G-give it Back T---T; !! (Scholar Edition)

[Aravell]

And I've answered this question before. You'll have to point me to that exact thread, but someone (I thought it was you) accused me of not answering before and I directly answered (I already had, but I made it far more explicit and direct), and it was just ignored.

You can't ignore when someone answers something or has answered it over and over again and accuse them of refusing to do so when they literally have.

No, you actually did not answer me, I checked the thread for days after I asked the question, it just devolved into an argument about whether or not SGE is "damage-focused". It was in the "healers want complex dps" thread. But at least you answered Roe, so that's good enough.

And which of those is someone who likes healers right now going to like?

Because I find none of them likeable.

SGE would. I only mentioned increasing healing complexity, which you expressed you'd be ok with, I didn't say a thing about changing the dps portion, so you'd still be spamming Dosis like now.

[Renathras]

No, you actually did not answer me, I checked the thread for days after I asked the question, it just devolved into an argument about whether or not SGE is "damage-focused". It was in the "healers want complex dps" thread. But at least you answered Roe, so that's good enough.
...
SGE would. I only mentioned increasing healing complexity, which you expressed you'd be ok with, I didn't say a thing about changing the dps portion, so you'd still be spamming Dosis like now.

Searching through that entire thread, haven't found it.

I DID find where I kinda stuck up for you. You didn't even acknowledge that, though. You instead kind of justified other people accusing me OF it and then didn't acknowledge my stepping in to your defense. But whatever.

We also got into a conversation where you were saying that no one thinks of people that liked pre-5.0 healers, and I pointed out that I do and consistantly advocate for them (the entire reason I suggest returning SCH and AST both to their SB kits), and you eventually seem to have grudgingly acknowledged I wasn't doing that but still felt it was a solid defense against me...not...doing that. For reasons. Though you did say after that that you weren't opposing my position outright and thought leaving SGE alone would be fine but that you thought people wouldn't agree with it since it was "because it's what SE calls the dps healer", which, of course, everyone else in the thread took me replying to you using the phrase "more damaged focus" as license to dogpile on me (funny how little it takes for people to decide to dogpile on me and derail threads, almost like they're looking for any excuse they can get...) and the thread went sideways.

I can't find, though, anywhere you asked me about the optional complexity of SGE going up. Was this the post you were referring to?

Maybe you skipped over when I said it, but I said I'm amiable to your solution if SGE is left as is, because SGE was designed in EW, it has never known any past iteration that people fell in love with, so no one is actually losing out on anything. So I never actually opposed your solution, I'm not someone you have to convince. If we can't have a skill ceiling on every healer, I can settle with keeping SGE as it is, I'm not ok with throwing WHM under the bus once again given their history of being bad.

You'll have massive trouble convincing everyone else to leave SGE as is though, because it's what SE calls the dps healer, also the lore behind it is that it's very complex. Not that SE cares about the lore anymore, given that the lv30 AST quest still says The Bole has a protective effect.

If so, I replied to it, rather quickly:

It is a conundrum. I think the disagreement there stems from SGE being more damage focused (as you point out) and about WHM being thrown under the bus. Far as I'm concerned, WHM post-6.1 is honestly the best it's ever been. ARR would be but for Cleric Stance being such a disaster, but it's runner up due to the fact it wasn't a big deal at the time anyway. It would be weird for the "dps focused" healer Job to be the least DPS rotation of them, but it would still be a passable solution.

Of course, the problem still remains that if people won't allow for that, then WHM would be the other logical choice.

So where did you ask me Roe's question and I not answer?

.

Now, if you hold the position you did IN THAT THREAD (not here) that SGE remains AS IT IS TODAY: Then yes, that would satisfy the 4 Healers Model. And I even said so right there in that quote:

It would be weird for the "dps focused" healer Job to be the least DPS rotation of them, but it would still be a passable solution.

"passable solution" here meaning "Yes, that would work".

.

