[Petition] Have Naoki Yoshida Play Healer and take off the DPS Gloves for a year.

[AnotherPerson]

My god, you can't believe this, can you?

Many people love healing as it is right now. They're part of EVERYONE, and they would most definitely not win. I hate healers in PvP other than WHM, and barely that, because I have no heals I can actually use. The CD on Cure is painful for a person that main heals. There are no healers in PvP and I hate it. The only Job I can even somewhat stand to play is WHM because it has some more healing than the others, but barely, and it requires you blitzing into melee (and often certain death in Frontlines) just to use Cure 3. Your functional Medica 2 comes from using LB. It's totally stupid. It's a garbage system. The PvP rework overall is okay, but what they did to healers was brutal. There's barely any HEALING in PvP now, and that sucks arse.

They did great on tanking and damage dealers in PvP - because the Devs clearly love Tanks and DPS but hate Healers - but they did Healers super dirty in PvP. Every single healer has to be a melee warrior and none of them have distance openers, and SCH doesn't even have a gap CLOSER to get into melee in the first place. I can't see why anyone thinks healing in PvP now is enjoyable. It's passable on WHM but total garbage otherwise. If that came to PvE, I'd either quit healing or quit the game outright.

You people that want and love that aren't healers. You're damage dealers in healers' clothing.

PvP healers ARE healers. Healing in PvP is literally the healer definition in MOBA games. You have to stop looking at PvP the same way as PvE because PvP is fighting against real players, not scripted monsters that repeat the same mechanics.

The big key difference between healing in PvE and healing in PvP is that PvE is ridiculously lenient in what mistakes players make against an scripted enemy, as opposed to PvP - which is more strictly based on team effort with real players and unique gameplay identity. Each mistake in PvP has a huge cost to overall team performance, and this is what separates players from being good and bad in ranked gameplay. Instead of extending player's "mistakes" forever until the next burst window (old PvP Cure spam + med kits), the new PvP shortens these skirmishes by removing this nonsensical delay on every role (recuperation now costs MP and has limited uses, healers have more burst healing potential) and instead make healing more impactful on timing and usage, resulting in shorter Crystalline Conflict matches and faster gameplay for everyone to enjoy.


- If everyone on PvP is doing well (including the other team), the impact of your healing is absolutely noticeable because you'd be able to draw out fights long enough to start pushing the crystal when the enemy has to start retreating due to the difference of self-sustain made up by having a healer.

- If everyone on PvP is doing decent, the impact of your healing becomes relatively noticeable because your team would be coming out on top of skirmishes.

- If your team is doing poorly compared to the other team, the healing would be just enough to offset the enemy team's damage comparatively, but won't seem "noticeable" besides to the healer.

- If your team is doing absolutely terrible (not bothering to use recuperation), then no amount of healing in Old PVP (med kits replacing recuperation) and the new PVP will save them.

This is why PvP healing gets a dramatic impact based on how well and how badly the team is performing when healers are using them effectively. This is what makes PvP GOOD by design. Healers are there to tilt the scales, but in a teamfight between players, they are not the only caveat that determines whether the team wins or fails. Teamwork and team coordination is still the main key factor to winning in PvP.

The reason why old PVP was bad is because it literally treated your enemies as scripted mobs with the same mechanics (A.K.A PVE mechanics). All that damage can just be healed through and ignored. DPS is basically useless outside of coordinating in a burst window because of the ridiculous amount of healing that healers can throw at everyone.

The reason why this gameplay works is because short of removing all abilities that are redundant in PvP when everyone is playing properly, you're left with a very small subset of abilities that only healing can cover and make up the difference. This frees up healers to also gain back their old "support-oriented" gameplay, except the support-oriented gameplay is not all just damage % modifiers anymore. We get back some crowd-control abilities and At least in PvP, healers all function uniquely. No one healer is a carbon copy of another and requires a completely different mindset to play another. This is completely opposite to PvE healing, because you have so much excess healing skills + 2 button DPS skills that each healer fundamentally functions the same in the vast majority of content.


