A summary of healer issues

[Recon1o6]

From what I read of that poster, it seemed they wanted to say something related to healer jobs being rightfully seen as awful by long term healers but wasn't sure what point they were trying to make.
I've done it myself in a couple of renathras' spammed threads. Was about to make a point but decided it wasnt worth it and didn't bother posting for various reasons.

I disagree with Ty on a few things, but his reply here wasnt one of them. There's enough healers here to call him out for being a dick or be wrong if either were the case since he's one of the more mild mannered folk here and tends to provide evidence where required.

[ty_taurus]

From what I read of that poster, it seemed they wanted to say something related to healer jobs being rightfully seen as awful by long term healers but wasn't sure what point they were trying to make.
I've done it myself in a couple of renathras' spammed threads. Was about to make a point but decided it wasnt worth it and didn't bother posting for various reasons.

I disagree with Ty on a few things, but his reply here wasnt one of them. There's enough healers here to call him out for being a dick or be wrong if either were the case since he's one of the more mild mannered folk here and tends to provide evidence where required.

That could be a nice change of pace conversation to dive into. What parts do you disagree with?

[Recon1o6]

That could be a nice change of pace conversation to dive into. What parts do you disagree with?

Astrologian mainly. For example, in another thread you brought up Sage being very challenging sharlayan discipline and astro be on the simpler side due to cards.

In case you forgot, Astrologian too, is a challenging sharlayan discipline. The "easy" version of it is the one ishgard uses which is concerned only with the dragonstar.


Sage's challenge should be from managing eukrasia if we were to stick to lore. The other reason its tricky is just how tricky nouliths are to use. Meanwhile Astro's challenge in lore comes from its spells (time dilation for example) and the fact you need to be good at both physics and observing/interpretating natural phenomena. Especially now one of your primary reference points dropped on etheirys


reallyy though no healer has an excuse in lore to not have a high skill ceiling

[ty_taurus]

Astrologian mainly. For example, in another thread you brought up Sage being very challenging sharlayan discipline and astro be on the simpler side due to cards.

In case you forgot, Astrologian too, is a challenging sharlayan discipline. The "easy" version of it is the one ishgard uses which is concerned only with the dragonstar.


Sage's challenge should be from managing eukrasia if we were to stick to lore. The other reason its tricky is just how tricky nouliths are to use. Meanwhile Astro's challenge in lore comes from its spells (time dilation for example) and the fact you need to be good at both physics and observing/interpretating natural phenomena. Especially now one of your primary reference points dropped on etheirys


reallyy though no healer has an excuse in lore to not have a high skill ceiling

Oh, I don't necessarily believe AST should be simple per say, but rather designed to appeal to players who want a more support-focused playstyle by having their GCD rotation involve setting up and activating their buffs, and in order to both function in solo content (and be fun) and to stay competitive with the other healers, the act of setting up and detonating these buffs would generate a stacking resource. When you attack, one is consumed to deal Malefic potency damage, and you can also pass these stacks over to other players to detonate for you. In solo play, you'd have a rotation of setting up your own buffs, then quickly bursting down enemies with effectively double potency Malefics. I do believe every healer should have room for optimization.

[Recon1o6]

snip

Hard agree on the room for optimising. I won't dispute that, even as someone who thinks parses etc are dumb. (I see skill expression more of executing mechanics consistently and adjusting your rotation accordingly to maintain uptime rather than chasing perfect numbers through greed and overgearing)

As someone who likes support though, I don't think GCD cards is a good idea from a fun or rotational standpoints.

Fun wise, there's a flat number of gcds per minute. By turning the cards gcd, this limits what options you have for spells which is the issue with all healers- lack of damage spells. Astrologian would still end up having a very dull rotation of Draw-Navigate to target-Play card-malefic-malefic etc since all your stacks will be detonated by malefic as you said.
Or if they are detonated by other players...your still spamming malefic when not using cards since someone's nicked your stacks


On rotation- This would also have the problem on controller of extreme APM scrolling through the party list depending on what card you draw no matter if its teh current invisible cards, or the previous fun cards. Not everyone will have the idea or hotbar space for a macro to every player. Assuming your rotation involves more cards than before that is to set up the various buffs.
Too few cards and you're stuck casting malefic, too many and you easily get a repeat of 5.0-5.3 Ast issues.

