Thread: Healer identity in 5.0

So just dropping by to say, that after my initial disappointment at DNC being a dps (my fiance was really looking forward to sexy twirly heals) and reading some of the post interviews, I can KIND of see what they are saying when it comes to balance.
I think they meant to say that atm, healers are not in a bad state against each other balance wise. They are in a poor state against the game itself specifically the design and requirements of healing. I think that's what they mean to address by saying they plan on making fundamental changes to the healing classes. I gotta say I'm immensely curious with how they go about it, and how it will influence fight design and Tank/Dps behaviour!

Focusing on regens or shields in particular misses out on what is really required by the classes. Each healing class needs a way to passively keep up the health of the party. This is essential. I think that is is also reasonable for each healer to have a way to prepare for upcoming damage and make it possible for party members to survive bigger incoming hits. I think that if we want to see greater balance, with the way that content is currently structured, we need all three healers to have well-rounded toolkits that allow them to complement each other.
Take a look at the dps classes. On the whole they accomplish the same thing (dealing damage) in different ways (the play style of the class). With healers we have not even been starting with the assumption that they will able to all do the same things.

On the topic of shields, I think that is good for all three healer classes to have access to them. At least, I think it's important for them to be able to prepare for a big hit ahead of time to minimize the amount of time spent in stressing low-health situations, or at least to provide some leeway for errors or tough situations. There are other options like % damage reduction that have a similar end result.
I think that there is plenty of space for them to differentiate how the healers' shields work. We already see this: WHM's shield is instant cast and has a cooldown which makes it great for soaking up general damage but harder to use for tankbusters if you want to maximize uptime. Nocturnal AST has the best on-demand shields with a small heal to go along with it, and it has the added benefit of being instant cast. SCH has a weaker single-target shield (outside of situations where you can fish for a crit) that falls in with the other skills in it's toolbox. Even back in ARR, WHM had stoneskin as a shield so there is certainly precedent for all healers to have ways to prevent incoming damage.
They have also said the we will be able to see shields as part of the ui in the future. I hope for two changes along with this: WHM's shields should change from a percentage of max hp to a potency so that their effectiveness isn't reduced when not using them on a tank. I think the main reason that skills that don't heal instead shield for a percentage of hp is because it is hard to tell exactly how much has been shielded without a heal number or hp bar indication.
The other thing I'd like to see is a cap on the amount of shields someone can have compared to how much hp they have. This would make it possible for all sorts of shields to stack, since it would never be able to go past this maximum and become overpowered.

In terms of passive healing, these are things that give the healer space to do other things like dps or move during mechanics while healing still continues to take place. The main ways that this takes place is through regens, but oGCD heals also contribute to this. Of course the king of passive healing is the fairy. The way that things work now, each healer should have a way to keep the hp of the party ticking up over time without having to constantly hard cast things like Cure or Benefic. This is a large part of what the problem with Nocturnal AST is - They have had to boost the heal percentage on the sect numerous times for this reason, since when the tank takes damage you often have to stop what you are doing to tend to his hp, having few options to keep his hp ticking up otherwise.

Originally Posted by Coltvoyance

Do we have a source for this? It's the first time I'm hearing of it. If so it's a great idea and could allow Square to introduce the concept of "Overhealing". Essentially creating healing skills that fill a "second" health bar (formerly the TP bar in the party UI?). And perhaps it slowly diminishes over time along with taking damage. This could give healers greater focus on casting heals to maintain this "second" health bar, as it continuously drops, instead of just dealing damage. Especially if the next attack requires that level of extra health to survive, or a specific amount of "Overheal" (which may provide different benefits to regular HP).

I'm not exactly sure when this was mentioned, but it might've been during one of the FanFests or LiveLetters. It wasn't on a slide or anything, but they did talk about being able to see shields in the future. I wish I remembered. The Las Vegas FanFest would be my best guess.

Originally Posted by Bobsmiaw

I have some ideas about this

Diurnal Sect:
Grant you the ability to draw offensive arcana to aid your allies.
Under this sect you can only Draw and Redraw Balance, Spear, or Arrow.
Using Minor Arcana will always grant you Lord of Crowns.
Cooldowns: 10 sec? or maybe longer?
Also possible to Sect swap during battle.

Nocturnal Sect:
Grant you the ability to draw defensive arcana to aid your allies.
Under this sect you can only Draw and Redraw Bole, Ewer, or Spire.
Using Minor Arcana will always grant you Lady of Crowns.
Cooldowns: 10 sec? or maybe longer?
Also possible to Sect swap during battle.

With this Sect effect on card, we can minimize the RNG of our cards.
Sleeve Draw will not affected by Sect. You can get all type of cards.
If you want to Redraw after Sleeve Draw, the Redraw is still affected by the Sect

Just dropping in to say this sounds really cool! I was advocating to just deleting AST's sects all together and tripling down on the card aspects, but this sounds a lot better!

Reposting from another thread for consolidation purposes, and adding a little more.

Given the flavor of AST, I feel like having the main gimmick of AST be reactive heals might make more sense than what they have now.

Benefic is obviously going to be their equivalent of Cure/Physic, but instead of Benefic II or the Aspected spells in their current state, give them a short term buff that can be applied to players.

The buff would have a short-to-medium duration, and when the buffed character is attacked, they'll get a heal for a particular potency. The catch is, the potency is based on the duration of the buff. The longer the remaining duration, the larger the effective potency. Since the buff's heals only trigger when the character is attacked, it's not like a regen, and the expectation is that it might be a few seconds before the character takes a hit, so if you are good at predicting damage, getting the buff on a second or two right before the attack would effectively give bonus potency to the heal.

I'll try to illustrate with putting it into an example:
Benefic II: Cure Potency: 350. Additional Effect: Erects a magicked barrier on target that heals when struck. This barrier lasts for up to 2 strikes. Potency is affected by the remaining duration of the barrier to determine the amount healed. Duration: 13s
Aspected Benefic: Cure Potency: (to be determined) Erects a magicked barrier on target that heals when struck. This barrier lasts for up to 1 strike. Potency is affected by the remaining duration of the barrier to determine the amount healed. Duration: 13s
Aspected Helios: Cure Potency: (to be determined) Erects a magicked barrier on target and all party members nearby target that heals when struck. Potency is affected by the remaining duration of the barrier to determine the amount healed. Duration: 10s

So you cast Benefic II on a player and it puts the buff up. If the player is hit when the buff has 12 seconds remaining, the trigger heals for 350 potency x 1.2. If the player gets hit when there is 10 seconds remaining on the buff, the heal that is triggered only heals for 350 potency. If they don't get hit at all until there's 6 seconds left, then the heal trigger heals for .6 of 350 potency.

Originally Posted by Coltvoyance

The second time now I've seen Enholy or something similar as a suggestion, and I really hope it's something that happens. IMO I think it'd be rad if they basically just turned WHM into pseudo MNK healer. WHM casts Enholy, then everytime a party members holy damage procs, it grants a Lilly (basically like Brotherhood). Lillies then give the WHM a passive "Healing Aura" that automatically applies a regen effect to those nearby until it's used up in a big flashy move for some other purpose like a DPS move, a Mitigation/Shield buff, or some other fantastical move.

Bam, right there, you've made WHM way cooler and more interesting.

Maybe but let me ask this, does WHM need more heals or would it be better to have lillies buff utility stuff. So what if SE added Holy Shield that last for 30s and inflicts 50 potency back to any enemy that attacks, Holy Brand that adds 30 potency to players auto attacks. Then Lilies would be used to buff those abilities based on how many are accumulated?