Yoshi-P: "If you want more engaging content, go play Ultimate"

[Maltothoris]

The sad thing that is probably almost something that they would exactly do for skills and stuff they would likely do for a healer in the expansion.

Whenever I do roulettes now, I only do the class in need now. I dread it though whenever I have to do healer and this coming from a healer main.

[Remember_The_Name]

Please look forward to it.

That was actually painful to read, ouch...

[Maltothoris]

Still not going to let this thread die here until Dawntrail. WE still got three months before it shows up and that is plenty of time to talk about the asinine that SE keeps making with healers. With the potential live letter coming in April, that should be enough more to talk about to keep this going.

[Rehayem]

Incoming another "SCH is fine the way it is now, we have no reason to make changes to it"

[Aravell]

I'm honestly half expecting a stealth full rework of SCH to make it as braindead easy as SMN, because the healing side of the kit still requires minimal brainpower.

Mostly because Yoshi P said before EW launch that they don't know what else to add to SCH anymore.

[ty_taurus]

I'm honestly half expecting a stealth full rework of SCH to make it as braindead easy as SMN, because the healing side of the kit still requires minimal brainpower.

Mostly because Yoshi P said before EW launch that they don't know what else to add to SCH anymore.

Given that they said “we don’t know what to do with scholar” you’d think it would be slotted for a large rework, for better or worse. It’s odd that nothings been said about it.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

Something something.... finding another reason to remove Energy Drain... something something.... lol

[ForsakenRoe]

Relinking 'what I would do to the healers' in this thread, because if I can come up with something for them, SE should have no issues whatsoever coming up with something more interesting than 'Glare 4' and equivalents. As I've mentioned in other times I've posted this stuff, I give full permission for SE to use all or part of these suggestions, should they happen to read these forums

WHM:

Plenary Indulgence moved to level 74
Afflatus Rapture moved to level 70 (now available in UCOB!)
Cure1 upgrades to Cure2 at 30, saving button space (making Cure2 cost only 500mp)
Medica1 upgrades to Medica2 at 50 (by taking the base potency of Medica1 (300) and adding the Medica2 regen effect (150p per tick) to it. Later, this becomes 400p/150p-per-tick)

New Trait: While Medica2 is active on the WHM, Cure3 has halved MP cost (from 1500 down to 750). This incentivizes spamming Cure3 instead of Medica1/2 for massive burst healing

New skill: Stoneskin (learned at 52 alongside lily gauge), GCD that puts a shield on the target equal to 300p heal, costs 1 lily
New skill: Afflatus Tragedy (learned at 62 just because there's a gap there), basically a downgrade from Misery, does 800p damage (4 stone3's is 880 so its a small loss still), upgrades to Misery at 76
New skill: Afflatus Bastion (upgrade from Stoneskin at 70), increases the shield from 300 to 400p
New skill: Afflatus Sanctuary (Learned at level 70 alongside Afflatus Rapture), GCD that shields all nearby party members equal to 200p healing, costs 1 lily

Returning skill: Divine Seal (learned at 40), 2min CD that buffs healing actions by 20%, so 'Temperance without the damage mitigation', becomes Temperance at 80
Returning skill: Protect (learned at 10 or something), 60s CD that gives 5% damage mitigation for 10sec, upgrades to Plenary at 74. Plenary would retain the 5% damage reduction, in addition to it's current effect.

New skill: Water (later Banish), learned at level 15, has a 15s CD. Is 40p stronger than your current level of Stone/Glare, and levels up whenever Stone/Glare does. (at current max level, this would be 350p)

Aero/Dia changed to be 12 seconds duration, potency rebalanced for the new duration, For Banish 3 (the version you'd have at current max level), it would be changed to 150, plus 70 per tick (total 430p). This means that you will use 5 Dias per minute instead of the current 2. Additionally, it becomes a gain to spam Holy on only 3 targets, instead of multidotting them, whereas currently it requires 5 targets for Holy to exceed Dia's total

A new HUD element, the 'Nature Gauge' (name is WIP), a simple 0-100 gauge that fills by doing certain actions.
Stone/Glare gives 1 point.
Aero/Dia gives 1 point on cast, and 1 per tick (5 total over full duration).
Water would give 5 due to being used less often than Stone.
Holy would give 2 per enemy hit (so a pull of 7 mobs means 14 per cast)

Cure2 would give 5.
Regen would give 4, plus 1 per tick (total of 10).
Medica2 would give 3 per tick (total of 15).
Cure3 would give 20.

