Healers need an overhaul

[Shurrikhan]

What don’t you like about the counter suggestion?

(For thread context, this was the suggestion given in counter to Deceptus's that heals should be potency-neutral.)

My personal take is removing the barrier break aspect and removing passive Addersgall generation over time. Toxikon stays the same Potency as Dosis, but grants 3 stacks of a buff that enable 1 use of the OGCD attack: Toxikosis, which is 1/3rd of Dosis' potency each. This not only gives you a net DPS neutral reward for Addersting, but also gives SGE gameplay, which it currently lacks like the rest of the healers. Addersgall is instead generated through a new DPS spell that has a 20 second cooldown and 2 charges, and that also grants 1 Addersting as well, giving you a "combo" of sorts into your Toxikon and Toxikosis stacks. Then, the meter part of SGE's gauge is converted into a gauge that increases by 2 to a maximum of 100 every time a Kardia effect triggers. Once the gauge reaches above 50, casting either Eukrasian Diagnosis or Eukrasian Prognosis will consume 50 gauge and generate 1 Addersting.

This allows you some DPS neutral healing roughly once per minute, allows Toxikon to feel like a proper reward, reduces SGE's potential crit variance since Toxikon's power is broken up across 4 actions, discourages dumping Addersting as you need to spend time using each Toxikosis stack before your next Toxikon, and expands SGE's gameplay by the Addersgall/Addersting generator as well on top of the new Toxikon "combo."

My main issue is that it seems an unnecessary overcomplication (or, more "convolution" than identity- or depth-adding). And overall it would seem to have a net negative effect on SGE's kit.

The primary purpose of Lily-Misery is just no-opportunity-cost healing, the same as any oGCD heal. It loses a ceiling on burst healing (since it can't stack with GCD heals) for a higher ceiling on damage window exploitation, and adds more mobility and weave space, but for the most part it's just another ability. It's not that its resource is gated behind time so much as that it and all other abilities are thus gated. This one just happens to have 3 charges instead of 1 or 2. That's all. And that's fine.

The same can be said for Addersgall. It's nothing fancy, it's nothing new... and that's okay. I neither think it needs nor would particularly benefit SGE's flexible Aetherflow-lite resource system being removed in favor of a no-cost Energy-Drain-lite locked behind deploying and breaking Eukrasian Diagnosis casts. That's sounds less fun to me than the earlier flexibility, as, like Deceptus's suggestion, would far more concentrate the kit around just those couple actions (EuD and Toxicon+oGCD_bonus_damage).

Similarly, if I were just looking to increase SGE apm, a one-third-of-filler-spell damage oGCD to be spammed, 3 at a time between EuDs, would be one of the absolute last ways I'd think to approach that.

Meanwhile, the change to lock SGE shields behind a Kardia-based gauge means that you're generating nothing during downtime, are further punished for direct-healing (can't even use your shields without enough Dosis/Toxicon spam), all atop fetter a core mechanic (Eukresia).

I just have to wonder... why do any of that? It seems more "convoluting" than "complicating" -- a net loss.

SGE may lack for gameplay, but creating purposely anti-synergic, downtime-punishing, and slow-to-ramp systems designed to constrain its existing actions doesn't seem the way to go to instill it. The net healing+damage might end up equal to what we have now, but it seems to me like it'd be a far more sluggish kit while still offering no real advantage over SCH (doubly so once stuffing it with SCH-levels or greater of clunk).

I'd far rather just approach SGE improvements from two paths together:

1. Replace or retweak a handful of its especially basic or lackluster abilities (Rhizomata, Holos, Krasis, Pepsis, and maybe Panhaima) with something a bit more synergetic (though not so greatly so that action A would only ever be used with action B).
2. Consider what actual button-flows or variations on pacing and/or considerations might feel especially good on SGE and find where all they might be included.

