#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[ForsakenRoe]

As far as your baseless accusation that I'm "desparate to sell pointless difference as meaningful difference", I think this is best addressed with a specific example.

M2S starts off with a Raid Wide, either a partner stack or spread, a second partner stack or spread, and then a raid wide as its goes into Beat 1. There's 23 seconds, then 29 seconds, then 23 seconds, respectively, between these hits. So I can't just use Kerachole for everything. But if I use Kerachole for the phase transition, that HoT also helps with the aforementioned long DoT.

Precast DeployAdlo before combat begins, this protects you from the first raidwide all on its own. For the first 'Love', Summon Seraph, drop one Consolation, and use Soil (and Fey Illumination before these if you feel like it, to buff the Consolation). For the second 'Love, you use the second Consolation after the first Love hits, and then use Expedient to mitigate. Then, Soil's up again for the raidwide that goes into Beat 1, and if you didn't use it before, you can throw Fey Illumination onto this too. In progression, you're much less concerned with 'spend every GCD on damage', and so you can throw Recitation Succor, or Deploy>Adlo, onto things with almost reckless abandon. For example, you could Recitation Succor the 2nd Love (supplementing the lonely Expedient), and then Deploy Adlo would be up (assuming you precast it before combat) for Beat 1's raidwide. Later on in gearing, when you're BIS and trying to parse, the 'advantage' of the additional heals that things like Holos provide, aren't as big a factor as you take less damage in the first place, have more Max HP, your other actions like Whispering Dawn etc. heal for more, etc. If the 300p healing of Holos really is such a big deal, well, as well as there being some pure healing being attached to those Consolations you'd be using, SCH can throw out Fey Blessing for the same 300p (ish, it's listed as 320 but pet potency still isn't 1:1, thanks SE). But it's also available twice as often as Holos' healing is (2min for Holos, 1min for Fey Blessing).

There is indeed some differences/nuances to how Panhaima compares to Consolation. Namely, Panhaima lasts 15s. Consolation lasts for 30s, and can be used up to ~18s after Summon Seraph (later risks ghosting the action), and so you can have 'party protected from attack' happen up to like, 48 seconds after pressing Summon Seraph. What you're covering with the combination of Holos' mit and its 300p barrier, SCH achieves by having access to its two Consolation charges, that can be placed as far apart as they are able to be. Effectively, one of SCH's weaknesses is that it has a lot of actions that feel 'weaker' on the surface than SGE (eg Panhaima protects you 6 times, Consolation only twice), but on the other hand, SCH's tools offer a lot more versatility in how/when you use them (for example, if I want the mit, but not necessarily the barrier, of Holos, I don't get the option, they are a package deal), and if you want to match the functionality of SGE's actions, you're much more able to do so by simply using more than one action, and combining them together for an 'effect greater than the sum of their parts'

I'm also not sure what you're talking about with 'needing Seraphic Veil up for the first raidwide', or having it up for anything, really. It's just Embrace, but with an additional effect of 'barrier for 100% of the healing it does'. That barrier is one of those 'it's nice to have, but it's not a factor in the plan' things when it comes to raidwide damage.

I would say that the statement of 'you can translate the mit plan 1:1 with no changes at all' is not true. Rather, the issue is that you can translate like 85% of it directly like that, which means that by doing the fight as one of the two jobs, you're already most of the way there on the other, which lessens how much time the player spends in the 'fun prog phase' for the fight. Going into a fight and clearing it on PCT doesn't necessarily translate to knowing how to do the fight as BLM, because of the very different playstyles of the two jobs, even though they're both Casters. Similarly, there's a bit more to reprogging a fight as AST, after clearing as WHM, due to the delayed healing effects, having to swap Lily instant healing for HOT based OGCD healing, etc. But with SCH/SGE, there's far more overlap in functionality with SCH's Tool A vs SGE's Tool B (currently), and that's where the debate arises.

A lot of the reason for this is simply that the game doesn't have systems enough to make the small differences feel like they're very apparent, so SE's boxed themselves into just giving us such basic effects for tools. For example, take Philosophia. Its effect is effectively Plenary Indulgence, with the additional perk that 'the healing can be triggered by all GCDs, not just AOE heals'. Plenary could just as well have been updated to be triggered by Cure2, or Regen, or Dia and Glare, either as a regular update or as a trait learned later in levelling. But then, Plenary is a 60s CD, and Philosophia is a 180s CD. Does the 20% bonus healing effect (which doesn't actually affect Eudaimonia itself, if you can believe that) really justify the extra CD? I feel like the action would work better as a 120s CD, with the potency-per-proc lowered to, say, 120p if needed for 'balance', but hey, if it were 100% up to me, it would have a completely different function

When every 'question' that raid design asks of the player can be answered with 'Heal', 'Barrier', 'Mitigation' or some combination thereof, is it any wonder that we see such overlaps in functionality in the kits?