Case in point:
Have you seen how effective a good SCH LB works? It removes debuffs (saving 1 purify usage) and doubles as an HP extender. An absolute burst defense skill. Especially in Frontlines. Good SCHs can directly mitigate the effect of multiple Bahamuts and give everyone enough time to recuperate and survive.

WHM LB is a gamechanger because of how you can stun the enemy team while increasing the damage/healing output of your team. Out of the 4 healers, this one is the most offensive oriented and simplistic to use.

AST LB directly applies a 30% damage mitigation buff, reducing all burst attacks on any player for a set duration. Combined with their Macrocosmos + their Ewer Draw, it directly improves the state of their healing and survival without being a carbon copy of WHM or SCH by maximizing the effectiveness on a singular AoE delayed heal while bolstering each player's potential to heal to damage on their own accord.

SGE LB makes it so the team take 0 damage if the enemy tries to attack while you are inside your LB. If they walk in to fight, they have to take a huge DoT Debuff, making it very advantageous for your team. It's not overpowered either due to the long charge time and limited space to utilize it. A good team can directly push the crystal far, win skirmishes, and even secure the game with it. A bad team will not use it effectively and end up wasting the game-changing skill.

Plus, unlike PvE, no role is 'forced' or required in PvP. There is no strict composition of 1 tank, 1 healer, 2 DPS. It's more balanced so that everyone have a form of limited self-sustain, but no role is "required" in a team - instead they're just a role with a unique playstyle & function like every other job.

Meanwhile, PvE healers... you have the tank directly do your job for you and act as the second healer. PLD can self heal themselves in Endwalker. WAR can straight up start ignoring the healer near the end of Heavensward and start healing the party by Shadowbringers. Teamwork only exists to handle mechanics and align buff windows. That's literally it. There's no actual coordination or strategy to PvE gameplay anymore. No support mechanics other than a % damage increase or a % mitigation buff to survive a fatal hit. The one good thing about healers in Endwalker is how SCH gained Expedience and AST gained Macrocosmos, making them stand more unique in toolkit.... assuming you ever need it when your tanks can handle all the mitigation and healing for you in most content.

Translating PvP healers to PvE healers does not necessarily force all healing to be removed because both content plays differently. PvE can still accommodate plenty of healing skills. However, the same exact 2 button DPS rotation that literally exists with each healer from level 4 to 90 needs to go.

[Renathras]

And yet solo healer queues in Duty Finder have never been so consistently instant in the manner that they are now.

Why is that?

What? o.O

I'm not sure what game you played, but solo healer ques were consistent for all of ShB and SB for me. I've never had to wait more than 5 mins to get into ANYTHING as a healer that I can recall, and generally the window pops for me as soon as I hit the que button. It's done this consistently for...basically 8 years. Even when I was leveling CNJ into WHM back in 2.2 when I started player, healer ques were pretty consistent. The main difference is that there are more tanks now than there used to be owing to the popularity of the role increasing over time, so you get instant ques on both these days - when I que as a tank, I also consistently get the window popping immediately other than for 24 mans because they only need 3 tanks total.

"Why is that?" It's ALWAYS been this way. The only time it WASN'T this way was back when tanks were super underrepresented vs healers. And in that case tank ques were instant while healer ones would be 30 sec to 2 mins. If your argument was really true, Healer ques would be instant while tanks would be waiting 20 sec to 2 mins in que. Jump on a tank right now and que any content other than 24 mans. You'll get an instant que.

So all you're seeing is that tank and healer numbers are about equal now - and that's because tank numbers have increased as a percentage of the population - not that there's a dearth of healers.

EDIT:

As to this...

And there is absolutely NOTHING for veteran healers to get better at on ANY healer and no, I am sorry but you cannot sit here and tell me having 1 dot and 1 nuke from lv4-90 is ok on ANY class. That is abysmal design.

When you calm a bit from the hyperbole...

Further, healers in previous expansion HAD more support and dps tools and they were removed. Your argument falls flat when the people who liked those original designs have nothing to be compensated. And yes, THAT INCLUDES WHITE MAGE.

Oh really?

Tell me, what "more support and dps tools" did WHM have in SB? They had realistically two more DoTs, one less combo finisher nuke (Misery), two less GCD heals, one less oGCD heal, and no additional support tools than they have today. So why are you openly lying here? On net, they had two less heals and one more DPS button.

