A summary of healer issues

[ty_taurus]

There seems to be a lot of issues if AST becomes a little-to-no direct DPS usage job. The problem is what kind of GCD support tool can outweigh a Malefic spam? The nature of the game makes DPS > most general support toolkits unless support skill is a DPS buff. Having it tied to the GCD means it has to be fairly spammable, and too strong of an effect will break game balance and make malefic not worth casting. It sounds good in theory but not feasible to implement. oGCD support tools have an innate advantage in that they can be weaved into a combo so even if a support tool doesn't give a DPS buff, it's still a beneficial utility. GCDs on the other hand aren't.

The real reason healers DPS is to maximize and optimize the efficiency of their toolkit and contribution to its max. This is especially the case for savage level raids. However... pure healers who don't want to DPS means they do not have the mindset of optimizing their toolkit for max contribution, which also means they won't be doing difficult content that requires mandatory DPS. If anything they'll be doing normal content and 4-man content, which would be counter productive to what rDPS is aimed for.

The second issue is gameplay progression. The effect of rDPS varys greatly depending on the number of players in a party - If the AST (with little-to-no DPS Usage but has rDPS skills) doing 4-man content, they are essentially only able to achieve less than half as much potential from their toolkit than the other healers's toolkits (as their main source of damage is composed of 3 people and not 7). For MSQ storyline content and solo instances / with just a Chocobo, they'll be down to 2 (and technically less than 2 because rDPS is boosting only a small portion of your Chocobo's DPS). This effectively locks them into a raid-healer-only job category. At that point, their actual DPS skills in the open world is their Malefic + Combust spam, which ultimately just changes nothing for variety. That's a big reason why I preferred Lord of Crowns minor arcana to keep the flat attack potency rather than exchange it for an 4 - 8% boost.

The third issue is balance with other healers. rDPS scaling from 3 players to 7 players will inevitably break balance.

There's no way to truly a good way to make a healer not "DPS" but still contribute to DPS fairly without ruining some form of gameplay somewhere else. SE already tried to delete DPS to make it easier for healers... but you know how bad that went. The real solution is really to just encourage DPSing for a healer.

There's one option you're forgetting: A support tool that contributes flat potency instead of a % DPS increase. I've been working on fully detailed redesigns of the healers and throwing ideas around, even on this forum, but I haven't fully set on what I think works nicely for Astrologian, but here's the basic premise I'm been trying to work with...

First, we take power away from Malefic spells. At the moment, Malefic IV is 250 potency... let's drop it to 150. Now, we add a GCD spell that deals an additional 50 Potency DPS whenever the wearer of the buff performs a GCD action. The target is the nearest enemy, or the initial target of the wearer's action if that target is an enemy. The buff lasts for 15 seconds. This potency acts as a separate source of damage. You can think of it like you're setting a star to orbit around your ally. You could also apply it to yourself when soloing.

The tricky part is finding a way to have this effect get applied dynamically so that AST players wouldn't just be spamming it on each individual party member. Perhaps it's a tool that heals the recipient of your card effects and applies this orbiting DPS star. This would compliment a rework of the cards to be all defensive utility since it lets you apply a damage buff to who you give a card too that also doesn't go to waste necessarily on Tanks or Healers.

Perhaps in a build like this, Time Dilation can exist as a GCD action with a 10 second cooldown, allowing you to try and keep up a card effect on one person? It's a rough idea to be sure. To make sure it worked, I'd throw it around during a table meeting with the other combat designers and just mess around with the idea. Sometimes the best solutions come from someone going "what if we did this?" And everyone just pretends it's happening for 30 minutes and just talks about it.

EDIT: I also agree that Lord of Crowns should be a burst of DPS. I imagine reworking Minor Arcana to not consume your normal card effects. Instead, you always pull Lord of Crowns and then alternate between it and Lady of Crowns as an oGCD heal to remove the random aspect. It will always change between one and the other, so you'll be able to plan for the Lady's heal while benefitting from the Lord's DPS

[BarretOblivion]

Honestly at this point, are we shocked? It just seems like SE doesn't know where to start.

They kinda just work really hard on DPS jobs, out some effort into tanks and then whatever energy they have at healers.

Eeeh, I would disagree with the tank part. They actually put no effort in tanks too this expansion. They have the same issues with healers of over homoginization, too many skills removed to take away job identities, nothing really to do other than hit a boss during tank downtimes with a rotation that is basically dry and the same across all 4 tanks. Then you have to look at all the skill tanks got from 70-80. Basically they all either got skills to give them something they were missing back in SB compared to other tanks, and then... passive skills that don't really add anything to their rotations or depth.

SE definately though did focus hard on DPS this expansion... perhaps far too much.

[GrimGale]

Because let's admit it, the healing role has always been female coded.

Reason why I wasn't disappointed DNC wasn't a healer. Hopefully we will get a "manlier" healer in the future, that's why I was hoping Chemist would make an appearance. There is no way SE would turn a battlemedic into another twirly magical girl-style job right?

[GrimGale]

There's one option you're forgetting: A support tool that contributes flat potency instead of a % DPS increase. I've been working on fully detailed redesigns of the healers and throwing ideas around, even on this forum, but I haven't fully set on what I think works nicely for Astrologian, but here's the basic premise I'm been trying to work with...

This gameplay concept has been rolling around the forums for months now.

-Flat out damage with personal abilities (WHM)
-Increasing the damage enemies take via debuffs (SCH)
-Increasing the damage allies deal via buffs (AST)

[Side-Eye]

Frankly, one of the reasons AST appealed to me when I first started playing, was that it seemed to focus on being a benefit to the party, more than being focused on its own DPS. A "pure healer" role would appeal to me if there was such a thing, but Squeenix has rarely created content which requires any heal job to spend 100% of its time on healing.

