Delete rescue from the game.

[Tigore]

@ Renathras

I like to explore and brainstorm ideas to see what may work and what may not. I keep seeing players posting how they don't like the current healer play styles ... but then no other solution is suggested in an attempt to fix the problem. The devs do need a direction to determine what a best course of action could be ... otherwise ... why are they being expected to be mind readers ... In this case, we might have multiple answers to how we can refine the healers with more DPS buttons. As a result, we will have to go by if the devs can do it and if the majority of the players want it.

In the case for melee healers, I would have been thinking of brainstorming if 1 of the 2 melee DPS could be swapped for a range or spell DPS to make it work. Maybe in the current Savage meta, it is not designed like that. Since the melee damage dealers tend to unanimously bring higher personal damage for the current meta. If we do have the BLM buffed to be around SAM's level, could it be possible to have a shift in bringing a melee healer? I am thinking more into the future if such a thing could be possible then. Most times, I see the healer targeted mechs have 2 stacks and those tend to be brought into melee range on opposite sides.

For the DPS side of the argument, I have made those suggestions with the intent for healers doing those 4 man content they already overgear. In a Savage setting, I can see Energy Drain being used far less. Although the DPS players should be the main contributors, every little bit helps if it is possible for the healer to do so. This may be a section where we might have to agree to disagree. I am not against using a regen or damage reduction spell that consumes a lily of course. That still translates to more damage contribution from me using Glare / Holy GCDs and it also still translates to using the Afflatus Misery AoE spell eventually. Assuming we are talking about the 4 mans again.

In any case, I have been quite adaptable to several healing styles and I had been used to Blizzard re-inventing the wheel every expansion for WoW :P I tend to see a split in opinions if the players approve of that approach or not. Even if it looks like I am indifferent, I will still examine the spells to see if they make sense or not. In the case of Rescue discussed by Romah, that one is up in the air. But even if we were to add the AoE Rescue that a few want here, it doesn't sound like it would "rescue" the healer class for them if they still don't like the style ...

[ForsakenRoe]

People have suggested ways to change things, they just get ignored by SE so people stop posting in the thread and it falls off of the front page. Just off the top of my head I know me and Ty have both posted reworks for things (iirc Ty did all 4, I focused more on WHM and SGE), but the interest died down and so those threads are now on page 4 or something where nobody will ever find them again.

There's literally zero excuse at this point to not have a melee healer though, as the hitboxes on bosses are so large you have 100% melee uptime in every fight anyway. If a Holy Paladin can work in WOW, where Kurog's hitbox is 'pretty small actually', it would work completely fine in this game where you can reach the P7S boss from 90% of the arena.

AOE Rescue will not 'rescue' the healer role. It'd be potentially interesting as a tool to have 'just in case' but it's too likely to just get everyone killed too. Imagine P5S double stacks, AOE Rescue and oops everyone's doublestacked and you're dead

[WaxSw]

snip

Only difference is that in the aoe, prognosis on the tank to get addersting should be below dyskrasia spam, no GCD spam should be ever that efficient

SGE has a 40 sec GCD, a "first three are free" Toxicon use, and Pneuma every 2 mins that it can use. So its rotation is already distinct from the others.

No its not, proof:
WHM rotation in p8sp1
Sage rotation in the same instance

Those differences you mention aren't enough to make the jobs feel different, because toxicon outisde of AoE is just a mobility tool and that unique 40s damage cooldown already existed in the form of assize for whm (funnily enough even the devs consider them similars seeing how they balance both at the same time)

Even tanks as homgenized as they are are far more different than those 2, just look at any 2 tanks and you'll se how they aren't even close.

Damage neutral Toxicon would increase the skill ceiling, not lower it.