[YarnMage48]

Precast DeployAdlo before combat begins, this protects you from the first raidwide all on its own. For the first 'Love', Summon Seraph, drop one Consolation, and use Soil (and Fey Illumination before these if you feel like it, to buff the Consolation). For the second 'Love, you use the second Consolation after the first Love hits, and then use Expedient to mitigate. Then, Soil's up again for the raidwide that goes into Beat 1, and if you didn't use it before, you can throw Fey Illumination onto this too. In progression, you're much less concerned with 'spend every GCD on damage', and so you can throw Recitation Succor, or Deploy>Adlo, onto things with almost reckless abandon. For example, you could Recitation Succor the 2nd Love (supplementing the lonely Expedient), and then Deploy Adlo would be up (assuming you precast it before combat) for Beat 1's raidwide. Later on in gearing, when you're BIS and trying to parse, the 'advantage' of the additional heals that things like Holos provide, aren't as big a factor as you take less damage in the first place, have more Max HP, your other actions like Whispering Dawn etc. heal for more, etc. If the 300p healing of Holos really is such a big deal, well, as well as there being some pure healing being attached to those Consolations you'd be using, SCH can throw out Fey Blessing for the same 300p (ish, it's listed as 320 but pet potency still isn't 1:1, thanks SE). But it's also available twice as often as Holos' healing is (2min for Holos, 1min for Fey Blessing).

Yeah, it makes significantly more sense to handle these mechanics differently on scholar. Taking my SGE plan and "converting" it to SCH in the way supersnow talked about resulted in a really weird plan.

But I guess all we are doing is just "seeing differences in tooltips".

[Supersnow845]

I never said conversion of an optimal SCH plan to a SGE plan would be optimal on SGE, I said that it works “near flawlessly” (like 90-95%) and I didn’t have to alter anything. Sure on SGE I could have done “more” by changing and reoptimising but my point is that my converted SCH plan shouldn’t even work in the first place. I shouldn’t have skills similar enough I can even convert the plan. My SCH plan got me clears on SGE without me changing anything, that shouldn’t happen

A 100% SCH plan shouldn’t be a 95% plan on SGE it should be zero because it shouldn’t even work

Like take a step back, instead of going “expedience and holos are different because of sprint vs heal” why do both shield healers even have a 10% mitigation on a 2 minute CD, an oGCD shield on a 2 minute CD and a bubble that’s a 10% mitigation and a regen on a 30 second CD. Like why do two classes need such blatant skill crossover

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

A reminder that Holos didn’t even had a shield attached in its inception. It was just 300p heal with same mit% for 20s, but added Holosakos later on because SGE was having an issue in one of DSR mechanics in that time. They weren’t having a problem because SGE wasn’t capitalizing its many ‘pity heals’. SGE was struggling to compete against SCH because of mits issue. Maybe if they don’t just copy pasta too much from the SCH template down to its potency, learning level, purpose, etc then try to add random effect baked into the same button as an attempt to sell meaningless differences & instead give the job more thought why XYZ skill needs to exist in a job’s kit, they would’ve immediately realize the 300p heal attached has always been very superfluous.

What’s the lv76 button for SCH? Ah yes, Fey Blessing. Used to be a 2m cooldown. Turned down to 1m by EW. For same potency. SGE being a job that was developed from mid-ShB, it’s another notion adding to its similarities.

“How do we differentiate Blessing and Holos somehow..? I know! Give it a mit but keep it 2m cooldown!”—somebody in their team, probably.

They probably don't even remember the attached 300p heal on it today. Am I saying they should remove it now? Not quite. But there's a part in my mind that tries to imagine.. will they even buff Holos ever if... instead of starting as a 300p Heal + 10% mit, it was always been 300p SHIELD + 10% mit? Honestly? I don't think they would.

[Derio]

I think the problem is healers never really come out of training mode. The opportunity to use your entire kit is few and far between and devs are too scared to do really big hits. This causes hiealing for the most part to be rather dull and less engaging when things are going right and more engaging when things go wrong.

