Originally Posted by
Renathras
In a nutshell, though, my proposed changes would amount to:
1) Encounters that require more consistent healing. Low difficulties would still have this, but the values would be so low that novice players could cover it with GCD heal fallbacks. Harder fights would actually make this threatening where the healing has to be addressed in a consistent manner. No more fights with lots of damage and then 45 seconds of nothing at all happening. This change would reduce the ability to address all healing with oGCDs, while still allowing oGCDs to be somewhat powerful for the Jobs that would continue to rely on them.
2) More somewhat randomized damage, like boss random targeting of players or continued auto-attacks of Tanks while prepping mechanics/casting. This was done in HW and was also generally well received for what that's worth. Again, this wouldn't hurt Jonny Casual as casual content would have the damage low enough they could handle it with their fallbacks if necessary.
3) A general reduction in oGCD power for Healers...but with caveats. Specifically, some Healer Jobs would be designed to work with their oGCDs being a source of their healing, and so they would be tuned to that end.
After those changes were made, since they're kind of essential:
1) WHM would largely play as it does today, with a few minor changes. First, a Protect spell (that Traits up to Pro-Shell and then Plenary with the Pro-Shell effect as a mitigation tool - WHM presently has less frequent mitigation than BLM. Yes, BLM. Addle has a lower CD than Temperance [lower reduction, true, but the point is, BLM can engage with party mitigation more frequently than WHM, and that's just silly]). Second, I'd honestly make it where all GCD heals nourish the Blood Lily. The point of this is to make WHM the GCD Healer...that actually USES its GCD heals. The Lily system has been admirable at trying to give this feel, but it's like saying SMN is just as much a Caster as BLM. While true in terms of the way the servers treat the Jobs, sure, but players routinely call SMN a Ranged that has the Caster icon because of all its instant (GCD, but instant) casts. WHM should be encouraged to engage with its GCD heals, not slapped with a big damage nerf for using them. It would also allow use of interesting abilities. WHM's GCD kit has redundancies, but with some tweaks (and looking back on its spell history...), they're more diverse than "Rapture vs Solace". Cure 3 vs Medica 3 vs Medica (when its MP cost was lower and it was actually what you used after Medica 2 while the HoT was still ticking) was a choice for how to deal with a problem based on the situation at hand. We no longer have that. Rapture is always the correct answer. Regen is a nice and pretty powerful heal...that we only use pre-pull because Solace is the DPS gain and Regen the DPS loss. Same with Cure 2. By making the GCD heals damage neutral, it means min/max damage optimization - which people here insist is the only thing that matters - isn't part of the decision on which heals to use. Instead, which heal is best for the situation is the decision on which heals to use...which it should be. MP management actually mattering would also be a consequence of this, though again, for casual healers in casual content, this wouldn't be something limiting them too harshly. But for skilled healers in high end content, this would be a serious consideration. For example, there could be a world where Medica 1 has lower range than Medica 2 and lower total healing, but has half the MP cost making it far more efficient when low on MP vs Medica 2 or Cure 3. Medica 2 could have some trait that has it work like Criterion regen where the power is boosted if the HoT is on the target, but with it having a higher MP cost than Medica 1. Cure 3 would have its higher MP cost, but apply its healing instantly in a big chunk, useful for stacked mechanics where the party also needs to be topped off quickly. Now each is actually a meaningful choice based on the situation, the party's positioning, the Healer's resources, and the encounter mechanics.
2) SCH I would mostly revert to the SB version. As I discussed in the Then and Now thread, SCH was the most harmed and is, today, the most "filler-spamy" of the Healers; the meme should be "Broil-spam", not "Glare-spam" (funny irony; WHM is about tied with SGE as the LEAST filler-spammy of the Healers). Specifically, with Broil being a 2.5 sec cast, it gave Ruin 2 (and Miasma 2 if you were in close to the boss and had ample MP) reasons to exist. Ruin 2 was both a movement tool and a weave tool that was optimal to use for weaving (even non-ED oGCDs), even though it was a damage loss vs Broil, since Broil oGCD use would be clipping and Ruin 2 allowed for more distance movement. Miasma 2 was actually a DPS gain, but at the cost of more MP, adding MP management into the mix here as well. The changes from SB I would want added would be the improved pet AI, and the capstones added since SB (Seraph/Consolation and Expedience), since those have been useful and interesting additions to the kit. We would also be reverting to (I believe it was ShB when we lost it) the changes where pet abilites were triggered by the player but didn't count against the player's ability use, allowing more effective weaving and allowing players to create macros for them if they wish. Aetherpact can remain as a boosted Embrace, but...I dunno if we want to just dump Faerie Gauge or try to salvage it into something useful. The goal here is to return SCH into its last "good" state, SB, while not taking away the actual improvements that would have made it better, such as better pet AI and utility like Expedience.
