Disheartened healer annoyed with Shadowbringers' difficulty

[Schan]

Yeah.. Ast needs to try hard if the tank wants to pull the whole dungeon.

WHM... it's more of the same. Holy is still stupid powerful in dungeons.

[RopeDrink]

You notice it.

Maybe you do. I certainly don't, and it also has little to do with me playing a WHM as that is just one of the classes I've hit 80 with thus far and it has been no different as a Tank or even a caster DPS with no self-healing and a lower healthpool.

eg. Amaurot. Final Sky isn't a one-shot, nor is the building falling, so even in dungeons where a boss is long-casting a mechanic, people can face-tank them in tome-gear and gain free DPS from an unresponsive target. A vast majority of the AoE from both mobs and certain bosses does LESS than what mobs and bosses in Stormblood did. Last boss Apokalypse can be healed through for quite some time without using platforms if you've got the stones to do it. Quite a few bosses in ShB resort to Vulnerability in order to rack up burst damage, hence their standard mechanics by themselves are only moderately damaging at worst.

Honestly, very little of what I'm seeing about any kind of 'difficulty' applied to me in any way, shape or form. SHB was certainly more engaging, both story wise and through its dungeon/boss mechanics, but the damage itself has been no different to what I'm used to, despite the presence of people multi-pulling at minimum IL. In time, when new gear is released and people head over to roulettes, they'll be hitting these dungeons and taking next to nothing from pretty much any non-one-shot mechanic. It just seems hard now because we're quite literally at the very earliest point of brand new content and at the lowest of SHB's progression.

[HyoMinPark]

I cannot speak for Whitemages, but Astrologians definitely have to do more healing than before. Maybe I should add that 'before' for an Astrologian was 'stack HoTs on tank and then DPS' for basically every boss or add group during dungeons. I'm not talking about savage content or Ex Primals, but simply dungeons(which is what our TE is refering to in the opening post), because for my experience in those, I had to actually heal instead of ignoring any type of damage to the party since it would never be lethal anyways.

If Whitemages can still ignore everything resembling a heal then I probably should not have generalized my experience as an AST during early access.

I agree with you that AST has a much harder time healing. I leveled it to 80 after completing the MSQ on DNC, and there were some instances where I struggled—it simply doesn’t have the potency anymore to upkeep a lot of DPS on trash pulls. It doesn’t help that some of our oGCD tools (CU, COpp) were either gutted or changed—I really miss COpp’s Stun and ability to extend regens. What we got in exchange for that is fairly weak for its cooldown. I leveled WHM after getting AST to 80, and it was night and day by comparison. I have yet to level SCH (focusing on BRD and crafters/gatherers right now), but I’ve heard it doesn’t struggle as much as AST does on pulls. With single-target, I believe all three healers are more or less the same, just WHM annihilates with its personal damage compared to the other two, SCH annihilates with its healing potency, and AST is weaker than both in terms of both aspects (but not a huge enough detriment that it’s unplayable).

AST does need some love at some point. I’m curious to see if the balance patch that will drop before Savage will involve potency buffs for it of some sort.

[Sylve]

Um, hi everyone! I'm very apprehensively posting this. I kind of expect to get verbally mauled for it.

I've gotten my AST and SCH to 80 and currently working on my WHM. Currently 74 also.
So uh, the problem isn't you, its the Tanks.
Last night I had a Paladin in Holminster Switch on my Levelling Roulette. Pulled wall to wall with an average ilvl of 350. Including i345 sword+shield … He was getting smashed hard enough that he was losing 2/3rds of his HP during a Holy cast. Was lucky we had excellent DPS, who were able to burn things down faster than my MP ran out, but I was ending each fight around 3k~ MP remaining after using Lucid and Thin Air due to the sheer number of Cure II bombs he needed to stay off the floor.
He was obviously a skilled Paladin, as I made sure to watch his buff bar, he was properly rotating cooldowns and such, but his gear was absolutely awful.
It was only when I pointed out that he should visit the marketboard for some upgrades that he informed that this run would ding him 80 and sure enough .. he was 79. Wearing an average ilvl of around 350 …

However, in general, Tank skill is more important now.
During Stormblood, even a bad Tank using no cooldowns wasn't an issue, because we could bomb some heals into them and damn near 100% them off one or two casts.
But that's not the case now.
Not only do Tanks have around 120k HP at 80, but they now factor in maximum Tank dps for tuning trash health.
So trash lasts longer in general, our heals only got marginally stronger and Tanks mitigation array was reduced a fair bit and made a bit more active.

Tanks cant rely on passive Defense on trash mobs, which at 80 routinely Auto Attack for 10k~. Doesn't seem like much, until you remember that theres often 10+ mobs all doing that. At the same time.
Also, specifically in the 73 dungeon and one of the 80 ones, there are trash mobs that give themselves a Damage Up buff. But since the mentality from the average player is "Trash mobs are harmless lol", they ignore whatever is being cast under the assumption that it wont hurt them.
And they let the Fuath double the damage of its target. With there being 2 such Fuaths in most multi pulls there, You can see how you might go form "Everything is fine" to "Oh god we're all dead" really quick.
In the 80 dungeon, the mobs that give themselves a Damage Up don't even do it right at the start of the pull.
So you can get set up, comfortable throwing some DoTs and starting some AoE and suddenly those Reptoids start auto'ing the Tank for 30k, among the other 10 mobs all tapping him for 7 - 10k each … Well, we just don't have enough oGCDs strong enough to handle that for extended periods of time.

