Another thread, in another discussion, this came up. But it's actually an interesting question:
Mechanically, something like this has a fair amount of capability, and some WOULD call it a healer while others would not.Quote:
Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe
If RDM had "Vermedica" with the potency of a Medica but the cast time and MP cost of Vercure, would it be a capable healer? Would it be fair to define it as one? Or would it be something else?
What defines a healer as a Healer and not a something else?
To be fair, DNC already straddles some weird lines, and DNC with this model would even moreso. Some MIGHT call it a healer in that situation. I remember when RDM was introduced, I first thought it would be a healer. After all, "Job with healing abilities that also uses some DPS spells" already described WHM at the time (late HW), just the damage spells being Earth and Wind element instead of Fire and Lightning.
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Is it the focus of the Job (healing vs damage dealing)? The number of healing abilities? How efficient those healing abilities are?
Hm...
How can we really define Healers?
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10-03-2022, 09:20 AMRenathrasHow can we really define Healers?
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10-03-2022, 09:29 AMSupersnow845
The thought experiment is kinda redundant because the situation would never arise, the only definition of healer in 14 is “has a green icon”, WAR and PLD already do the healing role in dungeons, RDM can be an emergency single target healer if needed and mitigation is now mostly a team effort
The definition of roles in this game is so arbitrary because square hates the idea of one role being a fail point, RPR is a surprising good off tank in dungeons if the tank dies, and most “support roles” do more than 50% of a true DPS damage, now you can argue this is a good or bad thing (I personally like how much damage support roles do but I wish the roles were more distinct, like mitigation should be the tank and healers role, healers shouldn’t be invalidated in dungeons, a DPS shouldn’t have better rezz capabilities than a healer etc
But this all comes back to the age old MMO problem where DPS don’t actually belong in the holy trinity, DPS is something everyone is responsible for, however if you give DPS no responsibility and the most fun rotations who the hell would pick a tank or a healer -
10-03-2022, 07:20 PMKDSilver
Healers are DPS with varied healing toolkit to support, protect and heal the party when needeed.
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10-03-2022, 08:36 PMTabrisOmbrelame
I think the term "Healer" and what it contains depends on the actual game where you talk about it.
A Healer on FFXIV will have a different skill set than a Healer on WoW.
On some games, Healer's doesn't even exist in the "general meaning" of what it should be.
So, I guess we can say that FFXIV are healers the way they are, because they are designed like that, and not because of what we actually want them to be.
Of course this doesn't mean healer on FFXIV can't evolve to have some great improvement, either on the healing parts or the DPS parts of their kits. -
10-03-2022, 10:30 PMAmiableApkallu
Ignoring mitigation…
I'd say that the role of the healer should be to do what the other party members cannot: efficiently and effectively manage the party's HP bars and detrimental status effects.
The focus of the job's identity is tied to what the other roles lack. For example, Second Wind doesn't encroach on the healer identity, but self-repairing HP sponges do. If RDM is going to be a grouped into the DPS, then Vercure is fine, but dual-casted Verraise is not.
It then falls on encounter design to dictate how much of a healer's time is devoted to managing HP bars and status effects. -
10-03-2022, 11:35 PMGrimGale
The role trinity effectively breaks down classes into roles that serve to focus their kits to deal with one of the three basic types of interaction between NPCs and Players in a "battlefield".
DPS deal with Player>NPC
- Can be CC, Combos, Priming enemies for further damage, or simply going on the offensive.
Tanks deal with NPC>Player
- Getting the enemy attention, creating cover, intercepting attacks and mitigating incomming damage, simply put defending the party.
Support deal with Player>Player
- Its probably the most vague as there are a lot of ways to "assist" teammates, hell even tanking could be considered specialized support. Healing is a pretty straightforward one, but they can buff allies, shield them, give them mobility or anything that makes them more effective at their role.
In the end, all roles have to deal with those three interactions, as all roles must be at least be able to attack, recieve damage and party up. Support is the most ambiguous one as "helping" the party can come in many forms, but is usually the role that most conforms to the game's internal workings as it is the role that can make or break the game systems. -
10-04-2022, 01:12 AMTabrisOmbrelameYou just mentionned something really interresting about each role that actually gives me an idea.Quote:
Originally Posted by GrimGale
When you said that healers can Buff, heal, shield, give mobility (which is kinda the same as buff), it doesn't come short of possibility. Instead, there is a Large amount of combinaison usable.
Even more, it will require less change on classes than an actual full-rework of the role and can be quite appealing for people who wants a "Full support" role. Of course you'll stick with the 1 button damage, but if you have more to manage on the side, it can balance the boring feeling that people have.
Let's take an exemple of what can done to give each healers his own identity while also being Lore-Friendly or logical.
