Dear Square Enix, do something with GCD healing please.

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Originally Posted by Navnav

Lemme know when you try another game and realise that healing is not like this in anything else you play, and for good reason. You guys play this game in a bubble, like it is genuinely mind blowng. Even the developers don't agree with you, but here you all are...

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Well this bubble has been surprisingly comfortable and efficient for the last 6 years for me.
I must be high idk

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Originally Posted by RinaShinomiya

That's what the thread is about. GCD healing shouldn't be a DPS penalty, we need mechanics that reward us for GCD healing even if its as boring as "Malefic cast after benefic deals 500 potency damage".

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Why, though? Just give us more to heal and our more frequently/integrally causing people to not die would be relative raid DPS increase aplenty. That tack also allows us to tune Healer damage potency per GCD higher.

At present, we suffer from much the same tax as tanks, in that, because of having so much free healing available, we're never not also generating cure potency, regardless of spending 100% of GCDs on damage and our maximal damage is reduced accordingly, just as a tank is taxed for their passive mitigation (which composes the vast majority of their mitigation, actually) and opportunities afforded by their having so much higher eHP even prior to active mitigation. Reduce the free healing and we can actually more purely spend non-healing GCDs on non-healing tasks, instead of simultaneously generating some 4k oGCD healing potency per minute even when spending every GCD offensively and having our damage reduced accordingly.

That's not to say reducing oGCD healing wouldn't require changes in turn to allow for similar healing burst, responsiveness, or mobility to what oGCDs presently provide, but if we're tired of Glare spam, the solution isn't to simply reduce the offensive/longer-term punishment of GCDs spent on healing, since they still should and will be minimalized regardless, but to give more that requires other ways of spending our GCD and perhaps add in some offensive GCD variance besides.

I honestly wouldn't mind if they removed GCD healing entirely, except for perhaps one tank upkeep heal for lower levels.

Obviously that's a big take, so what I mean is if they embraced healer dps and designed to work with it instead of pretending it didn't exist. Dps would be mainly GCD based. They could add more engagement to that dps (I don't mean rocket science complexity, just make it more interesting), then have healing as something you weave between those GCD casts. This means the role has a decent apm and flows well. Dps neutral GCD's like Lilies (if improved) or Macro/Pneuma would be fine too. They would need to bolster the oGCD kit where it might be lacking (especially WHM) so that encounters could be beaten with just oGCD's.

What this would result in is a role where resource management is actually important. No more blind Medica II spam. You couldn't just blow 3 oGCD raid heals at the first scratch either. You'd need to space out, combine and utilize your tools well and you'd be rewarded for it.

Trying to make Medica or Benefic II or Succor rewarding is an exercise in futility. They'd outright have to stick 300 potency on them. But then you'd spam them more than ever. I think it's time to accept healers are Battle Clerics in this game and try to design around that type of gameplay.

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

I honestly wouldn't mind if they removed GCD healing entirely, except for perhaps one tank upkeep heal for lower levels.

Obviously that's a big take, so what I mean is if they embraced healer dps and designed to work with it instead of pretending it didn't exist. Dps would be mainly GCD based. They could add more engagement to that dps (I don't mean rocket science complexity, just make it more interesting), then have healing as something you weave between those GCD casts. This means the role has a decent apm and flows well. Dps neutral GCD's like Lilies (if improved) or Macro/Pneuma would be fine too. They would need to bolster the oGCD kit where it might be lacking (especially WHM) so that encounters could be beaten with just oGCD's.

What this would result in is a role where resource management is actually important. No more blind Medica II spam. You couldn't just blow 3 oGCD raid heals at the first scratch either. You'd need to space out, combine and utilize your tools well and you'd be rewarded for it.

Trying to make Medica or Benefic II or Succor rewarding is an exercise in futility. They'd outright have to stick 300 potency on them. But then you'd spam them more than ever. I think it's time to accept healers are Battle Clerics in this game and try to design around that type of gameplay.

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Which is a alternative i would be fine with. Currently the role is in a limbo where half/third of the kit is used on a healing method that's outdated the moment you go into expansion content.
Either got full GCD or full oGCD. You could even tie that into the distinction between Pure Healers and Barrier healers, just do something about it.

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Originally Posted by KDSilver

Well this bubble has been surprisingly comfortable and efficient for the last 6 years for me.
I must be high idk

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Uh yes.

That's how bubbles work.

One doesn't know how good or bad one has it because the scope of one's perspective beyond their bubble is nil.

It's generally why I treat the "Glare is so boring" with indifference. It's filler, and it isn't meant to be interesting, and that applies in basically every other game. Heck, it even applies to the other roles in this game, but somehow we like to pretend that having a filler combo is better than having a filler spell.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

Uh yes.

That's how bubbles work.

One doesn't know how good or bad one has it because the scope of one's perspective beyond their bubble is nil.

It's generally why I treat the "Glare is so boring" with indifference. It's filler, and it isn't meant to be interesting, and that applies in basically every other game. Heck, it even applies to the other roles in this game, but somehow we like to pretend that having a filler combo is better than having a filler spell.

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Near 80% of your button presses being filler isn't great, is it?

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Originally Posted by ThorneDynasty

Near 80% of your button presses being filler isn't great, is it?

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Yeah, I hate tank rotations too.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

Yeah, I hate tank rotations too.

