Any support utility ideas other than heal & shields?

There has been talk that we don't want to see just another heal and shield skill because we have so many of those already. Personally, another ability with only a combination of healing, shielding, and mitigation is getting not particularly exciting or fun when we have plenty of those already. Assuming we can disregard balance, what kind of support utility ideas that you want a healer to have instead?

redistribution - like pain split in pokemon. Take the healthy health from someone who's mostly fine and give it to someone who's critically injured

just having different SHAPES of AOE heal would be the most basic step for this game, and we can't even get that. Pneuma could have been a line aoe like it's damage half is, but nope, everything has to be a circle around player, 15y. no cone aoe heal, no line aoe heal, no 'target this point on the floor' outside of persistent ground aoes like Soil and Asylum.

Aside from that, the 'mechanic' i'd want to see is a healer that restores it's job gauge by doing damage, then spends it on healing skills, to force people to do damage as the healer and stop their ridiculous 'healers should only heal' rubbish. necromancer could have been the healer that used that (steal life-energy from enemy, redirect it to ally) but we got RPR instead. Alternatively, rework Sage to have more focus on 'heal by doing damage' instead of 'heal by pressing reskins of SCH skills'

Reactive Healing - Healing that restores a portion of all damage taken.

Delayed Healing - Healing that is delivered after a set duration or gets stronger the longer you wait to activate it.

Drain Healing - Healing based on a percentage of damage dealt to enemies.

Field Effect Healing - Healing effects that trigger when standing within specific player-generated AoE fields.

We have individual examples of these, but they could very well be the staple way that a new healer provides recovery, rather than falling back on regen and barrier healing.

There's an ocean of great stuff out there that's completely off the table because of the way Square has settled into an encounter design pattern: the less the player can interact with the fight the better. There is exactly one "correct" solution to every problem laid before you. This solution is (nearly) always some combination of movement and positioning. That's it. An encounter with gaze attacks where a support could cleverly blind their allies to hamper their view of the battlefield but immunize them from a nasty attack? Unthinkable. A boss that summons an add that needs to be put to sleep to keep it from killing the off tank with its strong attacks? No way. A hard CC that works on anything, but also puts a huge regen on its victim so you have to be selective when you use it? Heresy. You could Reflect enemy spells. Use Float to make your party immune to ground effects. Using Raise to instakill undead would be entirely within the Final Fantasy standard. Teleport weaker enemies out of combat in exchange for no reward. Zombify tanks to make them take damage from heals but immune to killing spells. Provide luck buffs. Enthrall weaker enemies into attacking each other.

None of the above works in FF14 because those things fly in the face of solving mechanics via moving and standing in the safe spot. Stacking and spreading. Light parties. Moving to the safe spot. Finding the uptime safe spot. In or out. An AOE that hits one half of the room, then the other. Clock positions. People make megathreads bitching about Rescue one of the tamest, least fight-intrusive abilities that can assist allies within the approved "positioning only" paradigm, so it's not like Square doesn't get feedback that the current flavorless gruel is A Good Thing, Actually. Fluid Aura was ground to dust under the heel of this design direction.

Heals, shields, and DPS+ abilities are what we're down to because that's all you get when fights -must- be solved via burning a boss down while moving and positioning, no further interaction allowed.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

just having different SHAPES of AOE heal would be the most basic step for this game, and we can't even get that. Pneuma could have been a line aoe like it's damage half is, but nope, everything has to be a circle around player, 15y. no cone aoe heal, no line aoe heal, no 'target this point on the floor' outside of persistent ground aoes like Soil and Asylum.

---

This would be a terrible idea

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by FireMage

This would be a terrible idea

---

And why would that be? If the fight design supports it I see no reason why some healing couldn't have more restrictive conditions in exchange for higher output. Claiming that everything needs to be a circle with X radius is just creatively bankrupt.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Absurdity

And why would that be? If the fight design supports it I see no reason why some healing couldn't have more restrictive conditions in exchange for higher output. Claiming that everything needs to be a circle with X radius is just creatively bankrupt.

---

If you can't immediately see the problems with a certain type of AOE heal range beyond proximity that's on you, not ne

As stated above, there's very little they could do to make healing interesting that wouldn't involve altering encounter design.
Honestly the easiest thing they could do is make the damage rotation more engaging..... But that ain't healing.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Hazama999

As stated above, there's very little they could do to make healing interesting that wouldn't involve altering encounter design.
Honestly the easiest thing they could do is make the damage rotation more engaging..... But that ain't healing.

---

Yep. The best I can think of aside from changing fight design for unique utility tools is job interplay, which already existed through resource buffs but SE decided to nuke that stuff instead of revamping it.
The most interesting utility tool we have that isn't a heal or a damage buff is Expedient. Unless we get something that teleports people, I think that's about the best we're getting with current fight and job design.

Defensive :

Debuffs that works on bosses ? blind, slow, paralyze, pacif.

