Can Healer Balance Survive a 4th Healer?

Guys, this game does NOT follow WoW's philosophy of "bring the player, not the class".

FFXIV DOES favor class diversity, and that being said, they WILL favor a setup of a HoT healer + a shield healer on top of doubling up the healer types. I wouldn't be surprised if they made it so AST and WHM HoTs don't stack, either

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Originally Posted by AlexionSkyllark

Guys, this game does NOT follow WoW's philosophy of "bring the player, not the class".

FFXIV DOES favor class diversity, and that being said, they WILL favor a setup of a HoT healer + a shield healer on top of doubling up the healer types. I wouldn't be surprised if they made it so AST and WHM HoTs don't stack, either

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What? I mean, making sure you have a barrier and regen healer (ew, ugh, I had to remind myself they were still pretending that's a thing when it hasn't been true since ARR) has been a stated goal for Endwalker. This otherwise hasn't held truth at all. They've always favored bringing 8 different jobs to content, sure, but they've been practically obsessive with making sure that any combination that fits role requirements is viable. FFXIV only favors class diversity inasmuch that GCD shields don't stack and you don't get party stat passives if all roles aren't represented/get the limit break penalty if you double up on a job. That's about it.

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Originally Posted by AlexionSkyllark

Guys, this game does NOT follow WoW's philosophy of "bring the player, not the class".

FFXIV DOES favor class diversity, and that being said, they WILL favor a setup of a HoT healer + a shield healer on top of doubling up the healer types. I wouldn't be surprised if they made it so AST and WHM HoTs don't stack, either

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Yes, it absolutely does.
Excessively so considering how closely the devs are trying to keep all classes within a role in terms of rDPS, how they've gutted several classes for the sake of balance and how they've explicitely stated multiple times that it is one of their primary goals when it comes to balancing to ensure that any reasonable combination of classes can clear any content. All you get for taking 3 different dps types is a 1% buff.
The only reason many PFs stick to this is because 1% buff means a nicer parse for everyone but that doesn't have to do anything with SE because ACT and fflogs are external resources that are against the ToS.
Just like with some mechanics requiring disengaging for one GCD or more this is only SEs attempt at discouraging severly imbalanced comps (e.g. 4 melees) but it's still very much "bring the player, not the class". 1 melee 3 physical ranged comps can clear content just fine because the dps checks are tuned accordingly; they may have to put in a little bit more effort than a more balanced comp but even average gameplay cuts it. And in casual content it doesn't matter one bit what you play.
GCD shields from Noct AST and SCH don't stack, everything else does.
Many party buffs don't stack, so doubles on classes who bring signifcant rDPS through buffs are discouraged but just like 1% buff it's something people mostly pay attention to because of parses or because they're first week progging.

The only class that deviates a bit from this concept is RDM for early prog because they can chain ress. SMN can ress but not as quickly and easily.

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Originally Posted by AlexionSkyllark

Guys, this game does NOT follow WoW's philosophy of "bring the player, not the class".

FFXIV DOES favor class diversity, and that being said, they WILL favor a setup of a HoT healer + a shield healer on top of doubling up the healer types. I wouldn't be surprised if they made it so AST and WHM HoTs don't stack, either

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All tank CDs are basically the same now. Healers can 1:1 70% of their buttons with each other. Remind me again how they are gunning for class diversity?

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Originally Posted by AlexionSkyllark

Guys, this game does NOT follow WoW's philosophy of "bring the player, not the class".

FFXIV DOES favor class diversity, and that being said, they WILL favor a setup of a HoT healer + a shield healer on top of doubling up the healer types. I wouldn't be surprised if they made it so AST and WHM HoTs don't stack, either

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Were you healing during HW? They were absolutely trying to do this. The healing classes are the way they are today because they aimed for homogenization back then.

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Originally Posted by AlexionSkyllark

Guys, this game does NOT follow WoW's philosophy of "bring the player, not the class".

FFXIV DOES favor class diversity, and that being said, they WILL favor a setup of a HoT healer + a shield healer on top of doubling up the healer types. I wouldn't be surprised if they made it so AST and WHM HoTs don't stack, either

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I disagree. FF14 does not favor class diversity. They dumbed down and homogenized way too far in 5.0 and have doubled down ever since. The SCH is now a boring, mindless healbot with 1 spammable, sorry dps button and single dot...and if they could get rid of that, I'm sure they would. The only differences FF14 boasts between jobs really begins and ends with cosmetics. I'm literally waiting in horror to see what further damage awaits us with the debut of 6.0's balancing we should all expect.