For the record:

I like all the healers right now EXCEPT for AST, since I don't like it's APM insanity and hyperweaving, especially since I prefer more hard GCD focus, which is why I like WHM that is its opposite. I don't care much for SCH's Energy Drain using AF and a bit heavy on the button bloat, but I like the Job in a more general sense for the most part. I like WHM as it is now a lot, and like SGE mostly as it is now as probably my second favorite. I'd like it if it was a bit different in a few ways, but it's close enough for me to like it. (I REALLY wish Toxicon was damage neutral, though. That and Plegma being near melee range really bug me for some reason...)

Personally, I suspect SE, if they did any major changes at all, probably WOULD leave WHM and SGE both as they are now ("why mess with a good thing"; WHM is generally well liked right now and WHM and SGE are generally speaking the most played healer Jobs) while changing SCH and AST. We're likely to see what direction they plan to go with healers with the AST rework, so really there's little point discussing things until we see the preview of what that looks like, probably in the third Fanfest/Media Tour or thereabouts, as that's when we saw new SMN back before EW.

From there, we'll have a better idea of what they seem to want healers to become (if SGE somehow didn't tell us that already) and how extensive they're willing to make changes and what direction they're willing to make changes towards/into.

[ForsakenRoe]

So, one healer has to have it's complexity completely untouched, both on the damage and healing side of things, and if that is the case, then the other three can be turned into what you would probably describe as 'unrecognizeable messes of overly convoluted rubbish' or something similar. As long as one remains untouched. Have I got that right?

I REALLY wish Toxicon was damage neutral, though.

Remove the 'gain an Addersting when shield breaks' and replace with 'gain {buff name} when shield breaks, allowing the use of Phlegma without incurring it's cost or cooldown'. Not damage neutral, but it's 600 vs 660 and it allows the player to make interesting decisions re: using it for movement vs using it for raidbuffs to get extra damage from it

WHM Lilies in SHB used to have this aspect of gameplay, of 'optimization' before they made them 100% damage neutral (and therefore damage positive when 'played properly'), now it's an expectation of the player that they'll overheal on purpose, to make use of the bonus damage potential from raidbuff-Misery. At least give us a shield Lily spender so we don't have to be completely wasteful with the Lily healing. The solution should have been 'shrink the loss', but instead we got 'remove the loss entirely, and any complexity that arose from it gets removed as collateral'. You can see it with the WAR gapcloser too. FC at the time was 590p for 50 gauge iirc, and the gapcloser was 100p for 20 gauge. So, with FC being 114 potency per 10 gauge, making the gapcloser 100p for 10 gauge instead of 20 would have reduced the potency loss from 128 per use, to a measly 14p. Nope, instead the cost was removed entirely, the gauge is now 'the fell cleave gauge', and we have to press the gap closer three times in a row in raidbuffs for optimal damage. Absolute masterstroke of design right there

[Aravell]

I DID find where I kinda stuck up for you. You didn't even acknowledge that, though.

I'll ignore the snide jab at my character so we can get to the actual discussion. I will note though that the argument that happened actually had nothing to do with anything I said, Shurrikhan summarised my points perfectly, maybe you skipped over it.

I can't find, though, anywhere you asked me about the optional complexity of SGE going up. Was this the post you were referring to?

It wasn't a reply to you, but a reply to Roe, as you can see though, I did ask the same question.

In regards to SGE, I personally want to see the Kardia side of their kit get expanded upon instead of the damage side. As SGE is designed in EW and there's no previous iteration that was lost, I think it's fine to keep their damage kit simple and intuitive. But the dev team should look into expanding the Kardia side and allow multiple different manipulations, that way, SGE can actually claim the title of "DPS healer" without actually making the damage kit any more complex than it is now because they use DPS to do healing.

I'm not sure if Ren's idea of keeping the job as is will allow for the Kardia usage to be expanded upon while keeping the damage kit as it is (Maybe fix Toxikon). But if it does allow that, then there'd be no complaints from me. Having the skill ceiling be on the healing side suits me just fine as well.

