Give your opinion on healer design!

[Exiled_Tonberry]

Am I happy with the current state of healers? Absolutely not. They're the most bland and boring they've ever been.
But SE will probably release a 4th healer anyway despite the healers all playing and feeling like crap. Just because it's been too long since the last one.

I wish so bad that they'd just go all in and reassess the way fights are healed really, because we all have these amazing healing kits, but since dmg is so scripted and spaced out, you never focus on it. At this point it's not only just the jobs that needs looking at. But I know SE won't go that far. New healer will be something with the base WHM spells and then some gimmick.

[AzshFayd]

-Are you happy with the current design of the three healers? Which one is your favourite?

Nope. Favourite would be Ast

-What keeps you engaged when playing a healer?

Right now, the most engaging thing about playing ast is trying to keep my ogcd healing as concise as possible in raid so I can sit there and mash my one dps button for 8 minutes

-Regarding healer identity, what gimmick or gameplay style would you give each of the healers? Both in terms of how the healing itself would work and what to do during healing downtime.

- WHM already has it's gimmick of big heals/big damage, should just expand more on the lily system

- SCH should have debuff mechanics again, and Selene shouldn't just be a "reskin".

- AST, Divination payoff doesn't feel worth it, dmg buff difference between no. of seals is so minimal, the amount of fishing required for a perfec div isn't justified. Ast also needs Noct specific changes, Diurnal is fine

-Are you expecting a new healer job to be added in the next Expansion? If so, what job would you like to see and what type of gameplay would you like the new job to have?

Whatever the job will be doesn't really matter, only it's appearance & aesthetic will be new. over the past 2 expansions, they've removed alot of the other 3 healers abilties (disable, lumineferous aether, time dilation, eye for an eye, Selene's buffs etc.) and I'm betting that whatever the new healer is, it'll just be loaded with our stolen abilities

[Crushnight]

-Are you happy with the current design of the three healers? Which one is your favourite?

No currently the worst healers design I've experienced in an MMO. The content design does not take into account healer design and vice versa. Healer design is the more flexible of the two when in the 3rd(4th) expansion. Healer design has also run counter to their intended goal of healers heal more as people are Dpsing more than ever.

Aesthetically Ast, playability Whm, whm is the only one that got noticeable improvements despite also having stuff stripped from it AGAIN, Sch got straight worse, Ast moved from 1 set of issues to another (the current issues I find are worse due to the controller aspect alone say what you will about old card system it at least was way more controller friendly)

-What keeps you engaged when playing a healer?

People being idiots standing in bad, dying, or anything fully unexpected happens to break up 1,2,2,2,2,2,2,2 etc

-Regarding healer identity, what gimmick or gameplay style would you give each of the healers? Both in terms of how the healing itself would work and what to do during healing downtime.

Sch: debuff machine with more fairy interactions, weak gcds decent ogcds
Whm: straight forward powerhouse healer with some more Lily and party interaction
Ast:Buffer with all the ways to manipulate then back, that was the big crime of ShB to me the removal of Time Dialation, Royal Road and old Celestial Opposition.

-Are you expecting a new healer job to be added in the next Expansion? If so, what job would you like to see and what type of gameplay would you like the new job to have?

Yes as been way too long since last healer.

I've been having thoughts on a Spiritualist as a healer with the Dead guiding and protecting the living while also soothing angry spirits that were hurt in life to move on.

[Saefinn]

My answers would be as follows. Bearing in mind, I've been a Scholar main most of my time playing, Astrologian is still new to me as I didn't play a lot of it prior to ShB and sometimes used WHM to mix things up, but not played it as heavily as SCH. So my views on AST/WHM might not be as fair, but put out how I see them regardless.

Are you happy with the current design of the three healers? Which one is your favourite?

I am not satisfied.

Prior to ShB Scholar was my favourite and had been since 2.0 but 2.0 and 3.0 are my favourite iterations of SCH. 4.0 was when it started to feel ‘meh’ but had enough to keep me occupied and not complain. 5.0 has made my favourite job in the game boring to play for the vast majority of content, 4.0 was the start of it. Naturally, I'm disgruntled by it.

