7.0 Healer Wishlist

[Aravell]

We've had this healer design for nearly 5 years now and we will have it for another 3+ with Dawntrail. It's terrible... but that's the point. They've said they're happy with this design and this is the most accessible to the most amount of players. They've also said many times that they are not going to increase the DPS complexity of the healers because they don't want to overwhelm newer healers; and after the way Savage PF turned out this expansion, we're not going to get harder healing as well. The role is stuck in a corner it can't get out of, but... the developers don't consider it stuck, or a problem at all. So it's going to stay there. Forever.

From what i can see as a long time player, the reason healers are stuck in a corner where they're not allowed to have more damage complexity or to heal more is because of fight design, more specifically mechanics via role distribution.

Look at current savage fights, the healer is expected to dance to the same tempo as the rest of the party. Now, let's look at a fight from SB, O8S P2 Forsaken 1, the DPS get skulls and towers, the tanks get near/far tankbusters and the healers need to burst heal before all this damage goes out. The part healers had in old fights was the part of the healer, their only job during most mechanics was to heal, there were some mechanics back then where the healer was expected to partake in the dance as well, but we had a few OGCDs for that (RIP WHM's Swiftcast).

My opinion is that fight design has to move away from debuff vomit and forcing the healers and tanks to move to the same beat as everyone else to have any hope of fixing support gameplay. Every role should be playing a different part.

[Supersnow845]

If anything these days healers have to deal with more than the DPS because any light party stack will always target the healer, anytime there is a far ranged mechanic the healer is expected to help and they still have to actually do their core job

If they refuse to get rid of debuff vomit then it needs to be designed like say basic relativity where there was some slight variation but the healers always got the easiest combination of the debuffs that allowed them to always stay near the centre of the arena at least until the blowback

[Sylvain]

So, I have few different wishes. I don’t dive into details as it makes things tedious to read unless you’re a fan of details.

Mana removal
I feel like we’ve reached a point where mp is simply useless. Unless we spam rez, we don’t ever have mp problems. We have a useless stat tied to it, the only stat being 100% useless as finishing any fight with positive mp results in having had 0 impact.
Having a whole resource system limited by “if things go very bad in EX trial” isn’t something to be kept. Reworking healing to extensively use mp would be a big rework and I do not believe this is where healer have evolved. Healer in ff evolved around weaving ogcd and optimizing their healing to do more damage. This is what a healer is in FF. it is a green dps. We do not manage mp, we manage cd.
Additionally, healers are doubly punished for dying. First, they obviously have the -25% as everyone else, but if they rez when lucid dream or other ressources or on CD, dealing damage can be a bad idea as you’ll quickly run oom and won’t be able to heal if necessary. This is not always the case, but it does happen, and it is frustrating to “sit there” because you have 150mp left.
Removing mp wouldn’t change how people currently play healer, beside allowing for more rez in bad EX group. This or a generic rework of mp management.

Now when it comes to job
DPS skills for SCH and WHM
I’ll only talk about damage skill of WHM and SCH which are the two needing the most revamp there I believe. And it's long enough as a post already

SCH
Energy Drain : Now has 3 charges upon using Aetherflow. Energy drain makes our next 5 broil deal direct hit. It will grant 10 fairy gauge with a trait at higher level. Damage also scales up.
RuinII : Every 15s, ruinII becomes “Slow Broil” which deal as much damage as your current broil over 12s. It is instant. Turns to RuinII once used, for 15s. This gives us a “no dps loss gcd” movement every 15s. You can obviously snap shot it during the opener, but it’s effectively “an instant broil” but as a DoT for flavor.
Biolteration : 60s CD, gcd, instant. Apply a 15s DoT named “Biolteration”. Biolteration turns into “Biostruction” for 55s (through a buff for instance), which is a 2.5s gcd. Biostruction removes up 30s of Biolteration and deal their damage instant to nearby enemies. Any Broil spell or art of war increases the duration of Biolteration by 5s. Biostruction has a 15s CD.
Deployement Tactic : Can deploy Bio spells (Biolysis and Biolteration) from target. Uses the old spread blue tornado animation we had to put a DoT on everyone around.