No need necessarily to complicate its basic gauges or funnel so much of a kit's significance through a forced cyclical relationship (between EuD and Toxicon, which seem merely to have been designed to provide a bit of extra mobility or a smidgen of burst AoE as its small bonus effect opposite Adlo's uber-crits, in keeping with SGE's overall intended fluidity). Just, take what's there and find spaces to make that more interesting and offer a bit more advantage.

...At least until such time as we're rehauling all jobs, though I'd still veer far away even then from anything that makes SGE clunkier instead of exploiting its fluidity for all that's worth.

[Fendred]

On the shield healer side, isn't this a pretty milk toast issue? The core of scholar's toolkit is a two-second hard cast shield while sage's core toolkit is a pure heal that transforms into an instant cast shield of the same potency. Sage can just mitigate a lot more stuff than scholar due to being faster, and at the same potency to boot. Its the same thing on the cooldown side of things. Either its cooldowns are linked to adloq/succor and thus are slower by relation or the cooldown requires extraneous input (ground targeting, summoning seraph to use seraphic veil, having to dismiss a status effect to get your fairy back, etc).

People get bored of playing the same job all the time. When the only other option in a role is a downgrade, people are going to start playing another role.

[Nizzi]

On the shield healer side, isn't this a pretty milk toast issue? The core of scholar's toolkit is a two-second hard cast shield while sage's core toolkit is a pure heal that transforms into an instant cast shield of the same potency. Sage can just mitigate a lot more stuff than scholar due to being faster, and at the same potency to boot. Its the same thing on the cooldown side of things. Either its cooldowns are linked to adloq/succor and thus are slower by relation or the cooldown requires extraneous input (ground targeting, summoning seraph to use seraphic veil, having to dismiss a status effect to get your fairy back, etc).

This isn't true at all, SCH is by far better at mitigation than SGE is, which is why SCH is overwhelmingly picked for DSR over SGE because DSR is a mitigation intensive encounter.

[Atelier-Bagur]

On the shield healer side, isn't this a pretty milk toast issue? The core of scholar's toolkit is a two-second hard cast shield while sage's core toolkit is a pure heal that transforms into an instant cast shield of the same potency. Sage can just mitigate a lot more stuff than scholar due to being faster, and at the same potency to boot. Its the same thing on the cooldown side of things. Either its cooldowns are linked to adloq/succor and thus are slower by relation or the cooldown requires extraneous input (ground targeting, summoning seraph to use seraphic veil, having to dismiss a status effect to get your fairy back, etc).

People get bored of playing the same job all the time. When the only other option in a role is a downgrade, people are going to start playing another role.

I mean, you say that but as somebody who enjoys playing Warrior or Paladin, I always switch to other roles or classes to avoid self-burnout.

I cant ever understand people who limit themselves on having a "main" job on a game that gives you the freedom to switch your playstyle on the fly. Sounds like a very easy way to get bored or burn yourself out if you just stick to one or two classes.

If healer gets boring, I switch to dps, if dps gets boring, I switch to tank, and if tank gets boring I switch back to healer. I dont ever try to stubbornly stay on one role or class in this game if I dont want to, and I find myself the happier with this game's combat when I switch up playstyles and roles often.

[ASkellington]

I cant ever understand people who limit themselves on having a "main" job on a game that gives you the freedom to switch your playstyle on the fly. Sounds like a very easy way to get bored or burn yourself out if you just stick to one or two classes.

Welcome to how MMOs like WoW are played, where you have 1 class per character. I'll grant you, that in such cases there are talent trees to where you can switch you role (say from Heal/Tank to DPS) but to me there's little difference when fundementally I am playing one class (even if specs/trees play differently)

Much like you can't understand people who limit themselves on one job I can't understand why (outside of flexing) people like to have multiple jobs. Its a difference of preference. I like having one job to get good at, other people like several.

That said, that doesn't excuse the state of the healer role. "Self burnout" as you call it is a real thing yes, but self burnout is not the whole reason contributing to why people think healers currently suck.