It kind of is shielding/mitig, but a targeted (or small AoE) invuln could be nice, and I guess would feel nice when used at the right time.

AoE esuna
Erase, spell that can remove debuffs esuna can't ?
Addle/Feint
Silence
rescue-ga

for trash : AoE toad/kappa/pea/etc

Offensive :

Stackable vuln up (single debuff for all healers)

reverse Addle/Feint

Haste

Direction removal (make target a "plain circle")

That's mostly taking things that are already in the game and keeping it at "Utility".

Well, disregarding balance and brokenness, we could have spells that manipulate encounter scripts. For example:

1. Cause the next AOE attack to delay its cast.
2. Cause all AOE damage the party takes to reflect back onto the boss.
3. Heal for a percentage of the damage the player takes for standing in an AOE.
4. Speed up the boss's script in return for decreasing the boss's damage output.
5. Reset the boss's script to the beginning at the cost of increasing the boss's damage output.
6. Do away with all scripts at the cost of the boss ignoring aggro mechanics and increasing damage on single-targets.
7. Each time an enchanted party member dies to an instant death mechanic, the current HP of the party member damages the boss.
8. Zombify the target so healing magic can damage it. This would allow enemies to be targetable by healing spells.

Classic Final Fantasy spells that could be included:

Slow, Pain, Osmose/Rasp (so that MP-based attacks fail), Drain, Reflect, Thorns, Discord (halving attributes), Revenge, Temper, Quick, Haste, Doom, Death

Of course, these skills would need a major cost to them because of their power, but if SE insists on keeping scripted designs without allowing for proper control skills, allowing us to exploit the script at a cost could be interesting.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Semirhage

Use Float to make your party immune to ground effects

---

Astro using Gravity or White mage using Aero to make the party float sounds amazing

Uneralted but on a similar note of flavor to healers, if the "tactic" healer, Scholar, could draw lines or markers in the floor (during combat), it would be really fun to use in teaching parties. But I can already imagine people using 3rd party tools to abuse the tool

Dps.

It's support (helps kill the boss faster), almost always useful, can be flashy and engaging. It's really a no-brainer yet we'll continue to dance around it forever and try to figure out compromises to please the stubborn devs we pay money to.

If the devs think trimming the useless buttons and replacing them with a handful of interesting damage buttons will explode poor Sylphie's brains, there's no way they're going to give us interesting forms of other utility, buffs, debuffs and so on either. Unless it's useless so new players aren't required to use it. And I really don't want more pointless fluff filler.

Just trim the rubbish, add more interesting dps buttons, make things hit a bit harder. It's so obvious and straightforward.

seconding DPS, it's the only thing anyone in this game actually cares about. With how reluctant to include 'esuna-able debuff' as a mechanic the devs are, I cannot see any chance of even something as simple as 'boss buffs itself, use Dispel to remove it'. If that can't get through, nothing can, so the only thing left is damage. But as Liam says, we're not going to get damage. Why, because players who 'more damage buttons' does not even affect, complain very loudly at every opportunity that they 'picked healer to heal', all the while conveniently ignoring that the most 'challenging content' they do is capping their tomes in EX roulette, content that has been proven to be so light on healing requirements, it does not require a healer.

Devs, please. Two camps of Healers have been telling you how to 'get people to play healers more' for 3 years now, one camp saying "by adding back some damage buttons, and some nuance to the damage rotation", the other saying "make us heal more, have bosses do more damage". You've had your crack at 'what if more healing is what they need' with this tier, and not only has it almost killed PF on multiple DCs, it also hasn't made the daily EX roulette interesting, quite the opposite. Instead of throwing in the towel and saying 'well we listened and it didnt work, time to go back to Asphodelos level healing so Savage is snoozefest too', please can we try the 'add more damage complexity' way?

I say this with all seriousness: it cannot possibly have a worse effect on the healer population than the 'add more healing required' experiment this tier did. Anyone who claims it'd kill the role harder than this tier did is doing such incredible mental gymnastics, they should try out for the Olympics.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XNJGY9B7VW4&t=712s

This guy has great ideas and he’s slept on se should incorporate some of them or just hire a dedicated dev for healers especially since they don’t play healers

Classic FF skills that Yoshi-P and the Dev's "can't seem to work right into ffxiv" (paraphrasing)


Protect: Medium length CD (60-90s) giving short term Physical Damage mitigation to group

Shell: Medium length CD (60-90s) giving short term Magic Damage mitigation to group



Bravery: Short CD (30-60) giving short term physical DPS gain to single member

Faith: Short CD (30-60) giving short term Magic DPS gain to single member


You can mix these up between the regen and shield healers to incentivize playing different jobs

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Semirhage

There's an ocean of great stuff out there that's completely off the table because of the way Square has settled into an encounter design pattern: the less the player can interact with the fight the better. There is exactly one "correct" solution to every problem laid before you. This solution is (nearly) always some combination of movement and positioning. That's it. An encounter with gaze attacks where a support could cleverly blind their allies to hamper their view of the battlefield but immunize them from a nasty attack? Unthinkable. A boss that summons an add that needs to be put to sleep to keep it from killing the off tank with its strong attacks? No way. A hard CC that works on anything, but also puts a huge regen on its victim so you have to be selective when you use it? Heresy. You could Reflect enemy spells. Use Float to make your party immune to ground effects. Using Raise to instakill undead would be entirely within the Final Fantasy standard. Teleport weaker enemies out of combat in exchange for no reward. Zombify tanks to make them take damage from heals but immune to killing spells. Provide luck buffs. Enthrall weaker enemies into attacking each other.

