Just one additional Damage Spell could do a lot - Mushrooms and WHMs

Yo, this is intended to be constructive and I welcome your feedback, peepz.

Currently White Mages have four Damage Spells (GCDs): Glare III, Holy III, Dia and Afflatus Misery.

I would add just one more Spell to their arsenal in total and change and rearrange how sh*t plays by a little to end up with what could be a more fun and interesting gameplay experience, especially for casual players who want to enjoy themselves in dungeons and solo instances.

Here's a setup that I thought I would share:

https://i.imgur.com/SXSDqq0.jpg

All you would need to do is add a mushroom gauge to track your mushrooms with the latest mushroom replacing the oldest in case you overcap. Also a Shine indicator in the same gauge.

I think it's super easy to understand and it could provide more fun during the leveling process. The number of spells is still very limited and the rotation is super flexible in terms of which of the two spells you need for shrooming you use first. Way less involved than any tank rota certainly!

Plus it allows you to seamlessly blend in Healing spells into your rota which currently are just a dps loss. You have to be smart tho to reap the greatest reward!

This also allows for interesting abilities and effects, like one which grants you an additional white mushroom the next time you get a red Mushroom or something like that.

Not going to happen. Gotta concede on it. Cause every time they create new tools and it doesn’t come to pass. Ppl go harder on the paint, it just end up hurting oneself.

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Originally Posted by Osmond

Not going to happen. Gotta concede on it. Cause every time they create new tools and it doesn’t come to pass. Ppl go harder on the paint, it just end up hurting oneself.

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I don't really understand what that means, but I enjoy thinking about the potential that healers have in my opinion regarless of whether it's realistic or not ^,^

What I care more about is whether the idea even makes sense or seems fun at all.

Why is it always Mushroom?

But hole.

Thematically, I think I'd replace the red/white/black mushrooms with earth/wind/water <something> to better fit the lore that's already part of the CNJ class quests.

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Originally Posted by AmiableApkallu

Thematically, I think I'd replace the red/white/black mushrooms with earth/wind/water <something> to better fit the lore that's already part of the CNJ class quests.

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Thanks for the feedback!

I wanted the earth, wind and water elements to be reflected in the spells themselves, so Headstone as the final spell in the "Stone" line, Gust for the "Aero" line and Geyser for the "Aqua" line.* The mushrooms are intended to reflect the three oldest and most foundational colors in human culture, red, black and white.

But I think you are right, mushrooms are cool but the WHM aesthetic is very beautiful and mushrooms are ugly. So let's replace Red Mushrooms with Peonies, White Mushrooms with Apricots and black Mushrooms with Violets!



*the reason why I didn't go for the classic "Quake" or "Tornado" is because they seem too destructive for a White Mage and also seem like they should require more buildup for the amount of impact they should have.

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Originally Posted by Eisi

I don't really understand what that means, but I enjoy thinking about the potential that healers have in my opinion regarless of whether it's realistic or not ^,^

What I care more about is whether the idea even makes sense or seems fun at all.

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You can have all the opinions you want. Just don’t get your hopes up, only to be in either disappointment or frustration. I do the same, but I also want think what the devs are thinking when they set the healers the way that they are.

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Originally Posted by Osmond

You can have all the opinions you want. Just don’t get your hopes up, only to be in either disappointment or frustration. I do the same, but I also want think what the devs are thinking when they set the healers the way that they are.

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I understand and I don't get my hopes up. Regarding this I wanna say the following:

I understand the reasons why the devs decided to design the healers in the way they currently are as opposed to how they used to be. I also think healers are currently the most boring role in PvE and that they actively repel players because they are so lame in accessible content. They also repel players naturally by virtue of being responsible for other players, which a lot of people either don't like per se or are frightened of. I believe the number 1 way to improve healer numbers is to make healers more fun and exciting so that there is something that an anxious person could look forward to that is worth overcoming their own fear.

I believe there is a lot of potential with healers that doesn't lie in the past, but in unexplored territory.

