Healer Suggestions Megathread

[TheDustyOne]

Ditto with DoT and HoT ticks, having them at 1s would also allow them to line them up a lot better with many rotations (assuming standard 2.5s GCD), 21s DoTs can now be 20s, 24s DoTs can be 25s, etc. as well as the aforementioned "just one more HoT tick and they'll be safe" being a little less risky.

[Post]

The very funny thing about tick rates is that they show that they don't have to make everything tick at the server tick rate of 3 seconds, Flamethrower on MCH ticks every 1 second. I don't know why they can't make HoTs tick faster so it works better.

I may be incorrect, but I think the reason for Flamethrower being an outlier is that it's not a debuff based Dot but a ground targeted one, that is, an AoE effect on the field. Numerous boss encounters use similar field effects like these (e.g. 9999 damage per second wall on Thordan Ex), but they also still make use of ones that apply a dot if stepped into that will tic every 3 seconds. This tic might still one shot you in some cases, but...

Other examples are Asylum/Sacred Soil/Doton, which now apply their effect immediately in addition to their over time component, making their actual strength greater than displayed. This change was done for consistency; some times you'd use the action .1 second after the global DoT pulse and then the effect wouldn't trigger until 2.9 sec later, and other times the inverse would happen. Buff based effects work without the immediate free tic, but can be refreshed without worrying about "clipping" a tic from the total duration due to the global server tic.

Maybe they legit can't make DoT and HoT buffs tic faster than the 3 sec norm?

The speed change to affect dot potencies after how many years of it being horrible for over time effects might be evidence of this, but could just as easily have been to prevent the system from becoming "disorderly." They like things to be pretty pristine, after all.

[Shurrikhan]

I may be incorrect, but I think the reason for Flamethrower being an outlier is that it's not a debuff based Dot but a ground targeted one.

This, kind of. Or, perhaps more importantly, it's just a sequence of individual actions, not a DoT at all. Salted Earth, Shadowflame, Doton, and Flaming Arrow, by contrast, still tick per 3s, but they too have no debuff component; they're auras, not status effects.

Maybe they legit can't make DoT and HoT buffs tic faster than the 3 sec norm?

The speed change to affect dot potencies after how many years of it being horrible for over time effects might be evidence of this, but could just as easily have been to prevent the system from becoming "disorderly." They like things to be pretty pristine, after all.

Skill Spell and Spell Speed affecting periodic damage is already noted by the 3.0 patch notes.

Iirc, it was also accompanied by a nerf to the GCD-reducing effect itself, actually making the stat potentially worse for Monk and BLM, much like the change (also with 3.0) to make Critical Hit quadratic (affects both chance and bonus of crits) could be considered a poorly disguised nerf to Bard's River of Blood procs (back then, regardless of song, DoT crit ticks had a 50% chance to refresh Bloodletter/Rain of Death) since it significantly reduced the crit chance added per point of Critical Hit.

While on this tangent, some other random tidbits at least somewhat related to speed:

• BLM's cast-speed acceleration from AF3/UI3 used to affect a second action if queued quickly enough (allowing for the at-the-time baseline 3.5s Fire III and Flare to each be cast in 1.75s, saving nearly a half-GCD of uptime).
• DoT ticks and MP/TP ticks do not follow the same timing / have not always follow the same timing, though each is an instance-wide shared interval of 3 seconds.
• Fey Light and Fey Glow originally affected the Skill Speed and Spell Speed stats themselves, rather than offering a flat % bonus to either (later consolidated into just Attack Speed for all and then removed from the game).
• Astrologian's Spear used to reduce all Ability recast times, while Arrow reduced all weaponskill, spell, and auto-attack recast times (at the time referred to simply as "Attack Speed" before the language was swapped to the clearer but more verbose).
• PvP skills previously allowed us to separately debuff enemies' Skill Speed (via Aetheric Burst) or Spell Speeds (via Somersault). Granted, we could also separately debuff INT, STR, DEX, magic resist, range, hit rate, etc., alongside stunning, silencing, slowing, snaring, binding, and pacifying back then.

[ty_taurus]

Every new expansion has the opportunity to make some drastic changes to the combat system, which is what we saw every expansion prior to EW. Things like adding gauges, removing Accuracy as a stat or the elements, adding cooldown charges, etc. I notice that when talking about 7.0 in the past, a lot of discussion would be made with the mindset of 7.0 refusing to change anything based on how EW was released without really changing anything outside of establishing the 2 minute meta. But while I also feel like EW has just been an example of staying the course and ignoring feedback from ShB, there's no telling yet if that will persist to the next expansion as well.

It's entirely possible that Dawntrail will change things, though that doesn't necessarily mean changes will be things any one person wants or that it will even affect healers in any significant way. Regardless, while I don't want to raise my expectations high, I also don't really feel like it'll be ShB for the third time as well.

