Healer Suggestions Megathread

[ty_taurus]

That is a horrible looking ramble, sorry I have worded this really badly, long story short, I think that adding a timing element to healers is probably fine as long as it's for the healing side of things, but adding one to the damage side means adding an incentive to say 'forget healing for a GCD I need to do the DOT timing thing' and potentially cause a wipe

That was a concern I had, but I wouldn't want to do Iron Jaws either, because all that does is replace your Eukrasian Dosis casts with Katarrh instead after your initial cast, and also since it's only 1 DoT, I feel like there's little reason to have a button to extend the duration when you can simply reapply the DoT. I suppose it makes things marginally easier since you can Katarrh at, say, 2 seconds remaining and just extend the duration to 17 seconds rather than being forced to wait for the DoT to fall off, but I also had a similar conversation with Ren a long time back about how reapplying DoTs to extend the duration to up to 60 seconds creates a really awkward environment where either the DoT snapshots during buff windows and you just constantly keep the buffed DoT going, or updating the duration resets the damage based on your current buffs (or lack there of).

Something much more simple that addresses any awkwardness with timing: Casting Eukrasian Dosis grants the secondary effect to Katarrh. Right now Katarrh has a flat barrier on your Kardion target, but we could also do something like what you're saying where the effect is somewhat connected to the DoT. Having the effect be based on the total potency of your DoT does give you a really strong Kardia heal on your target which can lead to potentially saving that Katarrh use, or it could be something that increases the less time there is remaining on your DoT. It's not removing the DoT altogether, but you still generally want to try and use it at the end of the DoTs duration. It could be more smooth as well, like the effect is at its strongest when there are 5 seconds remaining or less, rather than getting stronger for each second, that way it's more smooth while still having a timing aspect. For example, the barrier potency is 100 from 15-11 seconds, 170 from 10-6 seconds, or 250 from 5-0 seconds, or something.

EDIT: In regards to the "long story short, I think that adding a timing element to healers is probably fine as long as it's for the healing side of things, but adding one to the damage side means adding an incentive to say 'forget healing for a GCD I need to do the DOT timing thing' and potentially cause a wipe"

I largely agree with that, but I do think it's okay to have 1 healer that does have offensive timing aspects designed for players that want that challenge, and it has the potential to work out better with Sage because your attacks are also providing healing. You could even set up Eukrasian Polydipsia right before so that the Kardion barrier you apply becomes party-wide.

[ty_taurus]

Any general thoughts on the concept of Soma as an ability on Sage?

[Shurrikhan]

<Soma>

Feels like it'd be kinda OP even if it gave no HP back from the remaining barrier and had no additional effects.

It's a whopping 50% added eHP (greater than Shake it Off, Dark Missionary/Heart of Light, and Temperance combined against magic damage), so long as you have time to top people's regular HP back off before the incoming damage.

...I'd almost rather see it temporarily reduce the allies maximum HP, or just to cause half their maximum HP to be manipulable as if it were a barrier, assuming SGE could do something with barriers.
This just seems both overpowered and yet... very plain?

[ty_taurus]

Feels like it'd be kinda OP even if it gave no HP back from the remaining barrier and had no additional effects.

It's a whopping 50% added eHP (greater than Shake it Off, Dark Missionary/Heart of Light, and Temperance combined against magic damage), so long as you have time to top people's regular HP back off before the incoming damage.

My thought process was tools like Shake it Off are on top of your total HP, whereas you need to heal up in order to gain value from Soma.

It can also be extended to 180 seconds and/or reducing the free Diagnosis/Prognosis casts to 1 from 2.

[Shurrikhan]

whereas you need to heal up in order to gain value from Soma.

Right, but that's... a GCD each of AoE healing from your healers, if that. For... 50% added eHP. At least ReciAdloPloyment is a bit more finnicky... and still not as powerful as this would be even without any of the extra bonuses.

Again, this design just seems very... basic/plain/dull(?) to me, so my $0.02 would be that if you're going to do some sort of barrier conversion, make it real conversion (not just a "then top them off rq" as the "cost" for the strongest AoE defensive in the game by far) and make it synergetic with new ways of leveraging things unique to barriers.