There is only one spell I would bring back from the grave which is of course Miasma :3 I think Scholars enjoy timers. I got rid of the Dot on WHM because I don't think WHMs are people who particularly enjoy tracking timers the same way.

It’s not impossible. They can bring back miasma, but it won’t call it that. I more than likely see them consolidate the dot dmg onto energy drain since it’s lacking a bit. Yet at the same time I don’t want to see more dmg tools onto SCH cause I can slowly see what they are trying to do…….more than likely I’ll be wrong. Playing the job mainly, pretty much conceded that I want it to be more support focused. Just give another stat buff tool for the party instead. Give it a new identity when back then it was a mini smn with just dots, but shield healing, not go back to where it used to be and the reason why they abandoned it in the first place.

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Originally Posted by Osmond

It’s not impossible. They can bring back miasma, but it won’t call it that. I more than likely see them consolidate the dot dmg onto energy drain since it’s lacking a bit. Yet at the same time I don’t want to see more dmg tools onto SCH cause I can slowly see what they are trying to do…….more than likely I’ll be wrong. Playing the job mainly, pretty much conceded that I want it to be more support focused. Just give another stat buff tool for the party instead. Give it a new identity when back then it was a mini smn with just dots, but shield healing, not go back to where it used to be and the reason why they abandoned it in the first place.

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I think Scholar can be DoT focused without going back to the past. Current and past Astro is support focused and I think that is the niche it should retain. I think the future of healer design should be in GCD variety, damage neutral heals and a reduced emphasis on OGCD healing tools, certainly for White Mage.

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Originally Posted by Eisi

I think Scholar can be DoT focused without going back to the past. Current and past Astro is support focused and I think that is the niche it should retain. I think the future of healer design should be in GCD variety, damage neutral heals and a reduced emphasis on OGCD healing tools, certainly for White Mage.

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Nah, they’re not going to go back to that hence DoTs are slowly being removed overtime. They going to just stick to 1 job getting 1 DoT and that’s it. It’s why I can see them applying a DoT to energy drain, but they seem set on sticking to 1 DoT for the future.

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Originally Posted by Osmond

Nah, they’re not going to go back to that hence DoTs are slowly being removed overtime. They going to just stick to 1 job getting 1 DoT and that’s it. It’s why I can see them applying a DoT to energy drain, but they seem set on sticking to 1 DoT for the future.

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I'm not saying it's what they are going to do, I'm sharing my own opinion.

I think some jobs should not have dots and I think Scholar should have two, but in a different form from what we know. Would need to make a graphic about that.

They can do it, it won’t be a new action though. I’ll be an existing one, but the base potency will be nerfed to compensate. Don’t need any more bloat for the job.

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Originally Posted by Osmond

They can do it, it won’t be a new action though. I’ll be an existing one, but the base potency will be nerfed to compensate. Don’t need any more bloat for the job.

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What bloat? Compared to other classes I have 6 extra hotbar spaces as WHM that are just empty. If there's any bloat, they can start by consolidating some of the extraneous healing crap we don't use much anymore. Like cure1/2 merge, medica/medica2 merge, stuff like that

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

What bloat? Compared to other classes I have 6 extra hotbar spaces as WHM that are just empty. If there's any bloat, they can start by consolidating some of the extraneous healing crap we don't use much anymore. Like cure1/2 merge, medica/medica2 merge, stuff like that

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Ok, then let’s go back to 3-5 full hot bars of madness….

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Originally Posted by Osmond

Ok, then let’s go back to 3-5 full hot bars of madness….

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Oh give me a break.

3-5 full hotbars? Really? If you have to resort to mindless hyperbole to try and make a point, maybe it's time to get a better point?

From a quick glance at my old UIs: Stormblood WHM was 3 hotbars with 7 gaps. HW AST was 3 bars with 3 spare slots

How are you getting 4 or 5 bars? Are you counting HW SCH's two fairies as 2 complete additional bars? You realise you could use hotbar swap macros alongside your summoning to mix both Eos and Selene into your regular bars allowing you to hide and never touch the pet bar itself ever again.

