What makes a job fun to play? Some ideas for healers

[verdres]

I was involved in a conversation about healer role that got a lot of thoughts going, and I wanted to share them all at once. There are a lot of things in the game that could be taken as inspiration for future changes, especially now that the PVP actions are out and everyone seems to find them refreshing.

SGE has something similar going with the addersgall and addersting stocks, and I think that can be improved if they make Toxicon more rewarding to use and acquire, or perhaps expand the Addersting mechanic. I've found that outside of dungeons, going out of my way to replenish Addersting is something of an opportunity cost, since they are only acquired from depleted single-target shields, and that doesn't feel like SGE's identity. Perhaps the player could also acquire them from increments of healing applied to missing HP by Kardia? I feel that rewarding players for using Kardia proactively would make the job more engaging. I also think Pneuma, while the mechanics are fine, needs like a visual upgrade that makes the giant laser even more impressive. The effect flashes for a split second and is gone!

SCH has a very powerful ultimate ability in expedient, so much so that it was nerfed. However, the fairy gauge feels like it is missing something at the moment, as aetherpact is the only way spend the gauge, and there is no particular reward for spending gauge other than additional healing. Perhaps they could apply a gauge cost to certain fairy actions while also awarding a new gauge value that either powers up Seraph mode, or even gives SCH an offensive tool, such empowering broil or reducing the cooldown of (or adding charges to) Chain Strategem.

AST...well it's understandable that the job is in a strange spot. Every player I've spoken to that mains the job feels like the card system is too simplified now. Perhaps we could lean into the YugiOh memes and take some mechanics from trading card games. Maybe implement card combos (and to save player brainpower, the combos could auto-complete), to add a semblance of summoning Exodia. Give AST a reward/consolation for discarding a drawn card, or even create a playstyle where the AST sits on a situational combo while using discard self-buffs to bide time (such as acquiring stacks of the double-cast skill from PVP). Even making it similar to mahjong could be a neat idea.

WHM is in a reasonable spot, but a lot of people seem to think the healing blossom is difficult to utilize. I think tying more things into the job gauge could help. The blood lily system is rewarding, but there are definitely certain times when things are going TOO well and there aren't any good times to spend lilies. This could be helped by simply making it more similar to SGE, where lilies can be spent to empower more spells.

[SlickPaws]

I always thought that Toxikon being able to do what Raw Intuition/Bloodwhetting can do would be an insanely powerful change to make the ability a lot more rewarding - but it'd probably be too OP. The initial thought was how about having a Kardion proc from every enemy hit by it and rather than being a single 170 pot heal from one attack, it'd be (x) x 170 pot where (x) is number of enemies hit. I actually think overall SGE is in a good place and having a lot of fun with it as a newly minted healer main, but I would like to see some things like a timed buff to spread Kardia to all party members - maybe given for 5 - 10s on a Kerachole cast instead of an added regen effect. Phlegma could also go up to 3 charges pretty easily without too much jank, I reckon... And maybe have Toxikon reduce its timer by 10 - 15s per Toxikon cast, meaning more Phlegma overall, meaning more DPS, meaning more Kardion procs. Really lean into that Green DPS playstyle that SGE wants to be.

Just my two gil as an ex-SAM (and ex-Tank, but that's because I don't trust random healers anymore) main who is dipping their toes into taking on a new role that I haven't really experimented with much until now.

[WaxSw]

-Whm: Add a 60s offensive lily action, would help build misery without overheal and woudn't get in the way of the healing as at best it would consume 1/3th of the lilies of a encounter, make thin air nourish the bood lily when used on a gcd heal and make every gcd build stacks/gauge to use on a stronger gcd attack (think a gcd shinten) add Fluid Aura as an instant GCD attack that eliminates the cast of the 2 following spells (So Whm's triplecast). If they make so healing gcds build more energy than dps gcds then whm could have gauge management that doesn't get in the way of healing (as you could bank uses in the gauge), could reduce the glare spam by a good % without drastically changing the identity of the job nor its playstyle

-Sch: GIB DOTS, for real dots are really noob friendly as delaying them is not that big of a loss vs a normal gcd not used and a job with high % of dot damage loses less when forced to switch a nuke for a gcd heal, change aetherflow so it doesnt penalize the dps when healing is used and instead reward the player for using this gauge. Buff the fairy actions but make them cost fairy gauge so the gauge is used more and they could also add cds related to dots with charges like old fester or shadowflare.

