On the other hand non targeted gap closers allow you to dash literally anywhere without the need to have an actual target there (or cumbersome targeting changes before being able to move). As a rphys player I dont agree that one is superior to the other they just shine in different areas.
Yeah, not having to target someone to move and deal with mechanics is so nice. I only really like targetting when it comes to staying on the offensive with melee tbh
I think the only nice thing about a targeted dash is I have a dash bar beside the player list and I can just click and fly to that person without thinking or finding them. I do wish I could just dash sometimes though
@@Cyrikyty Smudge being a 15y dash on a 20s CD *and* giving you Sprint is obscenely good, it's insane! I think there's a lot of room for improvement with other classes to bring them up to par with PCT, it's so good. Off the top of my head, I don't see much need to fiddle with the 'gap closer' ones that MNK/VPR/SAM/Tanks get (I know DRK and GNB are mad about losing the potency, but that's not what I'm looking at here); they're all 30s dashes that get them back into range. Maybe the Tanks could get their dash to also let them zip to an ally, especially PLD for Cover? Not a massive deal either way IMO. For Aiming, DNC's is a short dash (10y) on a 30s CD, but they get to bank up to 3 charges, so I'm cool with it. I reckon MCH should get some kind of rocket-propelled heelies that work identically to En Avant, and BRD should just get extra charges of Repelling Shot to bring it up to 3 too; it's backwards, but you can work with that. In terms of Maimimng, RPR's got a forward, back, and return, all on a shared 20s CD. Very very good, love it! DRG's a frustrating one, though. Elusive Jump is great, and they have natural gap-closers on Dragonfire and Stardiver, but then their new movement skill is a 60s CD, has 2 charges, and *isn't a jump?* Not only is it a weird balancing decision, it's a weird aesthetic decision too. I say chuck that out and give them a forward equivalent of Elusive Jump that shares a cooldown, then a skill that bounces them back to their starting position, and reduce the CD to 20s. They'd then have an identical suite to RPR, plus their damaging jumps. And then there's Healers and Casters, which are in a weird spot. Smudge is incredible, as are RDM's dashes, meanwhile BLM and SMN's are clunky. I guess you could call it a day by giving SMN a skill that dashes them to an ally akin to Aetherial Manipulation; have them grow Bahamut or Phoenix wings and leap over with them or something. Healers are the weirdest by far. WHM's just got a dash that's equivalent to Smudge on PCT... Except it's got a CD that's triple the length, and it has no secondary effect? And SGE has Icarus on a 45s CD that dashes them like a MNK or VPR. I think you can work with this, though. Reduce the CD on WHM's dash to 20s, or 30s if you give it charges. Then give AST an equivalent - have them melt into starlight or something, I dunno. For SCH, I've been saying for years they should have a 'Castling' skill that swaps their place with the fairy, which would essentially be Shukuchi with extra steps, but even just an equivalent to Icarus would be *something.* And with that I believe the only class I haven't touched on is NIN. Shukuchi's unique and awkward but cool, and they also got a dash on their Raiju charges, so... Sure. Doesn't really need changing, I don't think. This set of changes would give most roles a kind of unified form of movement, with some variety but overall at least everyone would be on roughly the same playing field; no "Man, AST feels like shit because they don't have any mobility" or MCH just feeling left out of the party alongside their equivalents.
As a WHM main, I have never been more happy. The only issue remaining is the levelling and synced-down experience. I completed both level 70 ultimates during Shadowbringers and Endwalker... And it's hell. Slightly less so now though, because of the dash we got. And I'll counter your argument about targeted gapclosers being better by pointing out: Targeted gapclosers rely on the targets' position, while straight dashes of a fixed length rely on the player's aim with that dash. I would have taken either (and I love using other people as my legs as BLM), but there's no denying that, when there is no target in the place you need to be, the dash is better. You just gotta move less (so you can cast!) and get used to the distance. I did the exact same jump you did in Valigarmanda just standing in the center of the arena, except I was closer to the place I needed to be.
I just did a slew of roulettes on WHM, and god lord are they godawful at lower levels. Anything under about 52-60 (when you get, respectively, Solace and Tetra) is functionally unplayable, imo, but 76 for Rapture is WAY too late. Why do so many jobs get literally core kit abilities soooooo freakin' late? Sage at like _45_ (ok, 46 for Dyskrasia, because why give people AoEs until literally the _end_ of ARR content?) plays better than a WHM at _70._
@@KaedysKor Yes, this is the main issue. Dungeons is fine if you have Solace, but lacking Rapture at level 70 is criminal. They finally adjusted Black Mage's levelling experience but White Mage is just sitting there eating glue until level 76 and it's downright criminal that SE doesn't seem to give a damn.
I rarely heard people mention this, but for whm, the new glare 4 is mana free, which (while small) is free 1200 mana every 2 mins. In comparison, Assize can be used 3 times within each 2 minutes, and that is 1500 mana, so it's significant enough. It's not a major point, but it's important during prog where you might use slightly more resses and/or more gcd heals.
I am actually more disappointed in Sage than any others. It is extremely fun, but I wish they had doubled down and pushed further on the DPS-healing aspect since the release of the job.
The only way they can add more dps options for sage is to reduce their potency across the board. Sage is the most flexible healer already with higher dps. They out perform both sch and whm on dmg, they have better mit options and deployment of them than sch, and enough raw healing to rival whm. To ask for more dps options on sage is to trivialize all other healers. The entire role needs a rework from the ground up.
Talking about how well fight design is in DT to how healing functions, I was genuinely surprised how well raidwide hits from bosses lined up with the Solar Bahamut summons, allowing a very effective use of the Refulgent Lux heal. Although I still miss having access to phoenix more often, and its strong single target heal, Solar Bahamut has saved my group in clutch situations far more often then I had expected it would.
I'm happy with the non-targeted dash on WHM, sure you could get more uptime, or have a bit more precision with a targeted one, it does also rely on others' positioning. And I feel very comfortable with my precision with it, it just requires a bit more time to get used to the distance. When you get that, I much prefer the freedom to dash to where I need to go. And I use it very freely to just get to position earlier to be out of the way of teammates. For example in EX1 where you need to spread the lightning/ice in the thunder phase, I can dash away so whoever does not have a dash, doesn't need to move too many spaces, while I'm already comfortably in mine. I wouldn't be able to do that if I had to target a teammate. Not saying non-targeted is directly better, just that both very much have their own merit! And I appreciate both of them! I'm just happy that as a WHM I get movement!
I really enjoyed this video. My two main takeaways are as follows: 1. I 100% agree with you on healing on SGE for the first EX. SGE feels perfect for the constant tiny bits of damage everyone is taking throughout the fight, and it felt really good to be able to balance significant movement with solid DPS and consistent healing throughout the encounter. Way more fun on healer than on tank, although the Mountain Fire tank buster is one of the most fun tank buster mechanics I've done in a while. 2. This video convinced me to give AST another try. I got it to 90 in EW and wasn't too impressed, finding myself having way more fun with the tight design of SGE's kit. But from what you've said, I really think I would enjoy it if I go back to it and give it another shot. Cheers!
yeah, astro is pog af now. It's cracked at 100, only thing I think is a bit scuffed is getting double dmg cards into burst, it requires some finessing. But they said they were gonna do something about that, so I'm not worried
@@BlackBl00dbrother In terms of overall contributed raid damage, far and away, yes. But that's entirely due to the dmg buffs it hands out during 2 min burst, so it's incredibly important to not drift out of alignment. It's healing is very strong when you need it, but it's not as straightforward as maybe sge or whm. That being said, once you get the hang of ast, it's incredibly powerful with a ton of tools to keep the party healthy
This is nothing new, but sages mobility alone is a huge pro for the job for me at least. It’s a little understated how useful it is in later content to basically never need to stand still to heal and damage.
I have my PFs set up for whatever healer you want, double SCH? sure, Double AST? has happened, you can kill this easily with pretty much anything really (99 kills never saw the mount drop)
As a SGE who likes to double shield heal I usually found it falling flat in PF when my SCH buddy literally never uses Sacred Soil for a 100 potency DPS gain. Otherwise Kera + Soil stacking is broken as fuck.
Agreed with everything, especially the new actions. It feels like they were added with the utmost caution, as if to try and avoid angering a certain portion of the playerbase. The changes to healer damage kits don't need to be massive, they can be as simple as, say for WHM, 'reduce Dia duration to 12s, and add Water/Banish as a 15s CD'. Those two changes alone would take our Glares per 2min from 33 down to 19. Adding back some damage actions to each healer would also serve to differentiate their gameplay from one another much more heavily. Where all four healers feel 'the same' to some due to their identical cadence of 'DOT every 30s, spam filler otherwise'... We could have eg: WHM bursty, with a focus on damage refunding healing actions and multiple systems to support that (ala Misery), SCH being DOT focused (though I'd also add tactical Stance-Dancing with VERY small bonuses for doing so), AST could be the healer for players who don't like dealing damage, and instead contributes its 'damage' via buffing allies a lot more often than any other healer with its cards, and SGE could be molded into the 'damage>healing' healer it was pitched as, by having several actions 'augment' Kardia in various ways, eg changing the heal to a shield, making it AOE, etc. And if it were up to me, I'd give SGE a 'fast burst mode' like Hypercharge or Enshroud which would synergise with Kardia (because more hits faster = more Kardia procs) I wish I worked at SE so I could do more than just post 'here's how I think we fix it' on the forums. I could talk Yoshi-P to death with how much I've written on the forums on the topic
Maining Astro this expansion, love it! The new cards take a bit of stress off weaves, but my favorite thing about it is how many mitigations I have on top of my pure heals, this will be amazing for my new static since my friend is new to both healer and scholar. Sun Sign is amazing and Oracle is so satisfying to use, finally seeing that big number on Astro! I do agree though that drifting the cards is very awful for burst windows, especially when you only have one stack of Lightspeed. I think giving us 2 charges and reducing the cooldown for astral and umbral draw a little bit will help out a lot. We'll have to see in 7.01. As for Scholar, it still plays the same, meaning I love it as well, especially with it's new ULTIMATE panic button in Seraphism, what an amazing skill...unless you're under Dissipation, which is still my least favorite of its skills, since it takes away half your kit for 30 seconds. I try to always have those skills up before pressing it, but sometimes things go south and you click it on reflex to quickly pump a heal. I was never a fan of using the skill just to mash Energy Drain. Astro's opener where you juggle both buffs/cards and your own ogcds in between your Malefic feels cooler to perform. Overall I still love scholar and its new skill, but I do secretly hope Dissipation will die in a ditch one day... I haven't had time to level the other two to 100. Sage was my main in Endwalker and like Astro, I loved the ability to both mitigate and pure heal since I like being versatile, either because my cohealer needs support, or because pf gave me trust issues :D. I like the AOE dot and Philosophia sounds like a good skill, but I prefer the other 100 level skills. Not much I can say until I try it out in Savage. As for White Mage, cool little dash and I'm really glad it finally got another mitigation skill off Temperance, it really needed it. Again though, I'll have to test it out in Savage to judge it fully. After clearing both extremes, done on both Astro and Scholar, Valigarmanda is one of my favorite fights in the whole game, so much damage dealt that it's very satisfying to both mitigate and top off the party. What an incredible fight! Zoraal Ja...weeeeell, a lot less damage and I was able to solo heal party stacks both on Astro and Scholar, due to demise befalling my cohealers. The fight itself is creative in its mechanics but I wish there was more damage dealt to make me use my kit more. I'm very excited for Savage, I hope they hit very hard and we're forced to gcd heal!
