My Question for Yoshi P

[ty_taurus]

I've written down a question that I can copy and paste into any future Q&A forum thread the next time we get to ask Yoshi P questions. I have no idea if that will ever matter, but as I said in another thread, I'm not going to stop trying to make my feedback heard no matter how hopeless it is.

With that in mind, this question does include examples of changes that could theoretically be made during Dawntrail and I want to make sure these are things you all feel would be appropriate to make healers at least a little more enjoyable throughout this expansion. Let me know if you agree or disagree with any of these suggestions, or if you have other suggestions for your particular healer. Additionally, if you agree with the below question and also want to present it to Yoshi P, you have my permission to copy and paste this into that Q&A. This is, of course, if you don't see my question already posted. The closer this question gets to the first page, the better.

Here's the question:

"Even in Ultimate-level content, healers spend most of our actions casting basic attack spells like Glare and we're frustrated with it. Dawntrail's additional finisher attacks, usable once per 2-minute interval, do not provide enough variety to alleviate this monotony. Our healing kits are full of cheap, powerful heals, which exacerbates the problem. We want our role to be more interesting, not just in Ultimate, but in all content. Can we have more ways to vary our gameplay and reduce the proportion of actions spent casting our basic attack spell? Why not increase how often the other attacks we already have are available? Rather than wait for the next expansion, we can make changes now. Reduce our cooldowns, reduce the duration of damage over time spells, and make the new attacks we received in Dawntrail available outside of the respective buffs they are currently restricted to.

I have some suggestions for ways this could be accomplished for each healer below that I hope can better communicate what we are hoping to see in our healer gameplay.

White Mage: Reduce the cooldown of Presence of Mind to 60 seconds, make Glare IV a separate hotbar action, and allow tics of Dia to proc uses of Glare IV outside of Presence of Mind windows like how Black Mage’s Thundercloud worked; perhaps with a 15% chance per tic. Additionally, you could bring Aero III back at a lower level as a weaker version that can upgrade into Glare IV at level 92 to make this added gameplay element available at an earlier time for White Mage.

Scholar: Bring Miasma back to Scholar as a DoT with a 12 second duration. Rename “Baneful Impaction” to “Miasmolysis” and have Miasma upgrade into it at level 92, getting stronger and becoming an AOE DoT. Add an effect to both DoTs that adds a stack of Impact Imminent to the Scholar. Return Shadowflare as a spell on the GCD that deals high damage and can be used by consuming 3 stacks of Impact Imminent. Scholar can have a max of 5 stacks.

Astrologian: Change Lady of Crowns into a buff that increases the party’s damage dealt by critical hits. Reduce the duration of all Combust spells to 15 seconds. Make Oracle a separate hotbar action on the GCD that has a 1.5 second cast time, a 25 second cooldown, and reduce the potency to 500 for the first enemy and 60% less for other enemies. Add an effect to Gravity spells that inflicts an Omen on the first enemy struck for 10 seconds; when Oracle is cast on an enemy with an Omen, Oracle can be cast again instantly and the Omen is removed. We can also return Stella to Astrologian at an earlier level as a weaker version of Oracle, and upgrade it at level 92.

Sage: Reduce the duration of all Eukrasian Dosis spells to 15 seconds. Reduce the cooldown of all Phlegma spells to 20 seconds. Change Toxikon I and II to oGCD attacks with the same potency as the current version of Dosis. Give Eukrasian Dosis spells and Eukrasian Dyskrasia a 35% chance to generate 1 Addersting when cast. Reduce the cooldown of Psyche to 40 seconds."

[ForsakenRoe]

As we saw with the infamous question from Recon (the one that got us 'if you want challenge as a healer, try the new ultimate'), the majority of your question would be ignored, and the part that is not ignored, will be partially mistranslated/misunderstood

I think only the first paragraph would get read, and so you have to make that have the most impact. You also left them an 'out' by not mentioning that the issue (spamming 1 button is boring) occurs even in Ultimates, and so he'd be able to just go 'try Ultimates' again

[ty_taurus]

As we saw with the infamous question from Recon (the one that got us 'if you want challenge as a healer, try the new ultimate'), the majority of your question would be ignored, and the part that is not ignored, will be partially mistranslated/misunderstood

I think only the first paragraph would get read, and so you have to make that have the most impact. You also left them an 'out' by not mentioning that the issue (spamming 1 button is boring) occurs even in Ultimates, and so he'd be able to just go 'try Ultimates' again

I added a line about ultimates and wanting dynamic gameplay outside of ultimates. I tried to write my post in a way that the first paragraph does have the most impact. I don't know if they'd read off the suggestions, so I tried to balance being direct while also being concise in that paragraph.

Even if the majority of the question gets ignored, I will repeat the sentiment I shared above: I will not stop talking about these issues. I will not stop giving feedback. No matter how hopeless and fruitless it gets, I will continue to push as much as I can. That's all I can do.

[Calysto]

I agree ; but I''m mainly going to bet against Roe's idea of how Y-P will avoid the issue : he'll say there will be more damage to keep us busy and that it would be too much stress (you know, the stress he said was missing from the game) <.<

[ASkellington]

My signature has a question that I'd like to ask, but honestly if I got to ask YoshiP face to Discord Face my own question:

"From a healer's perspective it seems as if the dev team doesn't want to engage the role, as they have yet to increase the encounter damage relative to the added healing skills the role gets every expansion as well as refuse to nerf the sustain/mitigation on tanks, rather instead as of Dawntrail have increased them, thereby making healers unneeded in most forms of content; as that seems to be the case, why then do you not delete the role in its entirety?"

