The changes to Astrologian are upsetting

[Zolvolt]

Which Savage fight in Endwalker needed a lot of single target healing? Because what I experienced was slapping a regen on the tank and occasionally putting Exaltation on them. That's it. They didn't need anything else. You either play with tanks who don't press their mit buttons and are wearing extremely bad gear, or you don't play healers.

Every single fight in the second tier of this expansion requires heavy use of healing ogcd's. If you are using your GCD's to heal the tanks then ofcourse you're not going to need your ogcd's as much because you are overhealing the content... you can and should handle about 90% of single target healing requirements with healing ogcd's and not a regen or aspected benefic.

But just to give you some solid examples, proto-carbuncle had some heavy to heal single target mechanics, so did p8s phase 1 and phase 2. so did p7s. But Yeah, if you're stopping dps to single target heal GCD then you are invalidating the use-cases for your abilities. GCD heals are for when you have nothing else left to press.

[Kissune]

Every single fight in the second tier of this expansion requires heavy use of healing ogcd's. If you are using your GCD's to heal the tanks then ofcourse you're not going to need your ogcd's as much because you are overhealing the content... you can and should handle about 90% of single target healing requirements with healing ogcd's and not a regen or aspected benefic.

But just to give you some solid examples, proto-carbuncle had some heavy to heal single target mechanics, so did p8s phase 1 and phase 2. so did p7s. But Yeah, if you're stopping dps to single target heal GCD then you are invalidating the use-cases for your abilities. GCD heals are for when you have nothing else left to press.

Really? I distinctly remember only throwing out the occasional excog to a tank. Zero lustrate uses, barely any fey tether (my gauge spent most of the time capped), and some protraction but mostly just for spreadlo for I think specifically high concept and p7s purgation, which was mostly just so we could cheese it and not have to heal. When i did it on AST i did even less bc the tankbusters were so infrequent and the autos so lacklustre that self sustain basically kept us going through it all. Natural alignment I basically just used aoe regens to heal the stacks/spreads and catch the NA people in it to heal them.

I never ever used my full compliment of single target tools in Abyssos. I used them sometimes, sure, but they were never all on cooldown and I never found myself wishing I had more. Now we're getting three more single target charges... when I didn't even use my full kit to begin with.

...What single target mechanics were in p5s that required healing? The busters? That thing that my warrior just pressed equilibrium on or GNB press Aurora, or pld pressed intervention/Sheltron... you get the picture. I don't remember tank autos ever being relevant, even week 1. I'm beginning to think you just had bad tanks or you seriously overestimate how much healing you actually had to do and just overhealed a bunch.

[Kissune]

Like... I really, really want you to stop and consider things, Zol. I want you to think about what giving AST a bunch of extra single target healing resources means.

A. They increase incoming single target damage to account for the increase in ST healing/mit tools. Considering AST now has way more ways to ST mit than white mage, this means that there are one of two outcomes. Either the damage output is high enough that AST tools are required for the mitchecks, making WHM unviable. Or the checks are low enough that WHM can get by with what they have, making AST's tools pointless.
B. They do not increase incoming damage, or increase it relative to the amount of tools we gain, making effectively a state where the ST healing/mit requirements are tuned to what endwalker should have been, but with dawntrail abilities. Again, in this case, AST abilities are just bloat.

Like seriously, do you actually, genuinely think that them adding more single target tools is a good thing bc you sometimes had to use the ones you had in EW? Yeah, I used exaltation and intersection sometimes in fights. Yes, i used ED as my go-to button to heal a tank up after a buster or to top up someone with natural alignment. But I never felt strained for uses. Most of the time, they sat accumulating charges on my hotbar, waiting for a use case. Now I get even more abilities that will largely do the same thing. Will I use the new cards? Idk, probably. But will they actually be useful? Lmao, no. Because if they are, then that means they actually are needed to survive. A tank living a buster on 15% hp vs 10% hp means absolutely nothing when you're going to spend the same resources to heal them anyways. A tank taking autos that deal 10% less damage means nothing when their self sustain and something like kardia will heal each hit anyways. They're just a bunch of placebo effects meant to make you think you're helping, when just a single ED or intersection does the same thing. If they really, really needed us to have more mit or more healing... they could have just given us more stacks of the abilities we already had, and made something more interesting in exchange. Instead we get our normal healing kit, and then a tacked on mediocre aetherflow with cards that will go unused in most content.

