New spells

[Sloprano]

Went down seven gcd spells and up several healing gcds with cooldowns tied to them over the years. The only new skills I can remember that changed up the gameplay as Adlo, Lustrate, Bane, Miasma 2, Rouse, Selene, Shadowflare did is Emergency Tactics, Deployment Tatics and Recitation because they could alter existing concepts. And those are on 20s, 120s and 90s cooldown respectively.

We've always had a lot oGCDs on cooldowns from 1 to 180s, but then mostly interesting tools and their cooldown weren't an issue as the focus was on the fight, the party, the fairy and the dots.

It all fits with the few pieces of info we've garnered from SE:
They don't balance dps checks with healer damage in mind.
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But they might need additional healing for these fights.
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Ergo healer jobs need more healing ogcd for this and this attack and only need rudimentary spells. Tools with effects that we have made Bosses immune to can be removed.

Trying for once to just not say "bring back 3.0" I think the fey gauge could be much more useful working alongside Aetherflow and not being fueled 30 gauge a minute from it. It starts at 100 and constantly fills, but unlike AF all it's applications are spells and the gauge powers us up, not Lily. So after 30 levels of Arcanist you find yourself with a hotbar with more holes in it than a slice of gorgombert, but instead find your all your gcds have secondary or tertiary effects depending on the gauge. Trying to avoid simply pressing Dark Arts for every gcd, "increased damage for x seconds" buffs or combos, instead have a plan for how some secondary effects spells are simple dots, but one is a a debuff that detonate all dots at end of the duration, making you plan the order you put them in, some tiers require casting, all from 1.0 to 3.0s and differ in some attack in a line like a beam, the close range of M2/AoW or cone attack that put another dot up if you hit enemies from behind.

[Lodi]

*several ideas about possible healer designs*

Honestly, at this point I would take anything over the "spam 1 on 90% of your GCDs" design we have now. The gap in originality, complexity and thought needed between healers and other roles is heartbreaking.

Imo, adding new and meaningful spells would be a start. Spells with actual interactions with the rest of our kit. It could be procs, different effects depending on certain factors, combos or synergies with certain actions...

Healers have three main spells (Ruin/Broil, Stone/Glare, Malefic) with four or five tiers each. That makes thirteen spells, who all do the exact same thing: X damage on one target, with a range of 25 yalms, every 2.5 seconds. No conditions, no interactions, nothing. Just "press this to damage".

This is just terrible design. No dps or tank would accept pressing one button for most of the fight.

[Connor]

As a Scholar I’m so tired of oGCDs lol. It feels like most of the healing on it now is just slapping party members with an aetherflow ability to restore most of their HP (if not all of it) then going to Broil III spam. Like, why do we even have Physick/Adloquium/Succor if they don’t want us to use them?

For Scholar at least, and Astrologian to a lesser extent (less oGCDs but still more powerful than anything you can cast, and they’re free), we’re at the point where oGCD healing abilities are really devaluing the GCDs we do have.

I have my preferences, but I’d take any kind of new GCDs lol, whether they’re pure healing, pure DPS or purely buff/utility like Stoneskin was. Also my prayer to Yoshi-P is that we get the eureka spell Bravery as a role skill for healers, though I imagine that’d destroy the entire game balance lol. PVP version of Protect as a GCD role skill would be cool too, even if you’re only using it for tank busters. I’d even support putting Astrologian cards on the GCD so you can literally use them during healing downtime instead of just spamming Malefic IV waiting for them to come off cooldown. But again, that would break the game balance lol

I know this is bit different for White Mage since their main heals are from Afflatus Solace and Afflatus Rapture, but at the same time, aren’t Tetragrammaton, Assize and Asylum normally enough for healing anyway? My White Mage is still only level 76 lol, so I won’t claim to know about how it is to play in actual endgame content

[Mansion]

As a Scholar I’m so tired of oGCDs lol. It feels like most of the healing on it now is just slapping party members with an aetherflow ability to restore most of their HP (if not all of it) then going to Broil III spam. Like, why do we even have Physick/Adloquium/Succor if they don’t want us to use them?

For Scholar at least, and Astrologian to a lesser extent (less oGCDs but still more powerful than anything you can cast, and they’re free), we’re at the point where oGCD healing abilities are really devaluing the GCDs we do have.

