#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[Kacho_Nacho]

I was rarely averse to using GCD heals with AST even in ShB since it was just normal to lose personal dps by healing with the other two. They also added Horoscope then, which just encourages using either Helios too, so the overall design certainly didn't feel like they wanted us to do lossless healing, at least.

I agree. Honestly, I've never seen the big deal about losing personal dps if I chose to throw out GCD heals. After all, isn't that part of the whole idea of playing a healer? Getting to decide which is a better contribution to the party's success, improving the health of the characters versus damaging the mobs/bosses?

The philosophy held by Square Enix that making these kind of decisions is too stressful to the players is wrong. We require this decision making in order to be engaged with the game. When things are too easy, players are bored. Nobody plays a game to be bored.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

I was rarely averse to using GCD heals with AST even in ShB since it was just normal to lose personal dps by healing with the other two. They also added Horoscope then, which just encourages using either Helios too, so the overall design certainly didn't feel like they wanted us to do lossless healing, at least.

Apart from horoscope and the overpowered neutral sect at the time, I remember having my ear bleeding in ShB days because people often screamed they wanted to do lossless healing like AST. CU, CO, CI, Earthly Star, uncharged Horoscope, & Essentials were all free to use due to the nature of their built in 1.5s at that time, whereas WHM and SCH had to 'pay' to a lesser extent to use their oGCDs outside 30s DoT refresh window. They 'felt bad' having to pay for said loss because XYZ had some way to do it lossless'y. Well, look what we get today lmao.

[Supersnow845]

Apart from horoscope and the overpowered neutral sect at the time, I remember having my ear bleeding in ShB days because people often screamed they wanted to do lossless healing like AST. CU, CO, CI, Earthly Star, uncharged Horoscope, & Essentials were all free to use due to the nature of their built in 1.5s at that time, whereas WHM and SCH had to 'pay' to a lesser extent to use their oGCDs outside 30s DoT refresh window. They 'felt bad' having to pay for said loss because XYZ had some way to do it lossless'y. Well, look what we get today lmao.

This pretty much sums up the ShB healer design problem. AST was the problem child yet they decided to model everyone after AST rather than bring AST back in line with the others

[GartredZW]

Speaking of which, I understand there's folks who don't want it changed back now, but were there threads and posts demanding for the 1.5s cast across the role on the english boards in the past? I recall finding a thread discussing reducing the cast time a little bit to make slidecasting easier, but its OP explicitly stated they didn't want it to be enough to include the weave.

That's really the crux of the issue. Some people want short-casts, but don't want to just play Astrologian for some reason, so they start demanding that other healers be changed to accommodate that. They see that little bit of nuance in gameplay to be a flaw instead of a feature.

[Azurarok]

to be honest I'm not so against lossless healing in of itself, and am more bothered by the fact they decided they do it exactly the same way AST did when WHM had lilies and SCH had RuinII + Energy Drain

And despite all that SGE adderstings aren't dps neutral

[Supersnow845]

That’s the problem. Energy drain and ruin 2 as well as Lilys were ways to generate weave space (you can also include miasma 2 when SCH had mana management) that you were compensated for to overcome restrictions. the idea of AST having 1.5 was because it had so many weaves with its cards but it also allowed for free healing

Honestly instead of everyone getting 1.5 AST should have swapped to 2.5 and and be given the extra charge of lightspeed it has now to compensate for its card weaves without really giving it free reign to have limitless free healing

[Azurarok]

ah, didn't realize the 1.5 cast was introduced to AST in 4.3. Other than Lightspeed I'm guessing they used Combust and Aspected Benefic to do it in HW, but then they merged the DoTs in SB, and with CombustII at 30s that reduced weaves, so that was the solution (to a problem they made). It seemed the system back then didn't call for the busy raid buff that requires constant weaves across a few GCDs either, so lightspeed probably functioned better as a healing tool too.

[Shurrikhan]

Honestly instead of everyone getting 1.5 AST should have swapped to 2.5 and and be given the extra charge of lightspeed it has now to compensate for its card weaves without really giving it free reign to have limitless free healing

Ehh, given how large an advantage Lightspeed could already be in the context of movement requirements during decently high healing requirements back in Stormblood, I'd rather the solution not come with even more imbalance in mobility.

I'd rather they had just... tuned AST around typical in-practice uptime costs of using those Card actions. If undertuned because too much weaving... just buff AST proportionately. No need to restructure the whole casting paradigm among healers over it.

As for in-practice gains being ignored due to losses in theoretical-maximum (vs. striking dummy) output... Keep the 2.5s casts and just get rid of the additional delay from roundtrip ping, provide a couple brief lessons and tips on uptime so that it's painfully obvious to someone that losing a third of a GCD to use Assize without timing it to an instant-cast would matter far more (at ~110 potency) than the third of a Misery's loss relative to filler spam, and you're golden.

If there's to be any broader casting reforms, they should come from partial client trust and QoL: let the server better trust the client when it comes to having ended movement and provide, say, the ability to briefly lock movement in place until a cast is actuated (also client-predictive) and/or until a movement command is started anew, so one can't so easily accidentally cancel a would-be start-of-cast on controller and so latency doesn't so delay the start of one's casting in general.

[GartredZW]

to be honest I'm not so against lossless healing in of itself, and am more bothered by the fact they decided they do it exactly the same way AST did when WHM had lilies and SCH had RuinII + Energy Drain

And despite all that SGE adderstings aren't dps neutral

Adderstings are a pretty interesting concept. If they really lean into that sort of thing, I think I'd enjoy healing more.
Your reward for GCD healing isn't more damage, but free-er movement. In such a scenario that you'd need to GCD heal anyway, and there's a movement mechanic that you can't slidecast through, then Toxicon is very useful. You can remain DPS neutral through that movement.
It's just not much of a factor at all in reality. Most of the time either a movement can be stutter-stepped to, or it's so great and immediate that three toxicons might not be enough.

[Shurrikhan]

Adderstings are a pretty interesting concept. If they really lean into that sort of thing, I think I'd enjoy healing more.
Your reward for GCD healing isn't more damage, but free-er movement. In such a scenario that you'd need to GCD heal anyway, and there's a movement mechanic that you can't slidecast through, then Toxicon is very useful. You can remain DPS neutral through that movement.

This. Exactly this.

Though, it makes me wish all the more that there were more interesting flavor of (A) barrier use on the job's end and (B) occasional needs for maintaining range, another advantage Toxicon provides above Dykresis, via encounter incidence/tuning/design (prevalence of PB AoEs, need to make time for a safe healing GCD later, etc.). Though, in the latter point, we're getting back into the "Why are AoE attacks basically just wasted keys in a majority of raid fights?" territory.

...I also wouldn't mind, though, if Addersting and/or Toxicon were to be revised somewhat to have other means of generation, and perhaps even to do something more obviously related to the shield('s destruction), though I'm not sure what the latter would best be.