[Nizzi]

I mean, you say that but as somebody who enjoys playing Warrior or Paladin, I always switch to other roles or classes to avoid self-burnout.

I cant ever understand people who limit themselves on having a "main" job on a game that gives you the freedom to switch your playstyle on the fly. Sounds like a very easy way to get bored or burn yourself out if you just stick to one or two classes.

If healer gets boring, I switch to dps, if dps gets boring, I switch to tank, and if tank gets boring I switch back to healer. I dont ever try to stubbornly stay on one role or class in this game if I dont want to, and I find myself the happier with this game's combat when I switch up playstyles and roles often.

Not really how Savage works. Gearing necessitates that you're locked into a role for at least 8 weeks, often way longer due to not everyone being week 1 clear material (nothing wrong with this) so often times you're stuck to your role for months a tier.
Further more, healers do not play meaningfully different from each other for a majority of their casts. There's not a single healer that breaks the monotony of 1 DoT 1 Filler Nuke spam. There's no "playstyles" within the healer role. There's one enforced way to play, on all four jobs within the role.
I get the point you're making, and I don't necessarily disagree with it (I don't do casual content on the jobs I raid on for the same reason) but at the same point, shouldn't "switching your playstyle on the fly" also apply within roles too, like it used to in the healer role?

[HyperiusUltima]

Not really how Savage works. Gearing necessitates that you're locked into a role for at least 8 weeks, often way longer due to not everyone being week 1 clear material (nothing wrong with this) so often times you're stuck to your role for months a tier.
Further more, healers do not play meaningfully different from each other for a majority of their casts. There's not a single healer that breaks the monotony of 1 DoT 1 Filler Nuke spam. There's no "playstyles" within the healer role. There's one enforced way to play, on all four jobs within the role.
I get the point you're making, and I don't necessarily disagree with it (I don't do casual content on the jobs I raid on for the same reason) but at the same point, shouldn't "switching your playstyle on the fly" also apply within roles too, like it used to in the healer role?

To add onto this, the only difference between the healers is in HOW they treat the damage that happens to keep the party alive. SCH/SGE provide shields and abilities that reduce overall damage with hard mitigation. I can't relate WHM to AST as much because they rely more on GCD healing than most, and AST relies on their oGCDs to handle things. The playstyles I see are extremely similar between SGE/SCH, but slightly different between WHM and AST as AST has a high APM and WHM is slower than most in terms of APM.

[ty_taurus]

My main issue is that it seems an unnecessary overcomplication (or, more "convolution" than identity- or depth-adding). And overall it would seem to have a net negative effect on SGE's kit.

Overall, I feel that you're giving the concept a very un-charitable take. There are elements that I recognize some players might not enjoy, "what if I'm in a burst window, but I want to prioritize this OGCD damage now and thus I can't heal if without cutting into my burst output?" But most of your response just seems to be "it's complicated, therefore it's bad." And I don't really feel like that's a fair take, especially when, in my mind, the solution is ultimately making the healers actually different rather than them being 4 shades of green, each with a different flower on top, so even if you might not find that healer fun, there's a chance you could find a different healer more fun. I also feel quite strongly that SGE should be like GNB--as in they are the healer that should feel like a DPS because that's something people want but sorely lack.

I'll also note that I only talked about 2 components and not the rest of the kit which would also develop changes to compliment this, nor what we'd get beyond level 90 in 7.0. For example, given the special barriers used by Alphinaud and Fourchenault in different examples, you could perhaps get a Passage of Arms-like channeled barrier that also adds to your Kardia gauge during downtime to resolve your downtime concern.

