Is It Even Possible To Have A New Healer Job?

[CYBEReris]

I like the Chemist idea if only because throwing and combat mixing are some of the few staples of the series that aren't anywhere to be seen yet. I think that it might be best for their "items" to be mostly flavor though, represented by buffs/job gauges. It'd really suck to run out of something in the middle of a dungeon or trial and feel like you have to abandon if that causes a wipe. I'm thinking using something similar to Mudras to "stock" and mix items from an infinite supply of basic reagants.

[RichardButte]

Looking at the three current healers, white mage, scholar, and astrologian, it seems like all the possible healing strategies have been covered. We have healing by raw power, we have healing and mitigation with the help of a minion, and we have healing, mitigation, and buffs with the help of cards.

What else is there? Every idea of a new healer expressed on this forum ends up stepping on another healer's toolkit or is simply unplayable.

So, has Square Enix painted themselves into a corner where no new healing classes can be developed?

The key problem with XIV's healers is the fact that the 2.5 sec GCD severely limits how the devs can design healing classes.

Since a healer can only cast a heal once ~every 2.5 seconds, damage done to players must generally happen in larger bursts instead of more frequently but in smaller amounts (with a few exceptions).

This means that it's not possible to design healers around the casting small, quick heals or healing classes that do almost all of their healing through HoTs. A healer can never cast a spell faster than ~every 2.5 seconds, which in turn means the game cannot force healers to need to act any quicker.

The end result is that damage tends to be bursty and healing is 2-3X more potent in XIV than most other MMOs, with a single non-emergency heal healing a tank for most of their HP and 1-2 AoE heals bringing an 8 person party from near dead to near full.

The pace of the GCD sets the rhythm for the entire game, and with 2.5 sec between every action, SE has severely limited how they can design healing classes.

Compare this to other MMOs where healers have healing rotations they're constantly using to heal small amounts of damage being dealt to players at more regular intervals.

Healers in WoW, SWTOR, etc. have more variety because a healer can use an ability once every 1 second instead of 2.5, meaning that you can have healers that specialize in quickly casting HoTs onto a bunch of players and then even using additional abilities to enhance those HoTs in some way, which means healers are constantly engaged pressing buttons to HEAL instead of feeling obligated to do DPS during the times when no one needs healing (again, because damage is so bursty).

The one area they may yet explore is a healing class that outright heals through damage itself, but even then, WoW has had a helluva time striking a balance so that healers that heal through DPS aren't massively overpowered (like Disc priests were for the longest time).

This healer would likely need to first cast some kind of buff on the target of its healing, then start rolling out damaging spells, which already makes it slower than other healers on startup.

In essence, I don't think we're going to see much more in the way of healer variety unless the GCD is reduced (which I don't see happening either).

Hell, even AST is basically 70-80% WHM with card buffs as it is...

[Renathras]

Kinda disagree with the GCD being the problem. WOW has a GCD, too - nominally about 1.5 seconds, reduced by Haste (just like FF14's). Additionally, FF14 has OCD heals and instant heals. While these tend to cost resources (Aetherflow) or have CDs (Benediction), there are also spamable ones that do not (Regen). Indeed, you use an example of a WOW healer being able to throw out several HOTs, possibly even buffing them, but FF14 already allows this - a WHM can hit Lagress (oGCD) and then throw out a Renew every second or so.

Finally, this doesn't say anything about incoming damage. You could have a 10 sec GCD and have slower incoming damage and weaker healer heals. The game would be BORING, mind you, but the GCD itself being 2.5 secons (reduced by Spell Speed) isn't the problem there.

[RichardButte]

Kinda disagree with the GCD being the problem. WOW has a GCD, too - nominally about 1.5 seconds, reduced by Haste (just like FF14's).

I know what you're saying, but you have to remember that healing is largely a reactionary role and the GCD directly determines how quickly healers can react to a bad situation and apply heals to multiple targets without using mana-expensive AoE heals.

The devs know this, which is why damage done to players in XIV typically always happens in one large chunk with a "grace period" that follows where the player who was just damaged is unlikely to take additional damage for at least the next GCD.

Remember, the GCD directly controls how quickly a healer can react and cast a healing spell on the next player who needs it. Yes, we have oGCD abilities, but those are A) of limited use and B ) don't shift the paradigm because there's no real place in XIV for quick, weak, mana-efficient heals because there aren't many situations in game that call for it (and we use HoTs when those situations arise anyway).

