Suggestions for addressing Healer Balance

[Seraphor]

These are just my proposed changes to balance the three healers for Shadowbringers.
I know we’re pretty close to release now so it’s not a suggestion with any expectation of being implemented, it’s just an exercise in theory crafting and job building.
I had posted these ideas in a less refined form in the respective topics for each healer, but they really only make good sense when shown together, and in the context of how shields would be changed.
These proposals aren’t exhaustive, so there’s plenty of room for additional skills as well as these changes. For example, I haven’t touched on DPS spells really at all.
A lot of the things I see suggested lately are things like AST cards not stacking, giving WHM more identity, buffs or shields, and this addresses all of that.

Ultimately these suggestions would eliminate the regen/shield dichotomy.
Although AST still maintains its regen/shield stances, it is effectively null as far as healers collectively are concerned because any combination of healers can make use of both regens and shields as required. Any fourth healer, providing it has sufficient use of both Regens and Shields, should be able to be balanced into this set up. Instead of regen/shield, it’s now buff/debuff, and there’s a greater range at which this could be expanded upon and balanced. WHM has MP and speed buffs, SCH has damage and crit debuffs, so a fourth healer could make use of other buffs and debuffs, while AST could still be the buff/debuff master.

1-Astrologian
2-Scholar
3-White Mage
4-Shield Rework



1: ASTROLOGIAN

New Spire effect:
Reduces MP cost for actions for a party member or self by 20%.
Duration: 15s
Does not stack with Fluid Aura. (see WHM below)

This would complement its counterpart in Ewer, while Ewer would recover lost MP, Spire would preserve MP, and with TP merging into MP this will benefit anyone.

Dual card readings: Sects would now effect cards. Current effects are present in Diurnal Sect*, new effects for Nocturnal Sect target enemies instead of party.

Nocturnal Balance:
Reduces damage dealt by an enemy by 8%.
Duration: 15s
Does not stack with Fey Rebuke.

Nocturnal Bole:
Increases damage taken by an enemy by 8%. Does not stack with Ninja’s Trick Attack.
Duration: 15s

Nocturnal Arrow:
Increases weaponskill cast time and recast time, spell cast time and recast time, and auto-attack delay of an enemy by 15%.
Duration: 15s

Nocturnal Spear:
Prevent an enemy from dealing Critical Hits.
Duration: 15s
Does not stack with Fey Illusion.

Nocturnal Ewer:
Deals unaspected damage over time with a potency of 80.
Duration: 15s

Nocturnal Spire:
Deals 10% of the damage inflicted by an enemy to that same enemy.
Duration: 15s


Nocturnal Sect Minor Arcana:

Queen of Cups:
Restores target party member's HP over time with a potency of 150.
Duration: 21s

King of Cups:
Deals unaspected damage over time with a potency of 80.
Duration: 21s


Celestial Opposition:
Stuns all nearby enemies.
Duration: 4s
Also extends duration of beneficial effects cast on self and party members by 10 seconds and extends detrimental effects inflicted by yourself on enemies by 5s.

Time Dilation:
Extends the duration of beneficial effects you cast on a party member by 15 seconds and restores the value of any active HP shields.
(e.g. if a 3000 HP shield is erected, they suffer 2000 dmg, then TD would reset that back to 3000, but will have no effect if the shield is already fully depleted. Indications that changes to the battle system UI will display HP shields would make this easier to manage.)


These would give Nocturnal Sect an extra HoT it can use but on RNG, and a way to modify its shields through TD.
I thought this was the most effective way to have you enhance the effect of Noct shields, but would be too OP to have two skills like this, likewise two skills extending the duration of debuffs would be OP if you could essentially stretch a Noct-Bole-Trick attack out to 25s.

The point of this is to allow dual-AST compositions to use their cards without worrying about overwriting the other’s effects.
The duration is nerfed to 15s for Nocturnal effects as they could be more OP than party buffs, with Bole/Balance nerfed in potency to 8% as well.
*Diurnal Balance and Bole also nerfed to 8% effect.

I think this would also see Nocturnal Sect favoured more over Diurnal in some ways, due to an Enhanced Bole being more effective than Trick attack. (12% more damage over 15s) Would be a neat way of improving the currently inferior Nocturnal Sect, in addition to the minor adjustment to CO/TD and the addition HoT via Queen of Coins.

“Wouldn’t this be too powerful? Diurnal Balance + Nocturnal Bole would give 16% bonus damage!”
You can already time a Balance with a Trick attack to give a 20% damage boost to a party member, 25% if enhanced, or a 15% boost to the whole party.

