Any support utility ideas other than heal & shields?

As much as I would like more utility and things to do aside from dps and timing my healing CDs, I doubt that SE would add more because they already view tank and healing as "difficult" to the general playerbase and as a result, are simple to play with little to no real challenge behind them.

Most of the playerbase doesn't care about having more to do than rolling their faces on the keyboard. The minute they add a little complexity, you will see posts and complaints about how difficult it is to play x role.

Even AST, who has had its complexity ripping away from it over time, is still getting complaints along with lower play rate because it's perceived as "too hard" (though I'd say playing AST is more of a chore nowadays).

But to really tie it together. The encounter design is really inflexible when it comes to designing usefulness into a role. It's pretty superficial now.

Tanks just need to have on tank stance to keep aggro as opposed to pre-ShB where you have to do tons of frontloaded damage in order for the SAM/BLM to not get wrecked by the enemy from ripping aggro.

Weapon resistances are gone (though I\\'d say for the better). DRG was a huge problem since it was the only job that brought piercing and BRD and MCH needed it to be competitive. So bringing jobs that require it no longer exist.

Buff timers have all or mostly been changed to fit the 2 mins timer that fights are flighted around. No flexible with odd phase changes and buffs to work around it.

MP assistance. Casters had Mana Shift, Ranged had Refresh. I kinda baffles me that they took this away from ranged. But I guess it's because MP management is non-existant now. It's not fun to manage if your kit doesn't allow it, but having teammates chip in to help you after a death was nice.

FF gets praise for good job balance when in reality, jobs are more or less the same with different flavor gameplay. Having uniqueness in a job/role leads to imbalance as something might be OP or DoA because of the nature of it. And nerfing/changing it just makes it the same as others.


The devs want jobs and roles to be ease of access and the punishment is that every job has to be equal or you'll see people complain their main jobs being weak or strong jobs being broken.

To add insult to injury, the devs themselves have literally said that the game will not have the same complexity as HW (which was the point in time where jobs felt unique from most people that played HW on release) with DRK as an example.

Tldr: devs don't want it, so won't. But we should ask for it anyway.

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Originally Posted by glamazon

But why did they settle on this? Why do the devs slavishly stick to this? MMO is a living breathing ongoing thing and should be able to grow and change... right? Why won't they grown and change and add different types of encounters?

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Some of it might work, but some would just be ridiculously strong. For example, take Float. Think how many fights have some sort of design, that uses ground dangerzones to make the fight hard. P2S is a good example. The reason Limit Cut is 'hard' is because you can't use the whole arena. If you COULD, it'd be a joke to handle. Hence, it's added into just O2S as a gimmick, as part of the fight's design. If Float was added to WHM as a skill, it'd be as a Mitigation tool like Zephyr in WOW, 20% reduced damage from ground-AOEs. You'd still get the DOT from standing in the bad on P2S, but it wouldn't be as hard hitting. And if there's a mechanic like A11, where he sets the entire arena on fire for a phase, Float would be good there to help deal with the environmental damage. Just, it shouldn't be able to completely nullify things, that'd just make WHM as 'locked slot' as AST was in P3S because of Macrocosmos

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Originally Posted by fulminating

redistribution - like pain split in pokemon. Take the healthy health from someone who's mostly fine and give it to someone who's critically injured

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As a tank main, I can't say I'm personally excited to have my HP siphoned just before a TB hits & having that HP go to the dragoon who stood in an AoE with 3 vuln stacks.

I already don't like how easily healers can grief with rescue (intentionally or not), and I'm not sure giving them more tools that have griefing potential would make the role any better.

I mean, with the new HoT and their pre-existing sustain, it might just be preferable to run more WARs in the healer slots than risk having jobs that have more than 1 way to possibly grief a party.

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Originally Posted by AnotherPerson

There has been talk that we don't want to see just another heal and shield skill because we have so many of those already. Personally, another ability with only a combination of healing, shielding, and mitigation is getting not particularly exciting or fun when we have plenty of those already. Assuming we can disregard balance, what kind of support utility ideas that you want a healer to have instead?

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Anything that isn't "more damage", honestly.

Get rid of that ridiculous "healers are green DPS" rubbish.

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There honestly are a lot of other things, it's just kinda what one takes from them. Part of the issue is FFXIV has a somewhat rigid combat system that has gotten more rigid over the years. Only Healers, RDM when things have gone south, and DRKs care about MP, making stuff like that old spell Casters had to give people MP or the AST Card (Ewer) pointless. Likewise, with TP gone, all the TP buffing and giving abilities are defunct.