WHM :
The first things that come in mind with WHM is the lost of Wind and Earth elements on the upper level. WHM actually only use Water and Light when they reach lvl 72. Earth and Wind can be used to buff people. Earth for defense/offense and Wind for Mobility.
Maybe using the Earth to buff your comrades for more damage or reducing damage income, and Wind to speed up party movement just like SCH do. (Before telling that SCH already got that and that's redundant, remember that it's only speculation, probably won't happen anyway, but it's still possible when you consider everything related to that). This can make Earth and Wind elements come back, while still being lore Friendly.
SCH :
As we all know, SCH use healing magic related to mathematical and science law (It's in the lore and even more obvious in the French version of the game). They are able to use schemes like Deployments for exemple, which make Scholar kinda the "Strategist" on the ground. Using something like that may lead to great possibility. A strategist must be able to use his strenght at the right moment to make a great counter attack and make it pay. Sadly, our current SCH is mostly defense based but could use serious offense based buff/debuff. It's even in the job description : "utilizing the creatures' (Faerie) magicks to heal the wounded and bolster the strength of their allies."
AST :
As we know, the AST is currently being reworked. I prefer not saying anything at this point and wait to see what they are up to.
SGE :
The Sage use aetherology, sorcery, and medicine all together to make their's spell. According to this, why Sage couldn't buff offensively his teammate by using either of those ?
Their is so much possibilities to do a full support job out of what we currently have. Only adding spell will not resolve anything. What's needed is the use of a new ressources unique to each job and the new spells going along with that. Maybe even build this ressource up by using the only spell of damage you have ? Why not ?
One things is for sure. If Square Enix don't change how Healer's work in the near future, they will reach a wall on what is possible to do with them. They need to do changes at least for the 7.0 Expansion -
10-06-2022, 02:56 PMKatish
The definition I'd give healers is, DPS with the ability to keep people alive efficiently. Still dps at the end of the day and their skills should reflect some of that tbh. Still waiting for the day this happens, wistfully that is. As for how Square could move...
Square could redefine healers by fusing some of their button bloat, i.e useless heal skills that basically are just copy pasted and are similar to other skills in their tree. By fusing, the skills keep the effects and identity but rather than four skills you only need one or two to execute that job. Then Square could implement new skills that are unique and worth having for those slots. Perhaps even proper dps combos that could also give off healing when executed correctly. This would not only cut down button bloat but future proof the game for additional updates, as well as, lessen the grievance for healers that focus more on healing.
For scaling purposes, they could introduce this new identity for healers via traits. When scaled down, the healers would play similar to how they do now. When not scaled, some skills would gain copy-pastad effects and the previous skills slots would become entirely new skills altogether, preferably DPS centric. This would: simulate healer skill evolution rather than just potency, have healers keep consistent, and edge people into a more damage centric mindset. That is, how healers focus more on damage than healing in the later content. Ironically, this would also allow Square to not having to go back and rebalance prior content AND them to reconsider where healers stand in terms of end game. Although this makes too much sense and would never happen which is unfortunate.
I personally would also like to see pushes for random AI, so healing isn't as predictable, and sustainability from players, especially tanks, reduced. This would make it so healing would be more spontaneous and needed, and for healers to be required to y'know "heal". But that's only what I personally would like to see and not everyone would agree. Should it ever come to fruition that would be the day xD. -
10-06-2022, 05:43 PMHellebore_Ghrian
Healers are strip poker players on a permanent losing streak.
Pieces of their clothes are taken expansion after expansion until they become naked. -
10-06-2022, 10:09 PMLimonia
To me it feels like that there are just some classes/jobs that get defined as healer and put into the healer role so in random group content everyone knows which player is responsible for healing when it's needed. It doesn't matter if tanks and DPS can also heal. Of course they should use them, no question, but it's either integrated into their DPS kit, oGCD, or only for emergency situations. But the healers are the ones actively responsible for healing anything all the three roles can't do passively.
Healers have the most healing skills and their kit kind of resolves around it (yes, I know...). If they'd for some reason give DNC those healing skills you mentioned it would be placed in the healer role and lose most of its DPS kit. Or if all healers where like that - DPS with 3 low CD healing oGCDs - there wouldn't be anything different to 'normal' DPS just that you press an extra button every few seconds. They could just remove healers then instead of reworking them.
They're a mess and need a rework. I like to do DPS as a healer. But it would be boring if they were just DPS with 3 healing oGCDs. Both their DPS and healing aspect should be interesting and engaging. I'd also like it if the healer role would be more like a support role with different types of buffs, heals and DPS. -
10-07-2022, 02:18 AMRithy255
My problem with "defining healers" is that healers generally have a weird design in the game, They do pretty good damage for a "healer" role so a DPS such as Red Mage or dancer having a strong "healer" utility isn't really really a bad thing in my opinion?