With Noct-Bole and Trick attack being exclusive, it’s really no different.
An Enchanced-Noct-Bole would increase damage dealt by 12% for the party, adding to that a spread-Diurnal-Balance would boost that to 17%, or an enchanced to 24% for one party member.
It’s virtually the same, it’s a couple percent difference in any case, and would rely on perfect timing and RNG just like it currently is with Trick Attack/Balance.
But this is why the Nocturnal card durations are 15s instead of 30s.

It’s also entirely dependent on party composition.
For one, it allows you to not take a Ninja, expanding the ‘meta’ options.
But if you have a SCH as your co-healer, the benefit of taking regens in Diurnal will outweigh the DPS boost of Noct-Bole when you can just as easily use Diurnal-Balance instead.



2: SCHOLAR

Not too much to change here, mainly just making Selene a more viable choice.

Embrace:
Potency increased from 250 to 300.

Silent Dusk:
Silences target.
Duration: 4s (up from 1s)

Fey Rebuke: (Replaces Fey Caress)
Removes a single detrimental effect from all nearby party members.
Decreases the damage dealt by all nearby enemies by 5%.
Duration: 15s
Does not stack with Nocturnal Balance.

Fey Illusion: (Replaces Fey Wind)
Inflict all nearby enemies with Blindness, and prevents them from dealing Critical hits.
Blindness Duration: 10s
Crit Debuff Duration: 20s
Does not stack with Nocturnal Spear.

This makes Selene more of a debuffer, to compete against Nocturnal AST and a viable choice when paired with WHM or Diurnal AST.

Other changes would be some development of the Fairy system, perhaps something like a Demi- version, perhaps changes Eos/Selene temporarily into Lily for a major ground-based heal effect, like Collective Unconcious but performed by the fairy where you place it instead of by yourself.



3: WHITE MAGE

Fluid Aura:
Reduces MP cost for actions for nearby party members and self by 10%.
Duration: 20s
Does not stack with Diurnal Spire.

Protect:
Reduces damage received by party member or self by 15%.
Duration: 20s.
Cooldown: 60s.
Physical attacks received by party member under the effect of Protect have a X% chance to generate a Lily.
Shares a recast with Shell.

Shell:
Erects a magicked barrier around party member or self which nullifies damage equaling 15% of targets maximum HP.
Duration: 20s.
Cooldown: 60s.
Magical attacks received by party member under the effect of Shell have a X% chance to generate a Lily.
Shares a recast with Protect.

Secret of the Lily:
Adds a Lily to your Healing Gauge upon the execution of Cure, Cure II, Medica or Medica II, or upon physical attacks received under the effect of Protect, or magical attacks received under the effect of Shell, on self or a party member while in combat. Lilies will lower the recast time for Asylum, Assize, Divine Benison, or Tetragrammaton by a percentage corresponding to the number of Lilies stacked at time of action execution (at which time one Lily is removed).
1 Lily: 10%
2 Lilies: 15%
3 Lilies: 20%

Secret of the Lily II:
Grants a 20% chance that Asylum, Assize, Protect, Shell or Zealous Wind recast time is reduced by 5 seconds upon healing with Cure, Cure II, Medica or Medica II.

Plenary Indulgence:
Restores own HP and the HP of all nearby party members. Potency varies with current Lily stack.
1 Lily: 250
2 Lilies: 350
3 Lilies: 450
All lilies are consumed upon use.

Zealous Wind:
Decreases weaponskill cast time and recast time, spell cast time and recast time, and auto-attack delay of nearby party members and self by 10%.
Duration: 20s
Consumes one lily upon use.
Does not stack with Diurnal Arrow.


Basically, rather than having two disparate and almost pointless systems, I’ve bundled Confession Stacks into Lilies, and made Lilies easier to obtain, as well as combining it with their new mitigation skills.

“Why give it a buff that’s basically just an expanded Arrow/Fey Wind and change Fluid Aura into the new Diurnal Spire?” Well in conjunction with my proposed AST changes, you’d be inclined to go with Nocturnal Sect, so you’d be using enemy debuffs instead of party buffs, and I’ve changed Fey Wind in my SCH changes.
It also means that between WHM and SCH, they’d have access to two of AST’s buffs, Crit and Speed, plus potential debuffs with Selene, which should help reduce AST’s dominance in the meta a little. In addition, with WHM sharing many of AST’s Diurnal buffs, it gives more reason to role with Nocturnal AST when paired with WHM.
Basically, they shift the regen/shield dichotomy over to buffs and debuffs. WHM gets some buffs, SCH gets some debuffs, AST gets either or depending on sect and compliments the other healers.

