A summary of healer issues

[AnotherPerson]

There's one option you're forgetting: A support tool that contributes flat potency instead of a % DPS increase.
...

I'm assuming the potency scales off of healer potency and not the character receiving the potency. The GCD buffs would also need potential to scale as many DoTs as a SCH has in potency. Assuming no one missed GCDs, this can fix the issue of balance. Assuming SCH gets their DoTs for debuff, AST does the opposite - good for job identity. Time Dilation being 10 second cooldown is also fair and can be used on defensive utility.


Making a GCD star and having it become a "theoretical star" which affects your card's divination effects sounds like a great idea. It's like combusting an enemy with a "theoretical sun". Haha! I love the idea.

Though, I'm having a bit of a tough time understanding what how you would want it dynamically applied. From what I understand, ASTs won't be spamming it so... the AST won't be spamming malefic, but mixing Malefic with this GCD buff? Or is there multiple GCD buffs? Or is buffing going to be a complex thing? Sounds tricky to implement imo.

The are a couple of unknowns when giving AST back it's Time Mage identity though - exactly how much of it is it getting back, and what is the job development direction going to take from that point forward? ASTs would always want this buff up. Naturally, upkeeping a defensive buff on the tank is key so it would be best to Time Dilate onto the tank. However, both SCH and WHM have clear solutions to outgoing raidwide damage. ASTs as a Time Mage does not. How much burst healing will ASTs trade for Time extension abilities (looking at Time Extended AoE Stun Celestial Opposition vs AoE Heal Celestial Opposition)? I'm not saying it would be a bad thing, but ShB made it clear that certain fights require a lot of AoE burst healing. A Time Mage with only regen ticks cannot achieve that level unless they took a more mitigative stance with defense buffs being applied to everyone nearby. It's a difference in healing potential & healing style for sure and sounds a bit more hectic for balance and future content depending on how the job proceed forwards. Just food for thought.

Alternating Crowns without consuming a card sounds good provided it has 2 charges in case you can't Lord at the moment and Lord/Lady shares the cd in order to always get the CD up as soon as possible. That way you can depend on the oGCD heal without planning the next x CDs in advance.

MHO, that duty should be fulfilled first and foremost by the party's healer, not someone whose primary responsibility is damage.

A healer's responsibility is to heal unavoidable damage, not adjust to people who don't do mechanics. Healers manage mana and time. RDMs have quick raise. I'd adjust but there's a limit to how much I can adjust because I have to take into consideration of the party's survival rate too.

[Gruntler]

100% This. Divine Benison is nothing more than Stoneskin renamed with a CD.

Except, it's ogcd, and therefore

1) Mana efficient
2) Does not replace damage output

Stoneskin, on the other hand, if we're being SLIGHTLY honest, was a thing you did at the start of a fight, then forgot existed for the most part and watched while it got cleared by the first thing every boss does, specifically because they were designed to clear stoneskin as their first move.

[ty_taurus]

I'm assuming the potency scales off of healer potency and not the character receiving the potency. The GCD buffs would also need potential to scale as many DoTs as a SCH has in potency. Assuming no one missed GCDs, this can fix the issue of balance. Assuming SCH gets their DoTs for debuff, AST does the opposite - good for job identity. Time Dilation being 10 second cooldown is also fair and can be used on defensive utility.

Yeah, the attack would technically be coming from you but it would be triggered by other players. I think that's the best way to handle it balance-wise. Having it scale off the target means you're bias toward DPS players, and that's probably not healthy for encouraging you to use your card effects on the best target. The added benefit of Time Dilation as a GCD action and allows you to always have a card effect in play so you're never in a bind where no one has card effects and Draw is on cooldown so you have to Malefic if you don't have time to heal. It's possibly you could let your cards fall off and find yourself in this situation, but it would just mean AST would be a bit more technical, which I think is fair considering this design would be about making them as passive as possible. There's the risk that a passive healer is a low-skill healer, but elements like this help make it so that you have to work to stay passively applying your flat potency buffs to allies.

Though, I'm having a bit of a tough time understanding what how you would want it dynamically applied. From what I understand, ASTs won't be spamming it so... the AST won't be spamming malefic, but mixing Malefic with this GCD buff? Or is there multiple GCD buffs? Or is buffing going to be a complex thing? Sounds tricky to implement imo.