New skill: Blessing of the Elementals (Name WIP). Costs 50 Nature Gauge, heals in AOE for 500p. Grants 'Rage of the River', 'Ire of the Earth', 'Wrath of the Winds', one stack of each. These can stack to 2.
New skill: Quake, 100p stronger than current Stone/Glare level, replaces Stone/Glare on the hotbar. Requires and consumes one stack of 'Ire of the Earth'
New skill: Flood, 100p stronger than current Water/Banish level, replaces Water/Banish on the hotbar. Requires and consumes one stack of 'Rage of the River'
New skill: Tornado, 30p on cast/20p per tick (total 110p) stronger than current Aero/Dia level, replaces Aero/Dia on the hotbar. Requires and consumes one stack of 'Wrath of the Winds'

(all of this basically translates to 'the heal GCD is damage neutral, and these elemental skills are how you get your damage refunded'. Additionally, all three of these elemental skills would have 50% damage falloff in AOE, making them all a gain over Holy to use, taking our AOE rotation from 1 button to 5 (if you include the heal to trigger the other three). It also means multidotting a whole pack with Tornado is possible, bringing back vibes of Aero3 somewhat)

Maths works out that you would, on a dummy with no healing required, generate approximately 55-60 gauge per minute from your damage buttons. As such, optimization for the job would be to try and wrangle your Lily/Nature Gauge heal order, such that you go into a burst window with 2 stacks of each element and a Misery prepared. Then, once raidbuffs go out, you unload with 'Flood, Tornado, Misery, Quake, Quake, Glare, Tornado, Flood'. The gain of doing this would be too small to affect anyone's enrage clearing potential (Crit Variance adds up to much more issues than this would), but it's 'something optional' for optimizers to aim for.

Maths also works out that this rotation is about the same potency as the current rotation. 1min of current combat (only looking at GCDs) is 8140p, 1min of this suggestion's combat (again only looking at the GCD loop) is 8200p.

Two video examples:First, Fun Healer Gameplay we get to experience during the downtime of a boss, when no healing needs to be done in the current game. Secondly, Potentially Slightly More Fun Healer Gameplay where I try to illustrate how the addition of one button (and the adjustment of one DOT's duration) can very easily spice up an otherwise dull rotation. Sorry for the button mashing, I was nervous. Play it muted if it is an issue

Finally, as a further illustration to show the effect of 'what GCDs we use in a 60s loop', two pie charts. Currently, we have the top one. This suggestion would give us something closer to the bottom one.

SCH:

Much shorter, thankfully.

If we assume Broil V is 300p:

Biolysis: 35p for 30s (total 350p)
Miasmalysis: 20p on cast, 30p for 24s (total of 340p)
ShadowFlare: Places a ground AOE centred on the target. Deals 100p on cast, and 50p per tick for 15s (total 350). Because of it being an AOE, it can also be used to spice up trash pulls (but it isn't strong enough to spam over AOW)

Aetherflow/Energy Drain: Moved back down to level 6 even as a SCH

New skill: Bane: Upgrades from Energy Drain at level 45. Deals 100p (like ED), with 50% falloff in an AOE. Additionally, if the main target is afflicted with Biolysis or Miasmalysis, those effects are spread to all targets hit, with 40% lower damage. Duration of effects is NOT reset.

Physick upgrades into Adloquium. Adloquium goes from 300p +180% shield (total shield of 540p) to 450 (matching Physick's base potency), plus 120% shield (totalling 540p still). The MP cost of Adlo is reduced to 600mp.

AST:

Mainly reworks to cards, not adding more damage buttons.

Benefic1 upgrades to Benefic2, as with the other healers. This means that Benefic2 would proc the 'guaranteed crit on next Benefic2' trait, helping in those panic-spamming situations. MP cost of Benefic2 is reduced to 500mp.
Helios upgrades to Aspected Helios, as with the Medica/Medica2 equivalents on WHM

Major Arcana: now autodraws one every 60s. If you have a Major Arcana drawn and the timer hits 0, you 'Spread' the second one, holding it in reserve. At this point, the timer will pause, like capping WHM Lilies.

