Genshin's Bond of Life Mechanic

In Genshin Impact, we've recently been introduced to a new region in Fontaine, the France-inspired nation that represents the Hydro element--water. While the region is still pretty new, one of the qualities of new characters and weapons from this region is a lot more involvement with the process of losing and gaining HP. One of these new mechanics is called a "Bond of Life."

The Bond of Life is a effect that prevents the character from recovering HP by creating this sort of 'empty space' that must be healed to full before that character can be healed again. Here's a visual to help explain the mechanic:

https://i.imgur.com/FR3BtHT.jpg

EDIT: I just came across someone on Reddit who described the mechanic very aptly. They described it as "HP Debt." You accrue a debt of HP that must be healed through before the character can be healed again.

You can see that in the left image, there is a red outline around the character's HP bar. When trying to heal, a portion of that red outline is "filled" in the right image. Now, this sounds like a bad status condition, but it's also being used to the player's advantage. You see, some of the new weapons will actually inflict a Bond of Life on the user based on their Max HP and grant special benefits once the Bond of Life has been filled. The characters from this region generally have built-in ways to recover their own HP, but in general, this also adds more value to the healers in the game who can accelerate filling these Bonds of Life. Here are some examples:

https://i.imgur.com/nPYXM3Y.jpg

Presumably, future characters from this region may also apply a Bond of Life to themselves, or other weapons might use this mechanic as well, and it's something quite interesting. But the reason why I bring this up is because I wonder if this is a concept that could also adapt to FFXIV to help give more reasons to heal the party.

Imagine if Warrior, for example, instead of just healing themselves, also created a Bond of Life that, when healed up, grants them bonus Beast Gauge. Or maybe it Dark Knight does this and their Bond of Life restores their MP. Or Reaper does this during their Enshroud and filling it extends the duration of their Enshroud window, or grants them additional charges on their Death Gauge. As long as the UI is very clear and strongly indicates when a player has this Bond of Life, I think it could do a lot in the way of creating more reasons to heal without necessarily increasing outgoing damage frequency. While that's still something I'd want to see anyway, I just say that because it's possible to see a lot more use of healing by creating reasons to heal these HP debts even when no one is taking damage.

Anyone have any thoughts on this?

How would you have it interact with galvanise/catalyse - it sounds like the same concept but in the other direction, so cancelling out or instantly fulfilling the bond could work there?

Similarly would it proc excog or nah? Being able to instantly proc whatever effect sounds like a pretty cool interaction.

A downside would be that it might incentivise and reward medica2 spammers.

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Originally Posted by fulminating

How would you have it interact with galvanise/catalyse - it sounds like the same concept but in the other direction, so cancelling out or instantly fulfilling the bond could work there?

Similarly would it proc excog or nah? Being able to instantly proc whatever effect sounds like a pretty cool interaction.

A downside would be that it might incentivise and reward medica2 spammers.

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You can have a barrier in Genshin as well. The barrier would protect your actual HP while you try and fill the Bond. Since we generate barriers through healing, I imagine the HP recovered would go toward the Bond, but the barrier would be applied independently and still protect you. It wouldn't proc Excog because as you can see in the example image, the bond is not actually a part of your HP. Your character still has full HP while the Bond exists.

As for Medica II... there isn't any more or less incentive to spamming Medica II since you ultimately lose out on a portion of your regen. Though I imagine if you fill the Bond with a regen, the remaining duration will go toward healing the target's actual HP.

IMO it'd be a super neat addition for more casual content for sure. Gives us something to feed all the excessive oGCDs into.

The only pain point for me is how it would potentially collide with the 2 minute meta's emphasis on stuffing every buff possible into the window coupled with SE's love of ensuring there's some kind of mechanic lined up right with said 2 minute window. On one side, we managed before with Blood for Blood, but on the other side, it could start being problematic if we get 'Top to 100% or Doom' style mechanics in these windows.

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

IMO it'd be a super neat addition for more casual content for sure. Gives us something to feed all the excessive oGCDs into.

The only pain point for me is how it would potentially collide with the 2 minute meta's emphasis on stuffing every buff possible into the window coupled with SE's love of ensuring there's some kind of mechanic lined up right with said 2 minute window. On one side, we managed before with Blood for Blood, but on the other side, it could start being problematic if we get 'Top to 100% or Doom' style mechanics in these windows.

