A summary of healer issues

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Originally Posted by Remolia

I manage to save people many times in 50 level alliances/trials with Cure1 only coz of 0.5 second faster cast, this 0.5 second allowed me to apply heal right before Boss mass AOE hits the target, other time it allowed to heal almost on walk, while I was avoiding tricky mechanics myself.

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That's an easy fix honestly. Just make Cure 2 have the same cast time. The fact they made the cast time changes to Glare and not the whole kit was just a bizarre change really.

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Originally Posted by Silver-Strider

That's an easy fix honestly. Just make Cure 2 have the same cast time. The fact they made the cast time changes to Glare and not the whole kit was just a bizarre change really.

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But they did.

Cure II always had a cast time of only 2 seconds.
Medica was 2.5s, now 2s.
Medica II was 3s, now 2s.

Holy is an outlier, they reduced the cast time from 3s to 2.5s. But the AoE stun is also an outlier and a tradeoff I am willing to take.

Except Holy and Raise all the cast times of WHM are shorter than the actual GCD.

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Originally Posted by Tint

But they did.

Cure II always had a cast time of only 2 seconds.
Medica was 2.5s, now 2s.
Medica II was 3s, now 2s.

Holy is an outlier, they reduced the cast time from 3s to 2.5s. But the AoE stun is also an outlier and a tradeoff I am willing to take.

Except Holy and Raise all the cast times of WHM are shorter than the actual GCD.

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I meant moreso why they weren't all changed to 1.5 seconds. Even with the Stun in Holy, I don't see a point on why it couldn't also be changed to 1.5s. With every new oGCD added each expansion, the overall power of Holy over the other healer becomes less impactful since they can just weave in those oGCDs seamlessly while spamming their AoE while WHM has to clip theirs constantly. It just seems pointless not to do so

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Originally Posted by Silver-Strider

That's an easy fix honestly. Just make Cure 2 have the same cast time. The fact they made the cast time changes to Glare and not the whole kit was just a bizarre change really.

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Even easier, just have a trait that changes Cure 1 into Cure 2 at the appropriate level. It's available when synced, and not when not synced.

Should be the same with Medica 1 into 3 There's no reason for both to exist.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

Even easier, just have a trait that changes Cure 1 into Cure 2 at the appropriate level. It's available when synced, and not when not synced.
Should be the same with Medica 1 into 3 There's no reason for both to exist.

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and upgrade the Cure1 trait that makes Cure3 cost no MP to also make Cure3 instant cast.

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Originally Posted by Silver-Strider

That's an easy fix honestly. Just make Cure 2 have the same cast time. The fact they made the cast time changes to Glare and not the whole kit was just a bizarre change really.

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I agree with this.

AST does this already MORE OR LESS. Benefic and Benefic 2 both have a 1.5 sec cast time. The only difference is Benefic 2 has a 700 MP cost vs Benific 1's 400. (Cure 2 and Cure 1 have the same deal, just 800 and 400). If they reduced the MP cost of Benefic 2 and Cure 2 to 400, they could make them straight upgrades. They could even make them a bit different - for example, maybe Benefic 2 is a 500 Potency heal with a 100 Potency DoT that ticks three times, once right away, once at 3 sec, and again at 6 sec (800 total) and Cure 2 is a straight 700 Potency heal, a bit weaker but more direct. AST has Essential Dignity super early to patch the damage more if that's too slow, and WHM is supposed to be the more simple and direct healer. For low level content, that'd be fine, even overwriting the HoT some would be fine.

But even just making them straight upgrades would be fine if they WERE straight upgrades.

The problem right now is they aren't because the 2 versions cost more MP (meaning spamming them makes you OOM faster - that is not an upgrade), and in the case of Cure 2, even have a longer cast time (which is a downgrade)

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Originally Posted by Tint

Sure I could have let him die, the tank was horrible and didn't deserve a carry through the dungeon. But wouldn't that be griefing? Even more so than using Cure 1?

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No, actually. They weren't doing their job by not popping cooldowns. So while you can try patching up their mistake, the fault would still be theirs as you wouldn't have been in such a scenario if they knew the basics of tanking. Dusk Vigil is level 51. There is no excuse to not know how cooldowns work by that point.