As an Astro main (for those what didn’t play Astro BEFORE shadowbringers) it as close to HW and STB as it’s guanna get (again for those that didn’t play I will explain) back in hw and STB we had the royal road style, on Astro so we could use cards and burn then to buff ponetcy buff the defence we also had AOE dps card and we also had mp and (yes tp if u know u know what that was xd) I do kinda wish we had that style back because it’s what drew some people to this class. In short DT Astro is close to old Astro as I am gunna get and I am happy about this
Comfort picks are usually better then 'meta' since you get more consistent results on a job/class you are more comfortable with. That being said, AST, and SGE are still personal favorites with SCH and WHM not far behind.
Always been a SCH main, and I absolutely love it. HOWEVER. Please Squeenix. Please. Do something about Dissipation 😂 It just feels so bad. I feel punished for wanting that extra ED dps. I feel like something that would consume fairy gauge to restore Aetherflow would work well. That gauge isn't used enough. Anyway. Love me some SCH
I think my biggest disappointment in healer design is how ogcd heavy they all really are. Too often the answer to a mechanic winds up being "weave in this heal/mit between your dps cast" Pushing to dps is great, but it feels like we're at the point where any time you have to use a gcd heal it feels bad even doing so.
Exactly this. I much prefer WoWs healing philosophy, which is essentially the opposite; spend your time healing and if you're effective you can free up a little time to use meaningful dps cds.
Spot-on. Scholar feels like a regen healer with a huge anti-nuke shield every minute or so, the passive regen we provide has become so ridiculous and phased out our Galvanize so severely that they had to give us a 20-second regen that also boosts our GCDs... and I still end it early with Dissipate after the first Emergency Tactics & following Galvanize. There is hardly a reason to use Seraph's heals or take Eos into account when anything that hits you without 100% HP will instantly end you like a turkey on Thanksgiving.
@@Draco-9158 Which doesn't even really hurt WHM's overall DPS since some of those GCDs fuel blood lily which makes up for the glares you didn't cast. Although I'm not sure about why lvl 100 WHM blood lily is only damage neutral.
We've been at this point since SHB and this is the healing design SE is going for since then as well and that is most likely not going to change any time soon. In the vast majority of fights, in a non prog setting, using gcd heals is just un-optimised. Saying that a mechanic is often resolved by "weave in this heal/mit between your dps cast" is an over-simplification in my opinion, since the trick is to figure out how can you place your oGCDs to never have to use a GCD.
Brilliant video hitting all the right notes. I'm a Sage main in a CONSTANT love/hate relationship with Scholar because of all the insane self-lockouts the job does on its own kit that make it feel so archaic, but the recitation change alone made me squint at it and realize it just hands down is too powerful to ignore. It feels *so* good to just negate mechanics with insane shields and keep going, but between the number of times I say "why does it do that??" when fairy skills just aren't available (WHY DOES SERAPH LOCK OUT BLESSING??) and Energy Drain STILL existing to ideally make a fair Aetherflow tradeoff for triage or raw damage (and unfortunately just ends up nerfing the IQ of most lazy SCH players) I can't justify it. It's something I feel like I have to full commit to in order to not get angry with how at odds it feels with itself. Sage has felt clean since its inception and what it got in DT feels underwhelming because it's hard to pin down what it "needed." Soteria to 60 instead of Zoe is criminal and Recitation getting away with it will never be forgiven, but the Physis change is a nothingburger and the AoE dot stacking getting shot is all just.. disappointing? Guess it's weird because I wasn't looking forward to much new stuff on the newest job, but still feels like it got the short end of the stick, lol. Philosophia feels good when it shines but is in a weird spot, but again it's one of those "what does a capstone SGE button even actually look like?" and I guess it's this. You can hit a FAT Zoe-Pneuma under it so that's awesome, but overall it's.. okay. Polishing a diamond just gives you a diamond, right? Awesome analysis and glad to see AST thriving after all the negativity. Simple changes to simple WHM made its MP economy feel MILES better too, so I even love that.
As someone who has only done a few ARR and HW extremes and is otherwise very casual, the talk in this video makes the hot air in my head very intimidated Still, its good that healers all around are doing good at all levels of content. Though I'm reminded once again that I'm probably a much worse Sch than even I think, which is oof
glare 4 in dungeons is so nice. The pull after first boss you can usually misery, presenace of mind, holy spam for PoM then glare four and out DPS the DPS :D
loved the video rinon and wish you best of luck with prog in the upcoming tier. i do have to agree with others that have said that, situationally, untargeted gapclosers can be superior and vice versa but either way i am happy to see more of this arriving in the healer role
The undocumented and ever increasing anti-synergies in the SCH design baffle me. Especially this expansion where they shoehorned one in even when it wasn't necessary.
@jaesaces yeah, stuff like that has made me unsure of whether I wanna keep playing it. I love my chunky shields, but Scholar feels like a mixed bag of stuff that doesn't want to work together at times, and it's kinda annoying. It's sad because I played Scholar all the way up to The Mid point of Shadowbringers before swapping to Astrologian
I'm having trouble understanding the issue with Eukrasian Dyskrasia. It's a net gain in terms of damage on trash packs even when you take into account the lower potency vs the single target one, because it's just one cast. Instead of wasting your time trying to get the single target dot on multiple enemies, you do it once and fit in more Dyskrasias. Any half decent tank is doing wall to walls, and that's more than enough time to get the aoe dot on the first group while running and spamming Dyskrasia II on your way to the wall. I'd much rather that than deal with having to waste my target swapping.
I kinda like Scholar’s jenk. Needing to plan around the skills that can’t be used together (dissipation, seraphism, seraph, and the fairy actions) translates the job fantasy into mechanics, being rewarded for strategic use while being punished for failing to plan them correctly. Recitation is my favorite skill in the game because it plays very nice with protraction, illumination, and even RDM’s Barrier.
On SCH: I hate Dissipation. I've ALWAYS hated Dissipation. It's not a numbers argument. I hate the IDEA of the ability AND what it does, and I've hated it from when it was first added to the game and you had to manually resummon Eos. I literally did not have the button on my bars for all of SB and all of ShB. I only put it on my bar late in EW, and "on" very loosely - I made a macro that casts Fey illumination and if I use it again, Dissipation. It is my button I push if I have literally NO OTHER BUTTONS to press. Otherwise I do not press it. I will never parse well on SCH, I literally DO. NOT. CARE. I don't run any add-ons or parsers and I HATE Dissipation so much, I could not at all care about that in any way. If I could nuke/delete any ability from the game, that's the ability I would remove. Conversely, I love the absolute hell out of Seraphism.
Your description of Scholar is perfect [Stormblood Scholar, how I miss you so...words cannot describe how much I miss Bane amongst other things from SB] and exactly why it's essentially the only healer I like to play. When you don't know the content and you're not the most in tune with the class's toolkit, it feels clunky and ineffective, but once you understand some of the content and you truly understand SCH's tools, it's the MOST rewarding part of playing the class. Being able to master the unique toolkit and heal in ways that are pretty unique compared to other classes knowing that you make mistakes with your choices and things are over [Admittedly this is nowhere near as bad as it was in Stormblood/Heavensward due to the general abundance of options SCH has these days] is so unbelievable satisfying. Compare that to WHM especially, where I feel like I could go into Savage and perform as well on WHM as my SCH by essentially rolling my face on the keyboard because every button is unbelievably efficient at just filling life bars up and it's just not the same. AST is the only other healer that properly interests me as the card system is another form of unique optimisation, but unfortunately for me, I will always be comparing it to Stormblood's card system...and I know which one I prefer. RIP Spread...And as a BLM main...RIP enhanced arrow :c
I have leveled ast from 44 to 60 since dt came out and the card rework is realy nice in that level of content i feel. Especially the shield, damage reduction and the free oGCD regen one. These cards replaces a lot of proactive healing and mana management. Usually just slapping on a regen every now and then and using cards is enough. And the one oGCD healing spell you have in that level range as a panic button
AST feels weird because with the new cards, I find I’m ignoring the non-damage ones often to keep the CDs lined up with Divination so that I can get 2 DPS cards off during that window. If there was a way to “store” a card for later use I can see that being useful but might turn off people who don’t have that play style of trying to line up draws with your 2 min CD. Also MP on AST feels weird tying it to playing cards rather than draw itself maybe a solution? SCH for me felt meh until 100, I can see Seraphism being nerfed, shielding someone for 110% of their HP feels nuts, along with just its raw HPS and general SCH utility. I feel the devs were scared to add to button bloat of healers being extremely careful with the new dps buttons (3 of the 4 are linked to a 2 min CD). Personally for WHM Glare 4 maybe should have been on a seperate 3 charge system? I’m waiting until Presence of Mind is over before I start casting it just because I don’t want to cast anything but glare during it. AST makes sense because why would I cast oracle outside that 2 min window in niche situations. Psyche with SGE feels good being an Ogcd dps button but only healing with Philosophia on the party feels lacklustre I guess? I love healing but having some more agency over our dps would feel nice but I do understand that for balance purposes the way it is now makes it easier from a balance perspective at the cost of fun for a lot of healer mains. If there was too much dps variation between healer kits it could be a nightmare to balance with certain groups only taking x healer because it does 5% more damage than y healer.
As a casual player who's not up to current content, I'm enjoying Astro much more than before. Maybe I'll get bored of the new cards later once I figure them out more, but I really enjoy having to actually think about where I'm throwing my cards and on who. I would definitely enjoy them being a little more potent and interesting but they're really onto something. And I'm shockingly happy that Astrodyne is gone. Not having to overlap Astrodyne and Divination to maximize my output makes things so much less tedious. I joined a group to attempt Nael for a few weeks a while back and trying to maximize that window was so frustrating, I was never sure if I should use them together or not. It's been just barely enough to keep me playing through my frustrations with the current state of the game, especially once I decided to stop playing this game like an MMO and start playing it like the singleplayer RPG with multiplayer elements it is.
Personally, I like the card system and just having a lot more tools available for different situations. I just hope for the card effects to be more interesting then just basic mitigation effects in 8.0. Aside from that I've been enjoying the AST so far.
been a casual astro since SHB i find these cards are causing me to think less as it really only a system where utility cards go to tanks and damage cards go to the respective dps, but i am glad astrodyne is gone that was not a fun button to use.
I think that giving more DPS options and ability to express healer skill through more interesting damage rotations is absolutely necessary. I would be warry though about requiring healers to perform better in certain kinds of content. I think for extremes and up it's fine, but to rely on and calculate boss health below that on optimal healer damage would require significantly increased both health or some kind of enrage mechanic or both in content below extreme for it to be meaningful. The problem you'll start to run into is that lower tier skill of healer who doesn't DPS well and if everyone else is going as hard as possible but if the healer is dead weight and you couldn't clear say, a dungeon roulette from it, I think that would be a problem. Mostly, I think this is an issue because a lot of those players when the issue is insufficient damage will not look into what they could be doing better to deal damage, but will look at others and say "well you should just deal more damage, I'm the healer and I'm healing so I don't see the problem". I do think this is a thing that will always hold healers back at a certain level of content. I don't think healing dungeons will ever not be a little brain dead if you aren't sitting on the literal skill floor.
Me and my friends just started FF14 and I wanted to play as the healer, i skipped conjour though and went for Scholar. I really wanna go for Astro cause i just think the whole card magician theme is cool, i just hope i can learn and understand how to play them at higher levels
As someone who picked up sage recently and grinded to 90, i feel like it was the hardest job to level up in PVE as it has the less margin of errors for emergency healing. When you don't have your main kit, it's often quite hard to keep up with the tank if it doesn't know what it's doing. Despite doing everything good to the tea, i often found myself trying to save the tank from a sliver of health. I often felt under-powered.I really want to love the job, i love how it looks, but gosh darn is the skill ceiling hard. I feel it's the healing class that depends the most on skills from the other players.
