A summary of healer issues

[bundythenoob]

Honestly a lot of this is just whining though. Astro and scholar feel really great to play in savage, and if I liked the idea behind WHM's optimization being about movement and lily use, I'd probably like that healer too...

I hated old astro cards, I thought getting useless cards was completely miserable, and even the whole, "Use what you have for what you currently need" idea was just...not fun. The new cards are great, because they are always a welcome sight to see. A personal trick attack for your buff window is amazing, and even beyond that, 8 percent damage for 15s is nothing to sneeze at.

SCH has amazing tools that can be used as well, Fey Union, Seraph, Blessing, Whispering dawn, so many things that can be utilized where you need to plan out your aetherflow.

yes even though the jobs feel "amazing" to play at lv 80. SCH falls very far behind its counterparts during any form of lvl sync content because of missing tools and gimped fairy. in fact, it almost feels like the devs took all of the tanks and healers, balanced them at lv 80, but forgot that certain tools shine much brighter at lower levels.

take embrace for example. i'm sure its potency was lowered to make up for seraph's healing and the soil regen at lv 80 to match the output of WHM and AST, but what if you take those tools away? SCH from lv 30-62 (before excog) struggles to heal what its fellow healers can do easily just due to lower healing potencies and the lack of damage to make up for that. that's not even including the fact that AST can draw cards outside of combat to prep itself, but SCH cant use aetherflow to prep its most necessary tools. on top of that, AST received very nice changes to its mana costs as of 5.3, and WHM has been in a decent spot on release with Holy keeping its stun, thin air, and assize. SCH meanwhile had all of its important DPS tools gutted, its older healing tools were not buffed to compensate for that gutting, and its fairy still cant cleanly weave its abilities like it used to, meaning that sometimes when you need the clutch boost to healing magic, it might get interrupted if fairy decides to embrace someone in between your orders.

Sure healing might be easier than ever before, and sure the classes might be balanced at lv 80, but if theyre unbalanced at lv 70, 60, and 50, then whats the point in leveling them up? or using them to run synced content with friends? whats the point in running a SCH in 90% of the content in the game if its only viable from lv 70-80?

[Deceptus]

yes even though the jobs feel "amazing" to play at lv 80. SCH falls very far behind its counterparts during any form of lvl sync content because of missing tools and gimped fairy. in fact, it almost feels like the devs took all of the tanks and healers, balanced them at lv 80, but forgot that certain tools shine much brighter at lower levels.

They did the same to DPS. Lots of jobs feel terrible in synced content which is why there are more than a few of us who advocate for keeping our whole kits even while synced (damage scales based on synced Weapon Damage).

[NobleWinter]

Does any healer really feel amazing to play? Even at level 80? One dps nuke button and one DoT is what you press for the majority of every encounter. No matter how you spin it that's not amazing gameplay to me. I actually regret wasting my time gearing up my healers. The complexity of any DPS class is so much more engaging. You aren't just waiting for a raid wide aoe or tank buster to finally press your important buttons. Dps get continual engagement with almost the entirety of their kit while healers can't even be forced to use most of theirs becuase the challenge would be far too punishing for most of the player base myself included. Healers will never be pushed to their limits and have nothing to compensate for their downtime. I want gap closers and disengages. I want useful crowd control beyond just Holy. I want to combo skills for big damage. I want my party to know that they have to do mechanics well so I can pull off my full dps rotation. Something has got to change cause this ShB iteration of healing is the least rewarding ever. Even Astro cards bore me to death. Its a chore instead of an exciting bonus. Ultimates and Savage should not be the only place in the whole game healing feels exciting. Why do people have to be terrible for healers to have fun in regular content?

[Videra]

Honestly a lot of this is just whining though. Astro and scholar feel really great to play in savage, and if I liked the idea behind WHM's optimization being about movement and lily use, I'd probably like that healer too...

I hated old astro cards, I thought getting useless cards was completely miserable, and even the whole, "Use what you have for what you currently need" idea was just...not fun. The new cards are great, because they are always a welcome sight to see. A personal trick attack for your buff window is amazing, and even beyond that, 8 percent damage for 15s is nothing to sneeze at.

SCH has amazing tools that can be used as well, Fey Union, Seraph, Blessing, Whispering dawn, so many things that can be utilized where you need to plan out your aetherflow.

AST and SCH felt better to play in SB and HW when they had more non-healing options everywhere in the game. Not just in Savage and ultimate. I don't know why people get hung up on this idea of 'Well, it feels good in savage, so who cares!'. Healers are drop-dead boring everywhere else in the game, and it's a matter of fact that they used to not be boring. What was wrong with what we had before, exactly? Why would anyone prefer the absolute trashfire that we have now over the sweet skill ceiling of HW or the more interactive than ShB healers of Stormblood?