Astrologian is now my favourite healer. This is because there’s more variety to do and now that I’ve stopped treating like a SCH/WHM hybrid and seeing how it’s supposed to work, it’s good for content that makes better use of what I’ve got. To me, it’s closer to where healers should be.

What keeps you engaged when playing a healer?

A mix of things. So I will list a few:

• Feeling you always have something to do. If things are going well, I need to have something other than healing to keep me busy. It shouldn’t feel like a 1 or 2 button spam, that gets monotonous.
• A healing kit & healing mechanics that has me thinking about what I am using and why.
• A healing kit that allows me to adapt to a situation, rather than spam the same thing over and over or for it be easily mitigated with 1 or 2 spells
• A healing kit that has weaknesses you must accommodate for (and have the ability to do so), but strengths in other areas. EG. Scholar is a great shield healer, whereas White Mage is great at topping up health, Scholar might struggle more to top people’s health up, but rocks mitigation. I’d rather something like Scholar’s mitigation tools be viewed as part of the healing experience and not just as a buffer for damage.

Regarding healer identity, what gimmick or gameplay style would you give each of the healers? Both in terms of how the healing itself would work and what to do during healing downtime.

Scholar

For me it has a layered identity. It’s a strategist, so it needs to feel adaptable to any situation, therefore it might potentially alter how it uses different spells. Its a “planned” healer, hence all of its mitigation tools it has had over time, which lends to its strategist nature too. The fact it has 2 spells that can modify the effects of another I think is a good “strategist” approach and is a nice throwback to their strategems in XI. I’d be game for more of this approach, it allows the existing toolkit to have it use better expanded. EG: Emergency Tactics make Biolysis deal all of its damage at once instead of as a DoT. Meaning you make use of Emergency Tactics when you don’t need it for Succor or Adlo.

And it is also a faerie healer, having faerie choice adds to a strategic approach and better micromanagement IMO should make you more efficient as a healer. Eos is great in situations you need more healing, whereas Selene to me should be where Scholar gets its utility. My view on this is instead of removing Selene would have been to give her more utility. In this approach I am in favour of the concept of “sacrificing healing for utility” or “sacrifice utility for healing”, this can also work in reference to other abilities and not just faeries (I put out a suggestion in a previous thread about how I’m make this philosophy work).

And finally, it is a DoT mage & is about sustained damage, it infects its foes and spreads the infection, it can also debuff (or used to) as part of the debilitating effects of the infection. I’ve felt this approach lends well to a Scholar that has less down time versus others (like it did in 2.0) and feel with it having more down time its DoT aspect became more OP (meaning maybe some of those Holy nerfs were unnecessary?), but it was a good weave between healing.

White Mage

For me is the “burst” healer, which requires Scholar and Astrologian to not only be less effective at pure healing, but for it to be a meaningful difference, as WHM can shine with topping up people’s health better. But it still needs some mitigation but that should be inferior to SCH or AST (as it is currently).

From a DPS aspect to me it’s still about bursting damage (and why I was less of a fan of the 1000 nerfs of holy). It is supposed to be the counter-part to Black Mage, like it was in the War of the Magi. So whilst there is the Astral and Umbral aspect split between them, Black Magic still has use of thunder, fire and ice magic, meaning White Mage should still have access to Stone, Wind and Water magic, but they’ve been replaced with holy magic as an upgrade in later levels, whereas I think holy magic should be an addition to the toolkit than replace it (I miss big rocks). But it should also mean its DPS rotation should feel big and powerful compared to SCH or AST (but they each have their own thing too to balance it out). Whilst I think it should favour burst DPS, I wouldn't see Aero abolished, because in a sense it's their equivalent to Thunder. Each healer would keep DoT's (and I see no harm in the return of an AoE Aero either). WHM and SCH I feel should have more variety in DPS overall.