Always love healer discussion. My current plans are to level AST and SCH. I bounced off of SGE in Endwalker and don't have much interest in WHM. Just have a few comments after watching the video. -I agree that some of the non-damaging AST cards could have more unique effects. I thought they might roll some of their current healing kit into the cards like Horoscope and Earthly Star. I'm not missing the RNG aspect. I actually though you'd draw all six at once and cycle through them. But getting three at a time and being able to play them as you please works too. Though it's interesting they gave us three separate play buttons and didn't have say our GCDs turn into Play buttons (Say Combust turns into Play 1, Benefic into Play 2 and Helios into Play 3 for example). Though I wonder if they'll add any other functionality to those Play buttons. -I'm open to more DPS buttons or options to do damage as a healer. I just ask that people are open to different approached to doing damage. For SCH at least, damage talk always revolves around DOT management and regaining old skills. I'm worried that even if they ever provide healers with more DPS tools that aren't the exact tools people want, they'll still reject it.
Unless you’re doing savage content AND EVEN THEN the meta doesn’t matter. Everything can be done with everything. To me it’s more a question, do you prefer healing or shielding ? Do you rather dps a bit ? Or buff ? These questions will answer who’s the best for you.
At this point, I'm not exactly sure how they're supposed to make the leveling experience more fulfilling without just adding bloat, especially for healers. Sure, getting an Addle upgrade at 98 might feel "cursed", as are simple trait upgrades and such, but what are they supposed to do? Just not give you anything at that level instead? Or add even MORE buttons to the already-packed hotbars? And even discounting UI problems, it's good to ask "what even is there to add?" Every job in Dawntrail got at least 1, 2, or even 3 new conceptual things added to their kits. That's not a lot, but it must be accepted that without huge reworks, most jobs in the game are pretty feature complete at this point in the game's lifespan. The only thing that has been added to most jobs since Stormblood have been garnish, aside from some obvious exceptions like Astro and Monk's constant reworks and WHM lilies becoming actually somewhat interesting. Take MCH, for example. It got two new buttons and two upgrades significant enough to be "new" (Gauss Round upgrades from a ST-only button to a copy of an upgraded Ricochet, meant to make using it in packs feel better; and we got a second charge of Bio/Drill). It got off pretty well, all things considered. But really, what else does it need in terms of "new" things at this point? The job plays pretty seamlessly and has done so since like level 80. I can think of things I might like it to have, but all of them would pretty much require mini-reworks or changes to foundational parts of the job at this point, not just leveling additions. There are plenty of jobs that have more room for improvement than MCH, of course, such as healers being desperately in need of more interesting damage core for when fights are learned, but at this point I think it's pretty obvious that leveling as a concept in FFXIV is pretty run-dry in terms of what it gains us as players - at least for how the jobs are currently iterated. I'm pretty sure most jobs being "feature-complete" is part of why Yoshida mentioned that they're trying to look for ways other than leveling as progression points from now on.
As a former main healer (I too miss SB's SCH) who switched after being disappointed with the excessive dumbification of our DPS rotation and simplifaction of actual healing, I've come to wonder after watching your video, what if SE changes the focus of mechanic punishments away from vuln stacks from changing how much damage you take, to being closer to death stacks that simply kill when you reach a certain number, and raids just focusing all damage to being mechanics that healers are dedicated to dealing with? By separating the responsibilities, it'll no longer be about healers fixing others mistakes, but instead about having dedicated mechanics that allow raids (hell, all encounters) to separate responsibilities and make healing not about how to avoid using GCDs?
I love savage prog for healer because it provides a great middle ground where you can usually find use for all of your abilities and if someone gets hit its still pretty recoverable and all you have to do is just adjust on the fly. Lower end content + extremes feel like I have too much healing or mit than I realistically need to use and high end content like ultimates usually becomes so optimized that there's not a lot of room for freedom with the role. I want more room for scuffed runs to succeed, scuffed hard content is what i live for as a healer, like when you end up the last party member alive and you manage to pop a clutch healer lb3 right before an auto attack kills you and you clear the raid, that's the dopamine i want more often as a healer.
Loved this! Awesome stuff put together! Only thing I couldn’t help but notice towards the end is how you pronounced Kerachole. It’s not a big deal but you pronounced it like Kera-Chowl (like bowl) when it’s pronounced Kera-cauli (like cauliflower)
as SCH main, i have sort of internalised the jank kit as part of the strategy. it doesnt synergise with itself so you need to plan which set of abilities works better at any given time. do you want a fairy heal phase where your partner does the heavy lifting as you spam Broil? is the healing a bit more urgent so you eat the fairy to pump your own healing while forgoing fairy buffs? or is it an "OH SHIT" situation where you need to become a literal angel of salvation to get em through it? granted with a party who knows what they are doing, usually you only ever need the fairy or seraphism stages. but for general dungeons with possible first timers and the like, having a non-synergising kit adds to the fun of when to use what where. and, lets all be honest, if Scholar's kit gets a rework where all the jank is ironed out and makes it simpler. ie, if dissipation boosts our healing by even just 20% without removing our fairy, SCH would probably become far too powerful. maybe make it so dissipation has the healing boost while also converting our shields into pure health? would be nice for those "you are now 1hp. heal the party to full fckers" things that happen sometimes.
I’m in minority here cause I actually am thankful they removed stacking dots as someone who wants more Dps buttons on healer, because it’s ONE additional damage gcd you’re mindlessly pressing every 30 seconds on top of your normal dot, and now the downside is you have to double dot every enemy in a pull in dungeons. Instead of 2 dots, I’d much prefer if they went the picto route where you pop a 15-30 sec cooldown that gives you 3 charges of a 2 sec channel time high potency attack. That doesn’t affect dungeon play, gives us more buttons to play with, and is something you have to think about because you can’t weave during that time without using phlegma or toxicon while also giving you a boost to kardia healing which would synergize with soteria. Idk, stacking dots just doesn’t seem fun to me
Quick question; how the hell do you play AST on controller now? I feel the macros I had for EW won't work even if I adjust it for the new draw and play skills
@@cagemerchant219 agree. Admittedly, I have had to start making use of both options for the crossbars so have access to 3 different bars, but for the most part, it's pretty simple to just keep the not often used tools on that third bar and keeping the important stuff on my main bar. I do think we are reaching the point where controller players are gonna struggle if they keep adding new stuff instead of upgrading pre-existing spells
As a controller player I am both sad they didn’t add more than 2 spells for my main but happy there isn’t more buttons to press 😅 (That third bar is for emotes and mounts, don’t make me change it) Helpful note to those who read this, if you didn’t know you can enable somehow in the settings that holding L2 then R2 can pull up a different hotbar than holding R2 then L2 ✌️💜
I feel like ASTs new card system could work, but some of the effects should be party wide. Maybe smaller mitigations or barriers on everyone. Or perhaps have a more impactful card like one that restores 20% MP to the target party member (using it on self could even be the most optimal play). If they are determined to keep it away from the pure damage boosting playstyle and go all in with variety, they should make the cards more usable. It's nice that Arrow can synergize well with Adlo at least.
I love whm so much. I feel so good about contributing to damage windows now. It's not so much more, but it feels better. And being able to shield and then regen with one button is nice
i like the new cards for astro, it might now be the best for savage and such, but it feels fantastic to use these cards in wall to walls during dailies, it's made wall to walls that i'd struggle with feel like child's play
I feel like the Astro cards changes were made, not to really serve “making the Job more interesting” as it was to make it so you didn’t have to weave as much. That’s a complaint a lot of people had, and not needing to do 4 draws for 4 cards frees up some oGCD slots for sure.
I think the issue is that the changes that were made didn't really effectively fulfil that role, and they also made the job less interesting as a byproduct. You are still pseudo-forced to use Lightspeed within your 2 minutes because you still need to div > card > lord > draw > card in quick succession to avoid loss, so the overall reduction is there somewhat, that's true, but it doesn't change the feel of that window whatsoever or the resources you need to expend to execute it, just shortens how long that feeling lasts. Then, as a byproduct the other 2/3 of the card system feels like a bolt-on that can essentially be ignored in most content. I think there are definitely a lot of better solutions that could be pursued
the thing i noticed is how spoiled many healers are greeding for dps not healing ppl that made a mistake who could be easily saved i see this so often in farm groups where ppl expect everyone to be flawless yet they don't seem to know how to press a heal when someone messes up ive had loads of fun in ex 2 with messy runs as healer
These are the same people that are bored. They have decided that "outside of week one progression" mistakes can be assumed to not happen and they don't even pay attention to party status. Sometimes, this is covered by their co-healer (people like me who still find healing fun because we are not assuming no mistakes and are always ready for unplanned damage), if you get two bored healers then people die.
@@HSExsiccator So then healers that want to have fun should actively seek out parties where people make mistakes often and need more attention? What if you're unlucky and find yourself in a good static/party with people that don't need exciting spot healing?
Naaa see the problem here (as a healer) is that if you are spending that time healing people accidentally standing in stuff (specially in ex or savage) instead of dpsing at that time you’re going to hear about your dps being down…. As a healer lol. I love FFXIV, played it from 1.0 launch and it’s the only mmo I’ve played in the last 25 years where groups complain or almost depend on healers dpsing.
@@motomortus4009 i mean ofc you should be doing the mechs right but thats no excuse for not healing you are playing the wrong class if you don't wanna heal
Sage : My two dots don't stack... QQ Scholar : Hey sage. Guess what ? Sage : What !?! I'm crying, can't you see ? Scholar : My two dots stacks. :P Sage : Stop it !!! It hurts !!! My sweet and Amazing ego !!! Scholar : Check this thick shield. I can spread it to nearby party member. Can you make one as big as mine ? Sage : WAHHHH !!! At least, I got Philosophia now. Scholar : Check, I got wings now. I can heal like crazy now. While moving. Sage : NOOOO !!! At least, I got my my Icarus! Scholar : Hey, look I make the whole group run faster and we dodged an huge AOE that we would have died to. We also got 10 % mit on that. Sage : (Proceed to jump off the arena) Scholar : (Look at the Gunbreaker) Told ya we should have brought an Astro.
I'm a WAR/MCH main but I do heal casually. That being said playing AST and then going to SCH feels like I'm sitting at a desk that constantly wobbles. I'll admit that the kit does feel like you have mix other spells together to get the most out of it rather than just cast stuff at face value which is cool but I always feel like I just don't have enough resources compared to other healers. Perhaps I'm just not playing the job right but it would be great if the faerie abilities reset when you summoned seraph or if SE actually used the faerie gauge for something more than just aetherpact.
Depends on the player, their interpretation of how the skills/spells are used and the friends/Free Company they are part of ( some are far more supportive than others). I have seen long time WHM/SCH/ASTRO that are useless. ( sage is still relatively new) I feel someone who is a level 95+ healer in the game since before 2020 should know what Esuna is used for. i have also seen people who have played the same jobs as above be phenomenal after playing a few months. I have played all 4, i prefer Sage as the need to DPS is built into the healing process.
Having played solely and sage, been wanting to look more into scholar. But playing it feels so clunky and like I'm always playing it wrong. It's a really odd job to try to learn
I like the concept, in practice its just dumb, the cooldown is horrid, but i do like the barrier card, and the 10% increased healing card. Too many of the cards just dont get used, or arent available when you truly need them.
@@devxved it'll be used Alot more when savage comes out, especially when the ultimate comes out. When has always been the weakest when it came to mitigation and that hasn't changed
It stil feels a bit weird to me that they wouldn't let Recitation crit with Seraphism, I mean it's a 20% increase to healing just like dissipation right? I really love how the job feels but this one thing just feels a bit off. Maybe there's some reason to it outside of squeenix wanting to separate skills more?
