A summary of healer issues

[Grimoire-M]

The point just soars right over your and Roeshel's head doesn't it?

You’re the one with literal rose tinted glasses in your avatar, not me.

I’m just tired of people hand waving my go-to healer’s (I started playing it in Heavensward, embrace management and all) former traits away as good gameplay instead of as the same jank we have now but with way more button mashing, because that was my experience of the class back then. It has legs to stand on without having to deal with carpal tunnel. The parts I love about it on the healing side didn’t go away entirely. If anything, they’re improved from prior iterations for the things that were added. It’s the DPS kit that we agree on. But pretending that the fun factor and ‘fluidity’ (which personally was never true for me prior to Shadowbringers) of old fairies and the power it carried weren’t inherently linked is also flat out incorrect. AST’s half casts are an example of the same thing from the other direction. Adding lossless weaving made their card management not garbage but also shot their DPS up by similar margins. The only reason I think Scholar’s was justified is because it brought all three healers to equal parity regarding their oGCDs. Unlike Roeshel, I do -not- think it should have cost their DPS rotation along with it. I play both sides of Arcanist equally and I get why you miss Bane. Losing Shadowflare was worth getting Soil back for me.

[Boizinho]

*sigh* how many times do I have to say it's not about the NUMBERS, it's about the gameplay?

Scholars gameplay loop right now is absolutely AWFUL, coming from a Scholar main since 2.3 (7-8 years ago). It is NOTHING like it used to be gameplay wise; no shadowflare, no using fairy actions in between casts, no micromanagement of fairy embraces, no Miasma 2, no Eye for an Eye spread, no original virus, no Malady debuff, no slow debuff.

NOTHING.

You said SCH can't be nerfed any more than it already is and it's objectively the worst healer. What you actually meant was that SCH is the job you have the strongest emotional reaction to. Those aren't anywhere near the same thing.

Did SCH get gutted harder than any other job in ShB? Yes. But even if you took SCH's current kit and removed all of the Faerie abilities, put all Aetherflow abilities on the GCD, and deleted Ruin II and Energy Drain, it would still have more going on than WHM's kit. The fact that SCH and AST got their kneecaps sawn off and still landed above WHM anyway just goes to show how huge the gap was to begin with. It was absolutely wrong for them to try to drag everyone to WHM's level rather than giving WHM a kit that's more complex than a level 30 Dragoon. But even after the mass gutting of the other two healers, they're like level 60 Dragoons at least.

It's just weird to suggest that SCH is in the worst shape out of the healers when you could remove half of its remaining kit and still give WHM a run for its money. It sort of just comes across as a selfish exclamation. Scholar is the worst one because I play Scholar, so Scholar being bad is worse than other healers being bad, because I don't play the other ones. Or maybe it's just a foregone conclusion at this point that WHM is completely non-competitive with other healers so they're not even part of the equation.

[FoxCh40s]

You said SCH can't be nerfed any more than it already is and it's objectively the worst healer. What you actually meant was that SCH is the job you have the strongest emotional reaction to. Those aren't anywhere near the same thing.

Did SCH get gutted harder than any other job in ShB? Yes. But even if you took SCH's current kit and removed all of the Faerie abilities, put all Aetherflow abilities on the GCD, and deleted Ruin II and Energy Drain, it would still have more going on than WHM's kit. The fact that SCH and AST got their kneecaps sawn off and still landed above WHM anyway just goes to show how huge the gap was to begin with. It was absolutely wrong for them to try to drag everyone to WHM's level rather than giving WHM a kit that's more complex than a level 30 Dragoon. But even after the mass gutting of the other two healers, they're like level 60 Dragoons at least.

It's just weird to suggest that SCH is in the worst shape out of the healers when you could remove half of its remaining kit and still give WHM a run for its money. It sort of just comes across as a selfish exclamation. Scholar is the worst one because I play Scholar, so Scholar being bad is worse than other healers being bad, because I don't play the other ones. Or maybe it's just a foregone conclusion at this point that WHM is completely non-competitive with other healers so they're not even part of the equation.

Which is true, because they are never going to significantly change White Mage, ever. It's why I stopped maining the job, for that very reason. Expecting them to significantly change Whitr Mage is like asking water to not be wet. It's impossible.

[Boizinho]

Which is true, because they are never going to significantly change White Mage, ever. It's why I stopped maining the job, for that very reason. Expecting them to significantly change Whitr Mage is like asking water to not be wet. It's impossible.

True enough. Though water may end up not being wet if they nerf Fluid Aura again in Endwalker.

[Sebazy]

Which is true, because they are never going to significantly change White Mage

And IMHO this is fine as long as it's still viable. SE really should embrace the job system's flexibility and push for diversity within the roles. Switching healers for different turns and content helped keep things fresh and I wonder if that's a big part of why so many look back fondly on HW when it was particularly common around 3.2 to 3.3.

In WoW, if my Shaman was obsolete for some piece of content I was probably going to be sitting out for it, in FFXIV, I just click a button and switch to the job that is more suited. Gearing just isn't an issue in the grand scheme of things. FFXI did well with this concept but FFXIV seems terrified of it.

[Semirhage]

And IMHO this is fine as long as it's still viable. SE really should embrace the job system's flexibility and push for diversity within the roles. Switching healers for different turns and content helped keep things fresh and I wonder if that's a big part of why so many look back fondly on HW when it was particularly common around 3.2 to 3.3.

