The Limits of Balance

Obligatory opinion warning, but I think these are some really big things we, as a community, need to keep in mind when suggesting what should happen with healers going forward.

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A new healer is not an effective way of fixing the meta. Not without overhauls to one of the current three healers.

Say we had gotten another healer for Shadowbringer, or we’re going to get another healer in 6.0, players progressing through to the point where this new healer is prevalent in play, usually passed its starting level, is therefore, unbalanced, with exceptions to instances in which the new healer is playing lower level content through Duty Finders, or Party Finders.

Balance is not a matter of new skills unlocked in the new 10 levels released in each expansion.

A very key skill in each role can do a lot to shift a healers placement in the meta, but when many of these key skills are oGCDs, it’s important to make sure equivalent options exist for each healer outside of their unique kit, at equivalent levels. Cure I is boring and important. Benefic is boring and important. Embrace is boring and important. These spammable skills are what determine the vanilla strength of a healing. These same basic skills could never be exempt from a new healer suggestion.

Truly unique kits are what make players want to play their favorite healer.

As an Astrologian main from 3.0 prerelease, I remember when we were the weak job. When we needed the buffs, but I also picked up Astrologian for the cards I saw. It’s my belief that Astrologian needs to release its grip on the other healers kits, among other changes, in order to make a genuine step towards balance. We do not need the sect system. I feel I’ll especially get comments on this, arguing for sects fore the sake of arguing for them, but please keep in mind, no other healer has a secondary kit option in the same way that Astrologian does. At the very least, the system should be tuned down, maybe making each Sect work like a buff that stays up for a limited time, so there’s no question as to White Mage being better at traditional healing, and Scholar having an iron grip on mitigation.

After the basics, fitting a niche matters. Not all niches were made equal.

Niches are big, they’re unique, and they’re easily understood. Massive healing is a niche, mitigation is a niche, buffing is a niche. HoT is not a niche, it’s just a modification to a normal heal. Other niches could include, totem healing or “item” healing, there are some good options that can be fun and unique, and there are some that just don’t work.

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Of course, I’d love to modify my ideas to coincide and work with what Yoshi-P has already stated he’d like to do, and like to encourage players suggest more fundamental ideas within those grounds, but I honestly can’t find many of his statements on healers, and what few forum posts there are don’t list sources.

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Originally Posted by Cyrocco

Niches are big, they’re unique, and they’re easily understood. Massive healing is a niche, mitigation is a niche, buffing is a niche. HoT is not a niche, it’s just a modification to a normal heal. Other niches could include, totem healing or “item” healing, there are some good options that can be fun and unique, and there are some that just don’t work.

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How is HoT not a niche, but totem and item healing are?

Druids would like a word with you about HoT not being a niche.

That said, HoT-based healing would be iffy in a game that favors big chunky direct healing, and people's mindset about that playstyle doesn't help (sure, keep topping people off right after I Regen/Medica II and there's no AoE damage incoming, send all my numbers to overhealing, please!)

Ironically, being the raw healer that does nothing else is exactly what puts WHM as the overall least favorable healer, because they have no utility that can help the party. This is where their niche being the "DPS-healer" would come in handy, but that claim has been controversial, to say the least.

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Originally Posted by Hustensaft

How is HoT not a niche, but totem and item healing are?

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Maybe I should be more clear what what my idea of totem healing and item healing would look like in a practical sense. If we look at the recurring ability, Mix, there's an entire kit we can make out of that. Items, henceforth, heals, can be prepared in advanced, ingredients can be changed to get a different heal depending on the situation, ultimate it could work like Ninja's mudras, albeit in a heal format.

Totems, functionally, could be anything from placing an AoE heal that goes off around a player, to having a powerful heal centralized around a designated area, much like Earthly Star.

It's very easy to come up with ideas that work under these because they're much larger and more generalized. HoT however, is really just a standard healing option everyone in this game gets. When damage comes in dealing 90% of an HP pool, following by raidwide damage that can end a run, HoT just isn't an option. But if you have a good way to present a healer who specializes in HoT, I'd genuinely like to hear your ideas, but this is just how I see it.

Now I by no means want this to become a theory crafting thread, my goal is to really narrow down what's an option at this point that would help to satisfy the entire healer community, but a brief summary or example that would help me to understand other peoples ideas is always welcome.

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Originally Posted by Allegor

This is where their niche being the "DPS-healer" would come in handy, but that claim has been controversial, to say the least.

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WHM is also attributed as “The GCD Healer” since they can’t weave their stuff like SCH/AST can. Let’s also not forget the other obvious reason WHM is heavily unfavorable...

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Originally Posted by Allegor

Ironically, being the raw healer that does nothing else is exactly what puts WHM as the overall least favorable healer, because they have no utility that can help the party. This is where their niche being the "DPS-healer" would come in handy, but that claim has been controversial, to say the least.

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This is something I really started to understand after I leveled WHM in order to really see what was going on with the job, and why I don't think a lot of suggestions centralized around new skills to the job are the best fix for balance at this time, something should be done to fundamentally change something about WHMs kit, and it needs to happen at a level earlier than 80.

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Originally Posted by Cyrocco

Maybe I should be more clear what what my idea of totem healing and item healing would look like in a practical sense. If we look at the recurring ability, Mix, there's an entire kit we can make out of that. Items, henceforth, heals, can be prepared in advanced, ingredients can be changed to get a different heal depending on the situation, ultimate it could work like Ninja's mudras, albeit in a heal format.

Totems, functionally, could be anything from placing an AoE heal that goes off around a player, to having a powerful heal centralized around a designated area, much like Earthly Star.

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None of these are niches. Your item idea will still combine into one of: direct heal, absorb, or even a HoT.