No I don't want to play DPS as a healer

Yes, you do. You just can't be honest about it.

What I want is to actually [I][B][U]juggle between doing DPS, SUPPORT, and HEALING.

Yes, you want to be a DPS with party buffs that can throw heals here and there. You literally want RDM as a role in a game that has a rigid combat system that pretty strictly adheres to the trinity. The only Job in this game that is going to be what you want is RDM, and that was already stretching it.

Ranged physical is the designated "Support" role, and barely at that. RDM and PLD are the only vaguely capable healers that dabble in other roles. RDM and SMN are the only non-healers that have Raise support.

I'm not telling you how to play, but what you want is what RDM is, not what the Healer role is. What you want is a Job that does DPS, has party buffs, and can throw support heals at the party. There is no Job that will do this fully in a rigid trinity system. None.

If you want to lean on the "buffs as support", the only real option is AST. If you want to lean on the "juggle DPS", then the only real option is RDM and convince your party to 1 healer content and let you fill in the other healer slot.

What you're asking for just doesn't exist in FFXIV, and never has.

You wanna know why PvP healers are more liked than PvE?

As I pointed out in my prior post, they are NOT more universally liked than PvE. They are more liked by people that want to play a support DPS. They are somewhat DISliked by actual Healers. Actual Healers tolerate a few of them and like a few gimics like SCH having the ability to boost ally damage directly with Adlo (though this is just Chain Stratagem divorced from the 2 min PvE burst window)

If anything, the reason they're at all liked is because they aren't bound to a 2 minute window and are instead bound closer to 20 second micro-rotations, which is something that plagues all PvE, not just healers.

It's not "because they feel different from one another", because the PvE healers ALREADY feel different than one another unless you're oversimplifying to the point that you would argue WHM, WAR, and BLM all feel the same.

And WHM? WHM feels more in line to a true healer in PvP with actually having heals.

WHM BARELY feels like a healer in PvP because of the CD on Cure 2. And it's the ONLY healer in PvP that does. SCH is a buffer, not a healer, and SGE is a DPSer. AST is kind of a hybrid of the two. WHM WOULD feel like a healer in PvP if it actually had no CD on Cure 2. Even WHM, the most healy of the healers in PvP has a massive damage death laser for REASONS.

Stoneskin

Look, I LOVED using Stoneskin in ARR and HW, and absolutely loved Stoneskin 2 when it was added to the game...but I was told repeatedly I was a bad player for using it, and honestly, they were right to say so. Good players didn't use Stoneskin. That's why Stoneskin was removed. I'd love it if that WASN'T the case and it was treated more like Adlo, but that ship has long since sailed.

We're not just asking for wildly new things, we're also asking for the things we lost because we found those fun and they didn't need to be removed to begin with.

That'd be fine if you also knew when to leave alone, something you don't seem to have the capacity to do. For example, WHM has Misery now in place of Aero 3 (uses it half as often, but it fills the same general spot in our rotation, despite people thinking otherwise) and has an actual USABLE Stoneskin in the form of Divine Benison as an oGCD weave so players aren't told they're bads for using it.

Not everyone found those things you like fun, though, which is arguably why they were removed. While adding some back wouldn't necessarily be bad, some of them were removed for good reasons.

You say it isn't fair to the people who like the way healing is now, but how is it fair for you to say that when the healers you have NOW are the result of the HEALERS OF THE PAST LOSING THINGS?

I started playing in 2.2. I remember when Stoneskin 2 was added to the game. Many of the Healers NOW are also the healers of the past.

So while I am in agreement it isn't fair to people who like healers now, it also isn't fair to people who liked how healers were in the past either.

This is the ONE statement you said I agree with - which is why I keep saying we should take a blended approach where we leave some healers as they are now and change some to more reflect the old playstyles.

And personally, THOSE are the people SE SHOULD HAVE CATERED TO TO BEGIN WITH AND DIDN'T.

This I disagree with. Many people even back then didn't like healers, which is why there was a chronic healer SHORTAGE until ShB. That wasn't healthy for the game.

And, as noted above, we didn't have a magical time of support healers then, either.