How would Shell’s shield work with AST/SCH as a cohealer? Well…



4: NEW SHIELD MECHANICS

- HP Shields are now displayed on the UI, under parameters, target, and party list.
- HP shields can stack between healers, and be combined into one singular shield with the duration equal to the longest duration of any active shields.
- HP shields can only reach a maximum of 25% of an individual’s maximum HP value.

The ramifications of this would be that shields could now be stacked to an extent, so Adloquium + Shell, or Helios + Benefic, etc. However as there’s a cap, the efficiency of this would be relative to those shield’s potencies. So if you were running SCH and AST, it wouldn’t be worthwhile going Nocturnal, because SCH would already be able to reach 15-20% shield on its own between Succor and Adlo, and so your Helios and Benefic wouldn’t be working at their full potential and the Regen would probably be more efficient.
So Shell would be 15% of a targets max HP, that leaves 10% available for the SCH/AST to work with, which would be about right. (SCH and AST could probably output a constant 10-15% shield buffer, while WHM gets a flat 15% on a limited cooldown in Shell just for tank busters)
Secondly, as all healers would have access to shields, fights from 70+ could be tailored towards shield use, so bosses could have harder hitting tank busters, etc. without worrying about healer composition.
In addition, there could be some (minor in comparison) enemy attacks that bypass shields, meaning you can’t rely entirely on shields and have to top up HP as well.

“But won’t the meta just shift to whatever gives the maximum shields?” If that were true, then there’s no reason why the current meta isn’t whoever gives the strongest shields. As that’s currently Nocturnal AST… I don’t see this being a problem.

Like everything, these values are up for tweaking. Maybe 25% is too much and 20% would be better. This might require all the other shield values being reduced, maybe Shell only imparts a 10% shield, etc.

[Mansion]

WHM:
I think your Protect and Shell are a bit too powerfull. 20% for 20 seconds every minute is a lot; you'll negate a lot of hard tank busters with that alone. I'd make it 10% with 60sec CD, and have them both share the same recast timer.
Your plenary Indulgence is solving the problem by getting rid of Confessions, that's really good.
Lily generation outside of Shell/Protect is still making things "unfair" for White Mage as it's based on GCDs we tend to avoid (although the Medicas addition is welcome). I'd add Stone Holy and Aero (basically any GCD spells), reduce the chance of generating a lily but add a tweak (guarantee a proc if your spell is a Critical hit), and it makes Lilies flow a bit more smoothly.
What's your recast on Zealous Wind and Aura? Instant as long as you have lilies? I'm not sure. And their effect... I don't know. Do we want a copy of AST but called WHM?
If we are a bit "lore" oriented, I definitely see WHM as a Defensive mage, so your Shell and Protect are good, and putting out large healing amounts with Assize and your new Plenary is enough I'd say. With the small changes I listed, you'd have a strong DPS healer, good damage mitigation and no penalty on healing that WHM is currently facing. It would still be casual-friendly, but could come up with a decent kit in a savage setting.
A bit more clipping solutions as you are adding oGCDs would be welcome

My main question is : what do you do when there's no incoming damage, Assize is on CD, Wind and/or Aura too, and you sit at 3 Lilies? It feels like the current fairy gauge, I'd like a way to use lilies that is always ready to be used to avoid lost procs.

Your design is kind of a fix that would have been nice in Stormblood. It's still quite close to WHM's current design. I would expect a bit more for 5.0, but it looks good when it's put like this.

SCH:
I'm not sure about the use of a Silence on Selene, even today. I'd rather see it replaced by something else.

And I think I already replied on your AST design in another topic. Thanks for sharing your thoughts! It's refreshing and keeps me busy until the Live letter

[Seraphor]

Thanks for the feedback.

Yes, I did include Shell and Protect sharing a recast in my previous version, but forgot about it here, so yeah totally agree with that.
Exact figures are completely up for debate so yeah, maybe it is a bit OP.

I'm hesitant to say DPS spells should generate lilies, it seems to go against their healer philosophy and might make it too easy, especially considering use of Shell and Protect.
If the % to gain a lily from Shell/Protect is high enough, given that you could have them up for a third of the time, usually around the time you'll need to use lilies, then I think that makes up for it.
You could always add Regen into the mix as well as that gets regular use but is not spammed.