Minor Arcana: now autodraws a Minor Arcana every 15s. If you have a Minor Arcana drawn and the timer hits 0, you 'Spread' the second one, holding it in reserve. At this point, the timer will pause, like capping WHM Lilies.

Sleeve Draw returns: A 2 charge, 60s charge time OGCD action. When you use it, your currently drawn Minor Arcana becomes a Lady of it's suit. More on Card Ranks in the Minor Arcana section.
Sleeve Draw's purpose is to be a 'bad luck prevention' system, which you can use to force the Minor Arcana you hold (preferably the ones in the burst window) to be the highest potency, so the burst window always feels satisfying to execute.

Draw, Play and Minor Arcana, are replaced with 'Play Major Arcana', 'Play Minor Arcana' and 'Sleeve Draw'. Playing Major Arcana is still OGCD, but Playing Minor Arcana are now GCD (to break up the Malefic spam). This means you can go Minor, Major, Minor Major (interspersed with Sleeve Draws as needed) in your burst window, should you be good enough to calculate ahead of the window who you need to target with each card at each step. If you need time to calculate your next move, however, you would be able to simply cast Malefic to buy yourself another 2.5s to consider the state of your cards

Now for Card effects:

Balance: 10% damage, 15s

Bole: 20% damage mitigation, 15s. Additionally, grants 3 stacks of Bole's Bulwark, causing the enemy that strikes the bearer of this buff to take 10% of that ally's Max HP as damage and consuming one stack.

Arrow: Grants 10 stacks of 'Arrow's Assault' (12 if the target is PhysRanged), increasing Autoattack rate by 400%. One stack is consumed for each Autoattack dealt under it's effect, and upon consuming all stacks, the Autoattack rate returns to normal.
Additionally, if the target of this card is the AST, grants 5 stacks of Arrow's Assault, speeding up the recast time of the AST to 1.5s for the next 5 GCD attacks, and making cast times of those spells instant.

Ewer: Grants 1000mp over 15s. Additionally, if the target is a Healer, grants 3 stacks of Ewer Overflowing, causing the next 3 attacks dealt by said healer to strike a second time for 100% of the spell's potency. Additional effects are not applied. This second strike cannot crit or DHit

Spear: 10% Physical damage, 15s. Additionally, if the target of this card is the AST, all magic damage dealt by the AST is instead considered physical for the duration, allowing them to benefit from this card's effect

Spire: 10% Magic damage, 15s

A Note on Minor Arcana: Knaves, Lords, Ladies are 7, 8 and 9 respectively. Due to not having a duration, these effects will last on the target until they are overwritten by another card, or KO removes them.

X of Staves: Increases the next 5 attacks dealt by the target ally by 60p. Additionally, increases the damage of the first attack dealt by target ally after this effect is applied, by 5 potency multiplied by the face value of the arcana.

X of Rings: Deals 100p in counterattack damage each time the target ally is struck, up to 3 times. Additionally, deals an additional 5 potency, multiplied by the face value of the arcana, for the first counterattack only.

X of Knives: Causes the next 6 Autoattacks to deal a second strike for 50p. Additionally, a bonus potency equal to the arcana face value is applied to each of these bonus strikes.
(if the concept of 'potency value not divisible by 5' is too much for the engine, make it 'first autoattack has bonus damage of '5 x face value'')

X of Cups: Causes the next 3 healer damage spells to cost half MP, and to strike a second time for 100p. Additional effects are not applied twice. Additionally, the first of these spells deals bonus damage equal to 5 potency, multiplied by the face value of the arcana

X of Crowns: Increases the next 5 instances of Magic damage dealt by 60p. Additionally, a bonus potency equal to the arcana face value is applied to each of these bonus strikes.
(if the concept of 'potency value not divisible by 5' is too much for the engine, make it 'first autoattack has bonus damage of '5 x face value'')

X of Irons: Increases the next 5 instances of Physical damage dealt by 60p. Additionally, a bonus potency equal to the arcana face value is applied to each of these bonus strikes. Additionally, if the target of this card is the AST, the next 5 instances of magic damage are instead considered physical, allowing them to benefit from this card's effect
(if the concept of 'potency value not divisible by 5' is too much for the engine, make it 'first autoattack has bonus damage of '5 x face value'')

