G-give it Back T---T; !! (Scholar Edition)

[Shurrikhan]

Honestly, I'd just boost Toxicon's damage. It's the most straightforward solution and it would even give SGEs a bit of a "rotation" of applying a shield to the tank and then throwing out Toxicons as they pop. Further, it would introduce skill expression (contrary to popular belief)

Issue 1: It's overpowered AF, increasing the single-target free healing of the healer already with the greatest HPS by at least some 125% at typical crit levels. This devalues SGE's healing optimizations under present (very low) healing requirements while making it nigh impossible to increasing healing requirements without forcing people towards SGE for having, for instance, nearly 3x WHM's free ST healing and some 1.5x its free total healing.

The issue with increasing Toxicon's damage --e.g., to damage neutrality-- isn't that it would necessarily reduce offensive skill expression but that it'd simply be flat overpowered (over 10k more free and wholly sustainable heal potency per minute being enough to devalue virtually all other healing optimization that would otherwise be rewarded/differentiating if healing requirements were increased).

In optimized play, SGE already produces about 5% more HPS than SCH (2nd place), 18% more than AST, and almost a quarter more than WHM. Now imagine that with a spammable DPS-neutral (i.e., "free of opportunity cost") Eukrasian Diagnosis, itself worth 840 (normal) to 1710 (crit at 50% bonus) potency. SGE regenerates ~99.5% of its MP per minute, allowing SGE to sustain without MP loss over time 11 EuDiag GCDs for 10110 extra healing potency per minute even at just a 9% rate. Given Toxicon, that leaves only 2 GCDs per minute for anything other than the shield and its recuperation... which then get spent on EuDosis. You've effectively replaced Dosis spam with just a (flexible) 1-2 combo of EuDiag-Toxicon spam. It's still plenty spammy, it just also broke any sense of balance among the role.

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Issue 2: It would reduce GCD healing choice (given increased enough healing requirements that GCD heals would be used) for self and cohealer.

Moreover, now you essentially lose all other GCD healing options, leaving AoEs to your cohealer for whom the relative costs are lower while you in turn take over all ST healing needs. Your co-healer pair's full range of GCD healing... is then reduced to Medica II and Eukrasian Diagnosis.

Let's assume again that we increase the healing requirements, because we certainly can do so at least a good third or so without overtaxing healers (though such still leaves too much downtime for the current state of filler-DoT-CD/spender to be a sufficiently compelling loop for most skilled players). You'll have then heavily reduced the variety available to the healing itself, greatly narrowing/dumbing that down whenever a SGE is present.

[Renathras]

If you make Toxikon DPS neutral you need to give it a cooldown. Otherwise you'd have unlimited DPS neutral healing.

Nah, it'd be limited by MP. The shields cost quite a bit of MP. Besides which, if it was the Job's functional rotation, this wouldn't be a problem. Let's be real, we already have effectively unlimited DPS neutral healing via all the oGCDs we have in the game. Everyone who brags about how they cleared an entire dungeon or fight with just oGCD heals? They just expressed they had, for that encounter's healing requirement, "unlimited DPS neutral healing". So this is already a thing. We might as well enshrine it and make it more interesting.

Issue 1: It's overpowered AF

It really isn't. SGE is already over powered due to the oGCDs it already has. The healing costs MP, so it ultimately isn't free, and this would be more akin to SB SCH's Miasma 2 optimization. As for the optimized play argument - that sounds to me like an argument for reducing SGE's oGCD healing power (what it heals with now), not for limiting Toxicon.

Also keep in mind, for what it's worth, that you'll be reducing Kardia healing by using GCD heals still. While not huge, that is cutting the direct heal of Eu Prog/Diag by effectively 170 potency. And remember, unlike SCH, that's not pet potency.

Issue 2: It would reduce GCD healing choice (given increased enough healing requirements that GCD heals would be used) for self and cohealer.

