Healer Area of Effect revision

[Calysto]

Wasn't there something like that mentioned by Yoshi in the pre-EW live letter ?
I think I remember something about adding "effects" on AoE, or was it just a translation error.

and for the homogenization argument, who remember shadowflare (sch slow/dot dome for those who don't) ? you know, when each healers had more than the same kit

[Nizzi]

Scholar is the only job with only one AoE ability in the game. Rather than give it a CC clone to mirror Holy, I have a never before thought up idea that I think people would love...
Scholar can spread Biolysis in PvP with Deployment Tactics, right? What if we gave Scholar that ability in PvE as well, and we also let that spread Chain Stratagem? We could make it a trait of Deployment Tactics, maybe give it a funny name like "Bane", I think that would be cool and unique rather than taking another thing from White Mage. In fact, what if we gave a cool MP gain trait to Energy Drain and removed Shroud of Sai-... I mean Lucid Dreaming from them as well so a Scholar is properly managing MP by using Aetherflow and Energy Drain? That sounds pretty cool, I think SE should hire me honestly.

Also if we're taking anything from White Mage, PLEASE give them more mitigation first, it is so dumb that AST's healing kit is pretty much able to be summed up as "White Mage's but better in every way", SE PLEASE understand that "heals lots real good x3" is not an acceptable niche where every other healer heals lots real good too on top of having mitigation, shields or raid buffs too.

[ASkellington]

The only change I'd like to healer AOEs is for

Kardia to scale with SGE's hit. If it makes SGE as powerful as WAR in AoE healing... I don't think many are gonna complain when that's, y'know a HEALER's job and you can always adjust the potency. *cough cough nerf war's cough*

SCH to get back bane to spread its DoT for AOE and maybe Miasma as well to do the same.

AST... Can a Fortuneteller get a detonate to speed up to explode something? Or... can I get a way to swap Lady for Lord?

I don't really care that WHM has a stun and the other healers don't. I'd rather WHM keep their stun and give other healers something else to make their AOE abilities interesting.

[ty_taurus]

I like the idea of adding in trash mob debuffs for the healers, but why do we need to just slap it onto just the AoEs? Aren't we trying to move away from homogenization?

AST used to have Stun attached to Celestial Opposition, and what a satisfying way to enter a trash wave that was back in the day. set a card on someone, perhaps a DPS card for the DPS, or Bole on the tank, Aspected Benefic & Helios, then extend all those buffs and stun all the enemies. It feels blasphemous that Celestial Opposition was reduced to a boring regen.

[Payadopa]

Can we please stop asking for more homogenisation? If anything healers are in dire need for unique ideas.

[AlereRaeder]

wasn't SCH's AOW stronger even in SHB in terms of potency? only thing WHM has going for it is the stun

Even then, the funny number compilling website/tool says otherwise. WHM competes for the top in damage contribution and speed in current dungeons. I didn't check dmg taken but im sure a dungeon with a WHM in it also has really low values because of Holy stuns. I'm sure the devs know these values and I hope for cool changes.

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?

I had an inkling the thread would become into healer vs healer talk, hahah. Lets put what you said differently instead. SGE is the only healer that is strong enough to compete with WHM's in dungeons. "Compete" in a true sense aswell because WHM is still holding strong. In addition to being simple, and how unattentive you can play the job.

... but because it plays into AST's Time Mage inspiration.

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.

Yeah i'm on the AST train right now. I use to play during heavensward so the whole "time mage astrologian" thing is dear and close to my heart. I remember giving a dps a 60 second duration 10% dmg buff.
On the topic of overwritting slows cause by tanks, there would definitely be some interaction there. Arm's length is only able to apply once while Gravity would have diminishing reapplication durations. In essence, the slow effect should be balanced in a way that its duration is able to mitigate as much as another healers' AoE would.

Can we please stop asking for more homogenisation? If anything healers are in dire need for unique ideas.

I believe that giving the healers thematically appropriate effects is a step in the right direction when homogenizing. It can give a little spice to the AoE buttons healers have. As it stands, WHM is the only one with an added effect while the other healers just have damage. What would be your idea instead?

[ty_taurus]

I believe that giving the healers thematically appropriate effects is a step in the right direction when homogenizing. It can give a little spice to the AoE buttons healers have. As it stands, WHM is the only one with an added effect while the other healers just have damage. What would be your idea instead?

Or we add CC to other tools and give each healer different wants of applying different debuffs like I mentioned.

[Archwizard]

I believe that giving the healers thematically appropriate effects is a step in the right direction when homogenizing. It can give a little spice to the AoE buttons healers have. As it stands, WHM is the only one with an added effect while the other healers just have damage. What would be your idea instead?

And while I can agree about giving all healers "thematically appropriate effects", they don't all necessarily need to be hard CC.

