Fixing Every Healer Job

[SirShady]

Like the idea but might not work since Doom and downtime exist
I would love to see a pneuma synergy since there isn't much that interacts with it
also there is alot of shields and thats cool I like the idea but could you stack them since your losing heals
A OGC dmg ability would be nice instead of another GCD spell feel like that would make the feeling of dps from SGE better (Maybe uses the addersting gauge doesn't have to be Toxicon)
they have the most attacks already so another GCD doesn't seem necessary to me but for other healers yeah

Hey Vatom! Honestly, the Sage changes were a WIP and I probably should have specified that before I posted it. I ran out of steam typing all this stuff out yesterday... You and WaxSw have given me a lot to think about! I'm going to try to incorporate the new buttons better into the current kit. I like the idea of another addersting spender as well so I'll play around with that. Appreciate the feedback!

[SirShady]

Sch.

I think the main problem here honestly is mostly the fact that Scholar already has a plethora of OGCD healing, and the faerie gauge being tied to Fey Union really limits its use. I think if we swapped Fey Union (Fey Union costs 1 aetherflow to tether for 9 seconds to an ally?) with Energy Drain and used the Faeria Gauge strictly a DPS spender that would eliminate the problem, but it might be a bit tricky. Not sure how other Scholar players would feel about that.

Sage changes.

Honestly the Sage changes were a big WIP when I pushed them to the forums. I was passing out at my desk and figured I'd look them over later lol. Your feedback here is really helpful! It really highlights the rough spot shield healers are in.

Physis changes would make the tool completely useless in downtime scenarios meaning Sage would have a disadvantage healing there and in stuff like ultimates downtime is present (and in DSR a lot). I think the idea of an AoE kardia should go in soteria, a tool that is already useless in downtime, making it trigger a kardia heal in all the party members and an aditional 70% potency kardia heal on the kardia target (so it doesn't lose its niche as single target sustain)

Honestly, it's a valid worry with stuff like downtime and Doom causing problems. I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing for the healers to have certain weaknesses, but I can see it being stifling in certain content. Perhaps the jump from Physis I to Physis II could heal at the same or slightly reduced potency, but give the Kardia buff to allies for 10 seconds to compensate? That would you could still use it in combination with Prognosis for downtime but a good chunk of value comes from the Kardia buff.

In retrospect, I wouldn't touch Ixochole and would much rather gives that change to Holos, like you said. That makes a lot more sense.

Good point on Toxicon. I would rather move the focused Kardia aspect of it to something else then as more of an emergency button.

The point of the combo is to balance their healing around using Duodosis carefully, managing the HP of the tank while putting out as much personal DPS as possible, but I get what you're saying. I've thrown up a new idea, using a three hit combo which accumulates more Addersting, which can be used on higher potency and higher healing. Toxikon would still be the go-to in AoE and mobility situations. Let me know what you think!

[pikalovr]

AST changes snip

yes thats much better and now you can preplan (kinda becoming ASTs whole thing) stuff like setting up a 10% damage buff on say a SAM for their burst window or if you do want to cheese a tank mechanic you need to actually plan ahead now (i'd honestly push the mit down to 5-10% tho tbh) thanks to ewer and tower cards (you'd make ewer and tower effects permanent until used ofc). lady of crowns remaining a pure AOE heal but having a caveat for it being not the DPs card is also a good way to mitigate RNG cause you either get a maximum 60% bonus potency lord of crowns or an upgraded lady of crown that also deals damage (although it could be debated on which card deserves more damage since lord of crowns is only 150 more potency at max buff)

now onto new skills like comet. no reason for it to exist tbh it's just use immediately before combust for more DPS. now if you made it an ogcd that instead refreshes the DoT and provides a secondary effect based on how low the timer is that'd be leagues better as it would still keep you to pay attention to the timer and reward riskier plays if the DoT was for example about to fall off during burst windows without just adding more damage. we wanna kinda keep WHM as the DPS job and AST as the buffer job think MCH and BRD for example. imagine if you will if at 3s and below if you use the oGCD you get a temporary tower/ewer effect for all nearby teammates. this would help you still get use out of the effects even if you got bad RNG and it affects everyone so unless you draw an ewer or tower all other cards are usable with it.

