Scholars used to be awesome; I hope 7.0 goes back to the basics.

[SweetPete]

Ahh I see. I’m getting an idea of what people are missing from healers. As I said there are no wrong or right answers here. I played back in 2.0 so I remember how things were back then and previous expansions. Healers are very different now. They seemed to have lost allot and gained nothing over the expansions.

I do miss cleric stance. It was such a unique and fun ability toggle. Especially when you quickly tried to heal after a raid wide and realized you were still in cleric lol.

[Zairava]

Adding my voice to bring Miasma, Bane and Shadowflare back into the picture, god I miss those on Scholar

[Renathras]

Simple, the answer is Aero III.
Plenty of times I see people clamoring for that skill to make a comeback.

And to give you more, something that could apply to all healers: 18s DoTs and SB's Cleric Stace.

Cool. Would you please post that in this thread so we could get that discussion going? -> https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...ld-be-combined

That's more or less what I was thinking as well. Aero 3, shorter duration Dia, and possibly SB (not HW) Cleric. The only other thing I think really needs changing is Thin Air reverted and I'd like old Stoneskin back. Have it upgrade to Benison and that be a GCD instead of an oGCD.

Sorry to nit pick one detail, but I might as well get in there before someone else does

I don't even think this aspect of things needs to come specifically from DPS actions, 3.2+ AST did just fine with a worse DPS kit than it has now IMO. The reason is of course that it had so much else to keep the player occupied with than it does now.

I'd wager that if you dropped HW's card play and time extension mechanics over the top of today's AST and balanced MP costs to give a similar economy as we had back then (Aka MP was plentiful but only if you worked for it, you couldn't just push shroud on cooldown and forget anything else), I'd be the happiest healer on the planet.

This is honestly the reason I posted that thread everyone's so studiously and obviously avoiding ( https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...ld-be-combined ) and no, it's not "because we already have one", because as Noble pointed out:

Renathras has a thread on the subject of Stormblood Scholar already but since you asked so earnestly for me to repeat myself...

...we already have a thread on SCH, too, yet here is this one, and here people are posting in it.

In any case, that was the point I was making in that thread: What parts of the old kits could we take and graft onto the EW kits to make them into things people would like?

As you say, take HW's AST Card mechanics and MP management and overlay them onto current EW AST and you'd probably have a pretty solid Job.

Take Aero 3 and add it to EW WHM and you pretty much have a WHM that is better than SB's WHM in every way. Lower Dia to 18 sec and have a 1 min CD 5% DPS buff ability and old Stoneskin, and of course revert the EW Thin Air change back to SB/ShB's Thin Air back if you wanted to be really frisky. There's not a lot to change other than that.

SCH is really the ONLY healer Job that needs a lot of changes to get back to SB-ready, mainly because it was the one that had most of its abilities stripped out. WHM didn't lose much and AST mostly didn't LOSE much so much as they had things simplified (Cards) and lost peripheral effects to them. But SCH...

...which is why I say all the time the discussion should be about SCH, not about healers in general, when we're talking DPS kit changes/complexity.

I laid out what I more or less want from healers in the suggestions megathread here

TL;DR

• More downtime options, preferably more DPS options
• Increased healing requirements
• oGCD pruning (or otherwise not having them as readily available)
• Kit interaction between healing and DPSing
• More interesting MP management

The sad thing is, for all our arguments, we aren't that far apart on things.

-Increased healing requirements? Agreed.
-oGCD pruning? Agreed (more or less; I prefer having weaker oGCDs that are short CD [30 sec] so we engage with them more often but where they mostly are augmenting/suplementing our GCD heals; stuff like Plenary or Emergency/Deployment Tactics)
-More interesting MP management? MP management AT ALL? Agreed. "Interesting" might be a sticking point, but choosing heals based on how much MP you have and trying to be efficient with expending it/saving it for emergencies is good design, imo