It woudn't and honestly I feel that it should be obvious why its not but to summarize
-You're gaining that "playing into party buffs" optimization which in the end amounts for less than 300-400 dps at the cost of losing literally every kind of GCD and cooldown optimization whatsoever which is what differentiates a 2k dps healer from a 6k dps one, you're shrinking the difference between the floor (plenty of GCD use and not much use of cooldowns) and the ceiling (no GCD and every cooldown planned to fit into the exact moment they are the most efficient)

-By introducing those big hits (3x660) you're increasing the RNG realiance of the job, something that the game does not need actually considering how swingy damage can be already and that niche of playing into buffs is already covered by phlegma
-You're disencouraging job knowledge, one of the main reasons to know how effective the healing cds are is to squeeze more damage, by giving an unlimited dps neutral action you're basically removing any incentive because no matter how they heal everything is equally as efficient, this only shrunks the skill ceiling because there is less relevant things to learns and go against the very idea of how healers are played

I could go on but I don't want to writte a full essay about that but basically, if you've ever cared about healing optimizations the reason why unlimited damage neutral gcds is a bad idea is obvious.

I don't think those "benefits" of Phlegma are sufficient. SGE players should know the range of their heals, they shouldn't need to be "coaxed" into range of using them

Same could be said about increasing its range when the bosses hitboxes are already of the size of skyscrapes, if anything this also hurts the ceiling (and the flavour) cause a bit of knowledge on when to use phlegma plays a role in some fights

Sch change

I do agree on that but didn't want to talk about that cause Sch is its own can of worms and is honestly another topic that could fill pages easily

The Job itself is fine as it is now, and has a lot of soul and heart.

If its for you, nice, but its undeniable that is dpsing side is the same as the existing healers had, its job mechanics are not unique and its main way of healing is a carbon copy of a pre existing job. Those are problems that no new job ever had and I think it shows that SE did not care about it in the slightest.

[Tigore]

I just placed the tank shield where it is since it would "never get used" if its priority is below Dyskrasia. In its current state, yeah it causes Dyskrasia to almost never get used. Even in overgeared 4 mans I try, the primary shield is broken almost within 2 seconds with the big AoE pulls. Don't worry, I use Physis and Haima / Panhaima with the primary shields too. If the primary shield was modified into ... say .. a 2 - 3 multi hit shield that needs the last charge to be broken for an addersting ... then I could see Dyskrasia being used more even with the priority I listed. If that is still not enough, we could always place an internal cooldown on addersting being granted by the shield.

[Renathras]

...

Oh, brainstorming is fine. I'm just saying that's something SCH has that a lot of people don't like, so spreading it to others who are actively choosing not to play SCH because they don't like it seems ill advised. Moreover, one of the complaints about Healers right now is that they feel too much alike. So "solutions" that make them feel even more alike also seem ill advised. That said, there's plenty of feedback to the Devs on what they do and don't want changed. I suspect one of the reasons the Devs are "resisting" changing Healers is because the people that don't frequent forums are telling them in various ways they like them. Apparently AST is the Healer where this is resoundingly not true, given they planned a rework already but have pushed it off to 7.0. I could be wrong, but I bet the Devs have a better handle on what the majority want than these forums do.

Indeed, the survey results on Reddit already indicate these forums have a significantly more negative view towards Healers than the overall playerbase does.

The problem with a melee Healer is it would necessitate a 2 Caster 8 man comp. So even if 2 Caster was considered viable or equal with 2 Melee (the former is debateable but the latter is not), the melee Healer Job would ONLY be viable in that specific comp, or would be doing the equivalent to chain casting Tomahawk during various mechanics, relying on a higher DPS output from their team to make up for them. This is even worse if it was like a WoW Holy Paladin where some of its healing kit REQUIRES it to be in melee, making it lose access to some of its healing if forced to disengage.

I think the key there is that the combat system/encounter design has to be made less rigid before that can be an option.

I think part of the trick is seeing that Healer Jobs should be different. Having a Job like WHM isn't a problem. Having all Healer Jobs in the game be like WHM is a problem. Likewise, having a Healer Job like SB SCH isn't a problem. Making all Healer Jobs into SB SCH is a problem. Substituting one "they're all the same" for another "they're all the same" won't make things better, it will just shift around who is pissed off and who is happy. It's why I've long advocated for changing up some of the Healers but not all of them.

