Quote Originally Posted by Ramiee View Post
Bit of a fun post to see how everyone would approach this, I feel like everyone would have different opinions on how a theoretical DPS system for each healer should be handled and im interested to see it.
Keep in mind that I've exclusively played WHM or SCH in 100% of the content when it was new. My opinion is that AST is way too similar to White Mage to even call it different. Sage is different but the only time I ever encountered healing pressure was in the job quest it comes with. (Maybe because it was tuned for Sage and wouldn't work if you could play Scholar in it.)

Preface, the AOE is actually different between the three healers (Holy is positioned, Gravity is targeted, and Art of War is "caster centered"), but these aren't really different in any way that matters, just where you place your character when you cast.

WHM: Make use of the the "elemental" business it inherited from 1.0 Conjurer.
The two main "DPS" buttons just randomly picks 1 of 6 things - (Water, Earth, Air | Ice, Fire, Thunder)
This is largely cosmetic since the game only does unaspected damage, but when the WHM fires off a what is normally Stone/Glare, it would pick a short-cast version of 1 of the 6 elements the game.
The Dot would do the same, except apply a "DoT" that overwrites each other. So if your last cast was Fire, casting Water would remove the DoT and replace it with Water.
Holy same as normal, but stun always works on trash, but MP costs increase if cast consecutively while target stunned
Assize swaps between "Assize" (unaspected damage, refresh, and hp recovery) and "Dia II" (refresh, 1 minute long DoT, HP recovery)
(And before someone says "that steps on BLM's toes", no it doesn't, this is originally what conjurer was. Even only using Water, Earth and Air this is fine.)

As opposed to AST:
Draw a card first (no card drawn, the DPS buttons will only cast unaspected magic)
Main DPS button will cast a 5 second DoT on the target of the same card debuff + unaspected damage.
DoT DPS button will cast 30 second DoT with the same card.
AOE Gravity inflicts Heavy on trash targets, always works, but MP costs increase if cast while already debuffed
Player can either pick a card at random each cast, hold a card indefinitely


SCH:
Honestly Scholar works the way it should work, though I would give it two DoT's, and change the AOE back to the "poison field" effect.
It mostly needs to be able to cast debuffs as an AOE, and presently it does not.

Sage:
I'll leave this up to others as it's too new to call it "needing fixing"


So in short, WHM DoT's cycle between element DoT's, one at a time. (The game has Aero, Aero II and Aero III DoT's, Burns, Chilled, Filfthy, etc)
AST's DoT's can be chosen from the cards for both a debuff on the DPS and a buff when Party healing.

Like I get the intent with AST, but AST keeps getting nerfed, and WHM gets nerfed and I just see the "First time here" meme of the WHM to the AST.

Also again, careful what you wish for, any additional DPS options will come at the cost of the potency of existing ones. That's largely why they removed existing dots and extended the length of the remaining ones. The 1-1-1-1'ing comes from making the DoT's not as frequently renewed. If DoT's only lasted 8 seconds, and you had multiple ones to cast, you could just over lap them by the cast times (Which is how Scholar would have played if they didn't take them away.)

In solo content however a lot of this stuff just doesn't work. Imagine trying to do that final Zeno's battle with just short DoT's.

No matter what is suggested, The developers have decided that the healer DPS doesn't matter and thus it will always have a ceiling that makes it a joke compared to a DPS having more uptime from not having to self-heal.