Want healers to be more accessible? Add "Quickened Aetherflow" back in + more

[Gravagar]

I'm gonna make the argument that healers need to be hit with the design philosophy behind Quickened Aetherflow across the board in order to be more accessible to new players. For those who don't know, or need a recap: In Stormblood, Scholars had this as a trait: "Reduces Aetherflow recast time by 5 seconds upon execution of an action that requires Aetherflow."


The design of this ability guides the player on how to play. "Use Your Stacks!!" Find me a scholar who doesn't agree that using your stacks up by the time AF is off cooldown is good play- I'll show you a liar. This trait guides the player by rewarding good play.


On Shadowbringers launch, this trait was removed. Energy Drain was also removed, but at least that was added back, which returned us to a state where utilizing your stacks to the fullest is part of Scholar's gameplay. That means using them on healing and mitigation first, then treating yourself with some Drains with your spare change. I believe Quickened Aetherflow is still sorely missed, though. Not only should it be added back, but I think every healer is STILL lacking similar key features that help improve accessibility by guiding the player towards making good gameplay decisions. This is because it is an instance of "breadcrumbs"- positive-focused design that rewards the player for good play. I love getting the damage buff in E8S, for instance, and I'd LOVE love love, absolutely adore, seeing similar mechanics used liberally from here-on in. Not just in encounter design, but job design as well.


White Mage sort of has this in the Blood Lily, but has the awkwardness of sometimes encouraging you to use heals when they'd be pure overheal, just for the sake of the mechanic. Overall, I'd like to see that system be more developed, to remove instances of encouraging bad play. It's ALMOST great.


AST is sorely lacking in breadcrumb design. The current card system causes a lot of Autopilot Brain, which isn't great. I'd like to see the added breadcrumbs here- since AST dishes out buffs so frequently, I'd like to see their design encourage stacking multiple different damage buffs as a player-visible mechanic, to make the practice of the "raid buff window" something that you don't need a discord or a wiki or a google doc to teach you. It's good play, so please, encourage it in a way that a total newbie playing AST gets rewarded by game- and job-design for good play.


Want new players to have an easier time learning how to play healer jobs, devs? Then you need mechanics that provide guidance baked into the job itself. Reward the player for good play, and do not reward the player for bad play. Try to avoid punishing them for bad play- withholding the reward is punishment enough. And, for the love of Nophica's bosom, please don't go trashing systems that were working to do what you tried to achieve in the first place!!! I'd love to hear thoughts and ideas on how to implement breadcrumbs to improve job design!


edit: post's a bit long, hope emphasizing with b/i/u helps improve readability, 3kchar


edit2: My goal is to get the devs to consider this. Any 'Likes' you can give will improve those chances. Please leave a 'like' if you approve!

[Grimoire-M]

Please don’t give SCH QA back. They don’t need it. Stack management went out the window when it was available. Nevermind Fey Union management. Just use Dissipation and Recitation. Seriously. Your gameplay will improve without encouraging blind ED spam every time you possibly can. Part of SCH’s tension and fun comes from NOT having answers for everything. All they need right now is a non-Aetherflow based damage oGCD with charges and their former DoT management brought back.

Blood Lilies are fine. Find ways to use them instead of Regen if you’re having trouble dumping stacks. I’d argue WHM needs a filler DPS spell that uses Lilies, and a trait that decreases Afflatus Misery’s Blood Lily cost to 2 and their regular Lily cap to 4. Maybe give back Aero III as an instantcast DoT that matches the potency value of the next Glare/Stone upgrade. Nothing complicated.

AST cards need their former card functionality restored to some degree. It’s painful to input on a controller. Add some way to see cards before drawing them too.

[Billythepancake]

I'd love to have quickened aetherflow back, just to have bio not line up with aetherflow anymore, also, yes, please, encourage people to actually use their main class mechanic. I don't see why it was removed. Having more aetherflow doesn't give SCH an answer to every heal, all it does is reward them for proper aetherflow uses. Your main aetherflow heals will always be excog and indom, both of which are on long-ish CDs, 45 and 30 seconds respectively, having more aetherflow at most gives you more lustrates, which is more of your "oh no" button, it's not used nearly as often as your other aetherflow heals. As for it making fairy gauge harder to manage? lol, that gauge is worthless. Both heals on it are pathetic, maybe when there's actually something on the gauge worth using frequently that'd be a genuine concern, as is you could get rid of the gauge and both abilities tied to it and I wouldn't miss it in the slightest. I'd gladly trade those for QA back.

[Kiarin]

Not sure about this one particular feature, but in general I very much agree. As I said in other thread, a good way to solve many of healers' issues is to add synergy between abilities. Make all abilities interconnected. Make them all somehow affect each other. Make a fluid, flexible rotation. Not as it is now, when Adlo and/or W.Dawn and/or Excog, so to say, are floating around each other in a vacuum.

If there were a system of synergies, then average healers would just heal as they usually do, not realizing - and not caring - what they miss. But for good and perceptive healers - sky would be their skill ceiling :-).

[Kabooa]

You can just say you want AF to have 45 second cooldown.

It's shorter, it's cleaner, and doesn't require you justifying what cooldown timers already teach.

