Chemist Kit theorycraft

[Seraphor]

You keep linking the General Discussion forums.

Yeah, I don't know why the url is general discussion, but the topic is on page 3 of the healer forums.

[Lyth]

...

I think if you want to avoid having players spam an unneeded ability to get to one they want, the restock should only proc from the effect (i.e. use Arctic Wind with immolate active, ends immolate (and the DoT), and gives drenched status + 1 Hi-Potion). There's a good amount of setup that goes into that (Oil -> Bomb -> wait for dot to tick down -> Arctic Wind -> Heavenly Wrath -> Vanish -> Dark Matter).

Alternatively - what if your damage abilities restocked your healing potions, but not vice versa? You might not always be healing, but you will be doing damage even during your downtime. Given that you can go above the recast charge limit through restocking as a trait, you could build up a reservoir of heals even if you're not using them.

[Shurrikhan]

I think if you want to avoid having players spam an unneeded ability to get to one they want, the restock should only proc from the effect (i.e. use Arctic Wind with immolate active, ends immolate (and the DoT), and gives drenched status + 1 Hi-Potion). There's a good amount of setup that goes into that (Oil -> Bomb -> wait for dot to tick down -> Arctic Wind -> Heavenly Wrath -> Vanish -> Dark Matter).

Alternatively - what if your damage abilities restocked your healing potions, but not vice versa? You might not always be healing, but you will be doing damage even during your downtime. Given that you can go above the recast charge limit through restocking as a trait, you could build up a reservoir of heals even if you're not using them.

Edit: I still need to better know what you mean by Vanish Edge's "Targets are vulnerable to item-based non-elemental damage", btw. Did they previously deal no damage? Or is it just basically the old Foe Requiem, reducing resistance by 10% (i.e. increasing non-elemental magic damage taken by 10%)? And since Dark Matter is the only one affected, does this really only matter when you need to spam Dark Matter for AoE, as Dark Matter is already worth maintaining for its Trick Attack effect? Additionally, is the Bravery Potion going to deal more relative potency per animation than the best possible direct damage spam, thus meaning you'd always want to spam DM-Bravery until Immolation, Drenched, and Forked Lightning need to be refreshed?

Let me make sure I'm visualizing the combos correctly.

All damage combos initiate from Oil, right, with some supplementation or extended combos provided by Vanish Edge (unless that's only really for AoE)? Oil -> Bomb (Immolation) [Pot] -> Arctic Wind (Drenched) [Hi-Pot]-> Heavenly Wrath (Forked Lightning) [X-Pot] [-> Dark Matter (with VE first in AoE so it can be spammed for higher damage, otherwise used only for the vulnerability debuff)]. I'd imagine so long as HW's initial damage under Drenched is greater than Bomb's normal initial damage, you'd want to use X-item on it outside of Niho windows, unless of course Dark Matter's damage under Vanish is even higher despite being an AoE???
(In Niho windows, you'd use X-Pot instead, I'd imagine, but the actual playflow would only change insofar as you delay X-item by one oGCD weave so it goes on X-Pot instead, since you wouldn't ever want to waste Oil CD or duration that could be spent cycling the highest potency per animation spam possible, except to refresh Dark Matter.)

Healing combos, on the other hand, initiate off themselves. Potion (AoE Hot) -> Hi-Pot (AoE Convalescence buff) // -> X-pot (Bonus healing).

Even if you made it so you could only Restock on a proper combo, you'd still have unlimited abilities to cast. Heck, unless they're incredibly low-potency, you wouldn't bother casting at all:

You'd just go Oil-Bomb-Pot-Arctic-HIpot-Xitem-Wrath-Bomb-Pot-Wrath-Xpot-Bomb-Pot-Wrath-[DarkMatter-Bravery]-Xpot-Bomb-Pot-Wrath-Xpot... making sure to refresh Immolation just before Oil falls off, Drenched just before Drenched falls off, Forked Lightning just before Forked Lightning falls off, Dark Matter before it falls off, etc., while otherwise just maximizing Wrath casts during Drenched but ensuring Xpot combos so it affords you more Wrath, which in turn forces you to alternate with Bomb-Pot.

If we made it only restock heals, it'd ensure that CHM would probably use GCD heals even less than existing healers, which doesn't sound all that... enviable, even if iconic. Worse, though, all it'd really amount to is Oil at best granting an extra 3 Pots, 2 Hi-Pots, and 1 X-pot per its burst phase. Depending on the potency and natural CD's of each, that'd likely mean Oil would have to be a pretty infrequent CD even then. Additionally, a tight duration on the Oil effect would ensure you don't want to waste any potential ability-casting uptime on mere spells during Oil's duration, thus removing any chance for weaves. If the Oil debuff is consumed on the first Immolate, then that phase would give 1 more of each healing potion, which would be a bit more reasonable and wouldn't feel as rushed; it'd just be kind of like GNB's added apm and ppm via its every other burst phase. Still, that may feel like an unnecessary convolution to some. (You'd be dealing that damage anyways, so why lock the extra 1 of each potion per 30/60/90/whatever number of seconds via a the burst phase you'd want to maximize anyways?)

tl;dr: Are you sure these item abilities need to be oGCD? It seems to cause a ton of problems, given that your only balancing point is basically just the limited windows of opportunities by which to chain combos as long/far as you can. Already this job looks like it'd be basically unplayable on any but the lowest ping, if balanced around its maximum potential. Couldn't we just make most of these abilities into weaponskills or instant casts instead?

Heck, you could throw out Salve completely and just spend casts refilling your Potion inventory if you wanted to go further with that.

[Lyth]

I really just wanted to reference Vanish-Doom/X-Zone. The end goal is to set up a bunch of elemental effects on some mobs, and then combo some big damage effects off of them to regain your healing potion stock.

You probably could make most of these into weaponskills or instant casts. I do think that having potions (healing or damage) be somehow limited by a total stock is still necessary, because that's what differentiates items from traditional spells. This is just brainstorming, you can flip around the combinations however you want. I've just laid out some of the healing and damage items that tend to recur in the series.

[Shurrikhan]

I really just wanted to reference Vanish-Doom/X-Zone. The end goal is to set up a bunch of elemental effects on some mobs, and then combo some big damage effects off of them to regain your healing potion stock.

You probably could make most of these into weaponskills or instant casts. I do think that having potions (healing or damage) be somehow limited by a total stock is still necessary, because that's what differentiates items from traditional spells. This is just brainstorming, you can flip around the combinations however you want. I've just laid out some of the healing and damage items that tend to recur in the series.

Again, the spirit's great. The names are great. The effects are cool. It's only the emergent gameplay that would be worrisome, but as you've said, this is just brainstorming. As long as all but the spirit of the kit and its gameplay is open to revision, this seems the most attractive CHM sample I've seen so far for sure.

I'd try to post my own in turn, but I'm still trying to work out what I'd want to see from the existing healers.