I'm just saying, having a group specific dot, and a single target specific dot will help someone like me. Because I'm hitting the toggle button so often before attacking with the dot it forces a habit that interupts my flow for everything else, because now that 1 2 is just instinctual, even when I'm trying to put a shield on tank mid pull because for the last 15-30 seconds all I've been doing is 1, 2, tab, 1, 2, tab as we run. I'd rather the group stop, I hit an aoe dot, and then focus on the tank between my aoe attacks
Whilst I agree that the targeted gap closers are in many ways better than the non-target ones, I think your comparison to Dancer's En Avant is a bit weak. Dancer is a PhysRange job with no limitations on their freedom to move around the arena whilst attacking. They have no hardcast abilities, so in the case of bosses like Valigarmanda the simple dash just complements their freedom of movement all the better.
I'm so glad to see a group doing MRRM on Vali. RMMR has been a goddamned blight on party finder for this fight. It's worse for healing and it's worse for movement for both healers and casters. There's no good reason to use it.
if stacking cards had fun combo perks, I probably would be enjoying AST more. Thank you so much for putting this up. But yeah, overall the cards do not feel rewarding in the slightest with 4 out of 6 cards are essentially HP cards. Don't know why people are so excited of this rework when the base kit was already really strong.
I leveled astro to 100 as my first healer and although I love how it plays... it's the only one I'm not comfortable yet to go do high-end content, the 2 minutes feels way too packed with everything needing to be aligned there and even with the lightspeed addition i'm not sure how good it'll feel everything else about it feels awesome tho!
I have to say I don’t like the ast changes. I loved drawing my random cards and having my 33% neuron activation in my brain when I got the 3 signs off. With the new one it is more consistent sure. But as an gambling addict is it not the same anymore. 😔
I was a scholar main until one of the wall to wall pulls of the Twinning at launch, I failed it twice and never touched scholar again. Not a comment on scholar’s effectiveness, it’s just a funny anecdote and also my trauma. Astro somehow I do far better as. And aside from losing 2 dps cards every two minutes, I think I prefer the new cards. Not a fan of switching between melee and ranged cards, making one half less useful in dungeons occasionally, but otherwise, okay/10. I still prefer Stormblood, having crit, attack speed, and damage along with three support cards and sleeve draw felt like a better and more fun balance between damage spam of Shadow/End and the new system. I do like your suggestions a lot, too.
Completely disagree with non-targeted dashes being worse than targeted. It's a dash that doesnt depend on any conditions like teammates positioning. Both types have their strenghts and weaknesses but i would say non-targeted is more versatile.
I agree too, but this is kind of a skill/bias situation. It would be neat if they made it a hybrid where if you have someone targeted it dashes to them or in their direction or en-avants if no one is targeted, or two skills sharing the same cooldown so you can pick. I personally prefer non targeted as well for the same reason I like holy being non targeted. It gives much more freedom on where you place it.
Would love to see them replacing some oGCD heal skills with damage GCDs. We'd have to use healing GCDs more, and get a more interesting damage rotation.
I love how busy AST is, I would really love it even more if the cloth physics wouldn't break so much as AST whenever I play it. Every few runs my cloth physics on my character will just break and I'm forced to relog to fix it. SE plz D:
Also, as a person that likes healing - not DPSing - I'm kinda less happy they're pushing healers back to being DPS. I thought those dark days were behind us forever. At least for the most part it's not terrible - as long as they stop here - since you only have to mess with it infrequently and it's MOSTLY just "press a button a second time (AST/SCH)" or "get 3 more Miseries by pressing a button 3 more times" (WHM). The only one that's kind of annoying is SGE since it has yet another button and my hotbar is already feeling bloated, so having to drop some stuff off of it. Which sucks. AOE DoT is nice, though, just for dungeon trash making it less annoying to apply the single target to everything while running. Now you can just slap the AOE one on, then spam the one AOE button for 30 seconds. That's kind of nice. But damn, I'm out of hotbar spots. I REALLY don't want more buttons, especially wasting my hotbar spots with more DAMAGE buttons. If I want to play a DPS, I'll get on SMN.
I havent tried AST and SGE (i used it like once, so I wont talk on it), but I have fully leveled SCH and partially leveled up WHM. I will say people problem with lockout for SCH is understandable, but I don't see it as a problem. I will say I kinda hope that they make buffed adlo in seraphism cost less MP. SCH already struggles with MP the most and it drains MP like no ones business.
Your video was super helpful in understanding what healers I want to care about atm. One criticism. Either you're turning up your VO in the edit too much and causing it to clip or you're mic is too hot, causing the clicks and pops. Turn something down lol.
I’ve found Scholar the most fulfilling so far, but as an Astrodyne unenjoyer I’ve also been enjoying AST a lot. If the cards felt a little more interesting to use than they are right now, but Astrodyne remained gone, it would be a really enjoyable version of the job imo
I want a healer that focuses on buffing the party's damage rather than dealing much damage. Think DNC and AST buffs with only 1 AoE and 1 single target dps ability.
Love the dash on WHM and I’d probably absolutely hate it, if it was a targeted ability. The thing that kind of bothers me about FF14’s healer design is that anything outside the newest expansions has a tendency to lock you out of the majority of your kit with very strange cutoffs. Difficulty also tends to be very inconsistent across content and bosses. Coming from MMOs that were extremely healer dependent, I have to disagree with the whole make the healer be integral to clearing type mentality. The game is not built for that and it would make learning hell for beginners as this game does not have a self res, most casters don’t appear to use their res and people generally don’t care to wipe and redo mechs so a new healer can learn. Tbh healing in FF14 feels a lot more rigid than what I was used to, which makes it easier but also less engaging after a while.
does valigarmanda ex’s forever dot snapshot mitigation buffs and damage reduction debuffs on application as usual? or does it ignore them completely, or is it aware of mitigation on players as it comes and goes?
I fell in love with scholar in endwalker. The only thing it needs is QOL to remove the jank around its pet actions. While I understand some people enjoying the added challenge, to me its feels like difficulty derived from tediousness. Not good design.
I play AST and SCH, which are clearly still the biggest winners. But my issue has never been with how strong they are. Their kits aren't fun to use beyond the first 3 runs of an instance. Scholar has ascended beyond jank to the point that we are now angels(?) rather than where we started as curse-weaving warlocks. All of the luster is gone when you realize you have the same 4 OGCD tools as the other healers (barring AST). The extremes are a blast for me right now because if anyone messes up, I am literally the only way they can survive. Healing should be that important - we SHOULD be using GCDs to protect our team while the DoT serves as a passive source of reliable damage between Broil IV. And for SCH specifically, we genuinely NEED our offensive tools back. I have so many random abilities that never make a big difference because no one needs healing that an Indom can't provide with a competent cohealer. Lower our outgoing healing again, encourage the use of Galvanize, and let us choose how to influence the field of battle. We are the successors of the genius Nymian Scholars, tactical geniuses aided by our Fairy. Stop melding us together into a divine being and reintroduce the dichotomy of a ruthless general and their altruistic familiar. Leave the communion and ascension to White Mage - they deserve to have just as much of a unique identity as we do. ❤
I think just giving us glare 4 but making it use a lily, and still giving is 3 charges on presence of mind that can be used without having lilies would be the better implementation
Love astrologian aesthetic so much but i find myself panicking a lot with it... Like i unrionically found it more "easier" with the 3 cards-2 min 1 card-1 min bursts but now i have to remember what each card does or just awkwardly dump it all on tank and then curse how a dps made a mistake and it wouldve been really useful if i had that regen/mit card as a raidwide comes up
I need to know all the healing cds used for ex1 to be able to heal it without gcds using AST + SCH comp. Maybe even AST + SGE. I don't see enough "free healing" options in AST + SCH to cover the entire fight without the tanks and dps parsing 99 on heals maybe.
As someone who loves WHM I never felt like I was doing good the entire dlc. regular mobs deal a surprising amount of damage which makes it hard to keep up at times, warrior just doesn’t need healing anymore, and the biggest one is even in normal difficulty you can get 1-2 shot by bosses so if you aren’t spewing heal after heal either you or all the dps and supports are dead because you couldn’t keep up with the damage output.
As a WHM main that honestly sounds like a skill issue. I had none of these problems, even the first few days on the new lv100 dungeons where everyone was dying left and right. Given, yes the healing requirements are a lot higher in this expansion but WHM has more than enough kit to cover it and without having to resort to spamming GCD heals.
@@JathraDH Maybe it is, maybe I just don’t know the rotation, all I know is i’ve had moments I had 90% of my hp and in one big move the boss would kill me outright
@@Cash_Mambo Oh yea you can not fail mechs or you will just die in this expansion. I thought you were meaning about being able to keep the party topped. The dungeon difficulty is much higher for sure.
Something that bothers me about Sage is that Psyche doesn't trigger Kardia, which breaks the idea that Sage is a Healer that primarily heals through dealing damage. Even Phlegma triggers Kardia!
Without a doubt, I will go red mage (can attack, can double revive and heal), though less potent....in a high level raid, I would love to see a red mage in my team (especially when the healer is meh.......) But on the side note of that, a lot of people noticed already, in the low level dungeons, WHM player just use script to play it and not even in front of monitor.
Hearing that Healers are allowed to perform poorly in high-end content blows my mind, from a mostly WoW player. In that game, a healer is stress incarnate with how much work they have to put into keeping people alive.
I gotta say the same thing I always say when people talk about SCH. What is this dissipation ability? Surely I have not missed an ability for my bars even as I clear Savage content, right? No.... No no, nah. Real talk, just because it eats the fairy at all, I have never placed it on my bar, and I never will. I dont care if my dps is lower because of it, I do not eat my fairy.
On the other hand non targeted gap closers allow you to dash literally anywhere without the need to have an actual target there (or cumbersome targeting changes before being able to move). As a rphys player I dont agree that one is superior to the other they just shine in different areas.
Yeah, not having to target someone to move and deal with mechanics is so nice. I only really like targetting when it comes to staying on the offensive with melee tbh
As a Picto player, Smudge is love, Smudge is life. Easily the greatest movement tool I've ever had access to.
Agreed @@Cyrikyty
I think the only nice thing about a targeted dash is I have a dash bar beside the player list and I can just click and fly to that person without thinking or finding them. I do wish I could just dash sometimes though
@@Cyrikyty Smudge being a 15y dash on a 20s CD *and* giving you Sprint is obscenely good, it's insane! I think there's a lot of room for improvement with other classes to bring them up to par with PCT, it's so good.
Off the top of my head, I don't see much need to fiddle with the 'gap closer' ones that MNK/VPR/SAM/Tanks get (I know DRK and GNB are mad about losing the potency, but that's not what I'm looking at here); they're all 30s dashes that get them back into range. Maybe the Tanks could get their dash to also let them zip to an ally, especially PLD for Cover? Not a massive deal either way IMO.
For Aiming, DNC's is a short dash (10y) on a 30s CD, but they get to bank up to 3 charges, so I'm cool with it. I reckon MCH should get some kind of rocket-propelled heelies that work identically to En Avant, and BRD should just get extra charges of Repelling Shot to bring it up to 3 too; it's backwards, but you can work with that.
In terms of Maimimng, RPR's got a forward, back, and return, all on a shared 20s CD. Very very good, love it! DRG's a frustrating one, though. Elusive Jump is great, and they have natural gap-closers on Dragonfire and Stardiver, but then their new movement skill is a 60s CD, has 2 charges, and *isn't a jump?* Not only is it a weird balancing decision, it's a weird aesthetic decision too. I say chuck that out and give them a forward equivalent of Elusive Jump that shares a cooldown, then a skill that bounces them back to their starting position, and reduce the CD to 20s. They'd then have an identical suite to RPR, plus their damaging jumps.
And then there's Healers and Casters, which are in a weird spot. Smudge is incredible, as are RDM's dashes, meanwhile BLM and SMN's are clunky. I guess you could call it a day by giving SMN a skill that dashes them to an ally akin to Aetherial Manipulation; have them grow Bahamut or Phoenix wings and leap over with them or something.