Like of course, I'm sure you will play all the cards that you get. Because you feel obligated to eat the slop square enix has dropped in front of you to 'own those dirty EW Astros'. I know you'll play every single card, you'll overheal, overmit, and talk about all the valuable decisions and actions you're doing. Bc that's the level of delusion you have sunk into, that you have convinced yourself that a system like this is actually relevant to any content, bc you've never been punished for thinking otherwise. You will continue to toss out your worthless abilities and pretend like that is equal to them being 'absolutely required'. I have logs to prove you otherwise, you don't. I barely put thought into Abyssos beyond a handful of mechanics and... newsflash. If the only time you have to consider using single target abilities to be 'mandatory' is a few instances in an entire expansion's worth of fights... odds are they aren't that useful. At least with dps cards, I was always using them, and they were always relevant. Overhealing doesn't make a fight more fun. Having to think did. And I'm not going to pretend I'm doing anything intelligent by putting the bole on the tank while he takes a buster and then watch him survive with 50% hp and then heal to full himself. But you will.

[Aravell]

I barely put thought into Abyssos beyond a handful of mechanics and... newsflash. If the only time you have to consider using single target abilities to be 'mandatory' is a few instances in an entire expansion's worth of fights... odds are they aren't that useful.

I remember that the only parts in Abyssos where single target focused healing matters were Natural Alignment and the Ifrit DoT during High Concept 2 (Because those were the only mechanics I remember using Fey Union on).

The DoT busters in P5S, P6S and P7S were an utter joke if the tanks cross-mitigated reliably. Like if a DRK and PLD crossed their mitigations, you don't even see them take damage.

That said, it's a different story in PF. I've seen some really bad tanks in P5S, like a WAR that died to 1 tick of Toxic Crunch, but that's not the norm, and I think a tank that barely mitigates isn't possible to save either way.

[Kissune]

I remember that the only parts in Abyssos where single target focused healing matters were Natural Alignment and the Ifrit DoT during High Concept 2 (Because those were the only mechanics I remember using Fey Union on).

The DoT busters in P5S, P6S and P7S were an utter joke if the tanks cross-mitigated reliably. Like if a DRK and PLD crossed their mitigations, you don't even see them take damage.

That said, it's a different story in PF. I've seen some really bad tanks in P5S, like a WAR that died to 1 tick of Toxic Crunch, but that's not the norm, and I think a tank that barely mitigates isn't possible to save either way.

I have said it before and I'll say it again. My job should not only be fun and interesting when people are fucking up.

[Zolvolt]

Y'all look at the logs. for these tiers. Damage from things like p5s poison is 500-700+ damage TPS on tanks on top of autos that are also 700+ dtps and during other raid-wide damage. Total tank damage taken person even in just tier 2 was 3000+ because of frequent double tank busters, DoTs and the pairing of raid mechanics with high tank damage. Even looking back at tank healing, it's still significantly under healer ST healing them. If you are dpsing full uptime outside of required aspected helios/helios you'll see that the accumulated healing on a tank from exaltation, CI, and ED will be your top heals to the tank.

P7s for example, tanks were taking about 2.1mil damage over the course of the fight. They would mitigate about 700k damage before that, and absorb/heal another 700k. (roughly, and thats being generous on behalf of tank heal/mits with tanks that actually hit healing parses above blue) Thats still 1.4m healing done by healers to a single tank. (one of two tanks). On p7s you would see something like 125k healing from ED. 93k Intersection shield. 42k Intersection heal. exaltation 100k, + however many times you use CO, CU, Lady, earthly star and horoscope(unaspected) just for extra tank healing. You're hitting over 400k of the entire fight's remaining 1.4m healing on healing up single target damage from a SINGLE healer.