All healers having the same DPS potential is progress just the same way all tanks having basically same DPS and same utilities such as gap closer is progress, because if you truly want to increase the amount of jobs in the game without at the same time increasing the amount of ROLES in the game, this is how it must be. Only way I can come halfway is to admit that there could had been another path of development, one where not a single job, not even Ninja, is added to the game without a solid treaty among the parties of the game, the players and the developers that each job from now on will only ever be a new role for the game, and jobs will only be added if they truly become a role to themselves.

For being a Dancer is not a role. Being a Samurai is not a role. But if you squint hard and stare at 2.0, you can say that being a Bard and being a Scholar were roles, sure. Only SCH had Adlo and Soil. Only Bard could sing more MP. So in some alternative universe FFXIV, every single new job would had been tasked with shouldering some new, unique burden that no other job can do. And I am going to cry realist that I am willing to take homogenized jobs over something that might had never been plausible in the first place.

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Originally Posted by AlexionSkyllark

FFXIV DOES favor class diversity, and that being said, they WILL favor a setup of a HoT healer + a shield healer on top of doubling up the healer types. I wouldn't be surprised if they made it so AST and WHM HoTs don't stack, either

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Looks at the tanks.

Sees how SE wanted dedicated MT/OT roles.

Sees how that did NOT pan out at all.

Has very little confidence the shield / regen thing is going to work out as well.

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Originally Posted by Ayche

... But if you squint hard and stare at 2.0, you can say that being a Bard and being a Scholar were roles, sure. Only SCH had Adlo and Soil. Only Bard could sing more MP. So in some alternative universe FFXIV, every single new job would had been tasked with shouldering some new, unique burden that no other job can do. And I am going to cry realist that I am willing to take homogenized jobs over something that might had never been plausible in the first place.

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Please sing more to me about the beautiful world of which you speak. Jobs in FFXIV having unique utility, even if it means that no single comp is 100% viable for all content. An endless blue sky!...

FF14 Classic will be coming if the nostalgia gets any stronger.

Tanks were fine, they had role/job balance well before healers ever did.

If anything they learned from the player base and how tanks were managed because good groups did not see tanks as MT/OT, just two tanks with a set of cooldowns that can be shared amongst the fight. They stepped this up even further in HW and the meta became forcing tank swaps to get another immunity/cooldown sooner = more damage for healers. This still lives on today in raid strats. Figuring out how in the fight to use both tanks immunities to their fullest potential. In a way that is kind of like healers as well, there isn't a main healer. It's just two healers that use the right skills for the situation. You use Temperance here, the Scholar will Soil the next mechanic, etc.

They stepped up healing this savage tier, likely as a precursor to what they are planning in 6.0, because shields are actually necessary in early weeks of a progression. Like doing E12S in i510 gear is much different than i530 for a healer. What they can likely do going forward is just making sure shields are necessary even at gear cap. They can spin some things like what they did in E1S where some of the AoEs are % of your HP, and not a fixed amount where overgearing the fight means you can't ignore the mechanic. Or those mechanics that always take you down to 1 HP no matter what your gear is kind of things. There used to be mechanics where if a person didn't have an Adlo/stoneskin, they'd get a stack of something or lose damage. Possibilities are there.

To be honest, I don't see the engagement in their design of "this raidwide is really big so you must press Succor or die" then back to Broil/Malefic spam. Sometimes you might have to add a few Medica II along with your 150 Glares. The most interesting parts of healing this tier for me were e11s cycles or e12s Terminal, where the damage is frequent and lasted long enough that you have to space out and plan your resources.

"You need a shield to live" doesn't suddenly make healing exciting, which is why the pure/shield divide seems to be going down the wrong track. It just adds a bland necessity that restricts job comps a bit.

I want to see how they're expanding on shields, if we're getting pure shields, their plans of how to turn a small piece of a toolkit into an actual playstyle, if they have any intention of increasing the frequency of damage rather than just making raidwides bigger, if they've heard any of the feedback about engaging dps and so on. But we've had literally nothing. If they don't change anything and simply make Sage a SCH clone, AST a WHM clone and make raidwides on the last boss of each Savage tier hit hard while everything else hits like wet noodles, what's the point?

