7.0 Tank/Healer/DPS Wishlist

[Zaniel]

As long as Ninja remains completely unchanged I'm whatever with everything else.

[TaleraRistain]

RPR:

-Have Soul Reaver stacks persist between actions. I'm sick of the stacks I get from Gluttony just vanishing if I do anything other than Gibbet or Gallows. They last for 30 SECONDS, why do they get eaten if I so much as look at another ability?

Very much this. Especially when we use the ability that we're supposed to use first in an encounter. Even if they just let me reapply Death's Design while retaining them I would be happy.

GNB: Please take us out of the party mit punishment corner and let us be able to help on physical damage with Heart of Light or get a party regen or something, too

SGE: More ways to get addersting stacks

[VictorSpoils]

Just make it so the Raise status can't be overwritten. Duplicate raises are a bad habit and shouldn't be the standard. It's even more laughable when a healer hard-casts a Raise on someone in the revival process and it's still consumed.

[RitsukoSonoda]

Just make it so the Raise status can't be overwritten. Duplicate raises are a bad habit and shouldn't be the standard. It's even more laughable when a healer hard-casts a Raise on someone in the revival process and it's still consumed.

Or just make it so casting a second raise on someone that already has the status on them auto accepts it and forces them off the floor :P lol

[Raikai]

Yes, that may mean dropping things like Arm's Length and Surecast and just actually doing mechanics and engaging with our mobility kits or countering KBs by more versatile means instead.

That's actually a very interesting point. Actions like the global KB immunity just make the mechanic itself pointless. Like in P7S, where you need multiple times through the encounter, but every single time you do it's already off cooldown. What's even the challenge? Correct timing of a key press?

We see that kind of thing in other examples too, like why melee have positionals when every situation that they can't hit the right side is covered by two charges of True North instead of actual movement adjustment? Or why BLM have the Thundercloud proc when that T3 management was already neutered by the Sharpcast changes?

[Shurrikhan]

That's actually a very interesting point. Actions like the global KB immunity just make the mechanic itself pointless. Like in P7S, where you need multiple times through the encounter, but every single time you do it's already off cooldown. What's even the challenge? Correct timing of a key press?

We see that kind of thing in other examples too, like why melee have positionals when every situation that they can't hit the right side is covered by two charges of True North instead of actual movement adjustment? Or why BLM have the Thundercloud proc when that T3 management was already neutered by the Sharpcast changes?

Pretty much. Yep.

To me, it'd be far better to instead just actually polish the base mechanics.

Positionals:
Give a triple-check on positionals (say, before, barely before, and barely, barely after the current actuation time) and count any of those successes as a successful positional so that what looks like it would have been a successful positional almost always would be, regardless of forced boss spins. Make bosses temporarily reverse their hitboxes (Rear is forward, but narrower; flanks to its sides, a la original Demon Wall) when they leap to the edge. For jobs with otherwise identical skills varied only by positional (Wheeling/Fang), let those skills be used in either order. For jobs with near-constant positionals, make the non-positional alternatives a bit less costly, give at least one frequent skill "front" in addition, and/or add a passive leniency mechanic (e.g., 3 charges, 30s recharge - Would-be missed positionals consume a charge to instead count as a success; each successful positional reduces the recharge time by 1s). And, community-wise, just re-normalize stacking under the boss or where the rear meets flank instead of just 'anywhere within melee reach of the boss's hitbox.

Knockbacks:
Use your damn shields and mobility tools. Make velocity-cancels a tiny bit easier to pull off, if need be.

Safety Alternatives (e.g., Engagement vs. Disengagement):
Get that shit out of here and instead just make the thing they're an alternative to a more flexible in their timing from the start and a bit safer to use. For instance, have fixed-distance mobility tools "snap" up to 10% more distance or 20% less distance to pathable terrain. Perhaps even create a quarter-second or so "hang time" window on non-pathable terrain from which mobility tools may be allowed to recover the player (i.e., those areas just become timed death zones without WASD movement control but from which one may still use mobility tools, instead of outright of being non-pathable and killing absolutely instantly).

