Building a better healer post 1.18

TLDR List:

1. Less aggro on cures
2. More direct active moves
3. Longer buff durations
4. Slight MP reduction on cures
5. Stats that matter (coming 1.19)

Building a better healer post 1.18 patch

Just a slight bit of background information on where I am coming from. I have primarily been a healer my entire MMO career which has spanned over several different MMO's over several years. I've played plenty of MMO's as a healer to know what works and what doesn't.

I waited until this long to post anything mainly because I was worried about how the impressions of the patch would affect balance issues with such direct changes. For instance, initially everyone was up in arms over the fact that SP was nerfed. The math states however that nearly every two resets someone who does a full set of 8 leves will gain a level, taking roughly 3-4 months to get to 50. I find that appropriate (if not a bit boring and stale currently due to the failure and monotony of levequests and transportation). I digress, however with sufficient time alloted to experiment and test out the dungeons and the new content and mechanics, I feel it is appropriate to fully write out and document how I feel a healer in XIV should play.

This thread will probably be incredibly thorough and if you don't have the time to read it, i put the TLDR version up that covers the highlights. I appreciate any feedback and discussion to help make healers more exciting and functional.

Finally, to give you a standpoint as to where I am as far as healing goes. I have a 50 Thaumaturge and a 38 Conjurer at the time of writing this post.

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Enmity and Aggro Generation

The 1.18 patch has ushered in a bit more tactical and strategic play for healing. I am glad that this change has come, but some things need to be tweaked. Cures now generate enormous amount of aggro and enmity. Too much in fact. I cannot help but feel slightly discouraged and reminisce about how terrible the FF XI healing system worked. 1 Cure should not pull aggro immediately at the start of any fight.
A simple answer to this would be to use stoneskin, find a better tank with more abilities, or rank down moves. I will discuss all three.

Stoneskin method: Stoneskin is really just a buffer for heals. Increasing the amount of damage absorbed by stoneskin is not an appropriate fix to fixing enmity. Not only would it imbalance mage solo play, but it would just become a fest of spamming stoneskin instead of heals by different mages. Thus, buffing stoneskin is not a good option and it should remain as it is now: simply a buffer for heals.

Finding a better/more competent tank: I appreciate this concept but it is not the best option either. If someone only has one rank 50 "tank job" available, they should be permitted to generate enough hate to at least keep hate at the start of the fight when cures go out. Currently I feel like this isn't possible and a better solution would be to once again, lower the amount of enmity generated on cures. I can find that in dire situations, I can pull myself from green to red in almost no time just with cures in only a few spell casts. Finally, finding a tank with say, two appropriate tanking jobs leveled will only create more of the same snobbish and masochistic requirements that Final Fantasy XI was famously known for. Its best to simply leave it to reducing the amount of hate on cures.

Aggro reducing abilities: I have both Silhouette and Elemental Shroud, unfortunately they seem to do nothing (like many of the other skills in the game). So unless these skills are made better to actually dump an entire color of aggro -- I probably won't be that impressed with them. With that being said, I am planning on more experimental time with them shortly in the future. These skills definitely need to dump more aggro though and would create an active move to use during each battle in addition to cures.

Rank down your cures! I appreciated the ranking down of abilities for MP and hate reduction in other games. Do I think it is appropriate in XIV? Yes and no. Here is why I have mixed feelings about this. Ranking down cures clearly creates strategic play; unfortunately not only does it take up valuable bar space but it also creates the same spell being used over and over again in the same fashion and it becomes nothing more than mindless spam -- similar to what we were trying to get away from pre 1.18. For the time being, ranking down cures is fine and I have continued to do it through this patch, but this needs to move toward and be eliminated via my next topic: more active abilities.

In summary for this section: the aggro and enmity generated simply needs to be reduced by all healer abilities. Not drastically, but a sufficiently small decrease (especially for the beginning of major battles) would go a long way.

Next topic: Active abilities! There need to be abilities that we can use that encourage diversity and uniqueness in different situations. Currently we really only have cure, stoneskin, and siphon MP. Yes we can remove status effects, but currently these situations are limited and even then due to the terrible range/aoe limitations of both conjurer and thaumaturge they don't work nearly as well as they should. We need more status enhancing effects that work 100% of the time. Absorb acc/def/atk/eva spells are not cutting it. Furthermore, the fact that these spells can be resisted at a high rate basically makes them completely useless and simply a mana drain that could be spent on other more important aspects of the battle. These are unique spells, but they need a lot of work to be functional. A cast is better spent doing damage, putting on a damage over time spell, or even a cure.

