Originally Posted by
Tigore
So far, it sounds like we should examine what worked in Stormblood and build from there for the 3 classes. From my time on the forums, this seems to be the closest collective voices that I am noticing.
WHM: We used to have emphasis on Earth, Wind and Water magics too and the players want that back. It's a reason why
ForsakenRoe's ideas have some momentum. Since it basically makes an Assize-like cooldown always proc Quake, Tornado and Flood / Tsunami even with the Holy upgrades. Another 15s cooldown with the Water / Banish idea and the Dia / Aero DoT timers dropping to 15s with higher initial burst damage should help to reduce the Glare animation spam too. The DoT being used more often will also have an indirect movement buff with needing to use an instant cast more often.
SCH: The DPS spells requested are mostly what we had from the past. Bio, Miasma, Miasma 2 and Shadowflare as candidates. This just leaves the discussion on how the fairy links to our kits. It's hard for me to see a consensus for this part. The one thing agreed on is Dissipation should NOT "kill" the fairy and do something else to work with them.
AST: I only remember
ForsakenRoe's suggestions again. I think she suggested we do away with the Combust DoT and add another set of 6 GCD minor card draws on a 15 - 30 second cooldown. As with the WHM potency calculations, the potency boost to using them over Malefic is 10 - 20, so the newer players can still spam Malefic with 90% ish DPS efficiency. Some of the cards were best for a tank to be given counter damage with a multi strike working best for the healers themselves.
SGE: I suggested we can expand on SCH's Protraction to help more with higher max HP and increased healing received being used instead of shields. This could allow SGE to focus more on the raw healing of Kardia and could potentially have weaker shield emphasis as a result if they can raise max HP and healing received as well as simply reduce damage taken as alternatives.
It's a bit weird seeing people referencing my stuff in a positive way, I guess I got used to how things went on the Healer Forums from.. certain vocal players (that being, some form of 'this is bad stop trying to ruin the game' kind of feedback). But humour me for a moment and let me expound on why I think SB Healer design would be the way to go. The main issue, IMO, is the perception of the 'zero GCD run'. In SB, it was this lofty, unattainable goal, you simply could not get to zero GCDs on certain fights. It was an 'ideal' to strive for, but not something we could ever truly reach. Now, however, we CAN reach it, and once we do, the process of optimization instantly dies. Where previously we had 'OK on that run we had 4 GCDs between us, can we get it to 3?', now we have 'OK we had zero GCDs between us (again), but I didn't crit enough Glares, we go again'. I'd much rather have an unobtainable 'perfect run', than one that we can obtain.
The depressed twitter bird was right.
Let me use and abuse some HB tags to save on screen space
WHM:
To clarify on the 'reduce number of Glares cast', said ideas would bring us from the current 70% (per 2min, to factor in Glare4 and POM), to a more sensible 38% (19 of 50 GCDs, if my maths is right, I just woke up). Also, slight nitpick (but details are important when discussing this kind of stuff IMO), I'd make Dia 12s, such that the timers between Banish and Dia naturally stagger from one another (else we'd just go DBGGGG on loop and that's also quite uninteresting). Since Dia/Banish/the 'Assize' move/Lily Heals/Misery are all instantcast in the idea, that'd mean we'd have only those 38% of GCDs requiring us to stand still, giving WHM unparalleled mobility and negating the need for the silly 'once per 1min' dash that is now taking up my precious hotbar space. On which note, isn't it funny that some people respond to 'can we have more DPS actions' with 'but there's no hotbar space', but somehow we have room for stuff like Aetherial Shift?
SCH:
I'd keep it as 3 DOTs total, Bio, Miasma, Shadowflare. Miasma2 was cool because it had a MP cost element to it, but now that MP is a non-consideration from the devs, it wouldn't hit the same. Additionally, SCH is probably the healer that has the least room for 'this button kinda sucks and can be removed', I think the most 'removable' button is actually Summon Faerie (by making it summon automatically when you swap to the job, ala Sneak on Gatherers). Not to toot my own horn too much (maybe a little as a treat), I'd like to think I did a pretty good job of making the Faerie feel 'linked to our kit', via the stances. If we have the Faerie's actions also be modified by the stances, then I think it'd massively increase the amount of 'SCH identity' exuded via the gameplay. Even something as simple as 'Embrace is a barrier while using Defensive, and a regular heal while using Offensive/Emergency' would serve to make it feel like the Faerie is hearing the SCH's Strategies and acting upon them.