Healers are the weirdest by far. WHM's just got a dash that's equivalent to Smudge on PCT... Except it's got a CD that's triple the length, and it has no secondary effect? And SGE has Icarus on a 45s CD that dashes them like a MNK or VPR. I think you can work with this, though. Reduce the CD on WHM's dash to 20s, or 30s if you give it charges. Then give AST an equivalent - have them melt into starlight or something, I dunno. For SCH, I've been saying for years they should have a 'Castling' skill that swaps their place with the fairy, which would essentially be Shukuchi with extra steps, but even just an equivalent to Icarus would be *something.*
And with that I believe the only class I haven't touched on is NIN. Shukuchi's unique and awkward but cool, and they also got a dash on their Raiju charges, so... Sure. Doesn't really need changing, I don't think.
This set of changes would give most roles a kind of unified form of movement, with some variety but overall at least everyone would be on roughly the same playing field; no "Man, AST feels like shit because they don't have any mobility" or MCH just feeling left out of the party alongside their equivalents.
As a WHM main, I have never been more happy. The only issue remaining is the levelling and synced-down experience. I completed both level 70 ultimates during Shadowbringers and Endwalker... And it's hell. Slightly less so now though, because of the dash we got. And I'll counter your argument about targeted gapclosers being better by pointing out: Targeted gapclosers rely on the targets' position, while straight dashes of a fixed length rely on the player's aim with that dash. I would have taken either (and I love using other people as my legs as BLM), but there's no denying that, when there is no target in the place you need to be, the dash is better. You just gotta move less (so you can cast!) and get used to the distance. I did the exact same jump you did in Valigarmanda just standing in the center of the arena, except I was closer to the place I needed to be.
I just did a slew of roulettes on WHM, and god lord are they godawful at lower levels. Anything under about 52-60 (when you get, respectively, Solace and Tetra) is functionally unplayable, imo, but 76 for Rapture is WAY too late. Why do so many jobs get literally core kit abilities soooooo freakin' late? Sage at like _45_ (ok, 46 for Dyskrasia, because why give people AoEs until literally the _end_ of ARR content?) plays better than a WHM at _70._
@@KaedysKor Yes, this is the main issue. Dungeons is fine if you have Solace, but lacking Rapture at level 70 is criminal. They finally adjusted Black Mage's levelling experience but White Mage is just sitting there eating glue until level 76 and it's downright criminal that SE doesn't seem to give a damn.
Favorite healer is pictomancer during opener with star fall
I rarely heard people mention this, but for whm, the new glare 4 is mana free, which (while small) is free 1200 mana every 2 mins. In comparison, Assize can be used 3 times within each 2 minutes, and that is 1500 mana, so it's significant enough.
It's not a major point, but it's important during prog where you might use slightly more resses and/or more gcd heals.
I am actually more disappointed in Sage than any others. It is extremely fun, but I wish they had doubled down and pushed further on the DPS-healing aspect since the release of the job.
literally
It’s literally scholar with smaller quicker shields.. severely disappointing
is an aoe kardia every 3 mins not enough dps-healing for you?
@@cutejustice I wouldn’t say it’s disappointing. They just need to add more DPS stuff. And I hope 8.0 rework will distinguish them a bit more
The only way they can add more dps options for sage is to reduce their potency across the board.
Sage is the most flexible healer already with higher dps. They out perform both sch and whm on dmg, they have better mit options and deployment of them than sch, and enough raw healing to rival whm.
To ask for more dps options on sage is to trivialize all other healers. The entire role needs a rework from the ground up.
The best healer is the one you enjoy playing the most, F the meta
My stance on any role. If you can do the content thats all that matters
Talking about how well fight design is in DT to how healing functions, I was genuinely surprised how well raidwide hits from bosses lined up with the Solar Bahamut summons, allowing a very effective use of the Refulgent Lux heal. Although I still miss having access to phoenix more often, and its strong single target heal, Solar Bahamut has saved my group in clutch situations far more often then I had expected it would.
I am having the same experience, but Reddit seems convinced all the healing in SMN's kit is useless.
I'm happy with the non-targeted dash on WHM, sure you could get more uptime, or have a bit more precision with a targeted one, it does also rely on others' positioning. And I feel very comfortable with my precision with it, it just requires a bit more time to get used to the distance. When you get that, I much prefer the freedom to dash to where I need to go. And I use it very freely to just get to position earlier to be out of the way of teammates. For example in EX1 where you need to spread the lightning/ice in the thunder phase, I can dash away so whoever does not have a dash, doesn't need to move too many spaces, while I'm already comfortably in mine. I wouldn't be able to do that if I had to target a teammate. Not saying non-targeted is directly better, just that both very much have their own merit! And I appreciate both of them! I'm just happy that as a WHM I get movement!
As a RPR main, I approve of this! ....I just need to move back to my original spot. (This is why I play RPR!)
Broil IV.
Miasma 2.
@@RinBananaShadowflare
@@RinBanana Enhanced Unmend
@@RinBananabook toss
Man, I miss bane and fester on SCH
I really enjoyed this video. My two main takeaways are as follows:
1. I 100% agree with you on healing on SGE for the first EX. SGE feels perfect for the constant tiny bits of damage everyone is taking throughout the fight, and it felt really good to be able to balance significant movement with solid DPS and consistent healing throughout the encounter. Way more fun on healer than on tank, although the Mountain Fire tank buster is one of the most fun tank buster mechanics I've done in a while.
2. This video convinced me to give AST another try. I got it to 90 in EW and wasn't too impressed, finding myself having way more fun with the tight design of SGE's kit. But from what you've said, I really think I would enjoy it if I go back to it and give it another shot. Cheers!
yeah, astro is pog af now. It's cracked at 100, only thing I think is a bit scuffed is getting double dmg cards into burst, it requires some finessing. But they said they were gonna do something about that, so I'm not worried
@@Vuln_Snacksis that the #1 healing class right now?
@@BlackBl00dbrother In terms of overall contributed raid damage, far and away, yes. But that's entirely due to the dmg buffs it hands out during 2 min burst, so it's incredibly important to not drift out of alignment.
It's healing is very strong when you need it, but it's not as straightforward as maybe sge or whm. That being said, once you get the hang of ast, it's incredibly powerful with a ton of tools to keep the party healthy
The only healer I've played to 100 is scholar because i didn't have to heal during the grind
Reasonable
I’ve been the opposite, as I don’t have to wait for dps wait times
Thats why i put all my stat points into intelligence and stay in cleric stance at all times. Gotta be a green dps.
I'm the polar opposite, Scholar is the only healer I actively dislike and being able to level it through SMN is a joy :P
yeah me to, cause I became SMN during the grind hahahaha
This is nothing new, but sages mobility alone is a huge pro for the job for me at least. It’s a little understated how useful it is in later content to basically never need to stand still to heal and damage.
Im having a blast running Sage and Scholar, they’re a lot of fun ❤.
Meanwhile PF straight-up locks out double shield despite Ex2 being one of those fights where it's incredibly strong without much pre-planning.
I have my PFs set up for whatever healer you want, double SCH? sure, Double AST? has happened, you can kill this easily with pretty much anything really (99 kills never saw the mount drop)
As a SGE who likes to double shield heal I usually found it falling flat in PF when my SCH buddy literally never uses Sacred Soil for a 100 potency DPS gain.
Otherwise Kera + Soil stacking is broken as fuck.
@@cute2dfrog all the fights are better with double shield. Regen really don't have a place in this game when shields get more and more raw healing
Agreed with everything, especially the new actions. It feels like they were added with the utmost caution, as if to try and avoid angering a certain portion of the playerbase. The changes to healer damage kits don't need to be massive, they can be as simple as, say for WHM, 'reduce Dia duration to 12s, and add Water/Banish as a 15s CD'. Those two changes alone would take our Glares per 2min from 33 down to 19. Adding back some damage actions to each healer would also serve to differentiate their gameplay from one another much more heavily. Where all four healers feel 'the same' to some due to their identical cadence of 'DOT every 30s, spam filler otherwise'...
We could have eg: WHM bursty, with a focus on damage refunding healing actions and multiple systems to support that (ala Misery), SCH being DOT focused (though I'd also add tactical Stance-Dancing with VERY small bonuses for doing so), AST could be the healer for players who don't like dealing damage, and instead contributes its 'damage' via buffing allies a lot more often than any other healer with its cards, and SGE could be molded into the 'damage>healing' healer it was pitched as, by having several actions 'augment' Kardia in various ways, eg changing the heal to a shield, making it AOE, etc. And if it were up to me, I'd give SGE a 'fast burst mode' like Hypercharge or Enshroud which would synergise with Kardia (because more hits faster = more Kardia procs)
I wish I worked at SE so I could do more than just post 'here's how I think we fix it' on the forums. I could talk Yoshi-P to death with how much I've written on the forums on the topic
I’m having fun with Sage and AST especially AST. I do wish AST had a gap closer- let me glide on Saturn or something lol
Urianger has a dashy thing seen in Ktisis as a trust, where's our star power?!
@@Kazagari EXACTLY! lol
Maining Astro this expansion, love it! The new cards take a bit of stress off weaves, but my favorite thing about it is how many mitigations I have on top of my pure heals, this will be amazing for my new static since my friend is new to both healer and scholar. Sun Sign is amazing and Oracle is so satisfying to use, finally seeing that big number on Astro! I do agree though that drifting the cards is very awful for burst windows, especially when you only have one stack of Lightspeed. I think giving us 2 charges and reducing the cooldown for astral and umbral draw a little bit will help out a lot. We'll have to see in 7.01.
As for Scholar, it still plays the same, meaning I love it as well, especially with it's new ULTIMATE panic button in Seraphism, what an amazing skill...unless you're under Dissipation, which is still my least favorite of its skills, since it takes away half your kit for 30 seconds. I try to always have those skills up before pressing it, but sometimes things go south and you click it on reflex to quickly pump a heal.
I was never a fan of using the skill just to mash Energy Drain. Astro's opener where you juggle both buffs/cards and your own ogcds in between your Malefic feels cooler to perform. Overall I still love scholar and its new skill, but I do secretly hope Dissipation will die in a ditch one day...
I haven't had time to level the other two to 100. Sage was my main in Endwalker and like Astro, I loved the ability to both mitigate and pure heal since I like being versatile, either because my cohealer needs support, or because pf gave me trust issues :D. I like the AOE dot and Philosophia sounds like a good skill, but I prefer the other 100 level skills. Not much I can say until I try it out in Savage.
As for White Mage, cool little dash and I'm really glad it finally got another mitigation skill off Temperance, it really needed it. Again though, I'll have to test it out in Savage to judge it fully.
After clearing both extremes, done on both Astro and Scholar, Valigarmanda is one of my favorite fights in the whole game, so much damage dealt that it's very satisfying to both mitigate and top off the party. What an incredible fight! Zoraal Ja...weeeeell, a lot less damage and I was able to solo heal party stacks both on Astro and Scholar, due to demise befalling my cohealers. The fight itself is creative in its mechanics but I wish there was more damage dealt to make me use my kit more.
I'm very excited for Savage, I hope they hit very hard and we're forced to gcd heal!
As an Astro main (for those what didn’t play Astro BEFORE shadowbringers) it as close to HW and STB as it’s guanna get (again for those that didn’t play I will explain) back in hw and STB we had the royal road style, on Astro so we could use cards and burn then to buff ponetcy buff the defence we also had AOE dps card and we also had mp and (yes tp if u know u know what that was xd) I do kinda wish we had that style back because it’s what drew some people to this class.
In short DT Astro is close to old Astro as I am gunna get and I am happy about this
Honestly the best healers are the ones you like to play. I’m horrible at sage but I also don’t like it. I love scholar and white mage. Astro is okay.
Comfort picks are usually better then 'meta' since you get more consistent results on a job/class you are more comfortable with.
