Make healers DPS with four or five healing actions

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Originally Posted by Renathras

Then we run into the people opposed to changing damage profiles saying "Then Jonny Casual couldn't clear 4 mans"

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Removing the oGCDs has a roughly equal impact on this. If increasing the damage done to increase the number of GCD heals would be impossible, so too would decreasing the healing available to healers to meet the existing requirements.

Available healing output as compared to requirement is the same thing as requirements as compared to available healing output.

It's not like the only way to increase healing GCDs is to decrease the number and/or power of oGCD heals, since what affects the portion of GCD heals is simply the ratio.

That's why I've typically specified "relative" healing requirements, even.

Final Fantasy XIV is basically already Squeen's answer to WotC's 4th Edition D&D, so I say make everyone responsible for their own healing, and just make "healing jobs" be "jobs that offer more proficiency and capacity for healing actions" while still enabling them the ability to be classes that can be used in a (really slow) action game.
At this point, they may as well go all the way.

Edit:

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Originally Posted by MintnHoney

You know what, you're right. That was me misusing language.
So allow me to correct myself and rephrase it to mean something along the lines of claiming parallels between Final Fantasy XIV and 4th Edition D&D (specifically regarding the latter's issue with homogenization of abilities for balance, of which I can't help but draw said parallel to these days) and, for the sake of everyone, leave it at that. I'll even quote this and put it in there for convenience.

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Originally Posted by MintnHoney

Final Fantasy XIV is basically already Squeen's answer to WotC's 4th Edition D&D

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The suggestion thereafter sounds like it could go fine (I'm all for job identity over mere role templating), but literally what? Unless "an answer" to something exists regardless of that something's presence... how the heck is XIV "an answer" to DnD 4E?

DnD 4E is the what now ? I play DnD for 15 years and TTRPG for 21 but this is a hot take here....
None of the TTRPG systems are an answer are even comparable on a detail level. You can be inspired but these systems but that's about it. They are so diffrent in audience, mechanics that anything going deeper than a superficial comparison you will run into serious problems.

But i guess you are going for make healers are some kind of dps now and everybody is responsible for healing themself. Why not, its what i wrote earlier change encounter design or kill the healer role. Two choices, everything else will not solve the problems.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

The suggestion thereafter sounds like it could go fine (I'm all for job identity over mere role templating), but literally what? Unless "an answer" to something exists regardless of that something's presence... how the heck is XIV "an answer" to DnD 4E?

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You know what, you're right. That was me misusing language.
So allow me to correct myself and rephrase it to mean something along the lines of claiming parallels between Final Fantasy XIV and 4th Edition D&D (specifically regarding the latter's issue with homogenization of abilities for balance, of which I can't help but draw said parallel to these days) and, for the sake of everyone, leave it at that. I'll even quote this and put it in there for convenience.

Although, people did compare 4th edition to an mmo, back in the day. Which I think is odd, but, these days, it's something that's come up in some old recollections.

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Originally Posted by Alaray

To be honest...

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Agreed.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Removing the oGCDs has a roughly equal impact on this. If increasing the damage done to increase the number of GCD heals would be impossible, so too would decreasing the healing available to healers to meet the existing requirements.

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Not at all, no.

oGCDs being required is difficult for players not good at managing oGCDs. Fights with high movement, fights with a lot of healing at once that GCDs are insufficient to cover, etc.

On the other hand, removing the oGCDs would mean the fight design would change a bit (less movement all the time) and that falling back on GCD spam would be functional (less difficult for newer healers).

Not to mention the reason we cast (few) GCD heals now is BECAUSE oGCD heals are so many and so powerful that we don't have to. The problem is, damage can't be increased much since it's already often nearly player entire health pools (so more doesn't mean using GCD heals, it means using mitigation just to survive), and the rate of damage can't be increased because there are only so many GCD + oGCD weave spaces. We've reached a cap on how damage can work as long as we keep the present oGCD power situation. They only thing they can do is add more damage during the same window, but then they have to add more oGCDs or cut the CDs so they're up more often, both of which end with us having the same problem: Doing the majority of healing with oGCDs weaved in between casts of spamming a single nuke button.

So no, it doesn't actually run into the same problem at all.

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Originally Posted by Banriikku

But i guess you are going for make healers are some kind of dps now and everybody is responsible for healing themself. Why not, its what i wrote earlier change encounter design or kill the healer role. Two choices, everything else will not solve the problems.

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The thing I REALLY hate about that argument is there are already games like that. Most ARPGs, games like Guild Wars 2. If people like that, there are already games doing that for them to play. One reason I could never get into GW2 and quit it was because there was no trinity and I like healing other players. Not just healing myself or doing minor splash healing.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Removing the oGCDs has a roughly equal impact on this. If increasing the damage done to increase the number of GCD heals would be impossible, so too would decreasing the healing available to healers to meet the existing requirements.

Available healing output as compared to requirement is the same thing as requirements as compared to available healing output.

It's not like the only way to increase healing GCDs is to decrease the number and/or power of oGCD heals, since what affects the portion of GCD heals is simply the ratio.

That's why I've typically specified "relative" healing requirements, even.

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I don't think that's true. There are many Johnny Casuals out there who don't understand what weaving is, and use OGCDs the same way they use GCDs, so deceasing the OGCD count might not actually have that significant of an effect on them, and in fact, can also be a good thing. Having too many options can often make something very overwhelming, and as anecdotal as this may be, I've seen how a relatively inexperienced healer can feel overwhelmed by the amount of healing resources at their disposal. At a certain point, it becomes harder to recognize what each of your heals actually does and recall which of them you have used, can use, and cannot use at a given moment. The person in question has not played XIV all that consistently, but while playing through the EW MSQ as a Scholar, she would often resort to panicking with Physick, Adloquium, and Succor casts when she had access to resources like Summon Seraph, or even Sacred Soil.