And as for Sharpcast, just increase the CD again. The charges and the fact that the duration lasts so long (so that you can always fit it in a weave well before its consumption) offers plentiful flexibility anyways.

[Raikai]

Pretty much. Yep.

Knockbacks:
Use your damn shields and mobility tools. Make velocity-cancels a tiny bit easier to pull off, if need be.

Funny that my fav. DPS job, Dancer, got An Avant, the best dash in the game due to how practical and with how many charges it comes with... yet Dancers don't really need it since they're fully mobile all the time and can be anywhere and keep their uptime.

I often not use it during prog, so my timing gets good without it as a crutch (for when I play other jobs). I don't use it on reclears because I have the mechs mastered anyway... I literally just use it to correct a positional mistake, which doesn't really happen if I'm paying attention.

But overall, I agree that instead of just deleting features, they should try to make them relevant again.

[Renathras]

For my main thing, healers, I thought maybe I should condense this. Maybe I should with the others...hm...

The super short version:

General: Make healers less samey, make encounter designs actually have more healing, less body-checks, less pass-fail one-shot mechanics, reduce "free" healing (Curing Waltz/Nascent Flash = bad, Clemency/Vercure = good) and mitigation from non-healers.

WHM: Remove "Afflatus Solace/Rapture". Add "Afflatus". Afflatus causes the next GCD heal to be instant cast, cost no MP, and nourish the Blood Lily. Cure 2 becomes Afflatus Solace, Medica 1 becomes Afflatus Rapture, Regen becomes Afflatus Comfort, Medica 1 becomes Afflatus Succor, Cure 3 becomes Afflatus Ascension. Cure 1 upgrades to Cure 2 at level 30. Cure 2's MP cost reduced to 500 MP, its cast time reduced to 1.5 sec. Medica 1's MP cost reduced to 600 MP. Freecure proc reworked to where Glare casts and Dia ticks have a chance of making the next Cure 2 or Regen instant cast and cost no MP. If the Afflatus is too powerful being used on EVERYthing, then just make it Regen, Cure 2, and Medica 1 if Medica 2 and Cure 3 are considered too powerful. Add a damage reduction (5%?) effect to Plenary. Call it Pro-Shell.

SCH: Remove Dissipation or rework to where it no longer removes Eos. Remove Fey Blessing's CD, it now costs 30 Faerie Gauge to execute. Remove Energy Drain from costing Aetherflow, it now costs 10 Faerie Gauge. Lower Deployment Tactics' CD to 60 seconds. Have Lustrate upgrade via Trait to also granting a 200 potency barrier (like Celestial Intersection manages to do) and/or give it a short duration (5 sec?) sprint speed to the target like Expedience does.

AST: Consolidate some things and make the burst less hell, make the CD on Draw short (15 or 20 sec?) and put Draw and Play on the GCD with some kind of damage neutral mechanic (next Malific cast does 3x damage, stacks to 3 so using cards back to back doesn't screw you out of it). Mostly waiting on the rework to see what they do.

SGE: For what it is, it's fine, but some ideas would be make Toxicon damage neutral or at least 1.5x a Dosis, have Addersting generate every 20 sec OR every time an Addersgall is used (either is fine by me), make Diskrasia ranged (25y) centered on the target (Gravity without the cast time) and give it the Toxicon 1 animation like Alphie used in the trailer (can give Toxicon 1, if we need to have a Toxicon 1 animation, the Dyskrasia animation, that'd be fine.)

[Shurrikhan]

Going to put questions for others, and responses to questions on mine, in expandable boxes ([ HB ] [/ HB ], if anyone wants to try), since they're tangential to the main point of the thread.

<On Post #38. Some food for thought; I dig most of it.>

WHM: Remove "Afflatus Solace/Rapture". Add "Afflatus". Afflatus causes the next GCD heal to be instant cast, cost no MP, and nourish the Blood Lily.

Still limited by Lily charges, I presume?

If the Afflatus is too powerful being used on EVERYthing, then just make it Regen, Cure 2, and Medica 1 if Medica 2 and Cure 3 are considered too powerful.

