A summary of healer issues

[SweetPete]

I just want them to remove sch from arcanist so they can rework the job to be amazing. It’s just not good in Shb. I would love to summon both Eos and Selene at the same time.

[Foxkid]

I just want them to remove sch from arcanist so they can rework the job to be amazing. It’s just not good in Shb. I would love to summon both Eos and Selene at the same time.

I at least want them to undo the decision that was "homogenize Selene and Eos into glamour pets" first because there's little reason to do such a thing if it means nothing more than "SCH can maybe now auto-embrace 2 people while focusing shields on the tank and damaging the boss".

I really do miss Fey Dusk for that party-wide Esuna and the slight dps increment from the gcd cd decrease (though make it a little bit faster maybe or give it another offensive-support effect). Not to mention the Silence skill she had as well, though that one is personal preference.

[SweetPete]

I at least want them to undo the decision that was "homogenize Selene and Eos into glamour pets" first because there's little reason to do such a thing if it means nothing more than "SCH can maybe now auto-embrace 2 people while focusing shields on the tank and damaging the boss".

I really do miss Fey Dusk for that party-wide Esuna and the slight dps increment from the gcd cd decrease (though make it a little bit faster maybe or give it another offensive-support effect). Not to mention the Silence skill she had as well, though that one is personal preference.

I agree with you. Now that the problem child Astro is becoming pure healer and we getting sage. Hopefully the devs can properly balance the healers. I don’t think they will give more dps options sadly. I can see Astro and sch being the buffing healers while whm and Sage are the selfish dps healers. I also believe sch and smn will be separated from each other in end walker. It can finally branch out so much more to the sch job if they weren’t connected to arcanist. I’m still for being able to summon both eos and Selene at the same time. That’s my dream.

[Recon1o6]

if anything its summoner that needs to be removed from arcanist, since everyone much prefers sch having dots and a pet...you know the very things smn are asking to be removed in favour of trances

also please stop with the "ast was a problem child" no it wasn't. The devs have never said they had balancing issues with the job and we've always known the reason whm got shafted was because of the devs reluctance to give it utility because they used it as a test bed for the problematic pure healer concept and in typical SE fashion, doubled down on it in shb

The problem children here are the developers gutting abilities and traits in pursuit of a playstyle that fundamentally doesnt work in this game

[Deceptus]

also please stop with the "ast was a problem child" no it wasn't. The devs have never said they had balancing issues with the job and we've always known the reason whm got shafted was because of the devs reluctance to give it utility because they used it as a test bed for the problematic pure healer concept and in typical SE fashion, doubled down on it in shb

There really is no denying that AST caused a mess. It was either the jack of all trades / master of none and no one wanted it beause it underperformed, or it could do anything as well as provide buffs and it was extremely overpowered.

[Grimoire-M]

if anything its summoner that needs to be removed from arcanist, since everyone much prefers sch having dots and a pet...you know the very things smn are asking to be removed in favour of trances

also please stop with the "ast was a problem child" no it wasn't. The devs have never said they had balancing issues with the job and we've always known the reason whm got shafted was because of the devs reluctance to give it utility because they used it as a test bed for the problematic pure healer concept and in typical SE fashion, doubled down on it in shb

The problem children here are the developers gutting abilities and traits in pursuit of a playstyle that fundamentally doesnt work in this game

Summoner’s far more likely to stick with Arcanist than Scholar is just cause of the relative developer work involved (Arcanist is a DPS class, in-lore there’s more Summoner-Arcanist links and references than Scholar-Arcanist, Alphinaud uses abilities from both). There’s also little reason to split them beyond the shared exp, so most likely Scholar would remain an Arcanist 30 unlock but otherwise be split off from Summoner entirely.

[Alex073088]

By far my favorite thread in existence. They absolutely ruined Scholar. I want the pet to heal without the scholar being locked into animation like pre-SHB, I want more DPS skills so I am not mindlessly cast broil over and over on downtime in 97% of content.
Skills I want to see brought back:

Embrace
Bane
Shadowflare
Additional dots
Old Selene

And they can remove some of those uninteresting skills they put into the game, for example. level 76 aoe heal on an absurd cd, make Seraph feel better(like way better, you barely control anything amazing with it).
I noticed Sage showcased maybe 3 attacks so I am hopeful that the scholar gets more engaging dps rotation this time around, and that the fairy is healing without the scholar needing to point at it.

[Eclesis]

Left the game at 5.0 because of the job changes, temporarily taking another look because of EW hype, sad to see that nothing much has changed from the healer implementation then. Good summary, for what it's worth hope someone over there is paying attention.

Surprised at the stated reasons for this mess, though - SE seem to have convinced themselves (and a lot of players) that the healer homogenization was for the benefit of making them "more accessible for casuals" when the only real benefit is flattening raid numbers. The chaotic unpredictability in casual content was exactly where old AST (and SCH, from what friends tell me) shined, and frankly I was hoping "healer rebalance" meant "add some more non-healing stuff to WHM rather than making everything gimp WHM and further gimping WHM. "Healing" as in "making the HP bars go up" is not a full-time job in this game and the easier the content the more apparent that is; sure it's fun to salvage a run gone wrong but you shouldn't be hoping for a disaster party just to get some excitement. When things are going well tanks and DPS still have their complex rotations, while healers are stuck with 2111112.

I'm a complete casual and was never interested in healers until I tried (SB) AST; had tried WHM as a newbie and didn't like it, ended up playing AST as much as my main job cause I loved the card system, which made up for the anemic DPS options (which I would not have wanted to inflict on any other job, much less all of them). Now the cards are pointless busywork that can just as well be distilled into a single button AND the DPS still sucks. If the stated goal was "get more casuals to play healers" I'm sorry to say it had the opposite effect on me; you can't pay me to play a healer the way they are right now, I don't care what the AIN says. And no matter how sparkly that new Sage job is if it's more of the same then why bother?

[Imora]

Only concern i have with adding new skills is button bloat.

Where the heck am I supposed to put new skills? Looking at endgame play, sch is already full on a controller. It's the healer i want to play but at the same time that many buttons is super daunting.

[ty_taurus]

In regards to button bloat, I honestly think we'll one day need a true culling of healing actions. I think people get a bit sensitive when it comes to the idea of removing things, but it might be a good time to start considering how to simplify healing tools. One of the reasons why healing is as easy as it is is because there are such powerful OGCD healing abilities, and many of them. In a lot of cases, that healing feels superfluous in most content.

Back during the 2.X era, WHM only had Cure, Cure II, Cure III, Medica, Medica II, Regen, and Bendiction. SCH only had Physick, Adloquium, Succor, Lustrate, Embrace, and Whispering Dawn (Eos only). Yet both were able to get through all the coils of Bahamut, which is still some of the most challenging content to date when synched. Maybe it's a good time to consider some serious fat trimming. I don't think we need to go back to that only, but maybe we need to think about what healing tools are most interesting and reevaluate how each healer heals. Like I'd argue AST should make Earthly Star the focal point of their healing and think of how to play with that concept more.