My Question for Yoshi P

[ty_taurus]

Yes really. Actually think about how this plays out in solo instances.

In order for me to use another attack I have to play a card that's only accessible every minute with a buff that doesn't even benefit me because I do the lowest damage of every class in the game. I have 2 casts of Oracle per minute. Do explain how is that fun?

I don't think its fun in the slightest. Put it on 20s until 8.0.

A 20 second cooldown is just 3 casts per minute, so sure that's more than 2, but it's not that much better either. I'm just saying are there other things we can investigate first before resorting to a cooldown? That's all. I'm sure there's something far better than what I can think of right now and I'm just wracking my brain on how to make it happen.

[ASkellington]

A 20 second cooldown is just 3 casts per minute, so sure that's more than 2, but it's not that much better either. I'm just saying are there other things we can investigate first before resorting to a cooldown? That's all. I'm sure there's something far better than what I can think of right now and I'm just wracking my brain on how to make it happen.

With what? Your stipulation is what we have going into 7.0.

• That means that Oracle would need to be tied to Divination as its going to be on release
• The card system as you mentioned, however which way you want to do it (after every play of a card, after every Draw, after every select play of a card)
• Off of any of the oGCD heals AST already has
• Lightspeed
• Synastry
• Combust
• Fall Malefic

The only acceptable answer of all these is to tie it to a proc off of Combust like Thundercloud and I'd rather give that to WHM.

Decoupling it from Divination and putting it on a 20s recast timer is a quick and easy fix that's easily able to be done in a post patch and it is one I don't mind advocating for.

Coupled with reducing the recast timer of Astral/Umbral draw and it would make DT AST on the same level as Shb. Not good, but not offensive either.

[ty_taurus]

With what? Your stipulation is what we have going into 7.0.

• That means that Oracle would need to be tied to Divination as its going to be on release
• The card system as you mentioned, however which way you want to do it (after every play of a card, after every Draw, after every select play of a card)
• Off of any of the oGCD heals AST already has
• Lightspeed
• Synastry
• Combust
• Fall Malefic

The only acceptable answer of all these is to tie it to a proc off of Combust like Thundercloud and I'd rather give that to WHM.

Decoupling it from Divination and putting it on a 20s recast timer is a quick and easy fix that's easily able to be done in a post patch and it is one I don't mind advocating for.

Coupled with reducing the recast timer of Astral/Umbral draw and it would make DT AST on the same level as Shb. Not good, but not offensive either.

Look, I'm not trying to be your enemy. I'm trying to have a conversation about it, because I want to try and make each healer feel more unique with the resources we're given. But whatever, if you don't want to talk about it cordially, I'll just write 20 second cooldown. It's more important to you than it is to me.

[ASkellington]

Look, I'm not trying to be your enemy. I'm trying to have a conversation about it, because I want to try and make each healer feel more unique with the resources we're given. But whatever, if you don't want to talk about it cordially, I'll just write 20 second cooldown.

My point is you're not going to achieve it with the resources we're given.

Toxicon is a poor idea simply because we don't use the GCD heals what so ever. If healing was more on the GCD and there were more raidwides/tankbusters for SGE to use E. Diagnosis akin to DRK's TBN (or even if autos hit hard enough) I could see addersing and Toxicon to be good. Unfortunately, its not.

Tying Orcale to the card system and Divination is about the same, but only for solo play. Divination as a solo AST is a waste of a button. Most enemies aren't spongy enough to be worth the duration. The ones that are, are painful and pretty much force you to use it to eak out whatever damage you can to make things go some what faster (think Zenos' fight at the end of 6.0) only for you to barely feel it. And the cards are about the same. Now add in an attack to make things go faster, but only after you use something that feels unrewarding just so you can use it.

And to further add insult to injury Oracle is just a standard attack like Malefic is, but at 600p. It's not a compile or anything fun where we could maybe tie it to something to enhance that, but it is literally a buffed out Phlegma on a 2min CD. There isn't much you can do to make it distinct from the other healers.

