Healer Suggestions Megathread

[IceBlueNinja]

These are the abilities that I compare:

Toxicon serves the niche of ruin 2.
Rhizomata is just recitation if you use it on aetherflow (which you usually do). Zoe is also similar, since crits are also ~50% buffs to GCD heals.
Haima and Panhaima are Seraphic Veil and Consolation.
Pneuma fits the niche of crit indoms to some extent.

Holos initially was just Fey Blessing but they buffed it and made it a pretty different. Now I compare it to deployment tactics/expedient.

Like yes, they have some differences, and in some ways you play them differently but you can see the similarities of the abilities right away. Other games would differentiate how healers play much more (you could also compare scholar to noct ast and see that the play style was much different). Or compare current white mage to Astro.

Really? when noct ast was a thing the way it was so bashed and hated and was ask to be removed which is finally is now yet now all of a sudden everyone is asking for it back there is never a satisfaction when it comes to ast, see the card dilemma atm. It was too had to handle stormblood ast now its too boring to handle EW ast. Its shields was whine about alot and like sage complained or weak/inferior they are compared to scholar even when in shb they improve it alot. There is always that set who is never gonna be happy. That part on rhizomata is not true because I barely if rarely have to use it unless its a situation where I got a sprout part or the average darknight eating my whole entire kit up with their lack of defenses.

[Supersnow845]

I agree but the same can be said of ast/whm and people seem to not gloat or mention how they are the same of each other as bad as they do with the sge/sch which honestly makes 0 sense. Why should the pure healers get away with cloning similarities yet its a big issue sneezed at on shield healers? Hey look lets go off topic the crafter and gatherer classes are barely different from each other. Other than the burst Idea healer I thought of there honestly no way to make healers too different.

I also agree that WHM and AST are too similar on the healing front (though not as similar as SGE/SCH), I think people harp on about SGE more because it’s a new class they supposedly designed from the ground up and then released it with half its abilities being copies of SCH’s, it has its niches and unique abilities 100% but I think that’s what people get hung up on

WHM and AST also have the advantage of while their GCD’s are copy past their oGCD “bread and butter” heals are rather different, WHM focuses on its lilys while AST rotates CU, CO and star as its core healing, they really don’t have a lot of oGCD overlap (unlike say sacred soil, indom, whispering dawn, lustrate etc)

Don’t get me wrong I’m not arguing to not give spreadlo to SGE because I don’t like SGE, I’m arguing because I don’t want the classes to be even more similar, it’s why I also don’t want SCH to have a gap closer or pulsing shields

[Aravell]

I agree but the same can be said of ast/whm and people seem to not gloat or mention how they are the same of each other as bad as they do with the sge/sch which honestly makes 0 sense. Why should the pure healers get away with cloning similarities yet its a big issue sneezed at on shield healers? Hey look lets go off topic the crafter and gatherer classes are barely different from each other. Other than the burst Idea healer I thought of there honestly no way to make healers too different.

I'm pretty sure that the reason SGE/SCH gets scrutinised so heavily is because of their job gimmicks being basically the same, they both heal while pressing their damage buttons (Embrace/Kardia) and they both have basically the same gauge system (Aetherflow/Addersgall). While the GCD heal kit is the same between both pure healers (only MP costs aren't the same) and there's some overlap between a bit of their OGCD heal kit (like how Earthly Star and Assize both heal and damage and you want to use them on CD), at least they have a different job gimmick, WHM being lilies and AST being cards.

[fulminating]

SGE Rework broad concept idk specifics it's more a theme thing


It's not worth its own thread so it's going in here.

Let's really lean into the 4 humours aspect of sage and rename their LB to "Big Top":

Blood/Sanguine - active/enthusiastic
Black Bile/Melancholic - you know what melancholy is
Yellow Bile/Choleric - aggressive/short tempered/decisive
Phlegm/Phlegmatic - calm/reserved

So there's 4 discrete aspects here we can lean into.

Without deviating too heavily from the current 1 dot 1 nuke, I think the burst gameplay would be to stay/maintain the Yellow Bile effect which would modify the dot to a shorter (15-18s) duration with increased potency and nuke to significantly stronger. I think this should also come with an increased mp cost or passive drain to incentivise switching to Blood outside of burst windows and boss nearly dead.

Blood should grant the standard 30s dot/nukey nuke, perhaps with a slight healing potency nerf.

Phlegm would more heavily lean into mitigation at the cost of lower actual hp restoration, but otherwise on par with Blood.

Black Bile would be an aggressive mp regen stance with a longer (45s perhaps) dot timer for the same total damage, weakened nuke and possibly slight increased healing potency.


Now as this still seems very disconnected, there should be some kind of interaction that promotes stance swapping beside mp demands. I think tying this to a rework of the gauge could be a viable approach. Staying with the concept of generating gauge over time and starting with three tokens, the gameplay could revolve around rationing these for swaps at appropriate times. The soft failure state would to be in Black Bile, the default stance. This should however be desired for healing intensive fight phases, eg if they ever decide to reuse goldbile, semi frequent tank autos or any mechanic that involves some degree of healing.

I think the next question that should be asked is whether the stances ought to be maintained through use of gauge or just by staying active until touched. I would like to limit how rapidly this sage could swap between stances because it already seems kind of cracked but shield healer lmao. I'm leaning toward "yes, it should need maintained", allowing for an easy to see and comprehend failure state and the gauge generation to remain largely unchanged.

The problem with trying to make a compelling healer with any degree of choice, meaningful or otherwise is that there's not really anything to use it on.

Since this is a hybrid, ast can have noct and diurinal sects back, and give white mage stoneskin/protect for good measure.

Kardia's dead btw.

Tried to draw what I mean, don't know if it'll show up.