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I mean, I don't like talking as if the 2 minute meta will never or cannot ever change. We don't know what Dawntrail will do to the flow of combat, or any future expansion. And that's not to say it absolutely will change or go away either, I just don't like letting something that isn't set in stone control discussion about design ideas.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

I mean, I don't like talking as if the 2 minute meta will never or cannot ever change. We don't know what Dawntrail will do to the flow of combat, or any future expansion. And that's not to say it absolutely will change or go away either, I just don't like letting something that isn't set in stone control discussion about design ideas.

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If the 2 minute meta evaporates, that only makes this mechanic better IMO++

As much as I think healers need more to do, I don't think giving tanks the ability to explicitly create an additional need for healing is a good idea.

If it was a mechanic in a specific fight maybe, something the boss does to the players? Sure. But not something players do to themselves that then creates a need other players have to fill.

You know, it's actually quite interesting to see how Genshin has addressed meta balance concerns over the years. Because its characters and weapons are monetized, there are legal difficulties in changing existing characters or weapons. So when they address concerns with balance, they have to do so by considering what they add rather than what they take away. Some examples...

For a long time, shielding was vastly superior to healing. Zhongli in particular is a character with such a powerful shield that it makes you nearly untouchable, and since you aren't taking damage when protected by a shield, you not only block damage instead of needing to heal it, but your character also doesn't get staggered like they normally would when taking damage, which is much better for dealing damage since there's no concern of getting stunlocked out of your combo. So they introduced Riftwolves, enemies that inflict corrosion, which deals damage over time to your entire party, not just the on-field character, and that damage over time ignores shields. So suddenly, healing because very relevant again. And then there's the new Fontaine mechanics like the Bond of Life that I explained here.

Another example would be the introduction of the Dendro element. Prior to Dendro characters existing, the Electro element was very weak because the interactions it had with other elements wasn't nearly as strong as the reactions between Pryo, Hydro, and Cryo. But Dendro has very powerful and very easy-to-use reactions with Electro. The character Kuki Shinobu was very underwhelming when she first came out, but once Dendro was released, she jumped from unremarkable to exceptional because her emphasis on the elemental mastery stat and consistent Electro application became a fantastic resource for Dendro characters like Tighnari.

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Originally Posted by LilimoLimomo

As much as I think healers need more to do, I don't think giving tanks the ability to explicitly create an additional need for healing is a good idea.

If it was a mechanic in a specific fight maybe, something the boss does to the players? Sure. But not something players do to themselves that then creates a need other players have to fill.

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What makes it work well in Genshin is that characters that have a need to heal themselves are able to provide that healing they need. Which is why I used Warrior as an example. Healers just make those mechanics significantly easier and faster.

In Genshin, I have the character Lyney who uses a bow and arrow. Bow users can charge an arrow by holding down the attack button to release an elemental arrow during combat. When Lyney does this, his charged shots consume 20% of his HP to summon a decoy object called a "Prop Arrow" that distracts enemies and eventually released a fire explosive and disappears. Every time he does this, he gets a stack of a buff unique to him, up to 5 stacks. He cannot reduce his own HP below 60% by doing this, though. When you use his skill, he deals a burst of Pyro damage that gets stronger and heals him based on the number of stacks you've gained. While he's able to sustain his own HP this way, having a healer who can provide healing over time to him makes him considerably stronger since he can keep burning that excess healing to gain more stacks, and then get back all his HP after he uses his skill.

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Originally Posted by LilimoLimomo

As much as I think healers need more to do, I don't think giving tanks the ability to explicitly create an additional need for healing is a good idea.

If it was a mechanic in a specific fight maybe, something the boss does to the players? Sure. But not something players do to themselves that then creates a need other players have to fill.

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Tell me you've never healed a random Duty Finder party without telling me you've never healed a random Duty Finder party.

Seriously, the current bread & butter existence of a healer in Duty Finder is waiting for some other player to do something to themselves (e.g., failing a mechanic, whether intentionally or by accident) that you then get to do something about.

The entire problem with healers in FFXIV is the lack of things that create a soul-fulfilling need for their healing kits.

Thus, other players being able to push a button and go, "hey, I could use some healing" is no different from the current state of things. And as opposed to failing a mechanic, from that other player's perspective, this hypothetical button gives them a reason to look at how the rest of the party is faring and decide whether "push button to request healing" is a good use of the healer's attention.

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Originally Posted by AmiableApkallu

Seriously, the current bread & butter existence of a healer in Duty Finder is waiting for some other player to do something to themselves (e.g., failing a mechanic, whether intentionally or by accident) that you then get to do something about.

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You're preaching to the choir.

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Originally Posted by AmiableApkallu

Thus, other players being able to push a button and go, "hey, I could use some healing" is no different from the current state of things.

