Shouldn't Virus be a healer debuff again?

Nah, I'm used to having Stoneskin or Hallowed Ground/Holmgang/Living Dead in those nightmare tankbuster scenarios in which Virus could be a third heavy mitigation option.

Excognition exists now to soften blows of that ferocity, too, on top of a Galvanize. Although, admittedly you need to survive the tank buster for that to work. I guess Divine Benison to a certain extent, too. I guess ASTs just pray for a Bole and Noct Sheild.


Think of it this way; if Virus is that good, and Healers are needed with or without it (completely setting the role skill crunch factor aside), wouldn't giving Virus to casters improve their overall raid utility and encourage more players to handle those jobs and invite them into statics?

I mean, now it seems like the argument is less, "Why can't healers still use Virus?" and instead, "Why aren't casters taking advantage of Virus?"

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And no, this isn't useless. Mitigation is never useless. And no you don't need to do savage race to be efficient et want to use everyskill you have.

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The whole point of Virus is to take an unsurvivable attack and make it into something survivable. If it's not doing that, it's pointless to have around as a skill in favor of other things, and it was barely even worth using pre-4.0 too. I am not a raider, and I pretty much always forgot it was there because it was too insignificant to matter.

I say it again, but you don't need to be an active raider to use what's on your toolkit.
No, Virus and every type of mitigation isn't only use to unsurvivable attacks.
Unless you're doing content unsync, as long as you can mitigate by pressing a single button,it's better doing it, and i'm not talking about Virus only here.
Everyone doing all what they can to make runs smoother is much appreciated.

If we have those things on our hotbars, on the cross role system and stuff, better to be used.

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Originally Posted by KDSilver

I'm talking about 8-man content.
And no, this isn't useless. Mitigation is never useless. And no you don't need to do savage race to be efficient et want to use everyskill you have.
Cause if we go further in that opinion, every kind of mitigation skill in this game would useless : reprisal, troubadour...

Or, people were just simply mitigating it without you noticing it and you just thought "lol, it doesn't hurt"
Also, maybe you never went on Extreme trials with pretty bad gears because it's totally new (aren't the best example since they were quite easy, even if their aoe hurt at the beginning)
If you think damages in this game are just healers doing the job on their own, you had it all wrong.

So now please. This thread is an open debate indeed, but don't dare commenting if you don't know what you're talking about.

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The more you stack mitigation, the less of an effect it has overall. Outside of savage, using mitigation outside of generic healer shields and tank cooldowns is more than enough even at minimum required level. Anything else is a bonus, and if it's actually needed, things had already started to go south before using said mitigation (like healers sleeping on the job or forgetting some raid-wide AoE is about to happen and non-tanks are sitting at half HP; seen this a lot in Sophia, as well as Susano and Lakshmi).

The only time I've ever uttered anything close to "lol it doesn't hurt" is a scholar popping a critlo and spreading it. Then it's a "lol wut damage?" ('cause most fights are designed for having 20k+ HP mitigation on the raid).

Hypothetically, if you could use something like Feint and not need a tank mitigation, using both means one is wasted.

Basically, outside of savage raids, you only need these things to compensate for mistakes.

Also, do you even know there was damage you simply could not mitigate? Anything that came up as "darkness damage" could not be mitigated by skills like Virus, but shields and Disable did work. While I have not gone back and looked to see if there has been any more of this type of damage in Stormblood, this damage would be immune to stat reduction mitigation.

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Everyone doing all what they can to make runs smoother is much appreciated.

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For the overwhelming majority of non-raid content (and even in most raid content), healers accomplish this by adding in nukes, not Virus.

Mitigation on a single enemy is just very rarely useful in this game. Dungeons get mass pulled and bosses are typically no threat as long as your healer isn't asleep. A number of bosses can even be soloed by a tank without any other support.

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Originally Posted by Fynlar

For the overwhelming majority of non-raid content (and even in most raid content), healers accomplish this by adding in nukes, not Virus.

Mitigation on a single enemy is just very rarely useful in this game. Dungeons get mass pulled and bosses are typically no threat as long as your healer isn't asleep. A number of bosses can even be soloed by a tank without any other support.

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In before they say they aren't talking about 4 man content, and thus dungeons, I would like to interject and point out to OP that for a large portion of the playerbase, their majority of time is spent in said 4 man content, leading to just a... less than useful skill for them. Possibly why the game is mostly balanced around savage raiding, and like a friend has said, if you aren't savage raiding, you aren't really playing the game.

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Originally Posted by Ametrine

Nah, I'm used to having Stoneskin

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:(

I wouldn't mind getting Virus or something like it on WHM, for those times where nobody needs healing to let me DPS a tiny bit more aggressively. Basically, for something extra to do, since the toolkit is so ludicrously simple now aside from juggling resources and Benison isn't always up or easily made available in advance of damage if you're unlucky (or make a mistake). Don't really need it on AST/SCH as my bars are full enough now, though I would 100% support changes to Esuna/Protect for all healers to give us more opportunities for interesting play.

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Originally Posted by JunseiKei

like a friend has said, if you aren't savage raiding, you aren't really playing the game.

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Like the majority of people playing the game who aren't really playing the game, I find there are things we can do for extra challenge that aren't necessarily running the latest Savage raids, and that's rather rude (even if I do understand what you're saying, in that pushing the very edge of your throughput isn't needed for the easy content we do every day). For example, my idea of fun is to grab some friends and do content at minimum ilv sync with the bare minimum of players, which can be eye-wateringly rough to solo heal sometimes, especially when you have to think of creative solutions to mechanical problems which wouldn't ever exist if you had the correct number of people. Is it as hard as current Savage raiding? Probably not, it's certainly not going to win me any respect. Is it hard, and do I need to know every skill inside and out? Personally, I think so, and I'd really appreciate having more options to allow us to mess around even more, since we find pushing ourselves as a small team rather fun. Since it's a game. And there's barely any lowman hard content at all unless we create it ourselves.

We have plenty of situational stuff already (Fluid Aura, Repose) and it's not as though WHM is struggling with an excess of buttons to press these days, especially in advance of incoming damage, so I'd personally rather like a few more options to make the gameplay feel more involved. Stone is great and all, but I did originally pick WHM to heal and a few interesting alternatives in between the relentless Stone spam would help me feel engaged.

I miss my AST having Disable :'(

It was pretty

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Originally Posted by TristanBlane

I miss my AST having Disable :'(

It was pretty

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It is in PVP. It's very useful there, being a 25% decrease in your opponent's attack power for a few seconds.

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Originally Posted by Serilda

Like the majority of people playing the game who aren't really playing the game, I find there are things we can do for extra challenge that aren't necessarily running the latest Savage raids, and that's rather rude (even if I do understand what you're saying, in that pushing the very edge of your throughput isn't needed for the easy content we do every day).

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Originally Posted by A Friend

By not playing the game, I mean playing the game at a level where their opinions about mechanics and balance are uninformed. You can pick up any game and mash buttons, but that doesn't mean your opinion on it is valid.

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/10characters