That being said, AST, and SGE are still personal favorites with SCH and WHM not far behind.
Always been a SCH main, and I absolutely love it. HOWEVER. Please Squeenix. Please. Do something about Dissipation 😂 It just feels so bad. I feel punished for wanting that extra ED dps. I feel like something that would consume fairy gauge to restore Aetherflow would work well. That gauge isn't used enough.
Anyway. Love me some SCH
Thank you for the video. My pick for savage is Sch as well. I'm feeling really good about this first tier.
I think my biggest disappointment in healer design is how ogcd heavy they all really are.
Too often the answer to a mechanic winds up being "weave in this heal/mit between your dps cast"
Pushing to dps is great, but it feels like we're at the point where any time you have to use a gcd heal it feels bad even doing so.
Exactly this. I much prefer WoWs healing philosophy, which is essentially the opposite; spend your time healing and if you're effective you can free up a little time to use meaningful dps cds.
Spot-on. Scholar feels like a regen healer with a huge anti-nuke shield every minute or so, the passive regen we provide has become so ridiculous and phased out our Galvanize so severely that they had to give us a 20-second regen that also boosts our GCDs... and I still end it early with Dissipate after the first Emergency Tactics & following Galvanize. There is hardly a reason to use Seraph's heals or take Eos into account when anything that hits you without 100% HP will instantly end you like a turkey on Thanksgiving.
Part of why I like White Mage. The vast majority of your healing on it is tied to gcds
@@Draco-9158 Which doesn't even really hurt WHM's overall DPS since some of those GCDs fuel blood lily which makes up for the glares you didn't cast. Although I'm not sure about why lvl 100 WHM blood lily is only damage neutral.
We've been at this point since SHB and this is the healing design SE is going for since then as well and that is most likely not going to change any time soon. In the vast majority of fights, in a non prog setting, using gcd heals is just un-optimised. Saying that a mechanic is often resolved by "weave in this heal/mit between your dps cast" is an over-simplification in my opinion, since the trick is to figure out how can you place your oGCDs to never have to use a GCD.
Brilliant video hitting all the right notes.
I'm a Sage main in a CONSTANT love/hate relationship with Scholar because of all the insane self-lockouts the job does on its own kit that make it feel so archaic, but the recitation change alone made me squint at it and realize it just hands down is too powerful to ignore. It feels *so* good to just negate mechanics with insane shields and keep going, but between the number of times I say "why does it do that??" when fairy skills just aren't available (WHY DOES SERAPH LOCK OUT BLESSING??) and Energy Drain STILL existing to ideally make a fair Aetherflow tradeoff for triage or raw damage (and unfortunately just ends up nerfing the IQ of most lazy SCH players) I can't justify it. It's something I feel like I have to full commit to in order to not get angry with how at odds it feels with itself.
Sage has felt clean since its inception and what it got in DT feels underwhelming because it's hard to pin down what it "needed." Soteria to 60 instead of Zoe is criminal and Recitation getting away with it will never be forgiven, but the Physis change is a nothingburger and the AoE dot stacking getting shot is all just.. disappointing? Guess it's weird because I wasn't looking forward to much new stuff on the newest job, but still feels like it got the short end of the stick, lol. Philosophia feels good when it shines but is in a weird spot, but again it's one of those "what does a capstone SGE button even actually look like?" and I guess it's this. You can hit a FAT Zoe-Pneuma under it so that's awesome, but overall it's.. okay. Polishing a diamond just gives you a diamond, right?
Awesome analysis and glad to see AST thriving after all the negativity. Simple changes to simple WHM made its MP economy feel MILES better too, so I even love that.
As someone who has only done a few ARR and HW extremes and is otherwise very casual, the talk in this video makes the hot air in my head very intimidated
Still, its good that healers all around are doing good at all levels of content. Though I'm reminded once again that I'm probably a much worse Sch than even I think, which is oof
Was so waiting for this and you did not disappoint!
Fantastic video! Pretty casual player, but was able to follow along with most points very easily.
glare 4 in dungeons is so nice. The pull after first boss you can usually misery, presenace of mind, holy spam for PoM then glare four and out DPS the DPS :D
loved the video rinon and wish you best of luck with prog in the upcoming tier. i do have to agree with others that have said that, situationally, untargeted gapclosers can be superior and vice versa but either way i am happy to see more of this arriving in the healer role
seraph locking you out of fey blessing might be the worse oversight yet. Why is Fey illumination ok but not Fey blessing.
That's always been a thing... it's intentional...
can’t u just use it first then seraph
The undocumented and ever increasing anti-synergies in the SCH design baffle me. Especially this expansion where they shoehorned one in even when it wasn't necessary.
@jaesaces yeah, stuff like that has made me unsure of whether I wanna keep playing it. I love my chunky shields, but Scholar feels like a mixed bag of stuff that doesn't want to work together at times, and it's kinda annoying. It's sad because I played Scholar all the way up to The Mid point of Shadowbringers before swapping to Astrologian
I'm having trouble understanding the issue with Eukrasian Dyskrasia. It's a net gain in terms of damage on trash packs even when you take into account the lower potency vs the single target one, because it's just one cast. Instead of wasting your time trying to get the single target dot on multiple enemies, you do it once and fit in more Dyskrasias. Any half decent tank is doing wall to walls, and that's more than enough time to get the aoe dot on the first group while running and spamming Dyskrasia II on your way to the wall. I'd much rather that than deal with having to waste my target swapping.
I kinda like Scholar’s jenk. Needing to plan around the skills that can’t be used together (dissipation, seraphism, seraph, and the fairy actions) translates the job fantasy into mechanics, being rewarded for strategic use while being punished for failing to plan them correctly. Recitation is my favorite skill in the game because it plays very nice with protraction, illumination, and even RDM’s Barrier.
On SCH: I hate Dissipation. I've ALWAYS hated Dissipation. It's not a numbers argument. I hate the IDEA of the ability AND what it does, and I've hated it from when it was first added to the game and you had to manually resummon Eos. I literally did not have the button on my bars for all of SB and all of ShB. I only put it on my bar late in EW, and "on" very loosely - I made a macro that casts Fey illumination and if I use it again, Dissipation. It is my button I push if I have literally NO OTHER BUTTONS to press. Otherwise I do not press it. I will never parse well on SCH, I literally DO. NOT. CARE. I don't run any add-ons or parsers and I HATE Dissipation so much, I could not at all care about that in any way. If I could nuke/delete any ability from the game, that's the ability I would remove. Conversely, I love the absolute hell out of Seraphism.
Your description of Scholar is perfect [Stormblood Scholar, how I miss you so...words cannot describe how much I miss Bane amongst other things from SB] and exactly why it's essentially the only healer I like to play. When you don't know the content and you're not the most in tune with the class's toolkit, it feels clunky and ineffective, but once you understand some of the content and you truly understand SCH's tools, it's the MOST rewarding part of playing the class. Being able to master the unique toolkit and heal in ways that are pretty unique compared to other classes knowing that you make mistakes with your choices and things are over [Admittedly this is nowhere near as bad as it was in Stormblood/Heavensward due to the general abundance of options SCH has these days] is so unbelievable satisfying.
Compare that to WHM especially, where I feel like I could go into Savage and perform as well on WHM as my SCH by essentially rolling my face on the keyboard because every button is unbelievably efficient at just filling life bars up and it's just not the same. AST is the only other healer that properly interests me as the card system is another form of unique optimisation, but unfortunately for me, I will always be comparing it to Stormblood's card system...and I know which one I prefer. RIP Spread...And as a BLM main...RIP enhanced arrow :c
I have leveled ast from 44 to 60 since dt came out and the card rework is realy nice in that level of content i feel. Especially the shield, damage reduction and the free oGCD regen one.
These cards replaces a lot of proactive healing and mana management. Usually just slapping on a regen every now and then and using cards is enough. And the one oGCD healing spell you have in that level range as a panic button
Oh, just got to the part of the vid where you said those excact cards had limited usage 😂
AST feels weird because with the new cards, I find I’m ignoring the non-damage ones often to keep the CDs lined up with Divination so that I can get 2 DPS cards off during that window. If there was a way to “store” a card for later use I can see that being useful but might turn off people who don’t have that play style of trying to line up draws with your 2 min CD. Also MP on AST feels weird tying it to playing cards rather than draw itself maybe a solution?
SCH for me felt meh until 100, I can see Seraphism being nerfed, shielding someone for 110% of their HP feels nuts, along with just its raw HPS and general SCH utility.
I feel the devs were scared to add to button bloat of healers being extremely careful with the new dps buttons (3 of the 4 are linked to a 2 min CD). Personally for WHM Glare 4 maybe should have been on a seperate 3 charge system? I’m waiting until Presence of Mind is over before I start casting it just because I don’t want to cast anything but glare during it. AST makes sense because why would I cast oracle outside that 2 min window in niche situations. Psyche with SGE feels good being an Ogcd dps button but only healing with Philosophia on the party feels lacklustre I guess?
I love healing but having some more agency over our dps would feel nice but I do understand that for balance purposes the way it is now makes it easier from a balance perspective at the cost of fun for a lot of healer mains. If there was too much dps variation between healer kits it could be a nightmare to balance with certain groups only taking x healer because it does 5% more damage than y healer.
Waiting for presence to end to cast glare 4 isn't a DPS gain or anything tho so what's the difference?
As a casual player who's not up to current content, I'm enjoying Astro much more than before. Maybe I'll get bored of the new cards later once I figure them out more, but I really enjoy having to actually think about where I'm throwing my cards and on who. I would definitely enjoy them being a little more potent and interesting but they're really onto something. And I'm shockingly happy that Astrodyne is gone. Not having to overlap Astrodyne and Divination to maximize my output makes things so much less tedious. I joined a group to attempt Nael for a few weeks a while back and trying to maximize that window was so frustrating, I was never sure if I should use them together or not. It's been just barely enough to keep me playing through my frustrations with the current state of the game, especially once I decided to stop playing this game like an MMO and start playing it like the singleplayer RPG with multiplayer elements it is.
Personally, I like the card system and just having a lot more tools available for different situations. I just hope for the card effects to be more interesting then just basic mitigation effects in 8.0.
Aside from that I've been enjoying the AST so far.
been a casual astro since SHB i find these cards are causing me to think less as it really only a system where utility cards go to tanks and damage cards go to the respective dps, but i am glad astrodyne is gone that was not a fun button to use.
SGE is the best for dungeons now. It has an aoe dot, praise the 12
AST+SCH Rdps buffer double melee comp is looking juicy right now even if buffs line other options up.
I think that giving more DPS options and ability to express healer skill through more interesting damage rotations is absolutely necessary. I would be warry though about requiring healers to perform better in certain kinds of content. I think for extremes and up it's fine, but to rely on and calculate boss health below that on optimal healer damage would require significantly increased both health or some kind of enrage mechanic or both in content below extreme for it to be meaningful. The problem you'll start to run into is that lower tier skill of healer who doesn't DPS well and if everyone else is going as hard as possible but if the healer is dead weight and you couldn't clear say, a dungeon roulette from it, I think that would be a problem. Mostly, I think this is an issue because a lot of those players when the issue is insufficient damage will not look into what they could be doing better to deal damage, but will look at others and say "well you should just deal more damage, I'm the healer and I'm healing so I don't see the problem". I do think this is a thing that will always hold healers back at a certain level of content. I don't think healing dungeons will ever not be a little brain dead if you aren't sitting on the literal skill floor.
