Healers need an overhaul

[Sebazy]

So they've delayed an AST overhaul until 7.0 because of "extensive changes" needing a new expansion and not just a patch or something.
Is there any chance that this could portend an eventual overhaul of the healing role?

I can't think of a single x.0 patch healer overhaul that has gone down well TBH.

3.0 AST was a disaster
4.0 SCH was a train wreck, AST was a nuisance
5.0's great healer reboot ended up being a gutting
6.0's was comparatively minor but it's neat additions were overshadowed by oversights and mistakes

Forgive me if I'm not terribly confident here =(

[RyuDragnier]

Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if they decided to gut all our oGCDs and make them GCDs like WHM's Afflatus moves.

[Silver-Strider]

So they've delayed an AST overhaul until 7.0 because of "extensive changes" needing a new expansion and not just a patch or something.
Is there any chance that this could portend an eventual overhaul of the healing role?

If by overhaul you mean how much more they can kill the job as a warning to other healers. I don't see any possible future that won't end in the death of AST as we know it. I fully expect them to remove all 6 base cards and just leave Lord/Lady of Crown as the Melee/Ranged buff cards so that they can remove Minor Arcana/Crown Play; Wouldn't be the first time they destroyed AST's lore to make the job more "approachable".

[RyuDragnier]

It's sad how easy it would be to fix the card button bloat problem, but SE refuses to do it. Remove Undraw. Draw becomes Play when a card is drawn, and Minor Arcana becomes Crown Play after that is drawn. Right there, 3 buttons down off the bat, opening space on the hotbars. I still don't understand why they even added those buttons to begin with, everybody could tell immediately that it would cause button bloat.

[Raven2014]

If by overhaul you mean how much more they can kill the job as a warning to other healers. I don't see any possible future that won't end in the death of AST as we know it. I fully expect them to remove all 6 base cards and just leave Lord/Lady of Crown as the Melee/Ranged buff cards so that they can remove Minor Arcana/Crown Play; Wouldn't be the first time they destroyed AST's lore to make the job more "approachable".

To be honest with you, I kinda expect that, but I think it will be done out of necessity and not because the dev is lazy or incompetent.

I know a lot of people are not happy with the SMN change because it's too simple now. But if you look on the bright side, it means SMN has room to grow for the next 10 years, on a path that's more inline with its identity (actual summoner instead of a Warlock with pets). I don't think the dev expected FF14 to hit its prime 10 years into the game when historically that's where most MMO start dying off. But it means at this point most classes have suffered from power-creep and button-bloat. Without a total re-invention SMN style, I struggle to think how they can bring most of the current job forward.


Sure, people may say "just do this and that and it will be perfect" and let's just say SE listens and do just that ... it will be only a bane-aid for now, what gonna happen next expansion? It's fair to say the majority of players will definitely get mad if a job remain absolutely the same in a new expansion even if it was already perfect. So change for the shake of change and new abilities add just gonna repeat this vicious cycle.


In a way, SMN is like a testimony SE is willing to do a full re-imagination of a class. Yes, a lot of people will not be happy when it happens because it will naturally simplify the classes at the beginning. But like I said, it will be necessary for the classes to meaningfully grow for the next decade. And just like SMN who had an identity crisis, AST is right next on the list of having ill-defined identity. AST has never feel like a proper pure astrologist, but more like a mash up of an astro and a time mage. If it gonna receive a make over SMN style, I expect SE will strip away the "time mage" stuffs from it.

[Deceptus]

I can't think of a single x.0 patch healer overhaul that has gone down well TBH.

3.0 AST was a disaster
4.0 SCH was a train wreck, AST was a nuisance
5.0's great healer reboot ended up being a gutting
6.0's was comparatively minor but it's neat additions were overshadowed by oversights and mistakes

Forgive me if I'm not terribly confident here =(

Forgot:

4.0 WHM was a disaster with the way the Lily system was implemented.

Grants a 50% or 100% chance that a Lily is added to your Healing Gauge upon the execution of Cure or Cure II on self or a party member while in combat. Lilies will lower the recast time for Asylum, Assize, Divine Benison, or Tetragrammaton by a percentage corresponding to the number of Lilies stacked at time of action execution (at which time the Lilies are removed)

And Divine Benison required Lilies to use.