Current Healer design (what defines them) generally has, a Simple one button rotation, Lots of OGCD heals, A GCD Heal with a Aoe counterpart, Giving a red mage a Aoe heal wouldn't really make it a "healer" but giving red mage a general healer kit would turn it into a functional healer, it becomes a problem when you can replace RDM with healers in hard content
I much rather have healers be a sort of spec option for general designs lets say "RDM/PLD/DNC" could theoretically spec into a Healer role with selectable abilities (that would generally hurt your dps), this would apply to other roles possibly having tanking specs or dps specs ect, I feel like allowing jobs to be more flexible instead of forced into a single category would be pretty fun, but I know it wouldn't really happen, because it would be too drastic from the rigid formula we got, I think the general rigid design really doesn't help a lot of jobs in Identity.
I like design that makes Jobs more flexible, Current red mage can't replace a healer in healing in hard content, i think it becomes a problem if it could (with current design anyway), I personally would like looser "roles" like "PLD has to be a tank" "RDM Has to be a DPS" "Sage has to be a healer" Obviously this would cause a lot of imbalance anyway so again it wouldn't happen I just wish it was less rigid then current. -
10-07-2022, 02:32 AMty_taurusI would argue that the ability to change your job takes the place of your ability to choose different specs within your class. A WoW class offers different paths to choose from, but in FFXIV, every job is available to you and that takes the place of your ability to spec. The issue is moreso that we're not taking advantage of that concept as effectively as we should be with the healers, and it's not just within the healer job design. Gear is shared between each healer, but what gear, and what materia each healer wants differs since each healer has a different preference for spell speed. As for kits, there are small strengths each healer does offer that give them minor advantages for certain fights and mechanics. AST has Macrocosmos and raid buffs, SCH has expedient and raid buffs, SGE has the largest amount of mitigation, including Panhaima, and WHM has the strongest burst window for damage contributions. It could definitely be more defined, and this doesn't take into consideration how gameplay feels, but I don't think each job having a fixed toolkit isn't a bad thing inandof itself.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rithy255
EDIT: I meant to say it isn't a bad thing inandof itself. -
10-07-2022, 03:00 AMRithy255I think jobs having a fixed tool kit in general is a bad thing personally, I understand your argument and we're at a point where it would be hard to even design one different spec for each job, I prefer more diversity and ways to play the game Instead of "1 job 1 way to play". Of course you can choose a different job but even then a lot of jobs in the same category pretty much play the same with minor differences at this point.Quote:
Originally Posted by ty_taurus
Healer design I feel like suffers the most from it, with no real major designs that "shake up" the healer role, I guess regens vs barriers are good, but that's why I liked how Astro could have the choice between two instead of being stuck as one type of healer, it gives jobs more breathing room for diversity, I generally think Healers haven't been well thought out for a long time
Casual Content healer design is laughable and I don't think healer design should purely be around only the hard content either, even adding some more incoming damage and maybe small rotations would generally help make healers feel a bit more different, they played sage so safely it pretty much shows they have no idea on how they would make a new unique healer have it's own niche (of course theirs differences but sage/sch are very borrowed, ast and white mage feel different enough from each other)
Obviously what I want from the game is going to be different from others and I don't expect people to agree, but I want design that is more flexible. -
10-07-2022, 03:16 AMty_taurusI think the concept of fixed vs specked toolkits is too broad of a concept to say that one is objectively a negative. It can definitely be a point of preference of course, but for me, I also feel like designing jobs with specs can also lead to one spec being objectively worse than the other and thus feeling like a punishment to those that chose the lesser option. That said I do think there is room for subtle choice to exist within healer kits. Diurnal vs Nocturnal in your example was fine. Nocturnal was largely inferior, but it was also something that was different rather than just being less damage, for example, so there were nuances that could give it an edge. Eos vs Selene as well is something that I think we should go back to. I think old Selene was always a bit problematic, but we can do something different with that in a more balanced way, such as choosing between more raw healing and defensive utility rather than offensive where the pressure to increase DPS contribution is too important in this game.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rithy255
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10-07-2022, 03:18 AMRisvertasashiHealers do crap damage and it's gone down, relative to other roles, as expansions have progressed onwards.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rithy255
It's still optimal to DPS because of the gross abundance of resources (time/MP/job-specific/etc), and because SE makes DPS checks so tight that - in high level content - it can still be difficult to impossible to beat the DPS check without the lowest damage people contributing.
And games designed like this often leads to the death of healers outside of specific bits of content that really need them.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rithy255
FF14 already doesn't need healers in dungeons and much other content. Take away the role requirement from the duty finder by allowing anyone with a "heal spec" to do it, and it's dead.