Also I never said Eukrasian Diagnosis was gated behind this gauge. Only the Addersting generation component is gated. You can cast vanilla barriers as much as you want, you just won't be reimbursed for that effort without having enough gauge, which is exactly how barriers work now since Addersting is not a reimbursement since you still lose 100% DPS for your cast. Really, all the change is is breaking up Toxikon and giving it a soft Continuation-style mechanic, and making Addersgall generation manual rather than passive, which is much healthier for game. Note also that cooldowns do still tick while experiencing downtime, so a good SGE would make sure their stacks of Addersgall/Addersting generation were spent going into a phase change.

On the shield healer side, isn't this a pretty milk toast issue? The core of scholar's toolkit is a two-second hard cast shield while sage's core toolkit is a pure heal that transforms into an instant cast shield of the same potency. Sage can just mitigate a lot more stuff than scholar due to being faster, and at the same potency to boot. Its the same thing on the cooldown side of things. Either its cooldowns are linked to adloq/succor and thus are slower by relation or the cooldown requires extraneous input (ground targeting, summoning seraph to use seraphic veil, having to dismiss a status effect to get your fairy back, etc).

People get bored of playing the same job all the time. When the only other option in a role is a downgrade, people are going to start playing another role.

Discussing barrier tools is more milk toast than the lack of gameplay that the healers suffer from. SCH gets Recitation and Deployment, SGE gets instant cast barriers, and neither of them actually even use their barriers in most content because they're an excessive waste of MP and DPS outside of lower ilvl Savage raiding. People already are bored of SCH and SGE and have been leaving ever since Shadowbringers.

[Shurrikhan]

Overall, I feel that you're giving the concept a very un-charitable take. There are elements that I recognize some players might not enjoy, "what if I'm in a burst window, but I want to prioritize this OGCD damage now and thus I can't heal if without cutting into my burst output?" But most of your response just seems to be "it's complicated, therefore it's bad."

No, I just don't see how what you'd suggested have any more layers of complexity, necessarily, than what we have presently; they'd just be routed more forcibly through the systems replacing our current more flexible systems. That's why I clearly differentiated between what I saw as "complexity" and what seemed more a matter of "convolution".

Adding a new attack would offer it some complexity, especially if it synergized with, rather than simply gated, other elements of the kit. On the other hand, replacing a 60s banking period (current Addersgall) with a 40s banking period that requires GCDs seems a convolution that would get in the way of more natural synergies to --imo-- no real gain.

At most the complexity is that you have to sacrifice dps tools early, to less potential synergy, to get access to those Addersgall heals that might not be used until a minute later anyways. That, even in isolation, seems a slightly net negative change to me, since it wouldn't feel like those skills are sourcing healing (unlike, say, if their Kardia healing scaled with their damage) so much as simply being muddled in their purpose, or even a resource CD first and a damage CD second.

And I don't really feel like that's a fair take, especially when, in my mind, the solution is ultimately making the healers actually different rather than them being 4 shades of green, each with a different flower on top, so even if you might not find that healer fun, there's a chance you could find a different healer more fun.

Again, not arguing that healer should remain simple. I've been arguing for greater available depth for healers since re-launch. I just don't care for that degree of system interdependence. Much like I don't care for the way the Fairy Gauge works but do want far more going on with SCH Faeries.

Not liking a particular iteration =/= not liking the direction that iteration was meant to pursue.

Also I never said Eukrasian Diagnosis was gated behind this gauge.

My mistake, then. Since you said EuD and EuP would "consume 50 gauge", I assumed they would also require 50 gauge.

In that case, though, you end up with a whole gauge, until later expansions of that system, devoted entirely to just... doubling Addersting generation per EuD, per X Dosis/Toxicon/EuDosis casts? That seems pretty wasteful, especially as a replacement for SGE's flexible resource system (Addersgall). Even once you expand it, since the gauge spending would be automatic on EuD/EuP, you'd have to balance its other spenders against the value of a mere extra Toxicon cast or you'd be effectively obliged to use those spenders before ever casting EuD/EuP at 50+ gauge.

