Healers in the new expansion

[Crystalinferno]

(This is my first time posting to a forum so bare with me)

As an AST main since Heavensward early access I can firmly say that I am severely disappointed how healers got treated in this expansion. AST and SCH pretty much got stripped of everything that made them unique as healers. With AST cards now only giving damage buffs (for 15 seconds mind you and only single target) and almost all of SCH's DPS abilities it's like they are WHM's but with a fairy or tarot cards. This "simplifying of healers for casual players" was not needed and as a "casual" player myself I hate that they did this. If people wanted a real easy way of healing they could have easily turned to WHM.

Focusing on AST divination seems almost pointless. A 6% boost on all your party members if you get the all the seals in a reasonable time is not worth it when it last for 15 seconds and has a 3 minute cooldown. And depending on how your RNG is you might not even get the seals you want in time for when you want to use it. The main cards doing only 6\3% damage buffs is also in my eyes dumb. The old card system gave you the chance to give out different types of buffs and to spread it out to people in a reasonable time. I think the only thing I like about AST that they changed was the Lord and Lady Cards as having a 8\4% boost in damage is quite nice. I would touch upon SCH as well but since I never bothered to level the class to even level 50 so i'm not a good person to talk about it.

The only positive that has come out of this for healers is that now that everyone is jumping ship que times are instant. And honestly if they keep the healers like this they should just get rid of AST and SCH as they are now just WHM reskins. I hope Square sees the backlash that this is getting and fix AST and SCH because this is terrible.

[RyuDragnier]

Uhh, SCH didn't really lose much in the way of healing when it came uniqueness. We kept the fairy, and all of our healing skills. We really only lost our DPS, which didn't really make us unique.

[AikenDrum]

We really only lost our DPS, which didn't really make us unique.

The only reason i levelled sch after getting ptsd from stone spam on whm (first class in game, didn't know any better) was having a dps kit that, well, wasn't great, but it wasn't whm- and ast- terrifying.

[LegoTechnic]

Uhh, SCH didn't really lose much in the way of healing when it came uniqueness. We kept the fairy, and all of our healing skills. We really only lost our DPS, which didn't really make us unique.

We kept the fairy, but it absolutely lost a lot of features. For instance you can no longer trigger its abilities during another spell-cast, like say while casting a broil, because it's now a player-cast skill like Fey Union with ogcd cooldown. Additionally all fairy aggro now goes directly to you, and is no longer associated with the fairy itself; that split healing aggro made SCH very low aggro in general, and could also be used for fun whispering dawn bait tricks. Fairy abilities also took a weird hit, with Selene fully killed off and Eos gaining a merged and much weaker version of Illumination+Covenant alongside a new free cast succor. Lastly you can't target embrace, which is exceptionally frustrating as a lost utility when looking at Seraph's powerful adlo-heals.

What did the fairy get in consolation? It got a "Consolation" skill! Which is actually a pretty cool free spread-Adlo whenever Seraph is up. That's pretty hot. Nothing we couldn't already do by actually spreading adlo, but now we can do it twice in succession, which is great.

[CaesarCV]

I think that the reason they made the changes to try and make the classes easier was a (woefully misguided) attempt to try and bring new Healers into the role. There's this strange belief among Japanese Video Game developers (notably Fighting game developers but the exact same logic applies here) that tons of people will jump into a role/job/game but are just intimidated by the actual mechanics. This is almost never the case. What draws people in are things that are flashy and cool. Making Healers easier to play is neither. Making a new Job would be...but they were apparently gobsmacked that people even wanted a new class so they're clearly out of the loop there. Healers will always be more rare since it's higher responsibility, which appeals to those who like healers but terrifies others.

[loreleidiangelo]

A bit less conspiratorial here but if you want my honest opinion they pruned to make way for the new 72-80 spells and frankly on the healing jobs, pruning their damage was the easiest thing to do. Look at physical ranged, they got pretty much all their utility slashed, and probably for similar reasons. Take away healing spells and there's a risk the jobs can't function at some level or another of content. Take away some DPS DoTs and yeah, while the classes are boring as sin they're still functional at least.

The only reason this sort of prune is noticeable on healing jobs is frankly because DPSing a ton is far too integrated into their design and thus no matter what SE pruned I feel like there would be blowback at some point.

[Dynia]

why ? op classes get well deserved nerfs, im happy playing my whm

[Rubiss]

why ? op classes get well deserved nerfs, im happy playing my whm

You're happy spamming primarily two buttons for your damage rotation?

[347SPECTRE]

why ? op classes get well deserved nerfs, im happy playing my whm

Too much of a nerf. AST and SCH should have support abilities that make up the difference between them and WHM. From what I can fathom people want balance between healers.

Why do you feel the need to troll those unsatisfied with 2/3rds of a role?

[Dynia]

You're happy spamming primarily two buttons for your damage rotation?

sorry what ? if i wanted more complex dps rotation i would use black mage insted white mage, my main role is healing after that when team is healed too 100% i start to dps + i love animation of holy that why picked whm insted other healer as my main role :P
I wanted to add that i dps while i can my rule is cast anything heal or dps spell all the time sorry for my bad english