There's literally zero excuse at this point to not have a melee healer though, as the hitboxes on bosses are so large you have 100% melee uptime in every fight anyway.

Lol, fair point, but only for EW bosses. And still ignoring that there are forced disengage or "4 ranged spots" mechanics during which you'd be doing the equivalent of spamming Tomahawk for a big DPS loss. I guess it'd be more like spamming Scathe?

[Sebazy]

Lol, fair point, but only for EW bosses. And still ignoring that there are forced disengage or "4 ranged spots" mechanics during which you'd be doing the equivalent of spamming Tomahawk for a big DPS loss. I guess it'd be more like spamming Scathe?

I'd see the meleeing aspect of a healer akin to WHM's Lilies, you're DPSing whilst also healing and pocketing further resources for down the line. As long as it's melee focus was a means to generate resources whilst functioning optimally I think it'd be fine. Times where it was forced out of range could be taken as moments to spend said resources in optimised play, not to mention that boss hitboxes are so huge these days that you can smack them from deepest Narnia anyway. I don't think it would be a problem now in the same way it would have been back in 2.x-4.x.

Watch some world prog team Savage PoVs on YouTube. It's kind of surprising how little time you need to spend out of cane slap range.

[Renathras]

No its not, proof:
...
Those differences you mention aren't enough to make the jobs feel different,
...
Even tanks as homgenized as they are are far more different than those 2, just look at any 2 tanks and you'll se how they aren't even close.

Okay, I know you guys hate me saying this, but it needs to be said:

This is subjective.

I don't mean the number of casts, that's objective. I mean the feel. Any time you use the word feel, you're speaking in subjective terms. I've read through the results of the long-form surveys on Reddit. While there are a lot of disappointed people (results of the satisfied/dissatisfied question here:

Note that the scaling is done from 1-9 instead of 1-10 since Ty's system is weird, so the net ratings are actually higher if you change the 9 to 10, but this is "looking at it in the worst way possible" - it's also not broken down into individual Jobs, and keep in mind the three notes listed... ), there are a lot of satisfied ones that talk about how DIFFERENT the Healer Jobs feel to them.

Conversely, hop over to the Tank forum. They've been complaining ever since the 6.3 PLD rework that PLD now feels just like GNB (or WAR, depending on who you ask), and that DRK feels just like WAR, and that all the Tanks are samey and feel alike because they just have the same 1-2-3 rotation, with some gimmick -4 or equivalent, and that their mitigation toolkits feel identical.

...I disagree with them, too, mind you, but the point is, you're speaking for yourself - AND for those that think like you - but not for everyone. There seem to be a lot of people who describe all the Healers as feeling very different to play. I would wager this is because some players put more emphasis on the healing side of things and others the DPSing side of things, with the former feeling different and the latter feeling they're the same.

It woudn't and honestly I feel that it should be obvious why its not but to summarize

You list a lot of things but don't really substantiate them.

You say you gain optimization (which SHOULD increase the skill ceiling...), but then handwave that away as just a small difference (but don't say what the difference is now to compare it to), then say "losing literally every kind of GCD and cooldown optimization whatsoever" but don't explain how or why you're losing these and what these optimizations are that you're losing. Like...what are you losing here? The only optimization you're losing is that of using downtime shields so Toxicon isn't damage neutral (which is clunk, not clever mechanics) and...what? If you're trying to stock the Toxicons for burst, it means you're trying to avoid them as a movement tool, not use them more for one (so you're gaining ceiling/optimization there, not losing it), you can use GCD heals for movement optimization in place of Toxicon, I guess? But since the Toxicons you gain are for burst and you're trying not to overcap them otherwise, that should still be a net increase in the skill ceiling. You say it will shrink the gap between ceiling and floor, but don't explain how it's supposedly doing so.

You are correct on increasing the RNG reliance, but it's more increasing the buff window reliance. If this is bad, then every DPS and Tank Job in the game right now are bad because they all do this.