The card effects (in terms of their damage output) have all been balanced against one another. In current Anabesios BIS, the Majors were tuned around all contributing roughly 30000 points of damage with their effect (numbers taken from several Samurai). Minor Arcana are balanced around dealing 300p, plus an additional 10-45p, based on RNG of the card and its Face Value. The one notable exception to this, which would be 'way stronger than anything else', would be Ewer and its effect of duplicating Healer spells, due to the difference between the strongest hit for SCH (Broil, 295) and SGE (Phlegma, 660). Or, if you prefer, WHM's Misery (1320). I could create some system wherein certain stronger skills consume more stacks than others to remedy this should it be such a pressing issue (eg it grants 5 stacks, Misery costs all 5 stacks, Glare and its equivalents cost 1, Phlegma costs 2, something like that)

Lastly, Minor Arcana would presumably also contribute Seals like their Major counterparts. As such, AST gameplay could revolve more around maintaining Astrodyne as a Huton style self-speed-buff, rather than the current odd 'slight buff for damage windows but it actually is a 90s effect in a 2min meta so it doesn't really fit very well'. Potencies of the Astrodyne effects would be changed to suit this, of course. I just haven't done the maths for that. Alternatively, we could just remove Astrodyne because it kinda sucks.

SGE:

Oddly enough, SGE's damage rotation, I left almost entirely untouched. Only Toxikon (not a regular part of the rotation anyway) was changed, rather, all of the adjustments were made with the goal of making the class utilize the Kardia effect more, and modify it with 'Augmentation' skills.

1: Dosis, Pneuma, Diagnosis, Prognosis, Dyskrasia and Phlegma, and any Eukrasian variants thereof (in other words, everything that currently has MP costs) now costs ZERO MP.

2: Soteria, Krasis, Zoe now have a 5 second cooldown, and an MP cost (maybe 1000 idk). Eukrasia now has an MP cost, albeit slightly lower (maybe 700, comparatively speaking)

3: E.Diagnosis, E.Prognosis and E.Dosis now have their base form's potency, with the additional effect being just that, additional, potencies adjusted to compensate. This means E.Diagnosis is 450p, with a shield equal to 120% of HP restored. E.Prognosis is 300p, shield equal to 100% of HP restored (yes it went down by 20p, it's not a big deal). E.Dosis now does 330p up-front damage, with a DOT effect of 35 for 30sec (same total, but half of it is now frontloaded). Currently, if you accidentally Eukrasia before a cast but don't need the Eukrasia, you have to either click it off (clunky) or suck up the loss of effectiveness. With this, all you lose is the MP cost. Which still sucks, just not as much.

4: Toxicon now has a 5sec cooldown, and an MP cost. Toxicon 2 is removed. Addersting is reworked as a resource into a 0-100 gauge. Addersgall is reworked into a 0-100 gauge. Addersgall is generated both passively at a rate of 1 per second, and actively via the class's skills. All previous costs of 'one Addersgall' now cost 25 Addersgall. Yes this means you can pool 4 Druocholes instead of 3.

5: A new button, Pankardia (MP cost 1000), is added as a level 68 skill. It's effect would be 'Applies 4 stacks of PanKardion to all nearby allies. When Kardion heals, every ally with PanKardion receives a heal of the same potency, consuming one stack per Kardion heal triggered.'

6: Soteria has it's effect changed to 'Applies 4 stacks of Soteria to self. Each Kardion heal is increased by 50% of the damage dealt by the attack that triggered the heal, consuming one stack. Area-Effect skills only count the primary target.'

7: Zoe has it's effect changed to 'Applies 4 stacks of Zoe to self. Causes Kardion and Pankardion to additionally apply a barrier, equal to 25% of the amount healed by the original effect, consuming one stack. Multiple applications of this barrier may overlap, strengthening the barrier's effectiveness. Does not stack with Eukrasian Prognosis.'

8: Krasis has it's effect changed to 'Applies 4 stacks of Krasis to self. Allows any non-instant spell to be cast with zero cast time, consuming one stack.'