E12S Terminal enrage isn't interesting at-all, it's just dependent on the party hitting their debuffs to help the healers. It's been the same story for years with A8S, O4S, E4S. "screw the healers doing damage, just heal mechanics". Lame way to finish fights.

If you go by what they did to aiming jobs is they pulled raid buffs from Machinist and Bard initially and gave them to Dancer. They won't be clones, not even the tanks are clones. Another healer will probably have no raid buff or be the selfish healer like White Mage is today. Astro has the most to lose with it's heavy buff toolkit, and Noct sect. Scholar less so, but Chain fits it's role as a strategist.

There is a lot ways they can go with a healer reset, it's a lot more than shield or die things. There are already several mechanics that requires more than one heal to survive today, or sequences of things that have to be executed or it's a wipe. But the creativeness around that is there many ways to push that boundary aside from Succor, or another. Whether phases of individualized healing or people die, it used to be the thing in ARR. Dispels in A3S and TEA were ok, but that was done before. Tighter windows for healing is something they always save for savage/ultimates to separate the casual healers. T

The only hints so far is they upped the target for savage healing, much more at minimum ilvl, but that's really all they can do with the toolkits in the 5.x series. With a redesigned meta in 6.0 they can put more limits on oGCD healing, change the skills completely, and tailor more mechanics around it. Way easier when you can design all of it at once versus two years into an expansion.

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

"You need a shield to live" doesn't suddenly make healing exciting, which is why the pure/shield divide seems to be going down the wrong track. It just adds a bland necessity that restricts job comps a bit.

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For me, I think the pure vs shield dichotomy is kind of too shallow to really allow for more interesting healers.
Instead, I think they could go further/more general and split healers into Proactive vs Reactive.
Proactive healers would set things up before damage is done (shields, damage down buffs/debuffs, heal bombs) while Reactive would heal after damage is done (burst heals, regens, drain heals).
This would at least give them more things they could design a healer around other then if it can place shields or has higher burst and/or regens. :B

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Originally Posted by Mimilu

Proactive vs Reactive.

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That's a really neat idea.
I think that would at least help the healers click better conceptually at least.

I generally have no hope anything meaningful will happen to healer design or to content design to warrant their current healing approach.

All tanks have gap closer, never incorporated into fight design
All tanks have silence, barely used in fight design
All tanks have stun, one fight in ShB wants that stun

Ranged dps have Bind, heavy, and silence, only silence is ever considered and that is usually filled by the tank

All Healers have sleep now, only the last role quest even wants it(really worth taking that from Whm allowing them to have something more unique to them >_>).

They set up stuff that could make fights more interesting and just never work around these things, making the tools virtually useless outside of PoTD/HoH and solo shinagens. That Sage reveal trailer is just shockingly bad especially when you compare it to Reaper reveal trailer.

Let's be real. The only Healer reveal video that could ever top the Reaper reveal would involve a Lalafell, with an oversized backpack, lobbing potions at their teammates. Gundam newtype SCH 2.0 Alphinaud never stood a chance.

I don't think that a proactive/reactive dichotomy really works in a game like FFXIV, where everything is scripted down to the millisecond.

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Originally Posted by Mimilu

Instead, I think they could go further/more general and split healers into Proactive vs Reactive.

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Indeed, there's a lot of good ideas they could work with really, but what concerns me is if they'd had any big plans to shake up healing design or had heard our feedback, we should have heard something a long time ago. They'd want to reassure us and give us hints of what's to come. We wouldn't be getting things like "ED is nerfed and Succor costs less now, please heal moar" or "we hear you and increased raid damage" when everything below e12s requires less healing than ever before.

Shield healing could be made interesting, but tacking 2 dps buttons, a Succor and Adlo clone onto Sage and calling it a day would be miserable. A lot of Endwalker is probably made by now and once it's released we're stuck for 2 years. They rework classes sometimes but generally not an entire role. Where is the dev communication?

Just design all 4 healers to have different ways of dealing dps weather is buff/debuffs or just raw dps, also give each healer a different dps rotation to make it more obvious.

They'll probably going to make sage like sch but either worse or better depending if they have to sacrifice dps to shield/heal lol.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Let's be real. The only Healer reveal video that could ever top the Reaper reveal would involve a Lalafell, with an oversized backpack, lobbing potions at their teammates. Gundam newtype SCH 2.0 Alphinaud never stood a chance.