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The important difference is that failing a mechanic is widely seen as "bad play", and is thus generally discouraged. Which means that in the case where a group is having trouble with content, one of the possible ways to improve is to not fail mechanics, which will lead to less incoming damage. But if that "incoming damage" is coming from a part of a player's optimized rotation, that's not seen as "bad play". And thus when the group is trying to get past a roadblock, it becomes more ambiguous whether or not a specific behavior should change, and thus the table has been set for conflict.

In my opinion, one of the reasons that Final Fantasy 14's community tends to be so great and overall experiences with other players tend to be so pleasant is because relative to many other MMO's, the game's mechanics are crafted and curated to mitigate the potential conflict. A class ability where I lose some life but gain a buff is packed with potential for this exact kind of conflict, the kind that is easily avoidable by simply not having this mechanic.

Which is why I don't think that adding the results of "bad play" to the formula for "optimal play" is a good idea: it's not a significant enough change to be an actual solution to the pervasive issue of healers being bored, but it is enough to cause problems and conflict for less skilled players and groups with different ideologies. No thank you.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

What makes it work well in Genshin is that characters that have a need to heal themselves are able to provide that healing they need. Which is why I used Warrior as an example. Healers just make those mechanics significantly easier and faster.

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If I were to try to adapt this mechanic to Final Fantasy 14, I wouldn't make it affect healing since there's a specific role that has overall "responsibility" for that domain. Instead, I would keep the disadvantage side of the double-edged ability local to the player that used it; that way you've got a double-edged ability, but it doesn't directly impact other players, only the player who cast it.

So, for example, Warrior could have an ability that gives them 3 stacks of "Unrestrained", and while "Unrestrained" the Warrior does less damage. But every use of Fell Cleave removes a stack of "Unrestrained", and when the final stack of "Unrestrained" is removed the Warrior gets a more damage for a certain amount of time. This is just an off-the-cuff example, but hopefully this illustrates the basic way that I would adjust this kind of mechanic so that the disadvantage becomes localized to the player, as opposed to being a problem someone else on the team feels the need to step in and solve.

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Originally Posted by LilimoLimomo

A class ability where I lose some life but gain a buff is packed with potential for this exact kind of conflict

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Well it's a good thing the main focal point of this discussion is not at all what you're describing. Phew, we dodged a bullet right there.

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Originally Posted by LilimoLimomo

But if that "incoming damage" is coming from a part of a player's optimized rotation, that's not seen as "bad play".

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Healers already have to be prepared for that. It's called, "There is a tank in the party, and they are, heavens be willing, doing their job."

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A class ability where I lose some life but gain a buff is packed with potential for this exact kind of conflict, the kind that is easily avoidable by simply not having this mechanic.

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As a healer, there have been times where I have wished to myself, "I really hope this GNB uses Superbolide, because I'm running on fumes." Or at the other end of the spectrum, there have been times a GNB fat-fingered Superbolide, and as the healer, I was like, "I thought I had you, but this is fine, I got heals to spare."

The only potential for "conflict" is when you have a metard (that might be my new favorite term) who thinks healing is beneath them -- despite, you know, playing a healer. The rest of us are more than happy to actually push a heal when the situation calls for it.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

Well it's a good thing the main focal point of this discussion is not at all what you're describing. Phew, we dodged a bullet right there.

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Apologies, it's very tedious to say "a reverse shield of negative healing that needs to be healed before you can really be healed". So I said "lose some life" to try to be less wordy since it's 90% the same idea, assuming that we'd all be on the same page as to what we're actually talking about. I shan't make such a mistake again.

Just to chime in with my own experiences, WOW's had this as a concept since time immemorial. Blood DK's 'cheat death' Living Dead whatever, Purgatory, does this. you have a 'HP debt' of however much you were overkilled by, and if you aren't healed back out of debt within 4 seconds you die for real. That's been in the game since... MOP, apparently? They refer to that kind of mechanic, where your healing is absorbed by a 'debt' of sorts as a 'heal absorb', I'm pretty sure. Boss mechanics apply them too of course. And to my understanding, while shielding is a bit less common in WOW, the shield is also treated as an 'overcoat of HP', protecting the player's actual HP bar while the heal absorb is preventing healing from getting through. In this regard, heal absorbs/bonds of life are a mechanic that incentivizes Pure healers, rather than Barrier, due to their higher flat heal potencies. However, Barrier healers retain a valuable position/role, as their shielding will be a safety net to buy time for the Pure healer to pump that big healing