[The global idea] : SCH essentially only get a single extra DoT. This DoT is a combination of 2 buttons which interacts with its base kit. The idea is that by dpsing normally, you build up the DoT which you “detonate” once its high enough. Because the DoT can reach up to 60s, you can do it whenever you, it won’t interfere with your rotation. The 15s is to prevent SCH from building up 60s to then burn through everything at 60s and 120s. Some of you may like it, but I feel like it would just ruin the skill, “just broil until 60s and double press”. I choose to make it 2.5s so that there a bit of thought in where you use it (since you can’t weave after) and as to not interfere with slowbroil for movement purpose.
Energy Drain has a CD as to prevent the same “burn everything into the burst window” and then nothing’s left to do afterward.
There is nothing revolutionary but it is I believe a good compromise between “too much for a healer” and “mindless broilspam” as it is fairly simple to grast and only add 1 button.

WHM
Assise : Gets 2 charges with 12s internal CD
Thin Air : Reworked, “your next Medica, MedicaII, Regen, Cure, CureII, CureIII” grant a blood lilly. Would swap with Blood Lilly at lv 74 for obvious reason.
HolyII : Casting Stone/Glare/Dia grants a stack of “Holying”, Holy grants2. Up to 7. Holy or HolyIII turns into HolyII. Instant, AoE (on the target) dealing about 50% more damage than regular single target. -50% to other targets. Consuming 4 stacks of Holying. At higher level, HolyII grants a blood lilly.
Presence of Mind : Also grants “Holy Misery”. Your next HolyII grants a free usage of Afflatus Misery. Last 20s.

[The global Idea] : WHM becomes the “war of healer”, instead of spaming felcleave, you’re gonna spam those misery! The idea is that you get more sources of blood lilies and you need to manage those. HolyII is basically a Phlegma that you need to build up. So every 4 glare, you get a free movement with some extra damage. Holying can stack up to 7 times meaning you don’t have to use it exactly after 4cast, but can keep it for movement. Presence of Mind gives some flavor to the burst window, basically becoming DoT, 3 glare, HolyII then misery. Assise with 2 charges allows us to use it more freely for healing without beign restricted to dmg. The internal 12s is for healing limitation. Finally, Thin Air rounds up the whole kit, allowing you to not loose dps on a regen/medicaII/cureIII once a minute which should be more than enough for most content!

This system does not add a single button to WHM’s kit yet I feel it would make it much more dynamic. Altough HolyII could be its own button but I like button which change. And I don't feel like dungeons need to be super optimised.

[Supersnow845]

I think any proposal that puts forward the suggestion of removing the choice between the aetherflow heals and energy drain has to have a valid solution to HPS creep (nothing against the proposal above just a thought)

We already all understand that SGE’s HPS is excessive but the problem is that ability for ability every SCH ability is equivalent or more potency than its equivalent SGE ability

Assuming no overheal and all shields are absorbed
-soil heals more than kerechole because of the regen tick upon placement
-physis and whispering dawn are equal
-lustrate and druachole are the same
-excog heals more than taurochole unless 1000 potency of damage is mitigated
-seraph has more potency then both haima and panhaima put together
-over the course of a fight fey blessing+ recite indom is worth more than Zoe+pnuema+holos
-indom and ixochole are equal
-succor heals more than e prognosis and ET succor is worth more than e prog+pepsis
-going by the cadence of earned aetherflow soteria and union are equal

Then on top of that SCH has illumination a mitigation SGE has no equivalent to and the monstorous healing up potency on dissipation on top of dissipation leading to 1.5x as many resources gained per minute compared to rhizomata

SCH with no healing restrictions has a terrifying HPS ceiling

[TheDustyOne]

I think the post I had back in the suggestions thread more or less sums up what I want out of healers. Here's a truncated version of the post.

1: More to do during downtime
I don't care whether this is an engaging DPS rotation, keeping up buffs on allies, or whatever else that provides a meaningful contribution to the fight when we don't need to heal, we need more than Glaroilificosis spam + DoT. I would however, personally prefer every healer get a simple and unique rotation with at least 1 defining mechanic to tie their damage kit together.

2: Increased frequency of incoming damage
The problem I've seen recently is that Square have addressed the complaint of having nothing to heal by increasing the sheer amount of damage that gets dealt, but not the frequency with which it gets dealt. What this change has done is increased the amount of mitigation checks in fights, but not actually given us much in the way of extra heal checks.

3: Reduce the amount of oGCD heals we have
Not everyone will consider this a problem, but in my opinion, oGCD heals serve only to further highlight how dull our downtime is and takes value away from our GCD heals. The reward for properly managing them is that we get to ignore half of our kit (our GCD heals) so we can spend more time doing the dull thing (Glaroilificosis).

4: More interaction in our kits
Have my regens proc an attack, have my attacks build up a heal gauge, have our kits come together in a cohesive whole rather than making half of our healing kit go unused and our attacks end up as pure filler. There's a lot you can do with this on every healer to make them have unique playstyles while still providing similar output amongst each other.

