Healer Suggestions Megathread

[ForsakenRoe]

though encounter design would probably need to step up a bit wrt damage to not make playing them in the moment feel like pointless button pressing if you're not playing with someone that's constantly stepping in bad.

That's a thought actually, if you have card effects that are 'pure utility' ie only damage reduction on Bole, it could end up that playing them during downtime is preferable to actually making use of their effect in combat where the boss is attacking. Conversely, you'd hold onto a Balance or Arrow to deal damage even through downtime because blowing it when the boss is not targetable becomes a dps loss of sorts. It's not the exact reason I was thinking 'tie thematic damage-dealing methods to the unique effects to make the utility more desireable' but it's another thing on the list I guess

[Post]

I like a lot of what I've seen, particularly the Divination promoting use of non-damaging cards. I don't really agree that cards should all have some component of damage baked in, and even though it's harder to make utility cards always feel like you'll get a good use out of them in a fight, that variety is interesting. I think as long as the cards do things that AST can't do on its own and other jobs mostly can't do, they'll feel fun and unique. Maybe Spire and Ewer could be Thrill of Battle + Mantra type effect and an MP bar version of it respectively or something. Arrow could last longer. Expedience was nerfed because it was party wide and could be applied relatively thoughtlessly whenever a fight dictated; Arrow won't have quite the same luxury given its randomness and ~30-60 sec window; the single target nature of it already making it challenging to use on the right player for the average AST.

I don't see why Celestial Opposition can't just exist as is and have the same effect as your Temporal Fortuna and Tragedia rolled into one. It's even already a 60 second cooldown. Take or leave its current HoT effect; if it compiles your regens then it works as an on-demand heal anyways, and Assize is already an ability that you can't always use optimally for healing and damage simultaneously so there's precedent. Benefit of this is it's already pretty complex to keep track of everything and this is just fewer buttons that do similar things to think about, especially when Tragedia would be pretty rigid with when you're supposed to use it. Rigidity in damage cooldowns is something that I think should be avoided for healers where possible; AST has enough of this in its kit with cards already. Unless you wanted to do something like, Fortuna extends all buffs (and debuffs) while Tragedia shortens all buffs and debuffs.

Likewise, in the current state of AST, Lightspeed has been turned into a button you use during dps weave crunch time, but that was not its original use. It was meant as a movement tool and an answer to the expansion that saw Asylum, Assize and Indomitability introduced while AST dropped with 0 oGCD aoe healing. I'm saying the extra charge to Lightspeed would help move it back to that freedom, obviously, but really I don't think it would be overpowered at all to just let each charge last the 15 seconds as they currently do, so players can choose to use it for movement and not simply 'to weave oGCDs" which, in my mind and experience, is the most mundane reason for a skill to exist. Even with no card drawing there's still going to be a ton of Doublecast weaving with this imagining. Like, I get why you made Macrocosmos into an ability given that it can't perfectly replicate a Fall Malefic or Comet cast, but as a spell currently it's actually kind of a blessing cuz of all the damn weaving AST has to do. Granting Lightspeed more freedom would help it fit as an ability, taking up another doublecast, essential dignity or what-have-you cast.

[Katish]

Giving healers a theme but making those themes feel different: if a whm stops their 1,2,3 to cast a heal (only affected by heal skills with cast times) it upsets the combo, it plays into their risqué gameplay without making it too hard on the individual. You can also have one of their combo hits inflict damage to the whm to have synergy with liturgy of the bell and in fact you can work most of their heals to require a balance act of high heal high risk (which reflects black mage gameplay but in a different way.) Add a burst phase that adds more damaging skills, with optional heal skills with increased potency.

Sage can be non-interruptable 1,2,3 as it seems they play to be the more safer healer. They can also add mitigation that reflect some damage. Allow them to have some burst phase that adds more optional mitigation skills and damaging skills with increased potency.