WHM in particular would enjoy this mechanic, given that Benediction would also instantly clear the Absorb/Bond, as well as putting the player to max HP. Slightly less so if there's multiple people with the debuff, but hey I cannot imagine SE having enough faith in their healer playerbase to challenge them with something like this more than once every 3 minutes. Also, if someone were set to, say, 20% HP with 50% of their max HP as Absorb/Bonded, then AST's Essential Dignity would get to pull double duty, as the first would not raise the actual HP level (hitting the Absorb/Bond first), meaning the second would also get to have high scaling (instead of currently, where one hits super hard and the second kind of noodles because the HP level changed)

TLDR This mechanic is very sensible as a way to 'counteract how strong healing is in a video game' and it's kind of baffling that SE has not made much, if any, use of it yet

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Originally Posted by LilimoLimomo

A class ability where I lose some life but gain a buff is packed with potential for this exact kind of conflict, the kind that is easily avoidable by simply not having this mechanic.

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You know the game used to have this exact kind of thing, right? I don't remember it being a massive issue so much that people were at each other's throats over it though. Mostly just a case of 'oops did the silly right before a raidwide, ok I'll be shifting my timings around next time then'

Actually, Superbolide can still do this, reducing your HP to 1. And Warrior's Berserk used to inflict Pacification after its duration that should've been Esuna'd by the healer. I think the community is more hostile now than it used to be in general, which still isn't that hostile in the grand scheme of things.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

Actually, Superbolide can still do this, reducing your HP to 1. And Warrior's Berserk used to inflict Pacification after its duration that should've been Esuna'd by the healer. I think the community is more hostile now than it used to be in general, which still isn't that hostile in the grand scheme of things.

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And those weren't even the ones I was thinking of, I was thinking of Blood For Blood (makes you take more damage by like 5%), and Convert (aka old Manafont, cost HP to use). Superbolide, in particular, can actually kill the party if timed badly. In P12s, there is a tether that needs to be taken by the players with the correct debuff that provides immunity (idk what it's called). Right after the blobs that tether you jump at the tethered player, blowing up in a big defamation style AOE, the boss does a double half-arena slamming TB. Usual strat for this is to just invuln it, as you'd expect. But, if it's the GNB that has to take the tether on the left side, and they invuln before the blobs do their thing, the damage goes through immunity (to prevent a tank from just taking all blobs with invuln, I assume), and because Super just set them to 1 HP, the blobs oneshot the GNB, meaning the TB goes wild and likely kills the whole party.

So yeh, 'friction-generating self-destructive skill design' still exists. But it doesn't really generate friction. When someone dies to THAT mistake in particular, everyone laughs it off cos it's just funny that of all the things that ignore immunities, it's the stupid little jelly blobs

But those abilities weren't popular.

Living Dead was changed because it had this issue. Super probably hasn't been just because they can't think of some other way to do "Not Hollowed Ground or Holmgang or Living Dead, but also keeps you from dying" yet. And Super does annoy people, and there are segments of the community that do complain about it and want it changed, just as the LD changes. And as you might note, that Pacification was removed from WAR's Berserk. And I'm old enough to remember when people mocked DRG for killing itself, but it was part of the whole Floor Tank meme so people largely just ran with it.

So yeah, these things have generated friction, which is why most have been removed or changed over time into forms that do not.

Lilimo's overall point is correct. Finding a few specific examples where it is not, several of which have been changed or removed from the game so they no longer do that, isn't a great rebuttal.

3-5 specific examples, more than half of which have been removed from the game outright or have had those effects removed after years of complaint, means that Lilimo is, overall, correct.

You know, friction is kind of necessary to have a livable environment. If you removed all friction from the world, you'd not be able to go anywhere.

Quite an interesting read, I think the only issue I see with it is the same issue we had back when BLM's Convert ate their HP and DRG's B4B could kill them to raidwides when used at a bad time, probably not an issue now since every healer has a way of dealing with that problem.

I agree with Ty, friction is necessary, if you remove friction, you get a sterile environment. Players in the party should have to rely on each other to survive an encounter, otherwise you're not really playing with others, you'd merely be playing near others.

While fair in a general sense, friction shouldn't be actively working against others.

Imagine, for example, if SAM had an ability they'd use on another party member, which had to be a DPS, and which suppressed that player's DPS by 10% in exchange for increasing the SAM's by 10%. Would it be an interesting ability? Yes. Would there be a lot of ways to optimize it? Yes.

...but in most parties, how many people would be pissed if they got the anti-Dance Partner slapped on them? Probably a lot.