You can't give it Delirium/Inner Release where you place Balance/Spear or Divination and give it 3+ consecutive uses because that's WHM's thing
You can't make it proc off of Combust because again WHM (and thematically I like that better on WHM due to the connections with BLM)
Proccing it off of Fall Malefic doesn't make much sense and is too similar to your changes to Addersting generation for my tastes

Therefore the only alternative is to place them on the cards (which you've done) which SUCKS in solo play, is fine in group play, and something I don't want or make it on a 20s CD. And I'm gonna prefer the 20s GCD to make solo play less monotonous.

There's not much else one can do with Oracle as it stands without changing it in some way.

[ty_taurus]

Therefore the only alternative is to place them on the cards (which you've done) which SUCKS in solo play, is fine in group play, and something I don't want or make it on a 20s CD. And I'm gonna prefer the 20s GCD to make solo play less monotonous.

I don't disagree that the cards are generally a lot weaker on you than literally anyone else, but would you not still be using your Draws anyway? Because that is how you're going to at least get uses of Lord of Crowns, and while damage cards might not offer that much on AST alone, wouldn't you still use them anyway since they're there and not taking away from your ability to use Malefic?

Like I said, this is not where I am most invested. So I'm not going to fight for it, but I would imagine that the 4 offensive cards you get between both draws are still going to be used in solo. That is 2 less casts per minute than a 20 second cooldown, so that's something that can be worked on sure, but it does also offer the benefit of giving you a little more flexibility in when you cast Oracle, which can be nice for movement potentially. I mean there's also adding a second charge to it, so it literally is just Phlegma but on Astro at that point.

Another idea that came to mind is something that I don't think will fly in DT due to how MP continues to be handled. But you could also have Oracle have no cooldown at all, but has a really steep MP cost--let's say it costs 2000 MP. If we did the cards thing where instead of enabling Oracle, it reduces the cost of Oracle by 80%. In that case, while you have 4 Oracles that are safe to use without tearing through MP, you would otherwise have the agency to greed with Oracle casts outside of those 4 uses. And in solo, that could probably be very exploitable since most solo encounters are short. Instance battles would need to be paced more slowly, but you could probably nuke normal enemies down very quickly as an AST in that case.

[ASkellington]

I'mma take this bit by bit if you don't mind

I don't disagree that the cards are generally a lot weaker on you than literally anyone else, but would you not still be using your Draws anyway? Because that is how you're going to at least get uses of Lord of Crowns, and while damage cards might not offer that much on AST alone, wouldn't you still use them anyway since they're there and not taking away from your ability to use Malefic?

Depends on the solo content. Overland for example, I probably may not. Depends on how tanky the mobs may be. Same with FATEs. Sure I'll cast Lord of Crowns, since its already there, and I'd get a use out of it, but there's no point in using Balance or Spear/Lady on me (which btw, does that stack?) or even casting Umbral Draw except perhaps out of habit. And even then, much like I do now with Astrodyne and did with Divination I'd still feel bad just using my stupid card mechanic in solo so I can have an extra attack to make things go faster. Its not fun and would make me use AST for nothing other than group play.

Going into the next set of solo instances where we have sponges:

Like I said, this is not where I am most invested. So I'm not going to fight for it, but I would imagine that the 4 offensive cards you get between both draws are still going to be used in solo. That is 2 less casts per minute than a 20 second cooldown, so that's something that can be worked on sure, but it does also offer the benefit of giving you a little more flexibility in when you cast Oracle, which can be nice for movement potentially. I mean there's also adding a second charge to it, so it literally is just Phlegma but on Astro at that point.

This is correct. I am going to be using Divination and the cards but again its going to be tedious and unfun. Were Oracle to be used after every card or just the 4 you mentioned on release instead of Divination (like that was never in the cards, ha, just what the devs themselves did for release) I'd play it, go through MSQ and then ask why not just make it a Phlegma ability then, because it isn't fun to tie a single use of an attack after playing a card. It'd still be a chip on my shoulder so to speak.

