Healer adjustment in 4.05

[Tsumdere]

Hey, did you know? Stoneskin was cross-classable, and availabe at what again? Early 30's? So basically exactly when needing shields becomes a thing. I got some of the old dungeons during leveling roulettes lately, and they have not been very fun without Stoneskin. But what do I even know, it's been a horrible skill anyway even in that content!

I've been leveling WHM on my alt because it is hands down my favorite healer class now, and low level dungeons feel exactly the same without SS.

WHM is way better than people give it credit for. The only thing that is off imo is DB eating all lilies and PI... and thats getting fixed.

[amihavingfunyet]

Why do we keep seeing this "no shield for 65 lvls" crap, its only 16 lvls after AST gets one... Do people just forget AST doesnt unlock Noct til lvl 50?

I don't want to argue this too much, because I'm never going back to that content anyway, but consider that some people might want to do (min) synced Lv 50/60 content. And there is content at those levels that need mitigation from both healers. T5, T9, T13 tankbusters, T10 prey, A7S cages are just the first that come to mind.
But I think it's more of a general problem that SE barely cares if the classes are functional at older level caps when we get a new exansion.

[technole]

Doing minimum ilevel content with the role skill changes means just having tank/caster/ranged DPS pick up some slack on mitigation like caster Addle and tank reprisal. Ranged DPS has palisade.

[Ghishlain]

All things wrong with this logic
1) idc how bad you are your basic combo plus a balance of any potency will be more damage then a whm.

Here's the best non-AST speedkill on Susano EX. Total DPS minus LB is 23,708.0. Let's also remove the WHM DPS for now (2,013) and include the DPS of the AST from the fastest kill on Susano EX (1,587) - changing our total to 23,282 total group DPS.

Assuming absolutely perfect RNG, this means you'd get an Expanded Balance every minute and Sleeve Draw also gives you Expanded Balance. With Celestial Opposition to extend one of those Expanded Balance another 10 seconds, this means you get a total of 100 seconds of 10% balance in a 120 second window - in other words you get an increase of 8.33333% DPS with this kind of uptime.

This means the total DPS gain from including an AST (skewed slightly due to the AST's boosted value already from the fight) would be 1,940.2 DPS (AST total DPS contribution = 3,527.2)

Of course this would be a completely unrealistic expectation. A more conservative estimate might be getting two Expanded Balance which leads to 70s uptime out of 120s for 10% damage up - leading to an uptime of 5.83% or a DPS gain of 1,358.1 DPS (AST total DPS contribution = 2,945.1).

For the sake of argument - let's aim for a single Expanded Balance within that two minute period. 40s uptime out of 120s for 10% damage up which leads up to a 3.33% or a DPS gain of 776.1 DPS (AST total DPS contribution = 2,363.1). This uptime actually kinda matches up the average uptime of the fastest kills for Susano EX (#1 | #2 | #3 | #4 | #5 | #6 | #7 | #8 | #9 | #10)

Assuming the WHM in the non-AST kill listed above got the same Balance uptime as the example just above (3.33%), WHM's number would become 2,080. Then AST's contribution would be approximately 13% higher than WHM's.

Considering that I'm taking statistics from the pinnacle of the player base and that the average person slamming basic combo would basically be lower than the 50th percentile (and therefore basically do less than half the DPS these players do) - this is my excessively long winded way of saying "You're completely wrong".

2)yay now I have enough mp to rez people over and over and over and over till we meet enrage. On sch and ast I can rez maybe 3-4 times before I go into mana conservative mode and with that many deaths your prob going wipe anyway
3) after you perfected the fight there is no reason to be a whm cuz how your described whm is that it\\'s nothing more then a safety net

Seeing enrage and thus seeing all the mechanics of a fight means people can learn how to do that fight sooner. Nothing wrong with that. Once you've perfected the fight on WHM, you could make the switch to AST but then your strategies would potentially have to change to suit the new composition. Is that something you'd like to have happen? That's up to each individual group to decide.

The thing about SCH having the best healer DPS is actually more depressing if you look into it deeper. At 80 percentile, AST and WHM HPS are basically neck and neck at around 4k HPS, while SCH is sitting at 2.5k (I have no idea how it calculates shields into its calcs, so take it with a small grain of salt).

Coupled with the fact that WHM personal DPS on a dummy is higher than that of SCH, the best interpretation is that AST and WHM are doing the heavy lifting of healing because SCH isn't really as able to, leaving SCH to sit there spamming Broil II and thus accumulate a higher DPS in comparison than it otherwise would.

Healer balance is mainly down to the specifics of SCH/WHM changes on Tuesday, really.