The Final Fantasy series has a gambit of wonderful spells that can be added and used in this situation. Here are a few spells that I'd like to highlight that would be wonderful additions.

• Faith
• Bravery
• Haste
• Regen (without sacrifice)
• Bubble
• Esuna (would be a much better option rather than separating curing debuffs into 3 or 4 different spells.)
• Mighty Guard
• White Wind (kind of works like Curaga now.. just figured I'd mention it)
• Refresh

In addition to these classic spells, (which are not limited to those simply mentioned above) you could create more spells that are a bit more functional. For instance a spell that could be cast directly on the tank to convert a % of damage of incoming hits to mana directly to the caster. Another spell could decrease all damage incoming by half for a very short duration of time with a large cooldown. Short duration spells (roughly 30 seconds to 1 minute) like this should be rather potent and used only for dynamic and situational purposes, however this should not be the case for protect and shell -- which goes into my next topic.

Longer buff durations

Increasing durations of certain buffs is something I've seen the dev team talk about back and forth on the forum comments. I'd just like to state that I know very few healers who enjoy spamming protect/shell every 4 minutes and 25 seconds. The duration needs to be increased to at least 25 minutes -- ideally an hour though.
These buffs are simply meant to be staples of the caster classes. Honestly, sometimes I don't even see them being used because the damage reduction isn't as significant as it probably should be. Furthermore, these spells don't even last for the full duration of some fights. They need to be increased in both duration and effect. I understand that the dev team wants "longer duration moves to be less effective" but the current level that protect and shell work (if they even work at all) is just slightly ridiculous.

MP Consumption:
I feel MP consumption is nearly where it should be. However -- I do feel it is slightly more expensive than it should be. As I mentioned earlier, ranking down heals isn't really an appropriate situation for XIV. Regardless, MP consumption for heals (sacrifice and cure) both need to be reduced by roughly 15-20%. This means that both rank 3 heals are roughly about 100 MP. 10-20% on paper may seem like a LOT, but in reality its only decreasing MP costs by roughly 15-30 MP.

Finally, my last section of improving and making a better healer is for stats.

Stats that matter on both gear, and in allotment:

I understand stats are going through revisions, so I am simply stating that the current stat allotment pools are not conducive to enhancing healing. I'll wait to comment on this in 1.19 when the stat revisions take place.

Thank you for taking the time to read, and I hope this helps create a better healer in the future for everyone to experience.

I just want to point out that Stoneskin is a viable enmity tool at the start of a fight, since generally in the middle of a fight it's too long of a cast time to deal with. Damage absorbed by Stoneskin is damage you don't have to heal, and the time it takes for the enemy to break it down is more time for your tank to build enmity through damage and abilities, especially with Shock Spikes. A Roaming Soul'd Sacrifice before engaging is also useful for a similar reason.

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Originally Posted by Estellios

I just want to point out that Stoneskin is a viable enmity tool at the start of a fight, since generally in the middle of a fight it's too long of a cast time to deal with. Damage absorbed by Stoneskin is damage you don't have to heal, and the time it takes for the enemy to break it down is more time for your tank to build enmity through damage and abilities, especially with Shock Spikes. A Roaming Soul'd Sacrifice before engaging is also useful for a similar reason.

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Correct, im not implying stoneskin isn't a good tactic to use at the start of the fight. Its a very useful spell :)

Bump, good read. Definitely should increase buff timers, 5 min protect/shell is pretty obnoxious with current content. Healer threat is still definitely an issue and this should be addressed immediately.

I believe Yoshida already said in one of his letters that they may have gone overboard on everything you pointed out. It would be great if they could say or feel they have got it right the first time, but they haven't and it's not something that is very unreasonable.

I think it's better to first release these extremes and adapt to them before they are balanced, personally. I know it is quite annoying to get used to at first, but it's really quite manageable as you marinate in this thick and bold new approach in MP and enmity management. I started to use abilities I kicked in the corner pre patch and started making Nerve Potions (-enmity) on my ALC to be an efficient main healer during dungeon runs. I quite like the new approach and while I do not totally agree with it 100% you cannot deny that it woke a bunch of players up and demanded they pay attention.

I'd say, along with you, that we should halt on further proficiency in healing when stats are revised. This would totally push healers in a new direction. Depending on how potent the new planned light allotment is, I'd assume.

I've found myself hitting the button to put my weapon away in between casts just to get the tick of MP refresh while I queue up the next cure. While I do think the cures a bit too expensive, I've found this technique to really aid me with keeping my MP up. I imagine this will be moot in the coming weeks when they make it so we can cast without going into active mode, but I think its worth doing for now.