I have my preferences, but I’d take any kind of new GCDs lol, whether they’re pure healing, pure DPS or purely buff/utility like Stoneskin was. Also my prayer to Yoshi-P is that we get the eureka spell Bravery as a role skill for healers, though I imagine that’d destroy the entire game balance lol. PVP version of Protect as a GCD role skill would be cool too, even if you’re only using it for tank busters. I’d even support putting Astrologian cards on the GCD so you can literally use them during healing downtime instead of just spamming Malefic IV waiting for them to come off cooldown. But again, that would break the game balance lol

I know this is bit different for White Mage since their main heals are from Afflatus Solace and Afflatus Rapture, but at the same time, aren’t Tetragrammaton, Assize and Asylum normally enough for healing anyway? My White Mage is still only level 76 lol, so I won’t claim to know about how it is to play in actual endgame content

This is pretty much it. For WHM in particular you either have enough with oGCDs, or sometimes dive in the Afflatus spells. They completely invalidate spells like Cure II, Medica (and Cure III perhaps). Because they are free, and come regularly as damage is not so frequent.

Basically, I don't know if more GCD spells would make healers better, but I feel there's a problem when oGCDs are so powerful that they replace half of the healing kit and 80% of our GCD.

[Lodi]

As a Scholar I’m so tired of oGCDs lol. It feels like most of the healing on it now is just slapping party members with an aetherflow ability to restore most of their HP (if not all of it) then going to Broil III spam. Like, why do we even have Physick/Adloquium/Succor if they don’t want us to use them?

For Scholar at least, and Astrologian to a lesser extent (less oGCDs but still more powerful than anything you can cast, and they’re free), we’re at the point where oGCD healing abilities are really devaluing the GCDs we do have.

I have my preferences, but I’d take any kind of new GCDs lol, whether they’re pure healing, pure DPS or purely buff/utility like Stoneskin was. Also my prayer to Yoshi-P is that we get the eureka spell Bravery as a role skill for healers, though I imagine that’d destroy the entire game balance lol. PVP version of Protect as a GCD role skill would be cool too, even if you’re only using it for tank busters. I’d even support putting Astrologian cards on the GCD so you can literally use them during healing downtime instead of just spamming Malefic IV waiting for them to come off cooldown. But again, that would break the game balance lol

I know this is bit different for White Mage since their main heals are from Afflatus Solace and Afflatus Rapture, but at the same time, aren’t Tetragrammaton, Assize and Asylum normally enough for healing anyway? My White Mage is still only level 76 lol, so I won’t claim to know about how it is to play in actual endgame content

WHM indeed gets most of its healing from ogcds and Afflatus spells.
I use regen a lot, but that's it.

I've been playing AST until lv78, and I had ogcds for everything. Earthly Star, Celestial Opposition, Collective Unconscious and Horoscope for aoes, Essential Dignity, Celestial Intersection and Synastry for single targets. Let's say that Benefic barely saw any use except for very bad tanks.


I don't know if it's the same team who does PvP and PvE skillsets, but I wish PvE healers looked more like PvP healers. They actually have different skills, different specialisations...

WHM is a GCD mage with lots of instant casts thanks to quicker lily generation
SCH is the shielder who generates fae gauge by attacking to fuel Seraph
AST is the buffer with 100% uptime cards and a Dualcast-style mechanic
Dots are turned into 15s debuffs (vulnerability, healing reduction, slow), Aoes have different effects (damage+healing, damage and knockback, damage that increases with the target's hp)
OGCDs complement your healing instead of replacing GCDs

Not gonna lie, if I could use PvP healer kits in PvE content I'd do it in a heartbeat. They are so much more coherent and thought-out.

[LariaKirin]

OGCDs complement your healing instead of replacing GCDs.

Copy-paste that PvP kit into PvE and it's going to be even worse in terms of GCD healing. That is immediately obvious when you realise you get 4 free Lustrates and 2 free Indoms every minute.
No more Aetherflow management either, no more trade-offs between ED and one of your strong healing OGCDs.

The only reason it plays differently is because you're in a PvP environment. If you didn't know, in PvP you are not playing against a scripted enemy and your goals are completely different.

[Lodi]

Copy-paste that PvP kit into PvE and it's going to be even worse in terms of GCD healing. That is immediately obvious when you realise you get 4 free Lustrates and 2 free Indoms every minute.
No more Aetherflow management either, no more trade-offs between ED and one of your strong healing OGCDs.

The only reason it plays differently is because you're in a PvP environment. If you didn't know, in PvP you are not playing against a scripted enemy and your goals are completely different.

Okay, SCH is the outlier. But the others? You can't just ogcd your way through everything.

And thanks, I never noticed that PvP isn't the same thing as raids, duh.
I was talking about the kits themselves, not the context in which they are used.