Respectfully disagree. SGE already has very limited GCD healing options. Pneuma is once per 2 minutes, so the only other options it has are Cure 1, Adlo, Medica 1, and Succor. The only thing that would be reduced is that Cure 1 and Medica 1 would be less used in favor of Adlo and Succor...but this is ALREADY the way things are. How often are SGE's using Diagnosis right now? AT THE WORST, it simply enshrines what's already happening in the game right now. It doesn't make it any worse. Pneuma would still be worth using, and non-Eukrasia Diagnosis and Prognosis would still mostly be for niche emergency situations. So nothing changes. Note that the damage neutrality here would mean that Eukrasia Prognosis WOULD STILL BE USED for AOE situations, so no, it wouldn't force all AOE healing to the other healer in the party.

Right now, the situation is that SGE's try to avoid GCD healing ENTIRELY. How is "You'll be encouraged to only use 3 of your 5 GCD heals!" so much worse than "You're currently encouraged to use NONE of your GCD heals other than the 1 per 2 minute one"?

[ty_taurus]

Nah, it'd be limited by MP. The shields cost quite a bit of MP. Besides which, if it was the Job's functional rotation, this wouldn't be a problem. Let's be real, we already have effectively unlimited DPS neutral healing via all the oGCDs we have in the game. Everyone who brags about how they cleared an entire dungeon or fight with just oGCD heals? They just expressed they had, for that encounter's healing requirement, "unlimited DPS neutral healing". So this is already a thing. We might as well enshrine it and make it more interesting.

Both Eukrasian Diagnosis and Eukrasian Prognosis are 900 MP, but Toxikon costs no MP. Dosis > Dosis = 800 MP while Eukrasian D/P > Toxikon = 900 MP. The MP difference is very negligible when it's constantly providing you with a no DPS cost attack spell.

[Renathras]

Both Eukrasian Diagnosis and Eukrasian Prognosis are 900 MP, but Toxikon costs no MP. Dosis > Dosis = 800 MP while Eukrasian D/P > Toxikon = 900 MP. The MP difference is very negligible when it's constantly providing you with a no DPS cost attack spell.

Eh yeah, that's fair.

Doesn't change the other part of my argument, though, that this is no worse than the current situation where we have infinite DPS neutral free healing via oGCDs. So at worst, this is, again, no worse than what we have currently.

But this is another "forest for the trees" tangent situation/derail.

[Shurrikhan]

Nah, it'd be limited by MP. The shields cost quite a bit of MP.

EuDiag>Toxi costs only 50 MP/GCD over Dosis. If you spammed it as often as possible short of overcapping Addersting, it'd cost only 1200 more MP per minute than using no healing spells at all.

Respectfully disagree. SGE already has very limited GCD healing options.

Something already being limited is not an excuse to limit it further, nor a mitigating factor to those further limitations' relative costs on gameplay. It's usually the opposite.

The only thing that would be reduced is that Cure 1 and Medica 1 would be less used in favor of Adlo and Succor...but this is ALREADY the way things are.

You know full well that's not the case in any serious content. The effect isn't just that you use the blatantly superior options that exist now, but you'd use almost only ever the blatantly better-still option that you'd have just recreated, because healers operate as a pair.

If one healer can freely spam ST healing but not AoE healing and the other has can freely spam neither, then the one with the relative advantage in ST will take up that much more ST duty and pass along that much more AoE healing to be done to the other. The only exception to this is where both healers somehow need to AoE GCD heal within the very same single GCD of time after impact for the raid to survive (i.e., basically never, even with increased healing requirements), instead of being capable of the more efficient combined action wherein the healer less penalized, relatively speaking, for AoE GCD healing does all the necessary AoE GCD healing.

If you make Eukrasian Diagnosis free and nothing else, you'll see more use of EuDiag and less (if any) of anything else.

Inb4 "But you defended people using GCDs when necessary even when it's a loss, so why wouldn't people still use the other GCD options!" Why? Because the others wouldn't be necessary outside of the aforementioned incredibly rare situations. You will thereby have reduced the number of competitive choices by overpowering the single choice among many.

Eukrasian Prognosis can also generate Addersting when its barrier on you breaks, so SGE would also have unlimited DPS neutral AoE healing.

It'd be bottlenecked by incoming AoEs, whereas EuDiag can far more reliably get you to 3 of the 4 suggested maximum Addersting stacks, but yes, my saying that Ren's suggestion would only give SGE more than double its free ST healing and some double WHM's total free healing in practice was technically lowballing its overall power increase.