But thats assuming you're playing correctly and at a high level where you avoid overcasting GCD's. Even a single healer throwing out extra GCD heals is going to make your OGCD's seem less useful. But make no mistake the amount of tank damage we've had to heal is significantly higher than previous expansions. The log data doesn't lie.

That said: we're still spamming 1 constantly as healers, despite the fact that we are doing more OGCD healing and more micromanagement than any other expansion prior to endwalker. That can skew your sense of what you're actually doing and what impact you're having on tank healing. But yes, we did have more tank healing this expansion. Don't take my word for it though, go compare SHB logs to EW logs. Look at the tank damage taken vs healer casts and what healing was effective. (and if you see excess regen and aspect benefic casts then something is wrong with the healer's play)

[Kissune]

cropped

I'm not looking at log data for damage, bc I don't need to. Im looking at me and my cohealers casts of ogcd healing. I had a sage for most of it, which partly skews things bc that class is so bloated with free ST heals but... considering that's not going away, it's still relevant here. We barely had to do anything to keep our tanks alive. I barely bothered to use my ST mits, I used ED relatively infrequently (not enough to justify a third charge for sure), and when I forgot a ST mit? Nothing... really happened?

My cohealer was much the same with his stuff. Mostly used his gall stacks to get mana and top off a tank when I used my ED to finish the job. Tankbusters were so infrequent, so easily overloaded with mit, and the bleeds so easily ignored... we didn't have to do much. You can point to the raw damage outputs all you want. The log data might say that the raw amount incoming is more than shb (which would be wrong, considering the stat squish). But warrior didnt have the bullshit heal tools it had now. Pld didnt have a self regen on sheltron and a heal on every hit of its magic combo. Gnb didnt have an excog on heart. Like... tanks have just been getting way more sustain, and it's to the point that busters hitting harder is moot bc they happen so infrequently, autos are so pathetic, that most of them can be safely invulned and then healed by either self sustain or a single heal ogcd from the healer, which will then not be used for the next 2 minutes. Raw numbers mean absolutely nothing. I just need to look at how little stuff my cohealer and I had to use to know just how useful ST healing was. I never felt like I had to press something, just 'eh, might as well' bc the rest of healer gameplay is so boring I might as well burn some ST stuff.

[Zolvolt]

"I dOnT neED LOG daTA"
okay doodlebob. Just because you're not hitting your buttons and making someone else make up for it doesn't mean the damage isn't there lol. I mean windburn, despite only happening 6 times i na fight still does 1.5m raw damage compared to auto attacks that do 2.05m and every single time those double debuffs go out you needed to double CI, exalt and double ED every single time. LAyering all of your multiple defensives/hots is how astro heals. You ignoring that makes you a poor player and you're just putting the responsibility on to someone else in your party. "i don't have to do it" yeah because you're making someone else do your healing job.

[Kissune]

"I dOnT neED LOG daTA"
okay doodlebob. Just because you're not hitting your buttons and making someone else make up for it doesn't mean the damage isn't there lol. I mean windburn, despite only happening 6 times i na fight still does 1.5m raw damage compared to auto attacks that do 2.05m and every single time those double debuffs go out you needed to double CI, exalt and double ED every single time. LAyering all of your multiple defensives/hots is how astro heals. You ignoring that makes you a poor player and you're just putting the responsibility on to someone else in your party. "i don't have to do it" yeah because you're making someone else do your healing job.

You wanna talk logs? You wanna imply I don't heal? Alright bud, let's talk logs. Lets look at how much me AND my coheal actually healed.

In Abyssos, (which I apparently did my first clear of p5s as white mage? Huh, don't remember that.)

As far as single target healing went for p5s, I used (with a kill time of 8:48):
1 Benediction (33% use rate)
1 Tetra (11% use rate)
2 Aquaveils (22% use rate)
3 Benison (15% use rate)
2 Afflatus Solace (8% use rate of total lily charges gained)
Aaand that's it.