[Liam_Harper]

Something I just noticed is how the Eden Savage weapons are well tailored to stats. Every dps is Crit/DH, with BLM getting a nice chunk of SpS. Tanks don't get DH since it's technically not a tank stat, but Crit/Det on each weapon is a solid stat spread. They know what stats each class uses.

And then healers. All have Det and a big chunk of Piety, their worst stat once Shiva is down and on farm. Not even a hint of Crit.

Small things like that are a strong hint they know how dps work and have a vague idea for tanks, but have literally 0 clue how healers function in their own game. I think the first priority for them before 6.0 is to hire or assign a class designer who actually plays and is very familiar with healers and work closely with them. We can't go into 6.0 without a proper healer focused class designer.

[GrimGale]

AST and SCH felt better to play in SB and HW when they had more non-healing options everywhere in the game. Not just in Savage and ultimate. I don't know why people get hung up on this idea of 'Well, it feels good in savage, so who cares!'. Healers are drop-dead boring everywhere else in the game, and it's a matter of fact that they used to not be boring. What was wrong with what we had before, exactly? Why would anyone prefer the absolute trashfire that we have now over the sweet skill ceiling of HW or the more interactive than ShB healers of Stormblood?

I've mained SCH for two Savage cycles now. Optimization for SCH comes down to fitting in more Broils while weaving all your AF into Energy Drains.

Imagine going out of your way to fit yet a other blue blast of energy in. Imagine bending over backwards with such precise timing you essentially memorize 10 minute fights with stretches of minutes just pressing one button to fit yet another grey blur of particle effects.

SCH is probably the most boring healer to optimize. Your reward for skewing healing mechanics is more Broil spam.

If you'd tell me that we had this big spectacular spell we can only use in certain situations by sacrificing our precious healing resources ( All the AF stacks for example, or all the fairy gauge.) I'd say optimization has suddenly become much more satisfying.

[Morningstar1337]

We can't go into 6.0 without a proper healer focused class designer.

We most likely will however, considering the lead time on the xpac (I presume that the moment the X.1 patch is live the next xpac is already worked on, the Covid delay gave them more time, yes but msot ofit was likely due to getting things back on track and making working from home feasable). The window of opportunity is shrinking and I kinda doubt they can get healer-dedicated staff until 7.0 unless they had already proven to get them before the expac reveals.

With that said, you do make a good point on Piety being the worse stat for people that already cleared. I wonder if the devs are gonna change the content (Each clear making the encounter more difficult, like what is being proposed for dungeons ona regular basis)or the Stat itself (as precedented by accuracy being DH)

[Deceptus]

I hated old astro cards, I thought getting useless cards was completely miserable, and even the whole, "Use what you have for what you currently need" idea was just...not fun. The new cards are great, because they are always a welcome sight to see. A personal trick attack for your buff window is amazing, and even beyond that, 8 percent damage for 15s is nothing to sneeze at.
.

There was no such thing as a "useless card", that was determined by the community. Every card had some positive effect tied to it. Just because it wasn't straight up damage didn't mean it was bad.

Take the Arrow for instance. Monks didn't like it because it made them run out of TP. Guess what? TP is GONE now. Ask a monk if they'd like to hit faster and the answer would almost 100% be YES.

Bole. Less time healing, is more time doing damage.

Spear was GREAT if you had a job that had multiple CD's to manage.

Ewer could have changed to a magic damage increase or something similar.

The cards needed improved, not scrapped.

[YusiKha]

There was no such thing as a "useless card", that was determined by the community. Every card had some positive effect tied to it. Just because it wasn't straight up damage didn't mean it was bad.

Take the Arrow for instance. Monks didn't like it because it made them run out of TP. Guess what? TP is GONE now. Ask a monk if they'd like to hit faster and the answer would almost 100% be YES.

Bole. Less time healing, is more time doing damage.

Spear was GREAT if you had a job that had multiple CD's to manage.

Ewer could have changed to a magic damage increase or something similar.

The cards needed improved, not scrapped.

The problem is in an organised environment you need to have consistency. Random mitigation/healing can never be planned for, Quickened Aetherflow was changed from random to consistent for a reason too.
The boss' patterns are consistent, so classes should be too.
This expansion, the devs have gone for removing the unique effects. I'm hoping they decide to remove the random chance instead, and have AST cycle through the cards in a mutable loop, similar to BRD's songs.

Now, just throwing a conspiracy theory out there...
The dev team typically design jobs with the current and the next expansion in consideration... On 5.0, AST lost their card mixing skill. I wonder if that means something for a 6.0 job. :eyes:

[Deceptus]

The problem is in an organised environment you need to have consistency. Random mitigation/healing can never be planned for, Quickened Aetherflow was changed from random to consistent for a reason too.

Completely understand that, Healing and tanking can't have RNG as their base resource because you never know when a massive spike damage will kill your tank.

But the FFXIV devs, in their short sightedness, decided to make that the basis of a healer.