More engaging DPS for healers

I think SE does not want to raise the skill cap with any of the roles, thus why they are streamlining the roles and many jobs. Giving people the option to dps or not to dps. To where a player can make it engaging or not.

Healers having more buffs to the group would help, but the question is wouldnt that add to the skill Bloat that SE doesnt want. Unless you add that on to abilities that already exist.

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Originally Posted by Derio

I think SE does not want to raise the skill cap with any of the roles, thus why they are streamlining the roles and many jobs. Giving people the option to dps or not to dps. To where a player can make it engaging or not.

Healers having more buffs to the group would help, but the question is wouldnt that add to the skill Bloat that SE doesnt want. Unless you add that on to abilities that already exist.

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As I understand and agree with the OP's line of thinking, we're not really asking for more active skills so much as traits to increase mechanical depth in our dps kits that will feed back into the healer kit.

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

It still stuns me that SE didn’t have the foresight to properly take AST all the way down this road. Let them spend their GCDs optimising cards rather than DPSing, it’d make a *lot* of people happy, open up the more passive playstyle so many desire and help stop the job being little more than a copy paste of whm with a clunky cards thrown on top.

Yoshida pls sort your healer designer out =(

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Yup, back when AST was first announced I ABSOLUTELY thought this was how the class was going to be - tons of short CD card buffs/card management tools and very minimal DPS capabilities loaded into their kit (to the point where outside of solo content they'd be a borderline waste of mana to cast). That said, solo content is probably exactly why AST wasn't designed this way - in solo duties even as WHM I would be popping Lucid Dreaming and stuff all the time just to not go OOM trying to Stone down all the mobs the instance threw at me. The solo bosses are pretty obviously designed around DPS-levels of damage, which is pretty moronic to me tbh because the NPCs heal as much as an actual healer does but don't do the damage an actual DPS does (making them unnecessarily tedious on tank/healer to complete).

It's a shame, because you're right - AST without a doubt had the potential to be the "true healer" class at least some people in this game desperately want to play. But I feel like SE was too afraid of the job being too tedious to level, or of card buffs busting coordinated gameplay (they did anyway, ripperonis SE) that they kept them a pretty homogeneous, uninspired SCH/WHM copy design that I honestly despise to this day (I love the cards though, which is why I play it, before anyone asks).

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Originally Posted by loreleidiangelo

That said, solo content is probably exactly why AST wasn't designed this way.

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I don't even think it's that TBH. It takes a bit of creative thought but there's plenty of ways around this, *see further down the post for one way that took me all of a few minutes to think up. The problem here of course is that simply taking WHM, slapping a wishy-washy gimmick ontop of it and fiddling the numbers a little takes very little effort to balance (And even then it was still released in a woefully under-tuned state). By comparison, 'a new and out there' system is going to require a lot more testing team man-hours to tune and refine which all equates to some potentially hefty investment, a thing SE try to avoid whenever possible.

*Case in point:

Seb's quick ciggy packet AST remake v1

Remove Malefic 1/2/3, completely.
Combust 1/2 reverted back to their HW behaviour aka stackable with one having a cast time.
Also remove shuffle, completely.
Plus unable to click off cards anymore, minor arcana and undraw removed.
RR and Spread would continue to function as is.

Now before I get told to uninstall, consider the following.

Draw completely revamped to be an instant cast on the GCD with no recast.

Hitting draw again with a card active will do different things depending on your target:

1. Using draw with a card on a friendly target or yourself will apply the card's effect to that target along with the RR modifier in the same way that we see now.
2. Using draw with a card on an enemy target applies a Lord of Crowns style nuke to the target (it'd likely need a small potency buff to keep AST's single target DPS where it is now even with them regaining a dot again).
3. Using draw with a card whilst you have no target applies a 6y point blank aoe around yourself dealing 100 potency in damage and 100 potency in healing (Baby assize!).

