#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[Supersnow845]

Even cure 3 barely counts as a niche anymore

Neutral aspected Helios and Seraphism ET accession are both stronger than it (neutral assuming the shield cracks between GCD’s)

Like when do you ever need more cure 3’s than can be covered by the duration of neutral sect or seraphism (both of which provide mitigation as well since they provide shields that propagate faster as well as their healing and sun sign)

[Lorika]

Like it feels terrible having no advantage

Oh there is : You can dish enough healing power without the need to press 40 button before pressing a heal button.
It also the Healer with the most MP free heal and the one with the most useless ressource (you use all your other heal button before using a Lilly)..... Your MP mostly goes into Glare Spam.

To sum up, the advange of the WHM it's being simple and straightforward.

Ah also, it's not being a SGE, which it's really the one without advantage at all (what a SGE can do, all the others can do it better)

[Supersnow845]

Oh there is : You can dish enough healing power without the need to press 40 button before pressing a heal button.
It also the Healer with the most MP free heal and the one with the most useless ressource (you use all your other heal button before using a Lilly)..... Your MP mostly goes into Glare Spam.

To sum up, the advange of the WHM it's being simple and straightforward.

Ah also, it's not being a SGE, which it's really the one without advantage at all (what a SGE can do, all the others can do it better)

“Enough healing power” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here when it’s healing is near redundant because everything is a mit check and pressing 40 buttons for 4* the advantage is pretty much a null point when healing is so infrequent

[Aravell]

Personally, the advantage of WHM for me is that it's straightforward enough that it's easy to play for the long hours of ultimate prog or week 1 savage prog without causing finger pains.

I've played AST for hours in savage prog before and it just gets really painful after a while, although AST was slowed down in DT, so maybe even that advantage of WHM has been taken away.

[Azurarok]

Damage done used to be a somewhat valid reason to pick up WHM at some point in ShB (CMIIW here)—they even outdpses tanks in those times. Today? Also taken away.

So I uh... was not aware of this until now since I was too new to even think about parses and whatnot back then.

They removed the one reason why healers were still worth having over tanks even if their healing became less necessary from gearing and such, while simultaneously making their healing become less necessary faster by both increasing mitigation on dps and healing on tanks

Maybe they really do want to get rid of the role

[ForsakenRoe]

I'm glad you get along better than I do with SCH, I see people like Supersnow touting it as being insanely powerful but I've never really experienced that first hand, it might just be my failing - SCH never really clicks with me the way WHM does.

It's no longer as ridiculous as it once was, but SCH is still arguably the strongest healer, due to fights in this game mainly being 'mit checks' rather than 'HPS checks'. Back before SHB nerfed it heavily (kinda deserved), a Crit-Deploy Adlo could singlehandedly mitigate through a mechanic, because the crit half (Catalyze) also got Deployed. Unreliable, but when it happened, you took literally zero damage from things, even in Savage. With Recitation guaranteeing access to a Crit on demand, it had to be nerfed to what it is today. Still, however, a guaranteed-Crit-Adlo-Deploy combo is going to be (300p x 180% x [Crit Mult]), and with the 2.50 BIS for this raid putting our CritMult at 1.588x, that gives a total potency for the shield of 857.52p.

By comparison, a SGE cannot guarantee a crit on their Zoe-E.Prog combo, and so they're either going to get a barrier of (100p x 360% x 1.5 (from Zoe)) for 540p, or that amount multiplied by the CritMult, for 857.52p. Yes, the exact same result, but on SGE the Crit is not guaranteed. As such, while SGE 'can' match SCH on this front (as Zoe-E.Prog and Adlo-Deploy both result in a partywide barrier of 540p), SCH is more 'reliable' in how often it can reach the higher potency of a Crit being involved (as in, it can guarantee it). Additionally, SCH has the oft-forgotten Fey Illumination, and SGE has no equivalent option to use. 10% increase to healing output means 10% stronger barriers, and the 5% magic resist can make or break some mit checks (I've died to a missing Feint on a Magic Raidwide before multiple times), so SCH is simply more versatile in that regard, as using FI on a weaker raidwide allows the SCH to save a bigger CD like Expedient for something stronger later, or it allows the SCH to double-up on certain raidwides (eg if they apply a bleed) for extra safety in early prog

So I uh... was not aware of this until now since I was too new to even think about parses and whatnot back then.

They removed the one reason why healers were still worth having over tanks

Yeh, if you had to choose between 'WHM has to cast Cure2' and 'PLD is in Requiescat, and could cast a boosted Clemency instead of a HolySpirit', back then it was 'more efficient' for the party's overall DPS for the PLD to sac a stack of Req and do the healing, rather than make the WHM drop a Glare. Of course, this had to be changed because the tanks were feeling a bit emasculated, getting outdamaged by a floaty twinkly-lights-and-flowers enthusiast

Rez tax is really weird to me. The way I see it, before EW RDM was the easiest caster to play and thus had lower dps, and the utility was there to make up for that. Then EW reworked SMN to be the easiest caster, but they still balanced it like it used to and had it stronger than RDM for the better part of the expac, and rez tax seemed more like an their excuse for their poor balancing.

