Cure Formula Changes

[Economizer]

Before I begin, I really wish I could put a dev tag on this thread, but SE has not yet issued one to this topic (they should, it is important). While I posted this in the White Mage thread for obvious reasons, this also involves Paladins, Red Mages and Scholar quite extensively - and I hope we can fight not each other, but the common enemy of crappy cures. Perhaps by doing this we will be able to get SE to resolve the issue on a faster time table as it becomes more obvious how important this is to us.

As many of you should be well aware of by now, SE has stated that they are looking into changing the formula for Cure spells as an option. This has been something asked for by all the jobs that can heal, even White Mages. Clearly, the spells do not scale well to high levels, and even SE now acknowledges this.

So one possibility we’re considering is increasing the influence of the healing skill and MND, as well as increasing the HP recovery amount more than it is currently.

We believe this would involve making adjustments to jobs that have healing skill to improve the amount of HP recovered, but due to the fact that we will also be implementing cure potency equipment, implementing this aspect is simply one issue under consideration.

With that said our goal is not to make it so a certain job’s advantages are given to other jobs so they are able to do the same thing, instead we would like to look into how we can keep each job’s specialties intact and create ways that they can support other jobs.

Now one of the most persistent things about these forums is the constant asking for Cure V for other non-WHM jobs. This has basically come down to Cure IV not being enough, and White Mage having Cure VI. These both resolve to the same issue - lower tier cures do not scale well.

There is some work being done with Regen spells and increased amounts of cure potency gear. However, Regen spells only do so much, and cure potency caps at 50% (and the implications of raising it are worse then simply adjusting the cure formulas). Thus, boosting cures below Cure IV would be very helpful.

Even on the higher end this is relevant - as any competent or remotely intelligent White Mage will tell you, Cure VI sucks, and is essentially Cure V on a different timer, for 92 more MP. Perhaps if after the formula changes Cure VI isn't utter crap my opinion about it would change, but as it stands, one could make a serious argument about simply removing the spell from the game. It might have useful situations now, but I'm currently disappointed to the point of disgust with this spell. While I could spend an entire thread complaining about this spell and players who think it justifies any sort of spell list changes for other jobs, the ultimate issue is that this spell was just a band-aid for poor scaling.

Here is a list of the current cure spells and their current cure amounts (this list assumes a modest gear set of 400 Healing Magic skill, 140 MND, and 80 VIT, both 0% and 50% cure potency gear are shown). This list is a bit incomplete for true analysis on the cures, as it lacks HP/MP ratios, but it is good for a general feel of what each cure does in terms of raw curing power.

• Cure I
  35 HP - 52 HP
• Cure II
  97 HP - 145 HP
• Cure III
  204 HP - 306 HP
• Cure IV
  441 HP - 616 HP
• Cure V
  721 HP - 1081 HP
• Cure VI
  940 HP - 1410 HP

As anyone can see, the bigger the cure, the more effect cure potency has on it. There are other implications too, but the important thing is to get a feel for the current cure amounts.

Onto the spells in general, I will start about what we can say about cure formula changes that, and some implications of this.

First, we know that the changes will ideally make it so everyone can cure better, but the main focus will be on making jobs that natively have cure spells (or rather, Healing Magic Skill) heal even better then jobs subbing those jobs. This is to say, White Mage, Paladin, Red Mage and Scholar.

To reiterate, this is one of the key complaints about spell scaling - White Mages, Paladins, Red Mages and Scholars should be able to cure more then jobs that sub these jobs with Cure I/II/III/IV. A White Mage casting Fire does not do as much damage as a Black Mage doing so, a Paladin casting Utsusemi does not get as many shadows as a Ninja, a Red Mage using Curing Waltz does not heal as much as a Dancer, and a Scholar using a summon does not get as strong a pet as a Summoner. If all these jobs do not offer as much, even when wearing equal gear, then why should a cure heal as much when subbed as it does on someone who gets it natively?

Basing this entirely on Healing Magic Skill, however, starts to run into problems. While subbing White Mage for example, someone would have access to Cure I/II/III/IV, and at level 47, 144 (150 at 49) Healing Magic Skill. But when subbing Scholar, you get Cure I/II/III and the ability to pop Light Arts to change your 128 Healing Magic Skill into 346 Healing Magic Skill. This is basically C skill +1, or better then a Paladin, Red Mage, or Scholar not under Light Arts can get natively.

There are a few solutions to this problem, many of which are bad. First, Light/Dark Arts could be gimped for subjob level skills, which wouldn't affect jobs that natively have some skill in the relevant skills, but would horribly affect ones that don't, such as White Mage trying to Dark Arts + Aspir with Scholar sub. Second, Cure III and lower could still be crappy to cast, but this defeats some of the purpose of the formula adjustments, which would ideally make it so jobs without Cure V have at least two solid cure spells.

