#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[ForsakenRoe]

I mean the whole idea that SGE (or even sch) is more lacking in pure heals (or even "regens") is pretty much a joke.

Shield healers are honestly just outright better then anything pure healers have to offer, the only reason why Astro gets a pass in comparison is because they also have so many mitigation and strong resource tools.

Which leaves pretty much white mage being this weird highly played healer that basically offers next to nothing in a group, but because healers aren't even really that important in the first place it's not like bringing a white mage over a astro (or second shield healer) matters that much.

They need to move away from shield/pure healer, it's clearly not even working properly, Let healers have different ways to actually be interesting and diverse... like different procs, dots, rotations, different cast times... maybe bringing stuff back like noct sect on astro... or wild idea fun interactive cards on aswell back to the job.

Make sage and scholar different jobs, lean into sages "dps healer" fantasy way more please... make scholar a big DOT healer with different fairies that offer utility in different situations.

Everything mentioned here, is exactly what I've been saying for months. Wish I knew Japanese so I could post it over on those furms too, maybe it'd have a chance of getting seen by SE over there. Though, I imagine there'd be a lot more 'why are you trying to do the devs job, shut up' kind of responses

For SGE in particular, a very simple idea I had was Second Opinion. In short, when a Eukrasian Diagnosis/Eukrasian Prognosis shield breaks, it'd leave behind a buff called Second Opinion, for 6s. This buff could then be consumed by using Pepsis (now with a much shorter CD, but a small MP cost to compensate) to heal the party. A bit like using Continuation on GNB after certain attacks, but we're 'Continuation-ing' the enemy's attack rather than our own. Or, if you've ever played something like Viewtiful Joe, Wonderful 101, etc. It's like the Ukemi technique, where pressing 'Jump' the exact frame you hit the floor recovers the HP you just lost (but this has a much more forgiving timing window). This gameplay is actually possible currently, because the netcode is so jank/slow, you can get the benefit of the shield, and heal as if you're consuming it, with precise timing. This would just make it an actual gameplay mechanic.

But, if such a system were implemented, we could go further with it to differentiate SCH and SGE. For example, at level 78, both get their 10% mit/30s CD action, Soil and Kerachole, upgraded to have a 100p regen for the duration. So, what if instead, Kerachole applied a special version of Second Opinion, that can be consumed via Pepsis to heal for... however much (I have it listed as 400p to make it equal to 'Eukrasian Diagnosis was consumed' values).

Then, we could also tie the generation of Addersting to 'When you heal via Pepsis', rather than 'when the barrier breaks', allowing players to generate Toxikons without having to lose damage setting up a barrier with E.Diagnosis/E.Prognosis, as they'd now be able to trigger a heal whenever they use Kerachole (meaning 1 Sting per 30s), provided they have the MP spare to do so. It also helps solidify SCH as being 'the proactive barrier healer', with more of their kit being based on 'prepare for what comes next', and SGE being more of a 'reactive barrier healer', where some stuff needs to be set up in advance (Kera, barriers, Holos), but it has more tools than SCH for dealing with the after effects of the damage (Pepsis, Pneuma, Panhaima's expiration effect)

I think that this should be the direction for changes to the Healer Jobs: Changes that are small in terms of dev time to implement, but have far reaching implications on the gameplay, thereby 'minmaxing' how much time is required to implement vs how much return on that time spend we reap. Unfortunately, such an approach means that AST is likely screwed for the foreseeable future, because 'rework cards again' is quite a time investment. But, by taking an approach like this, we could theoretically break the 'fixing process' up into stages, to make it less of a strain to get everything done all at once for the expansion launch. For example, this Pepsis idea could be implemented as a 7.3 change. WHM, SCH and AST could see a similar-sized update to part of their gameplay at the same time. Then, in 7.4, another small change comes in, such as updating the Damage rotations a little (eg on SCH, adding back Miasma, Shadowflare and Bane, and rescaling the damage of the DOTs/Broil to allow for them to exist without being 'mandatory' to the gameplay). Over time, as we lead up to 8.0, the groundwork would steadily be laid to set up for the larger scale updates that the expansion would bring (in my ideas, this would include new Job Gauge UI elements, systems that use said Gauges, another rework to the AST cards would occur here to make AST feel like an AST again, etc)