the issue is we don't need more buffs for DPS and more DPS we need more interesting interactions within our own kits like for comet giving out tower and ewer effect to all party members you notice it's not just a DPS increase but actually melds well with what your kit specializes in. it's why sleeve draw as much as i disagree with it was good cause it interacted with ASTs core mechanic and made it interesting/feel better.

just an ending note change arrow the only caster that would even remotely benefit from it is BLM. sadly every other caster is already lower casts or have so few actual long hardcasts (SMN) that it'd basically be wasted even when astrodyne did that we figured it up at most only being one extra malefic per use which isn't the greatest thing i'd instead focus on arrow being a GCD reset card (yes ik it would be difficult to balance but it's RNG so you're always gonna have "good" and "bad" cards) plus it wouldn't benefit from ewer and tower so it's already at an disadvantage there as well

[Semirhage]

Honestly, I'm actually inclined to agree with him on this one and since 6.1 I've thought it myself as well.

WHM doesn't have much, but one thing it does have over the other jobs is a little more broad synergy within it's kit coupled with a slower but consistent rhythm, it's historically usually felt more impactful and direct than it's alternatives as well (Even if the numbers generally don't reflect that). The Lily System is easily the best healer gauge mechanic of the 4 now, it has impactful self buffs and Assize is literally a second charge away from being perfection, it's this sort of thing that SE need to build upon.

The issues I have with keeping WHM the "Shadowbringers style nosepicker job" are A) 11111111111 is effing boring; everyone admits it, everyone complains about it, and yet the second WHM comes up specifically it's all "oh but it's so great on WHM, 9/10, only tweak it a little with an extra dot and 1111111 is suddenly good! At least one healer needs to stay stupidified and WHM is it, baby."
B) Fixing all the other healers while leaving WHM alone will land us right back in Stormblood. You've got three utility-stuffed turkeys bringing damage, heals, buffs, mitigation, debuffs, a whole cavalcade of delights to the table, and Chopped Liver, who brings "so much healing" and "so much personal damage", and yet soooooomehow ends up not particularly standing out at either, so you've got the Garbage Can Job with an explicit focus on limiting the skill ceiling and the three that Actual Contributor jobs that have a focus on being good at things, having niches, and actually excelling in areas that aren't "being easy".

BLM is the "simple" job in its role. It's not laden with utility. In theory the goals of its rotation are simple. It's got a high skill ceiling and is tough to master. The sales pitch for the simple DPS mage isn't "Do you hate thinking? Does the first boss of Sastasha confuse you? Come on down to BLM's Play Doh Kingdom, where the only goal of our job design is to make sure you're still breathing!"

No other job in the game has people constantly, constantly advocating for making it the empty-headed baby job on purpose.

[Nizzi]

This entire thread is fighting against the perception that "Healers don't want to heal!". Yes we do, we just want to do it while having meaningful ways to spend our time outside of 1 button rotations. I would rather not regulate the faerie gauge to just another healing resource.

Ah, I meant more of how the existence of Aetherflow creates a scenario where Scholars hypothetically "do not want to heal" because of Energy Drain existing and healing with Aetherflow being a DPS loss. While we know this isn't true because of the huge amounts of healing we get from your faerie/protraction/recitation before having to dip into any Aetherflow, the perception remains within a lot of players, nonhealers especially that SCH just wants to be "green DPS for fast queues." Personally, because I like the opportunities and affordances that Energy Drain optimization gives Scholar, I think leaving your faerie as your first source of entirely free healing should be how it stays. I think this is why they ended up scrapping Selene entirely; if you have one fairy that has DPS buffs/utility skills but has no healing outside of Embrace, while also having a system with Aetherflow/Energy Drain in which you can spend your healing resources on DPSing, how is Scholar supposed to heal?

I'm not saying I agree with that nor do I like getting rid of Selene, but I think that's what the intention behind it was and why I think she'll unfortunately never come back with unique skills, unless they're slight differences to Eos's like a shield instead of regen, etc.