Currently, while I don't know exactly what to expect, I am thinking about a few things that I think may change in some way:
1. I think they will try and address the 2 minute meta in some way. It's gotten a lot of negative feedback from many different sources, including from big names in the content creator circle.
2. I don't fully expect this, but I am curious if they might do a rework to the limit break system.
3. My expectations for a healthy healer rework are very low, but at the same time, I feel like they've designed the healers into a corner. What more can they realistically add to their existing kits at this point? How are they going to approach that? Or will they just continue bloating out their healing cooldown list and power creep their existing heals even further?

[Aravell]

1. I think they will try and address the 2 minute meta in some way. It's gotten a lot of negative feedback from many different sources, including from big names in the content creator circle.

I wouldn't bet on it. The dev team has shown that they're not opposed to doubling down on something until they get so much negative attention that they have no choice but to reverse course. The 2 minute meta also makes job design very limited, thus easier for the small battle design team to handle, so I highly doubt that they'll move away from it, though I'd like to be pleasantly surprised.

[vetch]

The 2 minute meta also makes job design very limited, thus easier for the small battle design team to handle, so I highly doubt that they'll move away from it, though I'd like to be pleasantly surprised.

Because of course that's the goal rather than capturing the players who enjoy playstyles besides 'cram these 10 skills into a burst window'.

[ty_taurus]

I wouldn't bet on it. The dev team has shown that they're not opposed to doubling down on something until they get so much negative attention that they have no choice but to reverse course. The 2 minute meta also makes job design very limited, thus easier for the small battle design team to handle, so I highly doubt that they'll move away from it, though I'd like to be pleasantly surprised.

I mean, I'm not expecting mountains to be moved or anything, but prior to EW, I feel like most criticism was more subversive and not particularly talked about outside of forums, but these criticisms of buff windows, homogenization, and the lack of strong content are a lot more discussed outside of forums throughout EW. Even if they were planning to do a 180, I wouldn't expect that to show until after EW anyway, and given how much SE doesn't like information to be shared until it's finalized, I wouldn't expect to hear anything about any course changes until the job changes liveletter anyway.

But prior to EW, we did see more sweeping changes from one expansion to the next. And while the current stance has not been great, I also can't imagine that every expansions from here on will just be stagnant.

[Supersnow845]

ShB->EW is probably the one time they didn’t make sweeping changes between two expansions (I guess you could argue ARR->HW didn’t change job philosophy very much) and it has gotten a lot of pushback (I almost said “it’s safe to say it’s not popular” but I won’t be the victim of a shot taken because I vaguely mentioned a majority) and a huge amount of criticism

The people who still remember anything older than 5.0 are a vanishing minority at this point (someone on r/talesfromdf got massively upvoted saying that bension never had anything to do with lilies while I got downvoted trying to explain old WHM), it’s hard to determine how much of the criticism about the current job design comes from that minority and how much is people who’ve only ever known the new system not liking it but I think it is safe to say this is the last “chance” to change it, if DT is ShB 3.0 then it will become obvious they never intend to divert from the current formula

[Aravell]

I mean, I'm not expecting mountains to be moved or anything, but prior to EW, I feel like most criticism was more subversive and not particularly talked about outside of forums, but these criticisms of buff windows, homogenization, and the lack of strong content are a lot more discussed outside of forums throughout EW. Even if they were planning to do a 180, I wouldn't expect that to show until after EW anyway, and given how much SE doesn't like information to be shared until it's finalized, I wouldn't expect to hear anything about any course changes until the job changes liveletter anyway.

But prior to EW, we did see more sweeping changes from one expansion to the next. And while the current stance has not been great, I also can't imagine that every expansions from here on will just be stagnant.

As I said, I'd like to be pleasantly surprised, but there's no denying that they've been extremely tone-deaf towards healers this expansion.
-"We don't know what to do with SCH"
-"Go play ultimates and suffer"
-Literally everything about AST design

And my personal favourite from pre-ShB
-"WHM usually handles the bulk of the healing while SCH just casts damage spells"

I can't say my hopes are elevated by how they're ignoring their DPS golden child as well, all the SAMs and RDMs that are unhappy. I'd say the only chance you'd be getting any sort of positive change at this point is if you're a WAR.

[Supersnow845]

As I said, I'd like to be pleasantly surprised, but there's no denying that they've been extremely tone-deaf towards healers this expansion.
-"We don't know what to do with SCH"
-"Go play ultimates and suffer"
-Literally everything about AST design

And my personal favourite from pre-ShB
-"WHM usually handles the bulk of the healing while SCH just casts damage spells"

I can't say my hopes are elevated by how they're ignoring their DPS golden child as well, all the SAMs and RDMs that are unhappy. I'd say the only chance you'd be getting any sort of positive change at this point is if you're a WAR.

Is there anyone besides WAR who is actually getting positive changes this expansion