Thread: 5.3 Wishlist

Originally Posted by IllyaPrisma

5.3 won't contain any major, groundbreaking changes to healers, and nobody should expect a more intuitive DPS rotation for SCH, or card changes for AST.

On the contrary, I see no reason why SCH cannot have back Shadow Flare. Pre-5.0 during a live letter, when addressing healers Yoshi mentioned that when looking at them they wanted to fill in the gaps. Well, there is a gap here. A big one. Both WHM and AST have at least two AoE that cause damage, and SCH has only one. If there is a discrepancy between healer DPS in the most recent high-end content, this is without question part of the reason why.

While a case can be made that SCH can spam their AoE on demand without sacrificing movement along with having Ruin 2, it does not inflict a DoT rendering it useless on ST. No need to raise the potency on Broil. Just give us back Shadow Flare, or the same thing with a different name if that's how they gotta do it; and it's a done deal. SCH would very likely top the healer DPS charts again - as they should.

I know it is wishful thinking, but it is a wishlist thread so I would love it if they came out and apologized for SCH and acknowledge that they went overboard.

A mount would be nice. One for each healer actually, so three.

Please stop forcing me to resummon Lily in Prae. I actually don't even bother resummoning her at all after the big pull, but this is still a techy issue that needs be resolved.

There is nothing they can do for AST this expansion that will have me take it off the bench, but I do hope that those who are still playing it get some favorable adjustments. Especially when it comes to their MP problems.

WHM is sitting a pretty good place right now. I finally took it into some more difficult content this weekend, and after getting things down again was very very enjoyable to play. I still have issues with lily expenditure due the situations in the game that do not warrant lily usage due to low healing requirements. Because of this, I would actually like for them to once again tie Benison to the lily gauge. No silly reduction to its CD though, and just make Benison function just like any other lily skill (instant GCD, 2.5s recast). This alone would add a significant element to WHM gameplay having them have to decide between a shield and heal, but also give them an easy lily dump skill if needed so they can dish out more Misery.

I want one of those mounts to a big giant white fuzzy silk moth.

I personally do not think SE will go back to giving Scholar 2 ground targeting abilities, especially since Sacred Soil is probably one of the strongest healing cds among any healer job now. It's a nice idea having Shadowflare back, but I think a simple AoE DoT would suffice for filling in both single target time gaps and trash mobs.

I'd love it if healers got redesigned to be fun again, but that's definitely not happening in a mid-expansion patch.

Healer balance is fine. Scholar doesn't need damage potency bumps. I'm hesitant about AST's MP economy too. While the MP struggles are something I remember well from late Heavensward WHM, I'm also keeping in mind two things: 1) AST is currently the numerically strongest of the three healers in both healing AND damage, and 2) improving their MP economy will increase those numbers. Not directly, but also remember that having another MP restoring tool means that ASTs won't have to meld as much piety, which frees up slots for materia that increase their damage and healing potencies. That's going to be the unintended consequence if the devs heed that request.

On that subject, I'm also iffy about MP management being a "good" way to increase gameplay interactivity. At least not in this game, and not in the way the kits are designed. I get it, I've played other games where keeping on top of your MP was important and it certainly -can- improve engagement. I don't think it'll do it here, at least not in any significant way. Why do I think that? Because healer kits don't have a whole lot of meaningful choice in them. A big part of the fun in keeping an eye on your MP is managing tradeoffs. Do I cast this heal because I need it, or can I get away with this other one because it's weaker but cheaper and I can keep myself rolling longer? It's a game of managing your resources carefully enough that you can keep up Always Be Casting, because your punishment for failure is running out and needing to stop the spells for a bit. FF14 healer kits have almost none of this save something like Cure vs Cure 2. I remember bleeding mana at the end of Heavensward as a WHM; that wasn't a game of "careful MP management", it was a game of realizing that my spells cost way too much MP and I literally couldn't indefinitely follow the ABC rule performing my basic tasks because there wasn't a choice I could have made that would keep me in the game if I played correctly. Just keeping up my basic lowest-cost rotations would eventually bleed me dry no matter how I spun it.

The point of my rambling here is, MP management is a good mechanic if you have a reward (you get to keep ABC) and a punishment (you have to sit for a bit to get your mana back). With the way healer kits work now, you don't really have much control over your MP output aside from never touching GCD heals and not raising people. And I definitely wouldn't want to be so MP negative that healer downtime, boring as it is now, is reduced to sitting around waiting for MP ticks.