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

Oh give me a break.

3-5 full hotbars? Really? If you have to resort to mindless hyperbole to try and make a point, maybe it's time to get a better point?

From a quick glance at my old UIs: Stormblood WHM was 3 hotbars with 7 gaps. HW AST was 3 bars with 3 spare slots

How are you getting 4 or 5 bars? Are you counting HW SCH's two fairies as 2 complete additional bars? You realise you could use hotbar swap macros alongside your summoning to mix both Eos and Selene into your regular bars allowing you to hide and never touch the pet bar itself ever again.

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/facepalm, my goodness you fall for that…

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Originally Posted by Osmond

/facepalm, my goodness you fall for that…

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And what am I falling for exactly?

I'm not sure if you've noticed, but the flipflop hyperbole argument sees a lot of use on these boards.

Please attack my idea.

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Originally Posted by Eisi

Please attack my idea.

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Nah, no reason for that. “Attack” becomes meaningless after constant uses. It’s just feeling at some point. I understood the idea, it’s just not going to happen. All I can see them doing for 7.0 is another mitigation or big healing tool for SCH since their path for the game is the decline to abolishment of DoTs.

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Originally Posted by Osmond

Nah, no reason for that. “Attack” becomes meaningless after constant uses. It’s just feeling at some point. I understood the idea, it’s just not going to happen. All I can see them doing for 7.0 is another mitigation or big healing tool for SCH since their path for the game is the decline to abolishment of DoTs.

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I don't care!

I care about whether the idea has any merit or not and what could be improved! It's just for fun, not a 'Square Enix has to do this' type of deal. And I meant the idea in the OP btw, I have no real clue what to do with Scholar yet.

It'd be an improvement on Glarespamming for sure. I'd want more eventually, since this boils down to a trio of 1-2-3 combos, which...I guess the melee DPS enjoy them, but I don't consider them ultimately engaging gameplay. The debuff that makes heals not cost damage is cool though.

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Originally Posted by Eisi

I don't care!

I care about whether the idea has any merit or not and what could be improved! It's just for fun, not a 'Square Enix has to do this' type of deal. And I meant the idea in the OP btw, I have no real clue what to do with Scholar yet.

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Well, since it’s WHM……I don’t see them adding another dmg spell. I do agree with the other user in the OP is the consolation of cure 1 into 2 make sense. I do see them adding a new ability that gives WHM free 3 lillies for a misery so no waiting to proc 3 Aff. for it. ……………….,……….I take that back, they may add another dmg spell at max lvl for 7.0. A Xenoglosy-like version for WHM for single target, oGCD perhaps.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

It'd be an improvement on Glarespamming for sure. I'd want more eventually, since this boils down to a trio of 1-2-3 combos, which...I guess the melee DPS enjoy them, but I don't consider them ultimately engaging gameplay. The debuff that makes heals not cost damage is cool though.

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I wanted them to not be 1-2-3 combos. You can either 1-2-3 or 2-1-3 and then 1-4-3 or 4-1-3 and every 1 can also be replaced by a healing GCD. For multitarget it would be 2-4-3 or 4-2-3. The variety in cast times - instant for maximum movement, 1.5 seconds for possible weaving and 2.5 seconds as full-commitment casts - are to spice things up and let you have fun with it. Melees don't have cast times!

You can also blend in lily heals and there is no combo interruptions or anything. I wanted it to be something for healers, not melee enjoyers, meaning there's enough room for you to keep track of incoming damage and health status of your party. Which I guess the mushroom system can be read as an extremely simplified ranged and cast masterful blitz, but not really, there's no perfect balance ogcd required, it's only two shrooms, the skills are all equal in damage for single target fights so there is no priority and even if you got the wrong mushroom, you can immediately correct that.