Me and my friends just started FF14 and I wanted to play as the healer, i skipped conjour though and went for Scholar. I really wanna go for Astro cause i just think the whole card magician theme is cool, i just hope i can learn and understand how to play them at higher levels
As someone who picked up sage recently and grinded to 90, i feel like it was the hardest job to level up in PVE as it has the less margin of errors for emergency healing. When you don't have your main kit, it's often quite hard to keep up with the tank if it doesn't know what it's doing. Despite doing everything good to the tea, i often found myself trying to save the tank from a sliver of health. I often felt under-powered.I really want to love the job, i love how it looks, but gosh darn is the skill ceiling hard. I feel it's the healing class that depends the most on skills from the other players.
Always love healer discussion. My current plans are to level AST and SCH. I bounced off of SGE in Endwalker and don't have much interest in WHM. Just have a few comments after watching the video.
-I agree that some of the non-damaging AST cards could have more unique effects. I thought they might roll some of their current healing kit into the cards like Horoscope and Earthly Star. I'm not missing the RNG aspect. I actually though you'd draw all six at once and cycle through them. But getting three at a time and being able to play them as you please works too. Though it's interesting they gave us three separate play buttons and didn't have say our GCDs turn into Play buttons (Say Combust turns into Play 1, Benefic into Play 2 and Helios into Play 3 for example). Though I wonder if they'll add any other functionality to those Play buttons.
-I'm open to more DPS buttons or options to do damage as a healer. I just ask that people are open to different approached to doing damage. For SCH at least, damage talk always revolves around DOT management and regaining old skills. I'm worried that even if they ever provide healers with more DPS tools that aren't the exact tools people want, they'll still reject it.
Unless you’re doing savage content AND EVEN THEN the meta doesn’t matter. Everything can be done with everything.
To me it’s more a question, do you prefer healing or shielding ? Do you rather dps a bit ? Or buff ? These questions will answer who’s the best for you.
At this point, I'm not exactly sure how they're supposed to make the leveling experience more fulfilling without just adding bloat, especially for healers. Sure, getting an Addle upgrade at 98 might feel "cursed", as are simple trait upgrades and such, but what are they supposed to do? Just not give you anything at that level instead? Or add even MORE buttons to the already-packed hotbars?
And even discounting UI problems, it's good to ask "what even is there to add?" Every job in Dawntrail got at least 1, 2, or even 3 new conceptual things added to their kits. That's not a lot, but it must be accepted that without huge reworks, most jobs in the game are pretty feature complete at this point in the game's lifespan. The only thing that has been added to most jobs since Stormblood have been garnish, aside from some obvious exceptions like Astro and Monk's constant reworks and WHM lilies becoming actually somewhat interesting.
Take MCH, for example. It got two new buttons and two upgrades significant enough to be "new" (Gauss Round upgrades from a ST-only button to a copy of an upgraded Ricochet, meant to make using it in packs feel better; and we got a second charge of Bio/Drill). It got off pretty well, all things considered. But really, what else does it need in terms of "new" things at this point? The job plays pretty seamlessly and has done so since like level 80. I can think of things I might like it to have, but all of them would pretty much require mini-reworks or changes to foundational parts of the job at this point, not just leveling additions.
There are plenty of jobs that have more room for improvement than MCH, of course, such as healers being desperately in need of more interesting damage core for when fights are learned, but at this point I think it's pretty obvious that leveling as a concept in FFXIV is pretty run-dry in terms of what it gains us as players - at least for how the jobs are currently iterated. I'm pretty sure most jobs being "feature-complete" is part of why Yoshida mentioned that they're trying to look for ways other than leveling as progression points from now on.
As a former main healer (I too miss SB's SCH) who switched after being disappointed with the excessive dumbification of our DPS rotation and simplifaction of actual healing, I've come to wonder after watching your video, what if SE changes the focus of mechanic punishments away from vuln stacks from changing how much damage you take, to being closer to death stacks that simply kill when you reach a certain number, and raids just focusing all damage to being mechanics that healers are dedicated to dealing with? By separating the responsibilities, it'll no longer be about healers fixing others mistakes, but instead about having dedicated mechanics that allow raids (hell, all encounters) to separate responsibilities and make healing not about how to avoid using GCDs?
I love savage prog for healer because it provides a great middle ground where you can usually find use for all of your abilities and if someone gets hit its still pretty recoverable and all you have to do is just adjust on the fly. Lower end content + extremes feel like I have too much healing or mit than I realistically need to use and high end content like ultimates usually becomes so optimized that there's not a lot of room for freedom with the role. I want more room for scuffed runs to succeed, scuffed hard content is what i live for as a healer, like when you end up the last party member alive and you manage to pop a clutch healer lb3 right before an auto attack kills you and you clear the raid, that's the dopamine i want more often as a healer.
Loved this! Awesome stuff put together! Only thing I couldn’t help but notice towards the end is how you pronounced Kerachole. It’s not a big deal but you pronounced it like Kera-Chowl (like bowl) when it’s pronounced Kera-cauli (like cauliflower)
If the new AoE dot for Sage actually stacked with the regular dot, it would open up interesting situations where it's worth using it as a swift cast
Yeah, at Media Tour it did stack and it was super fun sadge
@@NomoregoodnamesD8 RIP Miasma2 and Aero3
as SCH main, i have sort of internalised the jank kit as part of the strategy. it doesnt synergise with itself so you need to plan which set of abilities works better at any given time. do you want a fairy heal phase where your partner does the heavy lifting as you spam Broil? is the healing a bit more urgent so you eat the fairy to pump your own healing while forgoing fairy buffs? or is it an "OH SHIT" situation where you need to become a literal angel of salvation to get em through it?
granted with a party who knows what they are doing, usually you only ever need the fairy or seraphism stages. but for general dungeons with possible first timers and the like, having a non-synergising kit adds to the fun of when to use what where.
and, lets all be honest, if Scholar's kit gets a rework where all the jank is ironed out and makes it simpler. ie, if dissipation boosts our healing by even just 20% without removing our fairy, SCH would probably become far too powerful. maybe make it so dissipation has the healing boost while also converting our shields into pure health? would be nice for those "you are now 1hp. heal the party to full fckers" things that happen sometimes.
I honestly love the SCH jank. I have to make choices, which keeps gameplay interesting. I think of it as different modes.
I’m in minority here cause I actually am thankful they removed stacking dots as someone who wants more Dps buttons on healer, because it’s ONE additional damage gcd you’re mindlessly pressing every 30 seconds on top of your normal dot, and now the downside is you have to double dot every enemy in a pull in dungeons. Instead of 2 dots, I’d much prefer if they went the picto route where you pop a 15-30 sec cooldown that gives you 3 charges of a 2 sec channel time high potency attack. That doesn’t affect dungeon play, gives us more buttons to play with, and is something you have to think about because you can’t weave during that time without using phlegma or toxicon while also giving you a boost to kardia healing which would synergize with soteria. Idk, stacking dots just doesn’t seem fun to me
Quick question; how the hell do you play AST on controller now? I feel the macros I had for EW won't work even if I adjust it for the new draw and play skills
I play it. It's not to bad unless your very slow on controller.
@@cagemerchant219 agree. Admittedly, I have had to start making use of both options for the crossbars so have access to 3 different bars, but for the most part, it's pretty simple to just keep the not often used tools on that third bar and keeping the important stuff on my main bar. I do think we are reaching the point where controller players are gonna struggle if they keep adding new stuff instead of upgrading pre-existing spells
As a controller player I am both sad they didn’t add more than 2 spells for my main but happy there isn’t more buttons to press 😅
(That third bar is for emotes and mounts, don’t make me change it)
Helpful note to those who read this, if you didn’t know you can enable somehow in the settings that holding L2 then R2 can pull up a different hotbar than holding R2 then L2
✌️💜
That’s why always liked sch. It’s like healing on a higher difficulty almost every expansion. You gotta be on it for it to be satisfying.
I feel like ASTs new card system could work, but some of the effects should be party wide. Maybe smaller mitigations or barriers on everyone. Or perhaps have a more impactful card like one that restores 20% MP to the target party member (using it on self could even be the most optimal play). If they are determined to keep it away from the pure damage boosting playstyle and go all in with variety, they should make the cards more usable. It's nice that Arrow can synergize well with Adlo at least.
I love whm so much. I feel so good about contributing to damage windows now. It's not so much more, but it feels better. And being able to shield and then regen with one button is nice
i like the new cards for astro, it might now be the best for savage and such, but it feels fantastic to use these cards in wall to walls during dailies, it's made wall to walls that i'd struggle with feel like child's play
I feel like the Astro cards changes were made, not to really serve “making the Job more interesting” as it was to make it so you didn’t have to weave as much. That’s a complaint a lot of people had, and not needing to do 4 draws for 4 cards frees up some oGCD slots for sure.
I think the issue is that the changes that were made didn't really effectively fulfil that role, and they also made the job less interesting as a byproduct. You are still pseudo-forced to use Lightspeed within your 2 minutes because you still need to div > card > lord > draw > card in quick succession to avoid loss, so the overall reduction is there somewhat, that's true, but it doesn't change the feel of that window whatsoever or the resources you need to expend to execute it, just shortens how long that feeling lasts.
Then, as a byproduct the other 2/3 of the card system feels like a bolt-on that can essentially be ignored in most content. I think there are definitely a lot of better solutions that could be pursued
the thing i noticed is how spoiled many healers are greeding for dps not healing ppl that made a mistake who could be easily saved i see this so often in farm groups where ppl expect everyone to be flawless yet they don't seem to know how to press a heal when someone messes up ive had loads of fun in ex 2 with messy runs as healer
These are the same people that are bored. They have decided that "outside of week one progression" mistakes can be assumed to not happen and they don't even pay attention to party status. Sometimes, this is covered by their co-healer (people like me who still find healing fun because we are not assuming no mistakes and are always ready for unplanned damage), if you get two bored healers then people die.
@@HSExsiccator nah I am bored and I still heal everybody and keep people up. I want more DPS buttons and I want more healing to do.
@@HSExsiccator So then healers that want to have fun should actively seek out parties where people make mistakes often and need more attention? What if you're unlucky and find yourself in a good static/party with people that don't need exciting spot healing?
Naaa see the problem here (as a healer) is that if you are spending that time healing people accidentally standing in stuff (specially in ex or savage) instead of dpsing at that time you’re going to hear about your dps being down…. As a healer lol. I love FFXIV, played it from 1.0 launch and it’s the only mmo I’ve played in the last 25 years where groups complain or almost depend on healers dpsing.
@@motomortus4009 i mean ofc you should be doing the mechs right but thats no excuse for not healing you are playing the wrong class if you don't wanna heal
Sage : My two dots don't stack... QQ
Scholar : Hey sage. Guess what ?
Sage : What !?! I'm crying, can't you see ?
Scholar : My two dots stacks. :P
Sage : Stop it !!! It hurts !!! My sweet and Amazing ego !!!
Scholar : Check this thick shield. I can spread it to nearby party member. Can you make one as big as mine ?
Sage : WAHHHH !!! At least, I got Philosophia now.
Scholar : Check, I got wings now. I can heal like crazy now. While moving.
Sage : NOOOO !!! At least, I got my my Icarus!
Scholar : Hey, look I make the whole group run faster and we dodged an huge AOE that we would have died to. We also got 10 % mit on that.
Sage : (Proceed to jump off the arena)
Scholar : (Look at the Gunbreaker) Told ya we should have brought an Astro.
I'm a WAR/MCH main but I do heal casually. That being said playing AST and then going to SCH feels like I'm sitting at a desk that constantly wobbles. I'll admit that the kit does feel like you have mix other spells together to get the most out of it rather than just cast stuff at face value which is cool but I always feel like I just don't have enough resources compared to other healers. Perhaps I'm just not playing the job right but it would be great if the faerie abilities reset when you summoned seraph or if SE actually used the faerie gauge for something more than just aetherpact.
Depends on the player, their interpretation of how the skills/spells are used and the friends/Free Company they are part of ( some are far more supportive than others).
