Sensible Toolkit Expansions: Healers

Procedure:

1. Identify current issues with the job. These can be issues of balance, applicability, or gameplay. Note if and when a gameplay element affects one section of players negatively and another section positively.
2. Identify reasonable expansions into further toolkit themes, functions, or gameplay mechanics that you'd find attractive (and expect most players would, too).
3. Include the likely most attractive of the above expansions in the course of or alongside fixing the above existing issues.

Have at it.

I'll preface this with, when WHMs wanted balance, most I talked to wanted to be brought up to the level of AST (either via straight up raw DPS or through utility) and wanted SCH knocked down only a tiny bit to be on par with AST, roughly speaking. This was my hope going into this expansion, that this level of balance would occur with the current kits, keeping them interesting and unique. And that the new skills given to us would build upon this.

I want to see two main fixes as a bare minimum to WHM.

- The two Lily skills, Solace and Rapture should be oGCD heals, not GCD heals. This will allow WHM to weave and not lose 300 potency on Misery during bosses. Though I'd love Misery to be a oGCD skill too.

- Keep Plenary as it currently is, not the ShB version.

Other suggestions I'd love to see.

- Give WHM back it's Cleric Stance.
- Give WHM back Divine Seal and have it upgrade to Temerance at 80 through a trait.
- Give WHM back it's Aero III as Diaga.
- Fix the clipping issues on it's spells like AST got.

I main WHM, so those are things I'd like to see on WHM.

If they keep insisting that WHM is the personal DPS healer compared to the raid support DPS of AST and SCH, then give us something like a combo or a proc, something real simple. Just a 1 2 combo would be nice.

At this point, I honestly dont' believe SE has an idea how to properly do anything but DPS roles. That is why tanks are officially blue DPS now...

What I would do is, scrap the whole concept of the healer role and replace it with the support role. The support role could be anything from a melee, to physical ranged or caster and would be a DPS/heal hybrid. DNC would perfectly fit that role already (with a few tweaks).

This has two big pros:
1. You can give the support role a full DPS rotation,which either buffs the group or debuffs enemies and give them 2-3 heals.
2. You can make tanks have an identity besides "blue DPS"!
Make them be responsible for their own survivability, f.e. by giving them active mitigation they have to keep track of while tanking and give them the tools to keep themselves alive.
The group dmgreduce CD also already fits into that concept.

This is what they could do:
SCH
Debuffs enemies.
Gives out heals/shields through the fairy.

AST
The SCH/WHM hybrid.
Rework the card system to either hand out buffs or debuff enemies (diurnal/nocturnal).
Make each card unique again!
Draws could be achieved by completing their DPS rotation.

WHM
Buffs the group with white magic.

All of this has to be refined of course, but I think this concept is something that could work out really good, with how battles are desingned in this game.

Just some Devil's Advocate inquiry:

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Originally Posted by Atlantasia

- The two Lily skills, Solace and Rapture should be oGCD heals, not GCD heals. This will allow WHM to weave and not lose 300 potency on Misery during bosses. Though I'd love Misery to be a oGCD skill too.
- Give WHM back it's Cleric Stance.
- Fix the clipping issues on it's spells like AST got.

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1. I think we need to consider balancing points here. Ultimately, any numbers can be retuned to achieve balance, but consider the difference between where they would have to be set to compensate for oGCD vs. GCD healing. Either would need to be balanced, essentially, around the best possible output. But, while that has very little range in GCD healing, it can vary immensely for oGCD healing due to potential clipping. You'd essentially be balanced as if you only ever used your Lily heals immediately after a Regen or Aero II, where you'd fully avoid clipping, rather than the more likely .3 to .8 seconds lost uptime caused by using any oGCD after a Cure II/III or Glare/Holy, respectively.
   
   The benefits, also, are almost nill. Except after a Aero II or Regen, your heal would be no more instant when oGCD than GCD-based.
   
   So you're trading more opportunities not to clip for a greater need for no-clip GCDs and a minor responsiveness increase after using an instant HoT or DoT.
   