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OK so you are in full understanding 1 button spam needs to be fixed then? Wasn't sure what point you were trying to make.

Don't really agree the same problem applies to more than 1 or 2 of the tanks, you aren't really ever pressing 1-2-3 on PLD or GNB just because there's nothing else to do. But sure.

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Originally Posted by ThorneDynasty

OK so you are in full understanding 1 button spam needs to be fixed then? Wasn't sure what point you were trying to make.

Don't really agree the same problem applies to more than 1 or 2 of the tanks, you aren't really ever pressing 1-2-3 on PLD or GNB just because there's nothing else to do. But sure.

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Didn't say otherwise. The manner that we fix the problem is as important as recognizing the problem exists.

And that's fine. Far be it from me to try and break your fun.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

Uh yes.

That's how bubbles work.

One doesn't know how good or bad one has it because the scope of one's perspective beyond their bubble is nil.

It's generally why I treat the "Glare is so boring" with indifference. It's filler, and it isn't meant to be interesting, and that applies in basically every other game. Heck, it even applies to the other roles in this game, but somehow we like to pretend that having a filler combo is better than having a filler spell.

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Yeah, why would how a job plays be designed as interesting? Just ridiculous.

If yoshinp played a healer like he plays black mage we wouldn’t even be discussing this because the issues would have been handled.

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Originally Posted by ThorneDynasty

Don't really agree the same problem applies to more than 1 or 2 of the tanks, you aren't really ever pressing 1-2-3 on PLD or GNB just because there's nothing else to do. But sure.

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Unless immediately replacing a DoT or badly overcapping a buff's duration has suddenly become a contextually viable strategy, that is exactly how each tank works. They just spend a lot more buttons on the same non-decisions and their ability to hit anything else during GCDs are determined by durations rather than durations and contexts.

DRK has only one offensive GCD ST choice between gauge spenders; it just happens to spend 3 buttons (Hard Slash -> Syphon Strike -> Souleater) on it instead of 1 (gauge), meaning it gets two fewer actual actions. Much the same can be said for AoE (Unleash -> Stalwart Soul in place of Holy). Naturally (i.e., without Delirium or Blood Weapon), DRK generate a gauge spender every ~21.25 seconds by which to use a "ST Action #2," admittedly a bit more often than a healer. Choice count: equal. Button cost: Double or greater. And the kit size and depth are not compensated for that cost.

PLD: DoT (3 step; takes 3 buttons). Filler (6 step; takes 3 buttons). Ranged filler (4-5 steps; 1-2 buttons). Ranged DoT (3-4 steps; 1-2 buttons). You maintain your DoT and otherwise follow your filler sequence. The only added points of control are the timing of Requiescat (the action, not the phase) and Atonement count once per minute if you'd otherwise risk desync.

GNB: Better combo on a 30s CD (6-step; takes 2 buttons, down from 4 in ShB). Filler combo (3-step; takes 3 buttons). Far more frequent bankable spenders, though.

WAR: Better combo on a 30s two-charge CD, effectively (3-step; takes 3 buttons). Filler combo (3-step; takes 1 further button). Twice-bankable spender.

Apart from perhaps GNB, most tank gameplay (yes, easily 80+%) is just hitting filler combos in their various forms. Heck, if playing with mods, that filler play, and the vast majority of GCDs used, would be literally one button.

That's not to say such is satisfying, far from it, but it does indicate that perhaps the best way to invigorate tank and healer gameplay aren't merely to give them more button hoops through which to perform the same non-decisions but instead give them actual decisions pertinent to their roles.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

Yeah, I hate tank rotations too.

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Yes, the correct response to "X is boring" is "Yeah well Y is boring too" as if that were some kind of own, or as if they were mutually exclusive statements, or as if it were a reason to never fix X because being boring is normal and we should just be satisfied with being bored because other people are bored too.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

Yes, the correct response to "X is boring" is "Yeah well Y is boring too" as if that were some kind of own, or as if they were mutually exclusive statements, or as if it were a reason to never fix X because being boring is normal and we should just be satisfied with being bored because other people are bored too.

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I think this is more a matter of "Filler is boring" -> "Yes, inherently so; as such, let's have less filler (or more reason to cast non-filler), rather than just making it bloated (or attempting awkward gimmicks by which to reduce the cost of anything else)."

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Unless immediately replacing a DoT or badly overcapping a buff's duration has suddenly become a contextually viable strategy, that is exactly how each tank works. They just spend a lot more buttons on the same non-decisions and their ability to hit anything else during GCDs are determined by durations rather than durations and contexts.

DRK has only one offensive GCD ST choice between gauge spenders; it just happens to spend 3 buttons (Hard Slash -> Syphon Strike -> Souleater) on it instead of 1 (gauge), meaning it gets two fewer actual actions. Much the same can be said for AoE (Unleash -> Stalwart Soul in place of Holy). Naturally (i.e., without Delirium or Blood Weapon), DRK generate a gauge spender every ~21.25 seconds by which to use a "ST Action #2," admittedly a bit more often than a healer. Choice count: equal. Button cost: Double or greater. And the kit size and depth are not compensated for that cost.