It probably would be tricky, and like I said, it would probably get written out and then thrown to the wolves, figuratively speaking. There would be a lot of discussion points regarding this concept, and we would probably be prototyping it aggressively in private servers. Basically, though, what makes it dynamic is a bit about what we mentioned. Your best DPS comes from this healing buff that you can apply only to allies with card effects on them, so we ideally want to create a "rotation" of healing and shielding perhaps that allows the AST to keep their buff up, possibly on multiple allies at times like after Sleeve Draw and keeping up defensive buffs with Time Dilation. There would probably be moments where there's nothing you can do to keep this cycle going, which would be the best time to apply Combust, use GCD healing, and perform a cast or 2 of Malefic if nothing else is needed, but ideally this would be minimized as much as possible without making the build unforgiving for when you need to stop and GCD heal.

The are a couple of unknowns when giving AST back it's Time Mage identity though - exactly how much of it is it getting back, and what is the job development direction going to take from that point forward? ASTs would always want this buff up. Naturally, upkeeping a defensive buff on the tank is key so it would be best to Time Dilate onto the tank. However, both SCH and WHM have clear solutions to outgoing raidwide damage. ASTs as a Time Mage does not. How much burst healing will ASTs trade for Time extension abilities (looking at Time Extended AoE Stun Celestial Opposition vs AoE Heal Celestial Opposition)? I'm not saying it would be a bad thing, but ShB made it clear that certain fights require a lot of AoE burst healing. A Time Mage with only regen ticks cannot achieve that level unless they took a more mitigative stance with defense buffs being applied to everyone nearby. It's a difference in healing potential & healing style for sure and sounds a bit more hectic for balance and future content depending on how the job proceed forwards. Just food for thought.

What about healing or mitigation tools that slow down the rate at which you actually receive damage so that your regens can keep up? You could have something that mitigates the damage you receive by, say, 90%... but the 90% that you don't take is instead spread out in the form of a DoT over 9 seconds, or so. These are all just random numbers, so adjustments can be made of course, but if the issue is that they can't burst heal... slowing down or dividing up burst damage is both a thematic and interesting solution.

Alternating Crowns without consuming a card sounds good provided it has 2 charges in case you can't Lord at the moment and Lord/Lady shares the cd in order to always get the CD up as soon as possible. That way you can depend on the oGCD heal without planning the next x CDs in advance.

That's a good point. Charges would make this version of Minor Arcana perfect. You both know when you're getting the Lady and can hold onto her for a few moments while you find the best time to use her. There are a lot of changes I don't expect to see regarding the healers that have been talked about, but this is one that I think isn't too unreasonable and makes a lot of sense. I really hope this shows up in 6.0

[SpiralMask]

popping in to show some support for OP: a great summary of a lot of the problems me and mine have with healers as of SB/ShB (particularly the latter).

Really do wish we got more than patch after patch after liveletter after patch of complete silence about the rampant healer questions/feedback/complaints here and even the JP forums.

[Lethros]

Stoneskin, on the other hand, if we're being SLIGHTLY honest, was a thing you did at the start of a fight, then forgot existed for the most part and watched while it got cleared by the first thing every boss does, specifically because they were designed to clear stoneskin as their first move.

As a scholar I used stoneskin a lot in dungeons in battle. I would drop cleric stance, heal the tank, add adloquium and stoneskin, then go back into cleric stance. Stoneskin maybe wasn't the most efficient way, but it was safer and gave extra time between healing. But it's long enough ago that I'm not sure how much I might've needed to heal and how often. I think it was tough for white mage to use stoneskin in battle because of the MP cost, but scholar could manage very well with aetherflow and energy drain. But maybe your idea is also mixed in with that stoneskin II could only be used outside battle (I think?)

And I should probably add that I really enjoyed having and using stoneskin

[Deceptus]

Except, it's ogcd, and therefore

1) Mana efficient
2) Does not replace damage output

Stoneskin, on the other hand, if we're being SLIGHTLY honest, was a thing you did at the start of a fight, then forgot existed for the most part and watched while it got cleared by the first thing every boss does, specifically because they were designed to clear stoneskin as their first move.

