FFXIV: Healers in 5.0

Posted on Edited on

My thoughts on the Healer jobs in FFXIV 5.0: Shadowbringers from what we know so far.

Outline

  1. Background
  2. Resources for 5.0 changes
  3. Initial reaction
  4. Concerns
  5. Counter arguments
  6. Summary

Background

I've been playing FFXIV since 3.0: Heavensward, off and on. It's been mostly my main MMORPG for 2 years. During that time, I've mostly played the healers, especially in raiding content. For the jobs I have at level 70, this is the order of how much time I've spent on each:

  1. AST
  2. SCH
  3. WAR
  4. PLD
  5. BRD
  6. DRG
  7. DRK
  8. RDM
  9. WHM
  10. SMN

As you can see, I have all 3 healers and all 3 tanks at level 70. I'm what most would probably categorize as a "mid-core raider". I've farmed all of the normal and Ex primals as well as all the normal raids. I've cleared and farmed (almost always in PUGs) Savage for O1-3/5/6. At each raid tier that I've participated in, I've geared at least 6 jobs to as high of an ilvl that I could with the content that I was willing to subject myself to PUGs to clear. I've been in several short-lived static groups.

In FFXIV, (good) healers have always filled downtime during fights with DPS. Sometimes, like during progression raiding, this isn't possible, as the healers are constantly on their toes fixing the lost health of the party. When the group learns the fights, however, there is downtime between mechanics that cause damage to the party. During this time, the healers can use their job's skills to support the party with extra buffing and damage. After all, it doesn't matter if everyone in the party is at 100% health or if only 1 person is up at the end of the fight as long as the boss dies. This isn't a TTRPG - there's no damage penalties from being at low health.

Resources for 5.0 changes

There's a lot of information about the changes coming to healers in 5.0. Rather than regurgitating all that info here, I'll include links to resources that I found helpful.

Additionally, many of those videos have threads on /r/ffxiv.

Initial reaction

When I first saw the Job Actions video from Square Enix, I was really excited for all the jobs - the animations did, and still do, look fantastic. I think the art and animation teams did a wonderful job. Specifially, the WHM's wings and the SCH's new pet really caught my eye. Additionally, all of AST's skills look great, per usual. When I saw the new AST card system in the preview though, I was both confused and concerned. I like the 4.0 AST card system. When the videos came out from the content creators about the changes to the individual jobs that are coming in 5.0, including tooltip screenshots and gameplay, I became even more confused and very, very concerned.

Concerns

For the purpose of this post, I'll be focusing on AST and SCH, as I don't feel comfortable enough with WHM to present an opinion.

Starting with AST, I can firmly state that I greatly dislike the new card system. As I said above, I like the 4.0 system. Fishing for the right card (notice how I didn't say "fishing for Balance") is a lot of RNG, but with Redraw, Spread, Royal Road, and Sleeve Draw, there are a lot of different ways to get buffs through the class's mechanics, and it's up to the player to decide when and on whom to use those buffs. A lot of players say that the only way to play AST is to only play AoE Balance, as that's the best way to contribute to a party. If ASTs could always draw AoE Balance 100% of the time in 8-man content, they would. In 8-man content that's going well, AoE Balance is definitely the king.

The benefit of AST having cards that aren't just Balance and Royal Road fodder is for all of the situations that aren't 8-man-going-well content. In 4-man content, I'd much rather use an improved duration or potency Arrow/Spear on a DPS job than doing an AoE anything. Even in 8-man content, using a Bole on the tank if they're low on CDs can save the pull, or using Ewer on myself or the other healer if we're getting low can allow us to get the group back on track. While Balance is universally good, it's not the only card that's good.

The new cards are all mini-Balances, giving a 6% damage increase to either melee or ranged jobs (depending on the card) and 3% damage up to the other group. Minor Arcana can be used on transform these cards to Lord/Lady which grant 8%/4% to the same group, instead of being direct damage or oGCD heal abilites. Each card has 1 of 3 new "seals", which are put into a new part of the job gauge. Every 180s, a new skill called Divination can be used to consume those seals and grant a damage up buff to the party of either 3% or 6%, depending on how many of the unique seals the AST has in their job gauge at the time. So, looking at these changes, we can see that SE removed all of the unique effects from the cards to just be damage increases that are less than what Balance is now. The new seal mechanic is a less-powerful AoE Balance on a significantly longer cooldown. We no longer have the ability to grant regen of any type, or damage reduction, or speed/crit increases.

Additionally, the change to Celestial Opposition (which is now a pretty bad ability overall) and the removal of Time Dialation remove the AST's ability to extend durations on any effects. As a side note, Draw and Play being seprated and Redraw being given 3 charges are both really nice changes. The stance-dependent healing changes are interesting, including the abilities that grant the other Sect's effect. I'm not opposed to those, though the potencies on a lot of AST's abilities look low when compared to the other healers. AST didn't lose any DPS abilities directly, as the job only had the now-common "1 DoT, 1 AoE, 1 spammable" setup that the other 2 healer jobs are getting treated to.

All in all, I don't like the new card system because it reduces the amount of thinking we do in combat. If SE is trying to reduce the amount of damage that healers contribute to in group content, then I'm not automatically opposed to that (though I don't understand why). I'm opposed to the reduction of in-combat mechanics for the purpose of simplifying the job because those mechanics were what we used to keep us from getting bored in between healing the group.

SCH primarily sees SE confirming it to the 3-skill-DPS-kit that AST had. SCH has always had a strong oGCD healing kit that allowed it to put out a strong amount of personal DPS between healing. The 5.0 changes completely remove this identity in favor of increasing the amount of healing that SCH can output, which was already top of the line. Additionally, since many players only used Selene for pre-pull buffs, SE apparently thought it better to just make Selene a carbon-copy of Eos. Yes, there is now only a cosmetic difference between the two fairies. Additionally, Embrace has had its potency reduced, which is annoying. SCH, like AST, got a couple of new nice things, including a HoT to Sacred Soil and an auto fair summon after Dissipation (though with the new Aetherflow mechanics, SCH's will likely need this ability even less than they currently do, which is very rarely). The new fairy looks great, but its abilities are a little underwhelming.

Counter arguments

  1. You're a healer, just heal!

We are healing - the loss of these mechanics mean that we'll be bored in between the times that we are and will be healing.

  1. ASTs were just going to search for a Balance anyway!

Since cards are RNG, refusing to use potentially less applicable cards in the moment rather than discarding to search for Balances is a DPS loss. Part of 4.0 AST is knowing when to use each card, rather than just using Balance.

  1. The encounters will require more healing, so that's why you're getting more healing!

We have no idea what the 70-80 content will require in terms of healing. Additionally, even if this is true, this won't solve for the 1-70 group content or any solo content. Additionally, if SE increases the amount of healing in normal-mode dungeons and trials such that even soft-core raiders are kept busy, they will have gated off a large part of the community that already finds that sort of content challenging. Healers having DPS abilities raises the skill ceiling, not the skill floor.

Summary

Overall, I'm pretty concerned about the changes coming to healers in 5.0. I'm not looking forward to how AST and SCH are going to play, especially AST. I hear WHM didn't get hurt too bad, but they got abilities that are largely what they already had, so WHM mains are pretty confused too. I'll definitely skill play a healer in 5.0, though I don't know if I'll main a healer.