Developers : Healer design mentality needs to change

[Saefinn]

For starters, I would probably stop comparing healers to tanks. In order to make the skills they use to perform their primary duty comparable, restore skills would have to heal and damage at the same time. While there are skills that exist that do this such as Earthly Star and Assize, having nearly everything healers do cause damage to the enemy is in no way a direction the devs will ever go. It's not a double standard. It's just a standard.

"Dual purpose" skills has been something i have thought of (in that we have Assize and Earthly Star), but only in the extent of how I think they could work for Scholar. A suggestion I made in a thread a while ago replaces none of Scholar's existing skills nor does it add new abilities, but plays to its tactician persona and potentially returns some of the risk/reward we got with stuff like Cleric Stance without being clunky or disastrous.

The idea is that there's 3 abilities in Scholar's tool kit than can modify the effect of certain abilities.
Those 3 Abilities are:
- Deployment Tactics
- Emergency Tactics
- Summon faerie

Summon faerie of course would be bringing back Selene for a Utility focus, but it could also change how the following faerie abilities work too: Fey Blessing, Fey Union, Summon Seraph (IE: a "Utility" based Seraph)
Deployment Tactics could work like Bane if used on an Enemy
Emergency Tactics could broaden its scope to not just replace Galvanise with a heal. But it would work like Thunder procs on BLM, so you could deal ALL damage dealt by Biolysis in one go. Maybe Emergency tactics could change the effect of Excogitation to be support based (it could be the reverse of Excogitation, instead of healing people when their health is below a threshold, it could be a damage boost as long as their health is above a threshold). The knock-on effect too is that instead of Excogitation being used so healers intentionally let people drop their health, but to use it when they're expecting your health to drop low.

I think this recycling could work because in a lot of content these abilities are just bloat. So when we don't need them, we can tactically re-purpose them. It adds risk/reward in that you will need to think about whether or not it's appropriate to use these abilities that way.

I'd also say it's still approachable for beginners because they can play the job exactly as it play right now. It won't be optimal play, but really, to me optimal play only matters in high end content, by which point we'd expect somebody knows how to play their job well by that point.

Of course, I've not thought about how such a thing would be balanced, just a principle of how you could make use of dual purpose abilities without compromising any of the existing job design and make it more engaging from a playability point.

[Gemina]

"Dual purpose" skills has been something i have thought of (in that we have Assize and Earthly Star), but only in the extent of how I think they could work for Scholar. A suggestion I made in a thread a while ago replaces none of Scholar's existing skills nor does it add new abilities, but plays to its tactician persona and potentially returns some of the risk/reward we got with stuff like Cleric Stance without being clunky or disastrous.

The idea is that there's 3 abilities in Scholar's tool kit than can modify the effect of certain abilities.
Those 3 Abilities are:
- Deployment Tactics
- Emergency Tactics
- Summon faerie

Summon faerie of course would be bringing back Selene for a Utility focus, but it could also change how the following faerie abilities work too: Fey Blessing, Fey Union, Summon Seraph (IE: a "Utility" based Seraph)
Deployment Tactics could work like Bane if used on an Enemy
Emergency Tactics could broaden its scope to not just replace Galvanise with a heal. But it would work like Thunder procs on BLM, so you could deal ALL damage dealt by Biolysis in one go. Maybe Emergency tactics could change the effect of Excogitation to be support based (it could be the reverse of Excogitation, instead of healing people when their health is below a threshold, it could be a damage boost as long as their health is above a threshold). The knock-on effect too is that instead of Excogitation being used so healers intentionally let people drop their health, but to use it when they're expecting your health to drop low.

I think this recycling could work because in a lot of content these abilities are just bloat. So when we don't need them, we can tactically re-purpose them. It adds risk/reward in that you will need to think about whether or not it's appropriate to use these abilities that way.

I'd also say it's still approachable for beginners because they can play the job exactly as it play right now. It won't be optimal play, but really, to me optimal play only matters in high end content, by which point we'd expect somebody knows how to play their job well by that point.

Of course, I've not thought about how such a thing would be balanced, just a principle of how you could make use of dual purpose abilities without compromising any of the existing job design and make it more engaging from a playability point.