   
2. Again, this would probably have to be balanced for maximal output. That means Cleric Stance could only increase the difficulty of reaching maximal damage, rather than increasing the actual maximal damage possible. WHM would then be uniquely limited/constrainted/inconvenienced, but at no real benefit. Some version of Cleric Stance would doubtless work, but I imagine just increasing the power of Presence of Mind and adjusting Temperance to also affect damage, for instance, would give greater burst opportunity (so long as Temperance isn't then balanced solely with damage in mind despite WHM's alleged "pure healer" identity) and a greater feeling of the uniquely "bigger, badder WHM dps".
   
   
3. We cannot expect that the same mid-expansion panic changes that awarded AST so much free extra DPS on the basis of gameplay would be similarly applied without cost to WHM. Moreover, AST's "solution" to clipping was far from comprehensive. They simply added a reliable oGCD gap to a single Spell, their offensive spammable. If we really are going to see greater healing requirements in Shadowbringers, allowing for healers who would truly need to spend significant time healing, then AST will be quick to find that their "solution" is rather... haphazard. And they'll already likely be paying a bit more for the added convenience (reduced uptime penalties) of their Cards.

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Originally Posted by Nujana

At this point, I honestly dont' believe SE has an idea how to properly do anything but DPS roles. That is why tanks are officially blue DPS now...

What I would do is, scrap the whole concept of the healer role and replace it with the support role. The support role could be anything from a melee, to physical ranged or caster and would be a DPS/heal hybrid. DNC would perfectly fit that role already (with a few tweaks).

This has two big pros:
1. You can give the support role a full DPS rotation,which either buffs the group or debuffs enemies and give them 2-3 heals.
2. You can make tanks have an identity besides "blue DPS"!
Make them be responsible for their own survivability, f.e. by giving them active mitigation they have to keep track of while tanking and give them the tools to keep themselves alive.
The group dmgreduce CD also already fits into that concept.

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Though it's dwindled over time, there already was a large sense by which tanks (other than perhaps Warrior) could take on significant survival responsibilities, at least in dungeon content where their rDPS penalties for healing were much closer (and in rare situations even favored tanks taking on the healing responsibility for overall DPS).

Is this something worth making more obvious, or ought it all be scrapped in favor of tanks having a more diverse rotational toolkit (of survivability vs. damage) while supports largely lose their own spectrum (of healing vs. damage)?

To take an extreme interpretation of what you'd said... Should Support mostly fall to Ability selection and on-cooldown or on-situation presses of CDs -- as needed to support more elaborate DPS rotations (full "Green DPS") -- or should Support still have significant GCD options?

To what extent would more elaborate non-healing functions require the reduction of healing functions?
To what extent should Supports still be able to trade between curative (or defense-supportive) and offensive (or offense-supportive) resources? In the case of GCDs, that resource would be time, while in other cases offensive and curative Abilities may share recast timers.
To what extent might changes in damage intake (due to, say, more damage-intense fight designs in Shadowbringers) affect your answers to the above questions?

My views on this are an absolute pipe dream and I honestly don't think SE have either the manpower or interest in even attempting to implement anything like this.

Moving forward, SE's designers now more than ever need to address the disparity between the healer's overall kit and the time spent in combat. As a healer improves in skill, the majority of their toolkit will revolve around the minority of their actions and this is a sliding scale that only ever gets worse. So it's time spent not healing that I'll be commenting on.

In my eyes, I can see 4 options for this time.

There's the time honoured SE tradition of just filling in the blanks with DPS. It's pretty clear by this stage that this isn't where Yoshida wants to be.

Secondly, Debuffs. We actually had this to some extent back in ARR with Virus being a powerful ability that could see extensive use with a pre planned rotation. Eye for an Eye was also a honourable mention here. Again, the fact this facet of healer gameplay has slowly been phased out from ARR so it's another aspect that Yoshida doesn't appear to want in the game. This is in my eyes a very significant mistake. I honestly think that giving the debuff role to DPS was a tremendous mistake. Placing this back on healers and tuning it to require planning akin to ARR Virus but without being quite so powerful would be fantastic for adding some desperately needed depth and complexity back to our gameplay.

