Paired Threads: What would it take to make Heaker kits "complex/interesting"?

[Osmond]

As much I’m joking about it, I’m actually curious about this. Seeing no middle of the road of it.

[ty_taurus]

That’s a question the post have to answer themselves. What’s the limit of hot bars a job needs for it to make it fun to play. Solutions are a lot, but becomes bloated. Solutions are little, but becomes boring.

For starters, there are a number of things that can be done to condense hotbar actions already without changing much. For example, Holy, Art of War, Gravity, and Dyskrasia all currently exist as buttons that are nearly never usable against bosses, which is the vast bulk of meaningful encounters this game throws at us, and even in the exceedingly sparse number of fights where there is meaning to choosing AoE over single target, there are only ever 2 targets, meaning Holy III still isn't worth using, and the gains are so miniscule on Gravity II and Dyskrasia II that it's likely to have no actual impact on clear speed.

You could easily add some modicum of value to single target situations on these buttons that make them desirable over single target nukes, and suddenly we've gained another viable action in boss content without increasing the action count. For example, maybe after playing your Minor Arcana, your next Gravity hits 3 times, or Gravity applies a Trick Attack like selfish DPS debuff on all its targets, increasing the damage you deal to enemies by 5-10% for x seconds.

In other cases, we can talk about merging or pruning buttons. On Scholar, for example, you could easily have Whispering Dawn upgrade into Fey Blessing, for example, being a flat heal with a HoT attached, and give it a second charge. This makes it more competitive with Sage's equivalent Physis II which is blatantly superior to Whispering Dawn currently and prunes 1 button of Scholar's hotbar without losing anything.

These are just examples of ways to trim bloat and improve engagement with the tools we already have. In practice, it would be beneficial for more conscious thought to go into revamping each healer to have a more curated selection of tools that have interactivity--keeping button total lower while increasing the amount of options players have with the actions these jobs are given.

[RyuDragnier]

I've said this before, I'll say it again...every healer needs something like the Cards to use to make downtime less boring. You know, SOMETHING to manage.

[Connor]

I've said this before, I'll say it again...every healer needs something like the Cards to use to make downtime less boring. You know, SOMETHING to manage.

I feel like the problem with this is that SE would point to Lilies, Fairy and Kardia and be like ‘oh you mean these super engaging mechanics? ’. Even though that’s completely missing the point because all three are entirely healing based lol

[ty_taurus]

I've said this before, I'll say it again...every healer needs something like the Cards to use to make downtime less boring. You know, SOMETHING to manage.

It's also been brought up that even in its prime, AST is miserable in solo content as its cards very poorly translate to a single fighter--one who suffers the lowest DPS output of any combat job. If this game is going to try and better support single target play, it should make sure every job feels fun and interesting when playing alone or with trusts.

[ForsakenRoe]

That’s a question the post have to answer themselves. What’s the limit of hot bars a job needs for it to make it fun to play. Solutions are a lot, but becomes bloated. Solutions are little, but becomes boring.

Personally, I look at some tools healers have and think 'wow we really didn't need to add this'. Stuff like Fey Blessing, which was added as a second gauge spender. It only cost 10 gauge though, why not at least make it 'uses all gauge, scales in potency', or 'uses 10 per tick, pulses aoe healing as AOE version of Union'? Instead they REMOVED the gauge cost in EW, and it's now functionally identical to Indom, just it comes from the fairy instead of the SCH. Protraction, Exaltation and Aquaveil are the biggest offenders of the expansion, requiring the massive bump in mit required in the current tier to even justify their existence for a lot of us. Physick, Cure1, Cure2 to a certain extent, Cure3 (cos Rapture exists), Benefic 1/2, all are basically never used because we have better stuff we can use in their place.

We have the question of 'okay but how do you avoid button bloat' a lot, and the answer I'd offer is, 'because we HAVE button bloat already, just it's bloat caused by having too many healing tools compared to how much we actually need to heal'. AST has CO, CU, Star and Horoscope. They all function slightly differently to each other, but the end result is the same, they heal for X potency, some having a 'over Y seconds' HOT component, and they're all 60s CDs. CO and CU are the worst offenders for this. CO is 200p instant, then 5 ticks of 100. CU is 100p instant (via the 'application tick'), then 5 ticks of 100p. So if one's 600p, one's 700p, both are 60s CDs, why have them both? Why not remove one (my vote is the stupid bubble), and give the other one two charges, or reduce it's CD? Why not combine Medica and Medica2 since Med2 only requires ONE SINGLE TICK to be equal to Med1? (same with AST's Helios) Why not combine Physick and Adlo, and adjust shield potency multiplier to keep Adlo's shield strength the same as it is now?

Why do we, as healers, need 15 buttons dedicated to doing 'healing'? WAR has the smallest button count of the tanks, and it's got 8 buttons that are 'tanking' related, the rest are damage stuff. No doubt someone will go 'well ackshually that is because they need those damage tools to maintain aggro' Yeh no they don't, aggro stopped existing when SHB launched with it's 'lmao tankstance is now a 25x multiplier', you could probably keep aggro with just pressing Provoke on CD at this point. Meanwhile, looking through Sage, the 'healer for people who enjoy doing damage as healer - Yoshi-P', there's 17 buttons that are 'healing' related, and only FOUR that are damage related. Partially because of Eukrasia, sure. But if those Eukrasian versions of things were made seperate buttons and Eukrasia removed, Healing would actually gain more hotbar bloat than Damage, as it's Diagnosis and Prognosis vs Dosis.