With the tight tuning on rotations, Spell Speed and Skill Speed can be actively detrimental rather than buffs outside of the Healers who only spam one spell anyway so it doesn't disrupt their rotation.

Out of combat regen is so fast, neither HP Regens nor MP Refreshes as party utility (e.g. in Everquest or FF11) are necessary or useful. Everyone can teleport, so teleport or portal or summon type spells are useless.

Persistent buffs no longer exist in FFXIV, so stuff like Protect or Stoneskin (for...reasons...; seriously 30 min duration but would break in the first moments of combat anyway) is gone and things like them out of the question.

Silence/Interrupt/Stun can be useful, but Stun and Heavy can be disruptive to tanks (imagine PvP AST's Gravity that hits enemies with Heavy if that worked with PvE AST Gravity when the tank was trying to get two packs in a wall to wall pull and the first one was so slow the DPS drew agro). Slow from Arms' Length could be nice, and that's kind of what old Eye For An Eye was, but...that was removed as well outside of the Arms' Length self-buff for Tanks and Melee and Ranged.

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Everything being based on 2 min burst windows and combat applications with VERY few exceptions (NIN teleport, run speed, increased fall distance, and Ranged Peleton; even Rescue requires the target to be in combat) makes for pretty strict limits on the kinds of support you can have.

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Originally Posted by fulminating

redistribution - like pain split in pokemon. Take the healthy health from someone who's mostly fine and give it to someone who's critically injured

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Could be the everquest version. Even out everyones in the group at the same % health. So your criticaly hurt tank gets in a safe range then boom AoE heals to top everyones back.

A timed buff with cheat death mecanic could be considered.

A self cast 5 second invulnerability coupled with AoE taunt (force your tank to time hi taunt off the healer).

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Originally Posted by Venur

A self cast 5 second invulnerability coupled with AoE taunt (force your tank to time hi taunt off the healer).

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Wait, an invuln and forced taunt on a healer? Unless every TB from thereon has a bleed attached, that's getting used for cheese 110%

All of this makes me think they are strangling their golden goose. The more streamlined and homogenized combat becomes the less fun I have. Yes there are a ton of other things this game offers that I like and appreciate but do I want to pay 15 dollars a month for it when I came here originally for the battles and classes?

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

Wait, an invuln and forced taunt on a healer? Unless every TB from thereon has a bleed attached, that's getting used for cheese 110%

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Pretty much how it is used in MMOs that has those kind of ability.

FF14 has no skill used to cheese any mechanics ?

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Originally Posted by Venur

Pretty much how it is used in MMOs that has those kind of ability.

FF14 has no skill used to cheese any mechanics ?

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Well, yes, but my point is like, take the stupid corner thing tanks were forced to do in O11S, invuln in a corner and bait large aoes there, because the ranged were too lazy to do it/learn. With a move like that, it'd be the healer forced there (cos 'uptime'), and they'd probably call it 'braindead strat'. And the ranged still wouldnt learn the mechanic that their moveset specifically is suited to deal with best

Though something I'd like to see Provoke knocked down to a 10s CD, that way they can force tankswaps way more often potentially. Or something like 'boss auto applies a stack, each stack makes you take 50% more damage from subsequent autos' so you have to swap at like 3 or 4. That's more an idea for the Tank section of the forums though

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

The problem with some of those suggestions is inconsistency. For example...

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One thing is AST's RNG weirdness being one of the issues with it being a true "buff healer". That is, you have no REAL control over which buff to use, unlike, say Stoneskin or Protect; imagine if Divine Benison was either a shield, damage reduction, or regen. Would kind of make it far less useful. RNG is kind of the nature of the Card reading thing, but it's also what makes it difficult to balance and subject to wild swings - even IF all the Card were roughly equally desired.

But I feel it's also important to point out: This is why we can't have nice things.

The optimization requirements make it where we can't have variety and everything is shoehorned into a milky morass of homogenization. The very nature of things is that those which are more interesting and distinct are also likely to not be balanced and not necessarily be consistent or always useful/applicable. By placing such constraints, it leads to the result of things being...well...boring.

The fun and diversity optimized away.

The only option they have is utility beyond heals and shields. Things that create synergy between the two. AST used to have a skill that best exemplified this called Time Dilation. It would extend the duration of buffs which included cards, HoTs and barriers. It was mostly used to increase the duration of that one dps with the enhanced balance but in some cases if you had a HoT on a tank that was buffed by something like neutral sect you can toss them a bole and TD for longer mitigation and HoT.