Astrologian

To me it has always been the most technical and versatile of the healers. Not quite hit on the “strategist” of Scholar, but being adaptable in the sense of manipulating fate, the stars and time itself. So the stars, time and space all feel like the important thing here, so Astrology plays in with how cards work, Horoscope and Divination. Time plays into how Celestial Opposition used to work, Time Dilation, The Arrow (basically haste) and Earthly Star. In it being adaptable it can help substitute Scholar’s or White Mage’s niches but not to their level (because AST should keep its own thing rather than suffer an identity crisis). In a way it should satisfy both our desire for a time mage and for a geomancer (as it is an Astromancer, essentially).

Then from a DPS aspect, Astrologian feels like it should be the support role here. So it is fine to have a bare bones DPS rotation (whereas SCH and WHM should have a lot more to do) because in its DPS time it will be managing its system of cards. But for me the identity of the card system is that the constellations can determine different fates and when the fates aren’t playing to your favour then you manipulate them to work in your favour (which I think is missing). Each of the cards have their own lore tied to them, which I think exists as part of the identity here (and lost in the new system). The old card system I think could have been adjusted so that if you get a card you can’t use then you have a means of making a use of it when Royal Road is not an option and you don’t want to hold it (I suggested using the current Minor Arcana system but adjusted for the idea that you turn the card into a weaker version of ‘Balance’ as your ‘fail’ scenario).


Summary

I feel each still to a degree respect each of their identities, but IMO are not where they should be in making them significant, Scholar’s strategist aspect cannot work if it’s too good at healing and can just oGCD stuff back to health. White Mage’s burst aspect means nothing if the other healers are easily getting people’s health up and not being smarter/working for it.
I guess you could tl;dr to: Scholar should be the smart healer, White Mage should be the powerful healer and Astrologian should be the manipulative healer.


Are you expecting a new healer job to be added in the next Expansion? If so, what job would you like to see and what type of gameplay would you like the new job to have?

I am expecting one because I think adding one could be an opportunity to rebalance how healers play. But my cynicism says if they add one then we just get a 4th healer with more problems.
One of the big divides over the current healer situation is over how complicated/involved healer DPS should be. SE’s answer to this problem was to still have DPS be integral and important yet simplify it so it’s a lot easier for people. In my opinion the beautiful thing about a system that offers multiple jobs per role is that those who found current healers to be inaccessible for whatever reason could have had a new healer that ticks more of those boxes. And this game has loosely held that principle, the strong example I felt was in HW where DRK was technical & could be challenging to play as a result (when not played well, they were flimsy), WAR was in the middle and PLD beefy and played like a traditional tank (and made it nice an entry level for people new to tanking).
If they do this with a new healer, then my expectation would be to rework the existing healers to return some of the aspects they’ve lost.
But for a new job, I think I’d like to see a Garlean variation of the Chemist job.

But I'd put in support for things like:
- Devout
- Time Mage (maybe, but I'd still prefer more time stuff put back into Astro)
- Geomancer (but IMO I'd rather see it as a support DPS mage)
- A Shamanistic healer to go with the Azim Steppe or another tribal culture in the game
- Any kind of technological healer (my support was for Garlean version of Chemist, but I'd back other techie healers too).

[edit]

In addendum to this, I feel one of the problems facing the above is how all of these jobs need to be balanced for Savage and Ultimate, meaning the requirements are greater and may mean they are pushed better in those circumstances to shine in what they are good at. I feel it has a detrimental effect to healing all other content. As one who doesn't touche savage that much and has never tried ultimate, this is detrimental to the overall experience of being a healer. And if I did more Savage or try Ultimate, I'd still want to enjoy healing outside of those scenarios because they're only a small part of the game. So this I expect is all a part of the challenge here, which I have thought of ideas for in other threads.

[Recon1o6]

-Are you happy with current design? Which is your favourite?
No, and have stopped healing as a result outside of rdm. Least shit is whm and that's because I like the pretty wings and blood lily sacrifices
Previously AST was my favourite though I did find whm in 2.0 to be decent enough. Sch had good downtime but I never really felt comfortable with it though that might be just not being able to grasp the dot focused gameplay and shields.