None of the above works in FF14 because those things fly in the face of solving mechanics via moving and standing in the safe spot. Stacking and spreading. Light parties. Moving to the safe spot. Finding the uptime safe spot. In or out. An AOE that hits one half of the room, then the other. Clock positions. People make megathreads bitching about Rescue one of the tamest, least fight-intrusive abilities that can assist allies within the approved "positioning only" paradigm, so it's not like Square doesn't get feedback that the current flavorless gruel is A Good Thing, Actually. Fluid Aura was ground to dust under the heel of this design direction.

Heals, shields, and DPS+ abilities are what we're down to because that's all you get when fights -must- be solved via burning a boss down while moving and positioning, no further interaction allowed.

---

While I don't disagree. It goes beyond them simply not wanting to do anything else except positional. The devs don't want any singular job to be prioritized. Take that Zomebie idea you cited. It fits perfectly on Necromancer and no other job except maaaybe Black Mage if we really stretch. The problem is that means for this one fight, you pretty much have to bring Necromancer/Black Mage or the fight becomes harder. Now you could say that's the solution: bring those jobs or you have to deal with the tanks taking substantially more damage. Unfortunately, we all know what would happen. Parties will force them because the healers don't want to deal with excessive healing. We even saw an example of this in P3S and Death's Toll. PF started locking Astro due to Macrocosmos invalidating the mechanic. The irony is it wasn't the high end raid community who cared but the more casual raiders. Which is precisely who SE appeals to.

This is just one example but I guarantee it's their thought process. And I hate to admit it, they wouldn't be entirely wrong for having it. Any form of support or crowd control needs to be universally available on one role. Which does limit the creativity to some degree. I do think they should invest more in that direction but we'll never see job specific things.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

While I don't disagree. It goes beyond them simply not wanting to do anything else except positional. The devs don't want any singular job to be prioritized. Take that Zomebie idea you cited. It fits perfectly on Necromancer and no other job except maaaybe Black Mage if we really stretch. The problem is that means for this one fight, you pretty much have to bring Necromancer/Black Mage or the fight becomes harder. Now you could say that's the solution: bring those jobs or you have to deal with the tanks taking substantially more damage. Unfortunately, we all know what would happen. Parties will force them because the healers don't want to deal with excessive healing. We even saw an example of this in P3S and Death's Toll. PF started locking Astro due to Macrocosmos invalidating the mechanic. The irony is it wasn't the high end raid community who cared but the more casual raiders. Which is precisely who SE appeals to.

This is just one example but I guarantee it's their thought process. And I hate to admit it, they wouldn't be entirely wrong for having it. Any form of support or crowd control needs to be universally available on one role. Which does limit the creativity to some degree. I do think they should invest more in that direction but we'll never see job specific things.

---

I think one of FF14's biggest design failures is exactly this mindset they operate by. The pussyfooting around and refusing to take any stances on anything, trying to please everyone and nobody at the same time. Other MMOs, through accident or design, have no seeming problem with designing fights that favor specific jobs or party compositions. They just rotate around which kits are more useful in different places, disappointing everyone equally. The thing is, FF14 has the design to support this more than those other MMOs- you can be every job on one character! You aren't forced to make a bunch of alts in the hope that some fight will favor your class someday. You could just swap to one of your other leveled jobs with a little gear and you're good to go. The problem with putting this in FF14 is twofold: A. they want every single comp to be equally viable for every single piece of content, which means all kits need to be watered down to a bland melange of baseline functionality with an occasional pinch of flavor thrown in, and B. as I must keep beating the WHM drum, this is CBU3. If they were to swap to an "everyone gets a fight that caters to them" model, we know how that goes. The other three healers are good at everything and will be not only perfectly capable of clearing, but will be better than WHM at it no matter what they design into the encounter because they can't seem to understand that variety means everyone is good at something useful, not "the other three healers are good at everything and WHM is just objectively worse than them on every single metric".

