Which healing job are they gonna gut for Sage?

[Izar_Chillen]

We have a thread going on at the moment: Toxic Glare spammers.

A lot of veteran healers suspect the gutting of their damaging kits is due to the complains of Dps players about some healers focusing on dpsing and not healing them. The devs did say they wanted healers to focus on healing more, and gave that as an argument for "simplifying" the healer dps kit.

Ironically, the removal of AoE dots makes it so that healers now have to individually target enemies in dungeon packs to dot each one of them, which steals their focus away from the tank during a critical moment of high damage, so you tell me.

The healer community is more or less convinced at this point that the devs didn't really know what they were doing in regards to healer class design.

Odd , I find that this game allows for a lot of breathing room when it comes to heals required , unless there is a moment in a dungeon that the tank pulls way above his gear/or skill set allows. The in between healing is handy to throw out a dot or two, weave a heal , more dots , or holys

Taking away dmg skills to make healers focus on healing more seems a rather strange decision given that you dont have to constantly heal like say in SWTOR or that other MMO because the damage received by FF14 tanks comes in chunks that work well with the 2.49 gcds which i suspect is because the enemies auto attacks are much slower than SWTOR or that other mmo , unless ofc the tank goes overboard with pulls without mitigation at all or being in poor gear.

[Rongway]

Odd , I find that this game allows for a lot of breathing room when it comes to heals required , unless there is a moment in a dungeon that the tank pulls way above his gear/or skill set allows. The in between healing is handy to throw out a dot or two, weave a heal , more dots , or holys

In the context of 2.x/3.x Cleric Stance, the danger was in its 5s cooldown. Once activated, the healer couldn't click it off or /statusoff; they were stuck in Cleric Stance for 5s. During this time, their tier 1 heal was even weaker than SMN Physick because Cleric Stance not only swapped intelligence and mind but also reduced healing by 20%. So if someone took avoidable damage just as the healer activated Cleric Stance, they couldn't do anything about it but hope the other person didn't die in the next 7.5s (the 5s cooldown plus the next heal's cast time). Original Lustrate was unaffected because it was percentage based, but once that changed to be potency based nobody had any heals that were worth using during Cleric Stance.

In predictable combats it was easy to use. But if the healer activated it because they knew there wasn't any unavoidable damage coming, and then someone died to avoidable damage, the blame often fell wrongly on the healer for being in Cleric Stance rather than on the person taking avoidable damage.

[Ayche]

I can understand why old Cleric Stance was cut if it disincentivised being ready to heal up "avoidable" damage. Just because it is possible to come out of a 24-man, dungeons and other content complete unscathed, I doubt that is what the data shows. So yes, in normal content healers should not be put into the dilemma where they feel peer pressure to optimize the use of Cleric Stance and at the same time be ready to save their party members from the dangers of trials, raids and dungeons if they misplay something.

There is little gained in setting up intentional confrontations like "why didn't you heal?!" vs "why did you take damage!?" in content made to be cleared with total strangers.

[Bright-Flower]

I didn't like the old cleric stance mostly because the primary job of a healer is to heal, and while it's great to pump out damage when you don't need to be healing, having a tool that pumps out more damage at the expense of healing if hit at a bad time didn't feel right.

I think a short window where your DPS is significantly raised, but your healing isn't gimped, could be interesting. That way, if you mistime it and have to heal, it's a dps loss but you can still do your job as a healer just fine.

As far as stripping down healer dps kits, I think they went too far. I get that healers aren't going to have rotations as complex as dps, or even tanks perhaps, but they didn't need to strip away as much as they did. I also don't think they had to completely get rid of cleric stance altogether. The changes make doing solo instances as a healer a bit of a bore and they didn't raise outgoing damage, at least not in the mostly casual contnet I've done, in order to make healers spend more gcds healing. It wouldn't be a big deal if healers had few dps tools but had to think about and use their entire healing kits more, but as is, the changes fell flat and I hope they expand their dps options more in EW.

It's similar to why I didn't like the old tank stances where the meta was to forgoe the defensiveness of a tank as much as possible in order to squeeze out more damage. Tanks and healers doing more damage? Great. Tanks and healers doing more damage with mechanics that run contrary to their primary purpose always felt off to me design wise.

[Izar_Chillen]

In the context of 2.x/3.x Cleric Stance, the danger was in its 5s cooldown. Once activated, the healer couldn't click it off or /statusoff; they were stuck in Cleric Stance for 5s. During this time, their tier 1 heal was even weaker than SMN Physick because Cleric Stance not only swapped intelligence and mind but also reduced healing by 20%. So if someone took avoidable damage just as the healer activated Cleric Stance, they couldn't do anything about it but hope the other person didn't die in the next 7.5s (the 5s cooldown plus the next heal's cast time). Original Lustrate was unaffected because it was percentage based, but once that changed to be potency based nobody had any heals that were worth using during Cleric Stance.

