#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Tint

Which advocates to take away healing from all other roles (at least to some degree) to let the healer role shine again. See any parallels to taking away from other healers so the "pure" healer can shine more?

Which advocates against homogenisation of the healer role. So is "I can do everything" now good design or not? Should WHM become more homogenized or the other healers less?

Talks about excessive and too powerfull oGCD healing and wants it dialed back, but now you are trash talking WHM for being too weak.

---

So long as something like Seat of Sacrifice's opening mechanic exists, I am going to argue that trying to establish a strict distinction between "pure" vs. "shield" healers is an exercise in sadness. And to WHM specifically, I look back to FFI and FFIV, and I see something more akin to "jack of all trades."

On the healing front, my issue with WHM isn't that it's "weak." It's that its kit sings essentially one note, and only one note: restore HP. The kit lacks breadth to the point of being anemic and almost non-functional. A little bit more access to party-wide shields and mitigations would go a long ways towards having some semblance of control over the raid-wides that hit for ~100% of HP bars — instead of hoping that literally anyone else in the party hits a mitigation, which is an asinine identity for a healer and WHM. It would pair well with reducing tanks' and DPS's access to those same tools.

And none of that needs to change what differentiates WHM from the other healers: what WHM does, it does directly, immediately, and on the GCD. It doesn't preclude WHM from being the healer that prefers to restore HP in large quantities and quickly. It doesn't preclude a future where someone remembers that White Mages were one half of a calamity, and they probably didn't Cure III the world into oblivion, so maybe WHM can get an assortment of direct, immediate, on the GCD, elementally-aspected offensive spells. That all leaves plenty of room for WHM's current, nearest competitor, AST, to differentiate itself with delayed and over-time based healing, and with buff-based offense, to say nothing of how one might evolve SCH and SGE.

We don't need to buff WHM, because that's a vertical expansion of its capabilities. For example, changing Asylum from 100p per tick to 150 per tick, won't solve WHM's issues. Increasing Medica2 to Medica3 (and the HOT potency by 25 per tick as a consequence) sure as heck didn't solve anything. It either needs to be a horizontal expansion of its capabilities (eg giving it more variety in its tools, and therefore more coverage of what things it can do), or a change to the fight design that uniquely benefits WHM moreso than the other healers.

Over here in a different thread where I keep some ideas, the OP there contains (but originally it was posted in this thread) an idea I call 'Aetherblight', effectively a debuff that acts as an anti-shield that prevents you from healing your actual HP bar until sufficient healing has been dealt to the afflicted player. This has many useful design benefits for the game, I would argue. More variety in raid mechanics would become available with its addition, and when it's used in conjunction with other things. For example, while the Aetherblight is active in one fight, it could reduce your movespeed somewhat, making it harder to get to positions for mechanics. It could apply a constant DOT that lasts only while as the Aetherblight remains, so dealing with it faster means less total healing to worry about. A great aspect of such an idea though, is that it unshackles the devs from one of their strictest limitations: Our HP pools. Say we have healers (the squishiest members of the party, alongside the casters) with a HP pool of 150k. We can't really go much beyond 180k, because it requires a lot of mitigation and barriers to survive even that. A mechanic that applies Aetherblight to the party, could apply an absurd sounding amount like 600k, literally 4 healthbars worth (displayed as diamonds over the HP bar, in the same way that 'you have more than a HP bar worth of shielding applied' is), and it's completely fine as long as there's a feasible way to handle it before the next mechanic makes it a problem.

Aetherblight, or a system like it, would incentivize WHM's sheer throughput as a good way to much more rapidly handle the negatives of having Aetherblight afflicting you. An AST could regen through it with its OGCD HOTs like CO and CU, or potentially use Macrocosmos to remove half of it instantly (if it's coded in such a way), but a WHM could clear the Aetherblight more 'responsively', reducing how much total DOT damage the party takes, or how slowed they are, depending on what the encounter design dictates that Aetherblight does (in addition to its primary effect of 'blocks your healing'), if anything. If Aetherblight were implemented, such that 'if you have a barrier active when the attack hits you, the Aetherblight aspect of the attack is negated', then that makes it easier for SCH/SGE to handle, by giving an alternative solution (prevent it in the first place, instead of healing through the effect after it's become a problem). But, it's also bad for WHM because they can't apply barriers like the others. So, what if WHM had the ability to spend a Lily to apply barriers, like how SCH/SGE can spend a Flow/Gall to do Pure Healing? Now, WHM is not only able to deal with Aetherblight by preventing its application entirely, but it's the healer that can do it without sacrificing damage, with by far the most frequency (every 20s, versus the long CDs SCH/SGE have to use). What if a tank takes a tankbuster that applies an absurd amount of Aetherblight as a side effect, say, 5x their own HP bar worth? That's gonna take a long time to heal through for many healers, so it could be implemented such that 'Aetherblight can be removed via Esuna'. But a WHM has Benediction to instantly clear it, so they don't necessarily need to Esuna it.

