A summary of healer issues

[Payadopa]

If you look back at that time, I can guarantee that almost every complaint about not getting The Balance and the SCH not using Selene all came from DPS mains. The rdps metric didn't exist back then, so the only way to get the funny number on the funny number site is for an AST to feed you The Balance. I personally remember a lot of DPS mains whining about not getting The Balance, but I most certainly have never seen any AST main worth their salt complain about the cards.

This shows that the card changes aligns with their aim of making sure the DPS players have as much fun as possible, regardless of what this does to the healer role.

Yeah, I can see that. It's a shame. I think they had good intentions but kinda shafted healers in the process.

[ty_taurus]

To be fair, I do think Stormblood Selene did need to be reworked. Eos offered extra free healing, mitigation, and increased HP recovered to party members. Selene offered a single target silence (delayed because of pet AI, so good luck actually getting that to come out on time in the incredibly rare circumstances where silencing matters), AoE Esuna, which as nice as that sounds, I think we have more healers in the game than we have fights that even have multiple debuffs to remove across the party, and a party-wide attack speed buff that equated to about a 1% DPS increase in a game that both curb stomps healing anytime more damage is an alternative and at the same time, loathes having unplanned for attack speed increases.

Flat out removing Selene's toolkit is the literal worst way you could realistically address this issue, and that's not hyperbole, but reworking her to actually feel like a balanced choice to Eos was something that was needed.

[ForsakenRoe]

Okay to be fair, if we're gonna include "Healing increases" as counting towards buff variety, healers in FFXIV do get a bit more than flat DPS increases.

The point isn't just 'oh Holy Paladin has heal increase skill', these four effects are one talent called Blessing of Seasons, and they rotate through the four as you use them (so it's consistent and not RNG like AST was). There's other stuff Holy Paladin has that I did not list, the point was to illustrate that this one system (the Blessing of Seasons talent) has more variety in it's effects than the comparable system we have here (what the cards used to be for AST and what they are now). You're also listing four healers here vs the one example I gave. I could list every 'buff you can give to allies' for all seven of the WOW healers, but I'd be here for a long time. So I'll just do Holy Paladin:

- Aforementioned 4 Blessings of Spring/Summer/Autumn/Winter
- Choice of passive aura between 3% DR, 20% movespeed while mounted, 'take more than 50% of your HP in a single hit and give out a damage buff to allies' Retribution Aura, 'reduce silence duration on allies' Aura (this one's more for PVP i think), swapping between them is GCD
- Aura Mastery increases the effectiveness of these passive auras, usually used on Devotion to increase it from 3% to 15% DR
- Blessing of Freedom removes anything that is CCing an ally and makes them immune to roots/stuns/slows for a bit
- Blessing of Protection makes target immune to physical damage for a while (makes them considered to have zero aggro for the duration too, so tanks will lose their mobs if you use it on them)
- Blessing of Sacrifice is Cover but actually useful
- Beacon of Light is Synastry but actually useful (considering all your healing is GCDs)
- A Stun, Interrupt, Taunt and Hallowed Ground (on a 5min CD, so theoretically you could purposely taunt a boss and invuln it's tankbuster. probably not worth the risk though). You can also use the invuln to soak a mech that a tank would otherwise have to eat, like those tank-specific meteors you occasionally see. These are not 'buffs you can give allies' per se, but being able to catch an interrupt that the DPS can't get, or soaking something so the tank can save their CDs for other stuff, is big utility to have in the back pocket
- A combat res. Not every class in WOW can resurrect in combat (and it's on a one-charge-per-5-mins system in a raid), so having someone that can CR is big

The only thing that we have left that gets any credit from me is Expedient, but I've always thought it'd be ridiculously good.

Flat out removing Selene's toolkit is the literal worst way you could realistically address this issue, and that's not hyperbole, but reworking her to actually feel like a balanced choice to Eos was something that was needed.