[ty_taurus]

My signature has a question that I'd like to ask, but honestly if I got to ask YoshiP face to Discord Face my own question:

"From a healer's perspective it seems as if the dev team doesn't want to engage the role, as they have yet to increase the encounter damage relative to the added healing skills the role gets every expansion as well as refuse to nerf the sustain/mitigation on tanks, rather instead as of Dawntrail have increased them, thereby making healers unneeded in most forms of content; as that seems to be the case, why then do you not delete the role in its entirety?"

I get how you feel. As much as I'd love to be more blunt about the topic to emphasize how frustrating it's been, I think it'd get ignored due to perceived rudeness no matter how many upvotes it gets. First, I think there's probably a PR person who sifts through results who probably wouldn't let that slide, but eastern cultures are a lot more intolerant of rudeness.

There's a newer game called Wuthering Waves created by a Chinese company that reworked a lot of its story because of a lot of backlash from the Chinese community regarding character rudeness. To give you an example, the basic premise is you have a world where people have basically been at war with these demonish entities called Threnodians that also spawn lesser monsters known as Tacet Discords. Your main character is an amnesiac that, in the very beginning of the game, gets woken up by a couple outriders basically, and you quickly encounter a high ranking Tacet Discord, fight it, and after winning, absorb it into yourself through your hand. In the original beta story, one of the outriders immediately turned her gun on you and demanded answers because, you know, absorbing the power of the threat they've been at war with for centuries is kind of a red flag. But that was seen as too rude and that character was receiving loads of hate. That was just one example as well. So the story was reworked and now everyone basically trusts you with their life, treats you like a hero from day one, and is super buddy-buddy with you because of that backlash.

Now China and Japan are quite different, and I don't believe the Japanese gaming community is that extreme, but there is a cultural similarity in that. I think that's something we gotta take into consideration no matter how frustrating. Blizzard could take it, but I don't think SE will even acknowledge it.

On a separate note, like I said initially, I'm trying to think of ways that we can make what we have here in Dawntrail work at least a little better. But Astro's a strange case because a lot of it comes down on the cards, and I can't imagine we'll see any major changes to this card system during Dawntrail no matter what happens. Personally, I'd advocate for dropping Exaltation and Celestial Intersection because, you know, we really don't need four single target mitigations, but I was more just focusing on DPS things with this. In all seriousness, regardless of what you think is or isn't on the table, what would you do to improve the DPS side of Dawntrail Astro based on the actions we have to work with? How do you feel about that Oracle suggestion?

[Kes13a]

I would be surprised if Yoshi P addresses anything to healers directly. I do not expect this direction to change, give healing abilities to tanks and dps and let healers wither on the vine.

I cant see myself being around for 8.0

yeah, there are many other jobs.. but I prefer healer, and will let a game that has a real healer job have my money if SE refuses to improve the job class at all. someone needs to tell them the classic trinity involves three job classes... and thats NOT a warrior and two dps...

[ASkellington]

but I was more just focusing on DPS things with this. In all seriousness, regardless of what you think is or isn't on the table, what would you do to improve the DPS side of Dawntrail Astro based on the actions we have to work with? How do you feel about that Oracle suggestion?

Oracle should be an action on the GCD with a recast timer of 20s. It should not be locked behind playing a card, using Astral/Umbral Draw or Divination or anything else.

[ty_taurus]

Oracle should be an action on the GCD with a recast timer of 20s. It should not be locked behind playing a card, using Astral/Umbral Draw or Divination or anything else.

Really?

I don't dislike just having attacks on cooldowns. I'm okay with Phlegma being like that, and I think reducing Phlegma's cooldown to 20 seconds would also be very apt, but I also feel like just having things on cooldowns is kinda boring. That's why I so desperately want Addersting to be something more unique, because I think that can be what makes Sage's DPS more exciting.

With Oracle, I like the thematic concept of having it be a follow up to something. Follow ups aren't a bad thing in my mind, just that having something only be a follow up to a single action, and one on a 2 minute cooldown no less, is so weak and uninspired. But I feel like there's a way that we could make it more dynamic than just a cooldown, and that can still make it used fairly often. I'm just really unsure of how to connect it to anything else Astrologian has. Because for some reason Astrologian has just become a kitchen sink of repetitive heals that do a lot of the same thing.

I mentioned before about my own idea for card effects, where you place a sort of "reverse dance partner" on the enemy, and cards instead offer different ways of proc'ing a special attack that triggers whenever you build enough stacks on this "reverse dance partner." I was also sort of thinking about how maybe Horoscope gets reworked to an effect that marks each party member with a designated card. Let's say you have a Paladin marked with Ewer, a Samurai marked with Spear, a Summoner marked with Arrow, and you're marked with Balance. Well maybe you can draw a specific set of cards, but the goal is to try and match the card you play to the person who's horoscope matches that card, and doing so grants you a use of Oracle. And then you could have tools that do things like maybe Celestial Opposition lets you overwrite everyone's horoscope to match the card you want to play.

Of course, all this is far beyond the scope of things we can do during Dawntrail. I guess, coming back from that tangent, are there not other ways we could make Oracle usage a little more interesting?

[ASkellington]

Really?
I guess, coming back from that tangent, are there not other ways we could make Oracle usage a little more interesting?

Yes really. Actually think about how this plays out in solo instances.

In order for me to use another attack I have to play a card that's only accessible every minute with a buff that doesn't even benefit me because I do the lowest damage of every class in the game. I have 2 casts of Oracle per minute. Do explain how is that fun?

I don't think its fun in the slightest. Put it on 20s until 8.0.