I just don't get the appeal to the gauge. It seems very reminiscent of the single-spender version of the Fairy Gauge, which doesn't seem a good thing to me. Add to that its slight cost to general fluidity (gating Addersgall behind your burst attack and at least part of [descriptor still a bit ambiguous] Addersting generation behind Kardia gauge) and I don't see how that's supposed to be a net improvement.

To me, a large part of SGE's identity is supposed to be fluidity. I'd rather keep to that than try to lock more tools behind recuperation.

I wouldn't feel more "DPS Healer" for having Addersgall locked behind an attack; that just means I'm a healer whose attacks are now muddled by incoming healing requirements, which in turns means they couldn't fully benefit from Kardia scaling with damage if that were ever permitted.

Really, all the change is is breaking up Toxikon and giving it a soft Continuation-style mechanic

Is a trio of lackluster oGCDs really giving it "Continuation-style" mechanic, though? Moreover, since each Toxicon already gives the capped amount of follow-up oGCDs that will take at least 2 GCDs to fully spend, you can't chain them for AoE burst now. I don't think there's any need to "discourage" dumping Addersting in controlled burst over forcing them apart.

Meanwhile, if "crit variance" of all things were a reason to take up 4 animations' weave space per Toxicon cast... you could get that effect by just having Toxicon hit 4 times (each potentially triggering Kardia, since it'd be on a spell) for a quarter each, more reminiscent of its animation.

___________________________________________
EDIT:

To summarize:

• I'd rather see Kardia scale with damage dealt and see SGE better able to bank damage burst (especially, in synergy with Soteria) than see its healing resources be outright locked behind damage casts otherwise bankable for damage / Kardia-healing.
• By all means, let's have some flexible burst options via a new two-charge spell; I'd just take almost any other additional effect or synergy over resource generation.
• I don't yet see the appeal to the Kardia gauge. It just doesn't feel like a system I'd want to attach generation to, seeing as Kardia is already, itself, a way of creating a rather huge lead in no-opportunity-cost healing.
• Addersgall present iteration seems totally fine to me. It's just a shared secondary CD across multiple abilities; it's never pretended to be more, nor need it be.
• I would be open to far more complexity on SGE; I just think they should build first from improvements/rehauls to SGE's currently lackluster/unimaginative CDs and should keep fluidity as a central focus.

[ty_taurus]

That's quite a strawman.

I don't see how what you'd suggested have any more layers of complexity than what we have presently; they'd just be routed more forcibly through the systems replacing our current more flexible systems. That's why I clearly differentiated between what I saw as "complexity" and what seemed more a matter of "convolution".

I'm not trying to strawman you, it's just that most of your points were "it is convoluted" rather than "here's why." That, to me, just comes across more as "I don't personally like it" rather than discussing what doesn't work about it on a functional level.

I want to follow up on me discussing that I only talked about 2 components... I've written out my own take on an entire SGE rework including changes like that, so there's more that would go into complimenting this system, but no one wants to read a thesis on a job rework, and I mainly was trying to communicate the approach I took to making Toxikon neutral without encouraging E. Diag spam. So for example, this Addersgall generating spell could be Eukrasiad into one that sacrificed your Addergall for MP restoration on yourself while still generating the Addersting, and you also gained Addersting from applying your DoT, so you had mutliple ways of maintaining Toxikon and managing your OGCD stacks, which would give it a fair amount of depth due to the frequency at which you'd engage with it (Up to 6 Addersting per minute) so you'd actually be doing quite a fair amount of weaving in this concept.

Also, to fully clarify the Kardia gauge aspect. Eukrasian Diagnosis does not produce Addersting when the barrier breaks in this concept. Both Eukrasian Diagnosis and Eukrasian Prognosis will generate exactly 1 Addersting when cast at 50 gauge or more. I feel the intention here was getting muddled since you mentioned double Addersting generation per Eukrasian Diagnosis which I didn't understand what you meant.