I really doubt it'd be too strong. If you think it'd make WHM too strong a "prog/nuke healer" [though... personally, I'd be cool with it actually being that for once] due to the free Cure IIIs atop Thin Air, then you could always just have it reduce MP cost instead of nullifying the MP cost entirely.

If applied basically only to Cure 2 and Medica 1 (since Regen may still be used for mobility without it anyways, depending on Dia duration remaining), then I suspect you'd get complaints about the consolidation causing "bloat APM". Just whole hog, I think; let it apply to everything, at least by level 80 or so (if you want fancy names and animations for each upgraded form).

Add a damage reduction (5%?) effect to Plenary. Call it Pro-Shell.

Is this on the bonus heal or on the initial cast? If the prior, does it stack? I could dig that.

SCH: Remove Dissipation or rework to where it no longer removes Eos.

Maybe I'm crazy, but I feel like I'd actually like Dissipation if it was just... a lot shorter and more bankable so that it could actually be an emergency tool instead of just 3 extra Energy Drains. Maybe if it just temporarily converted every 20 Fairy Gauge into Aetherflow and drained Fairy Gauge over time to enhance your healing potency by an even larger amount, so you could pull out some heads-and-shoulders best-in-role burst shields...

Idk, but I like the idea of dropping a situationally less synergetic/fitting form of output (Eos) temporarily in form of one that can be better or more burstily leveraged. I just wish it wasn't so lengthy a commitment.

Have Lustrate upgrade via Trait to also granting a 200 potency barrier (like Celestial Intersection manages to do) and/or give it a short duration (5 sec?) sprint speed to the target like Expedience does.

While Lustrate doing some barrier, too, would make SCH more barrier-focused... unless you really mean to give SCH a 900p sustain oGCD opposite everyone up to 3 times per minute opposite everyone else's 600-800p versions, wouldn't it also reduce SCH's sense of skill selection? Sprint speed would be cool, though.

It does make me wish we again had to choose between Eos (say, bonus regen and Defense) and Selene (utility and a bit of bonus output), though... RIP.

Remove Energy Drain from costing Aetherflow, it now costs 10 Faerie Gauge.

This one I don't really get the point of, though, as ED is then costing only a third of a competing action (Fey Blessing), instead of whole action, likely making it feel less deliberate. I guess it's kinda neat that you have a very granular filler to increase APM with, but... I imagine it'd seem less costly and yet all the more obviously lacking in punch.

Even if were to increase healing requirements enough that 300 oGCD potency of damage wouldn't exceed the value of 300 oGCD potency of AoE healing, I'd rather see Energy Drain remain on AF and just see buffs to remain situationally useful, such as by again giving MP (perhaps even increasing its damage dealt based on %MP and MP stolen based on %MP missing), but that's just me. The above is the broader critique.

AST: Consolidate some things and make the burst less hell, make the CD on Draw short (15 or 20 sec?) and put Draw and Play on the GCD with some kind of damage neutral mechanic (next Malific cast does 3x damage, stacks to 3 so using cards back to back doesn't screw you out of it). Mostly waiting on the rework to see what they do.

Probably the simplest but most impactful thing you can do for the hell opener is just make it impossible to Astrodyne the opener by now having Drawn Cards cool until they're Played (bringing AST down from effectively 3 charges of Cards to an actual 2). In doing so, you remove the 30s delay to each pull with an optimizing AST and their remove the need to hit Draw on CD (and hold it for up to a minute) in dungeons. Best yet, literally only the opener would be affected, unless they're trying to stack 90s 3-card bursts.

I'd be cool with Draw being on the GCD, but not Play. That'd make it feel much too unresponsive. I'd also rather just see the value of the Cards go up rather than AST getting personal and direct damage refunds via Malefic. Or rather, also increase the Card duration a bit, instead of just the potency, as to be a little less affected by recipient burstiness. If AST would feel too crushed thereafter by its whole party being shitters, maybe return Minor Arcana as non-CD Card spender (half the cards turning into Lord, with a falloff-AoE attack, and half turning into Lady, with a falloff-AoE heal), with something granting the occasional free Lady/Lord to ensure the button sees some use even in good parties.

