Ideas for Healer Rework.

[Karowolus]

Disclaimer: The purpose is to give both the classes and the game itself a more creative avenue to prevent designs from being overly repetitive. Three things were kept in mind while designing this:

• Stuff has to be fun but easy and straightforward for the game’s AI to follow on Trusts. Were the trust NPCs updated to follow these skills. (Looking at you Goring Blade DoT Gr'aha.)
• Things have to escape the Healer\Shielder faux dichotomy
• The main concept of the classes need to be preserved
• These are ideas. Ideas Ideas. Its not considering systems in the game and it is very much an early kinda thing. Take what's said here with a pinch of Mountain Salt.

These Ideas mainly came from discussion with a friend.

[Karowolus]

White Mage
A straightforward healer whose primary focus is to control the flow of combat.

• Primarily regen healer
• Reactive healing
• Bursty damage

As the game’s only Lv 1 healer, White Mage should have beginner friendly tools. But that doesn’t mean the class should be devoid of all flavour like British Cuisine. It should have straightforward tools that don’t require the biggest of brains to figure out, but slowly build up on it.

Early Conjurer should keep Stone, Aero, Cure, Regen and Medica. However, the first change I’d make would be to turn Cure an instant-cast spell with a relatively high MP cost, but no cast time and reduced recast time. Then, the second change would be to make Cure 2 be a direct upgrade to Cure

• Freecure procs a free cast of a Cure spell when one’s used and that’s it.
• Medica would still remain as a cast spell.
• Presence of Mind remains.
• Aetherial Shift is a dumb button overall but it can stay I guess.
• Presence of Mind and its upgrade with Glare 4 stays.
• Benediction stays.
• Cure 3 should be a direct upgrade to Cure 2. Let’s keep stuff consistent, shall we?

Then come the first few changes. This WHM is made to be primarily a healer that relies on consistent regens and few punctual burst heals. WHM’s job crystal unlocks a passive trait called “Clear Mind” which boosts the passive HP recovery of the party, boosts HP recovery by Regen effects.

• All healers get access to their bubble early on. Asylum is given to WHMs at lv 30. It counts as an unremovable regen buff, and its cooldown is lower than other bubbles for obvious reasons.
• Medica 2 will remain separate from Medica 1, applying a regen.
• Divine Benison will no longer be a shield. It is now a regen on one person. A follow-up skill called Divine Blessing will remove the regen and heal the target for the remaining duration at once.
• Aquaveil takes any regen effects except for Asylum off of a target and converts them into shields. Naturally, this has a long cooldown.
• Tetragrammaton has a cure effect with a regen as well.
• Temperance increases healing magic potency by 20%. But rather than a reduction of damage taken, it restores the party’s MP. It has an effect that says any damaging skill from the WHM will proc an effect similar to Liturgy’s AoE healing. With an internal cooldown of 3s between pulses.
• Divine Caress will work as how Celestial Opposition currently works, applying yet another regen after a strong heal.
• New button: Refocus. It's Synastry.

The Afflatus bar would fill up depending on how much damage would be thrown out overall. As such, access to Afflatus Solace and Rapture would depend on dealing damage. This bar will slowly fill up outside of combat. Access to Afflatus Misery will remain the same, though it now recovers MP on use.

• To prevent overhealing, a secondary bar called the Zealous Gauge would fill up whenever a healing regen “overflows”. As in, whenever you cast a regen and 60% of it is used to heal someone but there’s a remainder, this second gauge would fill up. Idk if the game can detect overhealing. That's the main thing. It would likely have to be done differently than this.
• This gauge would allow uses of:
• Assize
• A single-target damaging spell called Calentune that heals the caster for the amount of damage dealt,
• Hydropic, which removes all regen effects on the party and deals damage based on how many were removed
• and Iscuria, which saps the entire bar to heal the party.