Asts combo can be worked from malefic into draw into another spell, their cards being prock based at a chance so it's not always 100% whether it'll happen. So their 1-2-3 is not absolute.
You can give them a skill that guarantees it more though (maybe a reworked astrodyne idk). You can also return spread to them but make it work similar to scholars tactic deployment where it spreads the cards effect on the party. I would advocate return of ast cards effects but it would bare nothing so maybe just one additional effect so it's not just damage, maybe direct hit? Vision for ast: buff machine

Scholar would be given a new debuff, with deployment tactics or some new skill now also selectable on an enemy with debuffs (chain stratagem, biolysis, some new debuff) to spread said debuffs to nearby enemies guess you could also have it reset debuffs already on the target used to syngergize sch with the party in boss instances. To reflect that of astro, their 1-2-3 would require them to use energy drain as their 2 skill, it would combo into a new spell. So they would not always have their combo ready similar to Ast because it would require them to aetherflow. Vision for sch: debuff machine

[TheDustyOne]

if a whm stops their 1,2,3 to cast a heal (only affected by heal skills with cast times) it upsets the combo...

This sounds like a recipe for disaster. Only WHM has a huge focus on GCD healing, so having them be the one that breaks a combo is only going to aggravate and cause problems for what's supposed to be the beginner healer. If anything SGE should be the one to drop a combo (if it was to have one) because it's much more oGCD focused compared to WHM.

As an aside, it's better to just not have 1-2-3 combos on healers. Not only are they designed more like casters (of which only RDM has a combo, and only for the weaponskills, SMN has a 1-2 under Ifrit, but it's also only 1 button), but 1-2-3 itself isn't all that more interesting compared to 1-1-1. Combos on melee jobs usually unlock other parts of the kit or build up to something not 1-2-3, or multiple combos so it isn't just 1-2-3, it's also 1-2-4, 1-5, 1-4-5, depending on the job. If we're gonna give healers multiple attacks, it's better to give them buffs or dots to maintain, cooldowns to watch, gauges to fill and spend, stacks to build, procs to watch out for, etc. without having to go through combos.

[Katish]

This sounds like a recipe for disaster. Only WHM has a huge focus on GCD healing, so having them be the one that breaks a combo is only going to aggravate and cause problems for what's supposed to be the beginner healer. If anything SGE should be the one to drop a combo (if it was to have one) because it's much more oGCD focused compared to WHM.

As an aside, it's better to just not have 1-2-3 combos on healers. Not only are they designed more like casters (of which only RDM has a combo, and only for the weaponskills, SMN has a 1-2 under Ifrit, but it's also only 1 button), but 1-2-3 itself isn't all that more interesting compared to 1-1-1. Combos on melee jobs usually unlock other parts of the kit or build up to something not 1-2-3, or multiple combos so it isn't just 1-2-3, it's also 1-2-4, 1-5, 1-4-5, depending on the job. If we're gonna give healers multiple attacks, it's better to give them buffs or dots to maintain, cooldowns to watch, gauges to fill and spend, stacks to build, procs to watch out for, etc. without having to go through combos.

I didn't say all gcd healing just healing that requires casting as whm should be focusing on usage of lilies anyhow. The only time it would break your combo is if you mistimed your buttons and have to hardcast a heal or something goes absolutely wrong and you to bring back the party (which in that case you should not be worrying about dps anyhow). I would also advocate for whm to be top potential self dps due to not bringing much mitigation. As for dps buttons, healers should reflect dps and tanks, in dps button pressing some healers should be simpler and others more complex. Like, how we have the mirroring of gnb vs say warrior, one has more going.

And dots don't make a class more interesting if the dots are 30s long you use it and forget it. This worked when cast time was longer but all it would do now is just a 30 second filler.

And you ignored that ast and sch 1-2-3 isn't pure 1-2-3. Where AST is your prock and sch is your debuff class.

What makes a class unique and imho fun is if their skills synergize and how they syngergize. A 1-2-3 is basic only if you make it a 1-2-3 with nothing else but when you add something conditional to that 1-2-3 that differs between classes you start heading into differentiating even if they potentially all have a 1-2-3.

[TheDustyOne]

I didn't say all gcd healing just healing that requires casting as whm should be focusing on usage of lilies anyhow. The only time it would break your combo is if you mistimed your healing or something goes absolutely wrong. I would also advocate for whm to be top potential self dps. Also this is looking to the future expansions where those said dps would have more damaging buttons so I don't see the issue.