-what keeps you engaged as a healer

• Mechanics and outgoing damage that require clever use of my healing tools (shinryu heads for example, or cloud of dark when she was new, thunder cid pre nerf) not repetitiveness or spam
• Varied and unique healing tools that give each healer their own flavour of healing and synergise appropriately to prevent clunkiness or redundencies with other healers
• Individual indentities in downtime with enough buttons fleshed out for meaningful solo play and downtime.
• Proper identity between each healer so they feel different when I swap to one from the other

-Regarding healer identity, what gameplay style would you give each healer both in terms of how healing itself and downtime?

In general, something I have always felt is that the game needs both higher incoming damage and difficulty in most content to make the use of healers good healing kit and downtime in equal measure. fundamentally, dungeon/alliance and solo gameplay need to be as important as the highest tiers of savage and ultimate as that is where the majority of the playerbase spends its time. The focus on balance to the exclusion of all else and the kits seemingly designed by people being healed rather than healers themselves needs to be scrapped asap
Furthermore, any buffs must be noticeable without a parser. It needs to FEEL like its doing something. Its a key component of any passive effect.

Another thing I believe is that the basic damage button should not consume any mp in any job, to provide fairness given physical jobs dont have any restrictions after death.

White Mage
The identity of the white mage in ff14 is 3 things. Nature elements (wind, water, earth), high potencies with gcd and regens. Currently though, it feels not so much potencies are high (though whm should be), but incoming damage is appallingly low or infrequent enough that a regen on the tank and medica 2 is enough to top everybody off, medica 1 isnt even on some whm hotbars because medica 2 is superior in almost all instances.
As whm has practically infinite mp (as well in direct contradiction to the lore to boot), their recovery ability needs a serious nerf I believe, however not to complete removal like poor AST currently is.

White mage as a whole I believe should continue to follow the lily system it has in place. Their healing kit I think could scrap cure 1 and tweak medica 1 and 2. Furthermore plenary indulgence I think could be tweaked to resetting and buffing any regens on allies. Its healing kit I also believe should receive some more of the classic white mage buffs from final fantasy such as bravery, protect/shell etc to couple with this- I'd suggest whm could go either big potencies and party buffs OR self buffing for bigger numbers.

Its downtime kit I believe needs to go back to being about earth wind and yes actually include water. White mage I'm thinking should follow what Yshtola does and rotate through the elements in order to access a holy magic attack (Holy pre nerfs, Glare, Dia, afflatus X) and either use or gain a lily as a result. The whm at this point should be able to cast Flood, Quake and Tornado, perhaps as a result of a buff gained through the blood lily. Aero 3 and Water should be added at least.

I'm making a whm rework idea so ideas are abound as it stands.

Astrologian
Astrologian identity is made up of Time magic, Buffing, celestial/spacial themes and flexibility. It is faster than the others, but not as strong yet it gains more weaving. It should be a high skill job given its potential. Its healing aspect in lore is all about reversing major damage and speeding up the natural healing of the body for minor injuries. Its constellations tie into changing fate to give the most appropriate action.

With this in mind, the Astrologian's healing kit needs to be weakest of the 3 healers but the most adaptable and the fastest. That said, the sects must be equal and not able to swap mid battle- a reader of fate should be able to forsee which one to prepare in advance, Nocturnal sect must be able to stack with sch shields and its aspected benefic and aspected helios need to be 1. buffed back to their previous levels and 2. stack appropriately and 3. equal cost to mp
Astrologian's horoscope and earthly star fit quite well in this instance. However Horoscope needs changing to auto detonate or only detonate manually and never time out. Collective Unconciousness and Celestial opposition need changing back to their previous incarnations. I would also suggest readding the healing potency boost back to the sects and changing minor arcana to OGCD shield/regen with a small cure.

Downtime for Astrologian is key- they will be spending a lot of it buffing and manipulating status effects and as such their healing will be quite fast and their dps buttons low number. However the downtime needs to be of use and interest in solo and dungeon gameplay otherwise AST's are gonna be bored senseless.
To begin with, time magic needs to be returned and expanded upon- time dilation, some sort of cool down reduction and the like. Disable should be reintroduced and as a niche it could stun, silence and bind as an ogcd and Celestial Opposition should go back to stun and boosting durations of status effects.CC can be a good part of all healer gameplay and Ast's is in the status effects and if that means pausing them in time so be it.
Astrologian's cards need to be returned to stormblood but spire and balance need to be changed to something less fishing based if that was such a problem or redraw could be scrapped to prevent it somewhat, lore wont be affected as spread is still around. Undraw can be scrapped since nobody has ever used it (most aren't even aware it exists) and play MUST be scrapped. Cards not running out is a good thing they introduced. Royal road I would suggest changing to making the cards automatically affect all party members as the base option- further sacrificing cards to gain additional effects.