As a WHM, You'll accidentally stun them out of it sometimes. But if they get it off, Tank is highly likely to die.

Also, A Macro that I swear by is:
/micon "Broil"
/merror off
/ac "Broil" <t>
/ac "Broil" <tt>

Same thing for Biolysis. With an identical version for Malefic and Glare on my other Healers. What it does is cast Broil at my current target, or if that's invalid, it'll cast on what my target is looking at.
This allows me to essentially hardlock my Tank and seamlessly switch between throwing DPS and tossing Heals out at the Tank without needing to be concerned about accidentally healing myself. Also allows me to monitor their buff usage, which is handy now with Gunbreakers routinely "accidentally" using Superbolide" >_>
Because it works off <tt> rather than Focus, it works just as well on Trash as it does on bosses.

I really wish Healers got a Trait that embedded the <tt> functionality into our DPS spells.
It would encourage newer Healers to try throwing some DPS without having to do the keyboard-fu that is trying to tab target trash/bosses and then quickly reselecting party members constantly.

[Merryl]

Well I'm stuck at Titania....this is no longer fun. The healers can't help dps, and the dps have been neutered. < There I said it
Can we stop locking stuff behind story now? Give me an ilvl to obtain instead, I will gladly grind for days to meet some other ridiculous requirement...please please stop locking the content.

[Connor]

I can understand why healing can feel more difficult, even if it is purely superficial. As a Scholar I’ve not had any particular issues with keeping tanks alive, but if you aren’t familiar with the ins and outs of the class I can see why it would feel difficult

That said though, I do put too much in tanks, especially in expert dungeons lol. Sometimes I’ll just spam Art of War with no healing and expect the tank to use their invuln (they don’t lol), which ends with having to spam Lustrate instead of just doing Emergency Adlo, maybe Recitation and possibly a Lustrate if required.

Also as an aside, I really feel like they intended Astrologian to be the low DPS but more traditional healer, in that you’re mostly healing with GCD instead of spamming DPS and oGCD. In an ideal world the cards would make up for the low dps, but sadly that’s not how it works in practice. They’ve tried to reinforce this identity for Shadowbringers but the cards are too weak to let Astrologian get away with not DPS’ing as much

[Silver-Strider]

If you're struggling to keep the party alive, stop dpsing. You're a healer, do your primary role first. Honestly every tank should be pulling so much you don't have time to dps.

I had a particular fun run of Twinning with a DRK while on my WHM. I told him I wanted a challenge, so he pulls wall to wall for each room and I got to utilize my entire kit to keep him alive. Granted, there were a few times that I was out of CDs and adds still weren't dead but he never died during these pulls so it was all good. We had problems with the last boss (DRG triggered the lazers a few times and we exploded but we didn't wipe thankfully). One of the more intense moments I've had this expansion and I thoroughly enjoyed.

[Shurrikhan]

If you're struggling to keep the party alive, stop dpsing. You're a healer, do your primary role first. Honestly every tank should be pulling so much you don't have time to dps.

On all healers, but especially WHM, dps is largely how you keep your tank alive in wall-to-wall pulls.

[Zoberraz]

Hello again, this is the opening poster.

First off, thanks for chipping in. I got a great deal of encouragement... and what it help me with was the pressure. I was kind of taking it personally. As it is, I just made it to WHM 80. Yay! \o/ Now that I have my three roles, I'll continue the MSQ and unlock the last lv80 dungeon and trial.

I can share my experience, though. Having been there when Heavensward and Stormblood launched, I can't shrug off the impression that something was up with Shadowbringers' difficulty spike. It seemed different. I don't recall encountering difficulty in HW and STB that made me feel this way (I acknowledge "feeling" isn't the most precise metric ever, but years later that recollection is all I have).

What I can say is that, like other people like Dualblade mentioned, it does get better. Level 75 opened a new dungeon, some more offensive abilities, and the groups in general felt... sturdier? My control of the situation, better? I quickly got a sense of the better tanks and the DPS that actually wanted to DPS; and those made the wall-to-wall pulls bearable. Based on advice here, I managed to handle the wall-to-wall pulls better too. Holy-spam happened, but I made sure to pay attention and be ready in case I needed to disengage for heals. Yes, Aero/Dia is more for mid-pull - no time for it later.

Using Holy is so much more a thing now.. I was concerned people would be miffed by how visually intensive it'd get, but most people seem fine (or have their UI/VFX adjusted for less ever since Eureka was a thing >_>; ).

I've yet to experience level 80 content in a better geared state (even if it's just AF4 stuff; or the Ronkan gear I see on some people), but being in Nabaath/Forgiven gear, I kind kind of relate more with the experiences those that do say they manage fine.

So, maybe I'll be fine. One rough spot were the leveling/lv50-60-70 roulettes, though, where something seemed to be missing. I wonder if my change of perception alone will make it better. I guess time will tell.

I'm very grateful for the encouragements. Even if you disagreed, it was constructive, and it helped me. Thank you, all.

[SineNomine]

I don't know, this is like every trash pull was designed based on running to the wall on the first pull of Bardam's.

Oh god, thats why I LIKE this expansion. I'm the type of healer that feels that if we aren't almost dying we aren't even trying. I want to be using my entire kit in pulls, that's what makes them fun instead of boring.

I guess on the bright side, I duo with a tank and so she is the only that gets begged to pull faster, so at least I am not convincing other random tanks out there to pull like that. I'm sorry guys, I swear I don't want you to be miserable, I just don't feel that the dungeons are challenging really.