Plenary Indulgence is a buff that says the following healing action cast by the WHM will be applied to the whole party as a follow-up hit called Confession. So Tetra? Confession. Assize? Confession. Calentune? Confession. Thin Air returns to being a duration buff. White Mage gains Banish. Every 5 uses of Glare, Banish and then later Banish II, will proc to deal damage to an enemy. Further charging the Afflatus Gauge. (Think like Mage’s Ballad’s Procs)

Liturgy is removed. In its stead, WHM gains Afflatus Exorcism. A DoT version of Afflatus Misery that consumes a single Afflatus stack. Again, it’s meant to be very easy to play and reward people for dealing damage without being overly wasteful.

[sharknado]

White Mage

• Tetragrammaton has a cure effect with a regen as well.

I would remove one row of random buttons as a start. Then add some cool-looking stuff. For dungeons something for trash packs. For bosses a button to increase self-survivability and/or self-death protection. Next, we would need some skill/reward skills - maybe very short duration dot that if present on boss/mob when he casts a damaging ability the healer get some charges as a reward and can use them on cool abilities - from super heals to stronger attacks (machine gun glare! carpet bombing trash packs). Existing dots could just get canned. Healer damage should go from consistent to bursts through the skill/reward system so healing isn't a direct block for dealing damage.

Cure I should switch to Cure II and no Freecure. Cure III with cleave heal is kind of unique enough to be its own thing. Could have additional shield/DR on stacked players maybe?

[Karowolus]

Astrologian

A complex healer with delayed mechanics and the ability to buff the party. Lowest damage, preparatory-type healing but juggles buffs.

• Does not heal straightforwardly
• LOADS of safety nets though

Astro… oh Astro… We all know this is the most overloaded of healers. And it comes from the fact that HSW’s design shoved so many tools onto their classes it made them jacks of all trades. Astro lost several identities over the years, but one thing made it consistent. Specifically the safety net healing. So why not lean into it?
So, what stays?

• Benefic 2 and Helios remain, as do their Aspected versions.
• Combust and Malefic remain in their boring glory
• Essential Dignity remains in all its scaling stacking glory.
• Gravity remains.
• Earthly Star remains.
• Macrocosmos remains.
• Collective Unconscious remains.

First things first! And the longest of the changes. There is no such thing as a Neutral Sect in Astrology. Sorry to burst that particular bubble. Instead AST gets two stances back, but not as how they worked before.
Diurnal Sect grants the additional effects on Aspected Benefic and Helios applies a barrier as usual.
Nocturnal Sect makes Malefic and Gravity actions give a small shield that’s additive whenever used.

This is reflected in the DRAW button. How so? Well… think of the current draw system. Astral and Umbral, right? BORING. Let’s make it Diurnal Draw and Nocturnal Draw, and until the button is pressed again they take those stances. Celestial Opposition is a party-wide heal in Diurnal with a regen on it or a party-wide heal with a shield in Nocturnal. Exaltation works as normal during Diurnal. It becomes Celestial Intersection in Nocturnal, healing when the barrier breaks. Cards and such we're still discussing....

• Horoscope remains with a twist. It stays, but gives the AST a buff to Helios actions that makes them instant cast OGCDs, turning them into Helios Conjunction. Horoscope Helios is procced off of it. Horoscope overall lasts longer.
• Synastry is removed, as it’s given to WHM. AST rarely used it anyway and WHM has a lot better uses for a Synastry skill than "delayed healer" AST.
• Sun Sign is its own skill.
• Minor Arcana is removed. In its stead, Lord of Crowns becomes a damaging action that applies a DoT on the enemy, and Lady of Crowns is a healing OGCD that applies a regen on the party. Or just remove them.

These are mainly my friend's idea. My thought is that the Diurnal and Nocturnal aspects should be like Black Stance / White Stance from RDM in PVP.
You're by default in Diurnal, and then can use 'Nocturnal' to switch to the other. And Vice-Versa

[Karowolus]

Sage
A healer that combines combat tools with healing tools. Damage and healing feed off of one another.