You say it's disencouraging[sic] job knowledge...but don't explain how. Fully optimizing SGE's burst under this model would require MORE Job knowledge, not less! You'd want to stock Toxicons and Plegmas for burst windows, have the raid awareness to know when those start, and ensure you land all three Toxicons and your two Plegmas in the burst window. That already would be a higher skill ceiling than what SGE's damage rotation has going for it now, would it not? And you would still be rewarded (provided you haven't overcapped Addersting) for downtime shielding. You'd be rewarded for knowing when you NEED to shield so you could optimize around that to use those Toxicons for movement (knowing you'll have more than 3 by the burst window and so need to burn some) instead of Plegma, ensuring a good player is stocking the Plegmas (2) for the burst window while a less optimized player would be using Plegmas instead and have a lower burst output and thus lower overall output.

Everything I can think of has this rewarding Job and kit knowledge as well as encounter knowledge. You're going to have to explain to me how this isn't so, because I'm not seeing it here.

I think what you're trying to say is people can more freely shield (but that's a trap if they dry out their MP) and that if they use Toxicon outside of burst it's a DPS loss but gives them more movement or something? But that wouldn't be optimizing, and thus is an example of widening the skill ceiling from the floor, since the lower skilled player wouldn't be optimizing there while the higher skilled one would be.

I do agree on that but didn't want to talk about that cause Sch is its own can of worms and is honestly another topic that could fill pages easily

Fair enough, though I suspect we might agree more on THAT topic than this one.

but its undeniable that is dpsing side is the same as the existing healers had, its job mechanics are not unique and its main way of healing is a carbon copy of a pre existing job

It is, in fact, deniable, as it's DPSing side isn't identical to any other Job. The only case that's absolutely true of is SCH and AST (since SCH arguably doesn't use Ruin 2). The question is how distinct they are (not very), not if they're identical ("the same").

It's Job mechanics are unique, but they're pretty similar to SCH's. Their Addersgall is generated differently, they have Addersting instead of Energy Drain (which is also generated differently), their splash heal works differently (arguably better), and their oGCD kit aside from Aetherflow/Addersgall is distinct (and arguably better as well) than SCH's. The fact remains that in all three surveys (Ty's and my two long form ones), SGE is the most praised Healer Job while SCH (in the long form) is pretty derided (only AST is worse), and in Ty's, SCH gets lower marks than SGE. Clearly people are seeing some distinction, otherwise they'd be rating them the same (in Ty's) and talking about them the same (in mine) where people aren't.

One of the most common things said in the long form surveys is "I really like WHM and SGE, but I don't like SCH since it's like a worse SGE and I really don't like AST" or some variation on that theme.

EDIT2:

I'd see the meleeing aspect of a healer akin to WHM's Lilies, you're DPSing whilst also healing and pocketing further resources for down the line. As long as it's melee focus was a means to generate resources whilst functioning optimally I think it'd be fine. Times where it was forced out of range could be taken as moments to spend said resources in optimised play, not to mention that boss hitboxes are so huge these days that you can smack them from deepest Narnia anyway. I don't think it would be a problem now in the same way it would have been back in 2.x-4.x.

Watch some world prog team Savage PoVs on YouTube. It's kind of surprising how little time you need to spend out of cane slap range.

Yeah fair.

I guess I should say this more like "in older content", but as I've said to you guys, older content doesn't matter, so...

You know what? Sure. Bring on the melee Healer.

Hm...Onimaiju...or whatever the thing that [SPOILER] from the Ranged Physical EW Role quest is. I'm not sure what it was, but like the shrine priest thing. Could have a playstyle slapping sacred suchers(sp?) on things like Miroku from Inuyasha. Honestly, I'd be fine with a melee Healer then. I wouldn't play it, but could be the candidate for the WAR 1-2-3 -4 combo system.

[Tigore]

Alright. We may have to back off from spell suggestions first to make the rotations different. Waxsw does seem to agree on differentiating the DPS logs. Since even with the differences in WHM, Dosis is still spammed the same as Glare in the end for... 80% - ish of the GCDs according to those graphs? We may need a draft of what type of DPS system each one should have.

