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1Warning: get ready for a long read, but I want to try and tackle the state of healers post SB launch. I will be covering the positives, and also the negatives of this topic
2Who am I? I’m a retired healer main that used to play all three healers during patches 2.1 -> 4.1. I’ve played all three healers probably too much over the past 4 years, with a primary focus on WHM and SCH, with playing AST upon patch 3.4 (just like everyone else).
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4Overall? I think that healers are the most balanced they've ever been since they added AST in Heavensward. But balanced does not equate fun to play, in my opinion. I’m going to go over each area that I think have issues and explain why they’re currently affecting the enjoyment of these jobs. I will also be outlining the things that are currently being done right as well, but keep in mind that the negatives will be more lengthy than the positives. The entire point of this analysis is to offer feedback on how to alleviate the issues that are currently present with healers in the patch 4.x series.
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6When reading this, please keep an open mind, and remember that this is purely an opinion piece. With me giving up on healing this expansion, on top of a few discussions about job design in Stormblood, I think this is as good a time as any to try and tackle this topic. Enjoy reading!
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10#Positives of Healer Design in 4.0
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12**1. Healers have never been stronger**  
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14With the introduction of abilities like Earthly Star, Fey Union, Divine Benison, and Exogitation, with some hefty buffs to Assize (CD reduction by 30 sec from HW), Succor (100% -> 150% shield), and Indominability (400 -> 500 potency) + the Noct Sect buffs for AST - healers have never had this many strong tools to heal multiple types of damage like this. Healers in XIV have some of the most powerful heals in most popular MMOs by comparison (compare against WoW healing). And SB only made XIV healer kits that were already strong, even stronger.
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18**2. Nice QoL additions and smoothing out job flaws that existed in 3.x**  
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20In the 4.x patch series, we’ve seen a lot of going back and buffing jobs that had a large amount of complaints from the launch of the expansion - Scholar is no exception to this, neither is WHM, and I’m assuming 4.3 will bring a decent chunk of adjustments for AST as well.  
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22With 4.0, SE basically put Scholar in a precarious position just by the nature of reworking the job and handing out some pretty hefty nerfs in their mana costs for Adlo/Succor and nerfing Embrace potency. To make up for these choices, SCH has received a buff in almost every single major patch since 4.0 launch. I personally believe that SCH is overbuffed now, and has way too much yet again.  
23WHM basically got the 24 second Shroud in Lucid Dreaming, got Thin Air, lost Fluid Aura, and gained the immense power boost of gaining both benefits of Assize since Cleric toggle no longer exists. Plenary is also a huge power boost to an already impressive AoE healing arsenal (most likely added because of the plethora of “Photon” and “White Hole” type mechanics we’ve seen in this expansion. WHM saw the biggest improvement in my opinion from the 3.55 -> 4.0 jump, and they’ve only gotten better. WHM’s biggest weakness besides no damage utility during 3.55 was mana management, and now WHM has the best mana tools of all 3 healers.
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25AST has also received Sleeve Draw (which would be even better if AST had more room for OGCDs…), which alleviated a lot of the complaints about the “RNG” factor of the job (even though it’s just adding another layer, it still allows for some counterplay around bad RNG). They also added the Lord and Lady card dumps for useless cards, instead of just right clicking them off, which is also a welcome change. Noct Sect also went from being largely unused in the 3.x series to being very strong in 4.0. Noct sect is a very powerful healer, and can fill the role of Shield healer very well, especially in this expansion’s encounter design trends.
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28**3. Patch 4.2 is the most balanced Healers have been since HW launch**
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30After a multitude of adjustments since the original 4.0 patch, healers are in a really balanced spot. Each healer brings something unique and desired to the table. SCH may be a tad bit strong since they’ve received a load of potency/QoL buffs post 4.0, but even considering those buffs, AST/WHM sees more play than it ever has. The AST/WHM healing comp excels when dealing with Heartless Archangel and White Hole type mechanics, which as I mentioned before, Noct AST plays very well into this expansion’s encounter designs, especially on the final fights of Deltascape and Sigmascape. 
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32As long as you’re not doubling up jobs, you’ve got a fully functional healing comp, and nothing is inherently “staple”. When you look at tank balance, and then you look at healer balance, you can see the sheer discrepancy. If someone says that one healer is better than another as an absolute, they’re wrong. This is the first time since HW that this has really been the case. There was always a “best” healing comp back in the HW patch series, and until major overbuffs in 3.4, WHM/SCH was the go-to healing duo for almost all contexts. Now SCH/AST, WHM/SCH, and WHM/AST all see healthy amounts of play, and work well in all current content. Sure, one set will have certain strengths, and this is fight specific, but as an overall analysis?, I’m very satisfied with the relative balance between these three jobs in correlation to one another.
