My ideas on healer design

[Vulcwen]

With the stormblood changes, healer design is again a discussion point, so I'd like to bring up ideas for the 3 healers that I believe might work better.

SCH:
Please keep the current DoTs as they are.. aero should go.. just put DoT on ruin 2 instead as a trait.. done.. do we really need to cut a DoT button? Change miasma into bio 2 after using ruin 2.. that should do the trick.

SCH in it's current form works really well, and the new stuff just plays to it's strengths.. Balance issues are in that:
- AoE is too efficient.. that can be solved by capping the dot duration on bane (I don't like damage fall off at all), need to use more stacks to keep dots up.. We also need a new AoE filler.. with a potency of 60 instead of 50 ideally.. just give that a reasonably high MP cost.. that should fix those issues.
- Fairy is OP.. ok.. here I'd change some things: 1. Embrace should not be able to target the fairy itself. 2.. I actually have changes to other healers in mind to fix the rest.

WHM:
Ok, the lily system doesn't look that great.. encourage spamming cure 1/2 and doesn't seem to get much use in normal play.. I'd add that lilies would proc on every cure variant, and should auto-generate every 15s in combat.
- Each oGCD gets a cooldown reduction and consumes a lily.
- For each lily currently on, you get a 5% MP reduction on all spells.
Confession just doesn't look interesting.. so I'd like to change something, that would also help balancing against the fairy:
- Regen becomes a 5s cd oGCD, 75 potency with 21s duration. It can also stack 3 times for a total of 225 potency. Planetary Indulgence can then depend on the amount of regen stacks a player has.
- Add a 400 potency instant cure, I'll call that Cure IV, so you can weave regen with it.. MP cost higher than cure 1 of course.
- Keep stoneskin 2, make it a 90s cooldown oGCD. Stoneskin 1 can be gone.

This still follows the pure-healer design of WHM, but putting a stackable oGCD regen on WHM that after some build-up would match what the fairy can put out, allows for larger DPS uptime, since the lily mechanic would work with cure 4, and you can weave regen in it.. it allows for efficient healing, and synergy between the different actions you have. Stoneskin 2 will be WHM's way to mitigate for dangerous AoEs.

AST:
Diurnal sect becomes passive. Nocturnal Sect will then be a 20s cooldown ability that changes regen to a shield on aspected abilities.
- They also get a new skill to cash out existing HoTs for direct healing (that's time-magic, so totally fits the job).
Also don't merge combust 1 and 2 here.. weaving capability is important after all.

By getting rid of the sect concept, AST only has a single toolkit in every situation, which allows for easier balancing. It'll not have shields on demand as much as SCH, but their shields would be more powerful, and still very frequent compared to 90s cd on SS2 for WHM. It also doesn't have a free regen, however get a lot of burst potential by cashing out their regens.

These changes would also bring AST and WHM further apart in design, creating unique healing styles for each of the 3 healers.

[LegoTechnic]

SCH in it's current form works really well, and the new stuff just plays to it's strengths.. Balance issues are in that:
- AoE is too efficient.. that can be solved by capping the dot duration on bane (I don't like damage fall off at all), need to use more stacks to keep dots up.. We also need a new AoE filler.. with a potency of 60 instead of 50 ideally.. just give that a reasonably high MP cost.. that should fix those issues.
- Fairy is OP.. ok.. here I'd change some things: 1. Embrace should not be able to target the fairy itself. 2.. I actually have changes to other healers in mind to fix the rest.

These are both less than ideal. SCH should want to be less like WHM, not more, so a spammable DD AoE is probably not what we should be asking unless it had a unique SCH spin to it. We spammed Blizzard II not because we wanted to, but because we had nothing better to do, and that's the problem. No one actually wants to spam Blizzard II, it's just the best we had!

Since Sustain has been removed, removing the fairy's ability to heal itself is a death knell for it, and honestly it's fine as it is. Basically when the fairy is injured its "regen" effect of embrace is turned "off" until it finishes healing itself. Additionally the Fairy is far, far from OP. It's very useful and definitely the defining trait of the class, but it's a supplement there to compensate for SCH's gated use of support heals that use Aetherize stacks or lengthy cooldown Tactics buffs, and that they have no large heals without them. The offset is that the fairy is drunk and heals whatever it damn well pleases even if you try to direct it otherwise.

[Vulcwen]

...

The removal of Sustain is not an issue, physick was better anyway, with the only downside that you need to target the pet.
I'd rethink the pet self-heal, mainly cause you pointed out a reason to consider it a buff :P.. but I kinda want to care more about the pet's survival, and with it self-healing you don't need to pay attention to it's health bar. Anyway, the fairy is OP because it offers more DPS uptime and MP efficiency.. which is good, don't want to see it gone.. that's why I rather give other healers also a tool to increase dps uptime, that fits the flavour of the job.

About AoE filler, you suggested a fester-like aoe.. which might be nice.. but AoE spam is just part of this game. I don't think SE wants more buttons for AoE, so the fester-like effect can be on a GCD ability you can just spam. (something like 30 potency + 10 for each dot (bio/miasma) on the target).
Also, I do like Blizzard 2's animation.. I kinda want to use it.

[Fernosaur]

I had honestly had similar thoughts on how AST could be redesigned to cement its own healing identity, though my line of thought was going more in the line of allowing them to change sects on a 30 sec CD and making Aspected Helios a CD itself. I had also had the same idea for burst healing by transforming HoTs/shields into pure healing, which I think would be an amazing burst healing alternative.

Tbh, I think AST shouldn't have Benefic II, but instead their personal and AoE regens should be stronger than WHM's to consolidate their support and utility-focused playstyle on top of the cards. Other than this, they could have RNG-gated mechanics like Regen crits procing a CD reset on Asp. Helios, or a crit on Benefic procing a CD reset on their Sect CD, etc.

Also, Benefic being an instant spell would help consolidate them further into a unique class, and since it would (probably) retain the same potency as Physick and Cure it wouldn't be OP in the slightest. If anything, they would be able to handle emergency healing situations really well and function as a support healer role further. Perhaps reducing ED's cooldown to 30 secs to compensate for the loss of Benefic II would help too, though that's debatable. The CD on the HoT > healing ability would have to be somewhat lengthy, though, at least 1 minute, or make it so it only transforms half the remaining total potency of ticking HoTs into burst healing.