I also think removing Selene entirely was not great, but we have to consider, it was 'Selene vs Roused Whispering Dawn', the odds were so stacked against Selene's kit it'd have to be some real impactful stuff to compete with how good Eos was. And that'd just mean making SCH even more dominant than it already was

[ty_taurus]

I also think removing Selene entirely was not great, but we have to consider, it was 'Selene vs Roused Whispering Dawn', the odds were so stacked against Selene's kit it'd have to be some real impactful stuff to compete with how good Eos was. And that'd just mean making SCH even more dominant than it already was

What you could do to keep things simple and balanced...

- Fey Illumination is removed.
- Whispering Dawn upgrades to Fey Blessing. Fey Blessing's regen potency is increased, and with Eos, increases HP restored via healing actions by 10%, and Selene decreases damage taken by 10%. Seraph applies both effects with Angel's Whisper.
- Add a new action that changes based on your current pet, something like "Dawn and Dusk". With Eos, you get a 500 potency AoE heal that converts any HP overheal into a barrier. With Selene, you get Expedient.
- Summon Eos and Summon Selene remain as separate GCD spells, and Dissipation swaps your current faerie for the opposite faerie as an OGCD cooldown.

Eos allows Scholar to fulfill burst healing needs while Selene gives you more mitigation and utility that is particularly helpful in Savage, meaning there's more choice involved in who you take, but you have some flexibility in swapping faeries mid combat. The cooldown across both Fey Blessings and Expedient vs the new Eos action are shared, so you can't double dip, but you could use Selene for one part of a fight while swapping to Eos for another.

This isn't a major change, isn't doing anything "sacrilegious" to Scholar, and accomplishes something a lot of people want to see.

[ForsakenRoe]

This isn't a major change, isn't doing anything "sacrilegious" to Scholar, and accomplishes something a lot of people want to see.

If they could have done this, they'd wouldn't have axed the Sects from AST, I think. It'd be good to see in a world where we don't have to pretend like the Pure/Barrier Split 'maybe works possibly', but we've got to go through the motions of SE licking their finger, sticking it in the air to see which way the winds blow, and realizing 'oh actually it's not working maybe we should try something else'

Ahh who am I kidding, if they saw the failure of 4.0 WHM and the 'Pure Healing' model it was designed to use and thought the solution was 'make every healer do that', they'll definitely doubledown on the split we have now. Probably by taking away the regen from SCH's Soil, Whispering Dawn, and making Indom a 120s CD

[ty_taurus]

If they could have done this, they'd wouldn't have axed the Sects from AST, I think. It'd be good to see in a world where we don't have to pretend like the Pure/Barrier Split 'maybe works possibly', but we've got to go through the motions of SE licking their finger, sticking it in the air to see which way the winds blow, and realizing 'oh actually it's not working maybe we should try something else'

Ahh who am I kidding, if they saw the failure of 4.0 WHM and the 'Pure Healing' model it was designed to use and thought the solution was 'make every healer do that', they'll definitely doubledown on the split we have now. Probably by taking away the regen from SCH's Soil, Whispering Dawn, and making Indom a 120s CD

I mean, Pneuma exists, so having a long CD burst heal on SCH is nothing out of the current pattern. If the Eos option were to share a cooldown with Expedient it would have the same restrictions as Pneuma as well. It's actually weaker than Pneuma, cannot be boosted by Zoe, and would stem from your pet rather than you, so not actually 500 potency as if it were coming from the SCH, so I can't imagine that's "against the rules," but then again, fun is "against the rules" so...