A third solution would be to accept this, and simply make Cure IV scale well enough that jobs with it would be in a much better boat then jobs with only Cure III, but still boost Cure III enough that it is useful. Ultimately, the formula changes for cures would be very difficult to perform right, especially with balancing jobs subbing Red Mage or White Mage for Cure IV and jobs subbing Scholar for Light Arts and Cure III, while still making it so that Healing Magic Skill has a more drastic affect on cures.

A forth solution would be to simply give a Job Trait to White Mage, Paladin, Red Mage and Scholar to ungimp the cure formula more then other classes will get, which ignores some of the more difficult formula design with the third solution while completely ignoring Cure III/IV balance.

Moving onward, we have the White Mage AF3+2 pants, which reduce the cost of cure spells for White Mages. The enchantment is very potent, and I think it would be reasonable to expect it to not be on gear ever again, due to the potent effects. Still, this leaves a 5% refund on healing for White Mages, who would probably get the most benefit in terms of maximum cure amounts from formula changes. This gives us a very clear maximum amount that cure spell will be allowed to cure, which I will list here. All maximum amounts are accounting for Light Arts.

• Cure I
  8 MP (8 MP) - 160 HP
• Cure II
  24 MP (22 MP) - 440 HP
• Cure III
  46 MP (42 MP) - 840 HP
• Cure IV
  88 MP (80 MP) - 1600 HP
• Cure V
  135 MP (122 MP) - 2440 HP
• Cure VI
  227 MP (205 MP) - 4100 HP

These numbers are quite high compared to what the numbers should be in most cases, however they are still important to be aware of.

Currently spell effects give about a 4-5.5 / 6-8 HP/MP ratio. Spells would have to do better then this when boosted. Scaling all spells up, the ideal would be to make Cure III and Cure IV be able to perform a competent amount of healing more in line with current HP totals, without being able to outperform Cure IV/V.

I will leave the exact numbers of what these should be to discussion (and might even give some suggestions, but not in the starter), but ultimately, every spell should get a boost in cure amount. This is more relevant for lower tier cures, and more of a trivial change for larger cures. Hopefully this thread will start some deep conversation about what we want from cures without adding to spell lists, and will get SE's attention drawn to this subject more.

[Tsukino_Kaji]

Cliffsnotes please.

[Arcon]

I cant reed, plz halp!

Read the last paragraph.

[Economizer]

Cliffsnotes please.

You really should read the entire thing, it is formatted for readability, and uses things like grammar with minimal mistakes.

People reading a summary wouldn't be as completely aware with some of the issues (well, at least the ones I was able to list) with changing the cure formulas, but if you want a TL;DR:

One of the most persistent things about these forums is the constant asking for Cure V for other non-WHM jobs. This has basically come down to Cure IV not being enough, and White Mage having Cure VI. These both resolve to the same issue - lower tier cures do not scale well.

Even White Mages have complained about Cure VI, which is essentially a band-aid for the scaling problem, since Cure III/IV are coming up short.

SE commented on this, a condensed version of my already condensed quote:

So one possibility we’re considering is increasing the influence of the healing skill and MND, as well as increasing the HP recovery amount more than it is currently.

The goal of this thread is to start some deep conversation about what we want from cures without adding to spell lists, and to get SE's attention drawn to this subject more.

TL;TL;DR: Basically, talk about and suggest changes to the cure formulas.

[Tsukino_Kaji]

Read the last paragraph.

I don't talk like a tool, please change your missquote to reflect that.

[SpankWustler]

I just hope the Development Bros realize the issue is with the soft caps themselves rather than reaching the soft caps. They can be very deranged at times, so I wouldn't put it past them to work on entirely the wrong side of the equations and then tell a thousand raging people "Hey, we fixed it!".

Without running any numbers, I'd say that just increasing all soft caps by 25% but leaving the formulas exactly the same would be easy to do and wouldn't break anything too horribly. Maybe less than a 25% increase for Cure V and Cure VI, since their caps aren't as brutal as those of their little bros.

Maybe a casting time reduction to Cure VI to give it a new niche as a MP inefficient "OH NO THINGS DONE GONE BAD!" button. I can't see people ever having enough HP for it to work as just another Cure, no matter how much HP it restores.

Honestly, I'm trying not to think too hard about what I want. It leaves the Development Bros with less room to disappoint me.

[Greatguardian]

Cure VI was built around a soft cap that no one will ever hit ever outside of brew/massive cruor buffs. I'm not sure what they were thinking when they introduced it.

