The Problem with Healer Feedback, and requested changes

[ty_taurus]

Let's not hyperbolize here.
Yes, the job could use more bells and whistles to be a true "offensive healer" (though you came out swinging against the essential "healer" part of it).
No, I wouldn't describe it as "rotting from the inside out" just because Toxikon and Pneuma aren't a damage gain.

Who said anything about Pneuma? And I genuinely am not being hyperbolic. SGE is not well designed at all. In terms of healing output, it's already doing a great job. It offers the greatest amount of mitigation, offers a lot of OGCD healing, Zoe + Pneuma is a fantastic burst heal.

There are QoL improvements you can make to the healing side of its gameplay, and I do genuinely think having the vanilla GCD heals having a higher potency on targets with barriers is a good safety net tool for SGE. I'm not saying those are bad buffs, it's just that they aren't addressing the problem. It's like when they buffed WAR's Tomahawk. Sure, your ranged button deals a little more damage. Awesome. Was it a quaint little QoL buff? Sure. Is it hurting WAR in any way? Nope. Did that address any of WAR's potency issues? Not at all.

The same is true here: buffing all these methods of healing is fine, it's just not doing anything to address what makes SGE unfun to play as, nor is it actively improving SGE's general healing capabilities. SGE's core tools for healing are Kerachole, Ixochole, Taurochole, Druochole, Physis II, Holos, Haima, Panhaima, Pneuma, and Kardia. Making the GCD healing of SGE stronger when it hates its GCD heals and will find any and all excuses to avoid it like the plague isn't going to improve its overall experience. We could stand to buff less powerful buttons. A common alternative suggestion for Soteria is making it apply your Kardia heal to the entire party rather than increasing the Kardia heal on your target by 70%. That would be a more worthwhile improvement if you're looking to make SGE better at healing. The Phlegma concept is neat, but it really only applies to dungeon trash, which SGE is already the most effective healer at handling.

[Archwizard]

And I genuinely am not being hyperbolic. SGE is not well designed at all.

There are QoL improvements you can make to the healing side of its gameplay, and I do genuinely think having the vanilla GCD heals having a higher potency on targets with barriers is a good safety net tool for SGE. I'm not saying those are bad buffs, it's just that they aren't addressing the problem.

Okay, so what would you suggest? I'm not saying you have to do the devs' job for them, but you obviously have a particular idea of what an "offensive healer" should be that isn't congruous with the existing design of SGE, and might be able to give some direction in that regard.

And to be clear, I'm not trying to be backhanded, I'm genuinely curious as to your thoughts. Nothing on my suggestion list was "be all, end all" -- after all, I prefaced with spitballing.

[ty_taurus]

Okay, so what would you suggest? I'm not saying you have to do the devs' job for them, but you obviously have a particular idea of what an "offensive healer" should be that isn't congruous with the existing design of SGE, and might be able to give some direction in that regard.

And to be clear, I'm not trying to be backhanded, I'm genuinely curious as to your thoughts. Nothing on my suggestion list was "be all, end all" -- after all, I prefaced with spitballing.

I've got a full skill list of what I'd do with SGE as well as the other healers over on the echo chamber thread in the first post. This includes a rework to the MP system but could also very easily adjust into the current MP system as well, so I'd not worry too much about the MP costs. Simply put:

1. Add a new attacking spell on the GCD with a 20 second cooldown and 2 charges that generates 1 Addersgall and 1 Addersting. Addersgall no longer generates passively over time. Instead, every time a Kardia effect occurs, your Kardia gauge increases by 2. When at 50 or greater, your next E. Diagnosis or E. Prognosis grants 1 Addersting. This replaces the barrier breaking aspect currently on E. Diagnosis.

2. Toxikon II gains a cooldown of 15 seconds. Its potency stays the same, but it now grants 3 stacks of Toxikosis Ready. This can be spent on an OGCD spell called Toxikosis II. Toxikosis II is 110 potency with 50% dropoff on secondary targets and can only be used with stacks of Toxikosis Ready. This makes Toxikon II DPS neutral when gained through healing, and also acts as a "combo" of sorts out of other actions that generate Addersting. Doing it this way also reduces the potential crit variance of what would otherwise be a 660 potency action.

3. Change Dyskrasia as the main AoE to "Paroxysm" mainly because adding a Eukrasian variation would create "Eukrasian Dyskrasia" which is kind of an oxymoron. It changes to a ranged, instant cast AoE with the same potency as Dosis but 50% dropoff (I'd do this with all healer AoEs, the potency part, and provide some added functionality to them in single target situations). Eukrasian Dosis's DoT is now called "Dyskrasia" and add a Eukrasian Paroxysm that applies the Dyskrasia DoT to all enemies in range with the DoT on secondary targets being 50% weaker. Paroxysm now works as a mobility tool at a higher MP cost and also heals all allies nearby your Kardia target in a small area which can be useful for some instances of group healing.