Here's an example pic of a mockup of how it'd look on the UI:

https://i.gyazo.com/c45cb6695190344c...377f678fcd.png

Assume that John Finalfantasy is a Viper, he liked the look of the guy on the front of the box. As such, he's got Second Wind, Bloodbath, but you don't know if he even has them on his bars. How would you personally handle this situation? Eyeballing the size of the Aetherblight (the purple bit), it looks to be about 20, maybe 25k worth of healing you have to do to remove it. As a WHM, do you Esuna it (that costs a GCD), do you try to heal through it (that costs a GCD, but it can be damage neutral because a Solace would probably handle it), do you wait for the next instance of AOE healing to be needed, and try to handle it at the same time there, do you use a Tetra or a Benediction to clear the debuff? Or... Did this situation ever even arise at all? Was it a mechanic that you knew John was going to do, you knew he'd get that Aetherblight as part of the strategy you're using to tackle the fight, and as such, because you used Divine Benison on John, did you simply prevent the application of the Aetherblight from ever happening? With such a system, you have choices, options, on how to handle the situation, and where you might choose one option, a different healer might find a different option more suited to them. Not just 'a different WHM might choose to Esuna instead of Cure2', I equally mean in the sense of 'in the situation of 'both tanks have Aetherblight, deal with it now', an AST might choose to use Synastry to clear both Aetherblights at once, whereas a WHM might use Benediction on one and Tetra on the other, a SCH might Lustrate each of them, a SGE might Zoe-Pneuma both at once, or perhaps Kardia-Krasis-Soteria to handle one, and Haima the other to prevent their application', etc.

There's ways to make WHM's kit feel more desireable, without changing anything about the job itself. They just take a lot more effort to implement than 'change the job', because that kind of change affects all healers (and to an extent, all jobs), even if they're not a problem. Like, I don't think that RDM having VerCure and Magick Barrier does much to this idea, because VerCure kinda sucks and is single target, and Magick Barrier is a %mit rather than a shield effect and so it wouldn't block the Aetherblight. A job like WAR or PLD, with their Shake it Off/Divine Veil applying a partywide barrier, however, that might be an issue. In fact, IIRC I worked out that, in order to foil the 1Tank3DPS EX roulette runs, all you need to do is have a boss that uses a raidwide that does this:

- each 15s, the boss does a raidwide that deals, say, 500 damage, and gives 20k of Aetherblight to the party. If the 500 damage is blocked by a barrier, the Aetherblight is negated.
- each 1s the Aetherblight is on the party, a DOT also ticks and deals 1% of your max HP as damage. This DOT is not fatal, and will leave the affected player at 1HP.
- all AOEs in the fight also deal incredibly low amounts of damage (let's say 500, for consistency), but also apply a decent amount of Aetherblight.

So, ignoring the DOT entirely because 'its not fatal' the next raidwide that comes in will deal 500 damage to your remaining 1HP and you'd die. Standing in an AOE does almost nothing to your real HP, but if you're only at 1HP because of Aetherblight's attached DOT in this encounter, the AOE is suddenly fatal despite doing so little damage. Such a boss would be incredibly forgiving as it deals so little 'real damage', but still poses a real threat to the party that has to be healed through and cannot be ignored.

A WHM/AST can just press Medica3/Helios Conjunction once per 15s, and the Aetherblight (plus the associated DOT) is handled entirely. A SGE/SCH can put up a barrier and block the application in the first place, or use Ixochole/Indom to blast the Aetherblight off instantly, before the DOT can do any real harm. Especially a SCH, they could use Seraph to block two different instances of the debuff being applied via Consolations. But, a 1T 3DPS party may not have the required CDs to handle the situation. The WAR wouldn't be able to keep all three players alive with Nascent Flash, a PLD would lose so much damage using Clemency on each individual player to make the run pointless compared to just bringing a Healer. Melee/Ranged could SecondWind, but A: cooldown's too long to use on every instance and B: I think it needs to crit to break 20k, which isn't exactly a reliable strategy. I think the only DPS comp that could reliably handle such a situation, is at least 2 Dancers rotating Curing Waltz to heal, and Improv Finish to shield, at which point... probably better to just bring a Healer?