What I'd ultimately like to see the healer balance look like:

- SGE: No buffs/No heavy utility. Very high personal damage--the BLM of the healers. Would reach tank levels of DPS and would still outperform buff healers, but has not utility other than good mitigation to carry them.
- WHM: Determination buff, strongest raise utility and/or party float buff--makes the party ignore puddle mechanics for 15 seconds. Weakest party buff, but highest personal damage of the 3 buff healers.
- SCH: Critical Hit buff (Chain Stratagem), combat sprint utility. second strongest party buff and second strongest personal damage of the 3 buff healers.
- AST: Raw attack buff (Divination), Macrocosmos--can invalidate certain heal checks. Strongest party buffs, lowest personal damage.

Gameplay:

- SGE: DPS rotation on the same level of complexity as GNB. Fast-paced and modestly complex. The healer that plays like a DPS.
- WHM: DPS rotation around the level of complexity as DRK, but slow-paced with low APM. More methodical like a BLM lite. Simple at a glance, but room to optimize.
- SCH: DPS rotation around the level of complexity as PLD. DoT focused with some light complexity, but easier to understand at a glance.
- AST: DPS rotation around the level of complexity as WAR. Simple, but also can filter their DPS through other party members on the GCD through a straightforward buff-focused rotation, allowing them to have a more passive playstyle to appeal to players who want a support-oriented healer to have something that functions in FFXIV.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

We even saw an example of this in P3S and Death's Toll. PF started locking Astro due to Macrocosmos invalidating the mechanic. The irony is it wasn't the high end raid community who cared but the more casual raiders. Which is precisely who SE appeals to.

---

Funnily enough it was exactly the opposite for us. We had to pug a 2nd healer every week and Astros in party finder were, to be frank, not very good. The kind that does an octaweave every burst window, manages to misalign raid buffs immediately, do bad dps and somehow still manage to be less effective at healing the party than our Sage.

So we gladly took a WHM pug over an AST pug for P3S every time because it could completely invalidate a mechanic just like AST, the bell made a mockery out of Fountain of Fire, and the usually better dps allowed us to simply skip Death's Toll.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Absurdity

Funnily enough it was exactly the opposite for us. We had to pug a 2nd healer every week and Astros in party finder were, to be frank, not very good. The kind that does an octaweave every burst window, manages to misalign raid buffs immediately, do bad dps and somehow still manage to be less effective at healing the party than our Sage. .

---

You gave a great example of why AST are one of the most demanding healers to play. It's intricate as F* and if not played optimally in what is essentially mid core / upper midcore content, is shelved for a different job.

People need to start accepting that a clear is a clear and just be happy for that.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Deceptus

People need to start accepting that a clear is a clear and just be happy for that.

---

Nooo we can't take a MCH for my P5S weekly run, it's baaaad! Never mind the fact there were week 1 clears of P8S (pre-nerf) that included a MCH, and that we are 20-30 ILVL over the recommendation for P5S, I'm going to lock out a class because I heard it's trash from [internet place]! /s

People need to learn that if they want to meta-slave that hard, they need to stick to logruns where that meta actually matters, because at this point you could probably clear P5S with one of the healers going full curebot

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Deceptus

You gave a great example of why AST are one of the most demanding healers to play. It's intricate as F* and if not played optimally in what is essentially mid core / upper midcore content, is shelved for a different job.

People need to start accepting that a clear is a clear and just be happy for that.

---

Oh, I never claimed otherwise. It is overly demanding for the average pug healer and really only a benefit at the high end.
I simply gave an example of our group not wanting an AST for that fight despite it being the meta job for P3S.

Here's some basic ideas that are probably unbalanced, unrealistic and would need to be further developed to work in this game (idk if those could even be considered as a utility):
-Skill range manipulation would be interesting to see (insead of huge hitboxes maybe)
-Healing radius increasing skills
-Self-preservation buttons/traits/whatever to allow people to make some mistakes and not wipe everyone maybe (self reraise, taking damage to mp instead of hp if it kills you, healer invuln lol, etc)
-Reset your own/your party's cds (once jobs are inevitably butchered yet again)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Latandris

Here's some basic ideas that are probably unbalanced, unrealistic and would need to be further developed to work in this game (idk if those could even be considered as a utility):
-Skill range manipulation would be interesting to see (insead of huge hitboxes maybe)
-Healing radius increasing skills
-Self-preservation buttons/traits/whatever to allow people to make some mistakes and not wipe everyone maybe (self reraise, taking damage to mp instead of hp if it kills you, healer invuln lol, etc)
-Reset your own/your party's cds (once jobs are inevitably butchered yet again)

---

The problem with some of those suggestions is inconsistency. For example, we used to have AST have the ability to reduce cooldowns, but it was seen as a throw-away card because it had to be used before a cooldown went off, and nowerdays it'd be seen as annoying for throwing off rotations. Here are the types of things we have to work with:

1. Damage - Ultimately, you can always sacrifice a job's access to utility for a notable bump up in damage.
2. Instant Raise - Having access to instant raises is a very strong form of utility that is not just good for prog, but also great for most reclear parties since most parties are going to make mistakes during tricky mechanics. There are many examples of mechanics where the healers could easily die, or half the party can wipe if one player makes a mistake, and getting everyone back up quickly can save a run. Famine's Harvest is one such mechanic that comes to mind.
3. Combat Sprint - As Expedient has shown, combat sprint can significantly increase a party's margin of error for many different types of position-focused mechanics.
4. Mitigation - Mitigation is something that's become essential for unavoidable damage in raids at this point, and all healers need to have a baseline amount of mitigation, but you could always add more than that to add more utility to a job.
5. Esuna - Being able to apply Esuna to the party and/or have OGCD Esuna could theoretically be a very helpful form of utility if the combat designers could remember that Esuna exists. As it stands, it's basically worthless, but the tools are there to make Esuna something that actually matters in the future.
6. MP restoration - Something that used to be a solid form of utility but has been erased over the years, both in the mechanics being gutted from every job that could, but also in the fact that healer MP management has become automatic. There is no decision-making involved, you just naturally restore your MP at preset rates as a consequence of performing actions. That said, this can always change in a future expansion, and even if it doesn't, helping a revived healer get back on their feet does still hold some value, even if not much.
7. Mechanic-specific utility - We could also introduce new forms of utility built to counter specific reoccurring mechanics in some capacity. For example, I made the suggestion of adding float, which is something Semihrage mentioned as well, which could allow your party to ignore floor mechanics like puddles. Perhaps in a fight like P2S, it would let you run across the water without eating the DoT, for example, allowing certain mechanics like Limit Cut to be significantly easier to position for.

Playing a certain other game has made me realise there's a lot of things that could be done on the 'fight design' side of things too. Purgeable buffs on enemies needing Dispel (a healer role action maybe?), more reliance on cleansable debuffs on allies (last time we had a mechanic in a raid that needed Esuna was E8S iirc), interrupts oh lord the frequency interrupts are needed, but one that stood out to me was yesterday, when I did one of the raidbosses. Healing Absorbs. That is, an 'anti-shield' on allies, which has to be HPS-pumped to remove. Any damage to that ally goes through like normal, any healing instead reduces the anti-shield. This would mean, for example, if someone got a 100% healing absorb on them, and then they were slapped from full health to 1hp (conveniently), Macrocosmos would not heal them to full. It'd only remove 50% of the healing absorb. It wouldn't have to be 100% though that's quite a lot, but even things like 25% would mean throwing out an extra something onto people, at least more than the standard 'oh there goes a raidwide, time to press PI Rapture again'. It'd also be one of the few times a WHM would be better than an AST, as Benediction would completely heal their HP and also remove the full absorb. Lastly, it's the PERFECT mechanic to throw at the 'I play healer to heal!' players. Well, up to the point where it turns out they actually can't keep up with the HPS required and it kills someone, because they don't 'play healer to heal', they 'play healer to get an easy ride through content'

edit: some bosses in 'other game' apply a shield to themselves, and keep pulsing increasing raidwide damage until that shield is broken. Perhaps having a certain role have a role skill (or just use Dispel for it) that does bonus damage to shields, maybe Casters, this would allow for bosses to be designed to have a 'mini DPS phase'. Like Diabolos in Dun Scaith has that barrier at the start, where he's also guaranteed to crit. Imagine if he pulsed raidwide damage that ramped in potency, or his autoattacks got stronger over time necessitating tankswaps, etc (assuming it was a Savage encounter to justify the complexity)

Rescue based healer, except you can target where you want someone to move instead of only pulling them to you.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

or his autoattacks got stronger over time necessitating tankswaps, etc (assuming it was a Savage encounter to justify the complexity)

---

That is another mechanic that was apparently completely abandoned. We had bosses that actually applied a stacking debuff to tanks, dealing increased damage with every stack until it became lethal. But when was the last time SE used it, Alexander?

It would be nice to get movement support as a healer so far aside from sprint sage is the only healer with a movement skill. Scholar has there level 90 but its basically just another sprint. A dash for all the healers would be nice. A cool one would be to give a support ability thats something like fury bound from FF7 where the healer can restore 1 party members longest cooldown actions, you would probably need to put it on a long cooldown itself or make it a complex side mechanic to get though to balance it out.

A teleporter could be a pretty good situational skill.

A support role skill I can see working:

1. Reduce the duration of Brink of Death/Weakness debuff, or temporarily nullify the effects with a second buff for a duration (synergizes with recovery for burst meta DPS, or for needing more healing power after dying on the healer's end). This separates the difference of raise utility between other roles and healers better. Other roles can raise allies, but only healers can effectively reduce the impact that comes with coming back from dying.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kele_Star

It would be nice to get movement support as a healer so far aside from sprint sage is the only healer with a movement skill. Scholar has there level 90 but its basically just another sprint. A dash for all the healers would be nice. A cool one would be to give a support ability thats something like fury bound from FF7 where the healer can restore 1 party members longest cooldown actions, you would probably need to put it on a long cooldown itself or make it a complex side mechanic to get though to balance it out.