Naturally it'd be safe to assume that card potency would likely need to be dropped to keep things sensible, but it'd enable ASTs the choice of either funnelling their GCDs into buffing party members, doing damage or even aoeing with the things. Something like this even has the nice side bonus of reducing button bloat as well =o

Of course, why stop there. Imagine if instead of Earthly Star powering up over a fixed period of time, you powered it up by feeding it unwanted cards++

I really would like to think Yoshida's job design team is creative enough to come up with stuff like this (Although their efforts on healers and tanks for SB thus far make me suspect otherwise), rather the biggest barrier is simply getting the budget to actually refine and hone these sorts of ideas to the point where they can be integrated into the game without breaking it.

Lastly, I don't really think that musical flavour of the month chairs is a such a bad thing in this game, as long as everyone is at least decently viable, it's not a huge hardship to switch jobs (Especially as a healer!). Mixing things up a little keep things fresh, and it's not like your practically throwing away nearly as much as you are in the likes of WoW.

Wow, I take a day off from the forums 'cause people were a little too salty/immature in the first few pages of this thread and it blows up in the mean time o.o


I will say if I ignore some of the similar salt that's filtered through I'd like to take a moment to address a few common concerns that have been voiced.

Some people seem to be taking what I said as the only proposed changes here. I understand that if anything like any of these alterations were to happen potency adjustments would need to happen alongside them. You can't add shielding to Stone IV without either bringing down it's potency or proportionately reducing the rest of the WHM healing toolkit to compensate, likely both. I assumed that this was so obvious it didn't need to be stated. My mistake. Clearly any change to the function of an ability would come with other adjustments.

Some people still seem to be getting stuck on the idea of button bloat. None of my suggestions add more than a button or two. Kaiva addressed this (thanks!) but I wanted to make it clear here as well.

To the people who are more interested in a 'pure healer'... Sorry? I mean by and large I have no interest in that sort of playstyle and so I don't consider it in any topics I bring up. This game doesn't have that kind of healing gameplay, for which I'm thankful, and so while I'm sorry my ideas won't appeal to you I think you've got bigger problems like how either way healing in ffxiv is focused on finding dps windows.

There have been contributions to this thread surrounding the idea of moving towards a buffing/debuffing healer and by consequence of that away from personal DPS and my real opposition to that is the hypercasual playerbase of this game. When you take EX and Savage out of the equation there are some players, many of them in DPS roles, who don't only perform below the basic expectations of their job but literally like they're pushing random buttons or just doing the move revert think looks flashiest. As a healer in a dungeon with these players now I can make up some of that missing damage myself and in fact do more than many of those dps on WHM. If you take that away and I'm stuck buffing the dps of an Ice Mage I am not going to be a happy camper.

Sebazy - your AST sounds really interesting! So long as AST would at least retain it's current personal dps I wouldn't be opposed to this in the slightest and I think it's a great way to move AST to be more on-brand and less like a WHM with cards.

Honestly I had the same image of Astrologian when it was announced, with cards being entirely randomised but on the GCD and very limited dps so you can decide whether to focus on healing, support or balancing the two.
Having a job like this also opens the possiblity for another healer job to be much more dps focused, since you have a choice between being a healer that supports the party or one that helps with dealing damage. That way everyone gets something they enjoy

Moro, I don't think this works. There are three reasons I see why.

1. Even with no buttons, you are adding more complexity. It may not have any additional combos, but I'm definitely sure there has to be timers involved, to add a sense of urgency to decide to use a proc. You have to keep in mind how many stone 3s you can fit in, to try an get the shield buff, especially because...
2...you are nerfing direct healing to compensate for the added healing gained from dps. I think its agreed you have to, because otherwise healing would be ridiculous. But this illustrates the final flaw.
3. This isn't really designed to benefit healers. It's designed to force them to DPS more.

It's not really about engaging, if you have to nerf direct heals to balance proc heals. its moving healers from relying on direct heals an needing both direct heals and time spent dpsing for proc heals. Kind of like the way heavy thrust in drg is nerfed, and damage spread to the combo, but for heals. Not really sure this helps people, because for people who already dps a lot, this kind of sucks; i don't need more engaging gameplay, and i dps constantly as it is. It just really forces all players to dps more and direct heal less by splitting the potency.

