Healers and the trinity feel broken

[WhiteWitch]

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[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

The game is a lot of fun, for the most part, but there are a lot of strange issues with classes syncing.
Sage and scholar don't stack their shield in alliance raids. This effectively cripples both healers. Why couldn't they make both shields do half the amount? Instead, they just overwrite each other.

To my memory, I think Astrologian's shield sect worked with SCH succor. But i might be wrong on that, it's been like half a year.

About the trinity feeling diminished-
Two of the four tanks don't even need healing for half of the games content. I've seen an expert roulette on PF yesterday on Primal saying "this is a message to all curebots saying your services are no longer required".


Healer dps issue-
2 of the healers have half the dps skills that the other two have.

Sage and whm have all these dps skills, but astro and sch have broil bio/malefic gravity.

Everyone wants to use afflatus on WHM but it feels like using lilies is a glare loss unless the boss is currently invulnerable. Like the only appropriate time you can use afflatus in suzaku is when she is invulnerable doing the arrow moves.

Shields never stacked. Ast shields overwrote sch shields just like sage

[Seraphor]

AST has cards, they're dps skills.

Unfortunately, the trinity is vulnerable to power creep. It works at min ilvl, but when tanks defence increase at the same time healers potencies increase, both become exponentially superfluous, overhealing damage that isn't threatening to begin with.
There is no solution in an rpg where stat increases are the bare minimal mechanic of gameplay progression.

[SieyaM]

AST has cards, they're dps skills.

Unfortunately, the trinity is vulnerable to power creep. It works at min ilvl, but when tanks defence increase at the same time healers potencies increase, both become exponentially superfluous, overhealing damage that isn't threatening to begin with.
There is no solution in an rpg where stat increases are the bare minimal mechanic of gameplay progression.

I would call them support skills but the card game for AST does at least help fill in some down time with something other than Malefic.

[Gemina]

Everyone wants to use afflatus on WHM but it feels like using lilies is a glare loss unless the boss is currently invulnerable. Like the only appropriate time you can use afflatus in suzaku is when she is invulnerable doing the arrow moves.

Afflatus is a good summary of healers issues across the board. It's a mostly passive mechanic that restores HP and can also do damage, and it is functionable despite the fact that it works against itself. These are the kind of healer gripes I can get on board with, and that I wish the dev team would address. When healers start talking about DPS rotations. I'm out. I don't even want to hear it anymore.

Tanks I can only really talk about as far as dungeons go, but I think this is where most people refer to the issues with them. DRK's self-sustain being in the crapper, and WAR being OP specifically refer to dungeon play. But I also understand that optimal DRK builds are pulling pretty close to DPS numbers ATM, so I don't know. I know next to nothing about the other two tanks, and any issues they currently have.

As for the holy trinity, I don't feel it's been compromised. What is echoed around here is only partially reflected in-game from my experience. A good example of this is in dungeons and how the group typically stops if anyone is having difficulty. It is obviously critical for the tank and healer role to be filled if big pulls are going to be attempted; but this can't be done without both DPS players present as well.

Every role has their part in FFXIV; even if it is not as critical in some instances, it alone can make the difference between a clear or reset in others.

[SenorPatty]

That's why I'm of the opinion that half of all the healing abilities should be dps/support. If you the game overall doesn't need that much healing and it's clear as day that it's going to remain that, at least from the devs' standpoint, then they should, at the very least, give us other buttons to press to make us feel engaged 100% of the time you're in party content.

[Jeeqbit]

To my memory, I think Astrologian's shield sect worked with SCH succor. But i might be wrong on that, it's been like half a year.

It didn't, but it doesn't really matter that shields don't stack. It only would matter in challenging content, where you use a Pure Healer and a Barrier Healer unless you didn't setup the party properly. Even if you have a SCH and a SGE, they are better played as pure healers most of the time because using their shields requires you to stop doing damage.

About the trinity feeling diminished-
Two of the four tanks don't even need healing for half of the games content. I've seen an expert roulette on PF yesterday on Primal saying "this is a message to all curebots saying your services are no longer required".

That has always been true though. I have solo'd dungeon bosses on PLD, WAR and sometimes DRK for years, literally even in Heavensward. For years it's been possible to do most dungeons with 4 DPS. Dungeons are just easy. Someone who is not good at these classes probably would still need a healer and I love that if you are good enough at your class you can overcome an unusual composition.

Sage and whm have all these dps skills, but astro and sch have broil bio/malefic gravity.