PLD: DoT (3 step; takes 3 buttons). Filler (6 step; takes 3 buttons). Ranged filler (4-5 steps; 1-2 buttons). Ranged DoT (3-4 steps; 1-2 buttons). You maintain your DoT and otherwise follow your filler sequence. The only added points of control are the timing of Requiescat (the action, not the phase) and Atonement count once per minute if you'd otherwise risk desync.

GNB: Better combo on a 30s CD (6-step; takes 2 buttons, down from 4 in ShB). Filler combo (3-step; takes 3 buttons). Far more frequent bankable spenders, though.

WAR: Better combo on a 30s two-charge CD, effectively (3-step; takes 3 buttons). Filler combo (3-step; takes 1 further button). Twice-bankable spender.

Apart from perhaps GNB, most tank gameplay (yes, easily 80+%) is just hitting filler combos in their various forms. Heck, if playing with mods, that filler play, and the vast majority of GCDs used, would be literally one button.

That's not to say such is satisfying, far from it, but it does indicate that perhaps the best way to invigorate tank and healer gameplay aren't merely to give them more button hoops through which to perform the same non-decisions but instead give them actual decisions pertinent to their roles.

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Yeah, but that's not what filler means. You mostly can't substitute GCDs with whatever and not have it throw you off. Keeping up your combo is important to keeping your overall rotation flowing. There's an inherent interactivity to that too since you aren't just fighting training dummies, but need to find ways to line it all up when mechanics try to throw you off it. For DRK and WAR it might be more true, but PLD? There's not 1 extra 1-2-3 combo in it's rotation you can skip without immediately going off script.

It will never matter if you miss a glare cast outside of that single glare cast. It's pure filler.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

I think this is more a matter of "Filler is boring" -> "Yes, inherently so; as such, let's have less filler (or more reason to cast non-filler), rather than just making it bloated (or attempting awkward gimmicks by which to reduce the cost of anything else)."

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I could turn around and beat the exact same strawman about Cure spamming and how boring it is. We could make healing more interesting sure, but I'd rather just say "whatever, healing is boring filler anyway so who cares, active tank mitigation is boring too so I don't know what you're complaining about. It's a baseline requirement so it's meant to be boring.".

Let's not pretend as if healer downtime activity being boring is an Immutable Law Of Game Design Physics that only silly plebeians in the healer subforum fruitlessly rail against.

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Originally Posted by ThorneDynasty

Yeah, but that's not what filler means. You mostly can't substitute GCDs with whatever and not throw you off.

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As in "don't hit prescribed filler combo button 3, part of the same exact decision, until after prescribed filler combo button 2, which will only ever be used in that exact context but will never be worth clipping short or restarting" (apart from the aforementioned Atonement per minute)?

See, again, the difference between actual complexity and mere convolution.

Tank DPS play is similarly just "higher value GCD option" vs. "fallback, lesser GCD option," just as per our DoT (higher ppgcd, constrained by duration) and fill. They each lack reason and/or ability to resequence combos to different contextual ends (e.g., for positionals, burst realignment, etc.), beyond the aformentioned PLD filler combo trim.

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Keeping up your combo is important to keeping your overall rotation flowing.

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They're one and the same thing.

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There's an inherent interactivity to that too since you aren't just fighting training dummies, but need to find ways to line it all up when mechanics try to throw you off it.

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Not really, no. Until such a time as missing a GCD or two could cause you to skip an entire section of your combo, there's literally no effect on your play, only delay. That may be more punishing, or less punishing, than when all but 1 GCD in 12 has the same ppgcd, but if it doesn't ultimately create an competitive opportunity for divergent play...

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It will never matter if you miss a glare cast outside of that single glare cast. It's pure filler.

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Nor will hitting a Maim, etc., a GCD late change the script you'd play by.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

I could turn around and beat the exact same strawman about Cure spamming and how boring it is. We could make healing more interesting sure, but I'd rather just say "whatever, healing is boring filler anyway so who cares, active tank mitigation is boring too so I don't know what you're complaining about. It's a baseline requirement so it's meant to be boring.".

Let's not pretend as if healer downtime activity being boring is an Immutable Law Of Game Design Physics that only silly plebeians in the healer subforum fruitlessly rail against.

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I never said healer downtime has to be dull. I merely pointed out that giving it n rigid steps, up from 1 -- sacrificing n-1 further actions to support it or giving every healer a greater button count than a modern, unconsolidated AST -- isn't going to fix that.

To make healer downtime interesting there needs to be significant and variable cost. That doesn't mean Cure spam. That doesn't mean Cure II spam. That does, however, mean stretches of synergetic offensive action and/or particular moments at which the value of offense is greater than typical and which we therefore want to make room for. DoTs significantly more powerful than our filler actions, for instance, provide that variable offensive cost for healing. But, of course, that variability only matters if preparing for those offensive GCDs actually takes a degree of skill.

Put simply, how interesting healer "downtime" is depends at least as much on the complexity of its "uptime".

(Simply giving healers the tank combo treatment, on the other hand, isn't likely to do a damn thing beyond button bloat.)

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

They're one and the same thing.

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Your weaponskill combos are a part of your rotation, they definitely aren't synonymous.

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Not really, no. Until such a time as missing a GCD or two could cause you to skip an entire section of your combo, there's literally no effect on your play, only delay. That may be more punishing, or less punishing, than when all but 1 GCD in 12 has the same ppgcd, but if it doesn't ultimately create an competitive opportunity for divergent play...