I have seen long time WHM/SCH/ASTRO that are useless. ( sage is still relatively new) I feel someone who is a level 95+ healer in the game since before 2020 should know what Esuna is used for. i have also seen people who have played the same jobs as above be phenomenal after playing a few months.
I have played all 4, i prefer Sage as the need to DPS is built into the healing process.
Having played solely and sage, been wanting to look more into scholar. But playing it feels so clunky and like I'm always playing it wrong. It's a really odd job to try to learn
about as disappointed with astro as I thought i'd be hoping it'll feel more interesting in savage and ultimate but those cards just aren't it
I like the concept, in practice its just dumb, the cooldown is horrid, but i do like the barrier card, and the 10% increased healing card. Too many of the cards just dont get used, or arent available when you truly need them.
@@devxved it'll be used Alot more when savage comes out, especially when the ultimate comes out. When has always been the weakest when it came to mitigation and that hasn't changed
I think it would be cool to use addersgall as a resource to buff damage. Risk/reward could be interesting.
It stil feels a bit weird to me that they wouldn't let Recitation crit with Seraphism, I mean it's a 20% increase to healing just like dissipation right? I really love how the job feels but this one thing just feels a bit off. Maybe there's some reason to it outside of squeenix wanting to separate skills more?
I'm just saying, having a group specific dot, and a single target specific dot will help someone like me. Because I'm hitting the toggle button so often before attacking with the dot it forces a habit that interupts my flow for everything else, because now that 1 2 is just instinctual, even when I'm trying to put a shield on tank mid pull because for the last 15-30 seconds all I've been doing is 1, 2, tab, 1, 2, tab as we run. I'd rather the group stop, I hit an aoe dot, and then focus on the tank between my aoe attacks
Whilst I agree that the targeted gap closers are in many ways better than the non-target ones, I think your comparison to Dancer's En Avant is a bit weak. Dancer is a PhysRange job with no limitations on their freedom to move around the arena whilst attacking. They have no hardcast abilities, so in the case of bosses like Valigarmanda the simple dash just complements their freedom of movement all the better.
I'm so glad to see a group doing MRRM on Vali. RMMR has been a goddamned blight on party finder for this fight. It's worse for healing and it's worse for movement for both healers and casters. There's no good reason to use it.
Ex AST main here.... picto is fun :')
if stacking cards had fun combo perks, I probably would be enjoying AST more. Thank you so much for putting this up. But yeah, overall the cards do not feel rewarding in the slightest with 4 out of 6 cards are essentially HP cards. Don't know why people are so excited of this rework when the base kit was already really strong.
I leveled astro to 100 as my first healer and although I love how it plays... it's the only one I'm not comfortable yet to go do high-end content, the 2 minutes feels way too packed with everything needing to be aligned there and even with the lightspeed addition i'm not sure how good it'll feel
everything else about it feels awesome tho!
I have to say I don’t like the ast changes. I loved drawing my random cards and having my 33% neuron activation in my brain when I got the 3 signs off. With the new one it is more consistent sure. But as an gambling addict is it not the same anymore. 😔
I was a scholar main until one of the wall to wall pulls of the Twinning at launch, I failed it twice and never touched scholar again. Not a comment on scholar’s effectiveness, it’s just a funny anecdote and also my trauma.
Astro somehow I do far better as. And aside from losing 2 dps cards every two minutes, I think I prefer the new cards. Not a fan of switching between melee and ranged cards, making one half less useful in dungeons occasionally, but otherwise, okay/10. I still prefer Stormblood, having crit, attack speed, and damage along with three support cards and sleeve draw felt like a better and more fun balance between damage spam of Shadow/End and the new system. I do like your suggestions a lot, too.
Completely disagree with non-targeted dashes being worse than targeted. It's a dash that doesnt depend on any conditions like teammates positioning. Both types have their strenghts and weaknesses but i would say non-targeted is more versatile.
I agree too, but this is kind of a skill/bias situation. It would be neat if they made it a hybrid where if you have someone targeted it dashes to them or in their direction or en-avants if no one is targeted, or two skills sharing the same cooldown so you can pick. I personally prefer non targeted as well for the same reason I like holy being non targeted. It gives much more freedom on where you place it.
Would love to see them replacing some oGCD heal skills with damage GCDs. We'd have to use healing GCDs more, and get a more interesting damage rotation.
I love how busy AST is, I would really love it even more if the cloth physics wouldn't break so much as AST whenever I play it. Every few runs my cloth physics on my character will just break and I'm forced to relog to fix it. SE plz D:
Also, as a person that likes healing - not DPSing - I'm kinda less happy they're pushing healers back to being DPS. I thought those dark days were behind us forever. At least for the most part it's not terrible - as long as they stop here - since you only have to mess with it infrequently and it's MOSTLY just "press a button a second time (AST/SCH)" or "get 3 more Miseries by pressing a button 3 more times" (WHM). The only one that's kind of annoying is SGE since it has yet another button and my hotbar is already feeling bloated, so having to drop some stuff off of it. Which sucks. AOE DoT is nice, though, just for dungeon trash making it less annoying to apply the single target to everything while running. Now you can just slap the AOE one on, then spam the one AOE button for 30 seconds. That's kind of nice.
But damn, I'm out of hotbar spots. I REALLY don't want more buttons, especially wasting my hotbar spots with more DAMAGE buttons. If I want to play a DPS, I'll get on SMN.
I havent tried AST and SGE (i used it like once, so I wont talk on it), but I have fully leveled SCH and partially leveled up WHM.
I will say people problem with lockout for SCH is understandable, but I don't see it as a problem.
I will say I kinda hope that they make buffed adlo in seraphism cost less MP. SCH already struggles with MP the most and it drains MP like no ones business.
Your video was super helpful in understanding what healers I want to care about atm. One criticism. Either you're turning up your VO in the edit too much and causing it to clip or you're mic is too hot, causing the clicks and pops. Turn something down lol.
I dont care for SCH but that's just me, but SCH is a beast. I love WHm and ASt though. Havent finished SGE.
you like player/enemy targeted gapclosers
Nin main: "You lost me"
You like them so you don't jump to your death
Nin main:"oh, carry on"
Do you have an absolute personal favorite in dawntrail rinon?
And if could add or remove something to a healer, what would you add or remove?
I’ve found Scholar the most fulfilling so far, but as an Astrodyne unenjoyer I’ve also been enjoying AST a lot. If the cards felt a little more interesting to use than they are right now, but Astrodyne remained gone, it would be a really enjoyable version of the job imo
I want a healer that focuses on buffing the party's damage rather than dealing much damage. Think DNC and AST buffs with only 1 AoE and 1 single target dps ability.
Love the dash on WHM and I’d probably absolutely hate it, if it was a targeted ability.
The thing that kind of bothers me about FF14’s healer design is that anything outside the newest expansions has a tendency to lock you out of the majority of your kit with very strange cutoffs. Difficulty also tends to be very inconsistent across content and bosses.
Coming from MMOs that were extremely healer dependent, I have to disagree with the whole make the healer be integral to clearing type mentality. The game is not built for that and it would make learning hell for beginners as this game does not have a self res, most casters don’t appear to use their res and people generally don’t care to wipe and redo mechs so a new healer can learn. Tbh healing in FF14 feels a lot more rigid than what I was used to, which makes it easier but also less engaging after a while.
does valigarmanda ex’s forever dot snapshot mitigation buffs and damage reduction debuffs on application as usual? or does it ignore them completely, or is it aware of mitigation on players as it comes and goes?
I fell in love with scholar in endwalker. The only thing it needs is QOL to remove the jank around its pet actions. While I understand some people enjoying the added challenge, to me its feels like difficulty derived from tediousness. Not good design.
I wonder if they'll ever fix Scholar jank. I'll still probably main it but I'd just like to know if I should have hope.
I play AST and SCH, which are clearly still the biggest winners. But my issue has never been with how strong they are. Their kits aren't fun to use beyond the first 3 runs of an instance. Scholar has ascended beyond jank to the point that we are now angels(?) rather than where we started as curse-weaving warlocks. All of the luster is gone when you realize you have the same 4 OGCD tools as the other healers (barring AST).
The extremes are a blast for me right now because if anyone messes up, I am literally the only way they can survive. Healing should be that important - we SHOULD be using GCDs to protect our team while the DoT serves as a passive source of reliable damage between Broil IV. And for SCH specifically, we genuinely NEED our offensive tools back.
I have so many random abilities that never make a big difference because no one needs healing that an Indom can't provide with a competent cohealer. Lower our outgoing healing again, encourage the use of Galvanize, and let us choose how to influence the field of battle. We are the successors of the genius Nymian Scholars, tactical geniuses aided by our Fairy. Stop melding us together into a divine being and reintroduce the dichotomy of a ruthless general and their altruistic familiar. Leave the communion and ascension to White Mage - they deserve to have just as much of a unique identity as we do. ❤
I think just giving us glare 4 but making it use a lily, and still giving is 3 charges on presence of mind that can be used without having lilies would be the better implementation
I think that would be a bit too imbalanced DPS wise. But as a WHM main I am all for this. Just give us glare 4 instead of glare 3 while they're at it.
Love astrologian aesthetic so much but i find myself panicking a lot with it... Like i unrionically found it more "easier" with the 3 cards-2 min 1 card-1 min bursts but now i have to remember what each card does or just awkwardly dump it all on tank and then curse how a dps made a mistake and it wouldve been really useful if i had that regen/mit card as a raidwide comes up
I need to know all the healing cds used for ex1 to be able to heal it without gcds using AST + SCH comp. Maybe even AST + SGE. I don't see enough "free healing" options in AST + SCH to cover the entire fight without the tanks and dps parsing 99 on heals maybe.
I'll take WHM over an AST any day in my statics. FAR more consistant.
As someone who loves WHM I never felt like I was doing good the entire dlc. regular mobs deal a surprising amount of damage which makes it hard to keep up at times, warrior just doesn’t need healing anymore, and the biggest one is even in normal difficulty you can get 1-2 shot by bosses so if you aren’t spewing heal after heal either you or all the dps and supports are dead because you couldn’t keep up with the damage output.
As a WHM main that honestly sounds like a skill issue. I had none of these problems, even the first few days on the new lv100 dungeons where everyone was dying left and right.
Given, yes the healing requirements are a lot higher in this expansion but WHM has more than enough kit to cover it and without having to resort to spamming GCD heals.
@@JathraDH Maybe it is, maybe I just don’t know the rotation, all I know is i’ve had moments I had 90% of my hp and in one big move the boss would kill me outright
@@Cash_Mambo Oh yea you can not fail mechs or you will just die in this expansion. I thought you were meaning about being able to keep the party topped. The dungeon difficulty is much higher for sure.
Something that bothers me about Sage is that Psyche doesn't trigger Kardia, which breaks the idea that Sage is a Healer that primarily heals through dealing damage.
Even Phlegma triggers Kardia!
Without a doubt, I will go red mage (can attack, can double revive and heal), though less potent....in a high level raid, I would love to see a red mage in my team (especially when the healer is meh.......)
But on the side note of that, a lot of people noticed already, in the low level dungeons, WHM player just use script to play it and not even in front of monitor.
Hearing that Healers are allowed to perform poorly in high-end content blows my mind, from a mostly WoW player. In that game, a healer is stress incarnate with how much work they have to put into keeping people alive.
Scholar and astro reign supreme as usual.
Kudos to the balance team, for a release patch to have healers within a 6% difference with this many added tools is impressive
@@radycalrad honestly yeah, we're leaps and bounds away from where it has been over the past years.
I gotta say the same thing I always say when people talk about SCH. What is this dissipation ability? Surely I have not missed an ability for my bars even as I clear Savage content, right? No.... No no, nah.
Real talk, just because it eats the fairy at all, I have never placed it on my bar, and I never will. I dont care if my dps is lower because of it, I do not eat my fairy.
i felt this