Scholar has Energy Drain, Dissipation and Chain Strategem and Astro has Earthly Star, its cards and Divination. Some of them are just buffs that increase damage instead of being an attack themselves, but they are all forms of added damage from a balancing perspective.

[Shougun]

The flattening of the curve was less strong as I thought it would be, so certainly still the whole powercreep kills healer's purpose issue- they also added quite a bit of self sustain on tanks... Which as playing a tank feels amazing!.... but I'm sure is more reasons for healers to feel like "what is my purpose?" "you cast glare" "oh my god. . ". At least until you get a tank that doesn't use their defensive cooldowns .

I like the above idea from SenorPatty on just maybe accepting some nature of that issue and changing some of their skills to be more support based then (and depending on the healer maybe a few more DPS spells). One support skill I still think could get around the issue SE had said long ago about support jobs (referring to the discussion of bard) is by having the skills have goal potency that are not too bad to reach. For example Scholar might inflict a debuff affliction that increases the damage the target receives by 10% up to 1,000 potency, their own spells dealing 25% more damage. Rather than a debuff it can also be buffs, like Sage energizes their special partner causing both to deal 25% more damage up to X potency. That way you can avoid different # of player issues like a buffing job would be more powerful in a group of 8 than 4 if you had no such self balancing designs.

Perhaps with epic echo (glad that exists), and trusts expanding, one might also make the power creep of defense and healing slower than damage (making sure to modify healer damage so that it is unaffected by the slight nerf in healing across the board).

Of course I don't think it should be so hard that a casual player is getting the 'dark souls' experience on each fight lol. Another thing that I think might need a counter-intuitive solution. Currently better players who need harder content get better gear that makes all content easier, giving them awful gear would just never work... but what if gear was more horizonal such that in a set the casual easy to get gear might have the same if not more defense than the hardcore hard to get gear.. of course the hardcore gear would have more damage though (balanced in plateau stepping groups, so there is still some powercreep- and epic echo / trusts still functioning to give players ability to do their own thing). Since technically the better players should be rewarded but probably not with more life / defense, rather more damage. Meanwhile the new players probably should have the more forgiving gear that also doesn't really let them skip any mechanics so they get to see and enjoy the whole picture. Materia can help offset some desires too.

Balance is a very difficult subject . . . A lot of one groups "way too easy, are you serious????" could be another person's "this game is unfinish-able". I don't envy the responsibility of making sure balance is fair lol (love making ideas, but if someone was like "do you want responsibility of balancing the jobs?" I'd be like "... can I make something less catastrophically important first? I want to be able to sleep at night for a little while at least" lol).

[Jeeqbit]

You’re supposed to seraph/panhaima and use cds to pre-shield the raidwides. It doesn’t take that long to apply pre shields that you’d be losing much dps ( especially if you have countdowns before the Fight starts)

Obviously I don't mean Seraph and other abilities because they don't suspend damage. Even if you use shields for the moments when you absolutely need them, there are a lot of healers that will use them for damage that does not require it and could just be healed after. That's why even if there are two barrier healers they are probably going to be fine, because you can play them as pure healers very easily.

[AlereRaeder]

I would call them support skills but the card game for AST does at least help fill in some down time with something other than Malefic.

AST cards used to be support skills. Some cards were speed up/damage up, defence up, regeneration up. New AST is purely damage, every card is damage. Calling them "support skills" is just plain wrong.

If my card usage nets me 100 (arbitrary) potency worth of damage by giving it to a dps then you can consider AST cards a 100 potency Ability (oGCD). Similar to how WHM's Assize works if you think about it.

Sage and whm have all these dps skills, but astro and sch have broil bio/malefic gravity.

I understand what you're saying is that the classes lack dps abilities, so i'd like to throw in something to think about.

SCH and AST don't only have those abilities you posted that contribute to damage. See above reply to SieyaM. Scholar has energy drains, Chain Strategem, and most importantly freedom. AST has cards, divination, macrocosmos/earthly star for example. The major reason why a group covets a NIN is because of trick attack as this skill alone contributes to a lot of damage.

While I do agree it doesn't feel as fun to have higher personal dps (ironyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy) than a WHM or SAGE (RIP Aero III). But you are essentially having about the same, more or less, damage playing AST or SCH. The way green dps plays out isn't so simple. The current rankings are SCH > SGE > AST > WHM. Yes, the healer with the least dps abilities is the highest.