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Exactly. You are actually punished for missing steps in your combo in the long run. You aren't just losing just that GCD, because you want to avoid delaying your entire rotation too.

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Nor will hitting a Maim, etc., a GCD late change the script you'd play by.

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As you noticed I was talking about PLD and GNB, so why you keep bringing up DRK or WAR I don't know. Anway, if it's a step in your set rotation it's by definition not filler - filler is what you fill gaps with, the moments where you have nothing else to do.

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Originally Posted by ThorneDynasty

You are actually punished for missing steps in your combo in the long run. You aren't just losing just that GCD because you want to avoid delaying your entire rotation too.

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Even when every GCD is of equal potency you are punished for missing steps in the long run and do not want to delay further offensive GCDs. The additional reason varied ppgcd gives not to delay your rotation (though, again, it does not constitute a decision, since you literally cannot skip ahead in that rotation [obligatory mention of PLD filler trim exception]) is if it'd bottleneck other actions with constrained GCD-tie-ins, such as Life Surge or Reassemble.

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As you noticed I was talking about PLD and GNB, so why you keep bringing up DRK or WAR I don't know.

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"Maim, etc." was an example (hence the "etc") of a GCD within a tank combo. And if your examples are only applicable to aspects of two tanks...

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Anway, if it's a step in your set rotation it's by definition not filler - filler is what you fill gaps with, the moments where you have nothing else to do.

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That's exactly how tanks' only or lower-potency-per-execute combos are used, though? Taking n steps to perform a single, not-adjustable decision doesn't make them any less a mere rote fallback.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Even when every GCD is of equal potency you are punished for missing steps in the long run and do not want to delay further offensive GCDs. The additional reason varied ppgcd gives not to delay your rotation (though, again, it does not constitute a decision, since you literally cannot skip ahead in that rotation [obligatory mention of PLD filler trim exception]) is if it'd bottleneck other actions with constrained GCD-tie-ins, such as Life Surge or Reassemble.


"Maim, etc." was an example (hence the "etc") of a GCD within a tank combo. And if your examples are only applicable to aspects of two tanks...


That's exactly how tanks' only or lower-potency-per-execute combos are used, though? Taking n steps to perform a single, not-adjustable decision doesn't make them any less a mere rote fallback.

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Filler doesn't have anything to do with decision making, it's about whether an action is a integral step in the rotation.

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Originally Posted by ThorneDynasty

Filler doesn't have anything to do with decision making, it's about whether an action is a integral step in the rotation.

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And again, your distinguishing part is literally just that, say, Royal Authority's 363.3 ppgcd is split into 6 steps and 4 buttons. What happens once it's a PvP combo, for instance, and therefore you hit the same button each time? What of the likes of Requiescat's Holy Shock spam, since you're not about to get the 3 different strings' worth of contextual wrappings without sacrificing a large portion of your existing kit?

Would WHM suddenly be more exciting if Glare required 3 different buttons (Glare, Side Glare, Snide Glare)? Would it be more entertaining if, by having to heal before having completed all n steps, you sacrifice disproportionately more damage?

(I'd argue the last is at least somewhat approaching a reasonable idea, but from the worst possible angle.)

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Originally Posted by OtakuSempai

Focusing on GCD healing and compelling players to use GCD healing, in pursuit of "making healers HEALERS" would require a complete redesign of the entire game and it's encounter design. It would go way beyond the scope of just simple job redesigns. That's why it's not talked about and suggested as much from people more familiar with the role, it's simply too difficult to do an entire game overhaul to flesh out one role especially given how reluctant they are to even do minor tweaks.

Adding a mini dps rotation or additional skills to utilize in healing downtime is far easier and more likely to be implemented and it's why many of us ask for it. "Healers should HEAL" is a fine moniker but completely ignores how this game is played (and most mmos in general), and being puritanical and inflexible helps nothing.

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Why would the game require a redesign?
If the game switched from Healer's DPSing 80% of the time to Healer's healing 80% of the time, the only change that would be needed would be that Heal Spells would cost what our DPS spells currently cost and vice versa. Cure 2, Medica 2 and Regen would be 400 MP, while Glare and Holy would cost 1k while Dia cost 500 MP. Also, given that mechanics in old content was never adjusted to account for the current game design of healers, I don't think SE would bother updating them either. I mean, some prey mechanics in older content like Coils required the use of Shields to get thru them and neither WHM and AST have any shielding abilities at all pre SB. They've been nerfed to not be lethal anymore sure but that's realistically all SE did to adjust that content. Would making enemies hit harder in low level content but have less health really require a redesign? Hardly. Something else to consider is that, there are currently GCD healing abilities that currently exist to try and put more emphasis on GCD healing. Macrocosmos and Pneuma are both GCD healing abilities that are DPS neutral and thus can be utilized for healing without negative repercussions in their usage. Afflatus Spells just need a buff and they'd fall into that same category as well so the idea has merit and is entirely doable.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

And again, your distinguishing part is literally just that, say, Royal Authority's 363.3 ppgcd is split into 6 steps and 4 buttons. What happens once it's a PvP combo, for instance, and therefore you hit the same button each time? What of the likes of Requiescat's Holy Shock spam, since you're not about to get the 3 different strings' worth of contextual wrappings without sacrificing a large portion of your existing kit?