Friction isn't always good. When it's acting directly against others, it's often bad.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

While fair in a general sense, friction shouldn't be actively working against others.

Imagine, for example, if SAM had an ability they'd use on another party member, which had to be a DPS, and which suppressed that player's DPS by 10% in exchange for increasing the SAM's by 10%. Would it be an interesting ability? Yes. Would there be a lot of ways to optimize it? Yes.

...but in most parties, how many people would be pissed if they got the anti-Dance Partner slapped on them? Probably a lot.

Friction isn't always good. When it's acting directly against others, it's often bad.

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But I thought the problem was healers not having enough reasons to heal? How is giving healers more healing to do actively working against them if that's what they want to do in the first place? Especially when it doesn't actually come at the cost of another party member's HP? We're not allowed to add DPS buttons, and we're not allowed to add new ways to put healing to use... What are we allowed to have?

Your comparison of an Anti-Dance partner doesn't compare to this concept, both because you can still clear the healing debt with OGCD heals or free heals, and because people keep saying they want to heal more anyway.

Well, one reason that jumps right out: How does it help having "more to heal" when it's ONLY if you have certain party comps?

Won't you still be bored in the cases you don't have those specific Jobs in the party?

EDIT:

Also, as far as "allowed" - to whom are you referring?

1) I always say encounter design is up for grabs, oddly that's the one thing you don't want to change. (Yes yes, "would have to retroactively for all the game's content", but no...)
2) I've never said no more DPS buttons, I've just said not for all the Healer Jobs. I fully support SOME Jobs getting more, namely SCH and SGE.
3) Nor have I held the position that healing requirements of encounters can't be increased or made more challenging through requiring GCDs instead of oGCDs. In fact, I've championed the notion.
4) I was only pointing out another user was correct. As always, this makes me the immediate target of what ire had been aimed at them. So I'm just going to bow out now instead of be more annoyed by it.

I was speaking generally. It feels like no suggestion is good enough--that nothing will ever be good enough.

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Originally Posted by AmiableApkallu

Tell me you've never healed a random Duty Finder party without telling me you've never healed a random Duty Finder party.

Seriously, the current bread & butter existence of a healer in Duty Finder is waiting for some other player to do something to themselves (e.g., failing a mechanic, whether intentionally or by accident) that you then get to do something about.

The entire problem with healers in FFXIV is the lack of things that create a soul-fulfilling need for their healing kits.

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In my experience, there is often very little need to be "waiting" for other players to get injured. They will get injured, and depending on the dungeon, un-injuring them can be a constant effort.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

...but in most parties, how many people would be pissed if they got the anti-Dance Partner slapped on them? Probably a lot.

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The issue here is.. well, you picked one of the worst possible examples. You love to quote logical fallacies, I'm pretty sure this one's an example of one or another

The main reason that Dance Partner and your example are different is 'permission'. You don't need permission to Dance Partner somebody, as there is only upsides involved. The DNC gets more gauge generation, the partner gets Devilment's effects and the 5% buff. Your example doesn't have any 'permission' given by whoever's getting 'leeched' from, they just have to suck it up. They also don't get any upsides, apparently. It's just flat negatives for one half of the 'partner' equation in your example, which is what makes it so fallacious. If Dance Partner didn't give the DNC more gauge generation, and transferred the 5% and Devilment (instead of giving it to both members) maybe it'd be a better comparison

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Originally Posted by Renathras

Well, one reason that jumps right out: How does it help having "more to heal" when it's ONLY if you have certain party comps?

Won't you still be bored in the cases you don't have those specific Jobs in the party?

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The mechanic suggested is literally a healer-centric mechanic. It is 'heal to remove the anti-shield, so that your healing heals actual HP instead of being absorbed by the anti-shield'. The comp that is helped, in terms of gameplay engagement and 'fun' is, literally, 'any comp that has a healer in it', and it's the healer that derives the fun from the mechanic, given that it's a mechanic designed to test them in particular. No DPS finds a tankswap mechanic 'fun' because a tankswap is a tank mechanic, it's for the tanks to work out, the DPS don't have anything to do with that kind of stuff. But we still have tankswap mechanics, because that is something the devs can throw in for the tanks to have fun with (efficiency of 'fun derived' from a tankswap is debatable) Everyone can just ignore these heal absorb/bond of life/anti-shield whatevers, and say 'that's a healer thing, I don't need to care about that'

I find myself agreeing with Ty, that 'nothing will be good enough', because we can't have damage buttons (it apparently screws the casuals), we can't have more mit check (it actually screws the casuals), we can't have more flat HP damage to heal through (it definitely screws the casuals), and now we can't have this, because I guess it's too similar to 'flat HP damage to heal through' and will also screw the casuals. Effectively, every potential solution gets shot down and we're just stuck where we are, nothing changes, the same complaints will still be made. This is literally a thread of 'here is how we could implement 'you need to heal more' as a change to the game, to make healers potentially feel more like healers and less like DPS with a 2-3 button rotation', and you're asking 'how does it help having more to heal', I don't get it.