Having a smaller, curated selection of healing resources with more meaningful effects can actually make it easier for Johnny Casual to keep track of their heals and understand them better.

It's a balance that isn't unlike a supply and demand curve, and I'd argue we have too great a supply for the demand.

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Originally Posted by Connor

Isn’t the issue for SE not the ideas themselves but the implementation? FFXIV (according to them anyway) has such messed-up code that even when they have an idea, they then come up against the problem of having to actually code/program that idea in a implementable format to the game.

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I think the whole PS3 limitations thing is more related to back end stuff, server code, character data storage etc? From the outside looking in they don't seem to have trouble coming up with unique and complex mechanics either for players or monsters. Construct's enumeration, ASTs Macrocosmos etc, Warri... Reaper's conal cleaves etc. The ingredients are there and many of them are pretty new so I can only assume that the combat scripting system they have in place is pretty capable.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

oGCDs being required is difficult for players not good at managing oGCDs. Fights with high movement, fights with a lot of healing at once that GCDs are insufficient to cover, etc.

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There's also the all too easy to fall into trap of trying to pocket those cooldowns for a 'rainy day' that would invariably never actually come.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

I don't think that's true. There are many Johnny Casuals out there who don't understand what weaving is, and use OGCDs the same way they use GCDs, so deceasing the OGCD count might not actually have that significant of an effect on them...

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Again, I want fewer oGCDs, simply because I hate seeing keys be comparatively left to rot / increasingly become rarely touched options for redundancy.

It just does not make a difference to the portion of GCD casts necessary or, by extension, whether our downtime kits can be made to feel better without changing or adding onto those actual actions.

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It's a balance that isn't unlike a supply and demand curve, and I'd argue we have too great a supply for the demand.

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Which can as evenly be solved through more demand (more damage intake)... Again, I'm all for trimming some bloat, but it makes little sense to say that trimmed/nerfed oGCDs (and the reduced skill gap in favor of "Johnny Casual" that would come with that) is the ONLY way that we can improve the context by which to make our downtime tools better fit our portion of downtime.

__________

To recap, I want...

• To adjust fight design (for older fights, where/as pretty formulaically possible or otherwise doable at low cost in dev time) to increase the instances of between-bursts damage, ideally with a degree of randomization that can better keep us on our toes and keep healing feeling urgent instead of just "Ehh, next AoE isn't for another 20s anyways".
• To increase downtime agency through an extra 1-3 non-healing actions per job, though not necessarily at additional button cost, ideally with frequent desired timings but no strong punishments for missing them (absolutely no interruptible combos, in any form, nor similar BS).
• To greatly rein in AoE heals, such as by having at least half of their output be split among all applicable allies affected.
  
  
• To decrease healing output in general, such as by reining back non-Healers' free (especially, on-ally or AoE) healing and removing Healer's +30% damage and healing done Maim and Mend traits, with only their attacks' potencies being increased in compensation (via far more significant upgrades in going from tier 1 to tier 2 spells, etc.) alongside whatever ppm comes from the new actions. The traits' removal would also have the QoL benefit thereby also making 1 potency of healing at a given amount of primary stat the same for a WHM as it is for a PLD as it is for a RDM, etc.
• For Tanks to likewise lose their Tank Mastery bonus and a portion of their massive Defense, Magic Defense, and Vitality advantages on their gear, but to nerf only OHKO tankbusters to match, thereby noticeably increasing tanks' damage taken.
  
  
• To trim some bloat, such by replacing Lucid Dreaming with just straight up more MP generation (ideally, in a way that scales with Spell Speed in addition to [multiplicatively with] Piety) and concentrating our healing abilities kits a little more around versatile and flexibly timed tools, trimming overspecialized or singular/obvious-use-case skills like Liturgy and Panhaima or accessing those functions through other actions (Eukrasia revamped to alter more than just 3 actions).
• To increase the apparent time by which oGCDs can and often should be held for emergencies (now that there is healing intensity to warrant such), such as by increasing random short-telegraph (or near-simultaneous powerful two-target, etc.) damage, giving abilities MP costs (and removing any %MP generation from their use), so that they can better complement an alternative core of healing, rather than needing necessarily to be that core around which all other healing is done just due to those oGCD's far greater efficiency and far lesser flexibility.

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

There's also the all too easy to fall into trap of trying to pocket those cooldowns for a 'rainy day' that would invariably never actually come.

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I'll save this Elixir for when I REALLY need it.

*Cue credits*

Goshdarnit.

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Originally Posted by TheDustyOne

I'll save this Elixir for when I REALLY need it[...]

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What I really like to call the "99 Elixir Syndrome".

Oh sure, I have 99 of them.







But I might need all 99 later.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

*for the people thinking of when WHM had Aero 2 and Aero 3 but think that Aero had an 18 sec duration; Aero 2's duration was made 30 sec in SB and Aero 3's was 24. Functionally we've substituted Aero 3 2.5x per min for Afflatus Solace/Rapture/Misery 4x per minute.

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https://i.gyazo.com/190bf7380cc4cac8...d998d9de6a.png

https://i.gyazo.com/785d428ebb4d10a5...1c13750bce.png

I think you got a different copy of the expansion to me

edit:

https://i.gyazo.com/b66c726f96bcd55d...e82d8d84b9.png

You can see Solace at the bottom, which means this is the SHB changes. Even in SHB, Aero2 was 18s, not 30s, and only became 30s duration when upgraded to Dia. The change that standardized the DOT at 30s the whole way through the levelling process did not occur until well beyond Endwalker's release (given that I can see the patch note for the change in the 6.1 patch notes). If you want to say 'A2's duration was changed to be functionally 30s thanks to it's upgrade to Dia, A: say that, and B: it still didn't do that till SHB introduced Dia.