Would WHM suddenly be more exciting if Glare required 3 different buttons (Glare, Side Glare, Snide Glare)? Would it be more entertaining if, by having to heal before having completed all n steps, you sacrifice disproportionately more damage?

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I think to this day my favorite iteration of healer came from Protection Monks in Guild Wars.

Restoration monks while you found your feet, but when you were ready to not only be a road block but the whole damn gatekeeper to death, Protection was there waiting for you, and the only attack skill I had slotted was my wand's auto attack.

Really the point is that healers need more resource management and interaction between elements of their kit to make it more interesting to optimize while by the same token encounter design needs to adjust to the player demand of same overall damage when things go wrong but more overall damage when things go right. That’s something I think everyone agrees on in general, if not the details.

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Originally Posted by Silver-Strider

Why would the game require a redesign?
If the game switched from Healer's DPSing 80% of the time to Healer's healing 80% of the time, the only change that would be needed would be that Heal Spells would cost what our DPS spells currently cost and vice versa. Cure 2, Medica 2 and Regen would be 400 MP, while Glare and Holy would cost 1k while Dia cost 500 MP.

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That would be a disaster.

You can't just "make healers heal 80% of the time". A 20:80 ratio of dps and healing for a reasonably new player in min ilv prog would be a 75:25 ratio for an experienced player in BiS with a good group using mitigation. The difference between a new player and a well geared and optimized player is massive. It's impossible to set a fixed percentage on how much a healer should heal and design exactly that.

The main difference now would be that the experienced player would have to afk half the fight because their mana pool can't even support half the amount of Glare casts.

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

That would be a disaster.

You can't just "make healers heal 80% of the time". A 20:80 ratio of dps and healing for a reasonably new player in min ilv prog would be a 75:25 ratio for an experienced player in BiS with a good group using mitigation. The difference between a new player and a well geared and optimized player is massive. It's impossible to set a fixed percentage on how much a healer should heal and design exactly that.

The main difference now would be that the experienced player would have to afk half the fight because their mana pool can't even support half the amount of Glare casts.

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So extreme a shift would indeed leave little room both for shifting towards offense, thus devaluing the feeling of benefit made through optimized utility, and for those less capable, making the healer role more exclusive (a good thing to some degree, but that finding that degree is a fine and very precarious step).

However, a lesser difference really would amount to just MP adjustments, especially when you consider where that damage can be placed without breaking fights (one-shotting tanks whose defensives, even optimized, have been exhausted): "white" or "sustained" damage, the likes of P3N's off-tank quadruple-hits every few seconds (enough to consistently pop TBN, a decent benchmark for answering "Is the sustained damage significant?" if started just before a volley).

That's an area that, if anything, reduces the punishment from lesser knowledge or less developed habits for our healers, because there's a smaller difference in optimal action between damage spikes and damage lulls and damage intake and response therefore become more intuitive.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

However, a lesser difference really would amount to just MP adjustments, especially when you consider where that damage can be placed without breaking fights (one-shotting tanks whose defensives, even optimized, have been exhausted): "white" or "sustained" damage, the likes of P3N's off-tank quadruple-hits every few seconds (enough to consistently pop TBN, a decent benchmark for answering "Is the sustained damage significant?" if started just before a volley).

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To be quite honest, I don't think any of FF14 has any room for MP management. That probably ended in Shadowbringers or earlier, but barring specific cases such as Black Mages and raises, there might as well not be any MP costs on damage spells.

MP doesn't matter, it hasn't mattered for a while, and very few have wanted it to matter again in any meaningful way. As far as a universal resource goes, MP is dead, and perhaps its time to formalize that just as they did with TP.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

To be quite honest, I don't think any of FF14 has any room for MP management. That probably ended in Shadowbringers or earlier, but barring specific cases such as Black Mages and raises, there might as well not be any MP costs on damage spells.

MP doesn't matter, it hasn't mattered for a while, and very few have wanted it to matter again in any meaningful way. As far as a universal resource goes, MP is dead, and perhaps its time to formalize that just as they did with TP.

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I don't think MP needs to die really. PLD, DRK, and BLM are able to utilize MP as a meaningful resource, and once upon a time, BRD did as well. I won't say they ever will do more with MP, but I honestly feel like every job could take advantage of MP in some fashion or another, even if on a very simple scale.

One day, we'll likely need to see some kind of healing rework, and while it may not pan out the way most of us here might want, how MP is utilized would probably be one of the most likely things that could be addressed, probably including the casters in on this aspect as well. In this case, Lucid Dreaming would likely die, and jobs would have their own built-in ways of handling MP like BLM does, and perhaps Piety just might evolve to no longer being a dead stat?

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

To be quite honest, I don't think any of FF14 has any room for MP management.

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MP hasn't mattered for a while, no, but I don't see why that would indicate that XIV, conceptually, has "no room for" MP management, even if present circumstances haven't left room for player agency via that mechanic.

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there might as well not be any MP costs on damage spells.

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While I agree with this, if not for an awkward further way of punishing Spell Speed, there is already, effectively, no MP cost on damage spells. They're net-MP-positive, though the passive MP generation in that equation includes a button's worth of bloat (Lucid Dreaming) that can lead to some rather wonkily uneven punishment for death.