My cohealer, for his part, used:
3 e.diagnosis (no cd gcd heal, use rate n/a. I'd also like to point out that these were all in downtime, during devour. He was clearly just trying to gain toxicon stacks, here.)
5 taurochole (45% use rate)
2 druochole (7% use rate of total addersgall charges gained)
4 krasis (44% use rate)
3 soteria (50% use rate)
3 haima (75% use rate)
and that's it. There were 2 deaths in this run, forcing more single target heals after raises. Both deaths were due to instant kill mechanics that could not be prevented with healing or mitigation. Neither of which were healers that died. But I'm sure you already know this, right? I mean, you stalked my logs.

He clearly used more than me, sure. But considering A. chole abilities are used for mana regeneration and B. he clearly did not need to use a shit ton of single target healing constantly, all the time, especially compared to me... This is the fight you list as an example of 'serious single target healing need'... and yet it clearly points to most of our single target abilities just. Fucking. Sitting there. This is p5s. Day 1. But hey, you mentioned p7s, so let's take a look at that one too! Bc I also cleared it w1. But admittedly, by that point, my logs were pretty scuffed. A static breakup happened bc the raid lead was convinced we weren't going to clear w1... on friday. We had a full weekend ahead. Anyways, that was when I switched to scholar and my cohealer was an astro. Now, my new healer, love him to bits, was a pure curebot. And I'm talking 'I literally asked him to stop healing so much bc I was getting bored not doing anything and he said he just preferred to play this way which is part of the reason I ended up quitting that static' kind of curebot. Our first clear of p5s together, w2, he had an 86% overheal rate. So using those logs there isn't worthwhile. So let me pull out my best friend and current static co-lead, Olivia, and see how she tackled it! She was a scholar, coheal was a whm.

P7S, KT 11:09
1 Aetherpact (80 faerie gauge overcapped)
1 Adloquium (Used with deployment tactics)
1 Physick (Damn, Olivia)
1 Lustrate (2% use rate of AF charges gained)
4 Protraction (40% use rate)
10 Excogitation (3/10 were used with recitation. A staggering 83% use rate.)
Good excog usage, but otherwise very, very little single target healing/mit. So surely her cohealer picked up the slack of all the totally outrageous single target healing, right? Well...

1 Afflatus solace (3% use rate of total lily charges gained)
3 Tetra (30% use rate)
3 Aquaveil (30% use rate)
6 Benison (26% use rate)
0 Benediction (0% use rate)

Oh, hm, huh... That's... not a lot of stuff. What was that you said? P7S has so and so blah blah tank damage? Well, this is what is needed to heal it. Barely. Anything. I could pull up p8s logs and do the math, but... Have I made my point? Get better tanks if you need more than this, bc you're clearly just a weak player.

You can call out 'raw this' and 'raw that' but raw damage means fuck all after you account for all the tank mitigation, sustain, and whatnot that counters it. You can say healers have to heal suuuuch a big number but when there's no time pressure and you can let kardia or fairy do most of the work? Who cares. 700k over the course of a 11-12 minute fight is a joke. I don't need to look at raw numbers, I need to see the actual buttons people used to heal up or mitigate tankbusters. And y'know what I found? Barely anything. I mean fuck, just peeking through the timelines here there was very rarely a case where a flat mit or shield was the difference between a tank living or dying. But you said there was a big number, so I guess that means everything is wrong? Face it dude, you're a terminal overhealer. That's okay. My coheal was too, and I still love him. But he wasn't good at seeing what really goes into healing, and neither are you.

[Supersnow845]

I feel like people that thought tank single target healing in abyssos was hard or excessive just got bad tanks and the tanks successfully panned off responsibility onto the healer

It’s why abyssos damage profiles were so bad, it required the tanks and DPS to press buttons they functionally had no incentive to press and if they didn’t press it responsibility fell to the healer but it was easy to hide not pressing the button you were supposed to press amongst the other mitigation used so the healer could never fight back

Healers had all the responsibility yet none of the control