However that is job exclusive concept but something I think all healers can benefit from is more ground aoes. Some examples:

WHM Lit Bell has two charges but shorter yalm aoe range. This would open up scenarios where the party is split far to cover healing in those areas or stack both for double healing when stacked.
SGE Pneuma dropping a line aoe (after its blast) that has a regen effect when stood in it.
SCH having both faeries out at the same time healing players within its short range. Eos embrace casts a heal and Selene embrace casts a shield. Can be used in the same scenarios as WHM.

As for AST it has the best option for this via the cards. It can place cards face up for a ground aoe buff or face down (eventually flipping face up) and have it act like earthly star to have a stronger buff.

Ultimately I feel like they peaked with healing and shields and the only option is just to diversify when and how those can be used in more creative ways.

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Originally Posted by FireMage

If you can't immediately see the problems with a certain type of AOE heal range beyond proximity that's on you, not ne

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That is what you have to offer, Firemage? Absurdity offers an idea and rather than support it or at least explain why it is not viable, you scorn them instead? It feels like you expect to receive patience and understanding for your contributions to the forums, while refusing to give patience and understanding in return.

Moving on, healing probably suffers from what every other role suffers in FFXIV. A lack of direction. The devs do what the player base wants and then the player base is still unhappy. Yoshida then almost whines about it. If the dev team had a clear vision and was willing to stick to it, they would be able to figure out which feedback is useful to them. Trying to incorporate changes that please ALL feedback is impossible and will result in the game getting over-simplified.

Semirhage provided a list of interesting suggestions, along with many other commenters. I would take virtually any of the suggestions posted in this thread. If FF14 was an investment, it would be the most risk-averse mutual fund ever. Also, no MMO I know of has ever had the situation of WHM (a class designed for an entirely different game than the one being played.)

A healer having a life tap ability that lets them sacrifice their own precious health to channel HP to a party member would be exciting! Who heals the healer?!

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Originally Posted by NYCLouisGamer

That is what you have to offer, Firemage? Absurdity offers an idea and rather than support it or at least explain why it is not viable, you scorn them instead? It feels like you expect to receive patience and understanding for your contributions to the forums, while refusing to give patience and understanding in return.

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I honestly didn't bother replying because it was a non-argument, it essentially boiled down to "AOE heals that aren't proximity based don't work because they don't work".

Let's take Pneuma for example, if the instead of being a big line aoe with a 25 yalm proximity aoe heal it would instead be a line aoe and line aoe heal, requiring your party to stand in front of the Sage (or anywhere on the line) to receive the healing, but for the added difficulty of actually hitting everyone it could be bumped up to 900 cure potency instead. It would make the ability somewhat more difficult to use since it requires your party to stack up properly, and depending on what mechanic currently needs executing might not even be possible to use, in exchange for a lot more output.

Or maybe we could make it a bit more interesting, we keep the 600 potency 25 yalm proximity heal, but if you're standing on the line of Pneuma it applies a 300 potency barrier to you on top.

I still don't see how that couldn't function in this game besides "now I can't just use it whenever"

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

Let's take Pneuma for example, if the instead of being a big line aoe with a 25 yalm proximity aoe heal it would instead be a line aoe and line aoe heal, requiring your party to stand in front of the Sage (or anywhere on the line) to receive the healing, but for the added difficulty of actually hitting everyone it could be bumped up to 900 cure potency instead.

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Aimed heals. Skill-shot heals. I like it. It would be a dramatic increase in engagement for healers while they are healing. People love BLM so much because its gameplay is like its own game. BLM (while not perfect!) is probably the only job that is not reskinned copy of another job. It is a miracle.

Time for some more miracles.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

Or maybe we could make it a bit more interesting, we keep the 600 potency 25 yalm proximity heal, but if you're standing on the line of Pneuma it applies a 300 potency barrier to you on top.

I still don't see how that couldn't function in this game besides "now I can't just use it whenever"

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That's a fair idea. It's the same strong burst heal but you get a bonus if your group is able to stack and coordinates. I'm not a fan of Pneuma being only a line aoe heal because the game is so incredibly scripted that there are many times where you simply wouldn't be able to use it for certain mechanics. Rather than being a skill reward in aiming it, it'd just be unavailable half the fight. And it'd be useless outside of statics in endgame because you have no power over random players scattering around.

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

the game is so incredibly scripted

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That's probably the largest problem that FF14 has right now.

It is why healers are punished with worse gameplay as they get better. Glare with a nice side of Glare and some Glare on top, sir/madam/enby?

It is why mobility is overpowered in comparison with other MMOs. That same mobility is hit with a nasty DPS tax if you aren't melee. Who cares if your DPS is crap and PF groups block you! You can move, can't you!

It is one of the reasons why there is constantly a tank shortage. A person is put in the position of having to study the fights in advance as if they were a school assignment/part-time job, especially if they are tanking. You mean you DON'T want to have tedious spoilers for every single boss fight in the game? Madness!