Nevertheless, Cure I wasn't didn't come in as much clutch as you're giving it credit. Benediction and Cure II spam would have been more efficient due to the massive difference in potency. Three casts of Cure I will have only saved you .5 seconds compared to two casts of Cure II while healing for less (1,500 vs. 1,600), and costing 200 more MP to boot. In otherwards, it accomplished nothing. None of this is to criticize you but rather highlight just how useless Cure I is. The only very minute niche it has would be if someone would die within the .5 seconds between casting it over any other heal. Those scenarios are so seldom it isn't worth the hotbar space.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

(Cure 2 and Cure 1 have the same deal, just 800 and 400).

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Correction on the mp cost, cure 1 is 400, cure 2 is 1000. THis is the same mp cost as Medica 2 which means you're getting less with this single target heal instead of the aoe regen. There shouldn't be any case to even use cure 1 or cure 2 at this point when regen is more than sufficient to cover the hp which there isn't a lily to cover things.

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

Nevertheless, Cure I wasn't didn't come in as much clutch as you're giving it credit. Benediction and Cure II spam would have been more efficient due to the massive difference in potency. Three casts of Cure I will have only saved you .5 seconds compared to two casts of Cure II while healing for less (1,500 vs. 1,600), and costing 200 more MP to boot. In otherwards, it accomplished nothing. None of this is to criticize you but rather highlight just how useless Cure I is. The only very minute niche it has would be if someone would die within the .5 seconds between casting it over any other heal. Those scenarios are so seldom it isn't worth the hotbar space.

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It accomplished that I was not running out of mana.

Three casts of Cure 1 cost 1200 mp while two casts of Cure 2 cost 2000 mp. So I saved 800 mp and lost only 100 potency of healing. On top of that I made use of the infamous free cure procc.

Without Cure 1 I would have run dry, would not be able to heal the tank anymore and we would have wiped.

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Originally Posted by Iyrnthota

If you could cleanse Vuln stacks, people would just start eating mechanics deliberately to keep uptime

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The sad thing is that would actually add agency and options to healers... if that GCD of DPS downtime mitigated (in going from a ranged instant filler to continuing average ppgcd) were actually worth the cost to healer damage. But because it's disproportionately your lower performing DPS who are also taking flame baths... that's just not quite the case.

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It's the reason Savage does Damage Down, not Vuln stacks, because otherwise people do exactly that. Just ignore mechanics for uptime.

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This on the other hand seems a non-issue to anything but the enjoyability of DPS gameplay.

DPSing is more fun when you actually have to do what you can to mitigate the net costs of mechanics, including to your own damage, and having the best answer always be to not dodge would make DPS gameplay less interesting. On the other hand, having dodging always be the best answer actually makes party play the less interesting.

A better balancing point than Damage Down, honestly, would just be to reduce healers' free (oGCD) healing and increase their damage per GCD. Then, if the difference between moving and full damage were actually enough to make up for that Glare lost, the healer gets more to cast.

It's honestly the lower end content that needs to assume the utmost tunnel-vision from its players, not the higher end. And the more we assume that tunnel vision from the whole party, increasingly therefore barring any exchange of resource/outputs between roles (a tank able to further a turtle a hit for a situational net rDPS increase through its healer, a DPS having good reason to greed, etc.) the more tunnel-visioned each role's kits become, until we have three flavors of DPS but with additional, differently-colored buttons to be used upon mechanical cues.

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

Three casts of Cure I will have only saved you .5 seconds compared to two casts of Cure II while healing for less (1,500 vs. 1,600), and costing 200 more MP to boot.

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It's worse for Cure I than that.

Cure I and Cure II each take up the exact same amount of uptime, as all sub-GCD spells do: They consume... a GCD each.

A cast-time lower than the GCD only allows for more movement, not more uptime.

Pre-SpS, 3 Cure I casts will take 7.5 seconds. 2 Cure II casts will take 5 seconds. (Rather than 4.5s vs. 4s.)

Though I'm also not sure where these MP values are coming from. Cure I costs 400 MP each, while Cure II costs 1000 each. So it'd still be 800 less MP for 3 C1s than 2 C2s.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

A cast-time lower than the GCD only allows for more movement, not more uptime. [/SIZE]

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And 0.5 second faster application time! Since FFXIV servers are laggy, it means something.

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Originally Posted by Remolia

And 0.5 second faster application time! Since FFXIV servers are laggy, it means something.

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Sure, if they're fewer than 2 seconds from being killed specifically due to a difference of a mere 500 potency's healing in health, and somehow not, say, 2+ seconds from being killed from the difference of 800 potency of healing.

...And assuming you haven't a single oGCD heal left, nor any Lilies that'd also instead make that heal instant.