[Renathras]

So, one healer has to have it's complexity completely untouched, both on the damage and healing side of things, and if that is the case, then the other three can be turned into what you would probably describe as 'unrecognizeable messes of overly convoluted rubbish' or something similar. As long as one remains untouched. Have I got that right?

No, but that's close enough to work with.

Absolute stasis is not required, but not shifting the gameplay focus to something else. e.g. a rotation or DoT management or gauge management or to a focus on dps and so on and so forth are all major shifts to something else. For example...

...5.0-6.0 to 6.1's WHM Lily shift wasn't a bad thing, as it didn't LARGELY alter gameplay from how the general playerbase was using it (high end raiders were avoiding using Rapture/Solace like the plague, but the general payerbase was not), so it didn't really alter gameplay much for most people, making it a minor but effective tweak that also helped high end encounter issues with WHM MP and was arguably an oversight missed in the 6.0 upgrade in the first place since Glare had upgraded. Glare, Dia, and Holy upgrades and more potency/new visuals were fine. Benison getting another charge was fine. Even Aquaveil being added since it was kinda just another form of Benison. And "overheal weed" doesn't really change the gameplay of the Job at all, partly due to how rare (longish CD) and niche (multi-wave attacks that also hit the WHM) it is, and partly due to it kind of being covered by other parts of the kit (it's basically a long CD oGCD souped up Medica 2 that can be detonated early into a Cure 3).

Despite having a change to Misery (damage neutral), this really only reinforced how many people were already engaging with the kit, and the other changes, which were a second charge of Benison (more or less used the same way in double tankbuster situations or as a spare shield for random who stepped in the bad), faster Lily generation (which again just increased how people were already engaging with the kit), Aquaveil (which again was just another variation on the Benison theme), and Lilybell (which has low engagement in general and is just a more powerful oGCD version of Medica 2/Cure 3), and the Assize CD reduction (which didn't change how Assize is still generally "use on CD"); oh, and that trait that increased healing of GCD spells - all this didn't change how the Job plays at all, they just enhanced how it was already being played.

Adding a new "elemental" rotation, an elemental gauge, a retribution gauge, a 1-2-3 rotation, more DoTs, and/or a burst phase rotation, would all NOT be how the Job is currently played, many of which would be upending and changing how it's played on a fundamental level, and likely decreasing how the Job is intuitively picked up and played by people now, and so would not fit this definition.

So minor changes are fine, as long as they're minor and don't really alter the overall gameplay. If "overall gameplay" is what you man by the word "complexity" in this case, then that's an adequate enough definition.

It's funny how quick people are to call me snarky or say my attitude poisons the well of discussion, etc, but have no problem with the above being posted...

Remove the 'gain an Addersting when shield breaks' and replace with 'gain {buff name} when shield breaks, allowing the use of Phlegma without incurring it's cost or cooldown'. Not damage neutral, but it's 600 vs 660 and it allows the player to make interesting decisions re: using it for movement vs using it for raidbuffs to get extra damage from it

Honestly, I'd just boost Toxicon's damage. It's the most straightforward solution and it would even give SGEs a bit of a "rotation" of applying a shield to the tank and then throwing out Toxicons as they pop. Further, it would introduce skill expression (contrary to popular belief) as you'd be managing a resource to avoid overcapping and ideally have for burst windows (optimal burst at that point would be using two Plegmas and three Toxicons, 4 if you could time a shield to break during the burst window) but like Tanks with their gap closer, rewarding fight knowledge by knowing when to save one for movement after the burst, etc.

Not to mention this SEEMS to all the world how it's supposed to work. A lot of newbie SGEs (who haven't looked up guides, etc) run dungeons this way. Shield tank, DoT adds, Dyskrasia AOE spam until both packs are collected, Plegma x2, use Toxicon when pops, refresh shield on tank, back to Dyskrasia until next Toxicon. The kit SEEMS designed to work this way. It's intuitive to use this way. And it has optimization options in "Do I use all my Toxicons in the burst window, or do I save one for movement? If I use them all, will I have time to have a shield broken to get another before the next movement mechanic I need one for? Can I slidecast that mechanic successfully to higher risk higher reward my Toxicon use in burst? And if I don't use a Toxicon here, do I risk overcapping at this other point in the fight?" It actually makes the skill floor lower and the skill ceiling higher at the same time, something people SAY that they want, and does so making the base gameplay more intuitive; that is, this is the natural way people already pick up and approach playing SGE to begin with because it seems like what it's SUPPOSED to be doing to people.

