What if we changed the way cures were scaled?

[MilesSaintboroguh]

What's the point in having DPS jobs if anyone can DPS?

Got anything better than "no u"?

[Zojha]

Got anything better than "no u"?

Fine, I'll bite: Specialized healers are sill better at healing than some random guy with a physick spell, even if that physick spell was stronger than a regular healer's physick/cure. They are more diversified and have dedicated cooldowns for dire situations.

This is why dedicated DPS can exist alongside Tank and Healer DPS and why DPS checks are, in fact, needed everywhere, regardless of what people like.

As such, there is no harm in giving everyone access to a decently scaled healing spell. And that's not even the scope of the suggestion in the OP since heal spells for cross class are limited among jobs and you'd only give a handful of jobs access to one.

[Ashkendor]

Next let's look at what effect this would have on gameplay. Physick would become a viable cross class for Blm and smn, as well as whm, allowing blms and smns to assist heal effectively if needed, and allowing sch and whm to give minor healing without dropping cleric's stance, it would also make cure a viable cross class for sch as they would need a mind based cure for when out of cleric's stance.

It takes away from the entire point of having the stat swap in Cleric Stance, though. Honestly, it would be severely imbalanced and SCH gear would have to be completely overhauled to boot. SMN and BLM shouldn't be having to heal anyway. If you have one of each of them in a party and they're busy healing for some reason, who's doing damage?

The only downside to this is it means that sch HAS to level cnj to get cure and cleric's stance to be viable. But those are both very low level moves (below 15, the required level of cnj to unlock sch) which makes it far more reasonable than the requirement of war and drk needing to get gla to 22 for provoke, since you need to have these moves available to unlock sch in the first place.

Any SCH worth half a damn should have CNJ to 34 anyway for Stone Skin.

This would make it a viable cross class for PLD again while still being weaker than whm cure, due to weapon damage and STR on pld being lower than magical damage and MND on whm. This would allow pld at 60 to keep up in self heals with war having storm's path, equilibrium and inner beast and drk having souleater and abyssal drain, with something other than clemency.

Beefing up Cure that way doesn't even come close to putting it on par with Inner Beast, Storm's Path, Soul Eater, Abyssal Drain, and especially not with Equilibrium. Inner Beast, Storm's Path, Souleater, and Abyssal Drain all deal damage while healing HP. Cure just roots you in place for 2 seconds while the boss continues to hit you, and you can't block/parry while you're casting either. Equilibrium is basically 8k+ free HP every 60 seconds off the GCD as long as you're in tank stance, and WAR has the easiest time dancing in and out of stance. I've seen mine crit for nearly 14k. There's no way Cure (which is a complete loss of a GCD) can compete with that. Considering PLD enmity generation is already weaker than other tanks, a stronger Cure is still useless. There's too many down sides to possibly make the argument that Cure would be comparable to any of those skills.

If you're in cleric's stance doing some dps and a party member doesn't dodge an AoE, instead of dropping cleric's to do a 2.9k cure with a chance to proc a cure 2 you won't use, you can stay in cleric's and use a 2.5k physick.

If I'm in cleric stance doing some DPS and a party member doesn't dodge an AoE, they can suck it until I'm out of cleric stance unless Eos feels like healing them. I don't think "party member stood in stupid" should be used as an argument for this.

[m3eansean]

This would not work under the existing game structure and I doubt it will be realized anytime soon.

This game needs content, badly. Yoshi admitted as such in his recent live letter. I would imagine development time is being dedicated to playable content instead of re-tooling the entire healing formula so that a BLM can waste his DPS potential casting physick on himself.

[DarkmoonVael]

In 4 man content you only need one person healing, in 8 man content you only need two healers, and even then once content is learned one of those two is in cleric stance most of the time. The healer that clerics most of the time brings highly valuable skills to the raid group (mitigation and instant cast healing and with sch a fairy) that can not be replaced. Basically, no point in any other class other than a healer having useful healing in this game for party content. I mean, PLD has clemency, and that really is a niche move if ever there was one.

[Harlow]

This thread is just going to a be a big ol' week long mess isn't it? To put it bluntly this idea doesn't work. The entire game would have to be restructured and built around it.

Physick would become a viable cross class for Blm and smn, as well as whm, allowing blms and smns to assist heal effectively if needed, and allowing sch and whm to give minor healing without dropping cleric's stance

Healing in Cleric stance at all isn't a thing unless you're a 2.0 SCH using Lustrate or a WHM using Benediction. This might as well just ask "what if the healers DPSed and the DPS healed? Wouldn't that be something?"

Also in this case I guess SCH would just be some weird Frankenstein class that only functions in Cleric stance? What's the point of that even? Or would it only be Physick and I'd have to stance dance just to do basic healing?

[Tint]

Also in this case I guess SCH would just be some weird Frankenstein class that only functions in Cleric stance? What's the point of that even? Or would it only be Physick and I'd have to stance dance just to do basic healing?

noooo... you are supposed to crossclass cure from whm, because sch doesn't know what else to fill in those crossclass-skillslots... v.v/

[Ashkendor]

noooo... you are supposed to crossclass cure from whm, because sch doesn't know what else to fill in those crossclass-skillslots... v.v/

All mine are already full up with stuff I don't want to have to replace with Cure just to be able to heal normally.

Cleric Stance, Protect, Stone Skin, Swiftcast, Aero

[MagiusNecros]

I feel crossclass healing spells should have percentage scaling in the same vein MP scales with your level.

Pre HW content when you sync down stuff like Cure/Physick at lvl 49 heals a decent chunk per cast.

HW content at 60 or even early 50's? Decent chunk of healing is beat down to nothing. Instead of healing 1/10 of your max HP it is healing for around 1/30 of your max HP.

And yet the MP percentage per cast scaling is still there. You use a spell that costs MORE to do LESS for you.