Ah, I must've missed the cast time comment, sorry about that. That said, I do think I'd rather swap the two around for SGE and WHM dropping combos regardless. WHM is very much seen as the beginners healer, so having it be too risky in play might cause people to drop off relatively early, especially since it emphasizes GCD heals as a whole more than the other healers. SGE on the other hand only has 3 GCD heals (5 with Eukrasia) and a heck of a lot more oGCD heals that it wants to use first, so having to use a GCD heal is already seen as a last resort there.

My comments on combos as a whole is moreso just that casters don't really do combos, so while AST and SCH are certainly different, it's still just a linear path that doesn't do much. Those branching paths on the melees tend to unlock other parts of the kit, like a buff, a resource, a DoT, etc. And since we don't want to have like 10+ different attacks that amount to like 3 mechanics on a healer who already has to share those hotbar spots with a bunch of heals, it's better to just have 3-5 buttons that do the same thing as those combos. So long as those 3-5 buttons are engaging enough, combos shouldn't be needed.

What makes a class unique and imho fun is if their skills synergize and how they syngergize. A 1-2-3 is basic only if you make it a 1-2-3 with nothing else but when you add something conditional to that 1-2-3 that differs between classes you start heading into differentiating even if they potentially all have a 1-2-3.

Agreed, I'm just saying that you don't need a 1-2-3 combo to do that, especially since all it really does is eat hotbar space. Let's take a generic gauge for example, you gain 25 gauge at the end of the chain and 50 gauge is needed to spend it on an attack. You could replace that with the filler spam generating 10 gauge and have it spendable at 60. You now only need 2 buttons instead of 4. Likewise with procs, the 3rd attack combo might have a 50% chance to proc a 4th 'finisher' attack, you can still have that with a filler having a 20% or so proc. 2 buttons instead of 4. This is arguably more important for healers compared to tanks since we have to share healing GCDs on the hotbar, whereas tanks have the real estate for GCD combos.

[Shurrikhan]

I'm just saying that you don't need a 1-2-3 combo to do that, especially since all it really does is eat hotbar space.

This. 1-2-3 combos if each given their own key are just an exercise in unnecessary and unproductive bloat, especially if made non-interruptible.

There's nothing they provide --save for further, likewise unnecessary penalties for packet loss / latency-- that can't be provided without that additional button cost.

[lulunami]

Healing spells do not necessarily have to interrupt combo damage spells. They can treat GCD healing spells like ranged attacks for tanks now. Throwing Shield Lob on tanks does not interrupt melee combos anymore.


Also, you can always treat combo spells like proc spells on Black Mage, Red Mage, and Summoner. Firestarter, Thundercloud, Dual-cast, Ruin IV, etc.

[Katish]

Agreed, I'm just saying that you don't need a 1-2-3 combo to do that, especially since all it really does is eat hotbar space.

If space is the issue we could have preexisting healing skills evolve into new skills via traits as skills exist that have already done that, and it follows suit that at a high enough level you know how your role works and can heal on your balancing act skills alone (oGcd or Gcd that feeds into damage eventually). Or just remove button bloat altogether by removing redundant healing skills(but this would require a whole change on what is learned when). The first suggestion being easier to do and not damaging to newer healers.. Although I do agree that gauge incorporation could help differentiate the healers maybe sage should be able to do this(?) Unsure.

[TheDustyOne]

If space is the issue we could have preexisting healing skills evolve into new skills via traits as skills exist that have already done that, and it follow suit that at a high enough level you know how your role works. Or just remove button bloat altogether by removing redundant healing skills(but this would require a whole change on what is learned when). Although I do agree that gauge incorporation could help differentiate the healers maybe sage should be able to do this(?) Unsure.

I had that idea for Sage myself a few pages back if you're interested in how I went about my proposed healer changes. The big thing I wanted was to also have the healing spells synergize with the damage spells so that it was safer to cut out a lot of the oGCD heals by having the GCD heals be mostly damage neutral similar to WHM currently, but having them all do it just a little differently and complementary to their damage kits.