5: MP shouldn't be an afterthought
This ties in with the 3rd point as well, because of how much free healing we have, most of our MP is spent on Glaroilificosis. Sometimes we'll have those groups that love the colour orange and want to spend as much time on the floor, but even those seldom feel like they put a dent to MP outside rezes, especially if you have any amount of Piety on your gear. The only time MP feels like it matters is after a personal death and Lucid is on cooldown.

Beyond that, the healers need unique playstyles and healing styles. I dislike the pure/barrier split and would rather the healers get various heals unique to a particular theme that suits the job fantasy. Give WHM stupidly powerful burst heals, AST should get delay heals and rewinds, SCH could focus far more on the pet heals, and SGE can be a drain healer that relies on attacks and the Kardia mechanic for everything. The use of barriers and regens spread throughout the healers should simply to be in theme with those jobs or to complement aspects of the kits.

[Sylvain]

I think any proposal that puts forward the suggestion of removing the choice between the aetherflow heals and energy drain has to have a valid solution to HPS creep (nothing against the proposal above just a thought)
snip

But it isn't really a restriction... it's either, you need that healing or you don't. if you don't, you use a ED, if you do, you use the heal. And while they do pill-up over the course of a fight, the trade off is definitely in healing's favor. Just picture scholar without any AetherFlux ability but increase their damage by 3 ED/min, and they'd most likely be unviable, or severly undertuned for savages and ultimate.

I mean, personally at the very least I do not consider it to be a choice. solution A: I heal (like indom let say), we survive, B: I ED, we die... there's no choice. If the fight requires so little healing that you can spend all your AF on ED, then at this point... does it matter that sage or sch has more or less healing? you're still not using half your kit.

The kit must be based on the assumption that the SCH will use all 3 flux for healing (i mean like you assume for a sage...). If assuming this, SCH is above the sage, then I guess nerfs would be needed. But tbh, even if that is true, it doesn't matter much, because sage is still vastly more popular than SCH. I'm currently progging TOP with my static (AST+SGE) and in pf for extra training, I've yet to see a single SCH join a pf.

[Aravell]

But tbh, even if that is true, it doesn't matter much, because sage is still vastly more popular than SCH. I'm currently progging TOP with my static (AST+SGE) and in pf for extra training, I've yet to see a single SCH join a pf.

That's less to do with the popularity of SGE and more to do with the fact that SCH does less damage than SGE in p4 of TOP because there's no 2 minute burst there, so SGE is far more reliable than SCH in beating that damage check in PF pug groups.

[Sylvain]

I think the post I had back in the suggestions thread more or less sums up what I want out of healers. Here's a truncated version of the post.



Beyond that, the healers need unique playstyles and healing styles. I dislike the pure/barrier split and would rather the healers get various heals unique to a particular theme that suits the job fantasy. Give WHM stupidly powerful burst heals, AST should get delay heals and rewinds, SCH could focus far more on the pet heals, and SGE can be a drain healer that relies on attacks and the Kardia mechanic for everything. The use of barriers and regens spread throughout the healers should simply to be in theme with those jobs or to complement aspects of the kits.

1. Yes, basically what I suppose most people (on this forum at least) ask for. And what I've been trying to go for. Something more to do and look at, but not something that is as strict as a proper dps rotation because well, we got other things to do. What I hoped to achieve with my idea is something that requires a bit of brain power and makes things a bit more dynamic while not being intrusive. Button bloat is a thing, we got a lot of healing actions already, i don't want 5 extra dps skills.

2. Couldn't agree more, ESPECIALLY in EX trials. Barbaricia, Golbez and Zeromus for instance are fine (could be a tiny bit more for the later 2 but still)

3. Well that would require a full job rework of all 4 healers, or 3 I guess, whm is GCD centric enough. And I think we're wayyy past that possibility now. I personally don't mind and I like the weaving style of healers. The issue is that, any heal on the gcd would be a heal we don't want to use simply because we loose damage. Just look at Neutral Sect and Deploy, they're using only if absolutely necessary because they make you loose a gcd. Make Neutral Sect transform your next Aspected spell into an ogcd, you'd see it used much more often.

4. I feel they did a good job with WHM, but that would be a tough thing to do without serious rework. But indeeed, that'd be the best.

5. Well see, I agree with you, but mp is somethign that you either fully embrace and make it a proper gameplay element, or you don't. Currently we're inbetween where "it's there..." and it is an afterthought unless you died twice and 3 people need a rez. I don't see SE reworking healers to make mp management a thing, (and a fun thing, if the only thing mp management becomes is "stacking piety so we can spam dps", noty), hence me suggesting "remove mp" because it is an aftertought, and I don't see them changing that anytime soon.