If you want to tell me I'm wrong/misremembering/blinded by nostalgia, that's fine, but you better come with receipts cos I sure as hell will be doublechecking this stuff.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

oGCDs being required is difficult for players not good at managing oGCDs. Fights with high movement, fights with a lot of healing at once that GCDs are insufficient to cover, etc.

On the other hand, removing the oGCDs would mean the fight design would change a bit (less movement all the time) and that falling back on GCD spam would be functional (less difficult for newer healers).

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This just absolutely hamstrings fight design, no? We can have big mobility dance mechanics like Act 2 or Act 4 from P4S where we run all over the place, specifically because we're not locked in place for casting GCD healing. And in those cases where there's movement AND GCD healing required, that is an expression of skill, to be able to keep up on a healing check while also having to deal with 'something the game is doing to prevent you from healing'. Act 4 was kinda hard to heal early on as WHM, partially because WHM not great (MP issues), partially because of the running around that was required. If the AOEs from the thorns were smaller such that you could safely stand middle and turret, that mechanic would be a joke by comparison

The fights are designed around the assumption that we have a certain amount of healing that is available, even while moving. I also don't think that pressing Medica like 8 times in a row, to deal with something like Curtain Call, was interesting. I found it much more fun to do that fight on AST, because rotating the CDs I had available to me to cover 16 raidwides in a row required some thought. Would it be enough to just use Celestial Opposition for the next few, or do I need to supplement with another thing? I only have one use of Neutral, where would be best for it? etc.
I don't like Medica and Helios, as they are. There's zero interesting design around them. I would much rather have things like the Lilies, where there's reasonable 'caps' on their effectiveness, be it via CD, Recharge times, target count caps, etc. At least Cure3 has a range limit to work around, but they keep extending that too. They might as well delete Medica1 and just make Cure3 15y at this point. Which they probably will in DT, let's be real

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Originally Posted by Rein_eon_Osborne

What I really like to call the "99 Elixir Syndrome".

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I seem to be doing that with my resources in OSRS. Prayer potions? Better hold onto those for when I do PVM stuff. I have the materials for over 4500 prayer potions in my bank.
I do not need to hoard so much and yet I do, I think it's encoded into our brains from when we were living in caves and not 100% sure we knew where our next source of food would come from

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Originally Posted by Zeastria

Thats why i said raide wide should happen more often,
Higher auto atk dmg means you have to heal the tank more often, 100% uptime on hots.
Even better would be to randomize dmg also.
Every fight is scripted --> every heal can be planned.
By adding RNG and unavoidable damage into the mix --> you can make healing more reactive.
But we all know SE will never do that, inc the overall dmg output would be more realistic goal to wish for.

[/B]

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They might actually be starting this or rather testing the waters on it.

I've been noticing when running the Expert Dungeons that it's really starting to do a lot more raidwide damage. And you can tell when the healer is asleep at the wheel because you start to have people dropping to Stackups. Its really noticable now when you don't have a healer keeping people topped off. I was on RDM and ate a tank buster the other day because the Tank went down. On another occasion I dropped to a Stackup and even just dropped out of nowhere because the healer wasn't keeping people topped off after the raidwides. Nice thing about RDM is that when you have a healer not doing that, you can turn around and start Vercuring yourself to keep from dropping because the healer didn't keep up with the constant Raidwide.

Quick correction of facts:

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Originally Posted by Renathras

*for the people thinking of when WHM had Aero 2 and Aero 3 but think that Aero had an 18 sec duration; Aero 2's duration was made 30 sec in SB and Aero 3's was 24. Functionally we've substituted Aero 3 2.5x per min for Afflatus Solace/Rapture/Misery 4x per minute.

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Aero II was only made a direct upgrade to Aero I (no cast time, 18s duration, up from 12s) when Aero I was pruned in Stormblood. We didn't get our 30s DoT until Shadowbringers.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

*for the people thinking of Cleric Stance and when WHM had Aero 1, 2, and 3; that was HW, not SB.

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Which says nothing of all four buttons having existed together. Granted, you already know what I thought of old Cleric Stance (mostly thoughtless ping-punishing garbage).

_________________

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Originally Posted by Renathras

oGCDs being required is difficult for players not good at managing oGCDs. Fights with high movement, fights with a lot of healing at once that GCDs are insufficient to cover, etc.

On the other hand, removing the oGCDs would mean the fight design would change a bit (less movement all the time) and that falling back on GCD spam would be functional (less difficult for newer healers).

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That's not just fight changes; those are significant fight constraints: Little to no movement, little to no significant burst (for which oGCDs ought to be held), little to nothing requiring quick reaction.

Hard pass.

Needing, at least in high-end content, to use an increasing number of skills as level increases is true of every role... Why should Healers become a (further) exception to that?

Something dawned on me... from a time long long ago... yes it's name was white mage.

I remember in shadowbringers it having a long cast time, I really liked that about white mage made it feel like the "healer counterpart of BLM" but now that cast times are so small on it, doesn't hit the same, I kinda remember why I enjoyed white mage and it being hard to move sometimes... using lillies as movement.

But THIS is the thing I don't even think healers need full on rotations... they just need interesting differences in combat, I think Adding damage buttons to some healers may enhance it, but adding cool differences in how the job fundamentally plays is also really healthy. This + healing more often, some procs here and there... Just would feel a lot better.

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Originally Posted by Rein_eon_Osborne

What I really like to call the "99 Elixir Syndrome".