• Damage is gauged off of offensive skills
• Reverse Macrocosmos
• Has Bloodwhetting. You heard me.

SGE loses its shield healer design. Sorry, that's Scholar's job, stop being "SCH but better", be original for once. Instead it becomes more offensive-focused and derives its heal from there.

• Diagnosis is a simple heal spell. Prognosis is a simple AoE healing spell. Nothing about them changes.
• However, their Eukrasian versions are removed.
• Eukrasia from here on is purely offensive.

First things first, let’s buff Kardia a bit. Every spell you use to deal damage with actually contributes to healing, and Soteria is there to make sure the healing lands.

• Soteria grants +1 Addersgall when cast.
• Since shields no longer exist, Pepsis gets changed. Rather than removing things, it applies Pepsis to the party, and they all share in on Kardia for the next few casts at a reduced potency. (2 or 3 times.)
• Similarly, since there are no shields around, Toxikon becomes a viable movement tool with stacks uncoupled from shields. (Like in PVP)
• A new action called Choler procs Kardia heals based on both the target and the Sage’s GCDs.
• A new action called Sanguis procs damage based on Kardia procs.

Holos retains its shield, but now becomes Shake it Off. Remove that broken-ass button from WAR.
For the rest, SGE remains mostly the same, relying on Addersgall to heal besides proc-ing Kardia.
It does however lose Haima and Panhaima to SCH! Oh don't worry... It's meant to be a Kardia healer. How so?

SGE gains more damaging options to make up for it:

• Kathreptis - What it says on the tin, but less broken. It is a shield, but until it breaks, it reflects damage back to the enemy.
• Pharmakon - Bloodwhetting. I am serious here. And yes it stacks with Choler.
• Panacaea - The above… but party-wide.
• Pentahumor – Continuous laser beam AoE for 10s that deals damage to anything caught inside during the duration, that also pulsates a heal on the party. Would be an initial cast followed by a 10s 'Zone' similar to their PVP LB.
• Philosophia remains as the buff to heals and granting the party Kardia, but rather than it being a 20s button, it’s a toggleable stance. The toggle consumes a bar that is filled up by successive hits of damaging spells. Soteria and Choler are also applied to the party when used during Philosophia.

[Shibi]

[QUOTE=Karowolus;6583169]Sage[Quote]

Channeled casts are not why I play SGE, it's the mobility. The channeled spells would hurt the class as it stands.

It needs to be about the same mobility. What I would like is something complex to get right in a very limited time that has a huge reward. I would also love to convert blue heal charges to red dps charges.

SGE loses its shield healer design. Sorry, that's Scholar's job, stop being "SCH but better", be original for once. Instead it becomes more offensive-focused and derives its heal from there.

No, Keep SGE the shield and amp them up, let the SCH do pure pet healing. That's far more in keeping with their job as a pet class.

[Supersnow845]

SCH has been a heal amp shield healers for 4 times as long as SGE has existed as a class. Why don’t we give SGE an actual identity rather than SCH but worse then give all of SCH’s good ideas to SGE pretending like they were SGE’s from the start

Also OP not sure what your beef against SCH is considering you both put it’s a better shield healer than SCH in SGE’s description and SCH is just a terrible healer in general in SCH’s design, neither of those statements are true

[Karowolus]

SCH has been a heal amp shield healers for 4 times as long as SGE has existed as a class. Why don’t we give SGE an actual identity rather than SCH but worse then give all of SCH’s good ideas to SGE pretending like they were SGE’s from the start

Also OP not sure what your beef against SCH is considering you both put it’s a better shield healer than SCH in SGE’s description and SCH is just a terrible healer in general in SCH’s design, neither of those statements are true

I mean, overall the idea behind changing SGE was to make it have it's own identity with quirky shields with additional effects. Whilst frontloading it's healing to Kardia and the additional sources of Kardia healing.
This rework would make is to that you could play both classes together without stepping on eachother's toes because you accidentally overwrote the other's shields.