There is territory between "playing itself" and "git gud casul". I'm sure the devs must be aware of this on some level.

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

The mechanic suggested is literally a healer-centric mechanic. It is 'heal to remove the anti-shield, so that your healing heals actual HP instead of being absorbed by the anti-shield'. The comp that is helped, in terms of gameplay engagement and 'fun' is, literally, 'any comp that has a healer in it', and it's the healer that derives the fun from the mechanic, given that it's a mechanic designed to test them in particular. No DPS finds a tankswap mechanic 'fun' because a tankswap is a tank mechanic, it's for the tanks to work out, the DPS don't have anything to do with that kind of stuff. But we still have tankswap mechanics, because that is something the devs can throw in for the tanks to have fun with (efficiency of 'fun derived' from a tankswap is debatable) Everyone can just ignore these heal absorb/bond of life/anti-shield whatevers, and say 'that's a healer thing, I don't need to care about that'

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I believe what Ren means in regards to the question of "How does it help having "more to heal" when it's ONLY if you have certain party comps?" is based on the idea that the jobs I name-dropped as potentially receiving this mechanic as a part of their kit, Warrior, Dark Knight, and Reaper, are the only jobs to get the mechanic. And even if not those specific three, unless an entire role has the mechanic, you run the chance of not engaging with that concept at all if your party does not have any job that utilizes it. And to be fair, I don't think every job within a role should be forced to have that mechanic for the sake of ensuring a healer can engage with it because then we're adding for the sake of adding.

I also want to mention that, like with the example in Genshin, the jobs that would utilize these mechanics would have the power to resolve their own HP Debt on their own. For example, let's imagine Reaper's Arcane Circle was reworked to have 20% of their max HP as a Bond of Life or HP Debt, but also grants them a personal regen that will resolve their own HP Debt after 15 seconds and rewarded them with additional Soul Gauge once its cleared. This means they could use it when solo and either let the regen do its job or even use Bloodbath or Second Wind to speed that up. In a party, however, I as a Sage could instead of wasting another Druochole on myself because I generate too damn many Addersgall that no normal content can keep up with it, I could instead throw it on the Reaper to clear their Bond of Life for them and give them that Soul Gauge bonus right away.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

I believe what Ren means in regards to the question of "How does it help having "more to heal" when it's ONLY if you have certain party comps?" is based on the idea that the jobs I name-dropped as potentially receiving this mechanic as a part of their kit, Warrior, Dark Knight, and Reaper, are the only jobs to get the mechanic.

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Ohh I see, well then it might be a misunderstanding on my part, but I have (unlike some, it seems) played WOW in recent years, and as such I was under the impression that this mechanic would not be limited to just specific jobs using specific actions, but would be something that could be applied by bosses as part of the fight design/potential mechanics to draw from. Things like, instead of the current raidwide+bleed we have, a raidwide that must be mitigated as hard as now (eg it does 110% before any mit/shields), but ALSO applies a 'heal absorb' of 50% of everyone's max HP. The tanks would take less damage from the raidwide naturally, and have selfhealing to help clear their 'debt' faster, but it would mean needing to 'heal more' (which was what people wanted to have, wasn't it?) to clear the 'debt' AND top the party up in time for the next damage instance

Imagine like, instead of two stack markers that splits damage, a different kind of 'two markers on healers' that splits 'heal absorb applied'. So you could choose to either spread it across the party by doing the usual 2x4 splits, or you could let the healers eat the stack marks solo, they still live (because the actual damage doesn't split here), but now they have ALL of the HP debt that 4 people should have had, likely making said debt be like, 200% of their max HP. Maybe it's better to have fewer people take the debt for some reason (eg Benediction fully clears one of them). It's a design element that opens a lot of doors for 'new ways to challenge the players', so limiting it to just 'specific jobs have this as part of their moves and it's used nowhere else' seems pretty wasteful to me. It would be very on brand for SE though