As to WHM, the ShB issue was, as always, people try to avoid doing things that aren't optimal, even if they are optimal in a specific situation (e.g. people trying not to touch Cure 2 unless there's no other way but waiting too late and people die first). Making things damage neutral allows for optimization, just of a different kind (burst vs minimizing use), and frankly, we already are encouraged to damage so much anyway, something that breaks that up is better. This is why I think EW WHM is better than ShB WHM. Hell, remember when we did the analysis on the different versions of the healers to see which expansion was the most "Glarespamy"? Recall that SB WHM was more Stonespammy than EW WHM is Glarespammy? And the key reason for that is because of Lilies being damage neutral, which encourages their use rather than encourages people not to touch them, which was the problem in 5.X to an extent and really bad in 6.0, which resulted in the change. It was a good change, not a bad one.

If Toxicon was damage neutral, it would likewise breakup the Dosisspam since you'd be using both EuPrognosis AND Toxicon as frequent parts of the rotation, where right now, the former is generally avoided and the latter is used roughly 3-5 times per long fight (if there are times where shielding is felt absolutely necessary or during downtime/phase transitions/ultimate attacks...where you can actually get 3 all at once; but there's no point using them for anything other than movement since downtime gains are only EQUAL to using a Dosis instead of an actual gain.)

Summary:

1) Close enough. Though not entirely correct (some small changes over time are acceptable to the one we choose not to sacrifice to the DPS gods)
2) Damage neutral is the way to go for Toxicon and Lilies. It makes the rotation less X-spam and seems to be the intuitive way people approach the Jobs anyway.
3) Damage neutral abilities actually increase the skill ceiling while lowering the skill floor, a stated goal of the people arguing to change healers in the first place.

EDIT: Deleted

[Shurrikhan]

Honestly, I'd just boost Toxicon's damage. It's the most straightforward solution and it would even give SGEs a bit of a "rotation" of applying a shield to the tank and then throwing out Toxicons as they pop. Further, it would introduce skill expression (contrary to popular belief)

Issue 1: It's overpowered AF, increasing the single-target free healing of the healer already with the greatest HPS by at least some 125% at typical crit levels. This devalues SGE's healing optimizations under present (very low) healing requirements while making it nigh impossible to increasing healing requirements without forcing people towards SGE for having, for instance, nearly 3x WHM's free ST healing and some 1.5x its free total healing.

The issue with increasing Toxicon's damage --e.g., to damage neutrality-- isn't that it would necessarily reduce offensive skill expression but that it'd simply be flat overpowered (over 10k more free and wholly sustainable heal potency per minute being enough to devalue virtually all other healing optimization that would otherwise be rewarded/differentiating if healing requirements were increased).

In optimized play, SGE already produces about 5% more HPS than SCH (2nd place), 18% more than AST, and almost a quarter more than WHM. Now imagine that with a spammable DPS-neutral (i.e., "free of opportunity cost") Eukrasian Diagnosis, itself worth 840 (normal) to 1710 (crit at 50% bonus) potency. SGE regenerates ~99.5% of its MP per minute, allowing SGE to sustain without MP loss over time 11 EuDiag GCDs for 10110 extra healing potency per minute even at just a 9% rate. Given Toxicon, that leaves only 2 GCDs per minute for anything other than the shield and its recuperation... which then get spent on EuDosis. You've effectively replaced Dosis spam with just a (flexible) 1-2 combo of EuDiag-Toxicon spam. It's still plenty spammy, it just also broke any sense of balance among the role.

____________________________

Issue 2: It would reduce GCD healing choice (given increased enough healing requirements that GCD heals would be used) for self and cohealer.