[Spoiler]tfw you reinvent miasma 2 as a job's usp[/Spoiler]

But you can see it's a fairly simple niche for sage to inhabit, has a clearish room for ceiling, may even allow piety to be marginally useful and even sitting in the soft failure state shouldn't be too terrible for those who don't want to try.

[ty_taurus]

I'm still a fan of my crit Sage concept:

Critical hits and critical heals generate Addersting, a hyper-offensive resource used on OGCD Toxikon with certain limitations, but also more choices in how you manage it: your main debuff being an increased chance to score crits on your target that consumes up to 3 Addersting and generally reimburses your damage with more frequent Addersting generation thanks to the added crits.

Addersgall is reworked from something that stifles Kardia healing by being objectively, massively superior flat healing/regens/mitigation to tools that further enhance your interaction with Kardia. Zoe ensuring both the damage and the healing result in critical hits means 2 Adderstings generated, Soteria essentially being a second Kardia on a cooldown and an Addersgall cost, and Krasis helping you manage MP to continue using Eukrasia and Dyskrasia.

Also the direction of having Eukrasia and Dyskrasia as opposing augments that are fairly easy to follow as one adds Kardia effects while the other is about more Addersting generation.

[ThorneDynasty]

I also agree that WHM and AST are too similar on the healing front (though not as similar as SGE/SCH), I think people harp on about SGE more because it’s a new class they supposedly designed from the ground up and then released it with half its abilities being copies of SCH’s, it has its niches and unique abilities 100% but I think that’s what people get hung up on

WHM and AST also have the advantage of while their GCD’s are copy past their oGCD “bread and butter” heals are rather different, WHM focuses on its lilys while AST rotates CU, CO and star as its core healing, they really don’t have a lot of oGCD overlap (unlike say sacred soil, indom, whispering dawn, lustrate etc)

Don’t get me wrong I’m not arguing to not give spreadlo to SGE because I don’t like SGE, I’m arguing because I don’t want the classes to be even more similar, it’s why I also don’t want SCH to have a gap closer or pulsing shields

AST also has the advantage of cards. While collecting the right seals is kind of limp in its importance now, it does make it an unique healer job in having anything to do besides one-button GCD spam and occasionally healing. Individual parts of the kits being homogenized is kind of overlooked. Partly because everyone knows its' a losing battle with SE being the way it is, and AST players are likely intensely aware it can still get so much worse: I mean who's to say if they start making too many displeased noises, the whole card system won't get completely nuked, since orbital launch seems to be a go-to with job mechanics that SE perceives even a slight problem with?

"AST players are complaining, it's not a very popular healer? Hmm, what makes AST stand out? Cards? What is the most popular healer then? WHM! Remove the cards, make it more like WHM, that will fix it."

[Mayhemmer]

"AST players are complaining, it's not a very popular healer? Hmm, what makes AST stand out? Cards? What is the most popular healer then? WHM! Remove the cards, make it more like WHM, that will fix it."

It's funny in that, while I like AST and want to like it more, the part of it's kit that never ceases to jab me in the side while I'm playing it is Astrodyne. I don't know how people typically perceive Astrodyne as I don't see it brought up much, but to me, it feels like a hastily cobbled together, legally distinct Presence of Mind, except I'm expected to use it on more than just Malefic spam for 15 seconds.

[Post]

Astrodyne sucks. It's what they put in because players complained about how Divination worked (requiring 3 seals to get 6% damage for 15 seconds versus the oh so abysmally different 4% damage for 15 seconds), which is a rework of how Expanded Balance worked all through StB.

So, it's a band-aid on a band-aid, and that's why it just feels like cheap fodder.

They cut the time mechanics to make AST more about cards and sects in ShB, and then cut half the Astrology and somehow more of the cards into EW. I don't know how the hell the AST quest chain looks nowadays, but I can't imagine it feels very good to do a solo duty at 60 with some guy that can stop time and then you learn the spell and it's just Aspected Helios (don't even need to qualify it with Diurnal/Nocturnal anymore) on a 1min oGCD.

Like, what the hell happened to their imagination?

[Supersnow845]

I’m actually in favour of divination not being linked to seals, I do wish that you had to do something to get divination but something that requires player skill and not RNG, I know AST is designed as an RNG job but RNG can only work when all of the options don’t contribute to damage

However I don’t think they needed to keep the seal system when they took divination off it, they should have just deleted the seal system (especially since they deleted sleeve draw which was your RNG protection and nerfed redraw)

My very barebones idea for AST would involve either
1) all cards being reverted to SB but both balance and spear are given non damaging options, to compensate for the damage difference you either buff malefic or give AST a different buff to do somewhere
2) give all cards an AOE 3% effect then return their original effects on the person they are played on (so for example bole played on a tank gives the tank a 15% mitigation and then everyone in a 25 yalm radius around the tank gets a 3% damage buff

This doesn’t fix 90% of AST’s issues but I don’t think putting divination back on RNG is a good idea

[Post]

Yes. They kept the seals because they didn't want to be arsed to fix the job, and just slapped on Astrodyne as a band-aid to be tied to them. I say they did this because they recognized the ~~balance~~ problems with Divination being RNG.

But, Divination was already a band-aid on expanded balance. I don't think Divination was a good idea. I certainly don't think making it go back to RNG would be a good idea, unless they made a hell of a lot of other jobs go back to more RNG, and left a few of them not that way so as to make the game have more variety.

Hell, I think all our giant ass aoes are band-aids, too, I guess for p10s or p12s? I dunno, we managed just fine in every Ultimate before that patch. But, I have no fucking idea how we can ever come back from it. Like, the dimension of space, of positioning, one of the core facets of the game design, is now just gone from most of our gameplay.

I think variety is key. The jobs felt like they covered more style range when there was 9 of them than now when there's 19.