The Healer Double Standard

[Kabooa]

Ya'll remember you're not supposed to be fighting each other, right?

Here, lets get you all back on track.

Nobody misses Miasma 2, and old Cards were obsolete.

[TonberiScholar]

Nobody misses Miasma 2

I do.

The disease-themed DoTs are a far better fit for Scholar than Summoner thematically, and we should've gotten them in the Big Arcanist Divorce (that they've yet to finalize).

I'd much rather have Miasma II than Art of War, even if it had the initial potency sharply nerfed/moved to the DoT/removed.

But I'd rather have Miasma II as part of a combo deal with Bane and Shadow Flare. It was an interesting-feeling AoE "rotation" that had potential for debuffs/party support.

And now that combo is wasting away on Summoner while everyone's more concerned with the Egi abilities and Trances.

[Gaethan_Tessula]

I do.

The disease-themed DoTs are a far better fit for Scholar than Summoner thematically, and we should've gotten them in the Big Arcanist Divorce (that they've yet to finalize).

I'd much rather have Miasma II than Art of War, even if it had the initial potency sharply nerfed/moved to the DoT/removed.

But I'd rather have Miasma II as part of a combo deal with Bane and Shadow Flare. It was an interesting-feeling AoE "rotation" that had potential for debuffs/party support.

And now that combo is wasting away on Summoner while everyone's more concerned with the Egi abilities and Trances.

I agree. If anything, getting an old DoT or two back would be one of my choices for an aetherflow dump. IMO SCH should be able to spend its 3 aetherflow charges/minute on three different non-healing skills.

If they aren't going to do Egi-glamours after all, making the 30s SUM DoT's briefly evoke one of the unused primals would be better flavor for them.

... and old Cards were obsolete.

Only because they were random. If AST had, say, a toggle (or a cooldown) for changing what effect it produces those additional options become solely beneficial. I actually want to see AST have card or otherwise buffing mechanics on GCD, as their active downtime as oppose to 2-1-1-1 DPS spam. I also want to see their time magic return.

I say these things as a WHM main, who still wants further work done on WHM.

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My ideal for the three jobs would be as follows:

WHM - BIG DPS and BIGGER heals, but GCD based (so, aside from abilities connected to the lily system, they can't sustain top HPS and top DPS simultaneously). The lily system is fleshed out such that using afflatus healing skills unlocks a DPS "rotation" for WHM. This "rotation" is spread out over a much longer period than most, to allow WHM room to break off DPS and heal. Essentially, every skill in this line works like the current afflatus skills in that it's ok, even desirable, to hold off on using them for a bit. Working out when to best use them for movement and weaving (and healing, for the foundational spells that set off the chain) is a major aspect of optimization. Completing the chain (casting Misery) provides some self-buff to future HEALING spells and abilities (either a raw potency buff or some other benefit like spell-speed and reduced cooldown time a la old lilies). WHM is about getting up to speed and then staying in the flow, and once WHM is in the zone it does very impressive numbers.

SCH - Less whiteroom DPS and HPS than WHM, but oGCD based so their performance overall is a lot more stable. Healing GCD's are weak (but many provide shields, which is its own benefit) on their own, but fairy micro (I think it ought to return) helps make up for that along with strong oGCD heals and some abilities to boost GCD's if needed (Emergency, Recitation, Dissipation). The job's main engagement is having to allocate three (six with Dissipation) units of aetherflow per minute, which can be used on healing, DPS, OR maybe buff abilities. Proactive tactical planning is the name of the game, both in regards to how one chooses to use aetherflow and in how shields need to be up BEFORE incoming damage.

The big difference between lilies and aetherflow is that WHM isn't making choices of HOW to use lilies, only when. The initial lily always heals, the further color changes all do DPS (or whatever) and feed the blood lily, the blood lily always does a burst hit and gives the capstone buff. WHM gets to heal AND DPS with its mechanic, but it doesn't get to choose its allocation. SCH DOES, but it won't be doing both with the same resource unit. WHM also gets fewer resource units at once, but has a potentially longer time to hold onto them before use than SCH does (because aetherflow clips unused stacks).

AST - Buffs, buffs, buffs. I've eternally had an issue with AST's core healing identity being a toggle between a (sometimes not so) discount WHM and a discount SCH, but I doubt THAT particular problematic design choice will ever change. So instead, looking at engagement and downtime, AST should be focused on buffs. I think they should be playing with cards even more than they currently do. Anytime they don't need to be oGCD healing, AST should be card'ing. I've proposed GCD buffing skills too, as a potential alternative to malefic spam. AST becomes a high APM healer/support, potentially making up for poorer healing potencies by managing its own ability to apply defensive cooldowns to party members.

Obviously, that one's the biggest and most problematic change.

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I also want to echo one of Tonberi's other points: this game has too few mechanics you can brute force via healing, at least without severely overgearing or leveling an encounter (at which point the INTENDED healing spikes are trivial). This design precept is one of the reasons why attempts to make WHM the big damn healer and little else have always failed. If you could IGNORE MECHANICS with a WHM in the party, but not with SCH and AST, then WHM's humongous HPS potential might actual be valued in some encounters even after prog if skipping a mechanic benefits overall party DPS.

If you could do this more often as any healer, it might result in fights where healing engagement actually increases for a time post-optimization as people figure out how best to brute force through the mechanic.

[Vibronix]

AST - Buffs, buffs, buffs. I've eternally had an issue with AST's core healing identity being a toggle between a (sometimes not so) discount WHM and a discount SCH, but I doubt THAT particular problematic design choice will ever change. So instead, looking at engagement and downtime, AST should be focused on buffs. I think they should be playing with cards even more than they currently do. Anytime they don't need to be oGCD healing, AST should be card'ing. I've proposed GCD buffing skills too, as a potential alternative to malefic spam. AST becomes a high APM healer/support, potentially making up for poorer healing potencies by managing its own ability to apply defensive cooldowns to party members.