[Motenten]

Here's my post working through the math for the changes I'd suggest for the cure formula:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/th...103#post222103

The math is far more specific than Economizer's post, but I think that the suggested changes are quite reasonable. It gives greater weight to skill than mnd, and tones down the scaling restrictions past the soft (for Cure IV/V) and hard (for all cures) caps. So jobs with native healing skill will heal significantly better than jobs without that skill, though the overall effect will have jobs that might sub whm (or whatever) still curing for just slightly more than they do now.

Thus, no downside compared to current curing, but improves the amount cured by Cures 1-4 by around 25% at level 99 for those with native skill (before cure potency is applied).

[Economizer]

I just hope the Development Bros realize the issue is with the soft caps themselves rather than reaching the soft caps.

Yeah, I honestly didn't think of the possibility that they'd just make it easier to reach cap, which is the opposite of what I'd want.

Without running any numbers, I'd say that just increasing all soft caps by 25% but leaving the formulas exactly the same would be easy to do and wouldn't break anything too horribly. Maybe less than a 25% increase for Cure V and Cure VI, since their caps aren't as brutal as those of their little bros.

First off (as more of a point of interest really), Cure V and VI actually have a hard cap (I believe this was tested with a Primeval Brew). If you are interested, my source says they cap at:

• Cure V
  810 HP / 1215 HP
• Cure VI
  1140 HP / 1710 HP

This point of interest only really comes into effect when we talk about changing the soft caps on spells, because when soft caps are removed, (using my previous 400 Healing Magic skill, 140 MND, and 80 VIT stat block to remain constant with the starter post), we get the following numbers for cures. Note that I don't have soft cap numbers for Cure VI, and Cure V is above the hard cap. I'm a bit suspicious of these numbers, as the source for these numbers has proven to be slightly unreliable.

• Cure I
  360 HP - 540 HP
• Cure II
  390 HP - 585 HP
• Cure III
  440 HP - 660 HP
• Cure IV
  720 HP - 1080 HP
• Cure V
  885 HP - 1327 HP

Second, I can't tell how exactly you intent to raise the cure amounts, given your wording about soft caps.

If you mean something simple like "just increase cure amounts by 25%" I can pull numbers for that fairly quickly, with this (just straight 25% across the board):

• Cure I
  43 HP - 64 HP
• Cure II
  121 HP - 181 HP
• Cure III
  255 HP - 382 HP
• Cure IV
  551 HP - 826 HP
• Cure V
  901 HP - 1351 HP
• Cure VI
  1175 HP - 1762 HP

Unfortunitely for me quickly pulling numbers out of the place I pull items in game, soft caps refer to something more confusing (to me). If my source is right, here are the soft caps for cures.

• Cure I
  30 HP
• Cure II
  90 HP
• Cure III
  190 HP
• Cure IV
  390 HP
• Cure V
  690 HP

As much as it pains me to admit it, I'm not so mathematically inclined that I can look at the formulas for these things and know how to increase the softcap and produce a number easily. Still, after some toying around with a spreadsheet using the date from my source, I found how to do this more or less (the numbers below come with a 25% decrease in the rate number to boost cure power, which essentially lowers what we could call the softcap by 25% - interestingly enough, boosting the constant 25% as well just returns the 25% boost numbers almost exactly). I don't have the numbers that the calculator I'm using uses, so again, can't calculate Cure VI.

• Cure I
  37 HP - 55 HP
• Cure II
  100 HP - 150 HP
• Cure III
  209 HP - 314 HP
• Cure IV
  425 HP - 638 HP
• Cure V
  754 HP - 1131 HP

I'm not sure if these were the numbers you were looking for, but perhaps this helps provide a better understanding of the numbers we are looking at. Note that these numbers are about a five percent improvement on the current ones.

Ultimately, I'm not sure a simple 25% buff would solve things ideally, although it would be a solid start. My issues with just buffing spells 25% is a question towards how it would be done - how do we ensure that most of this buff is enjoyed by White Mages, Paladins, Scholars and Red Mages, and not anybody subbing White Mage or Red Mage? Moving from this, even if those four jobs essentially got a 25% buff to cures while well geared and other jobs didn't, would this be enough of an edge to satisfy main job healers? Lots of difficult questions for now, at least for those that would like an elegant solution.

Maybe a casting time reduction to Cure VI to give it a new niche as a MP inefficient "OH NO THINGS DONE GONE BAD!" button. I can't see people ever having enough HP for it to work as just another Cure, no matter how much HP it restores.