[TheDustyOne]

I'm experimenting with the idea I have for Sage where Addersting is a typical 0-100 gauge built up by DPSing, but it acts as both your damage gauge and healing gauge. Here's a very basic moveset to get the idea across:

Dosis III
Spell - 1.5s Cast Time
300 potency damage + 5 Addersting

Phlegma
Spell - 0s Cast Time - 40s Recast - 2 Charges
500 potency AoE damage + 30 Addersting

Generisis Spendikon
Spell - 0s Cast Time - 30 Addersting
450 potency damage + some MP regen

Pneuma
Spell - 1.5s Cast Time - 30 Addersting - 1300 MP
450 potency damage + 500 potency AoE heal

Kardima
Spell - 1.5s Cast Time - 30 Addersting - 1000 MP
450 potency + 800 potency Kardion heal

I'm open to suggestions for this, but in general I like the idea of Sage focusing more on the damage-to-heal spells and I want spells like Pneuma to be a much bigger part of the kit. The gauge can hold 3.33 healing spells and takes roughly 20s of Dosis spam to gain enough Addersting for a single use.

I'd definitely have a more interesting damage kit than this. This is just to get the damage-to-heal idea across

Names not final. You shall be missed, Generisis Spendikon

[ty_taurus]

I'm experimenting with the idea I have for Sage where Addersting is a typical 0-100 gauge built up by DPSing, but it acts as both your damage gauge and healing gauge. Here's a very basic moveset to get the idea across:

Dosis III
Spell - 1.5s Cast Time
300 potency damage + 5 Addersting

Phlegma
Spell - 0s Cast Time - 40s Recast - 2 Charges
500 potency AoE damage + 30 Addersting

Generisis Spendikon
Spell - 0s Cast Time - 30 Addersting
450 potency damage + some MP regen

Pneuma
Spell - 1.5s Cast Time - 30 Addersting - 1300 MP
450 potency damage + 500 potency AoE heal

Kardima
Spell - 1.5s Cast Time - 30 Addersting - 1000 MP
450 potency + 800 potency Kardion heal

I'm open to suggestions for this, but in general I like the idea of Sage focusing more on the damage-to-heal spells and I want spells like Pneuma to be a much bigger part of the kit. The gauge can hold 3.33 healing spells and takes roughly 20s of Dosis spam to gain enough Addersting for a single use.

I'd definitely have a more interesting damage kit than this. This is just to get the damage-to-heal idea across

Names not final. You shall be missed, Generisis Spendikon

The concept of making choices with Addersting that involve healing/support is similar to what I did as well, though this is just single-target vs AoE options at the cost of more MP. While there are minor differences, mine's effectively the same just with aoe healing vs aoe mitigation. I think there's more interesting things both concepts can do other than just healing or just damage reduction, but for now it's a solid start given the changes needed to shift Sage's design from where it is now to either of those angles.

The thing that I'm not a huge fan of is having Addersting generated strictly from attacking. I think the current formula of having it generated from breaking GCD barriers fails in a lot of ways because the spammability of those barriers means the resource can never be worthwhile to generate, but I think it's something that should be connected to Addersgall in some fashion, or some other restrictive resource for barrier application.

[ForsakenRoe]

Any general thoughts on the concept of Soma as an ability on Sage?

It'd need a 5min CD to be 'balanced' in it's current state, 50% shield on the party, even with the caveat of 'you need to heal half their hp back' is an insane level of power. Remember you had Holos at 600p/2min still too, so you'd just use this and Holos together to counteract it's 'downside'. Or pretty much any WHM/AST stuff, like a Star or a Rapture. In fact, with the numbers the way they are, you'd be able to take pretty much any raidwide, week 1, with just Soma+the healing to get people back to 100% real-HP. No other mitigation would be required, allowing you to move it all to other things. Even Crit-Adlo-Deploy is like, 25% of a HP bar and that takes a lot more setup

It's a cool idea (converting part of your HP to shields temporarily), thematically it'd be like 'you have been prescribed a dose of painkillers', but maybe knock it down to like, 15% or 20%

I'm experimenting with the idea I have for Sage where Addersting is a typical 0-100 gauge built up by DPSing,

Yeh Addersting as it stands is pretty flat, converting it to a 0-100 gauge makes it sound more bland on paper but it offers more granularity in how it can be spent (rather than 'this costs one of your three', you can have eg 25, 50, 30, 43 whatever costs). I went for the same thought, 0-100 gauge, generated by damage (terms and conditions apply)

but it acts as both your damage gauge and healing gauge.