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

Ohh I see, well then it might be a misunderstanding on my part, but I have (unlike some, it seems) played WOW in recent years, and as such I was under the impression that this mechanic would not be limited to just specific jobs using specific actions, but would be something that could be applied by bosses as part of the fight design/potential mechanics to draw from. Things like, instead of the current raidwide+bleed we have, a raidwide that must be mitigated as hard as now (eg it does 110% before any mit/shields), but ALSO applies a 'heal absorb' of 50% of everyone's max HP. The tanks would take less damage from the raidwide naturally, and have selfhealing to help clear their 'debt' faster, but it would mean needing to 'heal more' (which was what people wanted to have, wasn't it?) to clear the 'debt' AND top the party up in time for the next damage instance

Imagine like, instead of two stack markers that splits damage, a different kind of 'two markers on healers' that splits 'heal absorb applied'. So you could choose to either spread it across the party by doing the usual 2x4 splits, or you could let the healers eat the stack marks solo, they still live (because the actual damage doesn't split here), but now they have ALL of the HP debt that 4 people should have had, likely making said debt be like, 200% of their max HP. Maybe it's better to have fewer people take the debt for some reason (eg Benediction fully clears one of them). It's a design element that opens a lot of doors for 'new ways to challenge the players', so limiting it to just 'specific jobs have this as part of their moves and it's used nowhere else' seems pretty wasteful to me. It would be very on brand for SE though

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You can do that too. And that's how it goes in Genshin as well. Some enemies can just apply a Bond of Life that stops you from healing until its cleared, but if you take a look at the second image in my initial post, you'll see those weapons which you can give to certain characters (there are 5 weapon categories and each character can equip any weapon from 1 of those categories. Swords, Bows, Polearms, etc.). They have effects that apply a Bond of Life to the holder, but once cleared, provides a buff to their attack stat or their elemental damage (raw damage output basically). So it can be multipurpose. Since the characters from this new region all have gimmicks that involve managing their HP, most of them have built-in sustain so far that can be used to clear those weapon effects on their own. But like I said, having a healer makes that a lot easier.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

Living Dead was changed because it had this issue.

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If anything, I might argue that the changes to Living Dead bring it closer to this "Bond of Life" mechanic thing. In very rough terms:

• The Living Dead condition + lethal damage is the trigger.
• The Walking Dead condition is the "HP debt." (Maybe more an "HP obligation" given that healing restores real HP.)
• Undead Rebirth is the buff.

The addition of the self-heal under Walking Dead is exactly the thing ty said makes it work well in Genshin.

As a healer, the problem with Living Dead is that the status icons can easily be missed in a sea of buffs and debuffs, not to mention having to know what they actually mean. Highlighting the entire HP bar in some universal-to-all-jobs manner would lessen or eliminate that problem.

(In fact, if we think about this UI-feature more broadly, imagine, for example, if the HP bar itself were used as to reinforce whether a particular Doom was Esunable vs. heal to full vs. go stand on the special cleanse pad.)

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

I mean, I don't like talking as if the 2 minute meta will never or cannot ever change. We don't know what Dawntrail will do to the flow of combat, or any future expansion. And that's not to say it absolutely will change or go away either, I just don't like letting something that isn't set in stone control discussion about design ideas.

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Haven't they already said that 2 Minute meta has made it easier for the dev team to "balance" and design stuff and thus it will be permanent?

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Originally Posted by Aldath

Haven't they already said that 2 Minute meta has made it easier for the dev team to "balance" and design stuff and thus it will be permanent?

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cough Abyssos

cough Ranged Tax/Melee being 10% ahead for seemingly zero reason

I'd expect that if they had said it would be 'permanent', it'd be like how 'we cannot have a checkmark to say if you already obtained an item, the servers could not handle it'. That is, as soon as it becomes a PR issue of sorts (eg a plugin does the job for them and makes them look bad), the tune magically changes. If the 2min meta were directly linkable to a drop in player retention/too much bad PR/etc then it'd be gone, I'd assume

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

cough Abyssos

cough Ranged Tax/Melee being 10% ahead for seemingly zero reason

I'd expect that if they had said it would be 'permanent', it'd be like how 'we cannot have a checkmark to say if you already obtained an item, the servers could not handle it'. That is, as soon as it becomes a PR issue of sorts (eg a plugin does the job for them and makes them look bad), the tune magically changes. If the 2min meta were directly linkable to a drop in player retention/too much bad PR/etc then it'd be gone, I'd assume

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I can only imagine they'll get hounded about it during the media tour. There's too much negative discussion about it including in influencer circles that I can't imagine nothing will be done at all. Which isn't to say that they might completely change trajectory or anything, but that I find it hard to believe with the way its been talked about that it's something that will never change in any capacity. It might not be a complete removal of the meta, but maybe there will be cuts to raid buffs. There are a lot of jobs that have raid buffs that don't exactly need them thematically.

