Healer Role Actions: SE, We Need to Talk

[Halkon]

Healers are a mess right now. AST is OP, SCH is d-e-d, WHM is... WHM. But I'm not here to talk about why AST is amazing, or the multitude of problems with Plenary Indulgence, I want to talk about healer's role actions.

For me, I think Lucid Dreaming, Swiftcast, and Largesse are necessary. Then you have Eye for an Eye, Esuna, Protect, and Rescue all fighting for the last 2 spots.

I personally think that Esuna should be removed from role actions and given to all healers. It's too situational to always have, but it's so nice to have when those situations arise. Furthermore, Protect should receive the same treatment. There's no reason to not have extra mitigation. And I also hate having to activate it at the start of a dungeon, casting it, then getting rid of it. Then someone dies and I have to activate it again and cast it on them again.

At least, I hope that happens in 4.05, along with a lot of other changes.

[Shurrikhan]

The same could be said for any other role.

The only two uniquely poor "choices" are Protect and Low Blow/Reprisal, which should always be swapped prior to the encounter. Reprisal has relatively no value on trash, and Low Blow has absolutely none on bosses.
Protect, worse still, is swapped to, cast, and then traded again for something else, usually all by macro.

Each encounter determines our Role Skills, atop the extra annoyance of swapping to and from Protect and deciding which healer has to take Esuna. There's no choice in any of it.

[Riyshn]

So the thing with Healer role actions, is all three healers already had skills that filled the effects of Lucid Dreaming, Largesse, Esuna, and Break. This isn't like Protect or Eye for an Eye that were removed from one job to be made available to all, these were removed/nerfed from all apparently just to fill out having 10 role actions. There isn't really a reason any of these should exist in their current form.

Even Protect isn't really needed - it is only still in the game because Yoshi-P insisted on keeping it for FF flavor reasons; why not have make it a WHM exclusive short term mitigation buff like they did for PvP. This would also have let them stop scaling up all damage on the assumption that Protect is always active.

[Halkon]

So the thing with Healer role actions, is all three healers already had skills that filled the effects of Lucid Dreaming, Largesse, Esuna, and Break.

That's the problem. They took away our actions and forced us to waste role actions slots on them, instead of letting us use new role actions instead. I wish they created other skills to be used for role actions (and maybe put stoneskin there) instead of taking away the cleanse, the mana restore, and healing buff.

[Shurrikhan]

That's the damn problem isn't it? They took away our actions and forced us to waste role actions slots on them, instead of letting us use new role actions instead.

It is. They not only retained bloat, but used it to excuse neglect of any meaningful creation of new actions, all while extracting a bit of the individual flavor from each affected job.

They need to decide what they actually desire from customization, if that's even a subject they're willing to wade into. These Legion-esque tools to be swapped situationally with given encounter types, if touched at all, are not that. There's no multiple flavors of gameplay here. There's just bloat and additional steps required.

[Halkon]

Snip

Yep, I'd be down with it, if maybe we could have "skill loadouts" or something. Changing individual skills out sucks manually, and sucks making a macro for it. It's all an illusion of choice, and it'd be great if there was real choice. But honestly, I wouldn't mind tossing role actions to the side completely (although I would like to keep Rescue).

My issue with role skills is that all of them are equal except largesse. That skill does not benefit all healers equally like the rest. It is situational yes but it has limited use on a scholar because the skill was designed for a whitemage kit and the great majority of scholars brute force healing skills are abilities which doesn't benefit from the healing potency up. This compounded with the fact that our gcd heals are the heaviest mp costing heals i find it blatantly unjust.

True, Largesse was made for WHM/AST. The only thing I can see Largesse being useful for, for SCH, is to try and get a massive critlo. But, it's not spammable enough. Largesse is a lot better for regen based jobs, WHM and Dirunal AST.

[Shurrikhan]

Yep, I'd be down with it, if maybe we could have "skill loadouts" or something. Changing individual skills out sucks manually, and sucks making a macro for it. It's all an illusion of choice, and it'd be great if there was real choice. But honestly, I wouldn't mind tossing role actions to the side completely (although I would like to keep Rescue).

Rescue and Peloton are literally the only things I've enjoyed about the change.