Not too sure on what the cooldown on Zealous Wind/Fluid Aura should be, but certainly somewhere above 60s.
I don't think it copies AST too much at all, at least no more than current Selene does of course with Fey Wind.
AST is of course on RNG, and fishing for Balance. Zealous Wind is predictable and as I explained, helps support the expanded buff/debuff philosophy I'm aiming for. In this scenario, AST wouldn't have this buff available when paired with a WHM, as Nocturnal Arrow would be a slow debuff instead.

And I don't think Silence on SCH is too much to ask for, when WHM and AST each have stun.

[Risvertasashi]

First a small nitpick: making things proc depending on whether an attack is physical or magical is a bad idea. Let's not repeat the mistakes of heavensward tanks.

And as a larger principle... can we please, please do away with procs like "20% chance of reducing CD by 5s"? These are completely useless and meaningless. We need to move away from crap like that, not encourage SE to use it more.

[Veis_Alveare]

WHM seems to still be getting the (very short) end of the stick here. Most jobs aren't big fans of speed buffs and some outright dislike them because of how they can mess up timings or make it hard to weave. With the game consolidating to only mp I doubt MP economy is going to be a huge focus either, seems like 2 bits of utility that are the least needed or requested. WHM would definitely still be losing out to DiAST here by a huge margin.

The AST buffs, as you said, can literally replace a ninja. Sure, they're less reliable than Trick Attack but with the way they've been letting us mitigate more rng with AST I don't think it would be that hard to line up. This version of AST would just be too overpowered.

SCH is the least problematic of the 3 at first glance but that could be because it's already so OP we don't even notice - the mitigation from Selene in particular could be a huge way to cheese mechanics when combined with other things like Critlo and even Largresse'd Noct shields.

All in all this continues the story of WHM being left behind for raiding and cements the SCH/AST meta except for extreme speedkills which would likely go double AST unless they were LB cheesing something. They're interesting reworks but also wildly unbalanced and seemingly without thought to what the raid community actually desires in a comp.

[Rosa_Frandlia]

First a small nitpick: making things proc depending on whether an attack is physical or magical is a bad idea. Let's not repeat the mistakes of heavensward tanks.

And as a larger principle... can we please, please do away with procs like "20% chance of reducing CD by 5s"? These are completely useless and meaningless. We need to move away from crap like that, not encourage SE to use it more.

Exactly, adding cure I and cure II to secret of the Lilly 2 is still very broken. 20% chance if you crit is still RNG built upon RNG so still around just a 4% chance or so of happening. That is what makes this trait useless already.

That's why I wouldn't be surprised if Lilies are gone in the live letter or completely reworked so that they don't look at all like what we have now. You'd still need to be upwards of 20-30 GCD heals for it to Proc, which unless you have a paper tank isn't going to happen.

[Ceasaria]

I'am not sure it address the situation at all.
You buff SCH while he doesn't need it. Noct AST is still largely inferior to SCH.
You make some skills from AST and WHM incompatible, encouraging to not play them together (even if it's diurnal), so SCH will be desired more.
Lily ands traits from WHM shouldn't exist or should change completely.
You should create a situation where temporarly Shell and Protect are enhanced and become AOE, otherwise it would still be not interesting to bring him with the hope to occupy the shield healer spot.

Sealous Wind is nice, and allowing a compo AST (diurnal) /AST (nocturnal) with their set of cards is nice too.

[Mansion]

I'm hesitant to say DPS spells should generate lilies, it seems to go against their healer philosophy and might make it too easy, especially considering use of Shell and Protect.
If the % to gain a lily from Shell/Protect is high enough, given that you could have them up for a third of the time, usually around the time you'll need to use lilies, then I think that makes up for it.
You could always add Regen into the mix as well as that gets regular use but is not spammed.

I actually think Stormblood worked towards that way. Getting rid of Cleric Stance, smooth clipping solutions for AST and SCH with DPS uptime, a DPS buff for SCH. I think (and hope!) we are walking the path of healing getting more DPS tools and/or being less punished by DPSing. That's why I was suggesting a Lily proc on Stone, because that's what you will be doing most of the time.

I'll agree with the idea than Magical vs Physical damage can be tricky, but if the game itself addresses it, I think that's alright (making it obvious, like physical damage figures are red and magical damage are yellow). Especially if Shell was the Magical version of Protect (Magical vuln up 10%), both sharing a recast timer would be quite flexible. Most of the time, the big loser is Physical damage because most damage tends to be magical.