Dissipation's a weird one, because on the one hand, I hate the idea of how it functions: Back when it didn't auto-summon the Faerie back, it make sense that 'you dissolve an aetherial construct, you receive aether(flow) to spend on abilities'. Now, it makes a little less sense lorewise. I'd much prefer to see there be love and respect for the Faerie from the playerbase, as we would give to other NPCs, rather than us seeing it as simply another tool. The fact that so many of us refer to it as 'the Faerie' or 'Eos/Selene' shows that so many of us see it as just 'an ability in the kit'. I still remember the name of my Imp pet from when I played Warlock in Classic WoW: Daglop. I would prefer to see the playerbase have enough of a 'bond' with Lily (yes the Faerie is called Lily) that we at least remember the actual name of the poor thing. As for 'risk/reward', I respect the stance, but I also don't see Dissipation's current form as having that much of a 'risk', now that we resummon automatically. If anything, the 'risk/reward' stems from its mutual exclusivity with other capstones (eg Summon Seraph), not from Dissipation's actual function. And that is where I'd personally draw the line between 'intelligently designed risk/reward' and 'this is just clunk'. So I'd prefer to rework Dissipation, BUT! I'd also try to include some other elements in the kit that give some degree of optimization to play with, to compensate for what Dissipation provided (that being, the Strategies)
AST:
Kinda crazy that they did this massive rework to AST, it's by far the 'strongest' healer in terms of healing (especially compared to WHM), and yet while it has had a boost in popularity, it's still the least played healer in Savage clears. Personally, not sure I'd have completely overhauled the job and alienated those players who liked the 'busy' gameplay of the job, to try and appeal to players who likely already settled on playing another healer (eg WHM), seems a strange business decision to me. With the DT changes to Malefic (making it 270p), my Minor Arcana effects would be a gain of 30p per 15s (since they did 300p), so each GCD you hold onto them for would be an effective potency loss of 5p, which could very easily be worth it, in order to use them as a mobility tool.
Not sure when the last time you (Tigore) read my AST stuff was, but a while back I decided to readd Royal Road, though with 2 main changes, A: You'd burn a Minor Arcana to empower the next Major Arcana you play (and because you can see what Major you're holding, you'd be able to plan the combos out a bit better), and B: Expand (the AOE effect) would be replaced with 'Echo', causing a card to play itself again when you play your next Major Arcana (so you'd want to set up an Echo card 30s before a burst window, such that doing your burst triggers the 'Echo' and you get effectively 2.5 cards in the burst instead of 2). I'm a big advocate of the stance that 'AOE Balance was not the issue in HW/SB, AOE Balance was'. So just keep the cards single target, and suddenly it's way easier to balance their expected potency outputs against one another, not really sure why SE didn't try that one before completely removing all of the RNG (and the RNG isn't even gone, it's just ironically shifted to 'did my Oracle crit?')
SGE:
SGE is, personally, a very weird job. It's 80% SCH reskin, and that makes it equal parts 'meh' to my eyes, but also a bit of a blank canvas to start building off of. Personally, I think the most important thing is to make Kardia SGEs 'thing'. Max HP instead of flat Barriers could be interesting, and a way to give SGE a 'protect allies' aspect without directly being Barriers (giving a bit of a functional difference between it and SCH), and it'd synergize well with some of the other SGE actions we have already eg: the burst healing of Pneuma, the increased HP recovery effect of Physis, or Krasis. However, I'd like to also see a design element in battle content that I'll call 'Barrier Checks' for lack of a better name. That is, a mechanic wherein something about the mechanic is lessened or negated, if you block the damage with a Barrier. The simplest example (which exists ingame, ironically) would be Vulcan Burst from Ifrit (it's also in UWU). It is a raidwide that does very little damage, but also deals a knockback. But, by having a Barrier active and blocking 100% of this raidwide, you also negate the Knockback effect.