I think my "favorite" example of this was Secret World - wherein people would want you to take a heal spec for perhaps 1 of 5 fights in a dungeon, and just be pure DPS the rest of the time.
Now, the trend in MMOs overall is to delete healers, but, yeeeah, I don't want it here. We've gotten close enough as it is. -
10-07-2022, 03:44 AMRithy255Making heals more required in general casual content would fix that, even if you had "healer specs" you can balance it in a way that would hurt the general DPS of a role speccing into healer, I wouldn't expect a massive "skill tree" Potions from bozja like content are a decent example, you who sacrifice damage or tanking ability for healing output (you could even make heals tied to a certain hardline healer spec that would mean you'd have to have decreased damage no matter what, if you wanting healing ability, Obviously this would need a lot more work and would likely just be a pain to balance, but I personally enjoy a job being able to fulfil more then one role and only having one set way of playing.Quote:
Originally Posted by Risvertasashi
Right now Healers contribute around 50% of a DPS damage, which is massive compared to something like Wow or other games for a Job "Healer" Should healers, generally be more heal focused yes, that's their purpose in a game generally, that's a problem with fight design, Healers aren't in a good state, they need to either up the healing requirements or rework healers in general, the current design makes healers pretty useless in content that 99% of the playerbase is playing, The problem is when you make content where a certain role isn't required or makes it significantly harder to do without.
I think you're blaming poor game design choices that ruin the healer on any actual Idea or innovation on how healers could work (would be pretty hard to balance everything with the current direction of the game so it's only a dream for me), My idea to let more jobs have flexibility isn't really fleshed out because I know they will carry on the current design on healers, I don't think they would go into any actual options in the game because it would be harder to balance, I don't think it would ever be implemented and like I've said just because I enjoy diversity and more different ways to play a different job, doesn't mean you have to agree.
EDIT: also yes sometimes some specs are more "meta" then others but if you compare different jobs to others theirs also better meta picks, theirs always going to be a "optimal" and "suboptimal" way of playing any game, making everyjob the same isn't a good fix (every change right now has been fit jobs into burst jobs) I rather a clunky unbalanced game with options then a boring game where every job type plays the same. -
10-07-2022, 03:51 AMRisvertasashi
I mean I'm not saying there aren't design issues here.
But going down the spec route will inevitably result in "bring the minimum amount of healing necessary to clear, and maximum damage." And even if SE committed to reworking every dungeon and nerfing tanks on a scale that the game hasn't seen in its entire history, it will still be a pipe dream to expect every instance to require such an amount of healing that someone would go all in on a healing spec.
Heck, even in ultimates, people would be going "Well you don't really need this ability or that ability, you can cut it for more damage." We pretty much already get the FF14 version of that - figuring out where to cut healing for that extra damage GCD. -
10-07-2022, 04:06 AMRithy255Imagine if you could spec into two different sort of support abilites for exampleQuote:
Originally Posted by Risvertasashi
>Option A: Gives out a small party Barrier around the team and "X"% mitigation CD: 90
>Option B: Gives out a aoe heal For "X" Potency CD: 60
That's a choice that doesn't have to be tied to direct damage.
Lets have another example
Red Mage
Option 1: White Shift, Will grant you a lot of healing spells and a healing potency increase passive, maybe some choose able healing spells aswell
Option 2: Black Shift, Will grant you a lot of damage spells and a damage increase, Potency increase ect.
Shifts would be selectable like old role actions ect, it could really work given the effort
Theirs ways of balancing it Imo. -
10-07-2022, 05:28 AMRisvertasashi
In that scenario, they would always go for option A unless there was some really specific fight mechanic that just happened to be perfect for B. At least in high level play.
As for options 1 & 2. Well that would go to the Secret World example mentioned before. "White shift for this one boss that has higher healing requirements, black shift for everything else" or similar.
Divorcing specs from affecting damage would help. But I'm still pretty skeptical of it overall. -
10-07-2022, 05:48 AMRithy255Well you couldn't really heal in black shift (lets say black shift would give you current RDM without raise) do you think that would even be healable? vercure alone wouldn't make a lot of content healable (Obviously you could give it slight healing and support but only to the extension of current DPS Jobs),It really wouldn't be able to replace a really healer even in casual content, I guess casual with like a warrior tank could be? (War would be the healer?) but the point is one build would heavily lean into healing elements the other would lean into a DPS elementQuote:
Originally Posted by Risvertasashi
Warrior is generally a big problem with healer design in content like dugeons, I know people enjoy being op but it doesn't feel good as a healer, they also would in theory need to increase boss damage, as dugeon bosses don't even hit hard.