If you had played at 2.0 you'd know that Stoneskin could be slotted in your extra skills. I used it all the time on PLD as mitigation when the cast time was less than the mechanic cast time. Or at the end of a pull, getting ready for the next group to give my healers some extra breathing room.

Also, it was a flat % so you could put it on FATE mobs to give a HUGE shield (the FF13 event comes to mind, Lightning had a LOT of HP)

As a scholar I used stoneskin a lot in dungeons in battle. I would drop cleric stance, heal the tank, add adloquium and stoneskin, then go back into cleric stance. Stoneskin maybe wasn't the most efficient way, but it was safer and gave extra time between healing. But it's long enough ago that I'm not sure how much I might've needed to heal and how often. I think it was tough for white mage to use stoneskin in battle because of the MP cost, but scholar could manage very well with aetherflow and energy drain. But maybe your idea is also mixed in with that stoneskin II could only be used outside battle (I think?)

Pretty much this. As a SCH in dungeons I would end every pull with an Adlo -> Stoneskin and that gave me plenty of time to set up a Bane Bomb.

[ty_taurus]

As a scholar I used stoneskin a lot in dungeons in battle. I would drop cleric stance, heal the tank, add adloquium and stoneskin, then go back into cleric stance. Stoneskin maybe wasn't the most efficient way, but it was safer and gave extra time between healing. But it's long enough ago that I'm not sure how much I might've needed to heal and how often. I think it was tough for white mage to use stoneskin in battle because of the MP cost, but scholar could manage very well with aetherflow and energy drain. But maybe your idea is also mixed in with that stoneskin II could only be used outside battle (I think?)

Scholar could probably manage the MP cost better than White Mage, but I think what the other person was getting at is that Stoneskin is otherwise a DPS loss if you're casting it over Ruin back in the day. The thing about shields is that they're only necessary when the target would take damage that would otherwise kill them, and it's the shield that prevents them from dying, so your strategy didn't necessarily help your target survive. There's possibly an argument for if that shield was able to net you an extra cast of Ruin that you otherwise wouldn't have, but I'm not sure if the shield was powerful enough for that purpose.

That said, I did find one incredibly useful niche for in-battle Stoneskin casting during Leviathan Extreme as a Scholar. I had my faerie obey and set a macro to have her use Embrace on the target of my Stoneskin. I could then use Stoneskin on the off tank without the range nerf you got from healing the target of Briny Mirror, or whatever that status condition was--the one that lowered your spell range when you healed that ally. It was a debuff that persisted throughout the fight, but it didn't effect Eos/Selene's healing. Stoneskin was a way I could command the faerie to heal that target without getting penalized myself.

[Lethros]

only necessary when the target would take damage that would otherwise kill them

I said in dungeons, and really meant outside bosses. Tanks die if you don't do anything (although with some single pull/low level exceptions). Healing one way or another, that was part of the way I liked to do it then (Heavensward when I started). I didn't mean healing in raids or trials. I don't think I really did any at-level extreme trials until Stormblood, definitely no savage until then, and maybe not even any normal raids

[Rosa_Frandlia]

Except, it's ogcd, and therefore

1) Mana efficient
2) Does not replace damage output

Stoneskin, on the other hand, if we're being SLIGHTLY honest, was a thing you did at the start of a fight, then forgot existed for the most part and watched while it got cleared by the first thing every boss does, specifically because they were designed to clear stoneskin as their first move.

You are forgetting, stoneskin was also instacast meaning a weaving tool. Whether it be for Assize, Tetra, or Assylum it gave you a chance to weave when regen or aero didn't need to be recast. A shield and a 600 potency heal is much better than a cure 2 when we had stoneskin. stoneskin 2 was the one to cast either at a start of a fight or a phase transition,

[Maltothoris]

Stoneskin was never instacast. Whm just had a trait that reduced the cast time from 3 seconds to 2.5 seconds. stoneskin was never a instacast outside of swiftcast.

Edit: Also you could only use use stoneskin 2 outside of combat. If you wanted to stoneskin people during a phase transition, you had to use stoneskin 1.