SGE: For what it is, it's fine, but some ideas would be make Toxicon damage neutral or at least 1.5x a Dosis, have Addersting generate every 20 sec OR every time an Addersgall is used (either is fine by me), make Diskrasia ranged (25y) centered on the target (Gravity without the cast time) and give it the Toxicon 1 animation like Alphie used in the trailer (can give Toxicon 1, if we need to have a Toxicon 1 animation, the Dyskrasia animation, that'd be fine.)

I wouldn't want to see it be outright damage nuetral, since it's spammable, but a bit more oomph would be cool, especially in combination with Addersgall granting Addersting or it just being generated over time (I think I might actually slightly prefer it coming from Addersgall just because the way it makes it more easily trackable as to avoid overcapping is also more... engaging/immersive/what-have-you).

I actually like wanting/needing to be in melee range often on SGE, though, and feel like Dyskrasia being a self-centered AoE actually makes Toxicon more interesting, especially in dungeons or in add checks with lots of AoEs from/around said adds, since that becomes your means of keeping up AoE uptime outside of melee range.

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But yeah, that's my two cents' food for thought. I hope they made sense. I dig most of this.

[Renathras]

WHM:

Yeah, Afflatus would use the Lily system as it is now, just for all the GCD heals. My thinking is "we have all these buttons yet we never use them; how can we get them to interact with what we DO use?" Afflatus Solace/Rapture are essentially "If you could proc something that gave you a free and instant cast Cure 2/Medica and nourished the Blood Lily". There are two ways of doing this. One is to have WHM's base GCDs (5, since we're not counting Cure 1) AND have 5 Afflatus abilities for each one (Solace, Rapture, and the 3 others) as separate buttons. Now we have 3 more buttons than we do now, and STILL don't use the 5 we never touch. Well, that seems inefficient. So how about, instead, having one button that toggles over to those, expending a Lily to do so? A third option is that whenever you have a Lily, they context upgrade (like RDM's Verholy/flare/scorch/resolution) into the Afflatus versions...but what if you wanted to save that Lily for an upcoming movement phase? So the resource expending toggle seems like a nice middle ground that doesn't add a lot of new buttons but does retain the deliberate use. It also has some knock-on effects such as allowing unlocking your first Afflatus ability earlier (at level 30 when Cure 1 upgrades to Cure 2 or even earlier, at level 10 when you get Medica if we wanted to go that far with it), as well as allowing future healing abilities to be added while keeping the hotbar economy, something SGE has with Eukrasia.

Two more positives are that this would be unlike any existing healer mechanic. While you might liken it to Eukrasia, Eukrasia is technically on the GCD (sorta), and is NOT limited by charges where Afflatus would be limited by number of Lilies you have and be an oGCD weave before a GCD cast. And finally, if there was a fear about "oh no, this Job could become too oGCD weave heavy!!" ...we're talking about WHM. It has the room. The only weaves WHM has right now (as "must press") are Presence of Mind and Assize on CD, and Lucid more or less on CD. That's 3 oGCDs that don't even have to be double weaved. So 3 Afflatus weaves a minute isn't a tall ask, especially since they'd make the following ability instant cast, allowing a double weave opening anyway. I'm a simpleton and even I think I could manage that well enough.

As for Pro-Shell, I was thinking you'd just get it with the Confession buff. Just the additional effect of "...and also take 5% less damage from all attacks". The buff is already there, so adding additional function to it and piggy-backing on that buff would prevent buff inflation, so to speak. I get that ARR's version of Protect/Shell isn't really compatible with modern FFXIV design, but a shortish (60 sec) CD instant cast with a shortish (10 sec) duration that reduces damage taken seems to fit the modern model, and the other similar healer abilities tend to have some secondary effect tacked onto theirs, so the tacked on effect here would be Plenary's normal +200 potency to AOE heals. The use case is pretty straightforward; party about to take raidwide, you mitigate some of the incoming damage and then boosted heal them after the damage is soaked. This would bring WHM in line with AST, which has Collective (bigger mit at 10% instead of 5%, but clipped if the channel is broken early) making the two distinct but in parity, and WHM having Temperance vs AST being "I have Succor and Adlo for the next 30 seconds" every 2 minutes. It would solve the problem of WHM having less party mitigation than BLACK MAGE (against magic) and SAMURAI (against physical), and a good deal less than MCH (which has both Tactician and Dismantle), and there's something wrong with a healer having less party mitigation than the selfish DPSers. This would fill that "hole" in WHM's kit that the other healers don't have.