There's some (though increasingly little as levels increase and any spot-healing itself gets more and more dull in terms of actual spells cast) application, but it's exceedingly rare.

Moreover, it often depends on prior mistakes on the healer's part, too, like not simply having used a Medica II instead of a non-urgent Cure II or using 3 Cure Is instead of 2 Cure IIs and therefore otherwise lacking the time to get a further person back to a survivable level of HP.

99% of the time, the sole benefit of Cure I is MP efficiency, but also... 99% of the time, MP is a non-mechanic outside of dying just after having hit Lucid Dreaming.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯


EDIT: Don't get me wrong. I'd rather retain Cure I or an otherwise more efficiency-minded option than have an umpteenth oGCD heal; we have too many of the latter as is. It's just that the context does not allow for Cure I to be a button well spent. AoE heals are too strong, MP is basically irrelevant, and too much of healer's offense is locked up in their filler attack to sufficiently reduce the opportunity cost of offensive GCDs lost to using more MP-efficient heals.

If you want Cure I and its equivalents to be of real use, rather than just a gimmick to play with at mild cost to your team, each healer's overall kit needs adjustment. Luckily, those are probably adjustments healers would benefit from regardless of whether they retain a less-bursty, MP-efficient spell among their kits.

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Originally Posted by Silver-Strider

You're not raising the skill floor for healers by giving them more to do during downtime. That only occurs if the healing demand is increased.

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Technically... perhaps not even that.

The less of healers' damage output is bound up in their filler attack, the lower the relative penalty of excess healing GCDs.

And when it comes down to it, one could just not hit their DoTs if they idled too long and now need to heal when their last application's duration has just elapsed.

Healing requirements don't have any particular anti-synergy with more offensive or non-healing buttons.

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Originally Posted by Remolia

And 0.5 second faster application time! Since FFXIV servers are laggy, it means something.

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Even as a former Cure 1 enjoyer, I'm not convinced that's actually true at the level cap anymore. If 0.5 seconds is actually a difference, We can apply far more healing far more rapidly through Lilies/Tetra/Benison/Bene.

A frankly, with 20 second Lilies, you're getting lilies faster than mechanics happen nowadays ;)

Cure 1 has 100% had it's day and for the good of our button bloat, should make way for something else that is more consistently useful and interesting.

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

Even as a former Cure 1 enjoyer, I'm not convinced that's actually true at the level cap anymore. If 0.5 seconds is actually a difference, We can apply far more healing far more rapidly through Lilies/Tetra/Benison/Bene.

A frankly, with 20 second Lilies, you're getting lilies faster than mechanics happen nowadays ;)

Cure 1 has 100% had it's day and for the good of our button bloat, should make way for something else that is more consistently useful and interesting.

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I am talking about ~1-50 duties where I don't have any lilies. Cure 1 can save some one ez, If target has low HP and Boss is about to hit everyone with his AOE, while Cure 2 (without Swift Cast) will land on already ded target.

Do aoes even hit hard enough in low level duties for that to be a thing though?

I did Stone Vigil the other day and it’s beyond watered down now. Isgebind used to aoe fairly hard on landing to the point where eating dives could leave people in danger of the following AoE that was 10 seconds or so after landing. Outside of that, I honestly don’t buy it at all but would be interested if you can point me to an example where a boss Aoes immediately after a fail-able mechanic hard enough where Cure 1 would actually be the deal breaker between that person surviving or not.

Not to discredit you but I just don’t think it’s the case anymore.

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

Do aoes even hit hard enough in low level duties for that to be a thing though?

I did Stone Vigil the other day and it’s beyond watered down now. Isgebind used to aoe fairly hard on landing to the point where eating dives could leave people in danger of the following AoE that was 10 seconds or so after landing. .

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At the time we were also in NQ white gear that was probably 10 ilvls below where we should have been.

biggest issues is there isn't enough to heal beyond hard content. mostly when I que for normal raids I never, actually NEVER touch any spells beyond the 1 button, and dot every 30 seconds. The little damage there is, easily be dealt with by the cohealer, or if he is of the same mindset, a single ogcd.

having two healers is beyond overkill in most normal content. there are some exceptions, but mostly its just nothing going on. Healers only get to have fun when everyone else plays bad. at this point, just scrap healers, and rework them into support

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Originally Posted by Tint

It accomplished that I was not running out of mana.