Consider: If damage spells truly cost nothing, and MP gen was adjusted accordingly, you'd just have, in effect, less MP gen during true downtime (nothing to do whatsoever, such as between fights in dungeons) and lower maximal healing resource.

Now, just as far as personal preference goes, I'd rather go the opposite way, making MP an actual mechanic (rather than simply removing it for its being a pretense on 80% of jobs).

• Remove Lucid Dreaming, as it's mere variable death punishment in ways that provide no further agency (outside the very rare occasion that you're some 5s from its CD refreshing and know you won't survive to claim its benefits).
• Have it tick per-player instead of on a global tick, matching player GCD speed.
• Give MP-consuming actions scaling costs. The less MP one has, the less those actions cost but the less potent they become. Players cannot be starved out of action, but they can certainly be badly starved out of power. It's damn near impossible to drop below 50% MP as anything but a healer, though, without having died. (A rez, for instance, might always consume just 30% of your current MP, though to a minimum of 10% of maximum, but would thereby restore an ally with that much more/less health and mana based on MP thus consumed.)
• Replace Weakness and Brink of Death altogether with just... MP's potency-and-cost scaling. Having rezzed with almost no MP, they're badly potency-starved. This also gives more relevance to rez caps in general as, the lower healer MP gets, the longer, effectively, the penalty lasts.
• Return to variable MP maximums, rather than a consistent 10000 MP. Players would still regain MP as a percentage, but that in turn curtails non-healers' rezzing capacity without having to rely on CDs or the like.
• Finally, if we wish, we can give MP cost to healing abilities, giving more reason (burst healing aside) to perhaps hold onto them and to, from the time, actually use GCD heals.

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Originally Posted by Navnav

You know something, I'm not completely against healers doing some damage during an enrage timer, but the whole fight isn't that is it? [...] You would think the enrage timer is 20 minutes of a 20 minutes fight.

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It literally is.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Now, just as far as personal preference goes, I'd rather go the opposite way, making MP an actual mechanic (rather than simply removing it for its being a pretense on 80% of jobs). [LIST]

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• Given LD currently only exists to keep a GCD locked caster from going OOM, might as well remove it, yes.
• I have no opinion on this. Having Haste increase MP regeneration seems unnecessary, as does changing its tick rate. This to me falls under needless complexity without something to truly take advantage of it.
• I don't agree with this unless it was one specific Job's gimmick. You end up with a very real risk of being trapped in a death spiral through no fault of your own. A job designed around breakpoints with specific bonuses and ways to both build and dump MP to place itself within those breakpoints would, in my opinion, be quite interesting to toy with though.
• This really just goes back to MP only being a cap on raises. IMO we should remove Swiftcast lock on Raising. Free up Swiftcast, and then grant a 60/120s 'Charge' for Raise to bypass its cast time, while being normally available at other times. The abundance of raising as it stands is something we should move away from, but Healers being your best source of it should be the norm / stay.
• I don't agree with this. MP costs were already a % of maximum MP, the 10,000 cap just formalizes it for easy reading.
• Remove the MP cost from GCD actions for Healers (other than raise) and then applying costs / altering cooldowns to their OGCD is the primary path I would take, as this is already how the multitude of other jobs are designed with their MP-like gauges primarily interacting with their OGCD kits while being built by their GCD kits.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

I have no opinion on this. Having Haste increase MP regeneration seems unnecessary, as does changing its tick rate. This to me falls under needless complexity without something to truly take advantage of it.

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To clarify, my concern there was simply that if we want to make MP a mechanic, we can't rightly allow a stat that players might not even be able to avoid... to break it. By scaling it to the GCD, Spell Speed no longer punishes relative MP efficiency on GCD heals. (And if you put MP costs on healing abilities then at least the rate of MP gen is affected by Spell Speed, thus allowing for a greater frequency, nearer to their CDs, of actual MP-neutral usage.)

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I don't agree with this unless it was one specific Job's gimmick. You end up with a very real risk of being trapped in a death spiral through no fault of your own.

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I would think the opposite. I suppose I should have included more detail (I skimped because I'm usually harangued for including too many technicals) there, but the idea would be that the costs lower more quickly than the potency, and the maximum potency loss would be, well, that of Brink of Death (-50%). As such, one could not be starved or otherwise forced into a death spiral even as much as is presently the case.

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This really just goes back to MP only being a cap on raises. IMO we should remove Swiftcast lock on Raising. Free up Swiftcast, and then grant a 60/120s 'Charge' for Raise to bypass its cast time, while being normally available at other times. The abundance of raising as it stands is something we should move away from, but Healers being your best source of it should be the norm / stay.

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Again, at present that's the case, but MP being a real and broader mechanic (more than merely a weird, unintuitive equivalent to rez charges) could allow for far more party-saving utility from non-healers than just Rez. (Of course, in BLM's case, something like a returned and not CD-limited Apocatastasis would likely have to cost maximum MP instead, and there's a ton more to consider in the case of jobs that haven't traditionally had any kind of significant party-support utility beyond number-shuffling / rDPS.)

Of course, I'd be totally up for even, say, all rezzes having some manner of granular charge system by which to reduce relative uptime costs -- cast time increased by 8 seconds after use, decreasing by 1 second's cast time for every 10 seconds since last use, with obvious polish for the remainder value, etc., for instance.