In predictable combats it was easy to use. But if the healer activated it because they knew there wasn't any unavoidable damage coming, and then someone died to avoidable damage, the blame often fell wrongly on the healer for being in Cleric Stance rather than on the person taking avoidable damage.

That does sound like a royal pain in the backside . I get the idea but the lock out must have been frustrating . I could only imagine that being a healer meant every dungeon felt like a step by step guide and things must have gone awry often if people ignored mechanics.

[MorionQ]

Cleric Stance combined with Tank DPS stances led to most of the very old healers (and some tanks) getting nerves of steel out of the game’s design rewarding speed running end game content from the very start. It was rough. Although, our DPS skills were so pathetic without cleric that it was treated like a necessary evil. I do not miss the old system.

Now that I better grasp AST’s updated cards after begrudgingly avoiding them for so long, I don’t think it’s that bad. I’m still more excited for it’s retool than I am Sage.

WHM has become my least favorite healer and I theorize the tendency to Glare spam is a result of how the design makes you crave that blood lily burst, which in turn means getting the most out of the lily’s instant heals instead of the sustained healing.

[GrizzlyTank]

Encounter design that insists that you stare at the boss for attack tells is not conducive to Simon Sez classes. A shame really, I much prefer priority based. Maybe next tier I'll opt for something with a brain dead rotation assuming I don't burn out on this one.

That's when you design classes with fewer buttons so you don't have to stare at the interface to remember where you are suppose to be in your rotation.

You can also hide un-used slots at a skill bar so you can move a bar near the middle of the screen and fill it it with skills that are highlighted when procced without cluttering the screen up too much.

[Vyrerus]

In the context of 2.x/3.x Cleric Stance, the danger was in its 5s cooldown. Once activated, the healer couldn't click it off or /statusoff; they were stuck in Cleric Stance for 5s. During this time, their tier 1 heal was even weaker than SMN Physick because Cleric Stance not only swapped intelligence and mind but also reduced healing by 20%. So if someone took avoidable damage just as the healer activated Cleric Stance, they couldn't do anything about it but hope the other person didn't die in the next 7.5s (the 5s cooldown plus the next heal's cast time). Original Lustrate was unaffected because it was percentage based, but once that changed to be potency based nobody had any heals that were worth using during Cleric Stance.

In predictable combats it was easy to use. But if the healer activated it because they knew there wasn't any unavoidable damage coming, and then someone died to avoidable damage, the blame often fell wrongly on the healer for being in Cleric Stance rather than on the person taking avoidable damage.

It also had the added bonus of, if you deactivated it via the hotbar, and you double pressed your key/a double press registered, you could turn it off and immediately turn it back on. Whoops Hehe.

[Shurrikhan]

you can move a bar near the middle of the screen and fill it it with skills that are highlighted when procced without cluttering the screen up too much.

There's also this revolutionary tech from the early 2000s whereby specific buffs can be gathered for view in specific places, while having the option not to show them elsewhere.

Just, not in FFXIV, of course.

[elioaiko]

Idk seeing how much they wrecked AST and SCH for ShB, it'd I'd imagine the same will happen. WHM was at rock bottom so it could only improve.

The devs can keep adding the same heaing/shield abilites they want, healer filler (which is a lot of) will consist of spamming Glare/Broil/Malefic.

As for my speculations on what healer will be gutted, Noct is going away and honestly as much as I hate the idea of ripping identity out of a job, AST being dual sect has been a point of contention for the devs. It HAS to be stronger than WHM and SCH in their respective sects or they're nothing. Cards mean nothing if the cohealer has to do more healing and barely meet the bare minimum for healing in general (in a raiding sense). This is why nerfing AST never works, either it's too underpowered to bring or it's crazy OP. There's no middle ground, and this is because it's healing kit has to be both burst and sustained healing, as we can see that bringing an AST alone frees up SCH and WHM weave windows because they have the means to heal more and efficiently without dropping a cast. And cards to top that off.

Being freed from being a stand-in for WHM/SCH, AST should focus on its strongest sect which is Diurnal. And not force the devs to build its kit around two different healing styles out into one healer. It's always amazes me how empty and redundant WHM's kit is (you can ignore Cure II/Medica for a Solace/Rapture) and still have open slots on your kb/m and gamepad.

I have a feeling it'll have a healing refund like Misery along with oGCD shielding/mitatigion ala CO/CU. Judging from what we've seen of Sage, it'll likely have selfish dps centric concept while balancing ST shielding.

I presume that AST and SCH will be the debuff/buff healers on rDPS that shine when optimized whereas Sage and WHM will be selfish "easier" healers. Of course it'll likely be problematic since none of the healers can be weaker to each other healing wise.

Though we don't have a clue until we get our hands on it or see it's tooltips.