Developers : Healer design mentality needs to change

[Absurdity]

I honestly think cleric stance come back as high end optimization tool. My idea would be something like

Cleric Stance: Increase damage action potency by 5% and reduce healing action potency by 50%.

which would mean healer dps without cleric would work the exact same as now, and nobody but minmaxers would feel pressured to use it.

That way you add depth to gameplay to those who want it and you relieve casual players from worrying about it since the difference isnt that big.

That unfortunately fixes exactly 0 of the issues. You would turn on Cleric Stance and proceed to spam your 1 button dps ad infinitum and we would be back here again in about 5 minutes rightfully complaining that healer gameplay is terrible.

[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.

[linayar]

More DPS abilities won't make healing hard.

A couple of considerations:

1. There is a limit to the number of abilities they want to have, so more DPS abilities would take the place of some healing abilities.
2. As I said before, depending on how these DPS abilities work together, it might feel bad to interrupt them to heal. It would be a similar reason to why they remove cleric and tank's DPS stances.

[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.

[Saefinn]

A couple of considerations:

1. There is a limit to the number of abilities they want to have, so more DPS abilities would take the place of some healing abilities.
2. As I said before, depending on how these DPS abilities work together, it might feel bad to interrupt them to heal. It would be a similar reason to why they remove cleric and tank's DPS stances.

In counter to this.

Speaking as a controller user, who are supposedly more limited in space for abilities, on WHM and SCH I still have space for more abilities. The same sort of space AST's card abilities take up. AST doesn't need new abilities, it needs reworking of existing ones.

Given there is bloat in the number of healing-related abilities versus what we actually need, there's wiggle room here to swap them for other abilities. After all, they took up the space that DPS abilities took before.

And of course, the main important point: we did just fine before.

As I've played since the game's BETA as a healer, I can tell you what it was like for all these DPS abilities to work together, it didn't feel bad to interrupt them. Because it didn't flow in the same way as say, a Dragoon or a Monk, which can feel terrible when your rotation is interrupted. When you think of it this way, Gemina's comment about not comparing healers to tanks, because tanks too have a rotational flow like DPS jobs have. Healers never did, but what they did have, was more abilities they could use in their downtime.

And it wasn't clunky like turning Cleric stance on and off. Because there was no combo bonus nor any buffs to keep up through your abilities.

You could cast Miasma, heal then cast Bio and Bio II after. So the flow could be more dynamic that a standard DPS rotation, likely because they've considered that you might have to heal.

So your flow as a SCH might be:
Physick -> Miasma -> Physick -> Bio -> Bio II -> Bane -> Broil -> Ruin II -> Fey Wind
Or it might be
Succor-> Miasma -> Lustrate -> Bio -> Bio II -> Bane -> Shadowflare -> Adloquium -> Miasma III
Or
Miasma -> Bio -> Indomnibility -> Bio II -> Bane -> Shadowflare -> Miasma III

It really depended on what needs casting at the time.

[Nabril]

I figure they should buff healer DPS since every healer is required to DPS in order to complete the group. Make them be actually useful damage dealers.

[Crushnight]

I figure they should buff healer DPS since every healer is required to DPS in order to complete the group. Make them be actually useful damage dealers.

Healers are useful damage dealers, and in fact required for some savage+ fights, they are just so goddamn boring, overall enjoyability needs to be improved on healers and the issue stems from the devs mindset on how they think we should play rather than letting us decide for ourselves.

[Hyperia]

Sometimes I wonder if they should just scrap healers and make everybody use potions / food to heal up. Just make the existing healers 3 new damage and its over because I don't think there ever going to get healing right at this point. If they really want to have some kind of healerish job, then give the 3 new dps jobs a healing aura that will slowly regen people over time.

[Big_Oof]

You know, the disparity between healer gameplay as intended by the devs and the reality of it is something I've been thinking about for a while now and recently I came to a pretty amusing conclusion. The healer design that would fit current encounters as they are actually played already exists in the game and it is called Red Mage.

I'm not advocating that they should swap Red Mage to a healer job of course, but if you think about it, its kit is more tailored to how healing is actually done right now than the actual healers themselves. It has an engaging dps kit that isn't hard to understand or perform with but it does keep you awake at the very least. It has a party buff you can play around. It can spot heal pretty well if it has to (which is pretty much what
good healers do anyways), and has access to an instant rez that doesn't rely on a big CD. Again, call me crazy but in the current state of the game, that makes for a more interesting (and appropriate, if you will) "healer" than what we have. Hilarious stuff really.