Moreover, now you essentially lose all other GCD healing options, leaving AoEs to your cohealer for whom the relative costs are lower while you in turn take over all ST healing needs. Your co-healer pair's full range of GCD healing... is then reduced to Medica II and Eukrasian Diagnosis.

Let's assume again that we increase the healing requirements, because we certainly can do so at least a good third or so without overtaxing healers (though such still leaves too much downtime for the current state of filler-DoT-CD/spender to be a sufficiently compelling loop for most skilled players). You'll have then heavily reduced the variety available to the healing itself, greatly narrowing/dumbing that down whenever a SGE is present.

[ty_taurus]

If you make Toxikon DPS neutral you need to give it a cooldown. Otherwise you'd have unlimited DPS neutral healing.

Issue 2: It would reduce GCD healing choice (given increased enough healing requirements that GCD heals would be used) for self and cohealer.

Moreover, now you essentially lose all other GCD healing options, leaving AoEs to your cohealer for whom the relative costs are lower while you in turn take over all ST healing needs. Your co-healer pair's full range of GCD healing... is then reduced to Medica II and Eukrasian Diagnosis.

Let's assume again that we increase the healing requirements, because we certainly can do so at least a good third or so without overtaxing healers (though such still leaves too much downtime for the current state of filler-DoT-CD/spender to be a sufficiently compelling loop for most skilled players). You'll have then heavily reduced the variety available to the healing itself, greatly narrowing/dumbing that down whenever a SGE is present.

Eukrasian Prognosis can also generate Addersting when its barrier on you breaks, so SGE would also have unlimited DPS neutral AoE healing.

[sindriiisgaming]

Sorry to steal the thread concept, but I think this needs to be said:

hoonestly, no. way to many buttons just to aoe damage people when you have fester and painflair. i dont miss these skills, i wont miss these skills. scholar is a decent dps even now. has lots of paths to go down for its dps that even sage doesnt have. so, no thanks. it should stay in 5.0

[ty_taurus]

This is a summary of my more recent, humble take on a SGE rework:

• Barriers: Barriers applied E. Diagosis or E. Prognosis no longer grant Addersting upon breaking. All barriers applied by spells now restore 400 of your MP when they break.
• Dosis: Adjust potency. Costs no MP. Kardia effect is removed.
• Eukrasian Dosis: Duration is reduced to 15 seconds. Kardia effect is removed. Grants 1 Addersting.
• Dyskrasia > Paroxysm: Becomes ranged instead of point-blank. Potency is the same as Dosis with dropoff. Costs 800 MP; refunds the MP when hitting multiple enemies. Kardia effect is removed. (AoE spam and single target mobility spell)
• Eukrasian Paroxysm *New*: Applies a weaker DoT in an AoE. Does not stack with Eukrasian Dosis; only for AoE DoT application. No Kardia effect.
• Phlegma: Cooldown is reduced to 20 seconds. Kardia effect is removed.
• Toxikon: Potency stays the same as Dosis'. Becomes OGCD.
• Ekkokardia *New*: Same potency as Dosis (AoE). Costs 800 MP. Restores HP to your Kardia target with 400 potency.
• Eukrasian Ekkokardia: Same as Ekkokardia, but instead applies a 300 potency barrier to your Kardia target.
• Pneuma: Potency is increased. Cooldown is reduced to 55 seconds. Kardia effect is removed. Burst healing is removed. Applies Zoe to all nearby allies instead, increasing the HP restored to them from your healing spells. Enables 1 cast of Soma.
• Soma *New*: Replaces Ekkokardia on the hotbar for 1 cast. Point-blank AoE the size of Dancer dances that is the same potency as Dosis and grants healing and a barrier to all party members in range.

[ty_taurus]

hoonestly, no. way to many buttons just to aoe damage people when you have fester and painflair. i dont miss these skills, i wont miss these skills. scholar is a decent dps even now. has lots of paths to go down for its dps that even sage doesnt have. so, no thanks. it should stay in 5.0

Don't put them on your hotbar then.