Stronger healing output vs mitigation and barriers both have their uses, that was a general example obviously they can have a strong heal to compete with a barrier/mit effect, hence me leaving out potencies in general, Obviously you need a certain degree of mitigation for fights but you also really want a certain amount of healing output, that's OCGD so you do have time for attacking spells, Would make bringing certain spells depending on gear and the fight more important.
Speccing different DPS stuff might be more harder I think theirs a few examples like you could give a job a "Dot" or a outright hard hitting move, but that would generally be harder to even balance. -
10-07-2022, 06:23 AMRenathrasAll this would do is replace healers in 4 mans with RDM, and in 8 mans replace a healer with RDM.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rithy255
We even see this with FFXI, which does allow this, where RDMs are often healers in small party content because they can heal well enough for the content while also doing more damage than the main healer Jobs. If you can't heal enough in White Shift, then there's no reason to be in White Shift - bring a healer to heal and stay in Black Shift the whole time. On the other hand, if you CAN heal well enough in White Shift you don't need a healer, then why would any party bring a healer when they can White Shift RDM it and get more damage? Not to mention RDM as healers would be amazing in FFXIV since they would be able to chain Raise, freeing up that "utility Raise" Caster slot for BLM. This would also make SMN useless in 8 man groups that had a RDM healer.
All the other would do is the theorycrafters would say which is better for a given fight and everyone would slot it. We had this in FFXIV in SB and there was always a "BiS" for the Role Abilities for each fight. WoW tends to even have this where there's always a "best Talent choices" for any given fight, though there's often an "here's a second set that doesn't math as high but is easier/safer to pull off".
The reason WoW got rid of the in-depth talent trees years ago is because they said it was an "illusion of choice" as most of the time, there was a right and wrong way, and if you weren't doing it the right way, you were bad. Some spects had a handful of points you could move around, but they were pretty insignificant, like Wrath Holy Paladin (healer) getting to pick between "Do I want to make Wisdom better or do I want to make Kings better?", and if you had more than one Paladin in your raid team, it was irrelevant anyway since one brought one and the other brought the other and that ended the debate.
EDIT: You say that White Shift RDM wouldn't be able to replace a healer in even 4 man content (other than with a WAR tank), so what would be the point of White Shift? Why would anyone ever use it? "I'm going to do less damage so I can provide a utility that the party doesn't need and which doesn't actually let us trade out a healer for more damage"? It's kind of like how PLD can absolutely heal with Clemency in 4 mans today. But...no one ("good") does because it's a DPS loss and you have healers healing instead. If Clemency could REPLACE healers, then it would be more valuable even at a DPS loss (the solo AST healing Ultimate had their PLD using Clemency quite a bit, but it was a DPS gain since they were able to sub out the second healer slot with another DPSer), but it isn't.
Likewise, if White Shift COULD replace a healer, then it would be valuable, but if it doesn't, then no one would use it. And if it COULD, they everyone would be replacing healers and you'd open that whole can of worms. :ENDEDIT
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Stuff like that works in more free-form MMOs like Everquest, but not in "polished" ones with well established theorycrafting communities like most modern MMOs.
NOTE: I say this as a person that LOVES that about old school MMOs. I would LOVE if that was viable in FFXIV. The problem is that FFXIV's combat system is too rigid and its theorycrafting community too entrenched (and too obsessed) for that to not be highly disruptive and destructive in FFXIV. -
10-07-2022, 07:34 AMty_taurusSomething you could more effectively do with the RDM example...Quote:
Originally Posted by Renathras
You could set up Black Shift and White Shift in a way where Black Shift offers Verblizzard and Verfoul, where Verfoul has a cooldown and requires a large quantity of MP, and you sprinkle in Verblizzard to give yourself an MP regen, or something along those lines where you get more damage, though not by too much, and White Shift offers Verwater and Verraise in place of Verblizzard and Verfoul, where Verwater can be used to deal damage and provide a soft regen on the party, and Verraise is self explanitory. It makes White Shift a great option for progging fights, and then once your party has made good progress, you can switch to Black Shift.
Maybe not this exact example, but White Shift and Black Shift could work with that kind of mentality--something that adds more utility to help learn fights, but can drop that to get a little stronger. RDM would still have tools like Magic Barrier and Embolden so it wouldn't be raised up to BLM levels or anything during Black Shift. -
10-07-2022, 08:08 AMRithy255(Quote Shortened for the purpose of reply)Quote:
Originally Posted by Renathras
You're completely missing the point.
>White Shift wouldn't replace healers, in theory it would be on the same level as other healers damage output and healing effectiveness. I don't know why I have to state this but oh well, Did you ignore the whole "black shift gives more spells and potency / White shift gives more healing potency and a lot of the healing spells (required to being a healer), did you assume white shift would do the same amount as damage as current RDM? Because that makes no sense, why would I want RDM to be ahead of healers as a healer?