4. Both Eukrasian Dosis and Eukrasian Paroxysm apply a small barrier to your Kardia target instead of a heal. When this breaks, or the duration expires, you get 1 Addersting like in PVP. This applies just to your Kardia target for Eukrasian Paroxysm and not all party members affected.

5. Remove Krasis and Taurochole and add a new DPS spell with a larger MP cost which applies a 20% increased healing received buff for 15 seconds to your Kardia target normally and a 10% damage mitigation buff for 15 seconds when used under Eukrasia. This has no cooldown and has the same potency as Dosis and thus can be used interchangeably as the effects are needed.

6. Add a couple more OGCD offensive tools to give SGE a bit more complexity; nothing too difficult in actuality, but an option for something that has a higher ceiling for optimization for players that want that.

My ideas are also not "end all, be all." And I wasn't trying to be antagonistic and hope it didn't come across as an attack or anything. It's just I don't necessarily feel like those suggestions were effectively addressing any problem areas in the design, nor were they really improving the regular healing experience of SGE either. I realize my idea is well beyond SE's comfort zone and has a very unlikely change of being anywhere close to the potential outcome of 7.0, but SGE needs to move somewhere in that direction to genuinely improve in its experience.

[Archwizard]

I've got a full skill list of what I'd do with SGE as well as the other healers over on the echo chamber thread in the first post. This includes a rework to the MP system but could also very easily adjust into the current MP system as well, so I'd not worry too much about the MP costs.

Looking over this, there's a few neat ideas here! I see there's some inspiration from the PVP iteration, wherein DoT application applies a barrier to cause Toxikon. (And I've also had the Eukrasian Dyskrasia crisis before.)

I do have some concerns about this design overall though, chief among them being "what even is the point of Eukrasian Diagnosis then, if you can get barriers and Addersting without ever stopping your attacks?" As you've already said, we avoid our GCD heals like the plague, and you've compounded that issue.
Plus you haven't mentioned if the two types of barriers can be stacked, for instance, or even if the E. Dosis barrier can stack for multiple SGEs, which could also be problematic when paired with another SGE or SCH since it constitutes a part of your DPS.

Second being, "what becomes the point of Dosis then, if you have a new spammable instant attack?" The Krasis/Taurochole skill you mentioned is "the same potency as Dosis and thus can be used interchangeably", but Eukrasian spells are instant by their nature due to consuming half a GCD to initialize.
You also haven't mentioned if the Eukrasian Taurochole is stackable with Kerachole (or even with the Krasis effect, which presently CAN be stacked), which could become an issue since it could increase the mitigation available to SGE significantly.
I mean just looking at any given 15 second window... you have Toxikon now being a DPS gain thanks to the oGCDs, the Eukrasian Taurochole, and then any number of options between the new generator GCD, E. Dosis and Phlegma. And if the new generator GCD is instant... all of the ones I just named would be.
And that's a pretty overwhelming number of options if your filler spell can be crowded out.

To be honest, looking at these two questions, one might almost get the impression that you think the point of the kit evolving is to... avoid/obsolete the staple tools of the kit, rather than treat them as the bread and butter.

And then there's the element of "what happens to Soteria, if there are now multiple spells that don't heal via Kardion at all, just applying buffs?"
I mean, several of the spells in that 15 second window I mentioned wouldn't heal at all, causing Soteria's potency buff to go to waste -- and I doubt we'd see an AoE Kardia out of Soteria, either, with all of those buffs you could spread through it.

[ty_taurus]

Looking over this, there's a few neat ideas here! I see there's some inspiration from the PVP iteration, wherein DoT application applies a barrier to cause Toxikon. (And I've also had the Eukrasian Dyskrasia crisis before.)

I do have some concerns about this design overall though, chief among them being "what even is the point of Eukrasian Diagnosis then, if you can get barriers and Addersting without ever stopping your attacks?" As you've already said, we avoid our GCD heals like the plague, and you've compounded that issue.
Plus you haven't mentioned if the two types of barriers can be stacked, for instance, or even if the E. Dosis barrier can stack for multiple SGEs, which could also be problematic when paired with another SGE or SCH since it constitutes a part of your DPS.