Content design is set to where things rarely go wrong in casual content which is where healers need help the most. However their gameplay loop is tuned to 8 man savages where things go wrong in early prog which results in a simplistic DPS kit of 2 buttons.

[ForsakenRoe]

I think the problem is healers never really come out of training mode. The opportunity to use your entire kit is few and far between and devs are too scared to do really big hits. This causes hiealing for the most part to be rather dull and less engaging when things are going right and more engaging when things go wrong.

Content design is set to where things rarely go wrong in casual content which is where healers need help the most. However their gameplay loop is tuned to 8 man savages where things go wrong in early prog which results in a simplistic DPS kit of 2 buttons.

Problem is, whenever anyone suggests the seemingly obvious followup to this, of 'well, what if we add some stuff that you can use to make that time where 'nothing is going wrong' feel more interesting?', we get some shade of 'no don't do that, healers are meant to heal'. It's so incredibly easy to make the downtime feel more varied with as little as 'add literally one new damage action, and shorten the DOT timer so we press the DOT more often', but there's this pervasive stance that 'Healers should heal', so SE doesn't take the time to address the problem, and the problem has persisted for years despite a solution staring them in the face.

Take WHM. Add new action, Water, at level 15. Give it 40p more than Stone, a 15s CD, and make it instantcast so you can use it for mobility. Upgrade Water each time Stone upgrades, including converting it to Banish when we learn Glare.
Reduce Aero/Dia's duration to 12s, rescale potency to compensate. My maths has 150p, plus 70 per tick, as good numbers, and this would also benefit 'clip it on purpose for mobility because you have nothing else' even more than currently.

That's all that's needed to spice up WHM's gameplay sufficiently (for my tastes at least). WHM gets 50 GCDs per 2min (cos of POM). As it stands, you get 6 Lilies, 2 Miseries, 3 Glare4, 4 Dia, leaving 35 GCDs as Glare3.
With the above example, you'd instead use 6 Lilies, 2 Miseries, 3 Glare4, 10 Dia, 8 Banish, and that leaves just 21 GCDs per 2min as Glare3. From 35/50, to 21/50, is a pretty big leap in 'rotational variety' IMO

[BunnyQueen]

Gonna keep saying it, healers should be healing a lot more then they are, make it so healers need to heal 60% of the time! SE killed the fun of healers in stormblood!.

Not just in raids and trials but all content including low level dungeons! Crack down on level sync! make it more effective!

[YarnMage48]

This seems to be the core of our disagreement, you see difference where it exists in the tooltips, I see it where it affects gameplay. This also extends to your second quote about how you picked a very specific situation and said that “this adds 500 potency or so to my healing that SCH can’t replicate with the equivalent skills”, yes sure but do you need that 500 potency? In your specific example the answer is no, if you did substitute the equivalent SCH skills you wouldn’t get that 500 potency but you wouldn’t be in any danger of dying and the next damage is ages away. So differences exist as per the tooltips but they don’t exist as per gameplay

I simply pulled an example from the current raid series. I could pull another one, if you like? I picked it because its a spot where I used both of Panhaima's effects and both of Holos's effects, which seemed liked a good way to illustrate gameplay differences. There are other spots where I used both effects of Panhaima and Holos if you'd care to hear about them. I really enjoy situations where I can use their full potential, so there are a few. But you know, I'm not really inclined to do so when you don't seem to be really reading my posts. I mean, you didn't acknowledge the gameplay examples I gave for Philospophia, and you used the wrong numbers for the heal potency I had in my heal plan. That makes it seem like you weren't paying attention to what I was saying. And having the impression that you weren't paying attention to what I wrote just causes me to feel really disrespected. Maybe you didn't mean to give that impression. But that is the message you send when you don't acknowledge what I'm saying.

I'm genuinely interested in knowing how you would handle those mechanics in M2S. Actually, how did your team handle those mechanics? Why do you think 700 potency of healing isn't needed when each of the 4 hits of damage takes out a significant amount of the party's health? Would not 700 potency of healing be relevant when you need to recover a lot of health in between each hit? Auto-hp regen isn't going to cut it, so that healing has to come from somewhere. Or are you trying to say that there's time to use other skills? Why use additional skills when you can utilize a more efficient heal plan, keeping those skills available for other mechanics?