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To be fair, this is also a thing for players coming from other games or single player games. I remember when I started FFXIV PLD in WoWs' "Lay on Hands" ability still had something like 60 minute CD (maybe it was shortened to 10?), and I looked at WHM's Benediction the same way as an emergency use only button. Which it's terrible for due to the delay. CD used to be 6 mins instead of 3 mins, kind of playing into that. FFXI players trickling into FFXIV over time also felt this, since the Job big abilities there had stupidly long CDs (we're talking like 4 hours or something).

And oGCDs being usable at any time and fairly powerful very clearly seemed to play into that idea, and for at least some Jobs, DID work that way and were more emergency buttons in ARR. People just didn't change over time and a lot of players even now see it that same way.

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

...

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No, I think you're right, because I remember them unifying the durations at some point so it would have been ShB (at least I THINK they unified them in ShB; Gamersescape says 6.1, which seems super late, but may be true because I remember there being some discussion about if Aero 2 was more damage than Dia for a brief time...). I think I'm conflating the calculation from the Healers: Then and Now thread, but that is probably due to factoring in the Afflatus abilities:

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Originally Posted by Renathras

In practice, SB WHM cast Aero 2 3.333... times per minute and Aero 3 2.5 times per minute. This is a total of 5.833... GCD casts per minute that weren't Stone IV.

In practice, EW WHM casts Dia 2 times per minute, 3 Afflatus (Solace/Rapture) per minute, and 1 Afflatus Misery per minute. This is a total of 6 GCD casts per minute that aren't Glare III.

On balance, EW WHM is casting non-Glare damage (or damage-adjacent Solace/Rapture) spells on roughly the same average frequency as SB era WHM did.

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I concede the duration point, though the rest does still stand: Aero 1 had already been removed and Aero 2 made an instant cast direct upgrade, and that EW WHM uses more non-nukespam GCDs per unit time than SB WHM did, making EW WHM a direct upgrade in the sense of "less Glare/Stone casts during downtime". Note, however, that three of those (Rapture/Solace) would have, in SB, required a separate cast, meaning WHM has marginally less use of its GCD healing spells (Medica 2 / Cure 2) than it would have in SB. But on the downtime non-Glare side, it is better off in EW than in SB, mechanically speaking.

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"This just absolutely hamstrings fight design, no?"

Yes and no.

Swiftcast exists. Afflatus Rapture exists. We could honestly convert a lot of oGCDs into GCDs. The question is, is the problem "casting too much Glare"? People SAY that's the problem all the time, but is that a misdiagnosis? People have a habit of looking only at GCD casts and insisting that's their entire rotation, meaning if we had no oGCDs anymore and all oGCDs were GCDs, that would fix that "problem" outright...but is that really the correct description of the problem? I suspect it is not. I could be mistaken, but I suspect if we made all oGCDs GCDs, such that you wouldn't have "Glarespam" anymore, people would still be complaining. I think the "Too much Glare" is probably not what the actual issue is.

...never mind that, despite the name, WHM is the least Glarespammy of the healers. All the others spam their nuke more than WHM does, with SCH and AST being the worst offenders since they don't have other GCD damage (or damage-adjacent) buttons to cycle through. WHM has Solace/Rapture/Misery and SGE has Plegma. So unless SCH is doing so much movement they use Ruin 2 a lot, they're using a lot of Broil IV, especially now that they can weave with it, and AST has always used a lot of Malific, people just seem to...forget this for some reason.

As for how to deal with things: Different players enjoy different things. One of my favorite things to heal at level was Memoria on WHM. When the two tanks are holding his attack and you could pop Presence of Mind and Thin Air then just UNLOAD Cure 3s. It just felt powerful and fun. I also like that for SCH, I can keyboard dance across Fey Illumination, Recitation, Adloquium, Deployment Tactics, Summon Seraph, Sacred Soil, Consolation, Emergency Tactics, Succor, Consolation (or something like it) to do ridiculous healing and shielding as well. Both are fun, and I liked that both were in the game (before they nerfed Thin Air into the ground, anyway...)

Whether you consider it "interesting design" or not is irrelevant; it's fun at least some of the time and to some of the people. And that's what matters in a game - what is fun.

And one woman's "interesting design" can be another man's "horrible design": I HATE in PvP that I run out of healing on WHM and AST, that SCH's Adlo barely heals, and that SGE has no direct heal. That's annoying to me. Old PvP, Cure 2 had a high MP cost, but Cure 1 had none, meaning you could still patch spot heal. Now when I've used my other abilities I have the "exciting" gameplay of <checks notes> casting Glare until something comes off CD. And watching my party die being able to do nothing about it. That isn't fun. Having charges on powerful abilities makes sense, but not having fallback heals feels really really bad to me as a healer. Imagine if a DPS Job's abilities all had charges, and when you used them all, you just sat there and autoattacked or cast Physick or something until you got more charges. Most DPS players would hate that.

The issue with Medica 2 is there's no reason to cast Medica 1. In the past, you'd have a sort of "healing combo" where you'd use Medica 2 to get the HoT ticking then Medica 1 since it was more HPS efficient. The thing is, now Medica 2 does the same healing (with the first tick) per GCD, but also costs only 100 more MP and has 5y more range. Medica 1 has no reason to exist and chain casting Medica 2 is the "correct" move in that situation (unless the party can stack, in which case it's M2 then C3 spam).

And the problem is, the heavy movement is ALSO hamstrining fight design, it's just ALSO hamstringing Job design as well. Isn't that worse?