Considering that Cure V could be scaled up and up and up when the rest of the cures are (short of some situation where Cure V cures 2440 HP and the tank has like 4000HP), and it wouldn't really affect how White Mage does things, I don't think the amount Cure VI cures could help its case, although I wouldn't be so bitter if it was more MP efficient then Cure VI, even if I could never use that efficiency in the majority of situations. Or if Cure VI performed some ultility while curing sorta like Blue Mage's Plenilune Embrace does. Or something. As is, the spell leaves a bitter taste in my mouth, even when I'm using it for the one use I have for it - being able to main Cure while weakened in Abyssea.

Cure VI was built around a soft cap that no one will ever hit ever outside of brew/massive cruor buffs. I'm not sure what they were thinking when they introduced it.

I think it was a lot like a band-aid, or maybe just misplaced idealism, I'm not sure sometimes. The spell caps at least potency then a Cure V in every situation, and even hard caps faster then Cure V according to current formulas (this is a little harder to tell, but ultimately, pop a brew and we can see the super disappointing hard cap). I'm loathe to admit it even has found a use or two (the second one would be if I'm being lazy on super easy things), but I'd like to think that if Cure III and IV cured for more, even that limited use. I hate even talking about it, because I'd like this thread to be more then just about White Mages, but I can't help myself but complain about it sometimes.

Cure formula changes aren't about to fix Cure VI anytime soon in my opinion, but considering the priorities, I think that's okay. While it won't hurt for Cure V/VI to get masses of more HP cured, I don't really see how that will majorly affect balance. What is more important and will have more impact is for lower tiers, particularly Cure III/IV to cure more for jobs with native access, and this should help everyone.

[Motenten]

First off (as more of a point of interest really), Cure V and VI actually have a hard cap (I believe this was tested with a Primeval Brew). If you are interested, my source says they cap at:

Cure V
810 HP / 1215 HP

That implies a hard power cap of 1240. Adding that to my spreadsheet for personal reference.

After doing some re-writing to clean things up, I found that values that make the scaling on the lesser cures make sense. The overall pattern being used is much clearer now.

The current cures (aside from 6, though 6 is still similar to the others) follow fairly distinct patterns. It's clear that the design for the formulas is a mixture of power (value generated from skill/mnd/vit) and the amount that each spell cures (which how the caps get defined).

Cure 1 has a minimum cure amount of 10 HP, and increases by 10 HP per cap. Cure 2 has a minimum cure amount of 60 HP, and increases by 15 HP per cap. Etc. See table:

        Min Cured     Cure @Cap1    Cure @Cap2    Cure @Max     Interval
Cure 1         10             20            30           40           10
Cure 2         60             75            90          105           15
Cure 3        130            160           190          220           30
Cure 4        270            330           390          450           60
Cure 5        450            570           690          810          120
Cure 6        660            960          1140         1140          300~

The amount of power required to reach those caps depends on a base value and the rate of increase the devs decided on. For example, Cure 3 has a base value of 70 and a rate of 4 (for up to Cap 1). To get from 70 to 160 HP cured at a rate of 2 power per HP means you need 90*2 = 180 power. To reach the next cap (30 more HP) at a rate of 4 power per HP means you need another 120 power on top of that. And so on.

Ultimately, everything is built around the intervals between each cap (generally doubling with each cure tier), and the maximum allowed power (1240).

The maximum allowed power is why the lower tier spells suck past a certain point. Cure 1, for example, reaches cap 2 at 100 power, and has an interval of 10 HP cured per cap. That means going from 100 power to the max 1240 power only increases the total amount cured by another 10 HP (1 HP every 114 power).

Cure 5, on the other hand, reaches Cap 2 at 560 power, and has an interval of 120. That means it improves by another 120 HP cured with an increase of (1240-560) = 680 power, or 1 HP every 5.67 power (about 2 points of mnd).

Cure 6 caps early because the absolute maximum power allowed (1240) hampers it (it hits the max power before it hits its natural cap).


Because of the way they've built it (now that I have a pretty complete picture of things), I can see how they might be hesitant to change it. For example, I don't know why the specific value of 1240 is used as a max power, but if it's hardcoded into various places, or there's other code that depends on that particular value, it could be very troublesome to change (and easily break stuff if they don't go through everything very carefully).

Likewise, they've built their cure tiers with progressively doubling intervals (though they didn't use 240 for Cure 6 for some reason). A large part of the balance of the game is the progression of damage taken vs damage healed. They have a 'nice' pattern for how healing improves, which, if they change, could throw the overall balance out of whack.

At this point I'm doing some rethinking of my proposed revisions based on these limitations (ie: min cured, 3 defined caps, max of 1240 power).