As for the second point, when I say "easier", I don't really mean from a skill ceiling perspective. To be more specific, AST can set up Expanded Balance while healing with GCDs, while DPSing vs. healing with WHM is a mutually exclusive choice outside of things like Assize. This is largely in part because oGCDs, even at maximum clipping, only eat up around 1/3 - 1/5 of a GCD, while GCDs eat up 2.5 seconds. In addition, ASTs can barely clip, if at all, if they use a oGCD after the 2 second cast of Benefic or Benefic II, not just after Aspected Benefic.

Say you have a raid encounter where the incoming damage is low and you spend 80% of your GCDs DPSing and 20% of them healing; both healers won't really have much of an issue giving the raid DPS then, right? But if the incoming damage goes up (phase change, mechanic is failed, etc.) and now you're spending only 20% of your GCDs DPSing and 80% of them healing, WHM DPS is hurt way more than AST because AST can probably still find the time to put out Expanded Balance, but a WHM has no way to recover extra Stone IVs except *maybe* (s)he might find a way to spend 30% of their GCDs DPSing instead if they're wise with oGCDs. This is somewhat troubling for WHM in Savage because I can only presume that the healing requirements in the upcoming Savage will be higher than those of the Ex primals.

I agree with the first section fully. In terms of raid encounter I do agree too, though if people are dying there might not even be opportunities to use Expanded Balance since you may be in need of those Spires and Ewers at that point. I can see where you're going with mechanical fails leading to HP loss but Savage tends to be mechanical fails = death which is a whole other can of worms.

Also, I love the theory of "if you are a good healer, you are much more desirable than a bad one on a better class!". It is, of course, true. But sadly... people don't know if you are that better healer, and if you are excluded from joining a party from the get-go due to your class, you can't proof them you are. And sadly, that happens a lot. That's the core of the problem, really. You are 100% right, but if I can't proof it to people because they won't let me, there is no chance in hell that knowing this helps me any.

Ideally, if you're running into people that block due to meta, you don't want to associate with them anyway. Easier said than done but the best thing I'd do is just take destiny into your own hands and starts making your own mini group. Getting at least one or two tanks and be the healer and you'll be able to build your own PFs with your own rules. As long as you have the tanks filled, the rest falls into place relatively easily afterwards.

Just keep calm, don't be angry, and try to look at things as objectively as possible. I agree that the AST kit is powerful right now but the WHM kit isn't a slouch either - just takes effort to make the wheels turn. Hopefully we'll see some good oil being poured into the WHM gears come 4.05.

[CreinCrein]

Adlo changes aren't needed. The reason for the shield disparity between Noct AST and SCH is due to the fact that SCH has a 1700-2100 free HPS bot flying around throwing around hundreds of thousands of HP worth of healing and freeing up dozens of healer GCDs for dps. SCH hands-down, even in it's "nerfed" state, has more output than any other healer is capable of doing in raid setting sans balance. Noct AST's shields are pretty much novelty compared to scholar utility and practicality.

[Furious]

Here's the best non-AST speedkill on Susano EX. Total DPS minus LB is 23,708.0. Let's also remove the WHM DPS for now (2,013) and include the DPS of the AST from the fastest kill on Susano EX (1,587) - changing our total to 23,282 total group DPS.

Assuming absolutely perfect RNG, this means you'd get an Expanded Balance every minute and Sleeve Draw also gives you Expanded Balance. With Celestial Opposition to extend one of those Expanded Balance another 10 seconds, this means you get a total of 100 seconds of 10% balance in a 120 second window - in other words you get an increase of 8.33333% DPS with this kind of uptime.

This means the total DPS gain from including an AST (skewed slightly due to the AST's boosted value already from the fight) would be 1,940.2 DPS (AST total DPS contribution = 3,527.2)

Of course this would be a completely unrealistic expectation. A more conservative estimate might be getting two Expanded Balance which leads to 70s uptime out of 120s for 10% damage up - leading to an uptime of 5.83% or a DPS gain of 1,358.1 DPS (AST total DPS contribution = 2,945.1).

For the sake of argument - let's aim for a single Expanded Balance within that two minute period. 40s uptime out of 120s for 10% damage up which leads up to a 3.33% or a DPS gain of 776.1 DPS (AST total DPS contribution = 2,363.1). This uptime actually kinda matches up the average uptime of the fastest kills for Susano EX (#1 | #2 | #3 | #4 | #5 | #6 | #7 | #8 | #9 | #10)

Assuming the WHM in the non-AST kill listed above got the same Balance uptime as the example just above (3.33%), WHM's number would become 2,080. Then AST's contribution would be approximately 13% higher than WHM's.

Considering that I'm taking statistics from the pinnacle of the player base and that the average person slamming basic combo would basically be lower than the 50th percentile (and therefore basically do less than half the DPS these players do) - this is my excessively long winded way of saying "You're completely wrong".