[deadman1204]

Putting aside your changes to the 3 healers, you said the next healer would be a buffer/debuffer.
That just creates a brand new dichotemy of pick one shield/regen healer and the new buffer/debuffer class. It breaks everything once again (ignoring that these changes continue to make WHM the worst healer).
A legitimate WHM remake needs to make you WANT to have a WHM over AST or over a SCH. A 2 whm group to be good.

Unless WHM is just as good at ogcd healing, dps, and utility as the other 2 healers, its crap.

[Seraphor]

Some good points. I definitely didn't address enough with WHM with this.

I'll agree with the idea than Magical vs Physical damage can be tricky, but if the game itself addresses it, I think that's alright (making it obvious, like physical damage figures are red and magical damage are yellow). Especially if Shell was the Magical version of Protect (Magical vuln up 10%), both sharing a recast timer would be quite flexible. Most of the time, the big loser is Physical damage because most damage tends to be magical.

I think balancing Magic and Physical damage reduction would be very tricky to balance.
The way I've set it out means that not hitting the right damage type doesn't impact your ability to heal and mitigate that damage, it only affects your job mechanic, so it won't negatively impact your party if you mes up, it's just about job optimisation.

The way I've set it up, Protect is more tailored towards trash pulls, not only is the damage mostly physical, but the damage reduction is more likely to be effective. Whereas Shell’s shield will be consumed by sufficient damage and so it suits bigger boss attacks more, which are more likely to be magic.

I'am not sure it address the situation at all.
You buff SCH while he doesn't need it. Noct AST is still largely inferior to SCH.

These changes don't really buff SCH at all, they buff Selene as an alternative to Eos, but if she's still not superior to Eos (and without all of Eos's AoE healing that's definitely a concern) then SCH as a whole isn't buffed. But it does mean that a WHM/SCH combo is more effective in terms of buffs/debuffs, as the WHMs superior regens will make Eos's healing less crucial.
Throw an AST into the mix and Eos becomes the better choice due to buff/debuff overlap, and then SCH is no better than it currently is.

WHM seems to still be getting the (very short) end of the stick here. Most jobs aren't big fans of speed buffs and some outright dislike them because of how they can mess up timings or make it hard to weave. With the game consolidating to only mp I doubt MP economy is going to be a huge focus either, seems like 2 bits of utility that are the least needed or requested. WHM would definitely still be losing out to DiAST here by a huge margin.

Arguable.
While some jobs, really only NIN, are negatively effected by speed buffs, extra speed unequivocally results in extra DPS. MCH and SMN may also have their rotations affected by speed, but this can be adjusted to.
The reason why a lot of jobs don't like melding speed is because it doesn't compare to Crit or Det which you're trading it against, but free speed is still a bonus.
For example, if increasing your speed by 10% means you clip your GCDs by 10%... then that's just no net gain, it's not a hindrance at all, you're just back to square one. It's only a loss in the context where you could have had a flat potency boost instead of that superfluous speed increase. But there are many cases where that speed increase won't be negated by clipping, and plenty of jobs or even portions of jobs that will benefit from it.

Completely disagree with MP. With MP and TP merging, MP management is likely to become more important, and important for a lot more jobs.
Speed and MP buffs should go hand in hand, because the main drawback for extra speed is consuming more resources, which is why WHM gets the speed and MP buffs, which also symbolically mesh well with wind and water elements.

Putting aside your changes to the 3 healers, you said the next healer would be a buffer/debuffer.
That just creates a brand new dichotemy of pick one shield/regen healer and the new buffer/debuffer class. It breaks everything once again (ignoring that these changes continue to make WHM the worst healer).

I don't think so.
You're always going to have to have something to differentiate healers, and due to the nature of simply having differences, perfect balance can never be achieved.
Tanks have OT/MT. DPS have varying degrees of selfishness or utility.
Healers currently have shields and regens, which is too restrictive, but my suggestions puts shields and regens on the backburner (as all healers will have access to both) and puts buffs/debuffs at the forefront.
There are a much wider range of ways to differentiate and balance buffs and debuffs, much like DPS and their utility.
This is the main paradigm shift I've aimed fro with these suggestions, regardless of nuance. This overarching philosophy is what I've tried to use to achieve a better system to balance.

But everyone saying WHM still gets the short end of the stick in this, absolutely right. I've tried to give it more, and giving it more mitigation (and oGCD at than) and some buffs is definitely a step in the right direct I think, but perhaps not enough.

But anyway, this is entirely theoretical, because recent leaks suggest that they've simplified lilies considerably, turning them into a flat potency increase kinda like Greased Lightning.