But, again, this is why I'd personally agree with making SCH and AST or SGE and AST more akin to what you want while leaving the other two alone.

[Sebazy]

I'm not sure what game you played, but solo healer ques were consistent for all of ShB and SB for me. I've never had to wait more than 5 mins to get into ANYTHING as a healer that I can recall, and generally the window pops for me as soon as I hit the que button. It's done this consistently for...basically 8 years.

This I disagree with. Many people even back then didn't like healers, which is why there was a chronic healer SHORTAGE until ShB. That wasn't healthy for the game.

So which is it?

I haven’t seen a 5 minute queue for leveling, expert etc roulette as a solo healer once since the release of EW. Queues were typically rapid in EW but not as consistently instant as they are for me now. Go back to ARR, HW and even SB, they weren’t consistently and guaranteeably instant like they are now. They weren’t long sure. But again. They weren’t instant either.

[Renathras]

...

I don't play MOBAs for a number of reasons, that's one - there are no real healers in MOBAs, just support focused DPSers. Besides, the most comparable game to FFXIV is probably WoW, and healers in WoW were not like MOBA healers, either.

I hate Crystaline Conflict type content. Haven't even qued for it. I hate arena PvP and always have. I'll play Battlegrounds/Frontlines kind of stuff, though, but arena PvP is uninspired garbage and always has been. It's just...not fun. So I hate to break it to you, but any discussion focusing on CC isn't going to win me over.

And I will contest you on the point of "damage being ignored" in old PvP. If you ignored damage, people died. The difference was you could do a lot more to keep people alive. Now, you can't. You get 2 Cure 2s (and that's if you're playing WHM - none of the other healers can come close to that), then they die. Especially if they're chain CCed (crowd control) because Purify and Guard don't work like they're supposed to and there are no diminishing returns on CC for god only knows what reason (even PvE enemies build up immunity to Holy's Stun) and can't use Recuperate because they're in permanent stun lock from 100% -> 0% and there's literally nothing you can do about it after casting Cure 2 twice and an Aquaveil that isn't going to keep them alive, either. Cure 3 once if you also fling yourself into the enemy team so that you, too, can die right after they're done with your teammate. And that's when you aren't all instantly dead anyway from a wave of Bahamuts, of course.

Healers shouldn't be able to keep a person alive while they're being beaten on by 20 enemies, but that was never true to begin with. In the current game, you can't even keep someone alive who's being beaten on by 2. The only solution is to try to blow a bunch of burst like you're some DPSer cracked up on 2 min burst CDs and hope you can kill one of the enemies so your ally can get out of the stunlock and MAYBE do enough damage to the other before dying so you can at least finish them off and your team come out even in the exchange.

That's not gameplay "works", that's a garbage system that's annoying and NOT healing.

I've played SCH in Frontlines. No, Seraph cannot negate 5x Bahamuts. Believe me, I've tried. Hell, SGE's LB sounds amazing on paper, but there are quite a few things that go through it (including LBs, it seems), and it has the long 2 min CD, making it far less useful than it seems like it should be. Also, I've yet to see the "huge DoT" actually kill anyone.

WHM is great on paper, but the number of times I've stunned an enemy (already below 50% health) only for my team to let them get away into the safety of their defensive line is ridiculous. Especially if THEIR Purify/Guard happens to actually WORK (which is totally hit and miss in PvP right now) and completely negate the Stun anyway.

No role being required is fine. But healers are not healers in PvP, no matter how much spin you want to put on it.

As to your discussion about coordination, I guess this largely depends on what content you play. Savages require coordination. And people who don't have Statics (and there are a lot of us) don't necessarily have reliable voice comms and communication, so we need tools that are plug and play. The game's mechanics are too fast paced for most people to type out strategies and converse in combat with chat boxes like you could do in, say, EverQuest. And many players already accuse FFXIV's gameplay of being slow and "boring" as it is, so that would never go over well. That's why "Teamwork" doesn't exist there.

...but having played a ton of Frontlines - enough to get my rare horse mount, and I don't mean the Garo ones - there is VERY rarely "teamwork" and "coordination" in FFXIV's PvP. "coordination or strategy" don't exist outside of sometimes one person calling things and maybe 30% of the party actually listening.