The problem with keeping the faerie gauge as strictly healing is that Scholars don't really need more healing. I'm in a bit of a bind... What would you like to see the faerie gauge used? More supportive options like buffs/debuffs? If you wanted to get rid of it, what would you do with Fey Union and what would you suggest as Scholar's bread and butter rotation if I scrapped using the gauge as a personal DPS spender? I'd love to hear your ideas!

I'm honestly of the opinion that we just can't expand upon the gauge. Fey Union is very bad in its implementation and the gauge at this point would require a complete rework IMO to be anything interesting, and I believe that SE is incapable of doing so as they've consistently failed to do anything interesting with the gauge for 3 expansions now, which is why it's still stuck to one level 70 ability and why they removed Fey Blessing from it. If you give gauge abilities CDs, they might as well not be tied to the gauge at all, and if you don't give them CDs, you might as well just spam the best ability. The gauge is very flawed and just doesn't work well, and I think it's pretty much never going to. If we tie anything offensive to it, why would you want to use Fey Union at all? Fey Union is already probably the most unintuitive skill in SCH's kit - it locks you out of using other fairy abilities unless you want to continually retarget and reapply Fey Union, Embrace is unable to be cast, and if the person your faerie is tether to moves out of range, Eos/Selene will just sit there doing nothing until they move back into range or you cancel the union. They could remove gauge entirely and make it a 2m ST Regen applied by your faerie and pretty much nothing would change except there would be less annoyance in its usage.

In terms of what I want Scholar's bread and butter rotation to be, I think the return of Miasma and Bane alone would help the job immensely. In an ideal world, it'd be a return to having Miasma, Miasma II, Shadow Flare, Bane, and if they were feeling very generous, potentially even Bio III on another separate timer, but I am entirely willing to settle for just having Miasma and Bane return with Scholar currently as it is. I really, REALLY want those two to return this expansion, even though I know they're not generally ones for giving more things to a job mid expac.

I wanted to ask for your opinion... What do you think should be done to fix the Energy Drain problem?

I'm unsure if I'm stockholmed myself into liking Energy Drain because SCH has nothing else to do or optimize, but I think Aetherflow/Energy Drain is one of the best and most interesting things about Scholar's kit and is pretty much the only interesting thing any healer has DPS wise. Scholar is the only healer with anything like Energy Drain and the existence of Energy Drain forces a healing prioritization where you want to use Protraction, Recitation, and all of your faerie heals before you start dipping into your Aetherflow. Energy Drain can also be a DPS loss if it forces you to end up using a GCD heal later (though I know with the huge amount of oGCD healing bloat and the existence of a WHM/SGE/AST cohealer not losing DPS to use their heals this scenario is very unlikely anymore) so to me personally it offers something interesting to each encounter that the other healers do not offer anymore. I've played a lot of Sage and it just doesn't have that level of "feel good dopamine" that making sure Aetherflow doesn't drift and healing as much as possible without sacrificing Energy Drains does.

I know a lot of people don't like Energy Drain and consider it a problem, but there are 3 other healers that don't have this. I'm really not sure how people can say that we have too much oGCD healing bloat for the amount of healing we have, and then also say that Energy Drain needs to be removed so Scholar can use more of its oGCDs. I think we can leave Scholar alone and let it keep this optimization skill, while also returning fun things to its kit DPS wise.

[QooEr]

I will never not be confused by these healer forum AST/SCH/SGE main screeds that spend paragraphs going on and on and on about how dreadfully boring mashing one button over and over again for an entire encounter is, what a wretched awful gameplay experience it is, how it's the worst design in the MMO genre.

And then conclude with "so that's why the 1 button rotation is perfect for WHM."

going on a bit of a tangent but i feel like 1 button spam could work if the dps kit revolved around it via procs (like arr blm and brd), cooldown reductions and modal buttons

it would still need an extra button or two but it Could be fine if 1-spam actually had interesting effects, which i think is possible.