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They really kind of screwed themselves over by teasing a Chemist-like job during the MSQ and then not really delivering (unless Sage is going to surprise use with some kind of Mix mechanic).

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Originally Posted by Lyth

I don't think that a proactive/reactive dichotomy really works in a game like FFXIV, where everything is scripted down to the millisecond.

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XIV's always had this dichotomy to a certain extent but it was most prevalent in ARR and got muddied as we progressed through the expansions with things like having to balance both of AST's sects, SCH getting more and more reactive heals, their shields getting nerfed with either lowered/split potencies and/or higher MP cost and their fairies getting homogenized, and WHM and Diurnal!AST getting their own mitigation oGCDs.
I think that now that there's going to be 2 of each type of healer (proactive and reactive) and that they're balancing the more high-end content around having one of each, they should focus on differentiating the two styles.

Also consider what the trailer shows us: Big pew pew lasers hurting an enemy. They could have shown a shield absorbing the attack against Alisae, they could have showed a massive heal healing both a weakened WoL and Alisae, they could have shown any "utility" part of the Sage's kit. But no, the healer part of sage is a "place your hand here and glow" thingy that could have been done by any other class with a potion.

The big eye catching moment for sage is the lasers, honestly sage could have been a caster dps at this point. Nothing about it is about healing or protecting.

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Originally Posted by Mimilu

Instead, I think they could go further/more general and split healers into Proactive vs Reactive.

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Originally Posted by ItMe

That's a really neat idea.
I think that would at least help the healers click better conceptually at least.

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How, though?

What could be uniquely "reactive" that would not be redundant with the same damage sources the "proactive" are meant to reduce? And if the potential redundancy (i.e., both wanting to use their unique portions around periods of greatest damage intake) is somehow avoided, that only causes either the "proactive" to be unnecessary, or the "reactive", in turn, un-unique (as both obviously need to have access to basic healing) or able to produce the same effect at less effort.

There can be differing extents or means of "proactive" or "reactive" healing that add to theme and flavor, certainly, but that dichotomy itself does very little to make healer identities "click"; it merely makes random matchmaking either slower or more problematic.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

How, though?

What could be uniquely "reactive" that would not be redundant with the same damage sources the "proactive" are meant to reduce? And if the potential redundancy (i.e., both wanting to use their unique portions around periods of greatest damage intake) is somehow avoided, that only causes either the "proactive" to be unnecessary, or the "reactive", in turn, un-unique (as both obviously need to have access to basic healing) or able to produce the same effect at less effort.

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For me, I think the Proactive healers kind of allow the Proactive healing define them, while, with how simple the heals are designed, Reactive healers will have to be define by how the heals are executed and/or managed.
Some hypothetical ideas could be:
-A healer with a system which allows you to use only a certain amount of abilities with in a time frame (similar to SCH's Aetherflow allowing 3 every 60 seconds)
-A healer who gains a resource that is used up every time they use a oGCD that affects its potency or effect.
-A healer who has multiple pairs of abilities that share cooldowns and you have to decide which ability to use at that time.
-A healer who instead of using oGCD abilities, uses high cost, insta-cast spells and has to manage their MP (maybe their DPS kit is weaponskill-based to compensate)
-A healer who has to choose between regen effects or HP-drain effects depending on the situation (like if the enemy isn't targetable)
-A healer who can use channeled heals and has to maintain them via a gainable resource

Additionally, a simple healing kit could allow for a more interesting DPS and/or Support kit.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

How, though?

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Because proactive/reactive is already how my brain tries to sum up the pure/shield healer dynamic, even though that's not quite what we actually have.
So if it were legit just made into proactive/reactive it would be make more sense to me.

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Originally Posted by Mimilu

-A healer with a system which allows you to use only a certain amount of abilities with in a time frame (similar to SCH's Aetherflow allowing 3 every 60 seconds)
-A healer who gains a resource that is used up every time they use a oGCD that affects its potency or effect.
-A healer who has multiple pairs of abilities that share cooldowns and you have to decide which ability to use at that time.
-A healer who instead of using oGCD abilities, uses high cost, insta-cast spells and has to manage their MP (maybe their DPS kit is weaponskill-based to compensate)
-A healer who has to choose between regen effects or HP-drain effects depending on the situation (like if the enemy isn't targetable)
-A healer who can use channeled heals and has to maintain them via a gainable resource

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What do any of these have to do with a proactive/reactive distinction, though?