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I don't agree with this. MP costs were already a % of maximum MP, the 10,000 cap just formalizes it for easy reading.

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If there weren't additional opportunities thereby barred by having one value shared across every role, I'd agree, but...

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Remove the MP cost from GCD actions for Healers (other than raise)

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Should all GCD actions be considered the same, though? A Cure III's potentially 4800 potency of healing to be no more costly than Cure II's 800? I'd rather most be net-positive, but if we remove their costs altogether despite passive MP gen (likely increased in the wake of losing Lucid) then we end up leaving that much more currency to oGCD casts. I'd rather oGCDs have an apparent resource cost beyond merely each other (in how close to their hard cooldown each may be cast), even if that difference might not amount to much outside of emergencies.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Should all GCD actions be considered the same, though? A Cure III's potentially 4800 potency of healing to be no more costly than Cure II's 800? I'd rather most be net-positive, but if we remove their costs altogether despite passive MP gen (likely increased in the wake of losing Lucid) then we end up leaving that much more currency to oGCD casts. I'd rather oGCDs have an apparent resource cost beyond merely each other (in how close to their hard cooldown each may be cast), even if that difference might not amount to much outside of emergencies.

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There are other ways to assign 'cost' to them that aren't related to MP, such as longer cast times, actions that build the "MP" gauge for the OGCDs, etc.

It's pretty hard to summarize what would be a long and complex endeavor, but the short answer is that you have, even now, 2 other costs you can adjust (Cast time and Recast time) along with a potential third (The "OGCD" resource.)

Cure 3 might be a 2.5 high potency AoE, but throw it on a 60 second cooldown and the use becomes more strategic. Likewise if you set Medica 2 to a 5.0 cast no cooldown, Medica 1 to a 1.5 cast, 30 second cooldown, +10 "MP" that you bank later to fire off Tetra during high single intake on the tank, etc etc.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

There are other ways to assign 'cost' to them that aren't related to MP, such as longer cast times, actions that build the "MP" gauge for the OGCDs, etc.

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Put longer cast times on, say, Cure III to make it more punishing than Cure II and you might not get the cast off at all. Similarly, if we just certain have actions build MP with no healing GCDs having MP costs... what's the difference between that and some actions having higher MP costs than others, save that one is now punished for downtime?

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you have, even now, 2 other costs you can adjust (Cast time and Recast time) along with a potential third (The "OGCD" resource.)

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Both are badly constraining, though, in real content. Put a cooldown on Cure III, even with a second charge, and many of what few places in which its niche could shine would no longer provide it with unique opportunities.

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Cure 3 might be a 2.5 high potency AoE, but throw it on a 60 second cooldown and the use becomes more strategic.

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Its use, sure, but it therefore becomes that much less unique a tool, ready to just be another filed under "like AST's, but worse."

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if you set Medica 2 to a 5.0 cast no cooldown

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Then you get very few new healers willing to use it in prog for the simple fact that they won't know if they'll be able to keep casting that mere primarily-a-HoT for 5 whole seconds (with no emergencies or required movement interrupting it).

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+10 "MP" that you bank later to fire off Tetra during high single intake on the tank, etc etc.

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I'd rather not turn MP into another NinKenBloodBeastSoul gauge. I don't see any issue with is having some slight benefit to/from full downtime and having more than a single category of spenders.

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

That would be a disaster.

You can't just "make healers heal 80% of the time". A 20:80 ratio of dps and healing for a reasonably new player in min ilv prog would be a 75:25 ratio for an experienced player in BiS with a good group using mitigation. The difference between a new player and a well geared and optimized player is massive. It's impossible to set a fixed percentage on how much a healer should heal and design exactly that.

The main difference now would be that the experienced player would have to afk half the fight because their mana pool can't even support half the amount of Glare casts.

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You claim it would be a disaster but that's kind of how it was in Coils back in ARR. We didn't have the plethora of oGCD healing abilities back then and had to actually utilize your GCD for Healing/Shielding as appropriate. Sure, there was moments of levity to throw on Cleric Stance and do some DPS but it's not as though you could do that for 80% of an encounter and be fine like you can today. If it was possible back then, then I fail to see why it would suddenly be impossible now, especially given that every role now has much more group utility than they did back then.

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Originally Posted by Silver-Strider

You claim it would be a disaster but that's kind of how it was in Coils back in ARR. We didn't have the plethora of oGCD healing abilities back then and had to actually utilize your GCD for Healing/Shielding as appropriate. Sure, there was moments of levity to throw on Cleric Stance and do some DPS but it's not as though you could do that for 80% of an encounter and be fine like you can today. If it was possible back then, then I fail to see why it would suddenly be impossible now, especially given that every role now has much more group utility than they did back then.

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Because the incoming damage isn't high enough to make healers heal (Ex can be cleared without healers, the P1N solo tank clear, dungeons being cleared with just tank heals...) and changing the damage to make healers heal would cost a lot of resources rebalancing all the game content, because that design punish good play and efficiency since the good players that heal just enough (cause overheal is not valuable) would have worse MP economy and would encourage more players to bad play, or in other words, curebotting, because a design like that is a hell to balance and make the barrier of entry bigger as Liam_Harper said since what is "high enough" for a good healer is "way too high" for a novice one, because it would make gearing feel worse as the more geared=the less damage party recive and less heal they need=more dps actions=more chances to go out of mp and not interact with the content

There are many more reasons why a healer design like that does not work and modern MMOs move away from there, its simply flawed.