According to Waxsw, we may be trying for a semi cooldown combo system for Sage.

Astrologian would be the simplest one by default due to the card system. Probably just needs an AoE DoT with Royal Road. Still need to decide which card buffs to use.

I know you said you would hate it Renathras, but a DoT mage sounds like a potential Scholar fate. The decision between manually Dotting all targets, or using Bane spreading with half pot DoTs. I imagine 4 targets will probably be the Bane point.

This leaves the White Mage. Currently, it is being compared to others for differentiation, but it will still have comparable buttons to what Astrologian has if we keep it the same. Pretty much just Afflatus Misery and Assize may feel different in that comparison.

[Renathras]

...

My personal position would probably be to give one of them a 1-2-3 (and possibly -4) combo system. "But they're casters, not melee"; MCH is close enough (and once was) a caster and has a 1-2-3. SGE having a 1-2-3 of lasers would work fine. Though I have a different Job in mind for the 1-2-3. For SGE, we can go two ways with it. One way is to make it like RDM or BLM where it has kind of a balance/back and forth rotation (simplified, of course; no melee phase of RDM/no extra stuff of BLM, just the core rotation). So if you think of BLM with just Fire 1, Fire 3, Blizzard 3, Fire 2, Freeze, maybe, or if you think of RDM having only Jolt/Stone/Fire/Aero/Thunder and their AOE Impact/Aero2/Thunder2. Either one of those might work for a A-B-C-D-A-B-C-D kind of a thing. The nice thing about SGE is its healing with Kardia. In my mind, its healing kit should be focused around that. Kardia, a second Kardia with a short duration (think AST's Synastry just for Kardia heals), an AOE Kardia with a short duration (for party healing), and a Soteria (for bigger Kardia healing). This gives you your base Kardia but also 3 offshoots for second target (off-tank), AOE (party), and boosted (Soteria) healing. I feel like those should be up frequently (short CD) and SGE's oGCD kit should probably overall be balanced to be a bit weaker so it's AUGMENTING Kardia, not REPLACING Kardia. Once that's done, the DPS rotation here is what's generating the lion's share of your healing, ideally, using those Kardia modifiers intelligently with some mitigation to smooth damage.

Alternatively, we could do a complex CD dance, but in practice, I'm not sure which would be better/worse...

SCH as a DoT mage seems to be what everyone wants. I'd just quit playing it, but as I've said before, I'm fine with the Healer Jobs all being different so that everyone can have one they enjoy; a corollary to that is that some of them would be such that some players wouldn't enjoy them. But that's true now - I don't enjoy AST now, I just also wouldn't enjoy SCH. That just means I'd stop playing them, but other people would be (presumably) playing them, so everyone wins. Yeah, I'd hate it, but I'm fine with that as long as there is at least one Healer that I don't hate.

I feel like this may be a case of you being relatively new here (not a dig, just an observation), but we've actually had a lot of these conversations here. My position has consistently been to change some of the Healers and make all four differentiated so that individual players can gravitate to the ones they like. If there's only one that I like, that's fine with me, as long as there's at least one that I like. I figure we need to leave one Healer alone (either SGE or WHM seem the best candidates) with their current DPS kits for the players that enjoy the way Healers are played now. People that like current healing would shift to those Jobs, and people that don't would have three other options to use instead.

I call this the "Four Healers"/"4 Healers" model, in contrast to many here who kind of want to make all the Healers more complex, but then we have the problem that they're mostly the same again, just more complex, which, as I say, just makes a different set of people mad.

I feel like AST needs more GCD damage buttons. People play AST because they like complexity, they play WHM because they don't. So giving WHM the more complex rotation and AST the less makes little sense to me. "But it has tons of button bloat", yeah, but it's a WHM clone, not the other way around. In a case of "We're both wearing the same outfit, ONE of us has to change", the clone/one that came after should be the one to change, imo. Not to mention it makes no sense for AST to be "the simple healer" since that would require gutting and simplifying its oGCD tools to be like WHM already is, at which point why do it instead of WHM? I've thought before AST would be a good candidate to remove the DoT and make it a 1-2-3 rotation Job. This way, it is just doing a 1-2-3 while weaving its various oGCDs between them. Since the 1-2-3 is a steady cadence that can be muscle-memoried, this should take little brainpower away from the oGCD game that AST plays.