Lemme put it to you this way: AST (as Time Mage) and WHM are two jobs I would fully expect to have some control-based effects, because of their history across the series; WHM as the early adopter of any defensive spell including damage prevention like Silence as well as being the archetype among healers, Time Mage as the eventual repository of such effects as Slow, Stop, Immobilize, Disable, etc.
SCH, put down as a hard maybe, you can justify one way or the other.

SGE however, is a job that we actually have relatively little thematic backing for. Yes, Sages exist within the series, but generally as advanced Scholar or Red Mage types, while 14's carves out a completely oblique identity that only shares the name. For instance, the most iconic character to use the Sage title within the series was Tellah, who famously was able to cast Meteor at the cost of his own life; even if Comet was in the cards for any healer, we wouldn't even consider it for 14's SGE because it exists outside the purview of SGE's abilities.
We can't really say that CC is "thematically appropriate" to the job because it's still in the early stages of what it can and cannot do -- you're assigning them Paralysis for the sake of giving each healer a CC, but not necessarily because you know it's fitting for 14's SGE specifically. This isn't to say "maybe some other CC is better for SGE, you don't know," but rather to pose the question: Is it even permitted, in your mind, for the devs to create a healer who thematically avoids CC?
Because as we can see from the existing paradigm, it's not some bare minimum requirement of the role. We see BLM as the one Caster who doesn't have rez support (or any utility outside of Role Actions) because it's designed to be selfish and falls outside of its theme since that would classically be White Magic; same principle, different role.

Even on the premise that you were shooting for some semblance of parity, the flaw in your reasoning is that no two of the CCs you mentioned were created equal. Yes, you can try to tune their durations so a 20% attack slow or 15% accuracy loss from Blind mitigates approximately equal damage to a hard Stun over the course of a trash pack, but ignoring for a moment that enemies have different resistances to different status effects (with some bosses even vulnerable to stuns that wouldn't be vulnerable to slows like Arm's Length), and ignoring that a trash pack may die well before their Slows or Blinds run out (so they didn't actually mitigate as much overall) versus a full bevvy of Stuns in the first 10 sec? Each one of these CCs is at their most powerful in different circumstances, with Stun able to act as an interrupt on powerful attacks that Slow won't. Paralysis is the next closest to this capability, but it's unreliable due to being RNG, and we still don't know the chance of its activation. Slow and Blind can't hold enemies in place when they're grouped for optimal AoE; hell, Blind is RNG just like Paralysis but without the same lockdown, so it's arguably the worst option here.
The list goes on. The only two types of CC that are truly "equal" are the ones that are just reskins of the same type of effect (like Stun vs Freeze vs Knockdown).

Like I said, there are thematically appropriate things that are untapped for each healer, like SCH throwing out a Spikes effect or SGE's "heal by attacking" theme; there isn't just one way to tune them to match up to Holy's stun window in terms of either free damage output or added defense/support.

[AlereRaeder]

And while I can agree about giving all healers "thematically appropriate effects", they don't all necessarily need to be hard CC. [...]

Even on the premise that you were shooting for some semblance of parity, the flaw in your reasoning is that no two of the CCs you mentioned were created equal. Yes, you can try to tune their durations so a 20% attack slow or 15% accuracy loss from Blind mitigates approximately equal damage to a hard Stun [...]

I agree that I am at fault for assigning CC to the healers, I did so in a way to make my point easier to understand. SGE is the newest healer and definitely not a healer I spend a lot of time playing, so the CC i assigned the job was more loosely added. I do believe that a healer can avoid CC, and still perform in an effective way. At the end of the day, the players will chose the stronger weapon. My ideals stem from the statistics; AST and SCH are heavily underplayed in endgame dungeons, and that's my issue with it all. For every ast/sch, there are ~2 whms/sges and that's a 100% difference.

On the note of balancing; I understand that holy's hard CC is insanely strong. To balance a slow against a hard CC like stun is difficult, however we have the law of averages on our side(for the most part). As in taking the data from a holy'd trash pack and balancing a slow'd mob pack against it. Blind being similar to slow. While Paralysis may be unreliable, the effect does happen. Arm's Length's effectiveness speaks for itself.

In FF11, SCH had Accenssion and Manifestation. Accenssion works pretty much like Deployment Tactics. Manifestation makes the next spell cast over an area instead of single target. So some semblance of Bane, but different enough that its within possibility to have back on scholar. In a way that it'll work like an offensive Recitation. SGE is kind of a star child tho, we'll see what comes :P

[AmiableApkallu]

At the end of the day, the players will chose the stronger weapon. My ideals stem from the statistics; AST and SCH are heavily underplayed in endgame dungeons, and that's my issue with it all. For every ast/sch, there are ~2 whms/sges and that's a 100% difference.

If we're talking about dungeons and other normal-mode content, then…

Because there is nothing in that content that requires the absolute best of the job or the player, there is no reason to assume that jobs being played at different rates is because of which jobs are stronger, and there is no reason to treat jobs being played at different rates as a problem.

For example, my problem with AST isn't Gravity. My problem is that playing cards feels unsatisfying because there is little to no feedback in-game about how effective those buffs actually are.