Deliberately using spells other than your cooldown-limited big burst heals, which you can then save to react to heavy burst damage, is itself proactive.

Generating resources by which you can then quickly react to a situation... is proactive.

Take even, say, an iconic self-healing tank like a Blood Death Knight from WoW. Their healing is wholly reactive (based on damage just taken), but the resources needed to employ that healing must be prepared in advance, to the extent needed to survive that damage -- proactive.

Other, more purely cooldown-based tanks meanwhile have to proactively save those cooldowns so that they may appropriately react to the dangerous events against them.

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A proactive/reactive distinction exists only in terms of externally or (additionally) internally constrained invention and whether the majority of meaningful decision-making seems to come before or after an event; there will be no true or encompassing difference on the whole.

When you have all the control in the world by which to prepare for upcoming events through your (especially, if complex) toolkit, and more of your decisive actions proceed any given event than seem to follow it, that tends to feel a bit more "proactive" simply because there is nothing yet to react to beyond the most essential (the fight dynamics themselves).

Similarly, when you add atop all that additional randomizing elements or inertias that one must account for and gamble based on (whether these create play from/during the events themselves or even just between them), then that tends to add "reactive" gameplay, but that's not something mutually exclusive with what seems "proactive".

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Originally Posted by elioaiko

Agreed, WHM has all but moved onto from relying on regens for their main source of healing. I also miss GCD regens having longer durations. They just feel so short now.

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This is why even if mathematically regens are better I feel their short duration and slow ticks on huge pulls is in the same categories of shields when they smash. I can throw all 4 regen on ast and dungeons like bardams still tearing up a well gear tank. Better off using bene 1 ands 2 or digs. at that point wont sch have no choice if they out of lustrates to spam alco? not like got some physic 2 such as whm/ ast.

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Originally Posted by Mimilu

For me, I think the pure vs shield dichotomy is kind of too shallow to really allow for more interesting healers.
Instead, I think they could go further/more general and split healers into Proactive vs Reactive.
Proactive healers would set things up before damage is done (shields, damage down buffs/debuffs, heal bombs) while Reactive would heal after damage is done (burst heals, regens, drain heals).
This would at least give them more things they could design a healer around other then if it can place shields or has higher burst and/or regens. :B

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This I been always having this thought for a while. SE just have issues when it comes to balance in the shield department and they slip in many ways I will list em and no am not stepping on no one toes here not trying to start issues, I respect everyone thoughts.

1 = whm/whm= their regens can stack with each other

2 = sch/sch= their shields cant stack up

3= ast/ast= dirunal netrual shields and regens can stack with noct stance netrual regens+ shields

4=ast/sch= dirunal shields can work however noct field and gal dont get along, wierd thing they did is if a sch alqo and gets a cata, noct field wont cancel cata only galavine, also celestial opp shield=wont cancel galvine

5 =ast/ast 2 dirunal /noct aspected helios shields cant stack yet strangely though which ofc is wierd and no one do that but say accidentally both ast pick the same stance and the tank already hit the boss locking us out of switching, if one ast aspect helio dirunal/noct what they can sorta do to make it work is one aspect and the other would use opposition so they are not regen fighting, make it a turn thing oh A =u asp helio and B cu oppo, then b = asp helio while A cu oppo.

6=- whm/ast= the most biggest mistake se shot it self in the foot for was dirunal ast regens able to work with whm regens. Why not had follow the same noct ast/sch role where the regens could not stack with each other? may as well then let noct stance ast and sch shield can work, but in the end I know that probably be too broken to the point you may not even really need regens then but if one way was applied to one side, should be the same with others.

Overall SE does not know how to balance this pure regens/vs shield healer things base on the list on top. Though the regens are honestly not an issue as they all work together cept ofc 2 dirunal ast, other than that the shielding is a major balance issue.

Regens stacking isn't a problem because you can't cheese mechanics with stacked regens. They're very hesitant to allow stacked GCD shields because you could cheese mechanics with those. They haven't come up with a solution for the cheesing problem, so GCD shields don't generally stack. If you want Noct shields and Galvanize to stack, you have to do something about being able to survive mechanics by cheating your health pool up.