I'm glad you like it, I wanna GCD heal not as a sort of last resort, but just like that, I think it's weird how the game disincentivizes GCD healing. The heals themselves I would also have a look at though, to make them more interesting. I think there is some design space left with gcds that isn't annoying but actually cool like for example I would have Cure III be a placed GCD ability, aka you press it, the gcd gets triggered and you are fueled with healing energy and you get an area indicator to place something as an ogcd immediately after (basically GCD Cure III turns into OGCD Cure III) and everyone within the placed circle gets healed instantly. That way you don't need to select any targets and it still fulfills the role of Cure III. I don't know how something like that would work in action tho but I think it could be super fun.

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Originally Posted by Eisi

I think it's weird how the game disincentivizes GCD healing.

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Hm. I think one of the...well not INtractable, but close enough that it would require lots and lots of reworking, problems with the game disincentivizing GCD healing is that it's ubiquitous. Healing is binary; you've either done enough of it or you haven't, and so healers are often measured on how well they do with the non-binary, pseudo-infinitely scaling part of their activity, i.e. their damage. And FFXIV's free oGCD healing model paves the road for lossless healing. I guess what I'm saying is, it's not just that GCD healing is disincentivized. It's that it's so disincentivized that you'd need to create lots and lots and lots of incentives for it to dig the role out of that hole. The whole role has so much free healing that if, for example, you were to redesign one healer to have DPS loss healing squashed in between damage GCDs (hello pre-Shadowbringers WHM), that healer...well it just sucks. Healers that can do their jobs without losing any damage are going to be flat out superior in basically every scenario. You'd need to bake it into the entire role for it to work, and FFXIV hasn't worked that way since arguably ARR Scholar.

Further to Semi's point, remember that recently Sebazy tried doing an EX roulette with just GCD healing sources as WHM and still got a 94 on damage. I'd estimate that, to make 'GCD healing incentivized/needed' you'd have to remove EVERY OGCD we currently have, and ALSO reduce every AOE GCD heal's effectiveness by roughly 30%. And who would be up for a change that says 'oh yeh btw, we made it so that Cure3 is now 400p, Rapture is back down to 300, and now you don't have Bene, Tetra, Asylum, Benison, and Assize is just damage'. You'd get to keep Aquaveil and Temperance though, I guess since they're mitigations rather than heal/shield

It's such an insane level of overhaul required to get 'just increase how much we have to heal' to actually work as a design choice

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

Healers that can do their jobs without losing any damage are going to be flat out superior in basically every scenario. You'd need to bake it into the entire role for it to work, and FFXIV hasn't worked that way since arguably ARR Scholar.

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That's exactly what I would go for, dps-lossless GCD healing but not infinitely, you still have to heal smart, if you have to heal more than your budget allows, you lose damage.

There's a bit of if in the game already, it's not much tho, but the lily heals, Macrocosm and Pneuma all work like that. Unfortunately Pneuma is on a two minute cooldown and Macrocosm on an astronomical three minute cooldown, those are too much. Also since Rapture and Solace share the same limited resource but Rapture has more raw healing power, Solace becomes a waste.

In my view there's lots of room for design with the healers to make them a lot more fun or what I'd personally consider fun. Having a baseline spell like Broil whose damage you can simply copy onto other effects and spells to make them neutral is I think a great anchor how to design healers with more interesting GCD to GCD action. Single target healing or mitigation being basically locked behind quick target swaps within a less than .5 second window is ironically what I believe makes healers a lot more difficult under the current paradigm.

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

Further to Semi's point, remember that recently Sebazy tried doing an EX roulette with just GCD healing sources as WHM and still got a 94 on damage. I'd estimate that, to make 'GCD healing incentivized/needed' you'd have to remove EVERY OGCD we currently have, and ALSO reduce every AOE GCD heal's effectiveness by roughly 30%.

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It doesn't need to be needed it just needs to not be a dps loss up to a certain point.

I would make it so and then check how players react. Will they still only ogcd heal or will they organically switch things up just because they can? What is more fun to them? Then I would dial back on the OGCDs if players enjoy GCD healing in a damage neutral fashion.

Fun is really the most important part, if players can optimize the fun out of the experience, they will. So you wanna make fun optimal.