For those who main/semi-main a DPS (e.g. DNC, RDM) but like Healers...

[Renathras]

Oh, sorry missed this.

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As you note, "on these boards", which do not encompass the entirety of the playerbase. Indeed, there are around 10 people that post frequently. It's a pretty tiny microcosm of the community as a whole. Note this isn't a "majority" argument, but the reason you don't see agreement is that. Moreover, it's been clear from the critiques. The people opposed to the idea don't enjoy current Healers, so they want none to remain as such. Some even specifically mentioning wanting to play particular Jobs by their aesthetics, so they are unwilling to surrender them. This was shown in a past discussion where the only allowance for a Healer to play like today was if it was a new Healer Job added and WASN'T one they found the aesthetics of compelling to play.

You shouldn't take that to mean that I'm literally the only player in the game who disagrees with the stated "good design" that my idea supposedly doesn't comply with.

1) I don't get the point in mentioning it if it's true now and would be true then, but let's just call this a "we agree" and move on.

2) I think the disconnect here is that not everyone agrees this is "shitting the bed". Some people enjoy different things. Turns out, some people ENJOY what you call "shitting the bed". This is the entire point of the proposal - to have different Healer Jobs so people that enjoy different things have...well...those things to enjoy.

3) "Reaching 80% of CPM from just the 5 most cast actions is literally current WHM" and the problem with this...is...? What? What is inherently bad about this? Again, some people happen to like that. It's like saying every Job in the game needs to be BLM because anything less is "boring", or alternatively, saying no BLM-like Job should be allowed. People state this as a bad thing, but not why other than they personally think it's bad game design. As to the "which people", again, people who play the game and think like I do. There are at least 3 in my FC alone. I'm not sure what you're suggesting here. Do you SINCERELY think that no one else thinks like I do on this topic? In a game of 1.5-2 million active players, that I'm literally THE ONLY HUMAN BEING who thinks as I do? What on earth would you use to support such a claim?

Second set:

1) You would think, but I've proposed it in the past and been told by the same posters here that it's impossible since it would require changing literally every encounter in the game (for reasons they can never justify and despite this change clearly happening in the reverse from SB to ShB without them changing every prior encounter) and thus it is impossible to do so the only solution is more damage buttons. We've had that actual conversation here, and I've banged my head against that wall more than once.

2) This one - oddly given the above - there's more consistent agreement on, btw.

3) My belief is that things that "cost more" should be more powerful. In this sense, costing more in either cast time, MP, or both. If we had a Cure 4 spell that cost 4000 MP and had a 5 sec cast time, it should be something like 3000 potency of healing, for example. Short duration (60 sec or less) oGCDs shouldn't be more powerful than spells that actually have a cast time, MP cost, and incur a damage loss. Using Cure 2 means being rooted for 2 seconds, losing 1,000 MP, and losing 310 potency in a foregone Glare. Using Tetra means you...can't use Tetra again for 60 seconds. There is no damage loss, no MP loss, and no lost mobility. Solace is in a similar vein, btw, except in that case, you're also foregoing a Rapture but in return have a potential DPS gain if placing Misery under buffs (if not, it's neutral still, though). Some people have argued oGCDs are more punishing because you lose use of the oGCD itself...but that's the Megalixir argument "What if there would be a better time to use it later?!", and for short duration CDs, it just doesn't fly. Especially when you get into cases like Divine Benison or Essential Dignity that have charges so you can keep one in stock. Note that an often praised game in terms of healing here, WoW, doesn't have "oGCDs". It has cast time spells and instant cast spells, and those are your options.

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WHM: You're going to have to explain this. I said nourish the Blood Lily (e.g. contribute to a Misery) not generate a standard Lily (that can be used on Solace/Rapture). E.g. casting three Medicas in a row would allow you to cast one Misery. How is this broken, exactly? The cheapest spamable heals are Regen and Cure 1, which both cost the same amount as a Glare, so you're not generating tons of free MP via Misery casts in place of Glares. Right now, the reason "Lilies are an MP management tool" is because you substitute 4 Glares per minute for three Solace/Rapture + one Misery, so 4 less Glares is 1600 MP. But if you just chain casted Cure 1 for a minute solid, you'd generate 6 Miseries...but you'd be doing this at the cost of 24 Cure 1s. And note that the actual heals you'd typically be using would be Cure 2s for single target and Medica/Medica 2s/Cure 3s for AOE (depending on situation), so you'd be spending more MP not less, I think. 18 Cure 2s + 6 Miseries per minute = 18,000 MP vs 20 Glares + 4 Lilies = 8,000 MP. Even if we kept the 3 Solace/Rapture + 1 Misery in the Cure 2 case, that's 14 Cure 2s + 3 Solace/Rapture + 7 Misery = 14,000 MP. I'm confused where you see infinite MP/"without MP limitations" coming from?

(Misery is worth 400 MP per CD, btw. I'm sure that was a typo, just saying it for clarity. )

Though I do think it's funny that Freecure would actually be...relevant. I hadn't thought of that, lol.

The only issue with it that I can tell is "But why have Glare at that point other than one just feeling bad about overhealing?"