3) AST I'm not entirely sure what to do with. I play it enough now that I can speak more authoritatively on it than I used too, but I don't at all main it, and I know people that main it tend to like the opposite of what I like in terms of rotation and encounter approach. Where I enjoy reactive healing, AST is all about pre-planning. And where I like low APM Jobs, AST is all about bursts of high activity. Since its inception, it's had a higher APM. It was long the only Healer whose spam-nuke had a low cast time to facilitate frequent weaving, and every iteration of it has had a lot of them. So where if I was making AST for people like me, I'd make the card effects into GCDs (that boost the next Malific by 100% stacking to 5 or some such to facilitate a Draw/Play series of actions if needed), I also recognize that a lot of AST players would hate that because they like getting carpel-tunnel. So instead, I'd propose returning towards SB, but with a few modifications. The first would be to have two sets of Draw and Play, probably Major and Minor Arcana. One set would be damage increasing abilities, the other utility. The first might be X% flat damage, Y% added crit, or Z% added direct hit, with the ratio being 1:2:3 like BRD songs are. The utility set would be a damage reduction ability, a movement speed increasing ability, and a haste (spell and skill speed) ability. Next, I'd massage RNG a bit by allowing stocking of any card the AST chooses. This would allow, say, the damage reduction ability, if not needed now but needed in the future, to be "stocked" for later use at the time it matters, instead of pre-SB where it was just wasted or Royal Road fodder. I'd...also bring back Royal Road, because while I personally hated half of AST buttons being both oGCDs and card related...some people loved the hell out of that, and liked being able to modify cards to increase effectiveness, duration, or give them an AOE effect. AST's damage kit and healing kit don't directly need to be changed, since they're more or less what they were. Some more recent effects could be added to existing ones - for example, Exaltation or Intersection's damage reduction/shield could be a trait addition to the Bole card (there's no reason Cards can't get improvements with Traits at higher levels, now is there?). Oh, and one more little change that I'm sure (sarcasm) no one would really care about or notice - return Diurnal and Nocturnal stances. No, not hot swapping in battle. Pick one or the other, but the option is now there again. I feel that would be a pretty welcome change.
4) SGE there are two possible ways to go with it. One is to leave it exactly like it is today. The reasoning being it's always been this way, so there aren't any complaints from people about it having some core part of what they liked about its identity or function changed. That is, possibly even moreso than WHM, there's a strong argument to leave SGE as it is, since this is all its ever been, and this is what all players of SGE knew they were getting (more or less) when picking it up any time after the first month or so of EW, if not before. The OTHER argument, however, is that SGE was billed as effectively a DPS that heals by doing damage. In an ideal world, we'd add a new Healer and split the apple that way. But for the sake of argument (since the first of those is already known; we know how SGE operates now, so "leave it as it is" is self-explantory), the second version would be to really double down on the Kardia system. Kardia healing would now be variable based on the attack used to generate it. Most of SGE's oGCD heals would be removed. SGE's purpose is to heal by doing damage, not to heal by casting heals, oGCD or GCD. Correct performance of the rotation would lead to consistent and large Kardia heals, and SGE would have abilities that would amplify Kardia. One would be an oGCD that makes Kardia AOE for a short duration (say 10 sec) on a 1 min CD. This is the "Whispering Dawn/Fey Blessing" type of thing that Physis 2 and Kerochole are used for now. Another would be a short duration (10 sec) second Kardia that can be placed on a second target (e.g. the OT after a shared tank buster). Think Synastry, just in this case, Kardia procs. SGE would retain mitigation effects from Kerochole, Ixochole, and Holos, as well as Holos' shield, but would lose the healing associated with them. Again, its healing should mostly be happening via Kardia. I haven't quite worked out the damage rotation (or specifically, how to do it), but something on the order of RDM's Caster rotation, with the big finisher being Pneuma instead of a Melee combo with spell stingers on the end. Properly executing the damage rotation would build resources that could be used on Pneuma casts, which would lead to big healing. Where WHM is the GCD Healer in this system, SGE is the opposite take, being a GCD damage dealer that provides healing to the party by properly performing a damage rotation (peppered with some mitigation and Kardia modifier use) instead. Where WHM would be focused on GCD heals and do damage as more of an afterthought, SGE would focus on GCD damage spells and its healing would be the almost afterthought instead.
...of course (laughable given the length of this post), this is more an overview. Though at least the first three of these are pretty self-explanatory. The SGE rework is really the only one that would require more in-depth explanation, but the point of it is to make it heal by doing damage and appeal to people that prefer dealing damage and like their heals to be something they throw on the side as a result of performing their damage rotation correctly. A Healer analogue to GNB for Tanks who like a more (Melee) DPS playstyle, this SGE would be the Caster equivalent, playing more like a RIFT Chloromancer + a WoW Disc Priest or something.
Each one would appeal to a different type of player, and each would be balanced around providing a similar amount of healing and damage, but with the method they use being what distinguishes them.
Oh, and one more random addition to all of them: Each one's basic cure spell Traits up to become a spell that has the same MP cost and cast time, but also the Esuna effect of removing one status ailment. For WHM Cure 1 -> Esuna, SCH Physic -> Leeches, AST Benific 1 -> Exalted Detriment. SGE's can just stay Diagnosis but with the added effect. (The name already calls to mind a visit to the doctor, so it kind of just works.) At the same cost, cast time, and healing as the base Cure 1 equivalent spell, in low level content, nothing changes. In high level content, for the healers based around MP management, it would still serve the Cure 1 slot of "if you have nothing else left, you can keep healing with this". And for the rare content with a status ailment you can cleanse, it does the job of Esuna now without costing an obligatory additional hotbar spot that you have to have Esuna slotted in "just in case" as is the situation now.
Overall, minor QoL change, that, but I think a lot of people would like to see it, or at least be neutral towards it.
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