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37#Negatives of Healer Design in 4.0
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39**1. OGCD issues**
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41The biggest issue with healers now is the fact that there is not enough OGCD room to put your instant cast abilities. The biggest offender of this is AST, and is typically what I see people complain about. Just because AST is the worst doesn’t mean that it’s that bad by a large margin, SCH is pretty bad as well (it was much worse before they got Miasma II). WHM just clips Aero II or clips Regen, or lets it drop to reapply later to line up with an instant like Assize or Benison. WHM has it the best of the three, but it still suffers from clipping, which has always been an issue. These OGCD issues do not exist from a strict healing or DPS perspective, it exists in both contexts as a healer, currently. Having this issue makes healers clunky to play, when there’s no reason for that to be the case. There are multiple adjustments that could make this problem not exist, and I will outline those later on in this post.
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43I've mained a healer since 2.1, and this is the first patch where I actually stopped playing it altogether in a raid setting. I’ll still play WHM in dungeons because it’s a ton of fun, but honestly, when it comes to raiding? I'd rather play a DPS job (RDM), where I have OGCD room for everything. DPS jobs are designed around not feeling clunky to DPS on, and have room for all of their OGCDs. Why can’t healers have this same thought applied to them when making design decisions? The majority of each encounter will be spent using a decent chunk of DPS globals because of the sheer power of XIV healer’s healing throughput, so why does it seemingly not have that much consideration applied to it when making changes? 
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45Sometimes, I get the desire to play another healer besides WHM in dungeons every so often since 4.0 dropped, simply because I really like the aesthetic of all 3 healers, and have fond memories of playing them in the past. All it takes is me doing one instance and it instantly reminds myself why I don't actually play them. To put it simply: they're clunky, and feel terrible to play if you're always casting. To perform a normal DPS rotation or you’re healing normally, you will clip your global. For casual healers that don't really push damage or really push the job to the higher limits, these problems aren't going to be as bad simply because there will be decent chunks of downtime with no casting or unplanned movement. But, for anyone that pushes the job - this is a glaring issue imo, one that makes me completely uninterested in playing AST or SCH.
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47The deletion of Aero from the cross class pool, and long duration instant dots like Combust II and and Bio II really gimp these jobs and make them feel terrible to play and weave OGCDs on. Pre-4.0 SCH had 6 OGCD windows per minute due to Aero + Bio being 18 second duration dots, post 4.0? they have 2 (not counting Miasma II or Ruin II). So not only did Scholar gain more OGCDs to use per minute because of Aetherflow Mastery, Fey Union and Shadow Flare being an OGCD, but they have a third of the space to put them in compared to before.
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49WHM wasn't as affected in this regard because Aero basically became Aero 2. Overall, WHM has less problems than before because of Cleric not being a toggle + no more potency on Fluid Aura. But it's still not where I'd want it to be. And optimal play will still include clipping your global.
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51AST OGCD space has never been this bad, and I find it absolutely insane that the current iteration of AST made it to live. I know that 4.3 is going to have some adjustments for AST, but it better address the glaring OGCD spam issue. The card system is all OGCD, has 6 OGCDs tied to one single ability - Draw. You have the exact same issue as SCH in that you have one 30 second duration instant cast dot, but you can just Aspected Benefic to create room. However Draw and the card OGCDs is not even scratching the surface of how many OGCDs you have to use on AST per minute, because there are so many abilities that are off the GCD. I could go on and on, but I think you get the picture.
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53I think a simple solution could fix all 3 healers. SE could just make all filler nuke abilities (Malefic III, Stone IV, and Broil II) be a 1.5 second cast, similarly to how it functions in PvP. This way, all 3 healers no longer have to clip to be able to actually weave in between casts.
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55**2. Loss of DPS identity**
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57The second issue I'd pinpoint is that I think that each healer basically lost parts of their DPS identity come SB. All 3 healers now DPS largely the same, with some small exceptions. Whereas before, they each had their own niche, that made them interesting to play offensively with.
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59SCH lost their DPS that they had before, which was efficient dots and freedom of movement at the cost of potency (using Ruin II instead of Broil). But with SB, they lost two dots - Bio and Aero, both of which were medium duration dots that were instant cast, and created a ton of OGCD space per minute. Now you have one instant dot that has a 30 second duration, and generates room for 2 Energy Drains a minute. Through this expansion they became more immobile than they've ever been, because Broil II's potency is so much higher than Ruin II's, it's actually more efficient to clip your GCD to actually weave in Energy Drains, and that honestly just feels like garbage imo. You went from being the healer with the least amount of OGCD problems to being in a terrible place, and that just feels terrible (caused my Scholar cohealer of 3 years to give up on the game entirely).
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61AST lost all DPS identity they had before and had it thrown into Earthly Star. You went from having two instant dots in Combust and Aero and have it all mashed into Combust II - a 30 second duration instant cast dot (sound familiar), and no second dot? You have literally one dot, and one Nuke. Really? You went from managing 3 dots and your cards to managing 1 dot and 1 nuke + Earthly Star. It really seems like SE didn’t want ASTs worrying about much more than their cards and ES, so they basically neutered their DPS rotation. Very unfun, AST has never been this unfun imo. You have endless OGCDs because of the card system, and no place to put them. I really hope 4.3 puts in serious changes for this job.