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SCH: /shrug

I guess that was kinda the point. Something generally acceptable to everyone. And considering how often people say they want SB SCH back (not HW, SB), it seems the safe bet.

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AST: I think being able to swap Dirunal/Nocturnal in combat would be too powerful. As long as the Pure/Barrier split is in effect, it would make AST the ultimate Job since it could freely adjust on the fly. It arguably already is because it's a Pure Healer that is also 1/2 Barrier Healer when it wants to be. Neutral Sect pre-EW gave AST a taste of being able to swap in combat, but without making it unlimited. (I think it's funny you think the WHM proposal would be unbalanced but that a combat swapping AST wouldn't be. ) And being able to change at any point that ISN'T in combat is already more flexibility than any other Healer Job has or would have.

As for the rest, I didn't mess with AST much before ShB - because it was even MORE to my dis-like prior to ShB (and is still the one I like the least) - which is why I'm so deferential to what AST players want. I do think a starting point of "SB AST, just with some kind of RNG protection and some way to not make Balance fishing a thing again" would be the most practical.

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SGE: You may have missed it, but I did address this: "Kardia healing would now be variable based on the attack used to generate it."

For a simple sake of argument (BIG FAT "THESE ARE PLACEHOLDER NUMBERS FOR THE SAKE OF EXPLANATION NOT AN ACTUAL PROPOSAL", just to be clear), let's pretend for a moment that SGE had three damage spells in a sort of combo. Let's call them "Jolt", "Thunder", and "Flare" (since we all know RDM well enough to see the general connection). Let's say Jolt generates 150 potency of healing to the Kardia target(s), Thunder generates 250, and Flare generates 400. The total combo would generate 800, meaning properly performing your 1-2-3 combo in this simplistic structure would result in the equivalent of casting a Cure 2 on your Kardia target every 7.5 sec. (maybe we could use 75/125/200 for a total of a Cure 2 every 15, which is close to a Solace, but you get the general idea). You would thus want to perform your combo CORRECTLY in order to ensure maximum healing. Any combo action used out of turn (e.g. casting Thunder without Jolt before it or Flare without a Jolt-Thunder before it) would only generate 100 potency of healing, and be both a DPS and HPS loss, obviously. Doing this enough would require using the fallback heals (Diagnosis/Prognosis) to make up the difference, which would return HPS to neutral but at a further DPS loss and possibly greater MP costs, taxing your sustainability over a long enough fight if you do it too frequently.

The goal of this design is that your various CDs enhance Kardia effects. So think like Soteria for more healing, "Pankardia" for party healing (the above-mentioned "party-wide Kardia on a 1 min CD") or "Dikardia" for healing a second target like with shared tankbusters (again, on a CD), and so on. Aside from that, SGE would have damage reduction abilities (like the reduction of Kerochole), but reduced healing. Aside from Kardia, if SGE wants to refill health bars, it has to use Diagnosis/Prognosis. No more Physis 2, Ixochole, Kerachole, Holos healing. Shielding is fine, but not healing. Kardia is for healing, and Kardia requires doing damage.

Note: The damage rotation would probably be more than this with some kind of rotation via "Ready" procs or the like. For example, suppose RDM's rotation was Jolt-Fire-Thunder-Stone-Aero-Resolution. You could have some system akin to that for SGE with Pneuma being the big line AOE at the end that also does a big Kardia heal and possibly an AOE heal like it does now.

oGCDs that remain, aside from the mitigation ones, would include Zoe and Pepsis, and possibly something like WHM's PoM or BRD's Raging Strikes (which would increase the Kardia heal procs for its duration).

Does that make more sense to you as far as what I'm aiming at here? Because it sounds like your critique here was what I already proposed...

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Cure -> Cure 2 is my alternate proposal. It's the one I've actually pitched for a while. I've just seen the Cure -> Esuna pitched by some people and like it just as well. The problem with Cure -> Cure 2 is that Cure 2 has a longer cast time and MP cost. Esuna does not. The shorter cast time and debuff removal qualities would legitimately feel like an upgrade, whereas Cure -> Cure 2 would feel like a downgrade due to being slower cast (less responsive) and more MP expensive. Note that unlike pre-ShB, our MP pools are fixed at 10,000, so we don't have growing MP pools over time to support more expensive cast spells. Cure 2 cost 2.5x the MP of Cure 1 and has a 33% longer cast time. And the Esuna being a separate button would retain this functionality of "that case you're too low on MP for Cure 2 and/or don't have enough time to cast a Cure 2 before the target takes fatal damage". Cure -> Esuna would preserve (and slightly improve the latter) functionality there, even if it is generally considered niche today.

Note that Benefic is a particular exception to this rule, as Benefic 2 has the same cast time and only a modest MP cost increase. (Honestly, given AST's insane MP economy, I could almost be convinced they swapped WHM and AST's MP costs for their Cure 2, Medica, and Medica 2 equivalents by accident...)

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EDIT:

It's kind of like arguing to greatly reduce traffic by making people not idiots. It's a simple idea, but not so simple to execute upon. The lack of responsive, mobile, and GCD-stackable oGCD heals would greatly change the viable tuning of fights.

To be fair: That's if none are instant cast. Solace is a GCD. Solace is instant cast. Solace is actually used FOR movement where Tetra isn't.