I think I agree on everything.

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Originally Posted by BruceyBruceyBangBang

I think it's better to first release these extremes and adapt to them before they are balanced, personally. I know it is quite annoying to get used to at first, but it's really quite manageable as you marinate in this thick and bold new approach in MP and enmity management.

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I agree which is why I waited a while to make this post. I didn't want to make any rash or hasty judgments since things change so drastically. I find most of the fixes welcome and are a good start to making a better healer.

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I started to use abilities I kicked in the corner pre patch and started making Nerve Potions (-enmity) on my ALC to be an efficient main healer during dungeon runs. I quite like the new approach and while I do not totally agree with it 100% you cannot deny that it woke a bunch of players up and demanded they pay attention.

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Using abilities from other classes is fine and should be supported. Supposedly the THM and CON moves drop hate -- unfortunately I don't think they do enough. After reading some more information where 1 hp = 1 hate from summer translation thread, I am going to guess that these moves drop hate equal to the amount of damage they produce... unfortunately that damage is like... 30. So definitely not appropriate or meaningful towards the entire fight. Furthermore, healers shouldn't be required to level up every other single class just to drop/manage hate. It needs to be functional with one class from the very start. I think the nerve potion is a great idea -- I haven't actually looked that much into consumables at this time but I am sure in the long run I will. I am glad you mentioned them :) I am all for using consumables during fights -- just don't want to get carried away.

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I'd say, along with you, that we should halt on further proficiency in healing when stats are revised. This would totally push healers in a new direction. Depending on how potent the new planned light allotment is, I'd assume.

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I'm not sure where you read this -- I just said I wouldn't comment on the stat portion of the factor until 1.19 since they are already changing it. I don't support halting proficiency at all. The current stat allocation is roughly equal to 1hp for every 2 mind. Thus my build gives me an extra 55 hp on heals. I don't hate this bonus, but I don't know if it is appropriate for the enmity generation build with 1 damage = 1 enmity. If that is the case I would assume (no real fact on this) that for healers the ratio is 1 HP healed = 1 hate generated. At any rate, I am just waiting to see what the 1.19 stat allocation bonuses will be for healing before I make any suggestions on it.

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Originally Posted by Thalamant

I've found myself hitting the button to put my weapon away in between casts just to get the tick of MP refresh while I queue up the next cure. While I do think the cures a bit too expensive, I've found this technique to really aid me with keeping my MP up. I imagine this will be moot in the coming weeks when they make it so we can cast without going into active mode, but I think its worth doing for now.

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I didn't mention this in the original post, but yes every healer should be doing this during the brief downtime that you get during the fights. It can also be used as hate management if other healers are available.

Its sort of a messy mechanic :S

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Originally Posted by Tibian

I didn't mention this in the original post, but yes every healer should be doing this during the brief downtime that you get during the fights. It can also be used as hate management if other healers are available.

Its sort of a messy mechanic :S

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Have ethers helped?

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Originally Posted by feint2021

Have ethers helped?

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Ethers can only be used once every thirty minutes I believe. (I'd test it if I was in the game right now JUST to be sure... but maint. prevents that -- so correct me if I am wrong).

Regular ethers restore 50 mp, I don't know about the elemental ones. I'd appreciate a cooldown reduction for ethers for sure, or an increase in potency of them, especially when siphon MP restores roughly 100-120 MP.

Yes they help (barely) and if the fight matters a healer should probably have at least a stack on hand. Overall you're still going to generate more MP with the active/passive toggling -- which is why its a messy mechanic.

Ethers can be used waaay more often than 30 minutes =P It's like 30 seconds or something, fairly long wait for an item timer though. I'm guessing we will see hi-ethers and the like next patch.

Thanks for reminding me about nerve potions Brucey, I forgot they existed. I get a ton of mileage out of a lot of the other stat afflicting/curing potions but I haven't made Nerve potions since enmity was kinda impossible to understand back when I first became able to make them.

Unfortunately I made all the mandrakes I got back then into Maddening powder for Maddening potions for my Gladiator friend. Time to go harvest I guess!

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Originally Posted by Estellios

Ethers can be used waaay more often than 30 minutes =P It's like 30 seconds or something, fairly long wait for an item timer though. I'm guessing we will see hi-ethers and the like next patch.

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Like I said, I wasn't too confident on the timer :) I will test it when the servers go back up for sure.