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63WHM is still the same mostly, just lost a dot, gained a lot of other QoL or power buffs (Assize not being affected by Cleric toggle is incredibly powerful), all around feels better because you don't have to be shackled to melee range when you want to Fluid Aura, etc. But it suffers from the loss of a level 68 trait (secrets of the lily 2 LUL3D), and having a very shallow job gauge. I like WHM the most out of the 3 healers currently, and this is the best feeling iteration of WHM, but it’s still a healer in 4.0 and is most heavily affected by the next topic I’m going to cover.
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65
66**3. Role Action Abilities**
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68Cross Class abilities, or Role Action abilities affected healers the worst this tier, and WHM got the shaft, big time (similarly to how PLD did as well, but much worse). Cleric Stance, Protect, Largesse (Divine Seal), and Lucid Dreaming (Shroud), which were all White Mage exclusive abilities were deleted, and thrown into the Role Actions pool so the other two jobs could utilize them as well. They were already given access to Cleric and Prot, but Divine Seal and Shroud were WHM exclusive abilities that were just given away, and WHM got buffs across the board to compensate for this, I’m guessing. It doesn’t change the fact that in an expansion, I lost access to power that I just natively had in my kit before. Yes, I can opt to take the bread and butter Role Action abilities on WHM, but I’m still losing Esuna, I’m still having to choose on what I can or can’t do, when before, I legit had everything I needed in my kit with only needing Swiftcast from Thaumaturge. Role Actions went from a neat system where you could elect to solve certain issues before with abilities such as Surecast (A7S bombs) and Ruin (A4S low mana because of sac strat), to now you play a game of “what am I going to have to deal with not having access to in this encounter?”, and I absolutely hate it. This is not interesting, this is not me getting to make meaningful decisions, I’m having to sacrifice core functions of my job now, for no reason (looking right at you, Esuna). Give all healers their role specific “Esuna” back, and give all three healers Largesse by default, or if those aren’t a solution that SE is comfortable with? Add more role action slots for the healer role, or all roles.
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74#Conclusion
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76Stormblood’s overall job design goal was seemingly to simplify all jobs, remove a lot of the ability bloat, and make jobs easier to get into and play. But in doing so, all 3 healers lost their “unique” DPS identity. However, I think that with healers, these were designed with the lowest common denominator in mind. These are jobs designed around people who do not frequently press their DPS globals, and primarily focus on healing - which are the players that are least affected by the SB changes, and the expansion changes are geared towards. I’d argue that healers right now feel great for casual healers who just play healers every so often, or like doing the occasional Savage pug, or Expert Roulette on a healer. But for those who have played healers as their primary role for years, it feels like a step back in multiple areas.
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78I honestly think that at this point, SE should look at changing role actions to not be as frustrating (losing key parts of your kit like Esuna, etc) as it’s first issue. This is the easiest to tackle, and they’ve shown the ability to re-add abilities that were previously deleted to add QoL to a job (see Miasma II reintroduction to help with SCH AoE at SB launch due to Bane nerf). Re-add the Esuna-type spells to each healer, that’s a start. I also think that Cleric is extremely underwhelming at a 5% damage buff for 15 seconds. Cleric used to be a permanent 10% buff when toggled on. This buff lasts too short for the amount of damage bonus it provides. I think upping it to 10% is fine, or increasing the duration. Or, just remove it altogether. Cleric Stance is one of the most shallow parts of healer kits now, and if we had more OGCD space for it, I wouldn’t mind it, but right now, it just serves as an annoyance for a minor pay-off.
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80Change all filler nuke abilities for all 3 healers to be 1.5 second casts instead of 2.5 second. This allows for a single OGCD to be weaved in between each cast. Think of Wanderer’s Minuet in HW - this is a similar cast time. Or just look at PVP Healers, they already implemented this idea there. If the cast time of the filler nukes cannot or will not be adjusted, please create more space for the sheer amount of OGCDs that each healer has to use per minute. Making Stella instant cast for AST, and giving it a decent filler potency, making Ruin II be a higher potency for SCH, or giving WHM an instant that has a decently high potency as well that’s instant cast. Anything that gets away from forcing GCD clipping onto healers. Right now, optimal play involves clipping your GCD repeatedly, which feels very clunky, and unfun. And with the way that slidecasting functions in this game (on the server tick + latency), it makes casting while moving while not having OGCD space to be tedious, more than it is skill-based at times. Sometimes with a 95% complete cast, if you move, you’ll be interrupted. Whereas other times, you can start moving as early as 90% and not be interrupted. With shorter cast nukes, you could actually have a better feeling DPS flow, and less frustration when dealing with your OGCD abilities, with added mobility to boot, without gambling as much with slidecasts. The core of a healer’s power now is in their OGCD instants, and right now we have very little room for them. Where the healers should feel powerful, they feel frustrating when you have to either clip your GCD or not cast at all to use them. This is counter-intuitive, and unfun.
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82If you’ve made it this far, I appreciate you taking the time to read my thoughts on the matter. In summation, I really hope that SE makes some sizeable changes to make healing more appealing in future patches, so I can go back to the activity that I enjoyed the most before this expansion.
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86tl;dr - give healers more ogcd space, give all healers esuna, and make cleric not be so shallow