The concept would need work but it would also possibly effect healer Jobs allowing them to also spec into damage builds or a different sort of healing build.
Current RDM doesn't work as a effective healer in 4 man dugeons, It might work well with a Tank to compliment them such as warrior or pld, but I can't imagine a Red Mage healing a dark knight through a 4 man dugeon without feeling like garbage, it would also ruin any sort of damage output that the red mage has, healers can DPS while healing RDM in it's current state can't, if you think current design has problems where healers don't feel useful enough. I agree, abilites such as Blood whetting in it's current form (only in dugeons) really don't take healers into account, the damage output is a joke, there needs to be changes in general in "casual content" Verraise could also be tweaked in ways that make it so RDM couldn't spam it (as a healer)
Talent trees with support options and stuff, yes a lot of fights might have a "optimal" skill depending on the fight but Ideally all skills would perform well and learning what would work best in a certain encounter would make it fine.
The goal wouldn't be to Replace healer, it would be like adding in a new healer, Of course right now the way healers are designed with very meh rotations, you'd either have to simplify it or give healers something a bit more.
Also this was just a example of how RDM could in theory spec into a healer build or a DPS build, It's not meant to be a in depth, I also don't think it should be something added in current ff14, I personally would love the idea of being able to adapt class skills into fitting more roles in game, Problem is the games so rigid and design is so different you'd have to rework a lot of things from the ground up, which yeah the devs wouldn't do, they've stepped away from even small selectable like role actions, I don't think any of this is even realistic -
10-07-2022, 09:22 AMRenathrasI guess my issue is that if RDM provides SOME healing, but not ENOUGH healing, then why bring the heal spec instead of the damage spec?Quote:
Originally Posted by Rithy255
Which makes more sense to bring, a RDM that does 10% less damage but offers about 10% of the HPS of a healer (thus being unable to replace a healer) or a RDM that does 10% more damage but adds no healing?
It has to either do ENOUGH healing to make the damage loss worthwhile, or the damage spec will always be seen as better. If it doesn't do that much healing, then the DPS spec is always better. And if it DOES do enough healing, then it causes issues with healers. -
10-07-2022, 10:49 AMRithy255You think current rdm vercure/magick barrier would be enough as a damage spec, would outright replace healer? then that's a problem with current design of healers. That's what I would generally give it, possible to add more but you'd need to be careful for reasons you have stated, you don't want a RDM in a DPS build to replace or be good enough that it can act as a healerQuote:
Originally Posted by Renathras
The healing Spec would
1. add healing trait abilities and healing spells, so basically what healers currently have.
2. add a general healing buff to
The Damage spec would
1. Add a strong magical damage potency (To generally make it on par with other dps)
2. Some damaging spells, mainly strong burst options.
Imagine a sort of skill tree where you can go into two directions one being a (healer) orientated abilities this would include healing potency biists, the other would be (DPS) orientated abilities, this would Include damaging potency passives
a Red mage using the "Black Shift" would not have most healing spells (likely just vercure/magick barrier) while a white shift RDM, would have generally weak potency spells and lack some of the real bursty ones (to the point where it's dps would be the same as your average healer), White shift RDM.
I'm mainly using Red Mage as a baseline as it already has "healing" abilities it's easier to imagine RDM as a healer, but this could apply to tanks giving up defensives ect. PLD would trade in it's Hp, stance ect. But retain some of it's rotational and baseline abilities and be more adapt at healing.
Like I said this would be pretty difficult and unrealistic to balance. But yeah I do think hypothetically it could work? It just would never be implemented into current ff14, the current design is super rigid and wouldn't allow for choice expression and difference specs, having to balance 2 specs per job (with optional stuff inside those specs) would be very tremendous to balance, it wouldn't likely be "good" for the game unless they manage to actually balance it well, which again is a high task, I just like the idea of Jobs being more flexible and having different builds, (Crazy I would enjoy something that not everyone else would).
EDIT: Strictly for arguments sake you couldn't use any abilities or passives of "White Shift" while you are using the "Black shift" action (vise versa), think of it like selectable role actions, you choose white shift and have access to a lot of Red mage healing traits (you couldn't change mid duty) -
10-07-2022, 03:24 PMRenathras
The irony is, as I said before, I would actually like a system where you COULD just go healer on RDM like you can on BLU. Your icon goes green, you que green, and you have healing actions set. When RDM was first released as "a healer that uses White Magic to cure allies and has Black Magic to attack enemies", I seriously thought "So like WHM, just with Stone and Aero replaced with Fire and Thunder?" Given FFXIV's focus of healers as somewhat hybrids that are damage dealing casters + healing spells, RDM as a healer would actually have fit FFXIV's healing model at the time, SB, pretty well. Before healing shifted to being almost entirely oGCDs, anyway.