Thirdly, Buffs. This is a strange one. Both SCH and AST have had solid buffing abilities (Counting defensive buffs as well as DPS) from day 1 whereas WHM has typically been shepherded away from that angle. Whilst healer buffing has been somewhat simplified with 5.0, this is perhaps the only aspect of our gameplay that got expanded here. Again, SE would do well to take this ball and run with it as there's a world of options here with countless possibilities being demonstrated in the MMO genre. Healers could be responsible for feeding DPS with MP or some other resource. We could spend our GCDs investing in the groups DPS via something like Cards being on the GCD rather than a cooldown. There's so many routes SE could take this.

Lastly, my wildcard. Crowd Control aka CC. For those that might have missed it. Prerelease FFXIV ARR revolved around 2 dungeons. Tam Tara Deepcroft and Brayflox's Longstop. Dungeons back then played out dramatically differently to how they do now. Pulls were generally 1 pack at a time and the preferred approach was for healers to CC the adds whilst the group killed the pull 1 mob at a time. This quickly ceased to be relevant once the game went live and people rapidly started to outgear dungeon content. Giving us the occasional pull where we simply have to CC certain dangerous adds to be dealt with separately would do wonders for spicing things up and removing a bit of the boredom of just mashing our AoE over again and again. One of Mr Happy's dungeon previews actually showed the DPS getting killed, perhaps either by getting gradually cleaved to death or maybe actually just getting AoE'd down by something intended for Repose now it's been changed to a job action. This could be further encouraged by making the AoEing mob a pet that automatically gets desummoned once the rest of the pull dies.

It's frustrating how many options SE are leaving on the table and again, I don't think that it's fair to say that there's any form of a grudge against the healer role. Rather that they just aren't willing to sink the manpower actually brainstorming, tuning, implementing and then balancing these abilities would require.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

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I cannot give you exact specifications, but what I basically had in mind is:
Instead of trying to force healers into the "pure healing" role (which just is not justified with how incoming damage and fight mechanics work in this game) to "embrace" ;) the 80-70% DPS to 20-30% healing output that exists right now.

This would mean, that the support jobs would all have a basic healing kit:
- 1 ST heal
- 1 Aoe heal
- maybe 1- 2 "job flavor" heals like Excog or Bene

Instead of focusing on pure healing (like SE tries to make us do now) these jobs would mostly focus on a fully fledged out DPS kind of rotation.
The final goal of that main-rotation though is not to maximise your pDPS, but to keep up the buffs/debuffs for your group, which in return would reduce incoming damage.
Your ultimate goal and your benefit for doing your job correctly would basically be healing less and having more time to 1. Do your own dps and 2. keeping the up buffs running for your group.
Of course you would still have to heal for spike damage and the occasional tankbuster, but this would ensure that the now healers have an actual fun and worthwhile gameplay outside of pure healing.

This is also where the tank changes would come into play.
To ensure, that the supporters can mostly focus on their main job (buffing/debuffing), tanks should be much more responsible for their own survivability and less dependent on outside healing.
Of course tanks should still do DPS. But like the support role, their main goal of doing their job correctly is not pDPS, but survivability. Basically a good tank - with a good supporter, should not need healing at all outside of tankbusters.

I do not know, if this idea is even possible to implement. I cannot give you any numbers, I'm no theorycrafter.
It would basically mean a complete rework of all the healer jobs. But it would be a solution to the "green/blue DPS" problem in a way without simply removing the healers dps tools...

I'm with sebazy on this one. But as an immediate fix for SCH here's what I have to offer:

The issue:

Right now 5.0 SCH is in a good spot when it comes to the healing kit and dps potencies. The real issue is related to some skill synergies and most of all the lack of interesting stuff to do during healing downtime. Lets not beat around the bush, in the current iteration that means DPS.
The dps will be clunky with little items to weave and the likelyhood of instant cast GCD skills not being weaved into. This is also largely reducing the skill ceiling while not making the class all that more accessible sadly (what's making the class more accessible is the new healing kit).
Ruin II is failing to meet part of it's purpose which is weaving since it's potency is a little too low (or broil too high) to make it worthwhile as a single weaving tool.
Dissipation giving us more stacks is a little pointless since short of lustrate we don't have any tools that can use them (because of cooldowns)
Lastly SCH gameplay in dungeons is an abysmal, unfun one button spam, and a little subpar compared to other healers (in dps). It should be addressed