[Gravagar]

Please don’t give SCH QA back. They don’t need it. Stack management went out the window when it was available. Nevermind Fey Union management. Just use Dissipation and Recitation. Seriously. Your gameplay will improve without encouraging blind ED spam every time you possibly can. Part of SCH’s tension and fun comes from NOT having answers for everything. All they need right now is a non-Aetherflow based damage oGCD with charges and their former DoT management brought back.
...

Your points on WHM and AST are good. I disagree about SCH, on many points, but I'll stay on-topic: I'm iffy to recommend using Dissipation to anyone in most circumstances because deleting your fairy at the wrong time can cause you big problems. That's one of the main reasons why I'm absolutely baffled that Dissipation still made the cut when so many of Scholar's tools got gutted. What parts of SCH do you feel could get some breadcrumbs to help unify the kit and guide scholars to Good Plays without relying on external guides / videos / discord servers?

Not sure about this one particular feature, but in general I very much agree. As I said in other thread, a good way to solve many of healers' issues is to add synergy between abilities. Make all abilities interconnected. Make them all somehow affect each other. Make a fluid, flexible rotation. Not as it is now, when Adlo and/or W.Dawn and/or Excog, so to say, are floating around each other in a vacuum.


If there were a system of synergies, then average healers would just heal as they usually do, not realizing - and not caring - what they miss. But for good and perceptive healers - sky would be their skill ceiling :-).

Yeah! The general point's more important than the specific details.

You can just say you want AF to have 45 second cooldown.
...

I could say that. And, if that was what I wanted, I would. I wouldn't complain if it was reintroduced with a similar -15s CD reduction, nor would I if it had -3s instead. For the sake of argument, if cooldown timers did teach players how to play jobs (personally disagree, but...), then I don't see why I should be satisfied with JUST a basic system when I could ask for a more robust one that provides greater guidance than a merely adequate system. Healers shouldn't even be using their healing CDs on-cooldown, unless they deal damage or generate MP. The fact that they have cooldowns doesn't seem to stop players from misusing these tools. So, our healer mechanics should be focused on rewarding good cooldown usage, not just blinding going "haha asylum go brrrrr" just because a button lit up again.

[QooEr]

i agree the game should reward good play. i kinda wish they moved the freecure and enhanced benefic procs to the dps spells

[Recon1o6]

absolutely, the game should reward good play, especially with healers and punish idiots who just want to sit there, occasionally casting cure and no broil/stone/malefic

synergy and complexity are sorely needed in healers again, and that's why i keep coming here as someone whose ditched healers. I want to heal damn it, but i want to have things to aim for, to improve at my job when i get more skilled as a healer

[HeulGDarian]

Accessibility is a euphemism for shit change my mind

[Grimoire-M]

Your points on WHM and AST are good. I disagree about SCH, on many points, but I'll stay on-topic: I'm iffy to recommend using Dissipation to anyone in most circumstances because deleting your fairy at the wrong time can cause you big problems. That's one of the main reasons why I'm absolutely baffled that Dissipation still made the cut when so many of Scholar's tools got gutted. What parts of SCH do you feel could get some breadcrumbs to help unify the kit and guide scholars to Good Plays without relying on external guides / videos / discord servers?

Actually press the buttons.

Seriously, Dissipation isn’t a bad cooldown. Learning how to use it isn’t going to magically make sense until you actively try to make use of it. It’s DPS and healing positive but actually requires thought. My problem with Quickened Aetherflow is that it trivializes SCH’s Cooldown management. That also includes Fey Union, which would be up way more often. It doesn’t make the class ‘hard’ as billy assumed I meant, it makes it brainless by completely mitigating the need to manage Aetherflow actions or Fairy Gauge at all. That’s my problem with it. Healers already barely have any resource management beyond their GCDs, why would you want to further trample on that?

EDIT: Was at work when I first wrote this, but to prove my claim that Quickened Aetherflow trivializes SCH's Aetherflow management, I'll demonstrate that it will do so even with Kabooa's suggestion to reduce it to 45s.

Stacks generated:
Aetherflow 3/45s -> 12/180s.
Recitation (Indom or Excog) 1/90s -> 2/180s.
Dissipation 3/180s.
Total: 17 Aetherflow stacks, 2 are limited to Indom or Excog.

Aetherflow spenders:
Sacred Soil/Indom 2/30s -> 12/180s
Excog 1/45s -> 4/180s
Total: 16, not factoring the use of on-demand cooldowns such as Lustrate or Energy Drain.

Now add another 25 seconds (Dissipation + Recitation's effect on Quickened Aetherflow as it existed in SB) onto that, which adds another aetherflow cycle every 6 minutes, roughly speaking. There's no reason to add such a ludicrous buff onto it again. SCH is already -barely- limited by Aetherflow as is. At that point the only reason Aetherflow exists is to add Energy Drains and Lustrates. We might as well add that in the form of an actual DPS cooldown instead, rather than bolster SCH's maximum healing throughput as a knock on effect.

As for how to improve SCH's gameplay, merge Dissipation and Summon Seraph, in addition to my previous suggestions (add a charge-based DPS oGCD, bring back DoT management). When you unlock Seraph give Dissipation 2 charges, and lower its cooldown to 90s. Force it to alternate between Dissipation and Seraph every other use. Forcing people to use one in order to get the other will make it clear why you should be alternating both. Another idea would be to make Deployment Tactics act as Bane when used on an enemy, with no drop off. That way you can justify leaving the cooldown alone.