It causes stagnation and it is why SE jumped through a zillion hoops to try to keep the veterans playing low-level content as part of the experience. If they don't do this, low-level zones will be dead for new players because veterans will refuse to queue up for low-level roulettes. This takes up precious time and resources that could be used towards developing satisfying job mechanics for each job. If each fight is identical once understood, why do it again. SE finally gave up and decided to turn FF14 into a more single-player experience. They still left the boring pieces in. No other MMO has been required to create a Duty Support system that staffs a multiplayer dungeon with NPC party members. Are we at SE willing to realize that turning an entire game into 1 big visual novel is why doing old instances is as dry as melba toast? Are we at SE willing to realize that we are busy putting out fires that we at SE started? Nope! (^_^)

We are going to need some good 'ol risk-taking if things are to improve.

I did have a 'dream' in the literal sense where I was playing Sage, couple of days after it was announced. In that dream, it was not Pneuma, but 'the skill that would later become known as Prognosis' that was a Line AOE.

Consider, we have 20y range on the circular heal of Pneuma. What if we had a 50y range on a LINE heal instead? So while you can't stand in the middle of everyone and heal, you could stand on the outside of everyone and heal. A good example would be 'Ruby Light 5' in P5S. You wait for the orange AOEs to hit the squares, spread out into the safe area, take an untelegraphed spread mark, stack up somewhere (usually the healer) to bait circle AOEs on the floor, then move in to the center as 2 groups for 'healer stacks'. So what if, at the point where you bait the circle AOES, you could hit both teams with the line AOE

https://i.gyazo.com/fc24042eeab13dfd...121140c936.png

Something like this? Though I do prefer the idea of the line providing additional bonus, rather than being the full functionality

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

And it'd be useless outside of statics in endgame because you have no power over random players scattering around.

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The unspoken rule of MMOs: if a class has ranged attacks, there will be players who decide they're going to use the full range of the attacks. Standing in Narnia doesn't exempt you from the mechanics, Mr BeastMastery Hunter

Alternatively they should just start by making healing not just a reactive thing or something to be planned out.

What I mean is that there should be some synergy in a healers kit (a gimmick) that delivers the same baseline healing but in that job's flare.

I only say this because they want healers to be the same playing field. AST kind of has this as Macrocosmos/Earthly Star is unique and feels different from what we've seen. SGE with Pan/haima and their dmg to healing.

Idk it just feels interactive in their kits rather than pop when damage happens.

But I think aside from utility differences, they should start with making healers feel different from one another, especially with the filler, dot and nuke.

How about killing two birds with one stone (in terms of giving whm a buff skill).
Convert Temperance's mitigation function to the functionality of the warrior skill Vengeance where it reflects a certain amount of potency, so when it applies, everyone "reflects" damage for a certain of amount of time. Allow for it to take the damage of the person the effect is applied on so it can be furthered with buffs if need be.
Then add the mitigation removed from Temperance or rather exchanged from Temperance to a new skill for white mage that allows them to also apply a party shield on top of that mitigation.
For the reflection portion of temperance, you'll have to time when AoEs go off on the usage to get its full effect (but technically we already do this so not much really changing here).

This way, it makes whm unique in regards to how they do damage vs AST's buff, it allows them to balance the skill easier, it allows whm to have a shield, and it diversifies the healers more.
There would be other changes I would do to whm, but this one just sticks out (the lack of a shield and a buff). WHM personal DPS also doesn't make up for the lack of utility especially when compared to their Sage personal DPS counterparts. (They are in a bad place here as Sage doesn't have to lose DPS to heal. And the DPS is too similar for the lack of safe healing). but honestly both WHM and SGE fall way off meta given lacks of buffs which is unfortunate. Idk what I would even give to SGE to balance it. (This is why this two minute meta is really a bad idea or at least one of the reasons why and also why healer "sameness" is also a bad idea)

Best designed healer in mmo i have ever seen was the Disciple of Khaine in age of reckoning.
You could wield dual daggers and heal a designated player much like kardia and also give the whole group lifeleech and you had some interesting skills as well or you could go blood chalice and dagger and attacking enemies would fill your blood chalice empowering your heals which were also mostly melee.

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Originally Posted by fulminating

redistribution - like pain split in pokemon. Take the healthy health from someone who's mostly fine and give it to someone who's critically injured

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Hopes for necromancer-style healing class intensifies.

But actually that'd be a really neat take on a healer. You literally suck the life out of the enemies to supply health to your allies. Alternatively you "equilibrium" two party members (or siphon hp from someone) to ensure one or more people don't die.