I do love Expedience, though. Nice to see a kind of more out of the box solution to more support focus, even if slight, that isn't just a damage buff.

And it's funny you hyp up healers in PvP over PvE...except in the ONE way they're more or less the same: PvP healers still largely have 2 button DPS "rotations". Indeed, WHM has no DoT, so when Misery and Seraph Strike are on CD, it's literally JUST Glare spam with no option. At least in PvE, you have the options of using a Lily heal for a future Misery or using Dia as a slight damage increase if you have literally nothing else to hit other than Glare and have to move. PvP has JUST Glare.

So the one thing you say "needs to go" is the one thing that PvP is arguably worse about than PvE...

[Visanis]

Imagine thinking the healer role has been in a good spot since Shadowbringers.

Yikes.

[Renathras]

So which is it?

I haven’t seen a 5 minute queue for leveling, expert etc roulette as a solo healer once since the release of EW. Queues were typically rapid in EW but not as consistently instant as they are for me now. Go back to ARR, HW and even SB, they weren’t consistently and guaranteeably instant like they are now. They weren’t long sure. But again. They weren’t instant either.

I know you want some kind of weird gocha, but no.

Healer ques were SLIGHTLY longer in ARR and HW because tanks were in such short supply. They made improvements to tanking in SB and introduced a borderline DPSer tank in ShB, so tanks are not in as short supply. To give a sort of numerical example. Suppose the player base is:

5 tanks, 10 healers, 50 DPSers

On average, healers have to wait a short time - but still short - for a tank to enter into the que after finishing their last instance. But suppose some change happens that leads to some DPSers going tank:

10 tanks, 10 healers, 45 DPSers

Now healer and tank ques will be identical even though there are NO LESS HEALERS than there were before, because the issue before was a shortage of tanks to fill out parties, which has since been lifted. DPS ques are still bad in both cases, mind you, though slightly less so in the latter.

I haven't seen a 5 minute que for leveling, expert, ect as a solo healer EVER: And again, I've been healing since ARR. I can't remember ever seeing any one of those ques go over 2 minutes at any time I've ever played FFXIV unless it was just in the dead of night, and then it still was less than 5 minutes. During prime time, healer ques FOR SOLO HEALER have always been near-instant for me. And again, the only change here is that there are more tanks, not that there is a massive shortage of healers.

It's harder to see in DF since it doesn't show you the party makeup as it fills (since it's instant) outside of 8 and 24 mans (where healer ques have long been as they are today anyway), but you can see in PF groups that healers (at least on my DC, Primal) are ALWAYS full before tanks are, and sometimes before DPS are. That doesn't speak to some massive shortage of healers. They were, in fact, often instant in ARR, HW, and SB, but when they weren't, it was due to a shortage of tanks not a massively greater number of healers.

The entire purpose of the change from SB to ShB healers were because there was a shortage of HEALERS then, too. A shortage which isn't as bad now. Hell, DPS sometimes get instant ques for 24 mans these days, which was unheard of in the past.

EDIT:

Imagine thinking the healer role has been in a good spot since Shadowbringers.

Yikes.

Imagine thinking that saying something and then saying "Yikes" is a good argument.

Yikes.

.

Don't mistake me, btw: Healing could absolutely be better. oGCDs are both too powerful and too numerous, meaning we never have to use GCD heals, or at least none other than Lilies or on the move Eukrasias.

But "more DPS buttons" is hardly the only answer to that conundrum.

[ASkellington]

snip

Where in this post do you think I want to do dps numbers in comparison to actual DPS? Juggling dps/buffs/healing is what the healing role DOES in mmos. If you have a buff you keep it up on the party as often as you can. When there is a time that healing is required (usually unavoidable damage) you heal as much as needed and go back to casting a dps spell, literally how AST is played.

As for the rest of your post. RDM isn't a healer. I've played RDM. If anything you should be telling me to play BLU since it seems to have a similar design philosophy you and I agree on. Thing is, no. I'm not playing BLU when healers can be equally as fun as BLU healer.

