Relatively large concern about new Healer: Sage

[Mahoukenshi]

Spoiler alert: Healing story dungeons is not very hard. I am sure you can use the "Cure 2" equivalent the whole dungeon and be fine.
By the time people arrive at end-content, they should have a grasp on the job already.

This maybe come as a surprise, but this depends on the players and ther innate (lack of) skill level. Just to give a short ancedotal perspective: I don't consider myself a good or above-average player, so whatever, but I did an actual pre-50 dungeon on SCH for grand company quest (Dzemael Darkhold). And healing felt quite rough in it, mostly during big(ger) trash packs. Adlo's shield was not really helping during bigger pulls, Physic felt underperforming and Lustrate has its 3 charges.

But eh... What can I say, by NA standard, I'd have been kicked post-50 anyways for being shaky with many mechanics *lol*.

[Deceptus]

I don't consider myself a good or above-average player, so whatever, but I did an actual pre-50 dungeon on SCH for grand company quest (Dzemael Darkhold). And healing felt quite rough in it, mostly during big(ger) trash packs. Adlo's shield was not really helping during bigger pulls, Physic felt underperforming and Lustrate has its 3 charges.

But eh... What can I say, by NA standard, I'd have been kicked post-50 anyways for being shaky with many mechanics *lol*.

SCH and WHM both feel extremely underwhelming in low level content after their healing "revamp", especially in MP management. While AST gets 16% MP back per minute at lvl 30 via Draw, SCH has to wait until 45 to get 10% back per minute and WHM doesn't get anything outside of Lucid Dreaming until they get Thin Air.

If you're casting every GCD like you should be, you can run into some major MP issues.

IMHO, this is an easy fix, Aetherflow needs to go back to lvl 30 and Fluid Aura needs to give 5-8% mana back on cast. That would fix low level mana management on SCH and WHM.

[EaMett]

Aetherflow needs to go back to lvl 30.

edit: nvm I'm a dumb. I thought we were talking about ED. (previously said they would remove ED next expansion.

[Rongway]

On the other hand, if SE is separating healers into "HoT healers" and "Shield healers" we can now have:


-----------------Self-buffing Dps-----------------

[WHM]<---------------------------------->[SGE]

Pure Heal <-----------|-----------> Shield Heal

[AST]<------------------------------------>[SCH]

----------------Raid-buffing Dps-----------------

Does that mean my boy SCH gets to be the Support healer I've always dreamed of?

In my opinion Sage and Scholar are reversed in that dichotomy, but that is mostly because Scholar’s better suited to that role thanks to the fairy being able to take on a significant amount of healing burden. If SE actually goes in hard on making Sage emulate Scholar as much as is reasonably required then they’ll get Scholar’s level of oGCD healing but given the preview had them actively using Nouliths in DPS spell casts they likely won’t get an Embrace equivalent. I think it’s more likely that Sage will get raid buffs that are stronger than what SCH can do currently (but worse than AST) and/or a non-pet version of Carbuncle to compensate for needing to actively heal. Being the first ranged auto attack healer would fit in line with that, or maybe the needle guns operate as a passive bunshin strike on heals. Either way I’m expecting its baseline GCDs to be weaker than SCH to compensate for whatever form of DPS compensation they get.

They specifically said Sage would be self-buffing in the announcement.

I wouldn't be surprised if we got some form of Cleric Stance just for Sage. Something like "Increases magic damage dealt by 10% while reducing healing done by 30%. Effect ends upon reuse. Recast time: 6s". The loss of Cleric Stance has been one of the largest laments of healer mains for years and the devs know this.

[Grimoire-M]

They specifically said Sage would be self-buffing in the announcement.

I wouldn't be surprised if we got some form of Cleric Stance just for Sage. Something like "Increases magic damage dealt by 10% while reducing healing done by 30%. Effect ends upon reuse. Recast time: 6s". The loss of Cleric Stance has been one of the largest laments of healer mains for years and the devs know this.

I doubt it's going to be that. My impression was they'd be getting multiple cooldowns that augment GCD heals the way that SCH does (ie. Recitation/Emergency Tactics/Deployment Tactics), and if they got a DPS equivalent it would operate similar to Reassemble on MCH or Bristle/Whistle on BLU but be split to also work on healing, giving its use an associated DPS cost. Cleric stance was removed for good reason. While the micromanagement was satisfying in some respects it also was viewed as punishing and unnecessary. But even if we assume they will do that, the best user of Cleric Stance in the past -was- Scholar because of Eos and Selene's passive healing as well as Lustrate being a fixed HP percentage heal. If they want a GCD focused shield healer that tries to meaningfully compete with SCH Cleric Stance is just going to add micromanagement and add homogeneity while also not fitting what we can see from the preview so far. I'd be more likely to bet that Scholar would get it back, if it ever returns.

[AnotherPerson]

They specifically said Sage would be self-buffing in the announcement.

I wouldn't be surprised if we got some form of Cleric Stance just for Sage. Something like "Increases magic damage dealt by 10% while reducing healing done by 30%. Effect ends upon reuse. Recast time: 6s". The loss of Cleric Stance has been one of the largest laments of healer mains for years and the devs know this.

Hard pass on Cleric Stance. If it's something about augmentation, I rather they made the Nouliths more interesting by making them work in parallel. Nuoliths come in sets of 4, so why not just let each Nuolith be able to work individually - aka you can use one to heal, one to barrier, and use one to dps. However, using more for the same task will augment the strength of the attack or the heal (such as using 2 will make the effect of the spell 1.5x stronger and using 4 will make it 2x stronger - diminishing gains). You can also set them to do something like ressing, but unlike other jobs you don't have the ability to swiftcast ress, instead you can instant cast a ress command, but one Nuolith will be casting for 8 seconds to ress. You can use multiple Nuoliths to speed up this cast timer up to a maximum of 4 seconds. Doing this will make the gameplay fairly interesting in terms of variation and control imo. After all, while you do lose the ability to pick people up instantly, you do have the ability to pick up multiple people at the same time (albeit doing so will probably empty out your MP very fast), so it'll bring some MP management focus to the job.

[EaMett]

Hard pass on Cleric Stance. If it's something about augmentation, I rather they made the Nouliths more interesting by making them work in parallel. Nuoliths come in sets of 4, so why not just let each Nuolith be able to work individually - aka you can use one to heal, one to barrier, and use one to dps. However, using more for the same task will augment the strength of the attack or the heal (such as using 2 will make the effect of the spell 1.5x stronger and using 4 will make it 2x stronger - diminishing gains). You can also set them to do something like ressing, but unlike other jobs you don't have the ability to swiftcast ress, instead you can instant cast a ress command, but one Nuolith will be casting for 8 seconds to ress. You can use multiple Nuoliths to speed up this cast timer up to a maximum of 4 seconds. Doing this will make the gameplay fairly interesting in terms of variation and control imo. After all, while you do lose the ability to pick people up instantly, you do have the ability to pick up multiple people at the same time (albeit doing so will probably empty out your MP very fast), so it'll bring some MP management focus to the job.

This would be great but I doubt we'll get anything close to it lol.

[DreadCrow]

They'll be not so good healers that quickly abandoned the class when they realize they aren't good with the role... But considering that it starts at 70, by the time they get to level 80 and can do the 6.0 story... They'll either get used to the role and at least be able to handle small pulls, or they'll give up... And really, at the worst, you'll have to worry about a bit of overhealing.

But considering there's level 80 tanks that don't use any cooldowns, level 80 white mages that don't realize casting Regen before Holy spam is usually smart, and sometimes even level 80 DPS that don't use AOE... Well, I'm not that concerned.