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Originally Posted by Mimilu

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

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Not much can be done with how fights are designed in this game. There are only 5 ways to restore someone's health; Directly (Cure, Physick, Benefic, Clemency), Regenerative (Regen, Aspected Benefic, Sacred Soil, Aurora), Barriers (Succor, Shakeitoff, Soon-to-be-gone Nocturnal sect, Blackest Night, Brutul Shell), Parasitism (nothing in FF14) and Vampirism (Bloodbath, Storm's Path, Souleater, Brutal Shell), and lastly Health Sacrifice (nothing in FF14).

Bosses go invulnerable and untargetable so often, and sometimes for extremely long periods of time, in this game that a healer that heals through damage dealt (parasitism or vampirism) wouldn't be able to heal the party when the boss goes untargetable, with no adds being spawned, and then starts blasting the arena with unavoidable damage without having on demand healing or having their co-healer pick up the work.

A healer that heals using their own health would be a nightmare to balance with this game's fight design. And the devs have proven time and again they can't balance healers without homogenizing them.

And on a healer that uses damage reduction: Damage reduction is the best form of damage mitigation in any setting. There's a reason you don't see any of the AoE damage reduction abilities going above 10% and cannot be stacked. If it were higher it would trivialize content more than deployed Catalyzedlos. If it were higher it would mean the devs would need to gut damage reduction into redundancy or increase incoming damage so much it's mandatory. Barriers are the same way but can be more easily balanced by just removing or nerfing the health restoring component. Think Aldoquium acting like Blue Mage's Gobskin. Scholar has Emergency Tactics to deal with the loss of health restoration from Aldoquium and Succor, just give it 2 charges and make them have no cast times.

Because of how fight design is, in FF14, we are stuck with 3 types for healers; Direct, Barrier and Regeneration. They could make interesting versions of Barrier and Regeneration healers though. Abilities that remove HoTs or barriers and heal based on remaining HoT duration or remaining shield strength. HoTs with extremely low durations but high potencies or extremely long durations with low potencies. Shields with extremely low durations but high potencies etc etc. But I personally don't see much else happening for healers, and also tanks (there are only a few ways to reduce damage taken and they've hit that threshold, without CC being a viable option which it isn't and can't be in FF14, and any new tanks will be copies of existing tanks), with how late it is in this game's life and how strict and rigid fight design is.

You're assuming parasitism/ vampirism would be the only way for this particular healer to heal and using it as an argument to completely exclude it from the game.
All it takes are one direct ST and aoe GCD heal each to solve that problem. Every healer always has a direct heal baseline kit, that had always been the case in any game that used any special type beyond direct healing. Even if you happened to have two parasitism healers in a trial that has a phase without target but is somehow so difficult and has such high healing requirements that it was impossible to get everyone above threshold before that phase, all it would take would be one or two GCD heals and done.
We're not stuck. We just need to stop thinking in black or white extremes only.
"Parasitism healer" doesn't have to mean they're completely screwed and unable to heal anything without a target.
It means they also use parasitism healing - to what extend is completely up to the devs and can go anywhere from the occasional skill to the majority of healing done.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

Regens stacking isn't a problem because you can't cheese mechanics with stacked regens. They're very hesitant to allow stacked GCD shields because you could cheese mechanics with those. They haven't come up with a solution for the cheesing problem, so GCD shields don't generally stack. If you want Noct shields and Galvanize to stack, you have to do something about being able to survive mechanics by cheating your health pool up.

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Very true indeed hence I mention that would be broken if shields just can stack, though diru ast + sch or ast/ast getting away with this xD. stack regens wouldnt save a hard core 99999999 damage set attack whew. Or honestly make all healers just do regens with some proper nice design since again indeed these mechs lately aint hitting hard enough that would need shielding unless them really are type like eden shiva savage. Fingers cross maybe in end walker we may see the reason for needing migi more idk....cant trust anything now lately. Really curious if they will even have the audicity to at least rewrite ast story and not confuse new people to ast on abilities that no longer ever exist.

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Originally Posted by Rilifane

All it takes are one direct ST and aoe GCD heal each to solve that problem. Every healer always has a direct heal baseline kit, that had always been the case in any game that used any special type beyond direct healing. Even if you happened to have two parasitism healers in a trial that has a phase without target but is somehow so difficult and has such high healing requirements that it was impossible to get everyone above threshold before that phase, all it would take would be one or two GCD heals and done.

