Famitsu Interview: Tuning encounters for healing

[Sovasin]

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E11S: Fun to heal. Lots of outgoing damage with some opportunities to delay Earthly Star. Damage is frequent and Elemental Break forces a quick top-up between the protean and the stack/spread damage that could be dealt with using delayed heals like Horoscope, a quick rapture/indom or by mitigating beforehand. At BiS just being topped up before the mechanic is usually enough though. Burnished Glory being a mini-Almagest is nice and was challenging to heal when undergeared. Some annoying RNG like the thunder tether applying a heavy DoT (good if a melee is targeted because of bloodbath and second wind, bad if caster) to a single target which made healing feel inconsistent. Lightning Elemental Break is also harder to heal than Fire and Light; getting Lightning first during Cycles can sometimes end a run.

E12S P1: Very well designed. Frequent Maleficiums make it difficult to rely solely on regens between each phase, forcing quick top-ups through Indomitability, Earthly Star etc. Damage happens back to back with primal release mechanics, double tankbusters etc keeping healers constantly on their toes and forcing GCD heals when undergeared. Incoming damage is very high during Diamond Dust and Titan, however the knockback during Diamond Dust is much easier to deal with with an AST due to Horoscope not having a range limit; Celestial Opposition is also very strong here for a few ticks of regen before and after the knockback or after the initial cast. WHM/SCH teams suffered when undergeared as each healer could only heal their side of the arena after the knockback and mitigation was limited to just Galvanise and Seraph + Temperance. Neutral Sect + Lightspeed allowed teams to overmitigate the knockback itself, especially with a SCH. Even with gear incoming damage is high and party mitigation must be coordinated. It is near impossible to 0 GCD heal this, as far as I know most groups are still using neutral sect during diamond dust.

Titan phase does heavy damage that can be partially avoided by groups that know not to stand under the bombs when they drop, and the Maleficium afterwards forces a quick top-up. The damage comes in a steady stream compared to DD which was a lot more burstier so personal heals such as Bloodbath and Second Wind can be coordinated to ease the burden on healers.

The stacks during Giants deal heavy damage and so do the beams + the knockback after, forcing top-ups while the healers are handling their own beam mechanics.

[Sovasin]

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The last heal check is probably the knockback during Lion rampant which dealt significant damage when undergeared followed by damage from the next two sets of lion breaths. It wasn't easy to heal after the knockback due to everyone being spread out for the primal release mechanics so overmitigating before the knockback was a safe way to handle it. Current strats give the healers tiny safespots to stand in after the knockback if they are baiting the big lions which can be tricky to reach in time after casting neutral sect/galvanise shields in the middle.

The double tankbusters make AST/SCH/DRK more viable as Essential Dignity can be used for each hit while Walking Dead is active. Two 1HP Essential Dignities + Fey Union or Lustrate is usually sufficient which is nice compared to fights with single tankbusters that often demand benefic 2.

It's hard to do this fight with a low piety set as GCD heals are very difficult to cut out without perfect party mitigation. Curing Waltz and Mantra are very strong here.

E12S P2: This fight doesn't demand much of healers until the enrage. There is a bit of burst healing required after each Relativity Mechanic. It would be nice if Intermediate Relativity happened a bit later to let Neutral Sect come off cooldown after using it in Basic Relativity. Horoscope is very powerful here as it can be buffed before the mechanics occur and it naturally triggers before the post-Relativity damage. It shines especially in Advanced Relativity where the period between the boss going untargetable and the double water stacks is just over thirty seconds. The enrage is one of the best soft enrages we've had since Alphascape and required mitigation to be planned by the entire party when undergeared. It still hits hard even at BiS and healers with low piety sets risk running out of MP, especially if people die during Triple Apocalypse.

Overall I think this tier was pretty fun to heal with the exception of E10S. I would like them to continue with this level of incoming damage. E12S especially was tuned quite high for players with crafted gear, but it was still doable. I think that AST had a noticeable advantage this tier; Horoscope's unlimited range gave them an edge over the other healers in mechanics like Lightning Elemental Break, Diamond Dust and phase 2 Relativities where it was common for both healers to be split up and for the party to be very spread out. Without an AST, Galvanise and Fairy lag can often lead to wipes, although Cure 3 + thin air works very well for phase 2's enrage.