This part... I would disagree with somewhat. Part of what I do actually like about SGE is not having the intrusive thoughts demon on my shoulder telling me 'you are an idiot for using that Soil, that could have been another 100p energy drain!', so attaching damage and healing to the same gauge is not a great idea imo. However, attaching damage AND healing to the gauge, ie, Pneuma style damage neutral skills, would be interesting. You'd have to keep them damage neutral I think, else people would dump them in raidbuffs instead of using them for actual healing (or try to), which isn't great

And I love Generisis Spendikon too

edit:

The thing that I'm not a huge fan of is having Addersting generated strictly from attacking. I think the current formula of having it generated from breaking GCD barriers fails in a lot of ways because the spammability of those barriers means the resource can never be worthwhile to generate, but I think it's something that should be connected to Addersgall in some fashion, or some other restrictive resource for barrier application.

I think having both is probably fine, ie you generate 20 from a Prognosis-on-self/Diagnosis shield breaking, and it helps to offset the damage you lost to the GCD. If you have these spenders at 450p for 30 gauge, you can infer that the shield break would be 300p worth of gauge. Maybe the loss of 30p, for the gain of 'the shield' is not good as it's almost free safetyshielding, so you can tune it to give 15, or 10 gauge whatever to balance it

[ty_taurus]

It's a cool idea (converting part of your HP to shields temporarily), thematically it'd be like 'you have been prescribed a dose of painkillers', but maybe knock it down to like, 15% or 20%

What I might change it to is the conversation about staggering damage taken. Something like "Applies Soma to self and nearby party members. Soma effect: The next instant of magic damage taken will be staggered across the next 9 seconds." Essentially breaking up the damage into three 3rds taken as a heavy DoT instead of a singular hit." It's something I think you and Dusty talked about earlier? I might be misremembering who. But it's actually something I've mocked up in past theorycrafts since HW/SB, though in a slightly different form. Lemme see if I can find any of those ancient ideas.

This part... I would disagree with somewhat. Part of what I do actually like about SGE is not having the intrusive thoughts demon on my shoulder telling me 'you are an idiot for using that Soil, that could have been another 100p energy drain!', so attaching damage and healing to the same gauge is not a great idea imo. However, attaching damage AND healing to the gauge, ie, Pneuma style damage neutral skills, would be interesting. You'd have to keep them damage neutral I think, else people would dump them in raidbuffs instead of using them for actual healing (or try to), which isn't great

Something I think you can get away with in regards to damage and healing sharing a resource is if there is some sort of cooldown associated with the damage aspect. Like, while I don't think it's necessary by any means, I think you could have Afflatus Purgation as a lily-spender on WHM if it has something like a 60, 90, or 120 second cooldown.

[TheDustyOne]

This part... I would disagree with somewhat. Part of what I do actually like about SGE is not having the intrusive thoughts demon on my shoulder telling me 'you are an idiot for using that Soil, that could have been another 100p energy drain!', so attaching damage and healing to the same gauge is not a great idea imo. However, attaching damage AND healing to the gauge, ie, Pneuma style damage neutral skills, would be interesting. You'd have to keep them damage neutral I think, else people would dump them in raidbuffs instead of using them for actual healing (or try to), which isn't great

Definitely sticking with damage neutral spells, 30 Addersting (or whatever value I end up using) would always equal 450 potency of damage regardless of the spell. The only real cost of using Pneuma or whatever other abilities would be either a cooldown or MP.

There is the possibility of having 1 damage cooldown attached similar to what I had for Assault Tactics in my Scholar, but it'd need to be a decently long cooldown to not interfere too much, and ideally I'd want it to be more interesting than use-on-cooldown. I'm fine with only having the one spender ability that restores MP.

Another option I'm thinking of is to have Addersting abilities apply the different Kardia effects, which can be extended with the previously mentioned Pankardia. Kardima (name not final) already has the big heal on Kardion, and I'd have that extended via Pankardia (probably at lower potency). Apart from shields, mit, regen, heal boosts, etc., I'm not sure what other effects to include. I do want to avoid damage buffs at the very least.

The only real downside is having to potentially dump Addersting in raidbuffs, although my solution to that would be a separate burst mechanic on a cooldown. At most I'd have it so only 1 or maybe 2 Addersting abilities would be used optimally under raidbuffs. The only real thing anyone should have to worry about for Addersting is making sure not to overcap and to leave plenty for healing when it's needed.