What we disagree on partly is probably interaction between healing and DPSing, but there's wiggle room here. Someone in this thread ( https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...mplex-DPS-kits ) brought up WoW Holy Priests, and looking them up, one thing I like is their Surge of Light ability where using any of your heals OR SMITE (basically Glare) could trigger a free, instant cast, MP 0 cost burst of your MP inefficient medium potency heal. Imagine if the Freecure trait could trigger from any heal OR FROM GLARE. That kind of thing...I'd like to see more of. And you might define Lilies/Misery as "interaction". Those kinds of things I agree with. I DON'T like "have to deal damage with these spells to unlock/empower this otherwise worthless heal" kind of stuff where heals are gated by DPS. For _A_ healer Job (SGE?) that's fine, but not for ALL the healer Jobs.

The only thing we disagree on is "preferably" more DPS options. Downtime options I'm cool with, but they are not preferably DPS in my book, and honestly, this is where the 4 Healers Model shines.

For example, a simple change to AST would be have Draw do 2x Malific's damage to your current target and then have Draw and Play be GCDs and then have the CD on Draw be 10 seconds. Now you've got a DPS neutral Draw/Play, less carpel tunnel syndrome suffering players, and you're throwing buffs out for 2 of every 4 GCDs. That's right, HALF your GCDs are now drawing a card, considering how to use it most optimally (again, pretend we have HW Cards back), and then playing it on the target or alternatively burning the card to boost the effect of a future card.

That would be a super simple change to AST that still has a lot of decision processes and downtime thinking/actions that aren't Malific, but your downtime isn't "more DPS options", it's "more buffing options".

As I've said, some healer Jobs having more DPS options (SGE seems a prime candidate, and SCH not a bad one) would probably be good for the game and players, collectively. But there are other options for the other healer Jobs and the players that would rather fill their downtime with other actions.

.

For my part, if AST was changed like that, I'd play it a hell of a lot more and actually like it. I don't dislike AST's kit, I dislike it's oGCD burst APM and some button bloat and inefficiencies (e.g. why ARE Play and Draw separate actions? At least with Crown Play, they figured out that's kind of stupid...maybe because of the charges and something weird on the backend, but then Summon Seraph and Consolation figured that out...)

Adding my voice to bring Miasma, Bane and Shadowflare back into the picture, god I miss those on Scholar

Would make some sense to have that done. And probably a bit more. Again, thread -> https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...ld-be-combined

But yeah, having more SB DPS buttons on SCH so people that want more DPS complexity have their outlet for it would be great for the game, I think.

I do miss cleric stance. It was such a unique and fun ability toggle. Especially when you quickly tried to heal after a raid wide and realized you were still in cleric lol.

Uh......agree to disagree, lol

I still remember doing the first dungeon in HW with Cleric on until close to the first boss. I was so flustered with "I get it's new content and levels and stuff, but why does everything hit SO DAMN HARD?!" then realized I had left Cleric on from soloing. It's like the forgetting Tank stance or Kardia when zoning in thing. Always hated that. Still hate that. I still think Cleric Stance is the most rose-tinted goggles ability in MMO history, especially since there wasn't much "stance dancing" and in practice you just were in or out of stance for long periods.

That said, I absolutely think there's room to have a healer Job designed around a mechanic like that. SGE with a mechanic like that would make a TON of sense to me, along lines people have proposed before where you have a set of buttons and using Eukrasia makes them heals while being out of Eukrasia makes them damage spells (e.g. a DoT becomes a HoT, an AOE DoT would be an AOE HoT, etc). If that was a toggle/stance, it would effectively work like old Cleric Stance did, just better since the Job would be designed around this.

As a super simple example, say you have Diagnosis (attack spell like Dosis is now), Dosis (DoT attack spell), Toxicon (AOE attack like Dyskrasia is now), Plegma (AOE DoT attack spell with a 20 sec CD and 20 sec duration). Now, if you go into Eukrasia stance, these become Diagnosis (heal/Cure 1), Regen HoT, Prognosis (aoe Heal/Medica 1), and AOE heal with a HoT (like Medica 2). Super efficient on button bloat, and also has the "stance dancing" element that people miss from ARR/HW SCH, and you might have some things that ignore it (Haima/Panhaima, maybe Taurochole) for emergencies when you got caught in the wrong stance, as well as Kardia healing as you attack (with a small/weak HoT if you use the DoT attacks) so that even in DPS stance you're doing some upkeep/sustain healing on your tank.