In terms of Ast's damaging abilities there are a total of 6 in all its history. Malefic, Combust, Combust 2 when it was separate, Gravity, Stella and Lord of Crowns. Given Ast's solo and dungeon gameplay wont have as many cards thrown about, the downtime needs to be filled with a simple but fun system of damage. I think stella could do a similar thing to synastery's fate tying but in reverse- you damage one target and the other target takes it as well, if you attack the stella target you get a stella burst which does additional damage to them. Gravity needs reverting back to 230 ish potency given its slow cast and high cost and malefic needs to be stronger at its first level.
Finally I would also suggest a capstone damaging attack- almagest: doing damage, a dot and resets benefical effects of allies by a few seconds.

Lastly Astrologian needs a way of regaining mp, I would suggest luminaferous aether from HW reworked to give a personal dps buff as a composite of it and the cleric stance. An equivalent but functionally different Assize if you will


Scholar

I haven't played Scholar very much in HW and not at all in Shb so I'm not as informed about it.

Identity of Scholar- its a tactician with DOTS, pet based healer, shielding heavy as part of the trio of WHM and AST. It also had some debuffing.
I personally would also want a carbuncle and feo ul options for fairy glamour

In terms of healing, Scholar is about resource management while Eos/Selene handles the heals or status effects. Often led to jokes of Eos being the healer and SCH being a dps
Sch needs to be built around eos and selene as pets that assist and can support autonamously or on command. Sch also has heavy shields it can put up and its tactician based playstyle should be built around adapting to the flow of battle- in other words changing skills to heal hp as emergency, getting allies to focus on a target or strike weakpoints, shield up together etc.
Eos should be built around hp and cleansing of debuffs, but Selene could be designed either as a support focused, or a damage focused pet. Either way there must be a reason to choose the fairies and unlike Ast, the seraph using both fae abilities makes sense and would work well as a capstone.

As for downtime, a Sch should be throwing dots, crowd control and debuffs as and when they are needed. Sch should have at least one ground based dot like salted earth, bane plus several dots like its arcanist roots as part of its tactical effects and methods of weakening the enemy (lower damage, mp sapping, slow etc)

-Are you expecting a healer job next expansion? If so what job would you like to see and what type of gameplay would you like it to have

I am about 50/50 on a new job given how much the devs hate healers or at least appear to. If it is a new job I would guess Chemist given popularity and how the Ast seal system doesnt work as an Ast but it would work very well as a Chemist system (different seals- different results make different concotions?)
I would want its gameplay to be like that or alchemist from ffx-2 where their individual items go well together- they have slow but super strong abilities they can use to do damage or heal as of when they are needed. They could also have some scrapped but fun or niche abilities like Erase (heal and scrap a dot) or Fluid aura (knockback, damage and bind. Would work as a garry's mod esque discombobulator)

On the other hand, I'm expecting further butchering of the healer role and more healer shortages plus lessons not learned. Or perhaps they will do both- add a new job thats functional and fun while simultaniously destroying the healers further like they did with the tanks this expansion. (gnb is fun and unique, drk and war are almost copies of each other)

[Wyti]

Are you happy with the current design of the three healers? Which one is your favourite?

My favorite healer is WHM due to its holy aesthetic (and wings !).

Design wise, I would be if this design were actually used in content. Lets assume for a moment there is a need for healing.

Each healer has an amazing healing toolkit:
-Multiple OGCD for emergencies
-Different spell for AoE healing with either a HoT to maintain or shielding + classic healing AoE spells (SCH has tactics + succor)
-Multiple single target spells with mana tradeoff
-Group mitigation

Also spell cost are expensive enough for AoE and cureII like spells to only be usable once every ~10s even with high piety (2540 pie = 100mana / second), so we would need to only use our expensive spells when necessary.

