balance through Balance

[MoroMurasaki]

The only thing that will balance healers is the effect of Balance (the card) being nerfed into the ground or spread to all healers in some way.

In general I'm against homogenization of a specific role, especially healers which I love, but Balance is the largest issue at the current time standing in the way of healer eqiality.

Personally I don't care whether they nerf the ability or give a counterpart to WHM and SCH, SCH already even has one if they would just increase the duration or potency of Chain Stratagem. They could kill of PI for WHM and replace it with some sort of party wide buff. Hell, for people who have played the WHM story that actually makes more sense as something to gain from the final instanced battle.

Either way there is no way that we will see healers represented equally going forward without one of those 2 things happening.

Clearly SCH needs more help in other areas but in that case I have every confidence that it is coming in 4.05. Either way not what the topic is about.

[HyoMinPark]

I don't think the solution to bring WHM/SCH back to viability is to nerf ASTs or AST's Balance. You shouldn't nerf a job to make the others better. Nerf Balance and AST will go back to being the weaker hybrid groups didn't want because they couldn't bring anything to the group the other two didn't already bring.

Each job needs their own niche to make them viable for any content, to make them unique, and to make them desirable to statics and players in general. Nerfing one will only cause said nerfed job to experience problems; it won't necessarily fix the design flaws with others.

There are definitely aspects of WHM that need to be addressed. And SCH needs A LOT of TLC right now. But nerfing AST is not the solution to fixing WHM/SCH. Just like how nerfing PLD wouldn't be a solution to fix the issues with WAR, or even DRK.

[Feidam]

I don't think the solution to bring WHM/SCH back to viability is to nerf ASTs or AST's Balance. You shouldn't nerf a job to make the others better.

Completely disagree depending on the situation. If one class is over tuned then it needs to be nerfed. You don't over tune the others as that makes content trivial and then content has to be retuned. The question is are Astrologians overpowered or not based on the target number the devs have set for "X" content.

[Enla]

I don't think the solution to bring WHM/SCH back to viability is to nerf ASTs or AST's Balance. You shouldn't nerf a job to make the others better. Nerf Balance and AST will go back to being the weaker hybrid groups didn't want because they couldn't bring anything to the group the other two didn't already bring.

I completely disagree, at least in regards to AST's Nocturnal stance. AST shields should be just under the potency of SCH's, not putting out better shields with an instant cast to boot. I don't think AST needs to be nerfed into the ground by any means, but it does need several balances in order for all the healers to play on even ground. Either half the potency to balance the instant cast or put in a cast bar like Succor has. Likewise their shields also crit far harder than SCH's do, which given the fact that SCH is the CRIT healer is absolutely unacceptable.

AST should be on par with the other two, not outpacing them at very single turn.

[Cyrocco]

Three Jobs

Two Jobs Preferred, Buff Third.

One Job Preferred, Nerf That One.

If all three healers are viable, but one is strongly preferred, the special one needs to be brought down to match.

[IttyBitty]

You cannot simply buff classes to bring them in line with a class that is overtuned to a ridiculous degree. That is a textbook definition of power creep.

The Balance is warping the healing environment. Either every healer needs something like it, or it needs to be toned down.

[Fernosaur]

I agree that Balance needs to go, tbh. By now, Astrologian's healing kit is so powerful that it can easily compete with the other two even without Balance.

Hell, even just having Arrow is still gonna make it borderline mandatory, but it wouldn't be 100% necessary like Balance makes it atm.

[LegoTechnic]

One of the reasons I liked skill/spell speed buffs on Selene was that bringing her also meant removing a SCH's regen, divine seal, and shell moves, so it came at cost to the healer. AST pays a cost in having their buff be a minor bit of RNG.

[Ilenya]

Three Jobs

Two Jobs Preferred, Buff Third.

One Job Preferred, Nerf That One.

If all three healers are viable, but one is strongly preferred, the special one needs to be brought down to match.

Yeah, they tried that, and look where SCH is now...

[Feidam]

Yeah, they tried that, and look where SCH is now...

Only problem here is the main one needing to be toned down got buffed and scholar took several hits. So it isn't really what happened. Guessing the Ast dev didn't get the memo.