How are healers fairing right now?

[GrimGale]

The problem i see is people will go for the actual meta, damage was always the meta sadly and is needed thanks to bad game design at times and the only answer.
I like the idea of this as buff but then people will always try to go for the "best", causing the same issue we have now, people prefered balance over everything, so they made all cards a balance card.

Yes, hence why cards should never give a flat damage increase and only buff the target's secondary stats.

Each job benefits more from specific secondary stats than others. Sure, Determination is the "safe" one since it grants damage and healing, but still, being percentual increase you'd still want to throw, lets say, an arrow on a BLM or a spear on a BRD since those jobs would stand to gain more benefit from those specific buffs than a simple Determination buff.

My point is, Secondary stats are supposedly already balanced. So having cards buff those stats with percentual buffs would solve the problem. Ofc, you'd still have to fish for cards, ideally but the card you'd need would change depending on your target job.

[Izar_Chillen]

I'll apologise in advance for my ignorance in this matter as I know little about both the AST and mechanics regarding raid buffs and their stacking of or overwriting of ( if used at the same time as another class) as i just do plain story mode type of content.

Im baffled why a healer give buffs from the card system such as damage because I would assume that sometimes it becomes too powerful by making it too good in a patch cycle so they nerf, or that due to its decent bonus, in particular damage, it cant be used at the same time say when a bard or a dragoon uses their bonuses to damage cool down ( if it does cause this). Wouldn't it be better to make the card bonuses unique in other ways that would add benefits to the group at large in ways that other classes who can cast group wide buffs which are usually damage related, dont.

Such as a card that reduces bleed/poison/burn damage to a target or group for xx seconds, or a card that gives a target or group immunity to stuns or silences for an allotted time, perhaps something useful to positional dps classes like 20 seconds of non positional requirements, maybe something healing related with a defense buff included such as a target once buffed by this card if target is reduced to 20% HP and is healed in full( during the buffs duration) the target now has 10 seconds of an increase to armour/defense?

Again apologies if any of these are already a thing, i know little to nothing about the AST.

[Saefinn]

Ah you're fine for the question about AST.

It's down to how the game is designed, there isn't a strong healer mechanic where they would benefit from the kind of things you mention. Existing healing mechanics has all that covered and then some to not worry about such intricacies.

The value of a job ultimately boils down to rDPS in this game, people don't really measure anything else, even on healers. And cards that boost DPS will raise AST's rDPS in its overall contribution to the DPS of the party. So when I comes to balance, this is the stat that's generally cared about.

This means it's a very DPS focused game, whilst I would like to say there's more complexity than that, but current encounter and job design is very much in that direction

[Mansion]

I'll apologise in advance for my ignorance in this matter as I know little about both the AST and mechanics regarding raid buffs and their stacking of or overwriting of ( if used at the same time as another class) as i just do plain story mode type of content.

Im baffled why a healer give buffs from the card system such as damage because I would assume that sometimes it becomes too powerful by making it too good in a patch cycle so they nerf, or that due to its decent bonus, in particular damage, it cant be used at the same time say when a bard or a dragoon uses their bonuses to damage cool down ( if it does cause this). Wouldn't it be better to make the card bonuses unique in other ways that would add benefits to the group at large in ways that other classes who can cast group wide buffs which are usually damage related, dont.

Such as a card that reduces bleed/poison/burn damage to a target or group for xx seconds, or a card that gives a target or group immunity to stuns or silences for an allotted time, perhaps something useful to positional dps classes like 20 seconds of non positional requirements, maybe something healing related with a defense buff included such as a target once buffed by this card if target is reduced to 20% HP and is healed in full( during the buffs duration) the target now has 10 seconds of an increase to armour/defense?

Again apologies if any of these are already a thing, i know little to nothing about the AST.

Well the "problem" here is that FFXIV's gameplay is just about DPS. That's the only mesuring scale really. You have to beat a pool of HP in a given amount of time. So as per your suggestions, small buffs have no value in that system because healing and mitigation in everyone's kit just take care of damage quite well. "Healing received up" is very niche, and already present in several actions across other jobs (Mantra, Nature's Minne, the WAR green thing). Mitigation of a DoT (be it Poison, Bleed, Burn, whatever, it's a ticking DoT) can be mitigated through Addle, Samba, Troubadour...
So damage buff is the only one that is really valuable, while others are more "niche". Arguably a Defense buff is good in certain context, but AST has it in Collective Unconscious (and others have Temperence, Sacred Soil, some Tank buffs too...)

TL;DR: As time goes by, most beneficial healing / mitigation stuff is already well represented in most jobs kits so the only added value to AST is buffing DPS.

[GrimGale]

I'll apologise in advance for my ignorance in this matter as I know little about both the AST and mechanics regarding raid buffs and their stacking of or overwriting of ( if used at the same time as another class) as i just do plain story mode type of content.

Im baffled why a healer give buffs from the card system such as damage because I would assume that sometimes it becomes too powerful by making it too good in a patch cycle so they nerf, or that due to its decent bonus, in particular damage, it cant be used at the same time say when a bard or a dragoon uses their bonuses to damage cool down ( if it does cause this). Wouldn't it be better to make the card bonuses unique in other ways that would add benefits to the group at large in ways that other classes who can cast group wide buffs which are usually damage related, dont.

