Healer Suggestions Megathread

[Aravell]

Tl;dr:

Rather than seemingly to arbitrarily punish the use of filler attacks and requiring the occasional extra pause of .5s after an instant-cast as to qualify for having "not casted" for 3s, etc., I'd pick either

1. a system by which the cost of abilities are essentially their net cost or their excess over the minimum cost per GCD (if you spend 200 MP per average GCD but regenerate 250 MP per average GCD, you're still net positive) and you needn't mess with the base cost per GCD or
2. a system by which they're the only cost.

The idea I had is 3 seconds straight of no casting before MP is restored, this prevents people from bottoming out for extended periods of time, GCD healing being free also means that they're not prevented from performing their role responsibilities while running on nothing. If it seems a bit extreme, that's what I was going for, bottoming out on MP is meant to be the critical fail state where you actually can't do anything but GCD heal. I want it to be punishing so you absolutely want to avoid it happening.

I personally see this as negative reinforcement. John Medica can still get by with completely free GCD healing while everyone else has to balance resources to avoid hitting critical failure and having to idle to get MP back. I think it would improve engagement quite a bit since you have to actually manage your resources. Proper play could also be slightly MP-negative to encourage usage of GCD heals to avoid excessive MP burn. Optimal play would require both healers working in tandem. Also, a healer bottoming out on MP will have enough healing output to get by, but not soloheal, this would solve the problem of 2 healers being unnecessary most of the time.

[TheDustyOne]

Hmmm... Remove Lucid, and instead have MP management cut into our healing resources in some way so as to make 100% GCD uptime something to actually manage.

Afflatus Vigorum: 1 lily
Restores 800 MP and charges the blood lily.

Not gonna lie, I kinda dig it, would still need a lot more tweaks, and I can bet a lot of others would hate it, but I like that kind of decision between using a resource for a free heal, or risking that resource to keep my MP up. Gives me flashbacks of old SCH.

[ForsakenRoe]

Hmmm... Remove Lucid, and instead have MP management cut into our healing resources in some way so as to make 100% GCD uptime something to actually manage.

Yeh ideally I'd prefer to have MP management be a more 'active' thing than the hands-off Lucid we have now, I just threw 'natural ticks' in as an additional source to utilize. If we take the 3850 per min (or 192 per 3s) of Lucid, we could solve it by just doubling the base MP regen from 200 per tick to 400. Boring but functional. But, we could also do it by increasing the MP regained via the gameplay of the class in various ways. That on it's own would be potentially difficult to cover the full 3850 though (given that Assize restores 500mp per 40s, we'd have to increase it to like 3500, for example). So instead, 'both' were given as examples, because we could use 'both' in some way. For example, if we increase base regen from 200 to 300, that covers 2000 of the 3850, meaning that only 1850 (or more) needs to come from the gameplay/the job kit. Any 'zero MP cost' GCD also can be considered as 'grants 400mp', due to it taking the place of a 400mp cost Glare or Dia, so your example of 800mp is technically 1200mp given that it removes the 'spend MP on a Glare', idk if you intend that or not

And that move would be nice not just cos 'MP management is a thing again', but because it would give us a non-overheal way to spend a Lily to prep Misery, while also giving us a good upside (more MP economy)

[TheDustyOne]

Now that I think about it, I think I did this with my SGE rework a few months back, where you could spend the gauge on either an attack that would heal (with added MP cost) or on an attack with MP restoration. Maybe I should've removed Lucid back when I was doing those theorycrafts.

[Post]

I've always hated Lucid Dreaming because it homogenized healer (and caster) MP management, and it did so in the most boring way by copying WHM's boring Shroud of Saints.

I dunno that there was anyone who asked for that going from HW to StB, but maybe they were just trying to give healer the suddenly ubiquitous aggro management role action (it also cut Enmity in half back then).

That and getting rid of the little unique flavor animations and names for Esuna. Like, was that really that important to do? Were there people confused by being asked to Dispel and not knowing what action that meant, maybe? I swear most players don't even call it Esuna anyways. And, the battles themselves hardly ever call for dispels anyways.

If they can't even fight the easy battles of homogenisation, I don't know how I can trust them to fight the harder ones.

[Renathras]

That and getting rid of the little unique flavor animations and names for Esuna. Like, was that really that important to do? Were there people confused by being asked to Dispel and not knowing what action that meant, maybe? I swear most players don't even call it Esuna anyways. And, the battles themselves hardly ever call for dispels anyways.

If they can't even fight the easy battles of homogenisation, I don't know how I can trust them to fight the harder ones.