[fulminating]

Scholar Changes
Scholar details that take me over the character limit

I like the suggested fey abilities, however I would change the name of putrify to fey tality. I think it's a pretty reasonable way of including more support abilities without "Summon Selene changes deployment tactics to bane, recitation to only affect damaging spells etc". I would question how well the three minute timer would work with everyone and their dog's burst being on 2m, but perhaps this would be the impetus to have more varied raid buff timers. I would also like to ask about how Fey Fury would mesh with trick attack mug - overwriting when used together or stacking? I suppose what I'm thinking is these abilities seem to be really rather strong - chain, Fey Divination and Fey Fury would all be used in the opener presumably, which would be pretty good in raids assuming they don't make every hardhitting ability a guaranteed crit.

The faerie gauge needs removed or things on the faerie gauge need to not also have timers on, having both feels redundant.

I think lustrate should go back to being a flat% heal, maybe with a significantly higher % on crit - 30 and 50 perhaps. Small things like that could really help lean into the battle tactician side of things.

RE: White mage - do you think having a full GCD cast time on its attacks would help it feel more distinct again? prior to 6.0 I thought the hardcasting made it feel much more a counterpart to black mage in a way that's since been slightly eroded.

[Rilifane]

I'm unsure if I'm stockholmed myself into liking Energy Drain because SCH has nothing else to do or optimize, but I think Aetherflow/Energy Drain is one of the best and most interesting things about Scholar's kit and is pretty much the only interesting thing any healer has DPS wise. Scholar is the only healer with anything like Energy Drain and the existence of Energy Drain forces a healing prioritization where you want to use Protraction, Recitation, and all of your faerie heals before you start dipping into your Aetherflow. Energy Drain can also be a DPS loss if it forces you to end up using a GCD heal later (though I know with the huge amount of oGCD healing bloat and the existence of a WHM/SGE/AST cohealer not losing DPS to use their heals this scenario is very unlikely anymore) so to me personally it offers something interesting to each encounter that the other healers do not offer anymore. I've played a lot of Sage and it just doesn't have that level of "feel good dopamine" that making sure Aetherflow doesn't drift and healing as much as possible without sacrificing Energy Drains does.

I know a lot of people don't like Energy Drain and consider it a problem, but there are 3 other healers that don't have this. I'm really not sure how people can say that we have too much oGCD healing bloat for the amount of healing we have, and then also say that Energy Drain needs to be removed so Scholar can use more of its oGCDs. I think we can leave Scholar alone and let it keep this optimization skill, while also returning fun things to its kit DPS wise.

I think the biggest issue many people have with ED is that SCH is the only healer that deals with dps loss if dipping into their class gimmick.

Lilies were a dps loss and that was problematic not because of the existence of healing tied to a smaller dps loss than GCD heals but bigger than oGCDs but because WHM had nothing else.
If WHM had a stronger baseline kit then Lilies would've been a secondary healing resource with enough other tools to fall back on but they had almost nothing to fall back on during ShB and only got Lilybell in EW which has a high cooldown. Asylum and Assize for aoe, that was it. And Assize is still highly unflexible, making it basically unavailable for anything that requires very specific heal timing like certain heal checks.
So you didn't ever had the same room to optimize as SCH had; SCH had an actual chance at avoiding AF heals without chadding their co heal or waiting until everyone was overgeared. WHM didn't. Making Lilies dps neutral was necessary but now it's even more obvious for SCH just how much their own job gimmick stands out. It's now literally the only gimmick you are discouraged from using to fulfill your role.

But I certainly don't want to see it gone especially since I don't trust SE to give us anything remotely meaningful in return. They'll just remove it like in the past and that's it. However it's not a particularly interesting skill either with the flat potency. I'd prefer if they added some nuance to it by giving it an additional effect.
If it also increased healing through all sources (including your fairy) for a certain amount of time, it could now also make a difference for how you time and map your other oGCDs and when exactly you use ED. Timing it well may make the difference between having to use an AF heal or not and thus easily mitigating the dps loss from using it ouside raid buffs/ pots and adds another layer to using it instead of "dump as much as possible during raid buffs" or "wait until AF is about to come off cooldown, then dump it all".
It would also make it useful during short-ish heal checks where you use SS & Indom but are left with 1 (or even 2 if Recit is used on Indom) leftover stacks and nothing meaningful to use them on because they don't last long enough for another SS/ Indom.
It would also be great to use before downtime as you can now snapshot the added healing for a stronger Spreadlo and the stronger Spreadlo may again make the difference between having to use an AF heal or not after the downtime, especially when paired with other heal increases like a nom nom'd fairy or Protraction.