Second being, "what becomes the point of Dosis then, if you have a new spammable instant attack?" The Krasis/Taurochole skill you mentioned is "the same potency as Dosis and thus can be used interchangeably", but Eukrasian spells are instant by their nature due to consuming half a GCD to initialize.
You also haven't mentioned if the Eukrasian Taurochole is stackable with Kerachole (or even with the Krasis effect, which presently CAN be stacked), which could become an issue since it could increase the mitigation available to SGE significantly.
I mean just looking at any given 15 second window... you have Toxikon now being a DPS gain thanks to the oGCDs, the Eukrasian Taurochole, and then any number of options between the new generator GCD, E. Dosis and Phlegma. And if the new generator GCD is instant... all of the ones I just named would be.
And that's a pretty overwhelming number of options if your filler spell can be crowded out.

To be honest, looking at these two questions, one might almost get the impression that you think the point of the kit evolving is to... avoid/obsolete the staple tools of the kit, rather than treat them as the bread and butter.

And then there's the element of "what happens to Soteria, if there are now multiple spells that don't heal via Kardion at all, just applying buffs?"
I mean, several of the spells in that 15 second window I mentioned wouldn't heal at all, causing Soteria's potency buff to go to waste -- and I doubt we'd see an AoE Kardia out of Soteria, either, with all of those buffs you could spread through it.

I didn't want to go into the nitty gritty of every action in the build, but a lot of these concerns I don't think would actually be problematic in practice.

Firstly, SGE's standard GCD barriers do not stack with one another nor do they stack with SCH's Galvanize as they function currently. The E. Dosis/E. Paroxysm barrier is quite small, equivalent to a 200 potency cure with no additional value added as crit. These do stack with other barriers, but they're connected to DoT application, so you'll generally prefer not overwriting your DoTs for the sake of the barrier.

For Eukrasia Diagnosis, the new gauge mechanic gives you DPS neutral barrier application roughly once a minute. Both E. Diagnosis and E. Prognosis are great tools if you're generating Addersting from them. You do miss out on 1 application of Kardia, but this is also how you spend that resource, so it makes sense you wouldn't generate additional gauge with your spenders. E. Diagnosis could be quite helpful for things like the bleedbusters in savage, for example. I think your concept of having Diagnosis and Prognosis heal more on barriered targets could also be applied here. Yes, you'd still want to avoid them like the plague for optimization, but the point of that is giving inexperienced healers a safety net. Not everything needs to be designed for optimization, other tools can be designed simply to carry the skill floor. I also have vanilla Diagnosis removing status conditions in my concept as well, which it gains via trait early in level. I did this with all the weak level 2 heal spells and cut out Esuna. It merges two extremely niche tools into 1 button instead of 2.

Dosis would still be used, it just wouldn't be used quite as much, though still probably more than anything else. The Krasis/Taurochole skill (Kardiorrhexis as is known) as well as the AoE button that now offers instant cast utility and small AoE group healing with Kardia both have higher MP costs and will run you dry if you spam them instead of Dosis. Kardiorrhexis specifically is an MP cost of 2000, so managing it effectively is a key part of playing SGE rather than trying to maintain it as an uptime buff. That said, one thing my and any theorycrafted build lacks is proper testing in a playable build. I have no doubt my idea would need adjustments when put into practice, but that's also a part of these being fanbased concepts rather than playtested dev builds. It may turn out that it would just be better to attach a cooldown to Kardiorrhexis, maybe with charges.

On the topic of Toxikon, there is actually a concern that came up based on what you mentioned... I think you generate more Addersting than you can phyiscally spend which is a flaw that I need to reevaluate. Perhaps that means there needs to be a weaker spender button you use for excess Addersting. It does muddy the water of generating Addersting via healing vs DPS buttons, though by having the spender GCD have a higher potency than Dosis, it does give it a small niche of being best used during your buff windows. One of those OGCD additional tools would give a personal DPS vulnerability for a brief window. So trying to plan your excess Addersting spending for those moments could be a unique aspect of engagement. Or maybe the Addersting generated on E. Dosis/E. Paroxysm is too excessive and it's just better to slim down the generation of Addersting. Or the cooldown isn't necessary for Toxikon and the use of all 3 Toxikosis stacks is all the spell needs to manage it's time.

Again it just goes to show that design requires playtesting and prototyping, which we lack as players to do for concepts.

Soteria and other tools are outlined in the full on document. It places Soterion on yourself and all nearby party members, healing them for each stack whenever any Kardia effect triggers. All the DPS actions do have Kardia effects, it's just that I didn't want to spent too much time outlining every specific detail. The effect was just not the main thing I was looking to convey on those actions. The only GCD tools that don't generate Kardia gauge are your heals and a revamped Holos (more in the document).

I think overall the concept is not a concern on the intent behind it, it's just, it would need to be tested and cross-checked for balance with the other healers before moving forward with the design. Which is true of any design really.