I have a 50 CON and 33 THM. I expect to be playing a full-blown healer after the advanced job system comes out. I agree with all of your propositions to improve healing in FFXIV, including your suggestions regarding enmity, spell additions, and buff durations. I only have a few comments I'd like to add:


1)

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Originally Posted by Tibian

Aggro reducing abilities: I have both Silhouette and Elemental Shroud, unfortunately they seem to do nothing (like many of the other skills in the game). So unless these skills are made better to actually dump an entire color of aggro -- I probably won't be that impressed with them.

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I agree with this completely. I would also suggest the addition of an ability similar to Fade (perhaps it could reduce threat by one color of aggro, or just drop it to green).


2)

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Originally Posted by Tibian

I feel MP consumption is nearly where it should be. However -- I do feel it is slightly more expensive than it should be.

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I think giving mages more effective means of recovering MP in battle would alleviate some of the problems being caused by the high MP cost of cures. One suggestion I support is strengthening the effectiveness of Radiance and Damnation. As I seen in my post in a Battle Mechanics thread:

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Originally Posted by Alyssa

Both Damnation and Radiance are really underwhelming. You say you're getting 5% of your MP back with these abilities? I think the most I've ever gotten (while on my 50 CON) is 30-something MP. Usually it's much more pitiful, like 7 or so.

If they could make these abilities more effective I think we'd see less unhappy mages. I think the return of ~10% would be more than sufficient. For me, that would be around 100 MP - which is what I get, on average, from a successful Siphon MP.

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Originally Posted by Alyssa

I have a 50 CON and 33 THM. I expect to be playing a full-blown healer after the advanced job system comes out. I agree with all of your propositions to improve healing in FFXIV, including your suggestions regarding enmity, spell additions, and buff durations. I only have a few comments I'd like to add:


1)

I agree with this completely. I would also suggest the addition of an ability similar to Fade (perhaps it could reduce threat by one color of aggro, or just drop it to green).


2)

I think giving mages more effective means of recovering MP in battle would alleviate some of the problems being caused by the high MP cost of cures. One suggestion I support is strengthening the effectiveness of Radiance and Damnation. As I seen in my post in a Battle Mechanics thread:

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I was going to mention Fade but I figured if I mention anything related to World of Warcraft the trolls would run with pitchforks just to troll. Fade is a wonderful mechanic, I'd love to have that ability in XIV -- would eliminate a LOT of problems.

Just for reference for people who don't know what Fade is.

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Fade out, temporarily reducing all your threat for 10 sec.

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The fixes to Radiance and Damnation wuold be nice but they need to remove the TP requirement for those abilities. How am I supposed to generate TP while healing? They would also have to alter aggro generation on those moves because I don't want additional useless aggro.

Sometimes I feel cure is better than taunt for generating hate... which shouldn't be the case.

good post. i just recently switched over from thm to con (both are r50) because i really feel con plays a larger role in battles now, especially with aoe cures, raise II and rebirth. that, and it's hard to find a good, smart healer who always keeps buffs and stoneskin up. as a healer, you really need to be aware of what everyone in your group is doing, and that sort of motherly/overseeing playstyle currently appeals to me greatly. i was honestly getting tired of dotting mobs to death as a thm.

here are some playstyles i implement in battles to help alleviate overall enmity generation for healers:

chameleon - i use it when i know i'm going to go blinky red with a cure.
accomplice --> chameleon - my team mates and party members use this on our healers when we start to draw aggro.
bounce enmity - having two healers allows you to spread the enmity thinner, as you can take turns healing. all you have to do is call out yellow/red and have the other take over.
out of sight - always have this trait on.

i don't personally think the system is out of whack; the whole "cure = damage" enmity-wise seems to be fair enough. a cure should not, at the beginning of a battle, pull all hate, but as someone before mentioned, roaming soul + sacrifice should be a staple before any large battle. i rarely go blinky red, if at all, anymore (a large shout out to my team mates who help with this by either mitigating inbound damage or by doing crazy damage output). it took some adjustments and there was a short learning curve, but to me, healing is a lot more engaging and entertaining, especially because there is now an associated danger affixed to the task. should i curaga ii this shizz and risk pulling all hate, or do i cure iii // sac ii only those who really need it? can i take that risk? can i do it without anyone dying?

encouraging this sort of thought process while actively playing, to me, promotes smarter gameplay. i'm glad SE is finally getting around to implementing things that address that.

all in all it's so much more fun now, and i really have to pay attention to how much damage everyone is doing and what's really going on, rather than siphon mp --> all and spam aoe cure-bombs all over the place.