Fairly small things all in all but another layer instead of a "dump for flat potency" skill.
I'll also admit that I've definitely stockholmed myself a little bit into liking it

RE: White mage - do you think having a full GCD cast time on its attacks would help it feel more distinct again? prior to 6.0 I thought the hardcasting made it feel much more a counterpart to black mage in a way that's since been slightly eroded.

I'm generally all in favour for doubling down on the low APM with strong, powerful, impactful GCDs identity for many reasons. It doesn't have to have a 3 page essay in every tooltip. Give it a couple of straightforward but strong nukes that are not too rhythmical (as in everything on a 30s timer) so you have a constantly changing rotation from different timers but overall slower but powerful gameplay... like it's darker counterpart.

But SE would need to give it some tools to offset the heavy loss of mobility and weaving windows from losing 1,5s casts.
One of the biggest issues with ShB WHM was the severe lack of mobility and weaving windows, way behind even BLM. If it should be more of a counterpart to BLM it should get similar tools to deal with movement and having to weave at very specific times.
BLM had fast casts, Swiftcast as a pure dps/ movement tool unlike healers that may need to keep it for Raise, Triple, Xeno, Thundercloud/ Firestarter procs and Sharpcast to force them in addition to the natural proc chance. That's a buttload of mobility for a supposed turret. And in EW they also added Amplifier, a 2nd Triple charge and Icedox.

WHM would need an instant that is not in any way tied directly to healing to make things like weaving PI or Temperance in advance possible. Diacloud comes to mind but it also needs something more reliable, preferably on demand. A dps Lily skill would lead to a similar problem we had in ShB so that's out of question. A secondary resource that is available at the start of a duty and accumulated through offensive gameplay could work.
Glare casts could accumulate stacks while you get a stack spender that has a potency gain over Glare to discourage you from constantly overcapping and you can spend 4-5 stacks on an instant - Seraph Strike already exists and fits this theme extremely well. In niche cases it may be actually better to overcap so you start with max stacks into heavy movement if Lilies have to be used on healing and can't cover the gaps. But overall it's available often enough to avoid being a "dump all during raid buffs" skill although it also offers some potential for optimization during them; it encourages offensive gameplay without building so slowly it's virtually unavailable during heal checks; it also fits the WHM theme of the powerhouse well as it would feel like the WHM slowly "overcharging" with gathered power and unleashing it with a particularly strong instant; and it already breaks the 11111 monotony nicely while also more than offsetting the slight dps loss from having to pay caster tax again with full GCD casts.

[SirShady]

Astro feedback

Thank ya! I think it sounds like a fun concept too. Honestly the 15% mitigation is there since it needs to be strong for people to choose it over other offensive-focused cards, but I agree that it would definitely need to be looked at if it's synergy with the new doubled card effects would lead to tanks being able to break certain mechanics. I suppose we could just have it be the only effect not effected by the doubling but that seems sloppy... I'll keep thinking about it!

Comet is basically just there to give the Astro something to do after their card burst phase is over and they're back to spamming Malefic. Same thing with Malign Continuum. They're just for flavor/fun for when you're stuck DPS spamming. Having it reapply the DoT kind of goes against the purpose, as it would make Combust superfluous after that first application. I don't mind the idea of it gaining an additional effect under a certain time instead of dealing extra damage though. The only problems there I could see is that there are already so many buffs the Astro is managing that it makes it hard to balance and justify another one that would activate every 30 seconds. That and it just doesn't seem like the kind of spell that would buff, honestly. Maybe it deals a flat 100 potency, but under 5 seconds, it gains a debuff like putting Stop or Slow on all targets for a short time? Obviously this would not work for bosses, but even then it's still a little extra free damage every 15 seconds for people to squeeze out.

Oh, the Arrow effects recast rate as well, so it speeds up the GCD by 10%, not just cast times. It's like a mini haste effect.

[SirShady]

Honestly, I really like this idea. A proc based rotation for a healer would be very interesting!