The best part though, is that the lore justification for such a mechanic is already in the game. After The Vault, it can just be explained that 'the reason we couldn't heal Haurchefant is that the spear applied a LOT of Aetherblight, and that prevented us from healing him. Also, the very large hole caused a significant DOT while the Aetherblight was active, and Alphinaud panicked and forgot that Esuna exists'.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by AmiableApkallu

A little bit more access to party-wide shields and mitigations would go a long ways towards having some semblance of control over the raid-wides that hit for ~100% of HP bars — instead of hoping that literally anyone else in the party hits a mitigation, which is an asinine identity for a healer and WHM. It would pair well with reducing tanks' and DPS's access to those same tools.

---

This so much. Even Kan-E-Senna's seen using that mit in Ghimlyt Dark (she also still uses StoneIV and AeroIII in her EW role quest too). I've seen folks get one-shotted to raidwides in savage because someone's slacked on mitigation, and AST can handle a lot of those by just adding in Collective Unconscious where WHM's Temperance would be on cooldown.

It's also been requested countless times even on the JP boards. Rework StoneSkinII, rework Protect, separate Divine Caress from Temperance, add some max HP buff, etc. WHM is the best reactive healer but that becomes less and less relevant in higher level content where you either do it right or you're dead.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Azurarok

This so much. Even Kan-E-Senna's seen using that mit in Ghimlyt Dark (she also still uses StoneIV and AeroIII in her EW role quest too). I've seen folks get one-shotted to raidwides in savage because someone's slacked on mitigation, and AST can handle a lot of those by just adding in Collective Unconscious where WHM's Temperance would be on cooldown.

It's also been requested countless times even on the JP boards. Rework StoneSkinII, rework Protect, separate Divine Caress from Temperance, add some max HP buff, etc. WHM is the best reactive healer but that becomes less and less relevant in higher level content where you either do it right or you're dead.

---

Wonder what the explanation for that is? Y'shtola's use of it was explained at one point IIRC as 'well it's Sharlayan Conjury rather than Gridanian Conjury', but then Sharlayan Astrology (what we use as AST) can also do the same technique, so maybe it's just a shared lesson between the disciplines of 'here is a technique that all healers should know, that can be used to protect an area from harm'. But now A: apparently it's not Sharlayan related because Kan-E can use it (unless they want to amend the lore to 'Y'shtola taught her it at some point') and B: Sage doesn't use it despite being a Sharlayan-based Job.

As for WHM and its lack of mitigation options, you know what makes me feel 'stressed' as a healer, SE? Seeing a raidwide coming, knowing we're going to die to it because the Melee didn't Feint/Caster didn't Addle when we needed them to, and me as the WHM having zero ways to cover the missing mitigation because what little I have (Temperance) is already on cooldown because I used it on the thing I needed to use it on. In their efforts to reduce the 'stress' of the Job, by making it so one-track in its focus (if there is missing HP, your one job is 'make the bar go up again'), they've actually made it more stressful because if ANYthing happens that is outside of the Job's one-track (of restoring HP), it can't really do anything about it.

It reminds me of WOW a little. I'll put it in a dropdown to save space.

There, there's 4 main debuff types that can be cleansed: Poisons, Diseases, Curses and Magic effects. Each healer can only clear certain debuff types, with all of them being able to clear Magic (a lot of raid effects are Magic types to allow all healers to participate in the mechanic properly). Any time I played a healer, and ran into a debuff of a type that I couldn't deal with (eg I couldn't remove Curses as a Priest, which doesn't really make sense to me lore-wise), it annoyed me to no end, because A: I don't have the means to handle something that is clearly a Healer mechanic (because other healers CAN handle it), and B: having to explain to people that 'no I can't do Curses' when they ask why I didn't remove the Curse from them. And when Curses involve things like 'your GCD speed is halved, f*** you' and it gets applied to a class like a Rogue, you can bet your bottom dollar they're going to bring it up. Possibly even during the fight instead of after.

All of this is to say, by making WHM be 'I heal good' and not much else (to keep the 'stress' of approaching the job low), it really hampers the number of situations the job is capable of handling, and thus when something comes along that the job has no answer for, it just feels bad. When 'large healing now' is asked of the player, like Seat of Sacrifice's Doom, the SCH can Emergency Tactics, Recitation to force a Crit, Fey Illumination/Dissipation to boost their healing output, and now Seraphism to effectively become a WHM (both in appearance and in healing throughput) for 20s. A SGE can Zoe-Pneuma, Physis amplifies their healing, etc. But when the inverse occurs, 'use Mit/Barrier to prevent some of this damage else it will oneshot you', the WHM has only Temperance, and so if it's on CD, we have to just watch as the attack hits us, and subsequently sends us back to the start of the fight. When our role is 'keep the allies alive', but we can't because we don't have the tools to do so, then we're failing in our intended gameplay, with no way to change the outcome, and feeling like 'there is nothing I could have done' is awful in a game.