Such as a card that reduces bleed/poison/burn damage to a target or group for xx seconds, or a card that gives a target or group immunity to stuns or silences for an allotted time, perhaps something useful to positional dps classes like 20 seconds of non positional requirements, maybe something healing related with a defense buff included such as a target once buffed by this card if target is reduced to 20% HP and is healed in full( during the buffs duration) the target now has 10 seconds of an increase to armour/defense?

Again apologies if any of these are already a thing, i know little to nothing about the AST.

These specific effects are interesting because they are situational, but do not mix well with the RNG system of cards. For example, let's say your tank is about to get hit by a tankbuster, ideally you'd want a damage reduction card, but you draw a spell speed card. Dps increasing cards are always useful, irregardless of the stat they actually buff because DPS is the only constant during fights. Damage taking varies, need of healing varies, debuff cleansing varies. But your group is always (ideally) damaging the boss.

[Side-Eye]

These specific effects are interesting because they are situational, but do not mix well with the RNG system of cards. For example, let's say your tank is about to get hit by a tankbuster, ideally you'd want a damage reduction card, but you draw a spell speed card. Dps increasing cards are always useful, irregardless of the stat they actually buff because DPS is the only constant during fights. Damage taking varies, need of healing varies, debuff cleansing varies. But your group is always (ideally) damaging the boss.

If you were on a mission during which you knew there would be at least one heavy tankbuster, you would likely have plenty of opportunity to draw and set aside a damage reduction buff -- to use precisely when you needed it -- and meanwhile, dole out the other buffs, most of which enhanced dps directly, or could enhance dps-increasing buffs.

People who wrongly insisted that there was only one buff worth casting, are the people responsible for dumbing down one of the most engaging, fun, and adaptable jobs in the game, because devs made the mistake of giving more weight to your opinion than those who played the class as their main. Thanks for that.

[monk-dps]

This is what I've thought of and came up with for the cards
Arrow: When used, gives the target a Haste effect for 15 seconds
Bole: Grants the user/target 10% Defense for 15 seconds
Ewer: Grants the user 50 MP potency recovery for 10 seconds
Spire: Grants the user 10% Direct hit for 15 seconds
Balance: Increase damage dealt by 5% for 10 seconds(Damage and duration has been nerfed to make other cards viable)
Spear: Increased critical chance by 10% for 15 seconds.
Royal Road is back with it's old effect
This will bring back flavor without making "Balance" Meta. Square enix shouldn't try to cater to those who care only about "Meta" they should be concerned with how they can bring back it's lore and unique game play while making all cards worth using.

As long as players can buff their damage with any card it will ALWAYS be meta. The whole point those streamers and raiders fished for balance was because it buffed their damage. Even if it was only a 1% buff they will still find a way to fish for it because that 1% will add up. It's why people look for those rotations and stuff now. You can't stop the meta. What we have now is really one of the only ways to fight it. Hell thats why ninja and other jobs will always be in groups. You can't stop the meta. D:

[EaMett]

As long as players can buff their damage with any card it will ALWAYS be meta. The whole point those streamers and raiders fished for balance was because it buffed their damage. Even if it was only a 1% buff they will still find a way to fish for it because that 1% will add up. It's why people look for those rotations and stuff now. You can't stop the meta. What we have now is really one of the only ways to fight it. Hell thats why ninja and other jobs will always be in groups. You can't stop the meta. D:

I don't really see how the change is fighting anything. A big part of fun gameplay and game design course 101 is for players to have options. It doesn't matter if you bole once in a while or if you ewer deaths during prog only etc... The simple fact that you even HAVE the option automatically increases the gameplay and fun factor. That one time you diverted from the typical balance fish to do something great or smart or whatever you want to call it totally justifies the feature. Changing the card system in the way they did is hard to justify, no matter what the stats say on balance usage.

[Billythepancake]

As long as players can buff their damage with any card it will ALWAYS be meta. The whole point those streamers and raiders fished for balance was because it buffed their damage. Even if it was only a 1% buff they will still find a way to fish for it because that 1% will add up. It's why people look for those rotations and stuff now. You can't stop the meta. What we have now is really one of the only ways to fight it. Hell thats why ninja and other jobs will always be in groups. You can't stop the meta. D:

While progging TEA I have never wanted AST to have Ewer as much as I do now. it would be such a life saver, meta be damned.

[monk-dps]

While progging TEA I have never wanted AST to have Ewer as much as I do now. it would be such a life saver, meta be damned.

I understand that. And I'm not saying you or the person above you are wrong. I'm just saying while you people here haven't fished for balance... sadly and the cold hard truth to this is the streamers, paid ad peoples making vids and the players SE flies out to events and whatnot WERE fishing for balance. Raid groups in that range mostly only cared about getting that balance for their clears and meter runs. And sadly those people are the people who have voices as their opinion and words reaches accross the net from twitch to youtube to pornhub. So that's most likely why the change was made. Sadly the voices here while SE has proven they can listen to them, sometimes like now we just aren't loud or big enough. Monks have been fighting the good fight for years so I understand... I just also understand we're small compared to who they are actually listening too.

This is also not touching the fact that no matter what the cards were going to be changed anyway because of TP and defense being changed or taken out completely. 4.X series Astro can't come back due to that fact alone. Change was going to happen no matter what.