Obviously, that one's the biggest and most problematic change.

100% for more AST buffs. I miss the old cards (except Spire), all of them being a %dmg buff is boring. I'd change spire to be like a healing potency buff instead, let us hold cards again, and maybe add a hardcast dmg buff to allies. Cast 2.5 secs, makes allies next attack deal x damage. So I can still contribute to party dps, but in a much more support way

[EpicOverlord85]

Ya'll remember you're not supposed to be fighting each other, right?

Here, lets get you all back on track.

Nobody misses Miasma 2, and old Cards were obsolete.

Speak for yourself, I miss being a plague spreader

[LariaKirin]

I don't believe that they're willing to redo all their previous encounter design to accommodate "more healing is required", and kits that get stripped down to fit a "more healing is required" model will end up even being even more intolerably boring in everything that isn't new than they are now.

They won't. Which is why I favor a nerf to overall healing, rather than an increase in healing required. I don't see why they would need to revisit old encounters in order to change their approach in the new ones.

Can't say I agree with most of your list, as it is too generic to apply to most encounters and some things do not sound like design principles to me. Here's what I agree with:
Damage is spiky and infrequent. Most healing checks revolve around a few lethal points during the encounter, while the rest of the encounter relies on people messing up non-lethal mechanics to provide a healing check.
The "wall" in all encounters is mechanic-related, which is to be expected, because it requires the entire party to perform correctly.

Dropped GCDs have to be punishing. The problem is, the amount of punishment they inflict is relatively standard across both "easy content" and "difficult content".

Dropping a Healing GCD when it's not needed doesn't really matter. Dropping a Healing GCD when it's needed can be lethal to the party.

[...]

That is not true. "difficult content" does have occasional healing checks, while "easy content" generally does not.

Titania relies entirely on the party messing up mechanics to provide any sort of healing challenge. There is nothing you have to heal immediately in Titania. The instances of unavoidable damage happen once a minute.
If you look at Patch in Final Omega, you have 4 instances of raid wide damage on tether breaks which combined are lethal by the end if not healed, together with tank busters and immediately followed by a lethal if unmitigated Ion Efflux.

Obviously, it's a bit silly to compare the final fight of a tier with an ex trial (especially Titania, which has pathetically low healing requirements) - this example is just meant to address your first comment about punishment being relatively standard.

It seems to me they are scared of adding punishing mechanics or challenging healing checks to anything that is not the 3rd or 4th fight in the tier. Even there, they are scared of having too many healing checks and it seems that they like to add significant "resting" time after every difficult healing check.

Healing "skill" would still end up at minimizing the use of GCD heals even if there weren't any oGCD heals in the game. There would still be downtime, there would just be a little bit less of it.
[...]

When I say healing downtime and uptime I am referring to healing GCDs. Of course there would still be healing downtime, that is impossible to eliminate.

I'm not saying to remove OGCDs anyway, I'm just saying I'd prefer an overall healing nerf with more difficult and more frequent healing checks ... A hard hitting raidwide is pointless if there's no more damage for the next minute.

I don't think this will cause that many problems at the low end because the main wall to progression is consistency during mechanics, not healing. That's also where spending GCDs on healing is not considered a problem and is considered even preferable in order to save OGCDs for emergencies.

If you're unwilling to make healing more difficult, I don't think there is a way you can make it more interesting at the mid-high end.

I think the root solution would be to change healing from a healing minimization/DPS optimization problem to an attrition problem (both in resources and time), and have downtime tools be split off as a separate resource or a non-resource-consumer.

I don't think we will ever agree on this.

I'm pretty sure I understand your proposal and most of the reasoning behind it and I hope I've been pretty clear with my objections.

So unless there's anything you'd like to add or address, I propose we stop for now.

[Brandedblade]

While I do miss sch having a focus on dots for dps. I do not miss Miasma II as it was in stormblood. If anything I wished for it to be replaced with something akin to that aoe brd skill, but spammable, where it did more damage per dot on the target to give it synergy with Bane. I don't think I'd be 100% against Miasma II coming back if its upfront damage was added into the dot and kept alongside Art of War.

[BahamutxD]

Ya'll remember you're not supposed to be fighting each other, right?

Here, lets get you all back on track.

Nobody misses Miasma 2, and old Cards were obsolete.

Old cards were a thousand times better than this. Atleast they gave us more depth and combinations while being easier to use than the actual system.

They could had turned every card to Balance and keep the old system and it would still be a thousand times better than this.

[Typhoria]

Anyone else dislike Sleeve Draw how it currently is? Since you want Draw to always be on cooldown, it forces you to rush through all of them before allowing the Draw cooldown to cycle again.

Imo, Draw needs to have 2 charges with Sleeve Draw refreshing 2. Also, why is Divination and Sleeve Draw on a 3m cooldown verses Chain Stratagem on a 2m cooldown?

[Sloprano]

Ya'll remember you're not supposed to be fighting each other, right?

Here, lets get you all back on track.

Nobody misses Miasma 2, and old Cards were obsolete.

Hehe, thank you for the reminder.

On the contrary. Shadowflaring, turn on Cleric Stance, dotting up 3 dots, baneing, then jumping into the pile flourishing Miasma 2 before running back out was great fun and I miss that part very much about sch.

Id give up a lot of potency and the shiny healing skills in SB and ShB for a sch skillset as varied and fun as the one I found in HW.