Well sorry, i dont agreed with u. Be4 patch things r too easy. At current state, all the problem u list can be managed. 8 ppl pt allow u have 3 mages in pt, two healing, one debuff, it work and mp r fine with 3 mage. Stop ask this and that, u just need to pay more attention now and play more skillfull. :)

Hint: as a healing role in party, sometimes, offence is the best defence. :)

Ps: just read the post above, i agreed with him. I believe he is a good healer. It might hurt, u said u play a lot of healing job, but be4 u complain about all this, have u ever try to find out the way to heal better with current skill and enmity. If u tried every thing and none of them work, ok, post it and u can tell SE this sucks, tell your dev team change it. Well for me and some ppl who always try to find the way do our job better. This system WORKED.

i think stoneskin is a bad way to start a fight. im not sure how the emnity works in ffxiv but if damage taken creates emnity, then stoneskinning at the beginning is just going to hurt ur tank's emnity gain more than help it.

if the tank has healing spells, its better to have him take some damage, heal himself a few times, then everyone can jump in cause he would have built a good amount of emnity from damage taken and damage healed.

damage taken doesn't generate enmity, i think. it's damage dished out, heals taken in and actions performed. stoneskin at the beginning lessens the total overall amount of damage taken in, saving everyone precious mp. the tank can heal himself after stoneskin wears off to generate enmity.

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Originally Posted by Tibian

The fixes to Radiance and Damnation wuold be nice but they need to remove the TP requirement for those abilities. How am I supposed to generate TP while healing?

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Yes, the TP requirement definitely sends these abilities to the back burner.

More demanding situations make the act of generating TP for these abilities nearly impossible. In most cases, however, I'm usually able to make use of them. On my 50 CON, I'm able cycle through Spirit Dart, Nature's Fury, and Elemental Shroud between my cures (I expect to be able to do the same on Thaumaturge, between debuffs/nukes). Including the TP I generate when I'm occasionally hit or get in a strike with auto-attack, I find Radiance/Damnation fairly easy to make use of (but ultimately not worth my time because of their ineffectiveness).

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Originally Posted by Tibian

They would also have to alter aggro generation on those moves because I don't want additional useless aggro.

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From my experience, Radiance/Damnation haven't been strong enough to increase my enmity level - but that's on my 50.

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Originally Posted by GabbaGabba

i think stoneskin is a bad way to start a fight. im not sure how the emnity works in ffxiv but if damage taken creates emnity, then stoneskinning at the beginning is just going to hurt ur tank's emnity gain more than help it.

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Damage taken does not do anything to emnity atm (In XI damage taken REDUCED emnity).

Healing is 1 heal = 1 threat, ethers are on 5 minute CD's, and Sacrifices HoT causes 0 threat.

Oh that -Emnity ability from CNJ only works on CNJ spells and has zero effect on THM ones.


But in regards to threat... you cannot reduce MP costs AND reduces threat costs... that will bring us back to pre-1.18 where healers could spam endlessly... reducing both = no thanks.

You can either:

Raise MP cost, reduce threat amount.

or

Reduce MP cost, raise threat amount.


If any change was to occur regarding those 2 elements I would say it would have to be either of those (or stay the same) or healers will once again require zero skill to play.


Btw having everyone with accomplice helps leaps and bounds since its very hard for meele to catch a tank's threat right now... they accomplice the healers / everyone wins.

with regards to the above, tp generation on THM is cake. profundity II + shadowfall on a mob = 3k tp ez.

I believe some of the issues you have will be overcome by the implementation of the White Mage, for whatever it's worth.

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Originally Posted by Zdenka

But in regards to threat... you cannot reduce MP costs AND reduces threat costs... that will bring us back to pre-1.18 where healers could spam endlessly... reducing both = no thanks.

You can either:

Raise MP cost, reduce threat amount.

or

Reduce MP cost, raise threat amount.


If any change was to occur regarding those 2 elements I would say it would have to be either of those (or stay the same) or healers will once again require zero skill to play.

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I don't think we're to that ultimatum yet. These are minor tweaks that wouldn't change the core basis of healing. Furthermore as Yoshi has mentioned, he wants to hear feedback like this for simple tweaks to enmity and healing in general to better balance classes and jobs.

As hotah pointed out, there are probably some fixes that will be implemented with the job system that level out these issues. I wouldn't be too surprised to see "healing abilities" have a reduction of mana by 10/20% when white mage job is active. It just makes sense.

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Originally Posted by hotah

I believe some of the issues you have will be overcome by the implementation of the White Mage, for whatever it's worth.

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That's quite a ways and who knows what it'll be like then.