-Sge: They could create a cooldown (with charges) based offensive version of eukrasia that changes dosis and dyskrasia into a reaper like combo with 2 branches (dosis->dyskrasia or dyskrasia->dosis) with different effects, think 1 with big damage and the other with a damage buff like War both giving addersting. Then add a 60s combo with addersting (like the one ty_taurus posted days ago) to spice things up, increase toxicon damage and add a trait so every addersting action reduces phlegma cd and phlegma uses reduce the offensive eukrasia cd.
Since all of that is charge based it could be delayed at will, being gcd based allows the sge to keep the healing with its massive ogcd kit and thanks to the loop (Offensive Eukrasia gives addersting, addersting action lower the cd of phlegma, phlegma lowers the cd of Offensive Eukrasia...) the player could keep control of the speed of its rotation being able to accerlerate it when low healing is required and having a slower one when they have to heal (an extra dot in the form of eukrasia dyskrasia would be appreciated too)

(very doubtful about this one)
-Ast: For this one I think an extra dot and more card management would be fine, instead of trying hard to make every card the same I think a fixed deck with cards that are stronger and weaker would be better. Let's say Ast has 6 cards in its deck (1 of each) divided into 3 ranged and 3 melee, give them tiers from 1 to 3 being tier 1 a weak 2% increase and tier 3 a 8-9%, with that every time Ast draws, the cards remaining in the deck would be reduced by 1, changing the % of getting a stronger one in the next draw, as such actions like redraw would be more impactful and new actions like discarding a card to draw other (reducing the number of cards in the deck) or discarding a bad card to improve the effect of the next card used could be implemented changing the ast mentality from "get seals" to micromanage its options to guarantee the maximum number of strong cards while getting the most out of their weak one be in the way of discarding them or powering up the strong ones.
Biggest drawback for this is that ast would need an action that opens more weaving windows which probably a cd reduction of lightspeed coupled with the dot could do.

[Seraphor]

First off, give all healers an AoE DoT again. WHM gets Aero II/Diaga, SCH gets Bane back, AST and SGE get variants as well.
Lose the first tier GCD heals to make room, then...


WHM: A 2nd dps spell, Aqua/Antumbra, 200/260 potency around levels 60/75 respectively, and bestows a 30s buff on yourself that increases your damage by 10%. (exact figures TBC)
Hey presto WHM now has an Astral Fire analogue or buff upkeep to optimise dps output, and an additional button to press every 30s or so. Simple mechanic for the simple healer.


SCH: When you use Aetherflow, you also get 3 stacks of Fervent for 60s, as long as Fervent is active, Ruin II is upgraded to Expostulation with a potency of 280 and consumes a stack of Fervent on use.
Nerf Energy Drain to say 80 potency. Reinforces the spend/gain aetherflow system and now Ruin II or Expostulation is only a 5 potency dps loss without Energy Drain instead of 75.
Doesn't really change all that much, but it makes the Ruin II button more worthwhile and just makes Energy Drain use 'feel' better.


AST: Here me out... make Crown Play a GCD skill.
Reduce the cooldown of Minor Arcana to 30s and buff Lord of Crowns to 400 potency and Lady to 800. (alternatively, make Lord 370/200 dmg/healing combined, and Lady 230/400 dmg/healing)
Sounds regressive, but this breaks up the Malefic spam with a nuke that you can hold for up to 30s, and reduces the high oGCD rate by spreading it out to once every 30s instead of twice every 60s (there's a difference). AST already has the most dps skills anyway (cards are dps) so this is a good enough change.


SGE: More ways to generate Addersting, preferably ways that don't cost GCD heals, because Toxikon is not built to be a GCD-heal-refund like Afflatus Misery, it's Ruin II, a movement/weave tool. Perhaps Phlegma generates 1 Addersting every time it's used to form a sort of loose combo system.
New skill: Eukrasian Toxikon, potency changed to 450 and 75% less for remaining enemies. The rationale here is Toxikon is a dps neutral movement/weaving tool, but if you Eukrasia it, you spend your weave window for additional damage, like sticking an Energy Drain in there.


All of these, with a minor exception for WHM, simply add a small additional layer of dps skill, that is not time gated, each of these add ons can be used at any time within a 30 or 60 second window. WHM is an outlier in that optimisation would involve not refreshing the dmg buff too early, so it is more or less time restricted and could cause players to potentially prioritise dps skills over healing GCDs, however if you need to use a healing GCD anyway, and Antumbra is about to fall off, you're not going to make use of it until your net Glare anyway, so not refreshing the buff in time isn't actually a loss in itself.

[RayneBoemir]

Dpsing sucks balls as healers I want more damage skills.

[QooEr]

how to fix the healers
scholar: return it to heavensward
ast: return it to heavensward
whm: return it to heavensward + lilies
sage: re-- oh.

[Hazama999]

no no no. I bet sage could be interesting in a pre-gauge world.

[Silver-Strider]

I just want more to do and manage again.
Give me DoTs on SCH and make the Fairies different again.
Make WHM an actual BLM counterpart with Regens procing a Thundercloud-like buff for Aero/Dia and Stone/Water Spells that mimic Fire/Ice on BLM.
Make Cards unique on AST again. Just split DPS cards and Utility cards into Major/Minor Arcana and get rid of seals and just make Astrodyne a 2m CD.
Give SGE a 1-2-3 combo that generates Addersting and turn Toxicon into mini Continum.

[VerdeLuck]

I strongly disagree with a DPS spender for lilies, that's going to take us right back to the "Healing is a DPS loss" arguments that just were addressed for the job.

[deadman1204]

This is easy - give healers as many dps buttons as tanks have (minimum).