Besides: Contrast Ex7. Lots of healing, some movement, but a decent amount of points where standing stationary or group stacking is possible. It's a really fun fight and somehow manages to cater to all healer types at once. That's good design, imo.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Quick correction of facts:

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Already discussed.

And also wrong: Aero 2's CD was apparently not increased to 30 sec (according to Gamersescape's version history, anyway) until 6.1. o.O (I know, surprised me, too: https://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/A...sion%20History

.

Yes, the 4 buttons existed in HW. But people are often pining for SB, not HW. Recall that HW didn't have most of the oGCD healing, either, just for reference.

.

Fights are ALREADY constrained - so many oGCDs and instant casts means that fights all have to be heavy movement and have large spikes of damage. That's ALREADY constraining fight design. Smaller spikes can be easily handled, and low movement allows for GCD heal use, making the oGCDs redundant.

So why not "Hard pass" on that?

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Originally Posted by Renathras

WHM's Benediction the same way as an emergency use only button. Which it's terrible for due to the delay. CD used to be 6 mins instead of 3 mins

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5, not 6

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Originally Posted by Renathras

No, I think you're right, because I remember them unifying the durations at some point so it would have been ShB (at least I THINK they unified them in ShB; Gamersescape says 6.1, which seems super late
...
Aero 2's CD was apparently not increased to 30 sec (according to Gamersescape's version history, anyway) until 6.1.

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I'm not sure it's 'right' for you to be 'educating' others on something you only learned about this very day, especially considering they likely already learned about it from the same place you did: me linking the patch notes listing the change. I know it was in one of those drop down thingys, but come on

As for the PVP woes, do you really want PVP to be decided entirely on 'who has the healer on their team' because I would prefer not to have janky systems like Dampening to 'force' a death to eventually occur. Culling Time in The Feast was bad enough. What are you after, an infinite charge Cure1 spell that heals for, say, 4000? It'd do little to help in CC and even less in Frontlines. Putting pressure on the enemy to drain them of their sustain before running out of yours is the whole reason PVP even works. There were times in pre-EW times, you literally could not kill a healer in PVP, as a DPS, if you were solo. They just healed through everything you threw at them. I remember walking away from FOUR DPS all wailing on me, as a Noct AST, because reapplying the shield over and over was instantcast. That is absolutely toxic design. Even if it had a cast bar so I had to stand still, the fact I could keep 4 of the enemy team busy, making space for my allies to take objectives etc, was ridiculous. I'm glad it's gone. All that is needed is Cure2 should be instantcast like the rest

edit: the bit about WHM being the least 'Glarespammy', we have to consider both the GCD count spent on one button (eg Glare), but also the overall APM. One value in a vacuum paints a very distorted picture. For example, if you did that with DRK and WAR, you'd get a result that makes them look like they're equally slow and GCD locked. But WAR is actually that slow and GCD heavy, DRK has a lot of weaving involved. AST is not 'more Malefic spammy' in the grater picture compared to WHM, because, while it does spend more of it's alloted 24 GCDS (actually higher, since AST runs spellspeed often) on Malefic, it has more going on in the minute-per-minute gameplay, because of OGCD heal weaving, and cards. The relative lack of OGCDs on WHM means that the GCD actions it DOES have, are thrown into sharper focus

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Originally Posted by Noumenon

And give DPS and tanks massively buffed self healing

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Apparently there's at least one player out there who thinks your wish has already come true.

I just had a random Black Mage player come up to me and ask me about something that happened in their last dungeon run. Apparently, the healer refused to heal the BLM at all and let them die. When BLM asked why they were acting this way, the healer told them "You can heal yourself in a boss fight."

Imagine caring about your own healer DPS so much that you let the actual DPS jobs die and slow down the run. Not to mention acting like such a big shot while not even knowing BLM doesn't have a self heal.

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

I'm not sure it's 'right' for you to be..

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Do you know why so many people won't admit to being wrong about things?

This BS.

"Oh, you admitted to being wrong about one thing, therefore, you don't get to talk anymore". And you've been wrong about things before, so don't even start. Not to mention that I'm saying something I literally did pick up on, so it's correct information to be "educating" someone who was trying to jump in on a dogpile (you already set the record straight, a second post was redundant). And clearly, she hadn't learned it, considering she also wasn't right about it.

Not to mention literally everything else I said was correct, which is why you only had the one thing to harp on, and why you're trying to run a victory lap on that single laurel.

Next time you're wrong about something, do you want me to say in your following posts you don't get to speak/it's not right for you to talk because you were wrong about one thing?

This is the sort of thing I mean when I talk about people attacking. And we WERE having such a good conversation beforehand. Note this is something I specifically DON'T do to others who admit they were wrong about something. Because I want to have good conversations, not attack or one-up people. That was a bad post and you were bad for posting it.

So stop that BS.

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As for the PvP system: I'm explaining why it's bad and doesn't feel good. It would be a bad idea to port something to PvE that already feels bad in PvP.

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APM is a separate argument, and one different people have different preferences on. BLM, for example, has a low APM. But this also comes down to "do oGCDs count or don't they" when having these kinds of discussions. IN GENERAL, they don't (otherwise we'd have to count things like Assize, Tetra, Asylum, etc, which people do not).

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Originally Posted by Renathras

until 6.1. o.O (I know, surprised me, too:

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Fair enough; I should have specified "its replacement" or "our (current/relevant) ST, instant-cast DoT", expecting an irrelevant nit-pick on a technicality over a skill that was by then irrelevant to the earlier point in question. Good use of... Roe's resource (all in the same breadth you slight others for mentioning anything others may have already discussed earlier in the thread -- the very same one, it would appear)?