Another idea that came to mind is something that I don't think will fly in DT due to how MP continues to be handled. But you could also have Oracle have no cooldown at all, but has a really steep MP cost--let's say it costs 2000 MP. If we did the cards thing where instead of enabling Oracle, it reduces the cost of Oracle by 80%. In that case, while you have 4 Oracles that are safe to use without tearing through MP, you would otherwise have the agency to greed with Oracle casts outside of those 4 uses. And in solo, that could probably be very exploitable since most solo encounters are short. Instance battles would need to be paced more slowly, but you could probably nuke normal enemies down very quickly as an AST in that case.

My initial thought is an immediate no. However an idea that did occur is that perhaps Oracle could then be apart of a loop - say it does have this steep cost, 1k-2k mp and the cards (all 8 perhaps) reduces its MP cost by the 80%. Why not also have it, so that if you use Oracle outside of a card proc it can reduce the timer of Astral/Umbral draw per cast thereby allowing an AST to have more card usage (doesn't fully address solo concerns but the thought occured and I figured I share cause why tf not?). Perhaps coupled with a change to Ewer for MP regen this could be a new fun mechanic for AST.

Tangent asside I don't see the harm in allowing Oracle to have an MP cost that's reduced after playing a card (however many), to be used outside of cards. I'm not sure how I feel about there being 0 cooldown with no cast time. Perhaps give it the 1.5s cast and I think it'd be an interesting change. It has ties to the card system without being beholden to it.

...I should add that potency would probably need to be reduced to maybe 400.

[vetch]

Here's the question:

"Even in Ultimate-level content, healers spend most of our actions casting basic attack spells like Glare and we're frustrated with it. Dawntrail's additional finisher attacks, usable once per 2-minute interval, do not provide enough variety to alleviate this monotony. [ADD: Our healing kits are full of cheap, powerful heals, which exacerbates the problem.] We want our role to be more interesting, not just in Ultimate, but in all content. Can we have more ways to vary our gameplay and reduce the proportion of actions spent casting our basic attack spell?"

I'm a professional editor, there you go. All the salient points (plus one I suggest adding), delivered succinctly and without anything to distract Koji and Yoshi.

Remember, this is hypothetically a media tour or Q&A-type question. You won't have a bunch of time to outline all the possible paths they could take and give them examples of changed abilities.

[ty_taurus]

"Even in Ultimate-level content, healers spend most of our actions casting basic attack spells like Glare and we're frustrated with it. Dawntrail's additional finisher attacks, usable once per 2-minute interval, do not provide enough variety to alleviate this monotony. [ADD: Our healing kits are full of cheap, powerful heals, which exacerbates the problem.] We want our role to be more interesting, not just in Ultimate, but in all content. Can we have more ways to vary our gameplay and reduce the proportion of actions spent casting our basic attack spell?"

I'm a professional editor, there you go. All the salient points (plus one I suggest adding), delivered succinctly and without anything to distract Koji and Yoshi.

Remember, this is hypothetically a media tour or Q&A-type question. You won't have a bunch of time to outline all the possible paths they could take and give them examples of changed abilities.

Thank you, I can update it with this as well. I might still add a piece or two from my post though.

[HappyHubris]

As true as that may or may not be, the only chance at changing things involves constantly throwing the same questions in his face. Like I said, I’m not going to stop trying. And it’s fine to talk about how to most effectively try and ask for these changes, but I don’t think the conversation will end up being productive if all we do is talk about how ineffective it may be.

I mean, the dev team has clearly communicated its design goals for healers across multiple expansions by now, and their game is a runaway success in the MMO space. No question is going to change their minds.

The productive options are to accept that this is what FFXIV healing is or switch jobs/games.

[Teno]

I saw you commenting on the japanese forums too, but it seems that they indeed like this type of braindead 111 gameplay. It does not bode well...... And it might explain why we've been stuck with this bs design for years... They might very well just not care at all about international players.