I've said before doing Ra La that it annoyed me on each of the other healers, I had SOMETHING to hit roughly every time it did a raidwide to do mitigation...except on WHM. And that feels bad. (Yes, I know it was Ra La, but you get the point - FEELS BAD is important when we're talking playing a game that should be fun). WHM just had to stand there with fifth digits firmly inserted into rectum except the once every 2 mins you could Temperance. And that both feels bad and makes WHM weaker in balance at the same time. Doubly stupid since WHM originally had both Protect/Pro-Shell and Stoneskin in ARR/HW, so it's not like I'm asking for something that violates WHM's identity or homogenzation, especially since the thing I'm asking is distinct from what the other healers have. Parity does not equal homogenization as long as the way to arrive at the destination is somewhat different. Hell, I'd be fine with a GCD cast mitigation, but unless it had a 60 sec CD (which...I guess we have precedent now for in Pneuma and Macrocosmos...), it would just be used ALL the time making WHM go from worst to best mitigator. Which would be...odd. It seems Plenary gaining a half-protect/shell effect is the easier sell.

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SCH:

I've always hated Dissipation, and I honestly just hate the idea of it. "Yes, my loyal PARTNER that I work together alongside and even trust healing tasks to...yeah, take a hike, I don't want you around, I just want to suck power out of you for a minute" doesn't sound very...right...to me. I dislike it on a conceptual level. I also dislike the anti-synergy of "You're now locked out of a third of your kit", along with "Oh, and here's some AF, but your AF heals aren't being boosted, and by the way, if you spend them before Eos gets back, you don't even get any lolfaerie gauge". I'm not sure I could design a more anti-synergistic ability if I was actively trying to do so. I used to propose changes, but at this point, I just want it removed or the Eos dismissing portion removed. People say "But she does so little healing anyway", but if that's true...then what does it matter if she stays around? That sword (argument) cuts both ways.

On Lustrate - I just want the ability to not suck. Right now, it's bottom of the barrel in priority, which itself wouldn't be bad, but it's even behind a 100 potency damage attack. That's frankly ridiculous. It's also stupid that SCH is the OG barrier healer...yet also the ONLY healer that does not have a single oGCD barrier (Confession requires two). WHM has two charges of Benison, AST has two charges of Intersection, SGE has Haima, Panhaima, and Holos (not to mention Eukrasia spells, while not oGCDs, are still instant casts), yet what does SCH have? A 3 sec delay Confession and...........that's it. AST has arguably more barrier heals than AST, which is just sad. And while one could argue maybe the pure healers have oGCD barriers (and GCD heals and regens) and the barrier healers have GCD barriers (and oGCD heals and regens), SGE breaks both of those rules, and AST kind of does as well. And we're not talking a LARGE barrier (200 potency isn't exactly huge, but it's SOMEthing). I'd honestly be fine cutting Lustrate's heal to do that. As you know, barriers generally have more value in current FFXIV encounter design than heals do, the only exception being "1 HP Doom" mechanics, and this wouldn't really change that much since that's generally an AOE affair (and you always have Recitation Emergency Tactics Adloquium if you REALLY need to heal a single target).