Solution:

- Give shadowflare back. It's needed for nicer gameplay in dungeons + raids and it's a good equivalent to earthly star and assize (which SCH no longer has). This will also give SCH an extra ogcd to fix it's lack of weaving. Make it 150 potency instead of 200. 60s cooldown. This aligns it with earthly star and is still miles away from the 400 of assize on 45s cooldown.
- Give SCH ED back for weaving (or call it whatever). Just make it a stack dump. Set it at 150 potency like it currently is. Leave out mana restoration unless it turns out in play that mana is a real issue. This also gives us more to weave and fixes dissipation for us.
- Nerf broil from 380 to 365 to account for both the added dps from SF and ED. That way the overall dps on single target doesn't increase. The multitarget dps will align roughly with the other healers now as well. This is assuming ED is roughly used in 30-40% of stacks. It also doesn't account for dissipation but that's fine because SCH has a bit of dps leeway for optimization from it's lack of Earthly star/assize/misery in the first place. The nice side effect from this nerf is that Ruin II now becomes a viable skill to single weave with, so it's win win short of mana issues (but those could be fixed by giving ED mana restauration back if needed).

To align gameplay a bit, WHM should get ~80 pot on fluid aura. It's a 30s timer that could line up with Dia for some desperately needed weaving.
I feel like AST potencies might need to be readjusted as well but I'll be honest here I'm not sure where their rdps currently stands. So it's perfectly possible that their pDPS is in a good spot.

Honestly, these seem so obvious I'm still amazed they weren't set up this way in the first place.

Agreed on your SCH comments. I think Art of War is going to be pretty unsustainable for SCH, not only due to the increased MP costs, but because of the lack of Thin Air/Lightspeed to help mitigate its cost.

One plot twist I thought about with Shadowflare would be combining it's utility with Bane.

Half the potency of it, make it cost an Aetherflow and make it mirrors your Bio damage across everything else in its effect whilst it's up for the usual 15 seconds.

This makes it a somewhat weaker version of both with the key difference being that you're spreading your core dot for a max of 15 seconds rather than 30.

Also, talking about WHM stuff lining up. PoM please =(

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Originally Posted by Nujana

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I’ve been saying this for weeks now and am glad you think the same way.

Healers are getting forced into this heal bot box by the devs and it’s not cute anymore. It’s almost like we’re the tank’s significant other that’s not really into gaming but forced to play a healer just to help them level.

We have to solo MSQ content as well and giving us 1 AoE, 1 DoT, and 1 nuke is tantamount to torture. Leveling is already a chore (go here, fetch that, kill those) and having to press the same two buttons over and over is mind numbing. Healers have become the Atari game characters of FFXIV.

What I would want to see, and think would solve their “healers should heal” mindset, is a DPS rotation that rewards you for using your GCD heals whenever they’re needed.

For example, the White Mage is founded in Conjury, and most similar to the Black Mage in its need for balance. Using that as base build, let’s start them out with elemental based skills, basically their main DPS kit. Let’s face it, never has there been an encounter that requires healing right from the start. So they need an opener. A simple rotation between Stone, Air, and Water to apply DoTs and start building their elemental power. As they continue to throw rocks and water, their elemental strength grows to a point where it culminates in an ultimate form (Quake, Tornado, or Flood). This spell would also spread a buff amongst the party (naturally, it would be different depending on which element you chose). With the elemental power peaked and spent, the White Mage now enters its Light (or Holy) phase.

The Light phase switches attack spells to their “white” counterparts (Glare, Dia, and let’s say Pearl for the water based spells and the VI fans). While these spells wouldn’t be as strong as their elemental counterparts, they would apply stacks to Confession or
something similar to injured party members through a smart heal system similar to WoW. Heals would also be buffed in this phase. This phase ends with Holy, having an Assize like effect where it heals the party and damages the enemies. Rinse and repeat.

Now in order to encourage healers to use their GCD heals, I would put in a solo buff that occurs when you use a GCD mid DPS rotation, basically so you’re not penalized for doing your job.

This is all theoretical. I’m not a number cruncher or a theory crafter. Just an idea guy. But something like this would give White Mages the identity they’re craving while encouraging them to heal more.

Just a thought.