Im not sure forcing it will be healthy.

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

AST revamp

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Uninstall! >:[

I actually really like your idea for AST. I would probably play AST if it played how you listed.

There is absolutely no reason to make healer dps rotations more complex than they are now. the reason theyre simple is becuase healers primary job is NOT dps but healing and they are expected to do BOTH at the same time.

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Originally Posted by Derio

I think SE does not want to raise the skill cap with any of the roles, thus why they are streamlining the roles and many jobs. Giving people the option to dps or not to dps. To where a player can make it engaging or not.

Healers having more buffs to the group would help, but the question is wouldnt that add to the skill Bloat that SE doesnt want. Unless you add that on to abilities that already exist.

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Yeah SE hasn't even done enough yet to lower the skill cap on most classes and I hope to see more done in the future. It's neccesary if the game is to succeed into further expansions.

I dont think this will happen. One of the main reasons why SE overhauled the current jobs is decrease the gap between low skilled and high skilled players. Making the healers job more complicated is the last thing that they want to see in the game.


PS: If healers are having issues doing damage when they only have few skills, what makes you think making it more engaging will incentives them to deal damage? I personaly think its best to request a new healer class to have these features that you have suggested. I just can not see this happening with the healers that we have right now.

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Originally Posted by MoroMurasaki

If you take that away and I'm stuck buffing the dps of an Ice Mage I am not going to be a happy camper.

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But your buffs on that ice mage combined with your debuffs on the boss could end up mitigating the effect of them being an ice mage. Adding our dps doesn't have to be the only way we can make up for where our party lacks.

Here's my input:

While I PERSONALLY think that healer DPS needs to be more engaging, this is a band aid fix to a problem that shouldn't even exist tbh. The real problem with FF14 healing is that it's too basic.

I would much rather see the game design shift to a more healing/support focused paradigm.

If you look at content now, damage only comes in 3 basic forms. AOE burst, ST burst, and sustained ST via autos. The problem with this is that a current healers toolkit can handle any of these situations with a single button to counter it with no actual effort involved.

What I envision is encounter design that actually utilizes more varied forms of incoming damage and a healing toolkit to supplement it.

1) Healers should have some form of support. External "tank like" cooldowns they can expend on others to counter/mitigate incoming damage when they need help catching up, things like MP restoration, resource improvement, big healing CDs, dispels, etc.

2) Healers need a resource that is expendable. This is how you manage the skill floor. Bad healers can still top up parties and heal just fine. They're just incredibly inefficient at it and over a more difficult fight this becomes problematic. This works for trivial content, but also affords room to grow and allows a healer feedback into their play as they make mistakes. If I am OOM, maybe I can try using different heals or timing my cooldowns better to conserve MP.

3) Design more interesting incoming damage methods/penalties. I.e. Instead of every single bosses tankbuster being a cast bar and a big singular hit with no real change:

a) Boss grabs tank crushing it, dealing significant damage over the next 10s while he holds the tank. If the tank falls below 40% HP during this effect, he gains a stack of vuln. up indefinitely.

b) Boss hits tank dealing significant damage and gives them a debuff where they deal raidwide pulse damage every second they aren't healed above 90% HP.

c) Boss hits tank causing a fear effect. Every second the tank is feared the AOE region around him grows until it is dispelled. Fearing everyone in its vicinity.

4) Instead of basic raidwide AOE:

a) Boss slowly drains health of everyone around them. The more HP they have the more the boss is healed. You want people low, but don't want to let them die either.

b) Stuff like Shin EX Reiryu's. Maybe a shield debuff on everyone that rapidly drains their HP until you heal enough to break the shield/kill the add.

Stuff like this.

Kaldea....I love you. That is beautiful. I especially love the idea of an AoE fear region, as it makes cleansing important again. And I love 4a as well.