Healing can be applied to a player in very limited ways: direct healing, HoTs, absorbs, on damage taken. Usually Absorbs are vastly superior to the remaining three, while HoTs have high requirement on encounter design and player health pools/damage taken.
Then you have mechanics that apply this healing effects: single-target heals, caster centered AoE heals, target centered AoE heals, jumping heals, range restricted heals, AoE ground circle, a totem/pet doing it's stuff, etc.
Some of these mechanics are inherently inferior, e.g. an AoE ground circle will always be bad if people can not stack and stay in it due to encounter, while a target centered AoE heal might still be able to heal all targets.

Lasty, you also have to look at number of keybinds: Healing inherently requires little buttons, healers will never get many DPS buttons. FFXIV usually wants you to have ~25 keybinds from your spec. WHM doesn't reach that number (while still having hideous stuff like Fluid Aura and the generic healer raise). AST reaches it because of hald a dozen of card modifying abilities, SCH reaches that number due to ACN carry overs and Aetherflow ability overkill. Healers get the least number of buttons, yet they also use the lowest % of the buttons they get... brilliant design.

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Originally Posted by Hustensaft

None of these are niches. Your item idea will still combine into one of: direct heal, absorb, or even a HoT.

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Okay, I understand more where you're coming from now, and I see what the issues with my own ideas were, and why there aren't a realistic solution. So what you're saying is that ultimately, if a kits special abilities just come down to a complex way of doing standard healing, it isn't a realistic kit, I hadn't thought of it that way before and I agree with you.

You also bring up an interesting point with the regularity in which certain healer skills see use, I'd personally like to know if you think that not only are there some useless DPS skills, but heal skills that don't see use because they're just too conditional.

And since we've narrowed down what constitutes a unique healing kit a bit more, outside of the glaring issues with WHMs kit only being healing, AST being a buffer that dips into everyone elses kits, and SCH being a mitigation machine, what options do we really have as healers as a whole, if we want to achieve and maintain balance?

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Originally Posted by Allegor

Ironically, being the raw healer that does nothing else is exactly what puts WHM as the overall least favorable healer, because they have no utility that can help the party. This is where their niche being the "DPS-healer" would come in handy, but that claim has been controversial, to say the least.

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WHM isn't the DPS healer. It's a niche some of us would like for WHM, but SE seems to be ardently against it. Even the relatively recent patch that buffed WHM DPS left WHM as "worst healer DPS, but by a narrower margin".

And then raw healer is a problem too. "raw" or "pure" or "throughput" healer that does, at best, as much healing but not more than as the others just leaves the job in a really bad place for any content where people care about optimization.

Whatever direction SE goes in for the expac, they need to give WHM a unique strength. Key part on unique because other healers can't be allowed to have it too or we're back to yet another repeat of Heavensward/Stormblood. Personally I'm skeptical SE will actually do this, but I'll keep hoping...

Let's not kid ourselves, WHM doesn't have a niche.
Big heals is out, AST and SCH both have options for this.
High dps is out, again AST and SCH both better.
Outside of Cure III, every single one of our main heals AST has but a slightly stronger version of it, so it's not like our GCD heals are even anything that special. It's just our only option because our oGCD aoe heals are too weak to properly take advantage of.

There is no niche for WHM, that's why it's performing so horribly right now. There is nothing unique about them. Can they fix this issue by 5.0? I doubt it. WHMs kit and playstyle both feel like it's stuck 2 expansions behind everyone else, still in ARR.

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Originally Posted by Cyrocco

And since we've narrowed down what constitutes a unique healing kit a bit more, outside of the glaring issues with WHMs kit only being healing, AST being a buffer that dips into everyone elses kits, and SCH being a mitigation machine, what options do we really have as healers as a whole, if we want to achieve and maintain balance?

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That's the conundrum. As far healing itself goes, our healers are actually pretty balanced. All three of them have a healing kit capable of meeting the healing requirements in the game. The other members of your group don't really care how you do it; be it barriers, direct heals, or HoTs. All three healers can also put out decent amounts of damage, and once again, the party does not care how you do it.

If we want to achieve balance, we have to look at what is actually unbalancing them. The way to achieve balance is that you deliberately have to give each healer a weakness that is compensated for by the strength of another healer, but you also have to do this in a way that they can still function by themselves in solo content, or in group content where they are the only healer. The glaring issue right now is that WHM has no strengths over SCH and AST. Both of them can meet healing requirements, while at the same time bring utility to the group.

Let's look at the utility of AST and SCH: Both of them can increase the raid's speed. Both of them can increase the raid's damage. Both of them can increase the raid's defense.

Can you see where I am getting at here? Two of our healers can do all three of those things, and one of them can't do any of it. One healer should be able to increase raid speed, another should be able to increase raid damage, and the other should be able to increase raid defense. Right there you will have distinctive strengths and weaknesses each healer brings to the table. Since the meta will always favor damage, the latter is the weakest of those three so long as heals keep them up and running, so that particular healer is going to need to have a higher pDPS than the other two.

If the devs keep fiddling around with healing and damage potencies, they will continue to chase their own tail. If they keep giving healers more ways to heal, they will continue to chase their own tail. These are NOT the problem. All the healers who see this know the nerf hammer is coming in 5.0. Both SCH and AST are too powerful due to their overall utility. They don't need to nerf heals or damage at all. They simply need to spread out the utility those two healers bring.

Damage is a great way to give each job it's own flavor. Think about it, how many DPS jobs do we have now? And it is the easiest role to add jobs to, so how a healer uses offensive abilities should be the least of the devs worries and ours. They can be totally creative here without too much worry of an unbalance so long as they keep it in check.

So what does this mean for an eventual 4th healer. All it means is they need to bring a utility that the other three don't have.