[Shurrikhan]

And Divine Benison required Lilies to use.

This effectively just meant you had to cast a Cure II once per 30 seconds.

Back then, there was actually damage to heal, however, nor did we yet have Afflatus spells, obviously; it wasn't nearly so asinine then as it would be today.

Also, the Lily requirement was removed before Stormblood's end.



That's not to say the way the Lily stacks were designed or spent back then was at all decent, nor that Benison should have continued to require any stacks to be used if that old SotL system remained, but the fundamentals weren't awful. It was simply variable potency recovery on every GCD heal, allowing one accelerated use of whatever ability they pleased per GCD spent on healing, rather than only on certain forms of GCD heals (Cure II or Medica) only once per 30 seconds (now per 20).

Had its cap been higher, its effect buffed to be truly noticeable, and flat CDR added atop the percentile CDR to make shorter-CD abilities, too, competitive choices, then aside from mobile GCDs, it would have been more a flexible and lower-bloat version of what we have now, assuming the increased free healing potency per minute since increased across all other healers would likewise have graced WHM oGCDs (in place of Solace/Rapture).

Or, to put it more simply...

Revised Stormblood Lily System:

• "Free healing" included as oGCDs (nearer to SGE/SCH/AST potency), rather than as Solace/Rapture -> Misery.
• Fewer instant-cast CDs (unless, say, Aero/Dia remains at a lower duration, or a new instant-cast CD-GCD is added).
• Potency recovery added on any and all GCD healing, without any cooldown attached to such options, but to lower effect (most free healing being given over to empowered oGCDs anyways, this only recovers a portion of potency lost to uptime costs of GCD casting, similar to Toxicon's best use scenarios). This potency recovery is done by allowing you to spend gauge to "rush" a currently cooling ability, at scaled gauge cost.
• WHM has faintly less free healing in pure offensive uptime situations while having greater combined healing+damage in healing-intensive situations (assuming gauge is spent primarily on Assize).
• No extra buttons required.

Current System:

• Would-be oGCD potency and their free healing instead become CD-GCDs of healing with recoverable potency (ultimately free, but only if the fight times evenly to a Misery cast, with no excess would-be Lilies).
• Extra mobility (4 GCDs per minute).
• Potency recovery attached to certain CD-based heals only.
• Faintly higher healing doable even in 100% offensive uptime scenarios. Lower combined healing+damage in more healing-intensive scenarios.
• 3 extra buttons required.

[Sebazy]

I pretty much just forgot most of the 4.0 WHM additions existed for Omega. Thin Air was the only thing that mattered

[Silver-Strider]

But if you look on the bright side, it means SMN has room to grow for the next 10 years

You'll have to forgive my cynicism but the brightside came and went. SE destroyed healers in ShB, gave them "room to grow" as you put it but left them to wilt instead.

Nothing about what Healers got in EW did anything helpful or even necessary for healers other than give them more bloat and reduce their systems even more.
WHM didn't get more Lily Skills or even a means of controlling Lily Generation.
SCH lost Fey Blessing as a skill that actually utilized the Fairy Gauge, making the system regress instead of expand.
AST lost flexibility with their cards and in return just got Lord/Lady of Crown returned back to their SB version but with AoE instead.

Waiting years for some sort of growth, when healers have been starved to death for since SB (or even sooner depending on who you ask) does not leave room for much hope.

[Raven2014]

Waiting years for some sort of growth, when healers have been starved to death for since SB (or even sooner depending on who you ask) does not leave room for much hope.

Exactly, depend on who you ask. And if you ask me, then I think healers have been growing, and I'm generally fine with things. It maybe hard due to the constant complains on here, but there exist people like me who the only reason we play healer for the last 8-10 years is because we "actually" like it. One of the biggest "milestone" in healer design is that they finally make the DPS and Healing channels neutral from one another (with SCH the very last straggler with Energy drain). There is no way I have been unsatisfy with healer for that long, because I would have left the job the moment I stop enjoying it.


Like I said, I think the role "does" hit a wall now, but it looks like the developers had recognize the right mindset for it, so I don't mind a hard reset and take it from there.