I'm more just saying the idea to switch - unless it's an actual full on switch like that - won't work in FFXIV, or really in very many modern MMOs. If a RDM could go White Shift and ACTUALLY fill a healer slot AS A HEALER (that is, for the entire instance run, you're in the healer slot and healing the party and doing so as a healer, not a hybrid dpser), that could actually work.
But if it's just "some abilities do some splash healing", it wouldn't work outside of solo content like PotD or some Eureka/Bozja type content that allows for more flexibility. So it would need to be a complete shift. While qued as White Shift, you're in White Shift the whole instance and you're a healer, not a DPSer.
Kind of like SCH shifting to SMN or SMN shifting to SCH.
And honestly, RDM's damage kit I like okay, so making a "healer version" of that with less steps would honestly be kind of cool.
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EDIT because of post limit:
Basically, yeah. Thing is, it's not a terrible concept. Most old school MMOs had hybrids that could heal in small man content and COULD heal in higher end content but usually went DPS. While that has issues of its own, considering how FFXIV groups like pushing "one healer" clears, it would actually work into the meta more here where people WOULD want to try these healer specs out if they're at least passingly viable in high end content. As long as they are treated AS A HEALER (as opposed to replacing/crowding out healers), I think it would be fine conceptually...Quote:
Originally Posted by Icecylee
I don't think it would work in practice because of a "this is why we can't have nice things", but the concept is still interesting to me.
Imagine if you go "healer spec" on RDM and lose Verfire/stone/scorch/thenewone but instead got Vermedica, Vercure2, and all your healing spells generate White Mana? (Probably some other changes like Fletche and Contre turned into something like Tetra and Assize, but keeping it simple for the sake of discussion)
Now you'd have a Job that is healer focused and has single and party heals and mitigation (Magick Barrier) and party buff (Embolden) where your gameplay is Jolt - Verthunder - Jolt - Veraero, and you can replace the Jolts/Veraeros with Vercure, Verucure2, or Vermedica to adapt to party needs and it would give you White Mana to help keep your DPS rotation moving forward. You then go into your melee combo in a simplified form since it just ends with Holy/Flare, and the rotation can be set up where casting heals doesn't break the combo. AOE would be Impact -> Veraero2/thunder2 (I know it works the other way in live RDM but I hate that, darnit! :p No, seriously, I hate that the AOE rotation feels "backwards" from the single target, that kinda thing sets my OCD off... XD), where again you could use heals and get White Mana from doing so. If Mana imbalance is a concern, they could just give both (like Jolt/Impact do), then go into an Enchanted Moulin spam before capping it off with a Holy/Flare.
A more engaging damage kit, a slim but effective healing kit, and where the healing kit doesn't interfere with your damage kit AND healing contributes to damage via Mana generation.
I feel like that would be fun to a lot of people kind of like how GNB as a "tank that plays like a DPS" is fun to a lot of people. -
10-07-2022, 07:39 PMIcecylee
Honestly at that point it sounds like you're just describing the class/job system as initializally envisioned, but uh... we never got more than ACN -> SMN or SCH, and, well, we've all seen how that got built off of. (it didn't, and also, they've been doing everything in their power to scrub it out. Wouldn't be surprise if 7.0 finally completely removed SCH from ACN tbh).
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10-08-2022, 01:24 AMRithy255Problem also would be healer rotations are non existent in the current game, I wouldn't want a "in theory" healer rdm to press one button and a dot.Quote:
Originally Posted by Renathras
You could easily make "simple" rotations or procs to give healers a lil bit more to do, I generally just don't think healer design is well thought out, I'd really love to play healer as a "second main" as it sounds fun I enjoy tanking generally because you play a more support role that has to focus on other things then rotation, but the rotations are also decent enough that It feels interesting to play.
Healers I wish had more in this game, even if they want to stick with one button spam they need to up the healing requirements in dugeons, normal raids and just general casual content, this also has the postive to train a healer players mentality for savage, as current savage vs normal healer is completely different. (obviously savage is meant to be super duper hard but normal content should help teach the basics, all casual content teaches about you healing in raids is throw in a few ogcd heals, keep dpsing). -
10-08-2022, 11:38 PMAnxin
Perhaps we ought to look at how healers could work within the mechanics-based system we have. For example, white mage could create a stone encasement that would absorb a ground-based AOE hit or even cast "Float" to make an AOE mechanic miss. AST could roll back time on an AOE hit or even, if we want to get overpowered, even roll back the boss's mechanics script a step or increase the cast time for the mechanic. Sage could disrupt the next script step. Scholar could use the fairy to pester the boss to make the next AOE hit itself instead of casting. Healers may prove to be more interesting if they could influence the script mechanics directly. Perhaps the a shield that halves the next aoe damage at the cost of dps output for the player it is cast upon. The balance could come at a cost to dps output in some way or maybe the next attack by the enemy will have 2x damage. There's a lot SE could do beyond the standard healing and buffing methods.
