Healer Area of Effect revision

[AlereRaeder]

Fact: Holy is the best Healer AoE spell in the game.

I'm capped on all healers. I don't even main WHM. I exclusively cap WHM for Holy spam and dungeon runs.

WHM dungeon gameplay is substantially easier than the other healers. Holy having the added effect of Stun, an invaluable type of damage mitigation, while contributing similar damage as the other healers. Dungeon enemy packs are essentially inactive for under 10 seconds because of holy.

I'd like for healers to at least have varying Area of affect bonuses.

AST: Gravity could have an added effect of Slow. Reducing the attack rate of enemies affected.
SCH: Art of War could have an added effect of Blind. Reducing the hit rate of enemies affected.
SGE: Dyskrasia could have an added effect of Paralysis. Interrupting actions of the enemies affected.

While there are nuances to the AoE abilities. ie. cast range, player based AoE, potency. In practice the spells all function the same, while Holy is leagues on its own.

The goal of this change is primarily to give non-WHM healers something cooler out of their AoE damage button. This change is thematic to the jobs and act as forms of mitigation for AoE scenarios. It'll also help new players() by giving them a higher reason to use their AoE in dungeons. In addition, further homogenizing the healers but in a fresh way.

[Semirhage]

Can WHM please have something unique that isn't either stripped off or spread to the other healers? It's already lacking in exclusive capabilities as it is, and Sage swooped in this expansion and stole the dungeon damage output crown. Could WHM maybe be standout good at this one thing?

[ForsakenRoe]

dungeon damage output crown.

wasn't SCH's AOW stronger even in SHB in terms of potency? only thing WHM has going for it is the stun, but even then we can just do krasis-physis-kerachole on basically every wall to wall and that's enough to ignore the tank for 15 seconds, and after that we have a selection of top up tools to work with that we can alternate for each pull, eg soteria haima on one, panhaima pneuma on the next, etc

but despite this i'd still say yes to this suggestion just because it'd mean it's something that sets the healers apart even the tiniest amount. Then again, most mobs seem to end up being immune to most statuses nowadays anyway so idk how effective these debuffs would end up being, there's the possibility that they end up as part of some cheese strat in a raid (being able to paralyse the boss out of a phase transition cutscene cos of a bug would be pretty funny), etc

[Rilifane]

wasn't SCH's AOW stronger even in SHB in terms of potency? only thing WHM has going for it is the stun, but even then we can just do krasis-physis-kerachole on basically every wall to wall and that's enough to ignore the tank for 15 seconds, and after that we have a selection of top up tools to work with that we can alternate for each pull, eg soteria haima on one, panhaima pneuma on the next, etc

but despite this i'd still say yes to this suggestion just because it'd mean it's something that sets the healers apart even the tiniest amount. Then again, most mobs seem to end up being immune to most statuses nowadays anyway so idk how effective these debuffs would end up being, there's the possibility that they end up as part of some cheese strat in a raid (being able to paralyse the boss out of a phase transition cutscene cos of a bug would be pretty funny), etc

WHM was far superior thanks to Assize and dumping Lilies between pull for Misery. None of the other healers stood a chance against that.
The only thing I want for WHM is a 1,5s cast on Holy so they don't have to clip everything if they don't need to heal with Solace. But other than that, I'd prefer to keep the aoes as it is. It's bad enough for me that AoW and Dyskrasia function exactly the same.

[Liam_Harper]

Honestly I wouldn't mind seeing Holy reduced to 1.5s cast, it's the last remnant of clip mage and feels awful to play. But WHM having a good aoe (stun) is a small perk for WHM in dungeons.

The only other healer aoe I'd change is AST, since they sorely need help in dungeons. Both a potency buff, possible radius buff and an added effect would be fine. Although Slow is going to conflict with Arm's Length and won't really be as much advantage.

SGE is a dungeon god, SCH is certainly holding up well. Both are fine.

[Archwizard]

AST: Gravity could have an added effect of Slow. Reducing the attack rate of enemies affected.
SCH: Art of War could have an added effect of Blind. Reducing the hit rate of enemies affected.
SGE: Dyskrasia could have an added effect of Paralysis. Interrupting actions of the enemies affected.

On the one hand, I like the idea of incorporating CC into the AoE kits of defense-oriented and supportive jobs. Of particular note is the idea of AST getting a Slow (and possibly Heavy) on Gravity, not only because Urianger's Trust Avatar is capable of the same but because it plays into AST's Time Mage inspiration. Bearing in mind that AoE Stun was never limited to WHM in this regard, since AST previously had Celestial Opposition as a sort of "time stop" effect, as well as Stella (and later Break) to Heavy enemies.

On the other though... similarly owing to my experience with Urianger's Trust Avatar, giving any job a spammable Slow effect is disastrous for tanks, since it can override the Slow effect from Arm's Length and thereby cause multiple applications to rapidly grant enemies resistance to the debuff entirely. If Arm's Length had some other effect then maybe, but as of now, it would do more harm than good.

I also think that if SGE was at all struggling to the point of needing an "advantage" over other healers, it could probably finagle something out of proccing Kardia additional times from select AoEs (a la Abyssal Drain or Bloodwhetting).
On a similar note, you could probably give SCH some kind of damaging barrier (they previously had Eye for an Eye, just go the whole nine yards and make it a Spikes effect instead), and maybe turn Gravity into a grouping skill (with Heavy attached) instead. We don't really need to homogenize the healers if each one has a "unique" advantage.

[ForsakenRoe]

nah 'apply a barrier that reflects damage to the attacker' will be the genius new idea for a new healer for the curespam healers to play, they'll be able to contribute damage by just constantly reapplying the barrier to the tank

[Zolvolt]

I think the healer aoe's are fine the way they are

[KDSilver]

Can WHM please have something unique that isn't either stripped off or spread to the other healers? It's already lacking in exclusive capabilities as it is, and Sage swooped in this expansion and stole the dungeon damage output crown. Could WHM maybe be standout good at this one thing?

Everything doesn't revolve around stealing something from others.
Besides, for the few spells we have, i'd call it adding flavor more than stripping off WHM "uniqueness".
Stun is still stronger than any other detriment.

[Semirhage]

Everything doesn't revolve around stealing something from others.
Besides, for the few spells we have, i'd call it adding flavor more than stripping off WHM "uniqueness".
Stun is still stronger than any other detriment.

Cool, can't wait for WHM's direct hit raidbuff or massive toolkit of ultra-strong oGCD heals with short cooldowns.

Or would that be the bad kind of homogenization.