A summary of healer issues

[Morningstar1337]

- With the inlcusion of a fourth healer, I think it's time for AST to lose the whole Shielding/Regen stances and get a thing unique to their own. This mechanic always felt very band-aid-y to me.

But I like the shielding/regen stances, the other two have simialr skills and oh yeah, they removed most of the other defining aspects already so that seems to be a long shot.

[Recon1o6]

So the devs want to incentive us healing more by further nerfing dps. All that's done is anger everyone and nerfed scholar below 72.

/clap

I genuinely fail to see why its taken so long to get monk back to its ARR state albeit improved. But it certainly doesn't give me hopes for this list of healer issues

[YusiKha]

So the devs want to incentive us healing more by further nerfing dps. All that's done is anger everyone and nerfed scholar below 72.

The +200pot/min on Biolysis makes up for the ED nerf, and that’s before you consider the Broil buff.

Dissipation is now more of a maybe-hold-for-movement tool instead of use-on-cooldown-for-dps.

And the ED nerf is to reduce the punishment for using Aetherflow heals. More power to them, my only complaint is that they didn’t go any further with the nerf and buff up Ruin2 to compensate.

But yeah the flat nerf pre-72 is a bit of a slap in the face, I 100% agree.

[Absurdity]

The +200pot/min on Biolysis makes up for the ED nerf, and that’s before you consider the Broil buff.

Dissipation is now more of a maybe-hold-for-movement tool instead of use-on-cooldown-for-dps.

And the ED nerf is to reduce the punishment for using Aetherflow heals. More power to them, my only complaint is that they didn’t go any further with the nerf and buff up Ruin2 to compensate.

But yeah the flat nerf pre-72 is a bit of a slap in the face, I 100% agree.

Sure, it's mathematically a buff to SCH dps, but that increased dps comes from more Broil III spam, which is the most out of touch buff I've ever seen. On top of that it actually PUNISHES weaving Aetherflow heals outside of Biolysis refreshes even harder than before unless you doubleweave it with the nerfed Energy Drain for a whole 10 potency gained over Broil III.

[Rymi64]

So I started at the end of HW and by the time i leveled a healer to max it was SB so what exactly did you guys lose inbetween HW and SB?

[Semirhage]

So I started at the end of HW and by the time i leveled a healer to max it was SB so what exactly did you guys lose inbetween HW and SB?

HW -> SB was prior to the Great Gutting of SCH and AST. They lost several things, but most of it was SB -> SHB. Off the top of my head, things like Shadowflare and Stella went away. A few damage/utility options mostly. SCH had some ugly MP nerfs that were fixed pretty quickly. WHM lost similar options, partially due to the upgrade traits for damage spells being introduced (i.e. lost the ability to apply heavy from Stone 1 or the extra DoT from Aero 1 because the levels of Stone and Aero got compacted together). Fluid Aura lost its damage.

The main red flag from SB was job identity/gauges, specifically WHM. AST and SCH gauges were easy to guess; they already had build/spend resources tied to their job identities, and tracking those resources was the logical place to go...even if tracking something you already have isn't exactly cool or new. WHM had no such gimmick to keep track of, so Square Enix invented the dreaded Healing Lilies. There are threads on this forum with more in-depth detailing what dreadful design they were. They fixed exactly zero of the problems career WHMs in Heavensward were complaining about. They worked in a way that made ignoring them more efficient than using them at all. And as Shadowbringers design can attest, they were the beginning of Square's wretched "pure healer" prototype. WHM, aside from Thin Air, got effectively no updates to its capabilities in Stormblood.

Heavensward -> Stormblood didn't have the biggest cuts to healer kits, but it did have the big red flag warning us about Shadowbringers.

[Absurdity]

Heavensward -> Stormblood didn't have the biggest cuts to healer kits, but it did have the big red flag warning us about Shadowbringers.

This was the big red flag for me at the end of Stormblood
Well, mainly the SCH & Astro part.

[Crushnight]

So I started at the end of HW and by the time i leveled a healer to max it was SB so what exactly did you guys lose inbetween HW and SB?

The good changes:

Malefic/aero/ruin-Broil actions were consolidated to 1 action on the hotbar that changes based on level.
New actions for Sch and Ast complimented their kits with earthly star/excog as most beneficial.
Ast gauge was the best designed of the three, simple and got the info you need.
Whm getting Thin air
Sch got quickened Aetherflow which rewarded skilled play

The bad:

Aero 2, Combust 2 were consolidated into a single DoT rather than separate DoTs from combust/aero, fairy was nerfed again at start
Loss of actions such as shadowflare, miasma 2(which they returned later), stella(If fluid aura is still around stella should be), disable(a dmg reduction and looked awesome)
Whm Lily system(it originally had that you needed 1 Lily to use benison and to get a Lily required a gcd heal AND get lucky as it was a proc)

The meh:
Sch gauge, it is the same as is now
Pet system was the same (got improved later SB to the best version of the pet system the game ever had)
New nukes DoTs were same as old just new animations

[Semirhage]

This was the big red flag for me at the end of Stormblood
Well, mainly the SCH & Astro part.

Oh, that was the nuclear fallout. We should have been terrified when we heard the phrase "pure healer". And even more terrified when we told them that was an awful idea, and they doubled down on WHM. AST and SCH were on borrowed time by that point.

[Recon1o6]

In SB

Everyone lost crossclass, one of the worst design decisions in the game. It was apparently unbalanced for savage- well just ask for restriction from savage not destroy a good incentive for players to level alt jobs. It gave job customisation, something lots of players are asking for now.
Everyone also had dots consolidated

Whm lost about a dozen abilities in SB, and got forced into being a "Pure healer" somehting that is unacceptable to play in ffxiv's encounter environment and had a pointless gauge to boot
Astro lost Stellar, Disable and its mp recovery (luckily it still had old ewer which a good astro needed)
Sch lost eye for an eye and another ability i dont recall the name of.

in Shb

Astro lost its cards, Time dilation, Celestial opposition time+stun effects, bubble effects and received nothing but nerfs and redundant heals
Whm lost aero 3, but then again they had already been destroyed in SB
Sch lost its pet, dots, shadowflare and energy drain but they were forced to give energy drain back because it broke the job.