[ty_taurus]

Hard agree on the room for optimising. I won't dispute that, even as someone who thinks parses etc are dumb. (I see skill expression more of executing mechanics consistently and adjusting your rotation accordingly to maintain uptime rather than chasing perfect numbers through greed and overgearing)

As someone who likes support though, I don't think GCD cards is a good idea from a fun or rotational standpoints.

Fun wise, there's a flat number of gcds per minute. By turning the cards gcd, this limits what options you have for spells which is the issue with all healers- lack of damage spells. Astrologian would still end up having a very dull rotation of Draw-Navigate to target-Play card-malefic-malefic etc since all your stacks will be detonated by malefic as you said.
Or if they are detonated by other players...your still spamming malefic when not using cards since someone's nicked your stacks


On rotation- This would also have the problem on controller of extreme APM scrolling through the party list depending on what card you draw no matter if its teh current invisible cards, or the previous fun cards. Not everyone will have the idea or hotbar space for a macro to every player. Assuming your rotation involves more cards than before that is to set up the various buffs.
Too few cards and you're stuck casting malefic, too many and you easily get a repeat of 5.0-5.3 Ast issues.

I bounced around a lot on the concept because it's a tricky one and I do not have access to the best environment to experiment with it which is a prototyping build. If I were on the clock and able to test it in engine, I'd probably have a more concrete example of what I envision, which is all just to say that I haven't solidified any specific iteration of the concept as of yet. However, here are some more specifics to the general idea I have in mind and why I think it does work:

If it's on the GCD, then Drawing and Playing a card do not require being weaved onto target party members while maintaining Malefic uptime on the boss. I also would have you able to Draw and Hold multiple cards and play them in that order, so you can Draw 3 cards and begin planning who they belong on. Another idea is that all cards are played on yourself to a maximum, and Celestial Opposition is another GCD action that applies the effects of all your cards to the party. Celestial Intersection could be another GCD in this example that doubles the effect of the cards on one party member that you can use after each Celestial Opposition. This combo would also mitigate the amount of needed single target weaving. Sleeve Draw returns giving you 3 cards with a priority system... something like Balance > Arrow > Spear > Bole > Ewer > Spire, or whatever depending on what card effects I stuck to, essentially ensuring you have the optimal trio for buff windows while making decision-based gameplay about the time between those windows.

Additionally, Minor Arcana would also be a GCD card action, and would generate the lord, lady, and knave which would replace actions on your hotbar as upgraded versions of those actions which also net you those passive DPS stars. Lord replaces Gravity, for example, while Lady replaces Helios. I've gone back and forth on what I'd see of the Knave, but there would no longer be RNG with the Minor Arcana since you get all of them each time.

The DPS library would end up looking like something to this effect:
- Malefic, your filler
- A new spell that generates stars for your passive damage, replaces Combust (20 second cooldown on the GCD with 2 charges)
- Gravity, under certain conditions applies a 5% damage mitigation debuff. The Potency would be increased to match Malefic's with 50% dropoff, but costs MP. Not entirely sold on how to trigger this at the moment.
- Premonition, standard step sized AoE cooldown that puts a debuff on enemies that deals Malefic potency to them when you cast Celestial Opposition, or something similar to that.

But all of this is just one take on the idea. There are countless ways you could interpret the concept of a healer who disguises their DPS as support, and I firmly believe that's a niche AST should fill, both because it's a design niche that none of the other healers have ever filled and offers a starkly different playstyle which is a good thing, and also because, while I disagree on principle with players who have actively fought against DPS on the healer role, I do sympathize with players who do not like DPSing for 80%-100% of their GCD, regardless of whether that's 1 button, or a full rotation, and believe they deserve a healer that appeals to their fantasy. It is something that can be achieved, and while harder to conceptualize, is worth the effort.

[ASkellington]

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Aside from feeling clunky, one major draw back I see to your idea of cards on the GCD is it being tied to increased Malefic potency.

Cards now, are useless to be placed on an AST in solo content. I would even say in the old SB system they're just as useless outside of maybe Spire/Ewer. But my point is, to me it feels like I would be doing a GCD version of Astrodyne in solo content, or NIN mudras, which, to me feel awful and I want nothing to do with.

I get that there is going to be no fix for AST being miserable in solo content no matter how you spin it, but this feels like it would be worse in some instances.

For group content which is what this is mostly more balanced around, again, I still don't want GCD cards. Part of why I like AST for all its faults is the weaving. With your GCD cards, you're removing it and instead replacing it with a system that seems to feel more unfun and more importantly - clunky.