[YarnMage48]

Gonna keep saying it, healers should be healing a lot more then they are, make it so healers need to heal 60% of the time! SE killed the fun of healers in stormblood!.

Not just in raids and trials but all content including low level dungeons! Crack down on level sync! make it more effective!

I get what you are saying, but I don't agree. Dungeons are the first level of content new healers will engage with. If dungeons are too difficult, then players who might be interested in trying out the role will be scared off and won't try it. Realistically, there needs to be a steady influx of new healers. New players join the game all the time, and if they all become tanks and dps, there wouldn't be enough healers to balance that out. Plus, players leave the game for a variety of reasons, including the fact that sometimes life changes. If healers leave as part of the natural loss of players, but the barrier of entry for the healer role is too high, eventually there won't be enough healers to go around. This stalls out gameplay for players who are trying to get through MSQ, or even get their roulettes done in a timely fashion.

All of this is to say that there needs to be content that new healers can cut their teeth on. Dungeons are perfect for this because you can engage with the toolkit as it grows more complex. Now, I know it's a common opinion that dungeon healing is easy. And I agree, it is easy. But when you talk to players who are trying out healing for the first time, you'll find that they still find it intimidating. It can be scary until you get the hang of it. And don't get me started on how one nasty player can scare people off of trying healing again. I encountered some nasty players when I was learning how to heal dungeons, including the classic "constantly fails mechanics but blames me for not being rezzing when I already burned swiftcast rezzing you the last time you stood in the obvious red circle and I don't have the time right now to stand still to hardcast it". I didn't let it stop me but I've heard some pretty bad stories. All of this is to say that I don't want to make dungeons more difficult because I want new healers to have a space where they can start to spread their wings. Literally, if they are a White Mage. Let them grow into the role as they take on progressively more difficult content.

It can be hard to find enjoyment in easier content when you get used to more demanding options, I know. But I think its important to remember that the player base is made up off people with a large variety of skills, and the game is just as much for them as it is for us. There are also a lot of people who like more casual content, and who maybe aren't up to more challenging content. Again, the game is just as much for them as it is for us. This game isn't built to have only super mega hard content for super mega hard core players. And this is never going to be that kind of game.

[Supersnow845]

snip

The feeling of “we aren’t being heard” is mutual I can assure you

As I’ve posted like 5 times. Take a step back. Look at the kit of SGE. Look at the kit of SCH. Why are they so similar? I NEED you to answer this question because otherwise everything else is pointless. Every single point you have made dances around this issue and this is why I keep bringing it up with comments like “you are trying to sell difference”. Sure you came up with a way to effectively use the heal of holos: but you aren’t looking at the wider picture. Why does SGE need the same 10% mitigation on a 2 minute CD SCH already has with the same 300 potency heal from blessing tacked onto it. Why is SGE’s primary mitigation a bubble that’s a 10% mitigation for 15 seconds with a 30 second CD that gets a regen for 550 potency at 78 given that’s a literal 1 to 1 rip of sacred soil. Why are you trying to act like SGE had no choice but to be a slightly different SCH so the only option is to look at these tiny differences? Why wasn’t SGE totally unique. Like PCT is totally unique, the closest analogue to PCT is SB SMN, why can PCT be unique but SGE has to be so similar to SCH that we are arguing about the colour of the rose petals in the weed filled garden

Mitigation plans for healers should not be “oh yeah we pressed the same button but I got an extra heal out of it” it should be completely different between healers. If you think the peak of shield healer optimisation is pressing holos as one button rather than expedient+blessing then sure…….i don’t remotely think so. SGE should be a DIFFERENT healer to SCH. Minute differences in mitigation plans isn’t “difference” in my eyes

As a side note I ignored the specifics of your philisophia example because nothing you mentioned was a niche. You just said “oh I need a regen for this mechanic” but didn’t explain why ONLY philosophia could fill that niche and not kerechole or physis. If you can think of an actual unique niche for philosophia I’m all ears

snip

On the topic of your dungeon point dungeon healing is fine to be easy. But the other roles aren’t “helping” make dungeon healing more accessible. They are straight up replacing the healer. Like I’m a more garbage healer in dungeons than any other content because the game simply does not encourage me at all to pay attention so I end up slacking. The dungeon healing curve should still be a progressive curve, but instead the hardest dungeons to heal are the mid 40’s and 90 you are functionally vestigial. How many healers are we losing to “why am I playing a role when the dungeon doesn’t need me”