Just to throw some ideas out there, some job-based customization sets/menus:

• White Mage - Blessings
• Scholar - Studies
• Paladin - Oath
• Bard - Repertoire
• Machinist - Gear Box
• Etc., etc.

Example of one such set:

Gear Box

• Heat Absorber (allows for set-aside Heat storage, and Flamethrower when combined with Gas Tank, and with additional synergy with Gauss Round).
• Wrench (repairs turrets and has an oGCD Pacify that grants one ammo)
• Gas Tank (allows for your rook turrets to be launched as rockets, self-destructing in a line AoE, Bishop turrets to soak enemies in oil, causing later damage to ignite them for DoT damage, and combines with Heat Absorber to create a flamethrower)
• Gauss Tech (allows for the Gauss Turret—which deploys between you and the target to accelerate shots fired and allow you to fire from outside of line of sight by redirecting your shots, Gauss Barrel, and Gauss Round)
• Foregrip (allows you to swap to a Rifle Grip, with a short charge time available on most weaponskills for additional damage and range, and allowing for Clean Break, an extremely damaging augmented version of Heartbreak following a critical Clean Shot).
• Advanced Salvage (allows parts to be picked up from destroyed turrets, mechanical enemies, and returned after consumption, which can augment additional abilities in a variety of ways).
• Extended Ordinance Permit (allows for multiple turrets to be deployed simultaneously, albeit at mana drain cost)
• Marksmanship (something, something Head Graze, Leg Graze, Foot Graze)
• Etc. (Pick 4-5)

(With the above ideas, mana is now consumed to Repair and Deploy any of the three turrets; Repair orders may be given to accelerate the recast times of destroyed turrets. The actual Repair ability (via Wrench) is an oGCD channel which rapidly reduces the recast time at no mana cost.)

[Spiroglyph]

Even Protect isn't really needed - it is only still in the game because Yoshi-P insisted on keeping it for FF flavor reasons; why not have make it a WHM exclusive short term mitigation buff like they did for PvP. This would also have let them stop scaling up all damage on the assumption that Protect is always active.

Hey, you.
I like you, and I like this thing you said.
This would also have "fixed" the issue with most healers having it too easy to spend 90% of the time in CS, as lack of protect would naturally have made everyone squishier, and this would have somewhat fixed WHM's lack of mitigation skills.
As it is protect is just a pain in my ass - it's basically mandatory for all content (bar 8-mans where you and your co healer can coordinate), and while you can swap it out after cast (thank you reddit role action swap macros) most of the time I don't even bother to swap it out, as someone dying mid combat means I can't use it on them again. It's all fine and well if someone has a momentary braindead moment and don't stand in the bad anymore as you can recast it after the fight, but if there's any new player or anyone lagging, or some such, well...

I just find it ODD that in their effort to reduce button bloat, they insisted on keeping the most useless skill in the entire bloody game. I don't even actually have 5 role action choices lmao

[inhaledcorn]

Protect shouldn't exist in general because it's soooo necessary. If not, whomever doesn't have it has that much less defense, and literally every major encounter is designed with Protect in mind. It's too important for such a "set and forget" buff. It really should be like it is for WHM in PvP, a general damage reduction, only for the party instead of a single target. Since they're so insistent on having Lilies, fine, lock it behind the Lily system, needing at least one Lily to use it. This gives WHM much needed damage mitigation, but, of course, SCH is just crying even further.

[Lyrica_Ashtine]

I'd argue that Lagresse is optional. Considering that each encounter is heavily scripted you can always just play around with or without Lagresse. At best it saves MP, but so does Eye for an Eye.

Protect, however, seems so incredibly pointless and seems to be here just for sake of tradition within Final Fantasy. The party could very well have a passive (magic) defense increase based on party size and have the same effect as Protect. Or make it a trait based on role and call it Divine Seal - The name is now free anyway. Or just flat out increase each player's magic and defense regardless or lower incoming damage equivalent to the mitigated effect when Protect is present. Groups never (or rarely) go into any form of content without a healer anyway. Passively having protect as spell, trait, or party bonus would hardly effect the game play. At worst it will save the healers a single GCD after a raise.