In WoW, if my Shaman was obsolete for some piece of content I was probably going to be sitting out for it, in FFXIV, I just click a button and switch to the job that is more suited. Gearing just isn't an issue in the grand scheme of things. FFXI did well with this concept but FFXIV seems terrified of it.

Thunderous agreement in theory.

Something just rubs me the wrong way that, from my perspective, healer design "diversity" nearly always means WHM has less-smooth healing, zero utility, lower rDPS, clunkier weaving...when I come to the healer bazaar, I'd like to see what I see in the DPS caster section: several items each suited to their own special purposes for different reasons. In the metaphorical healer section, I've seen two items that look like Kitchenaids with a dozen attachments for doing anything you want, alongside a potato masher that has the dual weakness of doing nothing the other two don't already do (and often better), but it also doesn't bring anything to the table that they don't.

This is going to be the albatross around the healer role's neck forever, mark my words. So long as WHM is cursed to never bring anything unique, healer design is still going to be stumped that for some ~weird~ reason, the community thinks the healer with no unique contribution sucks compared to the others.

[Sebazy]

In the metaphorical healer section, I've seen two items that look like Kitchenaids with a dozen attachments for doing anything you want, alongside a potato masher that has the dual weakness of doing nothing the other two don't already do (and often better), but it also doesn't bring anything to the table that they don't.

This is the best content I've read on the forums for a while++

[QooEr]

So long as WHM is cursed to never bring anything unique, healer design is still going to be stumped that for some ~weird~ reason, the community thinks the healer with no unique contribution sucks compared to the others.

Players fixation with whm being the simplest healer adds to this, but whm couldve been simple And strong. they simply never build on the supposed strengths of whm. if it was supposed to be the "big heal healer", how come its healing potential is always lower than ast's, and its heal opportunity cost is always the highest? if its supposed to be the gcd healer then why is its only notable gcd heal cure iii? whm doing the comparative damage it does now was overdue since 3.4

[FoxCh40s]

Players fixation with whm being the simplest healer adds to this, but whm couldve been simple And strong. they simply never build on the supposed strengths of whm. if it was supposed to be the "big heal healer", how come its healing potential is always lower than ast's, and its heal opportunity cost is always the highest? if its supposed to be the gcd healer then why is its only notable gcd heal cure iii? whm doing the comparative damage it does now was overdue since 3.4

I've never understood why White Mage wasn't the buff healer? Like, where was Faith? Bravery? Their absolute insistence on all the healers being able to do everything means no one is good at anything. There are no strengths and weaknesses, meaning the one that can do both becomes the strongest.

It has absolutely perplexed me, as I started out as a White Mage for a reason. I wanted Iconic Elemental Power combined with Unsurpassed Party Interaction.

[Grimoire-M]

I've never understood why White Mage wasn't the buff healer?...I wanted Iconic Elemental Power combined with Unsurpassed Party Interaction.

I've never really associated White Mage as the 'buff character' across all FF games. It certainly has those aspects (ProShell), but it's never been the distinguishing factor the way it has been on classes like Bard or Dancer, or even within the mage category, Scholar, Green Mage, and Red Mage. And that's mostly due to Faith/Bravery being very late additions to the series in particular while those effects also have been traded across classes as much as they were across the White & Black magic Spell Lists themselves. Support Magic often fills out lower level spell lists that multiple classes have access to across the entire series, and sometimes lean on for their identities through secondary mechanics that White Mage itself doesn't get (hence the RDM/SCH association). I do associate White Mage with strong healing and strong caster damage at endgame (thank you Holy), but if I were to give it a unique identity that fits that theme, it would probably be through something like the Confession mechanic we got in the later half of Stormblood, but way more involved, where you get this additional healing resource that changes the context of your spells (Lily and non-Lily alike), and enables you to DPS in situations the other two straight up wouldn't be able to.

As an example of what I mean, here's a theoretical rework of Assize that uses Confession in the manner I'm talking about:

Assize: Deals damage with a potency of 400 to all nearby enemies. Additional Effects: Restores 5% of MP and applies two stacks of Confession to self and all allies in range.
Confession Effect: Upon receiving HP recovery or regeneration from the next Cure, Cure II, Medica, Tetragrammaton, Afflatus Solace, Afflatus Rapture, Regen, or Medica II cast by self, Confession consumes a stack for an additional heal. Potency: 200. Maximum Stacks: 4.
Cooldown 45s. Maximum Charges: 2.

Of course, the problem with "300 potency regen ticks*" and "Do I cast Medica or Cure III here?" is despite their theoretical ramifications SE still has to design fights that strain those resources mid-fight, not at the last minute pre-enrage. A rework like that needs even all healers to at least be using healing GCDs 20-35% of the time in end of tier speedclears to feel impactful. And I think that's why something like the above Assize rework just doesn't matter (and why I haven't bothered posting my full reworks of all three healers), even if it would be fun to juggle in theory. If SE isn't going to put some effort into easing off their item level scaling and amping up sustained damage accordingly, adjustments to any of the healer's kits in the name of chasing raw potency will consistently fall into that trap.

That's at least partially why I advocate for squishing the item level gaps we have each tier and want to add a significant healing potency increase to Piety. Those are vectors that directly target that problem, and also have the benefit of making gear and 'dead on arrival' content matter more, without actually requiring SE to change much on their end. If the gap between min-ilvl and BiS healing requirements is smaller, then actual skill expression matters more, or at the very least, you won't see Succor becoming irrelevant within a month.