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Fights are ALREADY constrained - so many oGCDs and instant casts means that fights all have to be heavy movement and have large spikes of damage. That's ALREADY constraining fight design. Smaller spikes can be easily handled, and low movement allows for GCD heal use, making the oGCDs redundant.

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First, I said nothing of instant casts. But having more oGCDs does not "mean that all fights have to be heavy movement and have large spikes of damage". There is no paired requirement for heavy movement and large damage spikes. There is no requirement for either individually. And is what is thereby permitted goes beyond either.

It is more than a little absurd to say that "Now that we have this tool, fights must cause us to live or die through its advantages." The whole course of the game, and of pretty much any other MMO, has proven otherwise. Literally anything that can make unique use of oGCDs can be good design in the context of oGCDs, and even letting those tools merely be redundancies woven in for efficiency is technically still fully permissible design.

You're free to dislike movement. You're free to dislike damage intake of any sort that would require split-second heals and/or heals from finite resources (e.g., limited by gauge and/or cooldowns). But having those tools does not force X, Y, and Z, just as new mitigation tools do not force constant or per-CD mechanics that would be one-shots if not for a strict schedule of stacked mitigation; those tools are simply something that helps allow for that variance in fight design in a more engaging manner than would changes to the base, spammable kit as to allow for near-infinite mobility, etc.

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:: Again, I'm not a fan of, say, EuD / EuP spam having infinite mobility, so I'm not about to defend a strawman. I'll say only that EuD/EuP spam doesn't outright break the game to me because it's a perk of only a single healer and is generally ill-advised anyways in the present context, but I have not advocated for constantly spammable instant-casts. I just like a degree of additional burst healing available atop our GCDs because of the complexity in fight design and player interactions therewith that such permits.

OGCD heals would be far, far more useful to the game if they could act as something that isn't quite the core of healing nor saved only for specific mechanics (instead, having their consideration interwoven a lot more around our GCDs heals and time-sensitive attack GCDs), but included reasonably/sparingly, they are good thing. Their presence permits that much more from fight design, but they do not force anything. Yes, we should probably re-concentrate/consolidate some of them; they are become rather bloated. But they are not the reason for high movement, etc.; they did not force those outcomes.

Look to the other kits and to trends across the expansions. Movement is simply a growing design fad that fits poorly born partly of and partly for the watering down of role identities (especially, that of Melee and Casters), not a consequence of oGCDs heals.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Good use of... Roe's resource

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It was a nit-pick of a nit-pick, so turnabout is fair play. That said, I didn't use Roe's resource, I looked it up myself earlier to verify what she posted (Wayback sometimes does some weird stuff, as do some of the referenced pages; Mr Happy did a series on the Jobs through the game's history and worked through that process). Far as I can tell, she was using an archived version of it, I'm using the modern version's page with the version history.

But this is an aside distraction, and as I said, I don't hammer people for honest mistakes admitted fairly. Let's get back on track, shall we?

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They kind of do mean they have to be, otherwise, there would be no pressure to use all the oGCDs and to plan out their use carefully to ensure you have them for the movement phases. If there was no movement, you could use them willy-nilly since they would be completely substitutable vs the GCDs that you have to use during the encounter.

Likewise, large damage spikes are necessary otherwise the kit isn't challenged. If the damage was not "several ways of large damage within a 10 second period every 30 seconds", you could easily deal with it without having to tax your kit at all.

So the oGCDs both encourage and nearly require the fight design to be high movement and heavy damage (when damage is applied) in order to at all pressure the kits. And it even ceases to do so as players gear, leading to the "too much downtime" problem.

Having these tools DOES force this encounter design. At least as much as not having them forces another. Your argument is equally applicable here.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

It was a nit-pick of a nit-pick, so turnabout is fair play.

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No. One error was used to draw an errant conclusion about the actual, relevant topic (portion of filler attack spam across expansions).

The other was about a then-replaced ability irrelevant to WHM's playflow in any endgame content in which Misery would also have been present.

There's a difference between a relevant correction (it literally changes the conclusion on a topic of some significance) and an irrelevant one.

This is the same reason why simply spinning the wording around on a critique on something flagrantly absurd you've said does not suddenly "turn about" that critique onto the one pointed out the issue. "Turn-about" is not equal when the objects of those actions vary qualitatively. I know that attempts at snappy/witty retorted in the best of light, but tough luck.

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Having these tools DOES force this encounter design. At least as much as not having them forces another. Your argument is equally applicable here.

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Show me where Benediction forces fight designs that would maximize its use.
Show me where Cover forces fight designs that would maximize its use.
Show me where Elusive Jump forces fight designs that would maximize its use.

Rotationally necessary gap-makers like pre-Engagement Displacement constrain fight design if left with only one charge, by giving a minimum space available for that backstep. Displacement has not and will not, however, create a per ~30s mechanic in which a RDM is forced to rely on Displacement to avoid damage. The presence of backsteps does not force mechanics that make unique use of those backsteps.
The frequency of available mitigation constrains the frequency of otherwise OHKO tankbusters. However, they do not force tankbusters to go off at that limit of frequency.


No tool forces its unique/maximal use onto fight design, but fight design is forcibly constrained by the minimum capacities available through the jobs' kits.

My giving you $50 for lunch does not force you to spend $50 on lunch, nor necessarily any more than whatever the cheapest lunch costs. If, however, all lunches cost at least $5, then you are forced to at least have $5 for lunch.

Minimums and maximums are not the same thing.

I play WHM, But I spam DPS unless I need to refresh regen or toss out a heal.
I wish I had a dps combo honestly.

The only time you need to know how to heal as a heal is in Extreme contant.
I would love to give more DPS option, or more big DPS tied to healing.

