruin 2's use for GCD weaves and LARGELY as a movement tool. Broil 3 should probably be 1.7 or 2 sec cast (the former would still allow weaving) or something. But as the former seems weird and the latter makes oGCD weaves clip...I guess we're stuck with it either way. But without some additional effect. Ruin 2/Broil 4 won't really see a lot of general use.

- I generally dislike DoTs. I don't mind them AS MUCH if they are working into the kit as a whole (as this seems to do), but even then, I don't love them, I at best tolerate them.

- I'm not a huge fan of procs or proc-like effects, especially when I'm focusing on something else. Damage procs on a Healer are generally going to be annoying. While the Fester and Aetherflow aren't QUITE that, they're somewhat close TO IT. So unless the Job Gauge somehow displays when they're ready, I generally won't like it. BLM Xenoglossy I don't mind since it's easy to track with the gauge, but RDM Verfire/Verstone Ready are not, and I dislike those. Same with BRD Mage Ballad reducing the cast time on your single target and AOE oGCD attacks, since it's not super noticeable unless your eyes are down on your hotbars, which I think is generally bad design since it reduces awareness of the gameplay field and fight mechanics. (It's ALSO why I hate DoTs since they tend not to display well on the native UI of literally any MMO I've ever played...)

.

Overall, despite the negatives, I don't hate this. A few tweaks - don't remove iconic abilities, consider some abilities not costing Aetherflow, less restriction on beloved abilities like Soil/Expedient, try to cross the streams a little less with SGE, etc - might make it pretty workable. And I do like the call-backs and homages to past FF Scholar incarnations.

Overall, not at all bad.