Final Fantasy XIV: Healers Reborn - Rebuilding the Healers

[guardin]

um only about the vocal minority are feeling ify and the rest are just hoping on the train for attention. most of us are fine and just gonna wait til EA to play and enjoy

[WaxSw]

um only about the vocal minority are feeling ify and the rest are just hoping on the train for attention. most of us are fine and just gonna wait til EA to play and enjoy

Wherever you go you see most of the people dissapointed with healing changes, youtube, twitter, reddit, this forum, most of the people who played healer there is dissapointed with the changes, I've seen people talking about their dissapointment in eureka with the whole instance agreeing with them, stop lying to youself calling us "vocal minority" and trying to stop any kind of discussion.

[HyoMinPark]

um only about the vocal minority are feeling ify and the rest are just hoping on the train for attention. most of us are fine and just gonna wait til EA to play and enjoy

I think you have the "vocal minority" reversed here. I'm still curious as to why you continue to speak on what healers think, since you don't seem to play them.

[ty_taurus]

Sorry, It's been a while, but I went through with a big update for each of these concepts to fix some of the issues that were coming up, in case anyone wants to check them out.

White Mage: Ended up cutting the blossoms as a mechanic and simplifying the overheal concept with Temperance as well as a few other things to make the concept a lot less meticulous. The big thing here is that Afflatus Misery is now more desire-able and thus makes GCD healing actually something the White Mage can benefit from: A. because power has been diverted away from Glare and into Banish and Conjurer's Amaryllis. Meanwhile Afflatus Misery now additionally applies a small 3% damage up debuff on the initial target to content with the utility of the other healers. Basically, if you don't DPS as a White Mage, you're inferior to Scholar and Astrologian who can improve party DPS without needing to cast any spells themselves. With GCDs rewarding you with this Afflatus Misery, you're no longer punished for using them over Glare.

Total Buttons: 20 + Role Actions

Scholar: I wanted to reinforce the faerie being a part of the kit and one way I wanted to do that was actually making Embrace function completely differently. Now your faerie wont automatically Embrace injured allies. Instead you'll need to deploy your faerie to allies throughout the fight, where she will then follow them and heal them exclusively. The cooldown on her deploy is 1 second, so you can pretty freely swap her between allies as needed, especially if you want to manipulate her positioning for her other abilities. Seraph does not work this way and will work the old way: mainly because this allows her to sling barriers around to everyone on the team.

Total Buttons: 22 + Role Actions

Astrologian: My last version of this build had way too many buttons which I honestly didn't realize. The build was honestly a little over loaded, so I tripped the fat on some things while also making Horoscope a little more unique as a healing tool. Now, it heals people differently depending on their role. Across 20 seconds, your tanks will get healed after taking damage, your DPS will get healed after using weaponskills and spells, and healers will get healed after restoring an ally's HP with a spell. This job still technically has a bit more buttons than I want, but it's honestly just because they have things like "Play" "Undraw" "Redraw" etc... The card abilities do add a bit of bloat, and I'm not all that sure how to handle that right now.

Total Buttons: 27 + Role Actions

As for Making DPS more engaging, I wanted to add a little something that embraced the theme of the job to make each healer have something a little more fun to do while soloing, or when capable of contributing DPS in battles. This of course means diverting power away from their spam spells (Glare/Broil/Malefic) and redirecting it into these new actions. Here's a quick rundown...

White Mage: Fluid Aura is changed to Water, which then is upgraded to Water II and Banish. It's oGCD, 30 second cooldown, and is simply burst damage. Additionally, the Conjurer's Amaryllis is the other offensive spell to use. Every 15 seconds, you can mark an enemy. The next Glare, Dia, or Banish you cast will detonate the effect, and do additional damage. Dia is the first priority, as it applies a second, longer DoT. Banish is next, which deals higher damage than Glare's detonation, but is on the 30 second cooldown, and finally Glare, which is used when Dia isn't needed and Banish is on cooldown.

Scholar: Meltdown was added to replace Art of War as a line AoE to do something a little different. Ruin II also gets upgraded to Kaustra. I decide to go with keeping Biolysis as the only DoT cast by the Scholar, but added Fey Spark, an AoE DoT castable by your faerie. Additionally, there's Attack Stratagem which creates a small, 2-step minigame similar to Dancer's Steps. Broil and Kaustra become two different runes that will do two different spells based on the order you cast them in. Basically, you just want to alternate back and forth between which of these spells you're casting as it guarantees that the next will be a critical hit. This is on a 20 second cooldown.

Astrologian: I kept this one simple as the cards themselves are already fairly engaging as an offensive buff mechanic. In addition to Malefic, Combust, and Gravity, they would now get Starfall. Starfall is a spell that does more damage than Malefic, but only after a certain amount of time has passed. So you can't spam this spell, but you want to make sure you're reapplying it whenever it previous Starfall strikes your opponent.

[Saefinn]

Looking at healers and SE's intention to try and balance them. I'd probably be fine for them to focus DPS less, but of course make them capable enough in a DPS sense. But what does need to be addressed is the homogenisation of healers and what healers do in their downtime.

Given balance is healers can benefit overall DPS and keeping people alive. Healer identity could then really be set in their healing abilities, but this is where healers are already homogenised and the changes don't really address that. It feels each situation is more-or-less handled in the same way but with a different flavour. So they could focus on unique healing mechanics.
They've got the groundwork for it.
SCH is the Shieldiest Healer
WHM is the Healiest Healer
AST is a hybrid of the two.
Whilst Scholar with the changes is still the shieldiest healer and White Mage the healiest healer. I'd argue this doesn't mean a lot when all 3 healers find it almost equally as easy to fill up people's health.

As a SCH I encourage that our pure heals get nerfed. since SCH healing got OP I've gradually found it less and less interesting to heal with. I always felt the mark of a good SCH was one who managed their shields and faerie properly. I've put a full document on my suggestions for SCH here (clicky).

AST needs to still work harder to keep people's health topped up and that the challenge for them is manage their two sects, because their selling point is versatility. So their pure heal tool kit would need to be harder to use versus WHM and their shield tool kit less effective than a SCH, but the mark of a good AST would be in how it manages the two.

I think in terms of healing, there's no harm in having a tiered approach to difficulty. We kinda see it in other roles.

I'd imagine it to be like:
WHM: The RDM of the three, simple to pick up, still fun to play, still useful in raid
AST: The BLM of the three, more to manage than a White Mage, so maybe harder to play as a result, thanks to its versatility
SCH: The SMN of the three. More technical of the three, requires more effort to optimise the healing aspect, where pets could aid in that regard. (like 2.0 SCH)

So what would I do to DPS?
They could keep it as it is in Shadowbringers if they long as long as the above can be met AND my next proposal to make downtime a little more interesting.

Healers are a support role. Give them more support-type things to do in their down time. Balance can then be based around how they benefit the group's overall DPS & little to do with personal DPS.
AST - make more use of cards.
SCH - keep Selene, improve her utility. Replace the DPS moves we lost with debuffs to aid damage reduction.
WHM - Introduce buffs & debuffs to add utility. WHM in other titles have them.

I think that's fair trade & may be easier to balance.

[PondHollow]

Your ideas are fine OP [edit: your scholar build is fantastic!], but the bitter truth is that there isn't going to be a rebuild for a role that is an afterthought for the battle system team.