I must be misunderstanding what you're saying, because what you proved in your analysis is that balance + ast is pretty much always more overall damage than whm can be given same relative skill between players in a group (and thus relatively uniform growth in dps between the ast/whm/total group dps). At best, the whm is nearly as good as the ast; at worst, it's nearly half the damage.

But, the quote you posted said "1) idc how bad you are your basic combo plus a balance of any potency will be more damage then a whm.", and you said he is completely wrong.. even though you proved him completely right? I feel like I'm either completely misunderstanding your post, or your misunderstood the person you quoted...

The only time a whm can compete with an ast on overall damage contribution in an 8-man group is if the healer's personal skill or gear (atleast in terms of damage contribution) is significantly higher than the group they are in.

[Rubiss]

Adlo changes aren't needed. The reason for the shield disparity between Noct AST and SCH is due to the fact that SCH has a 1700-2100 free HPS bot flying around throwing around hundreds of thousands of HP worth of healing and freeing up dozens of healer GCDs for dps. SCH hands-down, even in it's "nerfed" state, has more output than any other healer is capable of doing in raid setting sans balance. Noct AST's shields are pretty much novelty compared to scholar utility and practicality.

That fairy is at the expense of healing power. SCH doesn't have a spammable Medica or a Medica 2 equivalent nor a spammable Cure 2. SCH is good at burst healing and flexible healing. Their actual healing power is low. Adloquium should not have a lower potency and cost more while also having a cast time versus the superior Aspected Benefic. That's just stupid. Adlo should either cost less than Aspected Benefic or have higher potency. One of the two. If you think SCH has the highest HPS, then you clearly do not actually play SCH and if you do, you do not have actual data. And no one cares about your A12S parses. In a fight so easy which can be solo healed within the first few weeks of coming out, the inflated numbers from that is not really important.

[LegoTechnic]

Adlo changes aren't needed. The reason for the shield disparity between Noct AST and SCH is due to the fact that SCH has a 1700-2100 free HPS bot flying around throwing around hundreds of thousands of HP worth of healing and freeing up dozens of healer GCDs for dps. SCH hands-down, even in it's "nerfed" state, has more output than any other healer is capable of doing in raid setting sans balance. Noct AST's shields are pretty much novelty compared to scholar utility and practicality.

Just some funny little tidbits.

Adloquium costs 1800 mana to cast. This is the same amount of mana as Aspected Helios which gives an AoE shield approximately 41 potency weaker than adlo's basic shield (259 potency shield vs adlo's 300 potency shield). If you cast Adlo twice in a row, then you just spent the same amount of mana that it takes to cast Resurrection (3600 MP). If comparing adlo to Aspected Benefic, AspBen offers 575 potency shields on all casts versus Adlo's 300 potency shield on a non-crit with the balance being that adlo heals for 100 potency more. On a crit comparison, adlo's 600 potency shield is only 25 potency greater. While it can be deployed, the mana cost of adlo prevents 'fishing for crits", and you can only deploy off the main tank if you're using adlo on them in a phase where they both aren't being hit and are close enough to use as a focal point to spread (10y radius), so often when deploying in mid-battle you're either wasting an adlo heal on a target that doesn't need it for the bounce or you've planned its use it in a phase where the tank isn't being hit. This can be done once every 90 seconds, or every minute and half. While this can be very useful in a lot of places (I used it multiple times to help with mechanics in Brute Justice), there is no encounter that requires deployed crit-shields and there never will be by S-E's own design statements. It is a tool you can use with good results but it will never be required, so often an AspHel will be more than enough for the same purpose and a lot easier to use, especially given the extra time lag required for deployed shields to actually spread and register on players, and AspHel can be reapplied immediately after whereas deployment cannot.

Succor has even worse performance issues with its 2280 mana cost (the most expensive AoE heal in the game) and 150 potency heal and shields (both notably weaker than AspHel's), but Succor can be supported by both Indomitability and Whispering Dawn when their cooldowns are up, so there's a bit of logic in its poor performance. Less logic now that Earthly Star and the shortened cooldown on Assize reduce indom's niche, but I feel like the spirit is still there, and no one should want to think of spamming Succor as viable regardless.

[Kurando]

I really would like to see Adloqium have a trait similar to that WHM has for Cure. So instead of a 15% chance of free MP cost (for Cure II) make it a 15% chance of the next Aldo being a guaranteed critical on the target. I dunno something around that number, but it would atleast give the SCH some kind of reward for Shield upkeep considering AST can just spam AspBen with no casting time.

[xNewbx]

I really would like to see Adloqium have a trait similar to that WHM has for Cure. So instead of a 15% chance of free MP cost (for Cure II) make it a 15% chance of the next Aldo being a guaranteed critical on the target. I dunno something around that number, but it would atleast give the SCH some kind of reward for Shield upkeep considering AST can just spam AspBen with no casting time.

Sounds like the AST trait lol (except the ability to proc the trait is then used on a different one)