Returning to reality:
The number one issue is that fights require so little healing that all that toolkit is thrown out of the window. almost all damage can be healed solely by oGCD abilities, making us GCD starved instead of resource starved, so to optimize the gameplay we will try to use the less healing actions possible (so high manacost and inefficient spells), and have enough mana to do it even with low level of piety. This has the secondary effect of having an useless stat on our gear (piety only increase the max number of raises possible per fight).

And whats left to do during the 95%+ of the fights we're not using GCD to heal, press a single button and maintain a 30s dot. AST got lucky there and they can press 4-7 more buttons per minute managing cards.

What keeps you engaged when playing a healer?

I like optimization, and figuring out how to do one less GCD for the fight, or precise positioning to slidecast a specific mechanic is enough to keep me awake.

Regarding healer identity, what gimmick or gameplay style would you give each of the healers? Both in terms of how the healing itself would work and what to do during healing downtime.

For me fixing healing as a whole is more important than small gimicks. This can be done 2 ways:

1) Have encounter designed to match our currently quite wide healing toolkit. That means frequent damage (at least every 10s if not more frequent), not always in AoE form but also targeted on non tanks. The goal would be for us to spend most of our time healing, while only maintaining our DoT in term of damage, and occasionally weaving our dps GCD (less than 1/3 of the time). And before you speak of difficulty, of course this would be targeted at the population expected to do the content, so yeah on extreme fight I expect good healer to still dps 75% of their GCD, but for the last savage boss or ultimates, players will need to step up, as thats the goal of difficult content to push yourself to get better (and in case of savage, a weaker healer could probably get by by not dpsing at all).

2) Embrace the fact we're currently DPS class with supportive healing actions. I'm not speaking here about increasing our damage output, but changing our gameplay to perform it. The goal would be here to have a fully fledged DPS GCD rotation that makes us heal one way or another.
-It could give us resources to use OGCd healing abilities.
-Some dps abilities might directly heal (think assize), or provide an extra healing effect on say the tank (think atonement from another game)
-Result in either buffing allies or debuffing enemies (like technical step or old HW tank abilities that reduced boss stats)

And only after a design direction is taken for all healers should we find thematic spells for each one that match this general goal.

Are you expecting a new healer job to be added in the next Expansion? If so, what job would you like to see and what type of gameplay would you like the new job to have?

We badly need a new healing job.
I really hate the basic idea we have currently of WHM for heals SCH for shields and AST can do both.
We need either like they did with tank this expansion so that any combination of the 4 healers can work together, or for each healer to only have 1 role in a party to avoid the case we have with AST currently that really don't want to play noct as its so much weaker.

But considering the backlash happening from the release of shb on the healer side, I expect SE to do something, sadly I also expect them to do it badly and double down on the current non functioning healer design.

[RyuDragnier]

-Are you happy with the current design of the three healers? Which one is your favourite?

No. SCH is definitely my favorite due to the "tactical" nature of it.

-What keeps you engaged when playing a healer?

Actually having to heal.

-Regarding healer identity, what gimmick or gameplay style would you give each of the healers? Both in terms of how the healing itself would work and what to do during healing downtime.

In terms of healing identity, WHM and SCH are fine, though I'd like more support type things to do during downtime, since just casting Broil/Glare is boring.

AST's downtime is fine, but it's GCD healing is...I'm sorry, it needs a rework on its Sects and Aspected heals. Give its base Aspected heals the Neutral Sect treatment (shields and regens, adjust the potentcies as needed), turn Diurnal and Nocturnal Sects into a 20s buff with a 90s cooldown they both share that thrown all their Aspected heals towards either full Regens or Shields, and buff the output of both to match/surpass WHM/SCH while those are active.

-Are you expecting a new healer job to be added in the next Expansion? If so, what job would you like to see and what type of gameplay would you like the new job to have?

I am, and I want it to be Chemist. Mix system, though for healing having them focus on damaging enemies to heal allies, not that I"m sure it's possible with this game.

[Urthdigger]

-Are you happy with the current design of the three healers? Which one is your favourite?