[Risvertasashi]

White Mage has Plenary, Assylum, assize, presence of mind, tetra, thin air and temperance

Ast has Draw, Play, Arcana, Divination, Celestial Opposition, Celestial Intersection, Horoscope, Nuetral Sect, Essential Dignity, Light Speed, Sleeve Draw, collective unconscious, Synastry and Earthly Star

SCH has Energy Drain, Lustrate, Excog, Indom, Aetherflow, Recitation, Whispering Dawn, Fey Illumination, Summon Seraph, Consolation, Chain Strat, Deployment, Emergency, Fey Blessing, Fey Uninion, Dissapation and Sacred Soil

So thats WHM 7, Ast 14 and SCH 17 unless Ive forgotten a few, and I think thats the right amount for all of them honestly, WHM is the RAW spell class, ast is the card fiddler and scholar is the off global powerhouse. More off globals wouldnt be well supported in whms kit, and ast is busy enough as it is

Quite a bit of what you've listed are DPS oGCDs, or otherwise completely lack healing.

WHM indeed gets most of its healing from ogcds and Afflatus spells.
I use regen a lot, but that's it.

You could rewrite this as "WHM gets most of its healing from GCD spells." I'm not sure why you're lobbing Afflatus in with oGCDs.

Asylum does do a lot of healing - HoTs do in general - but it would be better to group, say, medica 2 with afflatus rapture. These two things are the WHM healing powerhouses that, by far, make up the most of WHM healing in a raid situation. But they're GCDs, plain and simple. You can't say "Too much healing is done with oGCDs" and then use GCD examples.

I've been playing AST until lv78, and I had ogcds for everything. Earthly Star, Celestial Opposition, Collective Unconscious and Horoscope for aoes, Essential Dignity, Celestial Intersection and Synastry for single targets. Let's say that Benefic barely saw any use except for very bad tanks.


I don't know if it's the same team who does PvP and PvE skillsets, but I wish PvE healers looked more like PvP healers. They actually have different skills, different specialisations...

WHM is a GCD mage with lots of instant casts thanks to quicker lily generation
SCH is the shielder who generates fae gauge by attacking to fuel Seraph
AST is the buffer with 100% uptime cards and a Dualcast-style mechanic
Dots are turned into 15s debuffs (vulnerability, healing reduction, slow), Aoes have different effects (damage+healing, damage and knockback, damage that increases with the target's hp)
OGCDs complement your healing instead of replacing GCDs

Not gonna lie, if I could use PvP healer kits in PvE content I'd do it in a heartbeat. They are so much more coherent and thought-out.

Oh gods, that would be horrible. I've pvped a fair bit - and I'd take the pve kits in pvp any day.

Yes, there is a certain coherency to the pvp kit design. There's also a huge, huge flaw - a game like this, having so few buttons sucks. It's really, really boring. FFXIV isn't overwatch and it shouldn't try to be. A tab target RPG needs a certain level of complexity in its kit to stay interesting.

Now I kind of get what you're saying - you want more healing GCDs used. But by the twelve did you pick some terrible, terrible examples. Slashing the healer kits isn't going to reduce DPS uptime - you'd have to fundamentally change encounter design and move damage to a sustain model instead of a burst model.

[Lodi]

You could rewrite this as "WHM gets most of its healing from GCD spells." I'm not sure why you're lobbing Afflatus in with oGCDs.



Oh gods, that would be horrible. I've pvped a fair bit - and I'd take the pve kits in pvp any day.

My point was, our actual healing spells with a MP cost see very little use. Unless your team takes a lot of unavoidable damage, Afflatus & CDs will take care of almost everything.
Looking at my own logs, my healing spells (minus Afflatus) represent 20 to 40% of my heals, and it's Medica II and Regen for the most part.
Cure I/II/III and Medica I are near useless because most of the time you have other, better tools available (Cure III is actually very strong, but with pugs and casual runs you're pretty much never going to use it)


As for the PvP bit, I'd much rather have 10 different actions that see a lot of use, than 30 actions but half of them are useless because the other half is better.
We get all our spells at level 50, and everything after that just makes said spells less and less needed, except a very few exceptions such as Neutral Sect, Recitation or Plenary Indulgence.

You say we need complexity, which I agree with. But healer kits aren't complex, they just accumulate more and more instant heals (which are often copies of basic spells) with zero interaction.

[Alpheus]

I wish we had spell and skill glamours so that we can at least look at different things from time to time. Could even make it something earned from playing BLU. Wish my SCH could replace the faerie with a allagan drone and throw out more tech looking spells like Biolysis. Make my BLM cast Water spells and Gunbreaker into more of a Spellblader. All these glams would be client side of course so that other player's clients would just load the regular visual effects. Sadly it may never be feasible as it would involve a lot of work what with making sure the sound fx are attached properly and making sure all replacement effects have the same animation locks as the vanilla spells.