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10-09-2022, 01:30 AMT-OwlWouldn't that just lead back towards tactics in which partys let certain dps, back in the day I think it was BLM, ignore mechanics to fish for higher dps output?Quote:
Originally Posted by Anxin
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10-09-2022, 08:20 PMRecon1o6
Healers are the same way they've been since the start
Primary role: clear the encounter by damaging the boss and keeping the party alive through unavoidable damage
Secondary role: heal the party through avoidable damage and res the dead.
You cannot clear any msq duty without doing dps. Nor can you do it as a healer if you let your comrades kick the bucket. SE won't give us the echo so we have to heal ourselves. -
10-09-2022, 10:57 PMHysterior
1. Change the name "Healer" to "Support" so it doesn't give the impression that you are just healing (because at this point we all cast more DPS skills than healing ones)
2. Improve our DPS "rotation" or at least skill variety so we are more similar to tanks (A proper DPS rotation to follow but some actions linked to our role on top)
Make it happen in 7.0. Thanks! -
10-10-2022, 06:18 AMRisvertasashi
Just thought this comment from the recent live stream might be of interest to the discussion here:
Quote:
Q2: For this Savage, there seems to be a serious lack of healer participation going on. My question here to you is: Are you aware of the reason and is there something you will reflect on, and if any are there plans to address this issue (that is within the means and intention of the dev team), and if there is, may I know the plan to address the issue?
YoshiP: (Super long paused followed by a long "hmmm") Things to reflect on......things to reflect on? Well for one I did read something written on Matome (Summary) sites, something about "Green skin"※......Hmmmm? (another long pause) ...n...nothing much I can say about that... But we also experience situations where there is a serious lack of tank participation and this seems to depend on the timing and situation...(another long pause) If I have to make a comment about it, I think the reason would be because it's a high difficulty content, and there are other factors which contributed to this issue....well, this is hard to answer...I mean there's also the request we got from players that asks us to create more situations that require healers to heal, and among other things that is asked of us...(another long pause) So in this case, due to certain circumstances and certain "wall" which caused deviations (biases?) to occur, and this is definitely a thing after operating this game for a long while, but as for the state of healers right now, I think it's just an extremely......I mean this simply is due to the healer population in general as well as the population of raiders participating in this tier...but if I have to say anything on this matter what I am able to say at this point is "please give healers a try", and that's what I want to convey, since this is a game where you are allowed to handle multiple roles, and when you try playing a completely different role you'll definitely find something interesting through that experience....hmmm...well we will need to observe the situation a little more...yeah.
※ - A meme referring to "actually a DPS job in a healer skin"
Q7: This is a question regarding the fourth floor of Savage (P8S), the Savage content, which includes the DPS check required, is definitely a challenging content, the healing check for the second half of this battle was really tight and compared to Dragonsong Reprise (DSR), I feel that there are certain parts in the second half of the battle contains healing check that is required which is comparable to what Ultimate would require, personally I welcome the increase in healing intensity but it causes the parties to be lack of healers when it comes to PF recruitment (be it progging or weekly clears) so I wonder what is your thoughts and opinion on the matter?
YoshiP: Ok I mean as I said before (and this happened before), if I give an answer to one question, it won't work on the other one (for some reason). Ok, we are told that (healers) are free, which is why healers tend to focus on firepower instead, and we should give healers more situations where they need to heal, and we increased the healing work required here...well I mean for the entire expansion and we did it but as expected this happens....so what are we supposed to do now hahaha...oh god if any I should be the one trying to discuss with you guys here. Aaaaaaahhh I mean yeah I knew this will definitely happen (long sigh). Well I mean I thought we've achieved quite a good balance here....(long ponder), Well yeah I mean if I have to start decreasing the difficulty and I'll get comments that it's too lax (laughs). Well I will need data...either way we did indeed increase the intensity for sure, although this was the balance that was asked of us......I mean this is personal disparity, yeah, there are healers who are completely fine with this tuning, and there are other healers who would go "this is too hard I can't do this".
Yeah I apologize but please allow us to continue ponder on this matter and find out what is best and this is what we can do here.
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10-10-2022, 08:32 AMAnxinPerhaps, but this would require the DPS and the healers to coordinate again. People always fish for higher dps output; that is, after all, part of the puzzle of encounters. I can also see healers griefing parties by disrupting the boss's script in ways to get "lols". However, I just wanted to point out that there is a lot more SE could do beyond the current range of thinking without changing their encounter design philosophy. Namely, introduce control-skills that have impact. That said, I believe that philosophy is part of the problem.Quote:
Originally Posted by T-Owl