I am not. My current favorite is WHM, though I play SCH more often (Most of my friends prefer WHM and I don't like to overlap)

-What keeps you engaged when playing a healer?

Bouncing back and forth between offense and defense as the situation demands. It's the one role where my "rotation" isn't static.

-Regarding healer identity, what gimmick or gameplay style would you give each of the healers? Both in terms of how the healing itself would work and what to do during healing downtime.

I think SE needs to embrace that DPS is a part of a healer's kit. We can't really go to the "pure healer" route without drastically changing the battle design as a whole (This is a big topic, but long story short it's not as simple as "more damage"), but one thing we CAN do to likely appease both crowds is to make our DPS kit either power up or enable our healer kit (Thinking of Dragalia Lost where your attacks are required to gain SP to cast heals), or make our heals also play a support role in debuffing enemies or possibly buffing allies that are also attacking them.

-Are you expecting a new healer job to be added in the next Expansion? If so, what job would you like to see and what type of gameplay would you like the new job to have?

I really hope so, but SE really needs to learn how to design a healer in the first place. I sometimes get the impression they have absolutely no idea how players play healer, or why they do so.

[WaxSw]

Just a few questions regarding healers and your personal enjoyment of their gameplay.

-Are you happy with the current design of the three healers? Which one is your favourite?

No, as it is right now healers are in their worst state, their design is very bland and boring. SCH

-What keeps you engaged when playing a healer?

The shorter queues, job identity resonating with myself irl and the savage fights, the only place where I can find those jobs remotely enjoyable thanks to the optimization

-Regarding healer identity, what gimmick or gameplay style would you give each of the healers? Both in terms of how the healing itself would work and what to do during healing downtime.

I'd like to see more fairy interactions with sch, more dots and debuffs and more offensive options for aetherflow (with maybe quickened aetherflow back) and an actual offensive rotation that is not press 1 button.

-Are you expecting a new healer job to be added in the next Expansion? If so, what job would you like to see and what type of gameplay would you like the new job to have?

They should add a new healer even if its just as apology for what they have done in shb and I'd like to see a more offensive/debuff oriented healer

[Haxaan]

Just a few questions regarding healers and your personal enjoyment of their gameplay.

-Are you happy with the current design of the three healers? Which one is your favourite?

-What keeps you engaged when playing a healer?

-Regarding healer identity, what gimmick or gameplay style would you give each of the healers? Both in terms of how the healing itself would work and what to do during healing downtime.

-Are you expecting a new healer job to be added in the next Expansion? If so, what job would you like to see and what type of gameplay would you like the new job to have?

-Not really no. I think WHM is in the best position it's been in in a VERY long time but I still feel like they are trying to figure out what to do with it. AST is my Favorite.

-Engaging? I love playing support and healing plays a very big role in that regard. I like being able to help those around me, benefiting the party as a whole.

-WHM- I think they should lean more heavily on the "holy" aspect of WHM and push lean more on the pdps aspect of the job. I think the Lily system has a lot of promise and adds some much needed mobility to the job.

-SCH- I think that SCH should either scrap summon 2 or bring back a second type of fairy play style. Something is missing from SCH and I can't quite put my finger on it, it just doesn't feel engaging at all anymore.

-AST- I was pretty devastated by the new AST to be honest. It feels like a shell of it's former self. That being said there are some new parts of current AST that I really think should be expanded on. I really think the "set and forget" play style works incredibly well for it. I would absolutely love to see less emphasis on pdps and more emphasis on time. I think the card system should be a mix of the old and the new and feel like a hard pressed gcd rotation of cards with cds would work rather well, especially if you used Time Dilation/Divination to extend the duration of said effect. Celestial Opposition should be reverted to how it was in 4.0 and the job should focus more on setting itself and the party up for success in the future whilst using it's downtime to enhance the party through it's cards and time extensions.

-Expecting a new healer... honestly no. I'd love to see a fourth, but at this point SE has made it pretty clear they can barely balance three healers and that was only done by homogenizing everything into the ground and stripping the flavour down to the point where the lore doesn't even make sense anymore when held next to the playstyle/abilities.