I wouldn't be upset at all, if changes were made such that AST lost most of its personal DPS, if its contribution to the party's DPS was visible without a parser and dps/tanks could appreciate the enhancements to their own damage and survivability by having an astro in the party.

Yeah, I realize that's an unpopular opinion... it seems everybody, even healers, want to see their names next to big DPS numbers on the ACT screen.. but I don't need that, if I know that what I'm doing is making the group as successful as it can be using my whole toolkit.

[Deceptus]

SE definately though did focus hard on DPS this expansion... perhaps far too much.

And still ended up with Red Mages in a terrible mana state at 5.0, where just doing their basic rotations was very mana negative and they couldn't finish long fights.

This gameplay concept has been rolling around the forums for months now.

-Flat out damage with personal abilities (WHM)
-Increasing the damage enemies take via debuffs (SCH)
-Increasing the damage allies deal via buffs (AST)

I honestly think this is the best solutions. Instead of the Regen / Shield things SE should lean into healers being Buffers / Debuffers. Next expansion: 2 buff based healers, 2 debuff based healers.

[Mimilu]

This gameplay concept has been rolling around the forums for months now.

-Flat out damage with personal abilities (WHM)
-Increasing the damage enemies take via debuffs (SCH)
-Increasing the damage allies deal via buffs (AST)

While I like the idea, the problem is if the buffs/debuffs are too good, SCH/AST is going to be too good to not take, leaving WHM on the sidelines like in past expansions. With the dev team's job balancing history, I don't know if I can trust them to balance this accordingly... >x>

[Crushnight]

This gameplay concept has been rolling around the forums for months now.

-Flat out damage with personal abilities (WHM)
-Increasing the damage enemies take via debuffs (SCH)
-Increasing the damage allies deal via buffs (AST)

A change like this would require content to be designed in such a way that it would compliment them.

As pessimistic as it sounds Shadowbringers has proven that the developers do not talk enough amongst themselves(specifically heads of department for job/battle content) when going through job changes else they would've done more changes in Shadowbringers dungeons to accommodate a more healer focused playestyle the job designers were going for.

So if those changes were to happen I highly suspect content would be boiled down to can the whm nuke the add saving a dps doing it? Yes take whm, No Ast/Sch.

[ty_taurus]

Frankly, one of the reasons AST appealed to me when I first started playing, was that it seemed to focus on being a benefit to the party, more than being focused on its own DPS. A "pure healer" role would appeal to me if there was such a thing, but Squeenix has rarely created content which requires any heal job to spend 100% of its time on healing.

I wouldn't be upset at all, if changes were made such that AST lost most of its personal DPS, if its contribution to the party's DPS was visible without a parser and dps/tanks could appreciate the enhancements to their own damage and survivability by having an astro in the party.

Yeah, I realize that's an unpopular opinion... it seems everybody, even healers, want to see their names next to big DPS numbers on the ACT screen.. but I don't need that, if I know that what I'm doing is making the group as successful as it can be using my whole toolkit.

I don't think healers want to see their numbers be as big as DPS players. There is a divide between the players that want healing to be a 100% healing uptime responsibility and those that like that there's both the capability and the expectation that they are to perform some amount of DPS. I think most of us agree that regardless of our stance on that issue, we currently have too much DPS uptime and that uptime is reduced to mind-numbing simplicity because of our brain-dead DPS tools.

I think players like you should have a healer that works with your play style--a healer that contributes to rDPS through healing spells that either also do damage (like Earthly Star), or that add potency to the attacks of other players as you heal them and apply shields to them. I also believe that, if done correctly, you could absolutely have that be balanced with a "green DPS" healer who is all about maximizing their personal DPS. These concepts can exist harmoniously.

I see a lot of people expressing complete lack of faith in Square's ability to achieve this, and in their defense, the evidence that we've seen of their design philosophies regarding healers doesn't seem to paint a bright future for us. That said, I don't want to completely denounce the possibility of this happening because the devs will never do it based on their former changes. For all we know, their elongated silence on the topic is them trying to collect data on the healer community and try to actually do it right come 6.0, which would be fitting if we're seeing a 4th healer in a year's time. I don't want to promote false hope, but I also don't want to promote utter skepticism either.

Let's just say that I want to look at the future of healing with a cautiously optimistic perspective. I think a lot of good things can happen, and I want to believe the devs hear our pleas and want to do this role justice.

[Side-Eye]

I don't think healers want to see their numbers be as big as DPS players. There is a divide between the players that want healing to be a 100% healing uptime responsibility and those that like that there's both the capability and the expectation that they are to perform some amount of DPS. I think most of us agree that regardless of our stance on that issue, we currently have too much DPS uptime and that uptime is reduced to mind-numbing simplicity because of our brain-dead DPS tools.

I've played DPS jobs for the majority of my time since SHB release, and I've *seen* many healers let people die while trying to eek out as much personal DPS as possible. When playing RDM, 99% of the time if our healer is SCH or WHM, I'm the one who rezzes a fallen tank/dps. (Yes, I do know that people expect red mages to rez, but IMHO, that duty should be fulfilled first and foremost by the party's healer, not someone whose primary responsibility is damage.)

Let's just say that I want to look at the future of healing with a cautiously optimistic perspective. I think a lot of good things can happen, and I want to believe the devs hear our pleas and want to do this role justice.

If devs were listening to players, there wouldn't be 50+ pages of posts from people discussing their leaving the healer role behind because of what was done to their favorite jobs in 5.0+... just sayin.