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Yes, that's true, but they'd need to be very weak or have massive MP costs to prevent people from just spamming those. Blue Mage, for example, only needs Pom Cure and Stotram to heal through most, if not all, synced content and the potencies on those are only 500 and 300 with their MP costs being 200 and 300. While Angel's Snack is nice to have it is not needed to survive most synced Blue Mage battles. White Wind becomes all but forgotten after learning Stotram or Angel's Snack as its MP cost is too great and Stotram too good.

This game is scripted. If I can prevent damage before it comes out, then that's preferable to healing it back after the fact.

The way that you balance this out is through caps. All forms of damage negation, be it temporary HP or shields, should be combined into a single merged 'overhealth' stat that caps out at some role-based value and decays over time at a fixed rate. The idea being that when a big attack goes out, you need some threshold of 'overhealth' to survive it from your shield healer, and some sort of follow-up burst healing from your pure healer to get you ready for the next attack. You could also design mechanics where you can prevent an additional debuff depending on whether an attack is taken with 'overhealth' up vs. taken raw.

It also creates a situation where your shield healer prefers to 'heal' at close to if not max health, while your pure healer prefers to heal at lower values.

Outside of this, I'm not really sure how 'proactive' healing wouldn't always win out.

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Originally Posted by Cithaerias_pyropina

Yes, that's true, but they'd need to be very weak or have massive MP costs to prevent people from just spamming those. Blue Mage, for example, only needs Pom Cure and Stotram to heal through most, if not all, synced content and the potencies on those are only 500 and 300 with their MP costs being 200 and 300. While Angel's Snack is nice to have it is not needed to survive most synced Blue Mage battles. White Wind becomes all but forgotten after learning Stotram or Angel's Snack as its MP cost is too great and Stotram too good.

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Healers have tons of tools that are clearly superior but people still spam Succor to heal the party up or Bene 1/ Cure 1/ Physick in high level content. So I wouldn't put my hopes up that a weak heal prevents players from spamming it over heals that require more than "push button whenever you feel like it".
The spammable baseline heals need to be inferior to the other heals but I guarantee you that it won't keep people from spamming them.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

This game is scripted. If I can prevent damage before it comes out, then that's preferable to healing it back after the fact.

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I'd say it's actually the opposite. If the damage prevented does

1. not prevent a death
2. not save resources you would've otherwise had to spend on reactive healing
then why would you ever waste your time on proactive healing?

This is exactly the issue that "barrier healers" currently suffer from. Why would I ever use Succor proactively when it doesn't prevent a death and I have to heal afterwards anyway? Why would I spend a GCD on a weak shield and additional resources to heal afterwards when the same job can be done by a single reactive oGCD Indom?


Sure, barriers have their uses in current savage fights, but I can't exactly call proactive healing a success when it gets used in maybe 2-3 fights in the entire content patch.


I honestly have no idea how to fix this problem as long as DF has the potential of giving you 2 regen or 2 barrier healers, because this means you can never implement mechanics in 90% of the content that actually require barriers to resolve.

To be fair, I'm not even sure what proactive and reactive even mean. Like they can be synonyms for shield and burst healing, but why not just call them that instead?

Personally, I've always associated reactive healing to be 'reacting' to a surprise stimulus. And then proactive be the opposite of that. So instead of proactive and reactive, I should call them planned and unplanned?

It matches how my FC taught me back in ARR too, SCH was proactive, putting up shields before damage occurs, and WHM reacts to the damage taken to heal it up.

Then I learned being good at this game means minimizing what you are reacting to and proactively planning as much as you can to ensure success.

Yeah it's kinda hard to figure out what is meant with proactive healing, I simply interpreted it as barrier healing in this case. If proactive is supposed to mean "planning your healing in advance" then basically everything falls under proactive healing.

Indeed it is trouble some but me whos always in noct if with a whm or grab it before another ast will use oppo amd field when I know aoe spams are coming and hope my di ast or whm regen after. It really aint as hard as it sounds to be of what proactive and reactive heal would be. However ast who does grab noct from me or sch for idk what reason tend to wanna field or succor after damage and to me that is just pointless. Better off using a horoscope reg helios or just helios itself then.