I do like your thought process. Deployment is a useful but underutilized skill. Skills in all healer toolkits that drift should all be looked at, and intriguing and interactive play can be tied to all of them if the healer has to make a decision to use it for one of multiple purposes. As I was saying before, the pieces are all there to solve the puzzle and multi-purpose skills already exist as one of those pieces.

Deployment currently does not live up to its potential because of this, because it could be used to spread whatever status effect the SCH currently has active whether beneficial or detrimental. This would allow it to have more use in dungeons for spreading Biolysis to all targets, and during raids to spread their shields. This streamlines DT into ST vs AoE, but it is a hell of a lot better than what it is now.

Seraph is another possibility. I am ok with Lily being strictly support, but Seraph should really change things while she is out. This is (should be) SCH's burst window, so at the very least, Seraph should grant potency increases to all of SCH's actions, including Broil and Biolysis. Again, this would give Seraph usefulness in dungeons as she will not only grant sustainability to the tank, but she also helps the SCH kills things faster.

And now look at that. Two simple changes and SCH becomes hella fun to play again in both dungeons and raids, and it is done in a way that makes the 'heal as little as possible' mindset SE is frowns on redundant because there is no reason to hold onto DT to fit into Seraph's burst window since it is effective without increasing SCH's ST DPS. However, the moment you make DT something that does increase damage, then it changes everything, and the devs know this. The same can be said for Excog by giving SCH the option to use it for damage. This is how the illusion of choice is created and must be avoided at all costs when it comes to the healers.

However the gameplay is designed for any given healer, the player should be rewarded for playing the job as intended through damage, and healers are no exception to this. If SE is willing to meet the playerbase at this intersect, I feel that would be a giant step - if not leap in the right direction.

[Absurdity]

Seraph is another possibility. I am ok with Lily being strictly support, but Seraph should really change things while she is out. This is (should be) SCH's burst window, so at the very least, Seraph should grant potency increases to all of SCH's actions, including Broil and Biolysis. Again, this would give Seraph usefulness in dungeons as she will not only grant sustainability to the tank, but she also helps the SCH kills things faster.

Since we're on the topic of Seraph you could also change Seraph's toolkit depending on which fairy you had before summoning her, healing oriented when summoning Seraph while Eos is out and dps oriented when you had Selene instead.
Since Consolation is currently the only useful shield I wouldn't want to change Seraph to a dps only summon entirely.

And now look at that. Two simple changes and SCH becomes hella fun to play again in both dungeons and raids, and it is done in a way that makes the 'heal as little as possible' mindset SE is frowns on redundant because there is no reason to hold onto DT to fit into Seraph's burst window since it is effective without increasing SCH's ST DPS. However, the moment you make DT something that does increase damage, then it changes everything, and the devs know this. The same can be said for Excog by giving SCH the option to use it for damage. This is how the illusion of choice is created and must be avoided at all costs when it comes to the healers.

I don't see much of an issue with DT becoming an aoe dps tool as that would really only affect dungeons and it already rarely matters in that content.

[Gemina]

Since we're on the topic of Seraph you could also change Seraph's toolkit depending on which fairy you had before summoning her, healing oriented when summoning Seraph while Eos is out and dps oriented when you had Selene instead.
Since Consolation is currently the only useful shield I wouldn't want to change Seraph to a dps only summon entirely.

Unfortunately, that just creates the illusion of choice as the optimizing SCH will always be sure Selene is out before summoning Seraph, so half of her toolkit will remain underutilized due to only being useful in niche situations. That is what Seraph basically is now, so this wouldn't change much about her.

I don't see much of an issue with DT becoming an aoe dps tool as that would really only affect dungeons and it already rarely matters in that content.

It's not an issue so long as it doesn't boost the SCH's damage in an ST scenario. In the case of spreading Biolysis to multiple targets, this is an exception because it doesn't matter if it is used inside or outside Seraph's window. However, if DT could for example thundercloud a Biolysis for full damage plus the DoT, then it will unquestionably be used inside of Seraph's window if Seraph being out boosted the SCH's damage, effectively reducing your options of when to use it to just one. You would never see SCH DT an Adlo ever again unless its CD is at least half the duration of Seraph's, but as of right now since these CD are both 120s, the former would indeed be the case.