Energy Drain is simple - Aetherflow is useful and has cool abilities on it. Sacred Soil (mitigation and regen), Excogitation (big heal with an insurance policy mechanic), Indomitability (snap aoe heal with good potency), and potentially Lustrate (small barrier or sprint speed boost). What does Faerie Gauge have? Well...Aetherpact. Which is too weak to be a clutch heal and too expensive in gauge to be a "take care of this for me for a minute, Eos" set and forget heal and too slow to be effective in most situations. Most of the time using it, I can't tell much difference vs not using it and just having Eos Embrace, as the power difference is not really that great when a tank is being hit on by 2 entire packs of mobs together. It might be doing something, but it's utterly unnoticeable. Fey Blessing at least would give that gauge something useful. But then you run into the problem of "burn all AF on Energy Drain INSTEAD OF INTERESTING ABILITIES THAT WOULD BE FUN TO USE...while burning all FG on Fey Blessing because it's better than nothing I guess?". I'd MUCH rather have Energy Drain on the Faerie Gauge. It still retains the "damage vs healing" mechanic now, and the 10 gauge cost preserves the exact same rate you gain and can use them in the game right now (3 per minute). Being on Faerie Gauge also allows the potential to pool them for burst windows, which is a bit MORE thought than what the spell has right now. And one of the number one requests for SCH in all the polls/surveys we've done is "decouple Energy Drain from Aetherflow".

While some people love the tug of war between healing and damage, many people really like the AF heals and WANT to use them, but feel penalized for doing so. Imagine if every time BLM used Xenoglossy, they couldn't cast another Fire spell for 60 seconds? Or every time a NIN used a Nijutsu on anything other than Houton, they weren't allowed to use any Ninki spender for the next 60 seconds? That wouldn't fly with the "fun" DPS Jobs. Yet we have SCH with these fun and interesting abilities, and we're saying "You don't get to use those except in dire emergencies or it's bad play". That just seems like bad design. ED being on Faerie Gauge preserves the tug of war gameplay, allowing players to optimize EVEN MORE (since, again, you can conserve Gauge for burst windows, and potentially could even use Dissipation's bonus AF into FG to send out a blistering 6 Energy Drains under the opener, and potentially 9 in the 4 and 6 minute bursts; all of which is higher skill ceiling than what we have now), while also freeing Aetherflow's interesting and fun abilities for general use. Finally, if Lustrate was changed to apply a barrier (ANY barrier, honestly), then it becomes an effective AF dump, so ED being needed as an AF dump is no longer a thing. Could even rework Aetherflow to, if used with AF stacks still available, converts the stacks into bonus MP as well as 10 gauge (as if they had been spent normally) so you keep that supply of EDs whether or not you spend all your AF (AF doesn't strictly NEED a spender, it just "feels bad" to overcap). If ED doesn't exist (e.g. early ShB), there's no actual "loss" to overcapping, but ignoring all that, it does feel bad, so having it either give something back (MP) or having another dump (Lustrate) absolves that.

Aetherflow should be for fun and interesting abilities, not for TRYING TO AVOID USING fun and interesting abilities so you can eek out another mere 100 potency of damage. And ED on the Faerie Gauge, because of how it's granular and can stack up to 10 charges (100 gauge) for Energy Drain or 3 charges (90 gauge) of Fey Blessing sounds more interesting and compelling as well anyway.

I know there's a certain loyalty to ED being on AF, but really consider what I said above and ask yourself if it doesn't sound more compelling and higher skill ceiling than what we have now. I think it does...

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AST:

I say all the time, some people love AST for what it is, which is why I tend not to make any suggestions on it. But they are doing a rework. For my part, I'd like AST much more if the burst APM was a bit lower, but the Job was more consistently applying buffs. Instead of cramming 3 buffs into a burst window, then using all of ONE over the course of the entire next two minutes...I'd MUCH rather the gameplay be heavily focused on handing out cards consistently throughout the fight. A card every 10 or 15 seconds seems way more compelling to me. But the Job still has the DoT + Nukespam and high APM when Malific/Draw/maybeUndraw/Identify Best Target/Malific/up-down on the D-pad to try selecting the right party member while the GCD is still casting the Malific and hopefully landing on the right person when the cast ends so you can immediately weave/Play/retargetboss/Malific/Draw...oh, and having to burn Lightspeed (instead of having it available for utility) to even manage this in the first place.