Also hate when another ast takes noct using only one party shield at a time just use both when necessary cause cels op cd is 60 secs and to me ur dps and co healer will have have more time to dps and dont have to regen specially poor whm with mobile issues cause who dont love a 250% party block. I feel at times by having shields up when can there is more up time vs keeping pt 40% and lower then having instead now be throwing up medic 2 and asp helios and even then I tend to see even after a medi 2 or asp helio a regen healer may even still helio or medi 1 if it seem regen not ticking up fast if another aoe is happening immediately after its first.

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Originally Posted by Irenia

To be fair, I'm not even sure what proactive and reactive even mean. Like they can be synonyms for shield and burst healing, but why not just call them that instead?

Personally, I've always associated reactive healing to be 'reacting' to a surprise stimulus. And then proactive be the opposite of that. So instead of proactive and reactive, I should call them planned and unplanned?

It matches how my FC taught me back in ARR too, SCH was proactive, putting up shields before damage occurs, and WHM reacts to the damage taken to heal it up.

Then I learned being good at this game means minimizing what you are reacting to and proactively planning as much as you can to ensure success.

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For me, proactive means healing that requires planning ahead and will not work as well if you failed to do that.
While the healing itself may also come after the damage came in, setting it up took place way before. One example would be ASTs star: to use it efficiently, it's best to place it at least 10s before the damage comes in and in a place where the raid will be in 10s, not neccessarily where everyone is now.
Another example from a different game was Archangel Disc: you spent several GCDs before the actual phase of heavy damage setting up selfbuffs so you could heal efficiently once the damage started to hit. Although a lot of healing was in fact direct healing, it wasn't reactive because simply spamming a skill without setting everything up beforehand wouldn't have worked. Heals were far too weak for that.
Proactive isn't limited to shielding for me - it means planning ahead, setting things up and preparing for what's to come instead of letting it happen unprepared and then reacting to it.
Reactive would mean simply using any heal once HP bars dropped without planning beforehand.

In a coordinated party, even reactive healing is planned, like WHM lilies, so once someone reaches a certain level of gameplay they will never heal 100% reactive. Mapping out every tool available itself is proactive, even if the heals heal reactively. But most people I see in DF definitely heal purely reactively even with skills that are by nature more on the proactive side, like shields or Star.
Being as scripted as it is, FFXIV makes healing proactively much easier than other games but incoming damage is usually so low that even a purely reactive playstyle will get you through every content except some savage bosses.

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Originally Posted by Rilifane

For me, proactive means healing that requires planning ahead and will not work as well if you failed to do that.
While the healing itself may also come after the damage came in, setting it up took place way before. One example would be ASTs star: to use it efficiently, it's best to place it at least 10s before the damage comes in and in a place where the raid will be in 10s, not neccessarily where everyone is now.
Another example from a different game was Archangel Disc: you spent several GCDs before the actual phase of heavy damage setting up selfbuffs so you could heal efficiently once the damage started to hit. Although a lot of healing was in fact direct healing, it wasn't reactive because simply spamming a skill without setting everything up beforehand wouldn't have worked. Heals were far too weak for that.
Proactive isn't limited to shielding for me - it means planning ahead, setting things up and preparing for what's to come instead of letting it happen unprepared and then reacting to it.
Reactive would mean simply using any heal once HP bars dropped without planning beforehand.

In a coordinated party, even reactive healing is planned, like WHM lilies, so once someone reaches a certain level of gameplay they will never heal 100% reactive. Mapping out every tool available itself is proactive, even if the heals heal reactively. But most people I see in DF definitely heal purely reactively even with skills that are by nature more on the proactive side, like shields or Star.
Being as scripted as it is, FFXIV makes healing proactively much easier than other games but incoming damage is usually so low that even a purely reactive playstyle will get you through every content except some savage bosses.

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Ah yes better examples indeed. soil earth aslyum would count as well. Love a well time star that goes off as soon as that aoe strikes you making it that you may not even have to cast a aoe regen then. Its fun to try get it just right.

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Originally Posted by Irenia

So instead of proactive and reactive, I should call them planned and unplanned?

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Honestly, that seems a lot more accurate to the design possibilities available to it all.

You can have however much planned depth (whether that be using, or specifically saving, an action in advance of some event), and however much unplanned depth (procs, randomization, or other factors not quite predictable that are still integral to whatever you do later beyond just Little-Timmy-took-another-avoidable-AoE). And, of course, there are many different procedures available to each that some may wish to sort into further categories. But, at no point is any of it mutually exclusive beyond just having met some particular need (making the excess, well, excessive/redundant).