The worst part is, BRD/MCH/DNC all have an identical button (Trubadour/Tactician/Shield Samba?), that do the exact same thing, yet have different names. Despite it making more sense for THAT to be a role action than something like "head graze" which implies shooting (something DNC doesn't exactly do), or Tank Stances each getting a different name and icon despite being identical.

[Aravell]

I dunno that there was anyone who asked for that going from HW to StB, but maybe they were just trying to give healer the suddenly ubiquitous aggro management role action (it also cut Enmity in half back then).

I highly doubt this was the case, only WHM had enmity-related issues at all back then, so the reduction of enmity would only be beneficial to WHM. AST's stances halved the enmity generated by their actions and I believe their version of Lucid Dreaming (Luminiferous Aether) also halved enmity, so AST was never in any danger of pulling off the tank at any point. SCH had enmity shared between the player and the fairy, which means they would never pull off the tank unless they did something stupid like pre-pull Rouse-buffed Whispering Dawn, which would mean Eos was tanking now.

[Sebazy]

I'd guess it was more of a design streamlining choice rather than a balance or feedback response.

AST did originally have wild enmity generation at it's release but that was largely not an issue by 3.2 as you say.

On the flip side, 4.0 gave us Neo Exdeath with a big gimmick that basically revolved around Shroud timing to deal with enmity resets. Given how conveniently it all lined up, I'd confidently wager that either this was the reason all 3 healers got the same shroud clone button or it that this decision had already been taken and set in stone by the time Neo Exdeath was getting developed.

There is always the odd potential that 4.0's core system changes and direction were being locked in much earlier in HW's life cycle, potentially explaining some of the decisions that would seem strange later on.

[ForsakenRoe]

I highly doubt this was the case, only WHM had enmity-related issues at all back then, so the reduction of enmity would only be beneficial to WHM. AST's stances halved the enmity generated by their actions and I believe their version of Lucid Dreaming (Luminiferous Aether) also halved enmity, so AST was never in any danger of pulling off the tank at any point. SCH had enmity shared between the player and the fairy, which means they would never pull off the tank unless they did something stupid like pre-pull Rouse-buffed Whispering Dawn, which would mean Eos was tanking now.

AST was probably a case of 'well sod it, WHM already had it, AST has a version of it, let's just remove AST's unique animation and give them all the same shared one, that way SCH has it too'. Remember though, they removed ED at the start of SB (and hastily gave it back). Them moving Shroud off of WHM and into the communal action pool likely got them thinking 'okay now SCH has Aetherflow, ED AND Lucid as MP sources, it's got ridiculous amounts of MP. Aetherflow is a guaranteed injection once a minute, though, and ED requires the SCH to burn resources that would otherwise be spent on healing. Let's remove ED, and just have Aetherflow/Lucid as the sources of MP for SCH, its nice and simple for newer players'. Then they had to readd ED because people complained a lot, and then also reduced the MP cost on some GCDs just to make sure. I don't think the Emnity had much of anything to do with it either.

On the flip side, 4.0 gave us Neo Exdeath with a big gimmick that basically revolved around Shroud timing to deal with enmity resets.

Ah yes, the fight where you could purposely let the WHM get marked for a TB and Cover them because back then Cover was actually a cool and versatile ability (with a bonus 20% mit trait on top). I miss the creativity old Cover allowed for, I understand why they had to remove the 20% but did they really need to give it a gauge cost?

[Aravell]

On the flip side, 4.0 gave us Neo Exdeath with a big gimmick that basically revolved around Shroud timing to deal with enmity resets. Given how conveniently it all lined up, I'd confidently wager that either this was the reason all 3 healers got the same shroud clone button or it that this decision had already been taken and set in stone by the time Neo Exdeath was getting developed.

There is always the odd potential that 4.0's core system changes and direction were being locked in much earlier in HW's life cycle, potentially explaining some of the decisions that would seem strange later on.

I'm not so certain that Neo Exdeath is the reason that every healer got an enmity dump, I farmed that fight a ton and the only times I've been flattened by an Earthshaker or Aero III is when I was on WHM. I'm pretty sure AST still had the halved enmity generation on their stances in SB and Eos was still a separate entity back then that had her own enmity table.

I think the second case is far more likely, changes already made and direction already picked. The Neo Exdeath situation was likely nothing more than a coincidence.

(Also, I believe WHM was MP-negative back in 4.0, so they'd never actually hold Lucid to halve enmity where it mattered and just get rolled by the Earthshaker anyway.)