I'm not necessarily pitching THAT as an idea, but more saying that would be one way to try and capture that gameplay feel with a modern take that is designed around it rather than it being kind of a clunky add-on that doesn't work for some Jobs, etc.

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EDIT:

Adding to the above, Sabezy, something I saw in a YouTube comment:

Include Gravity in AST single target rotation somehow. Pair that with the Job having unique cards again (they did so in PvP) you have a winner. No new dps ability is needed.
The healer jobs would benefit if the only “new” dps ability is to have their aoe abilities included in their single target rotation somehow.

Like, take Draw and Play. Make them GCD. Give Draw a 10 sec CD but no charges. When Draw is used, the next Gravity does 3x Malific damage. Rotation is now "Combust, Draw, Play, Gravity, Malific, Draw, Play, Gravity, Malific, Draw, Play, Gravity, Combust. It's simple, but much more involved than Combest, Malific, Malific, Malific, Malific, Malific, Malific, Malific, Malific, Malific, Malific, and less obnoxious than Combust, MalificLightspeedDraw, MalificPlayDraw, MalificRedrawPlay, MalificDrawReadraw, MalificPlayDivination, MalificAstrodyne. The cards are actually interesting, requiring some thinking, and you can substitute Play for Royal Road, and probably have some charges on Redraw so it's not one per Draw and you can play around with that, like DrawRedraw, Play or Draw, GravityRedraw, Play or stuff like that.

So I'm not the only one thinking things like trying to work AOE abilities into the single target rotation - in my case, it was Holy, but kind of the same deal here with Gravity.

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Oh, for fun, here's a SB era SB video (have a WHM one in that thread, so thought I should look at SCH. Going to go hunt down an AST one now since...I actually really want to see what they had then):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czZVDtR7_I0

All that Miasma 2...

EDIT:

EDIT for post limit:

I've got no problem with AoE abilities getting worked into a single target rotation and I'm sure there's a wealth of ways it could be done. SB Miasma II played a huge part in restoring faith back into SCH amongst high end healers. It offered a ton of min max headroom.

The number of keys isn't the limitation here, it's CBU3's imagination and willingness to put some effort in that's the stumbling block IMO.

This I agree with.

And the thing is, they've done it before.

As you know, I do fully advocate for SCH to get that kit back. Our contention is over WHM or SGE or something, but for what it's worth, I fully agree they could do things like Miasma 2.

[Aravell]

Ahh I see. I’m getting an idea of what people are missing from healers. As I said there are no wrong or right answers here. I played back in 2.0 so I remember how things were back then and previous expansions. Healers are very different now. They seemed to have lost allot and gained nothing over the expansions.

I do miss cleric stance. It was such a unique and fun ability toggle. Especially when you quickly tried to heal after a raid wide and realized you were still in cleric lol.

While I personally enjoyed the thrill of Cleric Stance, it is an undeniable fact that the toggling isn't exactly smooth. There's plenty of cases where it won't toggle off when you tap it, then you mash it and it turns off and back on again, then your tank dies.

There's also an argument to be made that it curbed the growth of new healer players because the button intimidates them into not doing damage. It's not exactly smooth design to have a button that blocks a player off from performing their main role. The move to damage spells scaling off of MND was a good one, though I firmly believe that they should have stopped there and considered it QoL and not kept going to the point of major simplification of the damage kits.

[Sebazy]

I've got no problem with AoE abilities getting worked into a single target rotation and I'm sure there's a wealth of ways it could be done. SB Miasma II played a huge part in restoring faith back into SCH amongst high end healers. It offered a ton of min max headroom.

The number of keys isn't the limitation here, it's CBU3's imagination and willingness to put some effort in that's the stumbling block IMO.