Three casts of Cure 1 cost 1200 mp while two casts of Cure 2 cost 2000 mp. So I saved 800 mp and lost only 100 potency of healing. On top of that I made use of the infamous free cure procc.

Without Cure 1 I would have run dry, would not be able to heal the tank anymore and we would have wiped.

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I miscalculated the MP (read potencies twice instead) but there is no chance you're running out of MP in any dungeon provided you're keeping Lucid Dreaming up. Even at near zero Piety, I still don't run out. And yes, I've had to spam Cure II. Trash simply doesn't live long enough in lower level content nowadays you'd ever bottom out.

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

I miscalculated the MP (read potencies twice instead) but there is no chance you're running out of MP in any dungeon provided you're keeping Lucid Dreaming up. Even at near zero Piety, I still don't run out. And yes, I've had to spam Cure II. Trash simply doesn't live long enough in lower level content nowadays you'd ever bottom out.

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The only time I imagine MP would be an issue in ARR would be in synched Extremes, Coils or particularly awful WoD runs. While those are rare occurrences nowadays, free trial and new players might be more inclined to do those bits of content and in turn might run into those issues. However, I'd argue that there are better ways to address sustain than keep an outdated skill like Cure 1 any longer.

Everyone and their mother seems to agree on lowering the level of Afflatus Spells down to level 50 content, which would absolutely help with sustain during that time.
I've suggested in the past as well to rework skills like Fluid Aura, Protect, Divine Seal and Stoneskin to be low level versions of Assize, Aqua Veil, Temperance and Divine Benison respectively that would also address sustain issues on WHM.
Evening just lowering the cost of Cure 2 would suffice honestly.

Anything is better than keeping Cure 1 around honestly.

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Originally Posted by Silver-Strider

Anything is better than keeping Cure 1 around honestly.

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I'd have to disagree. Anything's better than a context in which having skills meant to actually interact with MP as a system (beyond merely hitting a bloat CD on CD) would be an utter waste (because of MP being left a non-mechanic divorced from the bulk of our actual healing throughput [oGCDs]).

I'd rather have a worthwhile Cure I, for instance, than the next Panhaima equivalent or other oGCD bloat skill that takes us yet further away from our cumulative kit's relevance.



Better that what mechanics we allege should actually exist and we occasionally have to feature the brakes because of that than that we just ride along on pretense, disjointed kits, and skills that exist only to unmake whatever nuance a particular mechanic would otherwise introduce if not for that matched 'solution' skill.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

I'd rather have a worthwhile Cure I, for instance, than the next Panhaima equivalent or other oGCD bloat skill that takes us yet further away from our cumulative kit's relevance.

Better that what mechanics we allege should actually exist and we occasionally have to feature the brakes because of that than that we just ride along on pretense, disjointed kits, and skills that exist only to unmake whatever nuance a particular mechanic would otherwise introduce if not for that matched 'solution' skill.

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We've been waiting for Healer toolkits to be given any sort of relevance for years now but have yet to get anything substantial.
If MP management is ever going to be relevant again to a point that Cure 1 becomes the go to healing spell, then a significant change to Healer's toolkits would need to be made, such as cutting back on our oGCDs tool, giving them an MP cost or removing sustain tools like Lucid Dreaming from the game, all of which are about as likely as humanity achieving World Peace (as sad as that is).

Is it possible to salvage Cure 1 equivalent spells to be relevant again? Sure but it's also very unlikely given the Devs design philosophy.

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Originally Posted by Silver-Strider

If MP management is ever going to be relevant again to a point that Cure 1 becomes the go to healing spell, then a significant change to Healer's toolkits would need to be made, such as cutting back on our oGCDs tool, giving them an MP cost or removing sustain tools like Lucid Dreaming from the game, all of which are about as likely as humanity achieving World Peace (as sad as that is).

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Of course. But those changes would benefit healers regardless.

Lucid Dreaming is one RNG means of screwing yourself over away from pure bloat (so... somehow even worse).

The more of our healing is free of both uptime and resource costs, the less swing we have between our damage and healing and the lower ceiling we can have on either, ultimately reducing agency. Not all abilities need to be free of MP costs. Nor do we need so many abilities altogether, especially those with so long of cooldowns or niche of functionality that they serve only singular "mechanic-solving" uses.

And none of that is only "as likely as humanity achieving World Peace."

Though we've accidentally trimmed depth and functionality at times, we have also trimmed real bloat, like Diversion, Goad, and Invigorate. We already have abilities with MP costs. None of those changes would be novel to the game.