You missed the entire point of my PvP mention. So I'll simplify it here: there are building blocks that healers like in their PvP variants that we want in PvE.

And as for your statement of "openly lying" at NO POINT did I say WHM had vast amount of support tools. I said "healers" as in IN GENERAL "had more support and dps options" and lost them. WHM losing a DoT and Stoneskin counts towards that broad statement, sorry if you disagree.

And personally I don't think Divine Bension is a better alternative to Stoneskin as the latter is CERTAINLY more flavorful.

As for your claim of my over simplification let me put it to you this way:

WHM/AST/SCH start with their 1 nuke 1 dot from lv4. SGE when you sink down doesn't get their DoT till 30, and they gain... Toxicon and Phlegma. <---dunno why they can have 2 extra buttons and other healers can't especially since there is no combo action.

Macrocosmos/Assize/Pnuema?/Earthly Star are not DPS abilities without also being tied to a heal which I do not count and we arguably shouldn't and Lord of Crowns is RNG.

What other DPS abilities exist for healers on a GCD? And yes I am ignoring AOEs.

I ask this because as a new player to FFXIV back in SHB I was expecting more. And I certainly feel it is dumb for me to spam Stone/Glare/Malefic/Broil for any solo duties where I play as my healing class. And as SE wants FFXIV to be a more SINGLE PLAYER EXPERIENCE for a new player starting out as CNJ that should be fix along with a slew of other issues I have with healers.

As for the "healers feel different" comment, no. If you want to get down to the nitty gritty sure. But AST shares too much with WHM and SGE shares too much with SCH for me to agree with you. The latter two I can LITERALLY arrange my bars near 1:1 and play just fine.

Of all the more unique abilities healers have there is Synastry which isn't really used outside of niche content and could be. Pepsis which I want to like, but SE doesn't want to play with for SGE. Haima (which again could be a fun healing style if it was spread to more abilities).

THAT is what I mean when healers play the same. Sub 50 AST is a straight up carbon copy of WHM for no reason as I've gone on record saying for AGES. In PvP it has effectively RDM's Quickcast for some of its abilities which is different to how WHM heals and that is what I want in PvE.

Do I want Doublecast in PvP? Hells no I hate it for my healing (I want the shield part first not the regen thank you very much) but do I want AST to be established as a HOT healer when you start at 30 instead of WHM but with cards? Yes.

[Floortank]

I cannot fathom how it could be "more engaging" without being "harder". There's no way to make it "more engaging" that WOULDN'T make it harder.

You're taking a game design approach to your argument, and sadly wasting your time. Game design is holistic, one change is never just one change; any alteration requires accommodation at multiple levels. You can't get through to people who don't understand this.

[Sebazy]

You're taking a game design approach to your argument, and sadly wasting your time. Game design is holistic, one change is never just one change; any alteration requires accommodation at multiple levels. You can't get through to people who don't understand this.

So what would you propose be done to tackle this ever growing issue? As a fairly well acclaimed ex game dev myself, I can’t think of an alternative that isn’t going to need a bit of an across the board rethink of healing in general. I’ve not seen anything to suggest that this is something Yoshida’s team are willing to do.

[AnotherPerson]

I don't play MOBAs for a number of reasons, that's one - there are no real healers in MOBAs, just support focused DPSers. Besides, the most comparable game to FFXIV is probably WoW, and healers in WoW were not like MOBA healers, either.

I hate Crystaline Conflict type content. Haven't even qued for it. I hate arena PvP and always have. I'll play Battlegrounds/Frontlines kind of stuff, though, but arena PvP is uninspired garbage and always has been. It's just...not fun. So I hate to break it to you, but any discussion focusing on CC isn't going to win me over.

Please do note that the moment you say you never tried Crystalline Conflict, you immediately discredit yourself for being disingenuous about making statements on PvP without actually playing it. Making statements about Frontlines is fine, but Crystalline Conflict is a small Skirmish between 5 coordinated players vs. 5 coordinated players and PvP balance patches are revolving around Crystalline Conflict. It's not a huge mess that Frontlines is, especially since Frontlines will be getting balance patches soon.