---

I was spitballing an idea for a AST card rework that included one of the cards being 'you get to use a gauge spender for free, even if it's on CD' effect to give to a DPS, like a DRG gets a free Stardiver, or a NIN gets a free Trick Attack, or such. Very hard to balance, but it'd be funny to see a meme run of a 24man or something with, say, a GNB and 7 ASTs feeding that card to him, so he can Blasting Zone constantly

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by AnotherPerson

A support role skill I can see working:

1. Reduce the duration of Brink of Death/Weakness debuff, or temporarily nullify the effects with a second buff for a duration (synergizes with recovery for burst meta DPS, or for needing more healing power after dying on the healer's end). This separates the difference of raise utility between other roles and healers better. Other roles can raise allies, but only healers can effectively reduce the impact that comes with coming back from dying.

---

Last time this was suggested, it was as 'what if WHM had this advantage over other healers' and it was shot down instantly because 'this doesn't help with damage in fully optimized speedruns, once everyone's learned the fight 110%'. Though I am guilty of similar ideas, I thought back in SHB 'what if we make Bene a role action, and give WHM something super strong to compensate' and the thing I came up with was 'res, but without weakness'. It's a very WHM thing in older games, isn't it, to be 'very good at raising dead allies'. Life, FullLife, Auto-Life, etc. Oh well, as long as SE insists on keeping it as the 'babbys first healer' I guess it's kinda inevitable we gravitate towards that kind of idea. 'Do damage' is kinda hard to come up with fresh ideas for, especially on healer, and doubly so on 'healer that isnt allowed a raidbuff because that's AST identity!'

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

Last time this was suggested, it was as 'what if WHM had this advantage over other healers' and it was shot down instantly because 'this doesn't help with damage in fully optimized speedruns, once everyone's learned the fight 110%'. Though I am guilty of similar ideas, I thought back in SHB 'what if we make Bene a role action, and give WHM something super strong to compensate' and the thing I came up with was 'res, but without weakness'. It's a very WHM thing in older games, isn't it, to be 'very good at raising dead allies'. Life, FullLife, Auto-Life, etc. Oh well, as long as SE insists on keeping it as the 'babbys first healer' I guess it's kinda inevitable we gravitate towards that kind of idea. 'Do damage' is kinda hard to come up with fresh ideas for, especially on healer, and doubly so on 'healer that isnt allowed a raidbuff because that's AST identity!'

---

Which is why I suggested temporarily removing ress debuff for a role action - all healers will get this skill. We have Esuna for crying out loud, and Esuna can be directly merged into Cure 1 / Physick / Diagnosis / Benefic with nothing of value lost since every job has it. Giving every healer the ability to reduce ress weakness is not a loss. It's a gain for prog and a gain for recovery. Just because it doesn't help with damage in fully optimized speedruns, doesn't mean speedruns are the only content that exists in the game and everyone plays perfectly in every piece of content. It's not a gamechanger, but it's something that can see more use than Esuna within the current system. This also isn't a ress - which highlights a key difference in its utility. Just because someone else raised someone, it doesn't mean you are unable to help alleviate some of that ress debuff. For balance sake, I would assume the debuff isn't removed, just temporarily nullified until this buff skill wears off. Additionally, to prevent overlapping of this skill by 2 healers, it can just extend the total time of the stat nullification buff.

Assuming I'm reading this right... As for WHM-specific skills and why this skill would be shot down, I think that's because you're trying to take benediction away from WHM, which has different implications to this story entirely. Benediction is one of those key identity skills (big heal regardless of stats) that WHM posses. By changing it into a role action for another action, you also reduced WHM's innate healing power and increased the healing to other healer jobs (thereby weakening WHM's healing output in relation to the other healers). If you want to add something into WHM to give it an advantage over the other healers, it would have to be an additional hotbar skill that they don't have to lose a skill for. To be honest, WHM lacks skills in general, so it's not particularly a bad thing to give it another skill.


For stuff that isn't a direct raidbuff but can serve as utility and speedruns, SE have to open the possibility for allowing mistakes that normally cannot happen as a separate skill since WHM's gimmick is all about super powerful healing ability (cause you know, support utility is meant to alter the way you handle mechanics). Dunno how well that would work when they're quite adamant on not allowing support utility on fight design though.. seeing how they nerfed SCH's expedient. :/ But here's an idea in its rudimentary state:

A skill that allows a positioning placement that can increase melee DPS if it was possible (bigger boss hitboxes are a mistake and I will probably die on this hill). SCH has mitigation and movement speed for all party members. What if WHM has uptime and increased maximum survival for one party member? We can think of something along the lines of The Heroes' Gauntlet stack markers. WHM can target a party member, summon a rock (aetheric construct) on the party member, and the rock applies something like PLD Cover to the party member. 50% of the damage the party member takes is moved to the rock (debuffs caused by regular hits and aoe like vulnerability up and damage down are fully transferred over to allow this to work), but the rock has its own HP bar (scaled by WHM stats), so it can also be used as a stack marker & healed. If the rock is still alive by the end of the skill duration, reduce this skill's cooldown by [x] seconds. You can use it to save an ally from cleaves, you can use it for single target multi-hit attacks, you can use it for tankbuster stacks, and you can use it to substitute a party member for smaller stack markers. That being said, if you use it for heavy hitting mechanics to undo a mistake, the cooldown for its next use becomes longer because the rock will definitely die before the duration expires, but it can also lead to different ways to approach the fight with a WHM over AST's card buffs because this is both uptime utility and simultaneously doubles as a big external HP bar skill but for only one ally. The mitigation is powerful, but it also isn't available as an AoE skill so its purpose is more focused.