I'd like to see more uses of that, alongside giving all healers access to Barriers in some way (eg WHM gets a Lily Spender that applies Barriers, cough Stoneskin). It sounds like 'homogenization' on the surface (giving all 4 healers a way to apply a Barrier), but I think that the extra creative potential it'd open up would outweigh that. For example, say a raidwide deals 2 instances of damage, one hits for a very small amount (but applies a bleed), and the other hits a single frame later for 'the actual damage of the raidwide'. Do you, as the healer, heal through the Bleed? Do you apply Barriers and negate the Bleed entirely? Or, do you Esuna the Bleed to remove it (eg if a healer has an AOE Esuna, maybe this is the better option)?
The issue with 'Max HP increased' is that it wouldn't work with such an idea, without some kind of rework to how the game detects if your 'Real HP' has been hit or not, at which point it becomes 'Barrier, but you can refill it'
Originally Posted by
Tigore
The 3 stances could perhaps grant the chance for Dissipation to either "kill" the pet or keep her out. Offensive stance seems logical to keep the version that "orders the fairy away" to get 3 extra Aethers for Energy Drains. Defensive and Emergency could keep the pet with another new effect considered like a party mitigation or shield.
Hmm, I had originally had the Faerie's actions as 'current healing in Offensive/Emergency, applies a Barrier in Defensive'. But this idea is interesting to think about, at least. If we rewrite it such that:
Emergency Embrace: 150p Healing
Defensive Embrace: 120p Barrier (can stack with Galvanize, can't be Deployed)
Offensive: Doesn't actually cast Embrace at all (Lily channels an empowering effect on the SCH)
Then it gives a reason why Offensive would boost the 'on cast' potency of your DOTs (Lily is busy empowering the SCH), and a reason to not just stay in Offensive until a heal is required (instead, you'd stay in... probably Defensive, until a DOT needs refreshing). Such an idea would keep part of Dissipation's risk/reward (losing out on Embraces for 30s, here you'd lose out on Embraces 'until you swap off of Offensive', which for some players might as well read as 'permanently'), while also minimizing the annoyance caused by Dissipation's 'risk/reward' (that being, can't use Faerie actions, can't use Union, can't use Seraph, can't use Seraphism, for 30s). I wouldn't be opposed to that. I think the main issue with Dissipation is the 30s lockout, it's so damn long that for a lot of players, they'd rather just not bother with calculating if the risk/reward is worth it. They see 'there is an element of risk to using this action' and immediately say 'well screw that then I'll just use something else', and that leaves Dissipation in this design quagmire. I wouldn't be surprised if it's the 'least used combat action in the game', even Synastry probably sees more use
I'm of the mind that 'Dissipation, as it stands, kinda sucks/isn't thematic/is a bit clunky, and should be replaced/reworked. But, if the cost of that is a net loss of 'complexity' for SCH, then Dissipation as it stands should remain'. Priority one is to have SCH's 'decision-making' aspect of it's identity shine through. At the moment, that's embodied by the fact that several of its capstone abilities are mutually exclusive. Ideally, I'd like said identity to come from a different place in the kit that is actually built for said decision-making. For example, with what I wrote, the Strategies and their effects on various SCH/Faerie abilities, even I struggle to answer the question 'how many ways can you solve 'protect the team from a raidwide'', there's so many options.
For example, say you need 10% mit, and some Barrier (let's just say that 'any amount' is enough). We have choices for 10% already, with Soil and Expedient. But what about if Protraction is Deployable? Then that becomes an option too. Barriers currently come from Adlo/Succor, or Consolation, but via Defensive, I'd have Indom swap to applying a Barrier, and Excog applying a Barrier on cast. But wait, Excog would also be Deployable. So what to use? We could Expedient and Defensive-Indom. We could go Defensive, Protraction, Excog, Deploy (and spread Protraction, Excog's heal AND the Barrier it applied, all at once). We could use Sacred Soil, and Defensive Fey Blessing. Maybe we don't need to use any Barriers at all, because we were in Defensive and Lily coated the raid in Defensive-Embrace barriers (weak as they are, it might be enough). We could mix and match all of this stuff with each other, creating a lot more combinations than I care to write out
I don't think that 'choosing one option locks you out from any of the others' is necessarily a good idea, at least, not the way that the current SCH does it. I'd prefer it be more logical 'lockouts', like 'Using Protraction-Deploy, then an Adlo, means you can't Deploy the Adlo, because Deploy is on cooldown. But, doing Protraction, Adlo (boosted by Protraction), Deploy, allows you to spread both Protraction and Adlo together'
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