WHM is the leading candidate for the Job I wouldn't touch. IF FOR SOME REASON we leave SGE alone instead and decide to change WHM (a bad idea since WHM is the introductory Healer, the baseline, and has long appealed to people that want a simple and straightforward kit), I'd probably make the changes minor. Aero 3 for AOE DoT which upgrades to Banish, Water at level 15 for an AOE Holy (that upgrades to Holy at 45). Some big ability they build up to where they case Flood, Quake, and Tornado (maybe something akin to PLD's Requiescat, perhaps retooling Presence of Mind into this, and that would be your "Swords Combo"), and make the Water/Holy have a use in single target. Maybe something like every Glare gives you a stacking buff "Increases the damage of the next Holy by 25%, stacks to 4", so every 4th Glare you'd want to weave in a Holy. Granted, for this we'd want to do the thing I said in another thread - make Holy work like Cure 3 where you can cast it on a target OR, if you're not targeting an enemy, it will use it on your location - but if we did that, it would make Water/Holy have a single target use, and give us the three CNJ core elements at all levels of gameplay; Stone, Aero, Water at low levels, Glare, Dia, Holy at higher levels, and adding Quake, Tornado, and Flood for the big hit burst combo at high levels. Also make Assize a GCD like Plegma that stacks to 2. Because...I dunno, why not?

.

Despite people insisting otherwise, I DO have a mind for adding damage abilities, I just don't like my Healers so heavily inclined to DPS rotations and want one of them - WHM, SGE, or SCH; I hate AST now and if it's the only one untouched, I'd just quit healing at that point and be pissed - left as it is now. If that's WHM or SGE, I don't mind either way.

[ty_taurus]

@ Renathras

I like to explore and brainstorm ideas to see what may work and what may not. I keep seeing players posting how they don't like the current healer play styles ... but then no other solution is suggested in an attempt to fix the problem. The devs do need a direction to determine what a best course of action could be ... otherwise ... why are they being expected to be mind readers ... In this case, we might have multiple answers to how we can refine the healers with more DPS buttons. As a result, we will have to go by if the devs can do it and if the majority of the players want it.

In the case for melee healers, I would have been thinking of brainstorming if 1 of the 2 melee DPS could be swapped for a range or spell DPS to make it work. Maybe in the current Savage meta, it is not designed like that. Since the melee damage dealers tend to unanimously bring higher personal damage for the current meta. If we do have the BLM buffed to be around SAM's level, could it be possible to have a shift in bringing a melee healer? I am thinking more into the future if such a thing could be possible then. Most times, I see the healer targeted mechs have 2 stacks and those tend to be brought into melee range on opposite sides.

For the DPS side of the argument, I have made those suggestions with the intent for healers doing those 4 man content they already overgear. In a Savage setting, I can see Energy Drain being used far less. Although the DPS players should be the main contributors, every little bit helps if it is possible for the healer to do so. This may be a section where we might have to agree to disagree. I am not against using a regen or damage reduction spell that consumes a lily of course. That still translates to more damage contribution from me using Glare / Holy GCDs and it also still translates to using the Afflatus Misery AoE spell eventually. Assuming we are talking about the 4 mans again.

In any case, I have been quite adaptable to several healing styles and I had been used to Blizzard re-inventing the wheel every expansion for WoW :P I tend to see a split in opinions if the players approve of that approach or not. Even if it looks like I am indifferent, I will still examine the spells to see if they make sense or not. In the case of Rescue discussed by Romah, that one is up in the air. But even if we were to add the AoE Rescue that a few want here, it doesn't sound like it would "rescue" the healer class for them if they still don't like the style ...

I make and remake healer theorycrafts all the time. I've shared a few, but it's just not something people really care to read about.