It took SE years to fix spell clipping in summons in general. And of the healers. Scholar is the one with the most Jank. Whilst a degree of Jank is OK. The fact that we have skills that don't interact with eachother that should needs to be corrected.

A lot of these ideas are concepts and are pretty much an early version. And are the result of a discussion. I just wanted to share it because I felt it was genuinely a good set of reworks that stuck to the job's lore. I do understand that people are probably going to see the bashing on scholar as 'You don't like Scholar'. As someone who plays scholar as their main healer. Right now? It has a janky feeling that I can't put my finger on and I don't feel like I'm incentivized to use the new tools given to me. The general ideas of each were intended to be:

• WHM: Regens, straightforward healing
• AST: Cool takes on straightforward healing and safety nets
• SGE: Damage-based healing
• SCH: Shield Healing and Rotational healing

I fully welcome criticism of these concepts. And these concepts are all very much having differing ideas tossed about.

[Supersnow845]

I mean, overall the idea behind changing SGE was to make it have it's own identity with quirky shields with additional effects. Whilst frontloading it's healing to Kardia and the additional sources of Kardia healing.
This rework would make is to that you could play both classes together without stepping on eachother's toes because you accidentally overwrote the other's shields.

It took SE years to fix spell clipping in summons in general. And of the healers. Scholar is the one with the most Jank. Whilst a degree of Jank is OK. The fact that we have skills that don't interact with eachother that should needs to be corrected.

A lot of these ideas are concepts and are pretty much an early version. And are the result of a discussion. I just wanted to share it because I felt it was genuinely a good set of reworks that stuck to the job's lore. I do understand that people are probably going to see the bashing on scholar as 'You don't like Scholar'. As someone who plays scholar as their main healer. Right now? It has a janky feeling that I can't put my finger on and I don't feel like I'm incentivized to use the new tools given to me. The general ideas of each were intended to be:

• WHM: Regens, straightforward healing
• AST: Cool takes on straightforward healing and safety nets
• SGE: Damage-based healing
• SCH: Shield Healing and Rotational healing

I fully welcome criticism of these concepts. And these concepts are all very much having differing ideas tossed about.

When you say jank what are you referring to?

Energy drain disincentivising healing?
Skills locking out other skills?
A lack of a cohesive “type” of healing?
Visual choices?

It’s interesting to me because in my opinion SCH’s dyssynergy is a form of synergy. The skills interact specifically because they don’t interact. You can’t just randomly pivot on a whim because you picked the wrong strategy, you need to commit to the healing choices you make and that leads to you planning them better. I think you should be able to freely pivot if you make a healing mistake, it’s an optimisation pathway modern healers sorely lack. Energy drain is an extension of this

Visual design not being cohesive for a while is a totally fair criticism though

[Karowolus]

Channeled casts are not why I play SGE, it's the mobility. The channeled spells would hurt the class as it stands.

It needs to be about the same mobility. What I would like is something complex to get right in a very limited time that has a huge reward. I would also love to convert blue heal charges to red dps charges.



No, Keep SGE the shield and amp them up, let the SCH do pure pet healing. That's far more in keeping with their job as a pet class.

Hi;

I'll adjust the wording, as I think this is a comment on Pentahumour. The 10s Beam would be something akin almost to their PVP LB, where it leaves a residual zone after the initial cast.

A lot of these ideas aren't really my own. They're my friend's who did a majority of putting all of this together. I just kinda sanitized it to see how the Forums reacted. I do think that either job could go the 'Main Shield Healer' route. Just depends on wholly on which job you would put the main strength on. I kinda like the idea of SGE having the quirky shields with different effects. Right now, a lot of the general sentiment among my friend group, and from what I've also seen other players has generally been that tanks have too much in regards to healing capability, again. Non-Healer clear of M4S on week 2...