We don't need to have 17 buttons for healing and mitigation. Do we need Druochole and Taurochole (or Lustrate and Excog) to be seperate buttons, instead of trait-upgrades? They're capped by Gall/Flow so it's not like '3 Excog's in a row' is going to be OP. Or did SGE absolutely 100% NEED Pepsis? SCH's been fine without 'a way to break their shield', and they don't have a throughput AOE GCD, where SGE has Prognosis (regular), instead they made do with Emergency Tactics and it's 15s CD. And do we really need Soteria, a 90s CD that affects FOUR Kardia procs? If it were reworked so that you could use it more often, at a price, then it'd be justified in existing but as it stands it's kinda just... there. I hit it alongside Krasis and watch as I do roughly the same healing as the WAR can give themselves via Bloodwhetting, for 4 GCDs. Wow. Zoe's on thin ice too, being as we use it on Pneuma 96% of the time (the other 4 is for a scuffed Deployment Tactics by boosting E.Prog)

[ty_taurus]

We don't need to have 17 buttons for healing and mitigation. Do we need Druochole and Taurochole (or Lustrate and Excog) to be seperate buttons, instead of trait-upgrades? They're capped by Gall/Flow so it's not like '3 Excog's in a row' is going to be OP. Or did SGE absolutely 100% NEED Pepsis? SCH's been fine without 'a way to break their shield', and they don't have a throughput AOE GCD, where SGE has Prognosis (regular), instead they made do with Emergency Tactics and it's 15s CD. And do we really need Soteria, a 90s CD that affects FOUR Kardia procs? If it were reworked so that you could use it more often, at a price, then it'd be justified in existing but as it stands it's kinda just... there. I hit it alongside Krasis and watch as I do roughly the same healing as the WAR can give themselves via Bloodwhetting, for 4 GCDs. Wow. Zoe's on thin ice too, being as we use it on Pneuma 96% of the time (the other 4 is for a scuffed Deployment Tactics by boosting E.Prog)

Eukrasia is also right there, and yet so little takes advantage of it. You could very easily consolidate buttons on SGE and get more engagement with SGE's toolkit without adding a single button:

Merge Physis II and Holos: Holos is a GCD heal with a cooldown that applies a regen and increased HP recovered buff normally, or a barrier and 10% mitigation under Eukrasia. Both versions also deal 330 potency to all nearby enemies, 50% less for secondary enemies, since it has to be on the GCD to work with Eukrasia.

Merge Krasis and Taurochole into a single target GCD spell that provides the increased healing received or 10% mitigation under Eukrasia and damages enemies nearby your target for the same potency. This can also be on a cooldown.

Remove Soteria and have a GCD DPS spell that's the same potency as Dosis and grants 4 stacks of Soteria normally, which doubles your Kardia heals, or 2 stacks of a new buff that extends your Kardia to all allies nearby your target under Eukrasia. This doesn't have a cooldown, but has a higher MP cost and would be your main way to heal.

Even if we do literally nothing else, you've trimmed 2 buttons, and made both healing and attacking more interesting for SGE and also better capture the SGE brand.

[RyuDragnier]

It's also been brought up that even in its prime, AST is miserable in solo content as its cards very poorly translate to a single fighter--one who suffers the lowest DPS output of any combat job. If this game is going to try and better support single target play, it should make sure every job feels fun and interesting when playing alone or with trusts.

Which definitely constitutes adding a bit more to their DPS, I admit. They should probably look at SB and PvP for ideas on how to make DPS feel better. Deployment Tactics becoming the Bane for SCH (if targeting an enemy) would be really good.

[Nizzi]

That’s a question the post have to answer themselves. What’s the limit of hot bars a job needs for it to make it fun to play. Solutions are a lot, but becomes bloated. Solutions are little, but becomes boring.

It has nothing to do with hot bar amounts or button amounts (to an extent) but rather what those buttons do and how they interact with it's kit and gameplay loop.
If we look at Stormblood Scholar versus Endwalker Scholar, there's only a 2 GCD DPS button difference - Miasma and Miasma II. (Yes, Scholar lost Bane and Shadow Flare too but those were oGCD and either not used in ST or just used on CD mostly so we'll ignore them) yet 2 buttons and how they interact with a job's kit is all it takes to have an engaging gameplay loop versus something monotonous and dull.

Miasma being a 2.5s casted DoT that you needed to hit every 21s and Miasma II being a large MP cost, risk reward weaving button that was a DPS gain if paired with Energy Drain. Having the ability to use excess MP for DPS gains while also using it to keep your Aetherflow rolling with Quickened Aetherflow is definitely a more engaging loop than Scholar has now. Managing 3 different timers (or 4 if you count Aetherflow at 45s) on top of doing mechanics and healing would be more engaging than what we have now. Of course, the job has been changed enough to where you couldn't just slap Miasma II back in and say "job is good now have fun" but the fact of the matter remains that we don't need a lot of buttons to have an engaging gameplay loop, but we have neither DPS buttons nor engaging gameplay loop.

[Aravell]

Seeing all this discussion, I can't help but wonder if going into Shadowbringers, instead of simplifying every healer, they instead just fixed lilies, reworked Selene into being more usable and gave more ways to mitigate card RNG, would people be happier even if SGE was implemented as it is now?