Though that may be pushing support utility too much, but I put it out here cause we're just trying to think of any support utility for healers at all.

I think the best "support" outside of healing, Mit, shields would be buffing, Astrologian I feel like does this better then scholar as raid wide buffs generally require no thought other then pressing it, but with a single target DPS buff you need to put in many factors on who to give that card to (beyond just melee vs ranged, depending on card), Scholars speed boost is a great example of Support that feels good for the entire party as well.

I think theirs only so much things you can do with "support" in FF14's current game design, the main way to make healers more intresting right now is give them procs or a few more buttons to press or something, I just want to feel interactive when playing healer not falling asleep, I generally enjoy "supporting the party" but I'll just go play Tank if I wanna support and also have a fun rotation

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Tehmon

A teleporter could be a pretty good situational skill.

---

I was thinking this when I first read Rescue's tooltip couple of years ago.

It would also be nice if I can use Rescue against enemies, too. To yank in that stray caster probably. Urianger can do this to Ran'jit in CS -.- Lemme do it too.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by AnotherPerson

Stuff about WHM and Bene

---

I probably should have mentioned, that at the time I thought 'hey what if Bene was a role action', it was when Living Dead was trash horrible to heal as anything that wasn't WHM. Now it's 'fixed' (though not in the way I'd have done it), the need for Bene to be role-skill'd is gone. Besides, you're right, the amount of stuff WHM has had removed and given back as roleskills over the years is obscene. Adding Bene to the pile wouldn't help at all I guess. I like your idea of a rock-friend, a lot actually, not just for 'it helps with stack markers' but also you could use it as a pseudo-waymark. Throw it down for, eg, Poly-whatsit Sigmoid, the one where there's 2 safespots and 2 stack markers, and not only are you helping mitigate the stack, you're also able to show your team 'hey this is the safespot!'

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Rithy255

I think the best "support" outside of healing, Mit, shields would be buffing, Astrologian I feel like does this better then scholar as raid wide buffs generally require no thought other then pressing it, but with a single target DPS buff you need to put in many factors on who to give that card to (beyond just melee vs ranged, depending on card), Scholars speed boost is a great example of Support that feels good for the entire party as well.

---

We need the playerbase to realise that 'buffs allies' is not as much of an 'identity' as they think it is, before that can happen. Yeh, AST's been about 'buff allies' since its release, but if WHM got a way to buff allies like Bravery or Faith or whatever, some people would complain that it's 'infringing on AST identity', not realizing that Mug, Embolden, Brotherhood, Arcane Circle, Radiant Coda, Technical Step all have the same effect at the end of the day: make allies do more damage for 20s. The amount of % increase might be slightly different, or the difference might be 'oh this one's a debuff on an enemy, the others are buff on ally', but at the end of the day, they're very similar effect buffs. And nobody went on the warpath about how RPR was infringing on MNK identity for having '2min buff, with side effect of 'ally attacks help build you up to big hit'.

We can differentiate WHM vs AST if both had a buff, based on many factors, just like with the DPS classes. How long the buff lasts, how often you're using them, how strong the buff is vs how much damage comes from your spam-nuke spell, what the buff even DOES (what if WHM had DHit version of Chain Strat, would SCH players complain about identity?), etc. 'Other MMO' has their healers all bringing different buffs, Priest has +10% HP for 1 hour (press it before pull and forget about it) and Power infusion, a 2min singletarget 20% haste buff to juice one specific friend and pad their logs, Paladin has 3% damage reduction aura (can be increased to 15% temporarily with a 3min CD), Druid has a 1h 3% Vers (our version: Determination) buff, Shaman has... Whatever totems they have, not massively familiar with retail Shaman (in Wrath they had stuff like Spell Haste, Melee Haste, bonus STR/AGI, Damage reduction, Movespeed, 10min CD ones that would summon powerful allied adds to punch enemies with you, etc), Monk is suffering and lost it's buff a while back (used to have a 1h Mastery buff), and the new class Evoker has a 1h 'reduce CD of mobility skills by 15%', so Heroic Leap on Warrior, or Roll on Monk. Don't think anyone was complaining when it was announced that Evoker would have a 1h buff like the other healers.