Imagine the situation of 'we died because the SCH didn't apply a Succor'. The only thing you can do as a WHM there is say 'that sucks, oh well guess we try again'. But if you're an AST, you can see the SCH isn't using a Succor, and you can try to get a Neutral Sect Aspected Helios out, or at least hit Collective Unconscious for the 10% mit and try to salvage it, if either are available. If you DO live through it by the skin of your teeth, through your quick thinking, it feels great to go 'hey I just saved the run from guaranteed failure, I'm so good'. And if you don't live, you still get to say 'damn that sucks, but at least I was able to try and salvage it', as WHM you don't even get to attempt to save it. Look at any time that someone Healer LB3's, but dies mid animation so the LB doesn't save the run. There's never a situation where the team goes 'you fool how did you fail to get the LB off', it's always 'ah damn, unlucky but valiant effort'

While calling WHM a waste of a party slot may be a bit harsh, WHM does unfortunately fall into the same position as BLM does.

While WHM/BLM can get the job done just fine, that slot would be contributing more to the party if it was an AST/PCT instead, that's the unfortunate reality of it.

What I don’t get about White Mage is that the devs tout it as being the ‘traditional, iconic FF healer’ despite FFXIV’s White Mage drawing so scarcely from that identity.

Like, if I was asked about ‘what are some iconic White Magic spells’ I’d immediately say like, Cure, Protect, Shell, Haste. So even with those four extremely basic spells White Mages can be seen healing the party and shoring up party defenses (i.e mitigation), and buffing party members in some way. Their idea that White Mage is some job that ‘heals and heals more’ hasn’t ever really been the case from what I’ve experienced.

To make it even more hilarious the previous incarnations of White Mage were much more in line with what you’d expect from the job. I mean, if you ask someone what ‘fundamental’ WHM spells were in 2.0 they’d probably say ‘Cure, Protect, Stone/Aero, Stoneskin’. Which like, in those four extremely basic spells the job is able to offer healing, mitigate damage, deal damage and give HP shields for additional mitigation.

Obviously Protect isn’t the best example because it had so many issues like needing 100% uptime and people hated having to cast it, but like, they could’ve just reworked it instead of being like ‘let’s just remove this entire capability from White Mage (then readd it later as a 120s cool-down)’ lol

Heh, there not locking this topic like they have done in the past when they go over 10,000 posts.

Are they so afraid of this topic that they don’t want to touch it in any way?

Seems the mitigation bit's even sillier in JP since their using raidfinder sometimes gets them grouped with 2 WHMs in things like Sphene Ex.

Not sure if there's anything really holding them back from doing it. Maybe some dev is super attached to the Pure/Barrier split despite the lv100 skills being designed to act like the other healer type.

Otherwise if their being spells on the GCD is a problem that's a non-issue because lilies are right there. WHM already has an established gimmick of healing tools on the GCD that don't cost them dps to perform. Adding StoneSkinII or Protect back in as a lily spender'd also somewhat reduce 'wasting' a lily to charge the blood lily for buffs too, so it seems like the fastest, most effective way to bring them back with their current setup.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Azurarok

Seems the mitigation bit's even sillier in JP since their using raidfinder sometimes gets them grouped with 2 WHMs in things like Sphene Ex.

Not sure if there's anything really holding them back from doing it, maybe some dev is super attached to the Pure/Barrier split despite the lv100 skills being designed to act like the other healer type.

Otherwise if their being spells on the GCD is a problem that's a non-issue because lilies are right there. WHM already has an established gimmick of healing tools on the GCD that don't cost them dps to perform. Add StoneSkinII or Protect back in as a lily spender'd also somewhat reduce 'wasting' a lily to charge the blood lily for buffs too, so it seems like fastest, most effective way to bring them back with their current setup.

---

It isn't a lot to implement lily variants of those older spells, although Stoneskin doesn't really fit the holy feel of Afflatus spells, so I'd tweak it to something like Afflatus Gratia (I'd also look into replacing Divine Benison into a lily spell for a single target variant and naming it Afflatus Benison). Protect however just needs Afflatus put into the name to fit the theme and that's it, no new animations would be needed.

Was it ever about improving though or is it really just enabling your power trip?
You try to bring others down to elevate yourselves up.