On the other hand, an alternative where Draw and Play are GCDs means with a 15 sec CD on Draw, out of every 12 GCDs (30 seconds) you have 1 Combust, 2 Draws, 2 Plays, 7 Malifics. Malific would go from being like 85% of your casts now to about 58.3% of them (when you aren't doing ANY GCD healing/Raising), which sound a lot better and less nukespammy. That should generally be considered an improvement. If it's 10 sec CD on Draw, then we're talking Combust/Draw/Play/Malific/Malific/Draw/Play/Malific/Malific/Draw/Play/Malific/Combust/repeat, which would actually make a majority of AST GCDs NOT-Malific - just there you'd have per 30 sec 1 Combust, 3 Draws, 3 Plays, 5 Malifics, so Malific would be 41.6% of your casts. And, again, this will be lower in any cases you're casting GCD heals/Raises.

It also wouldn't just be pressing a button over and over; you're actively identifying the cards and deciding who to play them on, meaning more APM since you're still targeting party members, still weaving oGCD heals, and possibly weaving oGCDs like Redraw (imagine if it had no charge limit and just a 1 sec internal CD so you had 2-3 bites at that apple before needing to Play to get the next Draw going). Does that sound boring and slow on the APM? I don't think so. And it sounds way more engaging since you're still weaving Malifics, just less of them, and instead of weaving your signature mechanic between a boring nukespam, you're weaving the boring nukespam in between your signature mechanic. Doesn't that sound like a BETTER state of affairs? Where the Malifics are a mere side diversion from your party buffing, instead of your party buffing being the diversion from your Malific spam, which doesn't even break up the Malific spam itself as you're just weaving current card oGCDs into your Malific spam.

I could be wrong, but I feel like this would be an overall improvement, making AST feel CONSISTENTLY engaging instead of overwhelming for 10 seconds and then boring for 110, and it would put its signature gameplay concept of drawing Arcanum to buff allies front and center consistently. Making the next Malific do 3x damage to be damage neutral would also give AST some burst potential, which would also make it more engaging to solo with since using cards on yourself would feel more rewarding and like a rotation; you Draw and Play to buff yourself then SLAM the enemy with a big hit followed by a still buffed smaller hit, rinse and repeat, and at a fairly high cadence. AST Crits would actually feel marginally good instead of like slightly larger feather tickles.

I honestly don't know all of what would make AST good, and I don't know what the rework will entail, but the above just sounds more fun than what we have now to me. Some people may love the 10 seconds of overwhelming, but surely they don't enjoy the 110 seconds of boredom that it costs them...?

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SGE:

Not much here other than we're not far from the same page. If Toxicon was damage neutral, then the way you generate it now would make sense. If it was NOT, then getting it from using Addersgall (think Faerie Gauge?) could work. But in either case, having it do 1.5x damage would make it a part of your rotation to use intentionally. I know people think modern SMN is easy, but something a lot of people don't realize is you ideally want to use Titan in burst, not for movement. You use it for movement if you must, not because that's the objective/ideal. Likewise, a bigger Toxicon would make it a thing you want to actively work into your rotation BUT weighing that against movement needs. Creating that tug of war of "can I get away with greeding with this now, or do I really need to save it for an upcoming movement phase?" that generates interesting choices. Even a simple damage neutrality would give it the Misery effect of optimization to place in burst when possible for damage gains, but either of the above works for me.

As for Dyskrasia/Toxicon: Because SCH already has Art of War.

Do we need two healer Jobs with not only their single target nuke being identical but ALSO their aoe being identical? If you like the fact you have to go into melee - you'd still need to weave into melee for at least Plegma, so SGE would still be incentivized to stay near-ish the packs if possible. And we are just talking dungeons at this point, as actual fights never have adds that you AOE down anymore (adds, yes, but generally spaced to where you can only single target them), and nothing would be stopping you from walking into melee if you so wanted to anyway. But unless you think Art of War would make sense as both the most powerful and the safest healer AOE in the game (having the highest damage and being ranged and being instant cast so it couldn't be wiffed like Gravity)? But that seems the less desirable of the two to me.

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Glad you dig it. I appreciate the points you raised. Hopefully this explains my thinking so that even if you still disagree, you at least understand what my pitches were based on. ^_^