Personally, outside of Dancer, Bard, and Astrologian, I'd consider cutting most, if not all of the party buffs across the other jobs. Focus on giving different DPS different pieces of utility to help sell their unique advantages.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

In my experience, there is often very little need to be "waiting" for other players to get injured. They will get injured, and depending on the dungeon, un-injuring them can be a constant effort.

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Yeah, this.

I don't know what DFs these people run, but I've yet to find one that the party wouldn't have wiped if I literally never healed anyone.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

I was speaking generally. It feels like no suggestion is good enough--that nothing will ever be good enough.

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The issue is more that most suggestions stick with a theme, in one of two forms, both of which people specifically have problems with. Namely, busywork for the sake of busywork that papers over an existing problem but steadfastly refuses to address the core problem, and does so in a way that's like to annoy a lot of people in the process who may prefer the current situation better.

As I said, what happens if you're in a party without the Jobs that require more healing? That doesn't fix the problem. Same as the more DPS buttons proposal, which also doesn't fix the problem and makes it worse for a lot of people (some are "less bored", but those who already don't like DPSing are even more annoyed) since it's merely distracting from/papering over the problem, not addressing it.

The core problem ultimately is encounter design, which includes damage output in both rate and quantity, and in Job design having too much access to non-GCD free healing that deals with every damage problem that comes at the party, which is also the reason for the Garoifiosis spam issue; since GCDs aren't used for healing, you end up with a lot more of them for...that.

Any true solution to the problem has to address those two issues. Solutions that skirt them aren't doing that, so such proposals, yes, won't be good enough, since they fail to address the key issues themselves, and thus perpetuate the problem, not solve it. And when they specifically make things worse, it's not a solution at all.

But...I also understand that's a harder sell, and a more deep seated thorn to dislodge.

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And yeah, that was how I interpreted your post. Though I am reminded of things like WoW Warlocks having the ability to convert some of their HP into MP, but they also had the ability to drain HP from their voidsent-esque pets to heal themselves, too (and also to use Bandages in combat, which actually WAS a thing once upon a time...) So while they could kill themselves and often annoyed healers, they ALSO had the potential to heal themselves...

...but then if Jobs like RPR/etc work that way, it's not really a healer problem since it's (potentially) solved by the Job itself.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

The issue is more that most suggestions stick with a theme, in one of two forms, both of which people specifically have problems with. Namely, busywork for the sake of busywork that papers over an existing problem but steadfastly refuses to address the core problem, and does so in a way that's like to annoy a lot of people in the process who may prefer the current situation better.

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Who exactly is "people" other than you and one other person who responded to this thread? Can you back up your claim with a healthy sample size of players? Your "Busywork" would be better known as playing the game. Half of the gameplay of FFXIV is your job's toolkit and what you do with it. I am tired of being told that my desire to actually play that half of the game is an "inconvenience" to some people. At this point, I really don't care what you do with your gameplay experience, just let me play the game I want to play with whatever healer I want. As long as I have that option, that will make me happy. However anyone else wants to play is their business, not mine.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

As I said, what happens if you're in a party without the Jobs that require more healing? That doesn't fix the problem. Same as the more DPS buttons proposal, which also doesn't fix the problem and makes it worse for a lot of people (some are "less bored", but those who already don't like DPSing are even more annoyed) since it's merely distracting from/papering over the problem, not addressing it.

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Me being turned away from the local food drive because my $20 donation isn't enough to feed the entire community.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

...but then if Jobs like RPR/etc work that way, it's not really a healer problem since it's (potentially) solved by the Job itself.

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So then don't worry about it and let me appreciate the opportunity to heal more.

If this is implemented as a raid buff that triggers when you apply a certain amount of healing, then your team will demand that you use it on recast, even if it costs you GCDs. Not really a skill check, though. If it's applied as a raid mechanic, then it's only a slight variation on the standard Heartless Archangel mechanic that we every so often (current Ex Primal included), in the event that you're one of those healers who really misses manually cleansing Living Dead.

Honestly, the problem isn't that you don't get to do more GCD healing. It's like wanting to play goaltender when there are no shots on net. The problem is that resource management on healers is practically non-existent, and that you're playing a simplified version of Caster DPS, of all things, between heals.