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

As for the PVP woes, do you really want PVP to be decided entirely on 'who has the healer on their team' because I would prefer not to have janky systems like Dampening to 'force' a death to eventually occur. Culling Time in The Feast was bad enough. What are you after, an infinite charge Cure1 spell that heals for, say, 4000? It'd do little to help in CC and even less in Frontlines. Putting pressure on the enemy to drain them of their sustain before running out of yours is the whole reason PVP even works. There were times in pre-EW times, you literally could not kill a healer in PVP, as a DPS, if you were solo. They just healed through everything you threw at them. I remember walking away from FOUR DPS all wailing on me, as a Noct AST, because reapplying the shield over and over was instantcast. That is absolutely toxic design. Even if it had a cast bar so I had to stand still, the fact I could keep 4 of the enemy team busy, making space for my allies to take objectives etc, was ridiculous. I'm glad it's gone. All that is needed is Cure2 should be instantcast like the rest

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Funny thing about old Feast, you could actually dive the opposing team and camp their base in 8v8 matches and just never die as a SCH, the balance was ridiculous back then. If I recall correctly, a single WHM can also keep their entire party alive indefinitely in Frontlines.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

Far as I can tell, she was using an archived version of it, I'm using the modern version's page with the version history.

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An archived version of the Job Guide, from SE's site, yes. It only goes back to SB due to that being the first time they actually made said page, though, so for HW or ARR changes we are entirely reliant on either Gamerescape's version history tab, or Consolegameswiki which exceptionally crispy and sluggish to load for some reason. I figured it would be better to get the info directly from the source as it were, rather than risk transcription errors with a 3rd party (eg they might write that a change happened in 5.15, when it technically happened in 5.15c, and I would want that specificity)

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Originally Posted by Renathras

Next time you're wrong about something, do you want me to say in your following posts you don't get to speak/it's not right for you to talk because you were wrong about one thing?

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So long as it's a situation identical to this one (where I am wrong, get corrected, and then try to continue talking from a position of knowledge on the subject using the updated information, as if I knew the 'real answer' all along), sure go nuts

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Originally Posted by Aravell

Funny thing about old Feast, you could actually dive the opposing team and camp their base in 8v8 matches and just never die as a SCH, the balance was ridiculous back then. If I recall correctly, a single WHM can also keep their entire party alive indefinitely in Frontlines.

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I used to do it for the GARO event as WHM, infinitely accessible Repose was absolutely disgusting too. Infinitely accessible Stella on AST as well, for HW specifically. Was especially nasty in frontlines, you hit one guy at a time and watch your blob of attack dogs just pile onto the 'straggler who fell behind'

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

So long as it's...

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

No. One error was...

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Okay, yeah, we're done here.

This is the part where the conversation turns from "We're having a good conversation" (you can tell because no posts are getting more than 1 or 2 likes) to "We're bashing Ren now" (where the likes go up above half a dozen - as I always say, just bash Ren and you get likes, proving that the like feature is useless for judging worthwhile posts since actual good conversation posts get few or no likes).

It as a good talk, glad we had it until you and Roe decided to switch into bash Ren mode.

Looking forward to the next time we can have a good conversation.

https://media.discordapp.net/attachm...1a84ef21ac89&=

What did he mean by this?

I just like Shurrikhan's posts anytime I see them because they're my favorite person on the forums to talk to and the stuff they write I find either interesting or enjoyable, not because they're clowning on you in particular.

I almost never like any post unless it’s a really solid OP that I think is important.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

Okay, yeah, we're done here.

This is the part where the conversation turns from "We're having a good conversation" (you can tell because no posts are getting more than 1 or 2 likes) to "We're bashing Ren now" (where the likes go up above half a dozen - as I always say, just bash Ren and you get likes, proving that the like feature is useless for judging worthwhile posts since actual good conversation posts get few or no likes).

It as a good talk, glad we had it until you and Roe decided to switch into bash Ren mode.

Looking forward to the next time we can have a good conversation.

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You rang?

https://media.discordapp.net/attachm...4fdd16c7dc217&

IDK what was meant here either, the reason I said what I said here:

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

So long as it's a situation identical to this one (where I am wrong, get corrected, and then try to continue talking from a position of knowledge on the subject using the updated information, as if I knew the 'real answer' all along), sure go nuts

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Is because I'm fine with getting told 'you don't get to speak because you got something wrong', as long as the situation where it happens, is identical to the one that happened here. I'm just, not giving carte blanche to just say 'oh Roe said something again, everyone discard what was said, because she was wrong about something a few months ago', because that would be silly. Or I could, but the same would apply to everyone, now that'd be funny

I'm also not sure what 'good conversation' was happening, other than us being told that we remembered things wrong (despite me not going from just memory, but also archived copies of the job guides). I also am quite stringent with liking posts, and 'haha dogpile on one guy on forum' is not one of the reasons I go by. Mostly 'I resoundingly agree with the point re: game design that this user has just made' is what does it

Well, you destroyed the flow of this one. Good job.

Until next time. o/

Okay, back to tpic.
Can we talk about role design for healer and encounter design are not matching. At all. To make it simple we have WoW healers but not the WoW encounters. We are missing the part were the healer role needs to heal damage spike, cleanse people, keep an eye on the tank or he get shredded to pieces. There is non of that and on top we have almost no desicion making. We do the same always all day, all encounter across the board. A Roulette healer, a Savage healer and even a Ultimate healer play extremly close because the "skill ceiling" is reduced for no reason. THe diffrence is only the mechanic of the fight BUT these mechanic are the same for everybody. So whats the point of healers ? Whats the plan? I dont see one.