I really wish the SCH would get a rework where you get like 4-5 pet actions, and once a minute you can swap your fairy, but when you do so you have a different set of actions, therefor you need to plan ahead which fairy you want out. Like... a true tactician basically. Also having it much more centered around the fairy gauge

[Supersnow845]

But it isn't really a restriction... it's either, you need that healing or you don't. if you don't, you use a ED, if you do, you use the heal. And while they do pill-up over the course of a fight, the trade off is definitely in healing's favor. Just picture scholar without any AetherFlux ability but increase their damage by 3 ED/min, and they'd most likely be unviable, or severly undertuned for savages and ultimate.

I mean, personally at the very least I do not consider it to be a choice. solution A: I heal (like indom let say), we survive, B: I ED, we die... there's no choice. If the fight requires so little healing that you can spend all your AF on ED, then at this point... does it matter that sage or sch has more or less healing? you're still not using half your kit.

The kit must be based on the assumption that the SCH will use all 3 flux for healing (i mean like you assume for a sage...). If assuming this, SCH is above the sage, then I guess nerfs would be needed. But tbh, even if that is true, it doesn't matter much, because sage is still vastly more popular than SCH. I'm currently progging TOP with my static (AST+SGE) and in pf for extra training, I've yet to see a single SCH join a pf.

I’m so confused on your point here, you first say that it’s not really a choice because either you use an aetherflow heal or you die (a bit reductionist but not exactly wrong, though there is nuance around actually trying to edit your healing plan) but then you make a point about it being undertuned in savage (are you saying it would be undertuned healing wise if you deleted the entire aetherflow system as a visualisation of only its completely free heals because otherwise I’m so confused)

Then you say the kit must be designed assuming that you will use all aetherflow on healing (which SCH is obviously not because of how disgusting it’s HPS would be) but then say if they do it it should be nerfed

I honestly can’t make heads or tails of what you are trying to say here

[Sylvain]

I think the post I had back in the suggestions thread more or less sums up what I want out of healers. Here's a truncated version of the post.



Beyond that, the healers need unique playstyles and healing styles. I dislike the pure/barrier split and would rather the healers get various heals unique to a particular theme that suits the job fantasy. Give WHM stupidly powerful burst heals, AST should get delay heals and rewinds, SCH could focus far more on the pet heals, and SGE can be a drain healer that relies on attacks and the Kardia mechanic for everything. The use of barriers and regens spread throughout the healers should simply to be in theme with those jobs or to complement aspects of the kits.

1. Yes, basically what I suppose most people (on this forum at least) ask for. And what I've been trying to go for. Something more to do and look at, but not something that is as strict as a proper dps rotation because well, we got other things to do. What I hoped to achieve with my idea is something that requires a bit of brain power and makes things a bit more dynamic while not being intrusive. Button bloat is a thing, we got a lot of healing actions already, i don't want 5 extra dps skills.

2. Couldn't agree more, ESPECIALLY in EX trials. Barbaricia, Golbez and Zeromus for instance are fine (could be a tiny bit more for the later 2 but still)

3. Well that would require a full job rework of all 4 healers, or 3 I guess, whm is GCD centric enough. And I think we're wayyy past that possibility now. I personally don't mind and I like the weaving style of healers. The issue is that, any heal on the gcd would be a heal we don't want to use simply because we loose damage. Just look at Neutral Sect and Deploy, they're using only if absolutely necessary because they make you loose a gcd. Make Neutral Sect transform your next Aspected spell into an ogcd, you'd see it used much more often.

4. I feel they did a good job with WHM, but that would be a tough thing to do without serious rework. But indeeed, that'd be the best.

5. Well see, I agree with you, but mp is somethign that you either fully embrace and make it a proper gameplay element, or you don't. Currently we're inbetween where "it's there..." and it is an afterthought unless you died twice and 3 people need a rez. I don't see SE reworking healers to make mp management a thing, (and a fun thing, if the only thing mp management becomes is "stacking piety so we can spam dps", noty), hence me suggesting "remove mp" because it is an aftertought, and I don't see them changing that anytime soon.

I really wish the SCH would get a rework where you get like 4-5 pet actions, and once a minute you can swap your fairy, but when you do so you have a different set of actions, therefor you need to plan ahead which fairy you want out. Like... a true tactician basically. Also having it much more centered around the fairy gauge