The point isn't necessarily 'we need to have all these various buffs', as most of them wouldn't be compatible with this game, or would be instalocked slots. If only one class brought +10% VIT buff, either the damage is tuned around having it, which makes the fight unclearable without that class, or it's tuned around NOT having it, in which case you would never need to shield, as the bonus VIT would be 'the shield', and you could get away with 2 regen healers. Actually 'any comp of healers is functional, even in week 1' sounds kinda cool, maybe that's a bad example to use

The way Astrologian "buffs allies" (obviously outside your raid wide buff) is more active and fun then any other Job who presses one button and forgets about it.

Theirs a clear difference between Melee DPS "push out one raid wide buff" vs "Actively choosing a target with each card, targets can change also depending on what card" that's why it's a big reason it's apart of Astros identity, while it's not the old days astro, I think it's actually quite a nice thing astro still has going for it that feels really unique to the job.

The kind of support utility I’d like to see:

SCH getting more enemy debuffs, like Libra increasing damage taken by [whatever]% to complement Chain Stratagem, something like Eye for an Eye that deals x potency when struck, maybe Virus as a DoT spell with additional effect that either overwrites Biolysis or has a very short duration (idk something balanced lol). I’d love to see the Fairy get more buffs too; I always loved the concept of Scholars having naturally weaker healing but buffing the party with the fairy to compensate for that. I’d love to see a physical defense variation of Fey Illumination, maybe with an additional effect like increasing shield potency on party members instead of healing spell potency. They could even give it to Selene to make her a distinct entity again lol. Maybe Fey Wind could return but Hastes are problematic to say the least; maybe like a flat 3% damage buff or something lol. As an aside, as an XI player I think it’d be cool to have Kaustra and Embrava as throwback spells. Kaustra could be a high potency DoT with base damage that procs from Recitation, whilst Embrava could act as a regen with an additional damage buff attached (resource restoration isn’t really a thing in ffxiv so can’t really use that as inspiration lol) available during Dissipation or Chain Stratagem

For Astrologian, I’d love to see the return of the card duration manipulation abilities like Time Dilation or the old version of Celestial Opposition. I also really liked the skill Retrogradation from HW PvP, which reduced the buff duration from all enemies and reduced duration of all negative effects on party members (at least I think that’s what it did lol). Though that wouldn’t really work for current content design unfortunately, since there isn’t anything it would affect lol. More varied card buffs of course, too. Like maybe Astrologian could get a second ‘Draw’ ability, (maybe a ‘Reverse Draw’ or w/e) that’s defensive and varied as a counterpart to standard draw being the same effect for every card. Like Bole could do damage shield, Ewer increases HP restored, Balance increases defense by [something]%, etc

I play Sage and White Mage much less (WHM isn’t even level 90 yet lol) so I can only give a vague idea for those jobs.
Sage naturally I could see having more offensive utility that synergises with its (supposed) ‘dps healer’ style.

As for White Mage, literally anything would be nice lol. White Mages traditionally do have a lot of support magic associated with them though - Protect, Shell, Reflect, Berserk, Haste (again, problematic but still lol), so there’s definitely plenty for them to draw on

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Semirhage

There's an ocean of great stuff out there that's completely off the table because of the way Square has settled into an encounter design pattern: the less the player can interact with the fight the better. There is exactly one "correct" solution to every problem laid before you. This solution is (nearly) always some combination of movement and positioning. That's it. An encounter with gaze attacks where a support could cleverly blind their allies to hamper their view of the battlefield but immunize them from a nasty attack? Unthinkable. A boss that summons an add that needs to be put to sleep to keep it from killing the off tank with its strong attacks? No way. A hard CC that works on anything, but also puts a huge regen on its victim so you have to be selective when you use it? Heresy. You could Reflect enemy spells. Use Float to make your party immune to ground effects. Using Raise to instakill undead would be entirely within the Final Fantasy standard. Teleport weaker enemies out of combat in exchange for no reward. Zombify tanks to make them take damage from heals but immune to killing spells. Provide luck buffs. Enthrall weaker enemies into attacking each other.

None of the above works in FF14 because those things fly in the face of solving mechanics via moving and standing in the safe spot. Stacking and spreading. Light parties. Moving to the safe spot. Finding the uptime safe spot. In or out. An AOE that hits one half of the room, then the other. Clock positions. People make megathreads bitching about Rescue one of the tamest, least fight-intrusive abilities that can assist allies within the approved "positioning only" paradigm, so it's not like Square doesn't get feedback that the current flavorless gruel is A Good Thing, Actually. Fluid Aura was ground to dust under the heel of this design direction.

Heals, shields, and DPS+ abilities are what we're down to because that's all you get when fights -must- be solved via burning a boss down while moving and positioning, no further interaction allowed.

---

But why did they settle on this? Why do the devs slavishly stick to this? MMO is a living breathing ongoing thing and should be able to grow and change... right? Why won't they grown and change and add different types of encounters?