The current order of BLM > PCT > RDM > SMN in full uptime seems right to me, though RDM probably should be closer to BLM/PCT going by how PCT and BLM are now (SMN kinda belongs down there).

A friend of mine had a genius idea to solve RDM's issues: AST Sects.

You choose at the start of a fight, if you're Caster RDM or 'Fake Melee RDM' (so, if you're in a party that has 1 Melee, 1 Ranged, 1 PCT (of course) and you're the RDM, you'd play Fake Melee RDM) via a stance toggle. All the button does, is change every 'Ver-' into 'En-', making every builder GCD like VerStone, VerFire, etc, into EnStone, EnFire, which imbue the rapier with elemental energy for a strike, rather than projecting it as a spell. Cast times of Jolt/EnFire/EnStone (the procs) would be instant, but EnAero and EnThunder would remain identical to CasterMode with a long cast time, to keep the same gameplay between styles (via Dualcasting). Not sure if the burst combo should be converted to EnHoly/EnFlare/EnScorch, that's probably fine to leave as is, and Reprise would act as the 'trash ranged GCD you avoid as much as possible', akin to Throwing Dagger, Writhing Snap, Harpe, etc

Lastly, there would be no potency differences between Caster and Melee mode. Every action would be the same potency between the two. Instead, the Melee stance would enable Autoattacks to use the same formula as Melee jobs use, albeit with Intelligence as the primary stat used for the calculations rather than Strength. The additional damage of Autoattacks, would propel RDM up the charts to roughly sit with the rest of the melee (theoretically). I expect the forbidden site would implement something to check if you're a Melee stance RDM or a Caster stance RDM, and have separate categories for each, else trying to get a top run for RDM would force you to be Melee mode

edit: looking at numbers, the autoattacks would need to be roughly 50% as potent as an actual Melee, as looking at a run or two shows that autoattacks make up about 8-10% of a Melee's output, and RDM is only behind the Melee pack by about 4-5% (fight dependent). Stick a 'x 0.3' to 'x 0.5' on the end of the formula and adjust for balance as needed, easily solved

The downside of this idea is that it encroaches on Mystic Knight as a Job Identity, but DRK already did that with Blood Weapon back in HW so eh (plus Enfire/Enstone etc were RDM actions in FF11)

[Maltothoris]

The other thing that about aldo deploy is that it's is enhanced more so by single target buffs. Zoe could onyl be buffed by things like mantra and nature's minne. Recitation can get buffed by protraction, karsis if you have a sge, thrill of battle and so much other stuff.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

A bit tangential on FI talks: some may add that SGE can use their Physis II to buff their follow up shield. But the ‘problem’ with this is the fact that Physis II on its own is already an overkill with their 650p total regen potency, and often time it’s harder to come up with situations where you’ll get to use both the healing receive buff AND the regen—one of them usually gets wasted if they want to buff their E.Prog shield together with Zoe, like SCHs do with Spreadlo+FI.

[…]Yeh, if you had to choose between 'WHM has to cast Cure2' and 'PLD is in Requiescat, and could cast a boosted Clemency instead of a HolySpirit', back then it was 'more efficient' for the party's overall DPS for the PLD to sac a stack of Req and do the healing, rather than make the WHM drop a Glare. Of course, this had to be changed because the tanks were feeling a bit emasculated, getting outdamaged by a floaty twinkly-lights-and-flowers enthusiast[…]

It’ll never not be funny to me knowing that each of WHM’s Glare cast has about the same effective potency as WAR’s Fell Cleave in those times.

[Supersnow845]

Exactly, SCH has three GCD buffs and only one of them really has a strong secondary purpose when used in an optimised situation (illumination as dissipation as emergency aetherflow stacks is really more a recovery tool). SGE has zero functionally free GCD amplifiers

So not only is the initial shield almost twice as powerful (and has more pure healing attached which also benefits from the amplifiers) SCH can buff it more at a lower cost.

[ForsakenRoe]

The other thing with SCH is, since a Crit is 1.5x (ish) with our current gear, it means that Recitation forcing a Crit when used on Succor, instead of an Adloquium, is functionally very similar to Zoe's effect on E.Prognosis' barrier size. Or in other words, if you don't need one massive shield via Deploy-Adlo, SCH has access to Zoe-E.Prog, over twice as often, due to Deploy and Zoe filling a similar role (and both being 90s), but Recitation-Succor combo is a 60s CD that also provide that same level of protection (as Zoe-E.Prog)