And I will contest you on the point of "damage being ignored" in old PvP. If you ignored damage, people died. The difference was you could do a lot more to keep people alive. Now, you can't. You get 2 Cure 2s (and that's if you're playing WHM - none of the other healers can come close to that), then they die. Especially if they're chain CCed (crowd control) because Purify and Guard don't work like they're supposed to and there are no diminishing returns on CC for god only knows what reason (even PvE enemies build up immunity to Holy's Stun) and can't use Recuperate because they're in permanent stun lock from 100% -> 0% and there's literally nothing you can do about it after casting Cure 2 twice and an Aquaveil that isn't going to keep them alive, either. Cure 3 once if you also fling yourself into the enemy team so that you, too, can die right after they're done with your teammate.

Please read what I wrote carefully. I said "All that damage can just be healed through and ignored. DPS is basically useless outside of coordinating in a burst window because of the ridiculous amount of healing that healers can throw at everyone."

In other words, damage is "non-threatening" or "non-lethal" in the sense that the damage can never exceed your maximum healing output to the point where it causes your ally to immediately die. This is the PvE mentality of spamming a healing spell to keep someone alive through multiple enemy mobs in a dungeon pull. Even if the damage exceeded a healer's healing, the medical kits were there to cover for the remaining damage. In other words, Old PVP meant healers were basically just there to spam Cure / Cure II while waiting for the next burst window. The next burst window is what actually determines whether the player will die.

And Again... you're bringing up the problem of a lack of healing by using Frontlines as your excuse to cover 8 players against 24+ enemies. This is in the situation of 5v5 (Crystalline Conflict) because this is what the healer toolkit is tuned to. It's not as if you have 2 healers guaranteed for each party, so it's imperative to pay attention to yourself first and foremost as each job has their own survival built-in to their toolkit.

Most players don't actually realize this but... if you put yourself in a spot where you CAN be Crowd-Control chained by 5 players and you DIDN'T guard for this eventuality ahead of time, then you made a HUGE mistake. That's a costly [positioning] mistake in Crystal tier if I ever seen one, and one that would set your team back real fast. Again... new PvP removes the "fluff" that is waiting for the burst window. Instead, it makes every moment in combat become a variable burst window because of the limited recuperation charges.

So yes... a healer with 2 charges should be easily able to make up for a player's mistake, unless the mistake is a fatal one. Being Crowd Controlled for so long to the point where they cannot survive with a healer on them in a 5v5 setting meant they were already dead from the getgo - same situation with old PVP.

WHM is great on paper, but the number of times I've stunned an enemy (already below 50% health) only for my team to let them get away into the safety of their defensive line is ridiculous. Especially if THEIR Purify/Guard happens to actually WORK (which is totally hit and miss in PvP right now) and completely negate the Stun anyway.

Are you using WHM's Limit Break nearby with your allies near the enemy (5 to 10 yalms), or are you standing 25 to 40 yalms away from the enemy with everyone far away from them? Because the former will guarantee a kill or put your team to your advantage while the latter.... wastes your limit break for no reason? If they're able to retreat to their defensive line, then they must have plenty of time to escape, which meant they were in no danger in the first place. I've usually am able to secure a kill with WHM Limit break if they're under 50% by myself as a White Mage... Chances are that you either hit that person while they're guarded (wasting your Limit Break) or your team is focused on something else. That's nothing inherently wrong with White Mage's Limit break, so it's a team coordination issue on your end.

I've played SCH in Frontlines. No, Seraph cannot negate 5x Bahamuts. Believe me, I've tried. Hell, SGE's LB sounds amazing on paper, but there are quite a few things that go through it (including LBs, it seems), and it has the long 2 min CD, making it far less useful than it seems like it should be. Also, I've yet to see the "huge DoT" actually kill anyone.

I don't know how to break this to you... but at least in the content of Frontlines -- because there exists a semblance of balance in Crystalline Conflict as Scholar is the anti-thesis of Summoner's Bahamut. Seraph is not supposed to negate 5 players worth of Limit Breaks with 1 Limit Break. That would make Scholars overpowered. You can, however, block up to 2 Bahamut Limit breaks with Scholar's toolkit alone. This is because Scholar not only can apply a party-wide shield, it can also strengthen their party-wide shield with Expedience and double that shield with Seraph + full Excogitations and debuff the enemy with a 10% damage reduction penalty. Blocking 2 Bahamuts is the limit of Scholar's LB, which then falls to the party to spam recuperate when they were hit. You can block up to 3 if you use the Scholar's entire kit defensively. This is under the condition that everyone is in the same Battle High.