[GrimGale]

The point isn't just 'oh Holy Paladin has heal increase skill', these four effects are one talent called Blessing of Seasons, and they rotate through the four as you use them (so it's consistent and not RNG like AST was). There's other stuff Holy Paladin has that I did not list, the point was to illustrate that this one system (the Blessing of Seasons talent) has more variety in it's effects than the comparable system we have here (what the cards used to be for AST and what they are now). You're also listing four healers here vs the one example I gave. I could list every 'buff you can give to allies' for all seven of the WOW healers, but I'd be here for a long time. So I'll just do Holy Paladin:

- Aforementioned 4 Blessings of Spring/Summer/Autumn/Winter
- Choice of passive aura between 3% DR, 20% movespeed while mounted, 'take more than 50% of your HP in a single hit and give out a damage buff to allies' Retribution Aura, 'reduce silence duration on allies' Aura (this one's more for PVP i think), swapping between them is GCD
- Aura Mastery increases the effectiveness of these passive auras, usually used on Devotion to increase it from 3% to 15% DR
- Blessing of Freedom removes anything that is CCing an ally and makes them immune to roots/stuns/slows for a bit
- Blessing of Protection makes target immune to physical damage for a while (makes them considered to have zero aggro for the duration too, so tanks will lose their mobs if you use it on them)
- Blessing of Sacrifice is Cover but actually useful
- Beacon of Light is Synastry but actually useful (considering all your healing is GCDs)
- A Stun, Interrupt, Taunt and Hallowed Ground (on a 5min CD, so theoretically you could purposely taunt a boss and invuln it's tankbuster. probably not worth the risk though). You can also use the invuln to soak a mech that a tank would otherwise have to eat, like those tank-specific meteors you occasionally see. These are not 'buffs you can give allies' per se, but being able to catch an interrupt that the DPS can't get, or soaking something so the tank can save their CDs for other stuff, is big utility to have in the back pocket
- A combat res. Not every class in WOW can resurrect in combat (and it's on a one-charge-per-5-mins system in a raid), so having someone that can CR is big

The only thing that we have left that gets any credit from me is Expedient, but I've always thought it'd be ridiculously good.



I also think removing Selene entirely was not great, but we have to consider, it was 'Selene vs Roused Whispering Dawn', the odds were so stacked against Selene's kit it'd have to be some real impactful stuff to compete with how good Eos was. And that'd just mean making SCH even more dominant than it already was

Oh yeah, I wasn't defending the barebone healing design in FFXIV. Holy Paladin skill interactions alone are probably more numerous than the skill interactions in all of FFXIV healer's kit in total.

[fulminating]

consider the following:
Energy Drain: Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 100.
Broil IV: Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 295.
3 energy drains is on par with a single broil.
The GCD heal used to take advantage of the buff is paid for by the aetherflow.

[MatchaokaCha]

I just want them to add some type of fun and engaging rotation. They don't need to remove the mono-button playstyle since that can exist as a core base, but they really need to add skill ceilings that complements and engages the game environment in a fun way. A cardinal sin for game design is to be boring, and Square has succeeded in making me fall asleep (literally) this expansion. I'm sure this has been mentioned, but having 10+ jobs is completely antithetical to homogenizing them to function the exact same way. There's a complete lack of creative diversity, and it just feels like the devs aren't having fun designing these jobs anymore.

[ty_taurus]

I think it's important to remember that you can criticize someone's work while still respecting them as a person, as a creator, and acknowledge the good that they have done. No game is perfect in every conceivable angle. Every game has flaws. Every developer will tell you that there are probably a million things they wish they could do differently with a project. That's entirely normal. Good design is about owning those flaws and striving to improve on them, being transparent with your audience, and listening to what people think about your product. This doesn't mean you must make changes as they demand, but rather, acknowledge the problem and find a solution.

The people who care about you the most are the people who will call you out on your BS and love you anyway, not the people who will be polite out of obligation. The same is true for art and design.

Healer design is a problem. This is a factual statement and not an opinion. If it wasn't a problem, this constant back and forth wouldn't exist. It doesn't exist for Black Mage. It doesn't exist for Dancer. It doesn't exist for Gunbreaker. If the healers were in as good a state as these job, then it wouldn't exist for the healers either. But it does. If all people on the forums wanted to do was trash talk every job and every aspect of the game, then these other jobs as well as several others wouldn't be exempt from the same experience.