I would like to see
1. reduce OGCD's - we have way to many and they are way to strong in healing/mitigation powers and have a way to high frequenz
2. give bosses more tank herrasment that enables good tank and healer gameplay aka more boss damage and random spikes
3. give us healer mechanic's to solve that involve the healer kit - *sarcasm* dps can kill the party because they are not doing theire mechs properly, so give us the possibilty to wipe the party too *sarcasm*>.<
4. give us DPS and healing tools that interact with our kit... yes i look at you WHM Lily's and SCH Moskito gauge
5. give us the agency to make choices as healer's and work with our partner together to keep the single braincell aka tank alive (its a joke dont hurt me ;P)

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Originally Posted by Banriikku

Okay, back to tpic.
Can we talk about role design for healer and encounter design are not matching. At all. To make it simple we have WoW healers but not the WoW encounters.

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Ehh... do we even have the kind of meaningful/affordance-producing utility that WoW healer kits carry, though? WoW's healer kits are almost like vital puzzle pieces, where no healer has all the answers, but can nonetheless make do with sufficient output among the pieces it can't cover and/or through the cross-role utilities of Tanks and DPS. That's hardly the case here. But yes, our counter design just... does not care to push healers to nearly the extent that WoW's will.

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I would like to see
1. reduce OGCD's - we have way to many and they are way to strong in healing/mitigation powers and have a way to high frequeny
2. give bosses more tank harassment that enables good tank and healer gameplay aka more boss damage and random spikes
3. give us healer mechanic's to solve that involve the healer kit - *sarcasm* dps can kill the party because they are not doing their mechs properly, so give us the possibility to wipe the party too *sarcasm*>.<
4. give us DPS and healing tools that interact with our kit... yes i look at you WHM Lily's and SCH Moskito gauge
5. give us the agency to make choices as healer's and work with our partner together to keep the single braincell aka tank alive (its a joke don't hurt me ;P)

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These all sound pretty good to me, though I suppose [3] is worth considering further to make sure we're all on the same page regarding the types of mechanics worthwhile, and [5] may need a sort of threshold, such that tank skill-gap isn't reduced to purely allowing their healers more offensive GCDs.

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Reposting my wishlist from a few pages back:

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

• To adjust fight design (for older fights, where/as pretty formulaically possible or otherwise doable at low cost in dev time) to increase the instances of between-bursts damage, ideally with a degree of randomization that can better keep us on our toes and keep healing feeling urgent instead of just "Ehh, next AoE isn't for another 20s anyways".
• To increase downtime agency through an extra 1-3 non-healing actions per job, though not necessarily at additional button cost, ideally with frequent desired timings but no strong punishments for missing them (absolutely no interruptible combos, in any form, nor similar BS).
• To greatly rein in AoE heals, such as by having at least half of their output be split among all applicable allies affected.
  
  
• To decrease healing output in general, such as by reining back non-Healers' free (especially, on-ally or AoE) healing and removing Healer's +30% damage and healing done Maim and Mend traits, with only their attacks' potencies being increased in compensation (via far more significant upgrades in going from tier 1 to tier 2 spells, etc.) alongside whatever ppm comes from the new actions. The traits' removal would also have the QoL benefit thereby also making 1 potency of healing at a given amount of primary stat the same for a WHM as it is for a PLD as it is for a RDM, etc.
• For Tanks to likewise lose their Tank Mastery bonus and a portion of their massive Defense, Magic Defense, and Vitality advantages on their gear, but to nerf only OHKO tankbusters to match, thereby noticeably increasing tanks' damage taken.
  
  
• To trim some bloat, such by replacing Lucid Dreaming with just straight up more MP generation (ideally, in a way that scales with Spell Speed in addition to [multiplicatively with] Piety) and concentrating our healing abilities kits a little more around versatile and flexibly timed tools, trimming overspecialized or singular/obvious-use-case skills like Liturgy and Panhaima or accessing those functions through other actions (Eukrasia revamped to alter more than just 3 actions).
• To increase the apparent time by which oGCDs can and often should be held for emergencies (now that there is healing intensity to warrant such), such as by increasing random short-telegraph (or near-simultaneous powerful two-target, etc.) damage, giving abilities MP costs (and removing any %MP generation from their use), so that they can better complement an alternative core of healing, rather than needing necessarily to be that core around which all other healing is done just due to those oGCD's far greater efficiency and far lesser flexibility.

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That WoW comparison is just to give it a name. TLDR- If you want to call it that. Our healing kit is overflowing as if the encounter would need that much "power", while the encounter, to put it simply just are "memory game" or a "dance coreography" with almost everything predetermined from safesport to damage and who and how much gets damaged. Example is, when i heal savage with my co-healer, we map out the used healing GCD's and OGCD's so we only GCD when necessary to the last minute of the fight. We casted combined i think 9 GCD for healing (i fat-fingered my buttons .... so i casted a gcd for no reason). With enough training we could get to 5 or 6 for the whole fight. And thats normal and not even the best. I think i saw on the website, whose name shall not be mentioned because evilzzz, told me the best team got trough with 3. So thats that.

So in short encounter need to "mind" healers more and the healer kit needs changes and trimming but also, i know i will get hate for it, nerfs.

I know I'll prob getting some heat for this but here was Anub arak from WoW. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaL3LpKNE94

We got the moves however, there is no constant raid damage until 30 percent left. It's mostly just tank damage in dealing with the adds that buff each other and then the whole leeching swarm with also the dot on 5 random people. Now granted something like this really wouldn't be possible in ffxiv but the other thing is that FFXIV doesn't really try to be unique with its healing checks. For the most part, they are all just aoe spam with either J-waves or Akh morn-esque mechs. The most unique healing check so far is in DSR with Haurchefant and healing him while theire is the constant shockwave while dealing with Charibert's cleaves.