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Originally Posted by Silver-Strider

You claim it would be a disaster but that's kind of how it was in Coils back in ARR. We didn't have the plethora of oGCD healing abilities back then and had to actually utilize your GCD for Healing/Shielding as appropriate. Sure, there was moments of levity to throw on Cleric Stance and do some DPS but it's not as though you could do that for 80% of an encounter and be fine like you can today. If it was possible back then, then I fail to see why it would suddenly be impossible now, especially given that every role now has much more group utility than they did back then.

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Looking back at Coils in ARR is like Classic WoW syndrome. People have rose tinted glasses about how great it was. Less people scoured information online on every aspect of the game. Bosses weren't as complex as today and like you said our toolkits were much more limited too.

I don't see that type of gameplay as an improvement. Taking most of our oGCD's away and giving us a barebones weak GCD system would indeed artificially force us to heal more, but it'd be boring. You'd really start to feel that 2.5s GCD. I'd much rather they embraced the current battle cleric design of DPS support with a wide array of healing spells to smoothly weave in. Its faster-paced, more rewarding gameplay. The main flaws for me are that the GCD dps aspect is severely lacking and the bosses don't hit near hard enough to put my fancy toolkit to full use. That and they really need a healer designer on the team, because certain design choices really need a look at (AST cards, WHM in general, Energy drain compared to Addersgall, ect.)

The other flaw with a slow GCD based heal system and ridiculously expensive dps spells is that a LOT of content would need to be redesigned. Things like E7s doing nothing for 2 minutes, or the current EX1 only having 5 unavoidable raidwides. You'd absolutely be reduced to Glare spam and go OOM in the first 2 minutes of the fight. It'd be horrible.

Dps is always useful. oGCD's create faster, flowing gameplay. It's about time they accepted, embraced it and designed for that gameplay instead of putting their fingers in their ears and pretending we still Medica II spam.

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

Dps is always useful. oGCD's create faster, flowing gameplay. It's about time they accepted, embraced it and designed for that gameplay instead of putting their fingers in their ears and pretending we still Medica II spam.

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No one has called DPS less than always useful. No one is asking for Medica II spam. But what is this "embracing" oGCDs even supposed to mean? If having to use GCD heals occasionally (and the bottleneck to DPSing Silver is referring to is not MP, but literally just your party's survival), a la Coils where we actually had more incoming damage than oGCDs alone could deal with, is so wretched... What then?

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I'd much rather they embraced the current battle cleric design of DPS support with a wide array of healing spells to smoothly weave in.

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How is that any different from what we have now? Do you just want healing to solely be oGCD (assuming you mean abilities, not spells, here) and we spend even more time just turreting?

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

Looking back at Coils in ARR is like Classic WoW syndrome. People have rose tinted glasses about how great it was. Less people scoured information online on every aspect of the game. Bosses weren't as complex as today and like you said our toolkits were much more limited too.

I don't see that type of gameplay as an improvement. Taking most of our oGCD's away and giving us a barebones weak GCD system would indeed artificially force us to heal more, but it'd be boring. You'd really start to feel that 2.5s GCD. I'd much rather they embraced the current battle cleric design of DPS support with a wide array of healing spells to smoothly weave in. Its faster-paced, more rewarding gameplay. The main flaws for me are that the GCD dps aspect is severely lacking and the bosses don't hit near hard enough to put my fancy toolkit to full use. That and they really need a healer designer on the team, because certain design choices really need a look at (AST cards, WHM in general, Energy drain compared to Addersgall, ect.)

The other flaw with a slow GCD based heal system and ridiculously expensive dps spells is that a LOT of content would need to be redesigned. Things like E7s doing nothing for 2 minutes, or the current EX1 only having 5 unavoidable raidwides. You'd absolutely be reduced to Glare spam and go OOM in the first 2 minutes of the fight. It'd be horrible.

Dps is always useful. oGCD's create faster, flowing gameplay. It's about time they accepted, embraced it and designed for that gameplay instead of putting their fingers in their ears and pretending we still Medica II spam.

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I'm not really arguing that it would be an improvement, rather that it was possible to do. Claiming that it was impossible or would be disastrous is hyperbolic since it's been done before. My only real take on GCD healing is that there needs to be a system in place so that they should be made DPS neutral and that our oGCDs should encourage GCD heals in some way.

Just a few examples.
Say that Tetra grants you a Lily upon usage. Now, have Afflatus spells grant you a stack of Cleric Stance, that upon using Misery would expend the stacks to increase your damage by 10% for 20s.
Say that under Dissipation that Addlo/Succor were instant cast skills. Now, have Addlo/Succor upon breaking turn Ruin 2 into Rumination as an AoE attack with 575 potency with 50% fall off.
Say that Celestial Intersection, upon breaking, would guarantee that Benefic 2 Crits. Now, have Benefit 2 grant 15% Crit or D.Hit to the target healed for 15s.

These types of changes would be more interesting than want we currently have, which is shafting GCD heals in place of oGCDs, and giving Healers an actual chance to be more engaging.