The amazing thing about Scholar is that if you play it right, it's not difficult to secure kills and gain a lot of Battle High because Scholar's DoTs are meant to pressure the enemy - whether it is to lower their HP for your team to secure a kill or to lower their HP during combat when the enemy is pre-occupied with something else (ex: Attacking Crystal/capturing point/defending against other enemies). I've gotten a decent number of kills with Scholar using this strategy purely through DoTs. Likewise, I've been biolysis'd before when in combat and disengaged ... only to realize I had no more mana for recuperation and directly died to a Scholar DoT before I got my elixir out. This is actually what Scholars excel the most at, so it's not just me who uses this strategy.

So uh... yeah... that's a problem on your end, if you aren't able to do well with Scholar on Frontlines.... because Scholar actually preforms much better on Frontlines due to how their gameplay works. I can confirm as I've consistently gained max Battle High from it. So uhm... sorry, you just outed yourself for not knowing how to effectively perform well on Scholar.

Also, no, Sage Limit Break does not allow other Limit Breaks or attacks to go through it randomly. It nullifies all damage - including Limit Breaks. It can even block a Ninja's Limit Break when an ally is under 50% HP. This is under the condition that the opponent does not have lype and you are under the buff Mesotes. Sage's Limit Break is only effective to block all damage when no one is in range of their Limit Break. This is what makes Sage's Limit Break powerful enough to block 5x Bahamut. For Dragoon's Limit Break, if the Dragoon attacked but did not get the lype debuff the moment your party is in attacked in the Sage Mesotes circle, then even a Dragoon's Limit break can be blocked.

If you have issues with using Sage's Limit break, there's a high chance you have placed the Limit Break too late or the opponent decided to take the lype DoT to do damage to your team.

And it's funny you hyp up healers in PvP over PvE...except in the ONE way they're more or less the same: PvP healers still largely have 2 button DPS "rotations". Indeed, WHM has no DoT, so when Misery and Seraph Strike are on CD, it's literally JUST Glare spam with no option. At least in PvE, you have the options of using a Lily heal for a future Misery or using Dia as a slight damage increase if you have literally nothing else to hit other than Glare and have to move. PvP has JUST Glare.

PvP White Mage skills to press for damaging enemies:
Afflatus Misery - 15 seconds
Seraph Strike - 20 seconds
Miracle of Nature - CC - 25 seconds
Glare
Afflatus Purgation - 60 seconds (Limit Break)

PvP Scholar skills to press for damaging enemies:
Expedient (Doubling as an enhancement) - 30 seconds
Biolysis - 15 seconds
Deployment Tactics (Doubling as an enhancement to spread DoT/Shield) - 15 seconds
Broil
Mummification - 20 seconds

PvP Astrologian skills to press for damaging enemies:
Macrocosmos - 30 seconds
Fall Malefic
Fall Malefic Double cast (speed up double cast) - 7.5 to 15 seconds
Gravity II - 15 seconds
Gravity II Double cast - 15 seconds
Draw -> The Balance / The Spire - 20 seconds


PvP Sage skills to press for damaging enemies:
Dosis III
Phlegma III - 15 seconds
Pneuma - 30 seconds
Eukrasia -> Eukrasian Dosis III - 15 seconds
Toxikon - 15 seconds
Toxikon II - whenever Eukrasian Diagnosis breaks

Yes, White mage is the most simplistic healer out of the 4. It doesn't mean the healers as a whole have less damaging abilities because all their skills are now set up in such a way that they either synergize with each other or interact uniquely. Plus, all these skills are on a fairly low cooldown (30 seconds on average), so they come up often enough in the rotation to the point where your main attack skill is not as noticeable. For the PvE side, these skills have an upwards to 120 second cooldown, so each use of Glare/Broil/Malefic/Dosis in PvE is much more magnified. It's really not the same.