Taking away AOE DOTs conflicts with the new healer ideology.

[Deathroes]

If SE wants healers to heal more,(disregarding how they really did not change healing requirements overall) why did they take away the AOE DOTs? It just means healers that are more active will have to waste a bunch of GCDs on applying their DOTs one by one instead of hitting one button for a group of enemies. With stuff like Bane gone, it means that they will have less GCDs for healing.(No matter how much more healing people actually need)

[Deceptus]

100% agreed and I've said it before.

Bane and Miasma II go really well with the new heal more philosophy.

All Miasma II had to do was have the initial hit low enough and the dot hard enough so it wasn't spammed and it would have worked well.

[LegoTechnic]

If SE wants healers to heal more,(disregarding how they really did not change healing requirements overall) why did they take away the AOE DOTs? It just means healers that are more active will have to waste a bunch of GCDs on applying their DOTs one by one instead of hitting one button for a group of enemies. With stuff like Bane gone, it means that they will have less GCDs for healing.(No matter how much more healing people actually need)

For the most part they didn't take away DoTs, but combined all of their potencies into one button. They also removed WHM's AOE DoT spell and SCH's ability to spread DoTs with aetherflow presumably to simplify balance considerations, but your DoT ability isn't actually any weaker, just the ease with which they can be spread in an AoE circumstance. If nothing else, it may be a consideration against having to balance something like WHM's simple-cast AoE DoT with SCH's aetherflow-required spread, versus AST's current lack of any such thing.

This is a mixed bag, because while in dungeons AoE DoTs were great, in trials and savage summoned mobs tend to either be spaced far apart or just die too quickly for long-running healer DoTs to actually gain their merit, making them often less valuable. While there were fights like A2 where AoE DoTs pulled great effect, generally such cases are not the norm.

[Lodi]

DoTs are fantastic tools for healers, since it allows us to keep our team alive while doing more than zero damage -> every healer lost DoT potency overall (SCH: 70>60, WHM: 90>60, AST: 50>45; I thought that gaining ten levels would make us actually stronger than SB's 70)

AoE DoTs deal massive damage against groups without hindering our healing, and now we have plenty of adds everywhere -> AoE DoTs are completely gone


So not only we have lost countless healing/defensive skills, tanks have lost defensive cooldowns and our healing is still at Stormblood levels, but on top of that we have to either heal or dps, there's no inbetween allowed...

Can't wait for 6.0 where we will lose our few remaining damage spells and just get a ranged autoattack instead! That way we'll be able to focus on p u r e h e a l i n g even more!

[Nethereal]

If SE wants healers to heal more,(disregarding how they really did not change healing requirements overall) why did they take away the AOE DOTs? It just means healers that are more active will have to waste a bunch of GCDs on applying their DOTs one by one instead of hitting one button for a group of enemies. With stuff like Bane gone, it means that they will have less GCDs for healing.(No matter how much more healing people actually need)

Implying that you would let the tank die and consequently wipe the party to apply 1 more debuff to an add out of maybe 4 or 6. Seems like they did just fine with the changes. Your primary role is to heal, if someone died because you were too busying applying a DoT you're playing the wrong class.

I feel you though.

[galbsadi]

I miss having more dots, but...at the end of the day, our primary job is healing, so having or not having dots doesn't take away from healing if we're doing our job...it just makes us less effective at secondary bonuses we can provide to the party.

Things that affect our job are things like taking Ewer and Bole away from AST, locking down Aetherflow on SCH, taking away the Aetherflow reduction traits from SCH, etc.

DOTs are always secondary to our primary purpose. Did it feel better to have them? Sure, absolutely, 100% agree. But it doesn't really change our capability to heal directly.

As for whether that affects overall damage, I think that's more complicated. Sure, we lost Bane and Miasma II (and WHM lost Aero III)....but Bane used to have a nasty dropoff that AoW does not for us, Holy used to have a nasty dropoff for WHM that it no longer does, etc. If we're actually free to DPS, I think we're probably about on par overall with numbers (across all healers, not specific to particular healers like a certain one that's ridiculously OP atm)...it's just less fun to get there.

So, while I hate it when pure DPS players go "healers don't need to DPS your job is to heal!"....it's just as wrong to forget that our PRIMARY job IS to heal...and DPS is secondary to that, always.

[Sloprano]

Agreed Deathroes. 3 spreadable dots and Miasma 2 was fun and easy way to help with damage while healing and made soloing fun aswell. Shadowflare not only did damage but helped mitigate thanks to slow. As someone else said, add debuffs to the dots like Miasma had and you have another incentive to put them up to help the party. For example, a stackable debuff reducing a stat for each dot and when the spread the effect is reduced to 1/4 of it.

[einschwartz]

I'm fine with the AoE DoT removal but at the same time I miss it dearly. It felt good (to me at least) to cast AoE DoT and help with damage while I try to keep a leveling/squishy tank alive during big trash pulls. Of course, I do enjoy my Holy spam but there are one of those times where I need to do extra healing (dps screw up, tank ran out of cd etc). Having AoE DoT can help things go much quicker for everyone.

Besides that, it was more efficient than applying DoT one by one whenever you have to kill a pack of mobs in solo quests.
And Aero III animation is cool.

[Semirhage]

like a certain one that's ridiculously OP atm)

Scholar, king of the busted oGCD kit, master of the efficiency fairy, Duke of utility, nigh mandatory in all high end content for multiple expansions straight, is buttmad that its competition dares to have an advantage over its kit.

I hope that fainting couch is comfortable, since it's where Scholars go every time they're not the best at everything.

[Hatstand]

Scholar, king of the busted oGCD kit, master of the efficiency fairy, Duke of utility, nigh mandatory in all high end content for multiple expansions straight, is buttmad that its competition dares to have an advantage over its kit.

I hope that fainting couch is comfortable, since it's where Scholars go every time they're not the best at everything.

Um... no? We're upset that they made our job feel worse to play. We're upset that, in "fixing" something that wasn't broken, they made it worse. If they'd brought the other healers up to where SCH was, or just nerfed some of SCH's potencies rather than removing half of our kit, then the majority of us would be fine with it.