9: Toxicon has it's effect changed to 'Drains the Addersting Gauge to 0, and applies 4 stacks of Toxicon to self. Offensive spells have increased potency, scaling based on how much Addersting was consumed. Consumes one stack per offensive spell used.' (at the moment, I'm thinking a 1:1 rate, so 100 gauge is 100p boost for 4 hits, but this can be spent earlier if needed, to reset the gauge to 0 and re-jig when you hit 100 to line up with raidbuffs better, for optimization gamers to play with)

10: Triggering a Kardion heal in any way generates 1 Addersting. Spending Soteria, Zoe and Krasis stacks have the additional effect of 'Increases Addersting gauge by 4.' (All 4 stacks total up to 16 gauge, 20 in total due to the Kardion triggering) Eukrasia grants 8 gauge on use. Spending Toxicon charges causes the Addersgall gauge to increase by 4 each. Addersgall spenders still retain their MP restoration effects, but the MP restoration potency might be rebalanced.

11: Phlegma has a 'Eukrasian' variant, which is a target-based circle AOE (like Phlegma currently is), does 50% of your current Phlegma's damage to the target and all enemies near it (and consumes a charge of Phlegma), but additionally applies Eukrasian Dosis to all targets hit for 15 seconds (this would mean a total potency of 475 per target in an AOE, over 15 sec), and uses Phlegma's current animation. Main Phlegma now uses Toxicon 1's animation, because it's our hardest hit and that animation is in the trailer for the game so it deserves to be front and center.

12: Rhizomata has it's effect changed to 'Adds 25 Addersgall. Causes the next MP cost to be reduced to 0. Duration: 10sec.'

13: Eukrasian Diagnosis' shield break effect changed from 'Grants one Addersting' to 'Grants Phlegmatic, allowing the cast of Phlegma without spending a charge'. This would not be a 100% refund (600 vs 660 of 2x Dosis), but it's better than what we have now. Also, going into a burst window with a E.Diagnosis, then spending your Phlegmatic charge, followed by the natural 2 Phlegma charges is probably a DPS gain for those optimization types, and would be a bit like DRK banking it's Dark Arts charge for raidbuffs

14: Pepsis now costs 500mp, has a very low CD (maybe 5sec), and generates 8 Addersting on use (even if it doesn't do anything you get the gauge). When Eukrasian Diagnosis or Eukrasian Prognosis break, they leave a buff on that player called Second Opinion for about 5 seconds. When Pepsis is used, it consumes Second Opinion to heal that player for the amount of HP the barrier protected for. Essentially, if you ever played a Character Action game like Viewtiful Joe, Wonderful 101, whatever, and used the Ukemi (jump button right as you land, instantly heal back the damage you took), it's that with a bit more leniency. And it gives Pepsis a much more interesting use case.

Later additions to the class would presumably include more damage buttons, but this would be what I'd hope for from the 'first step' on 'fixing the Healer role'. With the reworked Soteria/Krasis/Zoe/Toxikon/the new Pankardia button, the goal of the class to 'optimize your damage' would not be on the damage side, but trying to juggle your resources such that you can heal/shield everything without a single GCD, by utilizing Kardia to its fullest. This should, if the devs balance it correctly, be 'doable, but exceptionally difficult', with even Orange-Parsing players having to occasionally dip into one GCD of shields. 'X team managed to clear Y fight with zero heal GCDs used on SGE' should be a task worthy of a Reddit post to commemorate the achievement, like that time a BLM cracked 10k damage in SB on O12S

Maybe one day I'd go and reformat them into 'job action guide' style formatting, to show what you get at what level a bit more cleanly, but that's a lot of effort

[Supersnow845]

Given that they said “we don’t know what to do with scholar” you’d think it would be slotted for a large rework, for better or worse. It’s odd that nothings been said about it.

Honestly it’s probably because they have no idea what to do with it that they won’t rework it

AST is a mess but in modern healer design it’s shockingly easy to “fix” it, dump either draw or play on the GCD, make the buffs AOE to compensate for the loss of one malefic when using a card, delete minor arcana and one or two of AST’s vestigial heals and boom the class is functionally fixed in terms of 14’s warped design philosophy

If they want to fix SCH without just doing another SGE they will actually have to have a design idea in mind and as we know they don’t for SCH

[AmiableApkallu]

For a moment, I thought I saw a post in this thread that was nothing but fifteen 1s, and I was like:

• If that's to imply that healers get a sub-2 second GCD, that could be interesting, maybe?
• If that's to imply that we lose our poor, refresh-every-30 seconds DoT, that would be... unfortunate.