In WoW, endgame gear typically brings the GCD down to ~1 sec overall. As a result, healers can react much, MUCH faster. The fact that they're able to react much faster not only means that it's appropriate for players to take small bits of damage, but also that it's okay for healers to have "small" heals that take very little time to cast, cost little mana, and don't heal for much, but are fine as part of a healing rotation that's designed to prevent party members from getting into danger in the first place.

All of XIV's healers have very similar baseline healing potencies, and something WoW has that XIV again does not is longer cast time heals that heal for a great deal more (or are at least more mana-efficient). Nearly all of XIV's healing spells take the same length to cast (~2.5sec), probably because they effectively take the same amount of time as a GCD and because they're so potent already that longer cast times for more potency is almost unnecessary.

It's more of a binary situation in XIV as well: if more than 2-3 players were just damaged, you're better off using AoE heals because trying to address those players one at a time will likely allow one of them to die. Again, this isn't an issue other MMOs suffer because their GCDs allow healers to heal multiple targets that much more quickly.

The end result is that damage happens in large bursts and healing heals it in large bursts, because the game can't handle it any other way with a 2.5 sec GCD that only allows players to address multiple targets so quickly.

[Ilyrian]

All of this

I'm on month 7 of my little WoW holiday and recently logged back in to do a bit of housekeeping. Running a quick LFR was the most jarring experience ever (and not only because it's an LFR) - obviously my muscle memory has totally shifted but trying to heal on a Holy Priest (vs WHM) confirmed everything you are saying.
I'm not going to start a WoW vs FFXIV war - but healing is basically night and day different and whilst I'm in no rush to go back to WoW I have to say I find the GCD in FFXIV really inhibiting when dynamic healing is concerned. The pay-off (being able/required to dps) I quite enjoy though, so it's not all bad.

[RichardButte]

I'm on month 7 of my little WoW holiday and recently logged back in to do a bit of housekeeping. Running a quick LFR was the most jarring experience ever (and not only because it's an LFR) - obviously my muscle memory has totally shifted but trying to heal on a Holy Priest (vs WHM) confirmed everything you are saying.
I'm not going to start a WoW vs FFXIV war - but healing is basically night and day different and whilst I'm in no rush to go back to WoW I have to say I find the GCD in FFXIV really inhibiting when dynamic healing is concerned. The pay-off (being able/required to dps) I quite enjoy though, so it's not all bad.

Yeah, it all comes down to preference and there's nothing wrong with that at all.

I just feel like it's a shame because the complexity of most of XIV's DPS classes is leaps and bounds ahead of WoW's: I can't think of any class in WoW that's even close to on par with MCH or NIN.

It's both tragic and jarring that XIV, with its deep and involved DPS rotations, has left its healers with a flowchart that barely even branches.

It's also a shame because it's going to severely limit future healing classes, especially when we already see it happening as AST (which I leveled to 70) has most of its kit stolen from SCH and WHM.

Then there was that patch when they just gave up and put AST's potencies on par with SCH and WHM's because it's not possible to deviate on healing potencies when damage is as bursty as it is.

AST was destined to be either too weak or too powerful because, when every healer NEEDS to have the same general potency because of the pace of the game, additional utility will nearly always be overpowered.

[Sylvain]

Well, while I totally with everything you said regarding gcd, there are multiple things they can do to make it more engaging. First, the very fact that most dmg comes from burst means that once that dmg is healed, there is nothing to heal beside the tanks.
Designing fight with boss having stronger AA would keep healer busy. In wow you often need to assign a healer to a tank. Tanks in ff don't need constant heal. Making tank requiring almost constant spam of basic heal would go a long way. Same goes for occasional spot damage, having boss constantly zat player to keep the second healer busy would also increase healing action required. Aoe are just too potent and it's dull to have 75% of our actions being aoe heals. Doing so wouldnt still prevent healer from dpsing, but they'd have less time to do so (making the whole thing more rewarding in some sens)

Another thing they could do is nerf aoe heal, it's just too potent in this game its insane.

[Tridus]

Nerfing healing is where I'd start. With the standard 2 healer comp the game wants to give you, you can heal people so fast that damage just doesn't last. That really limits what can be done for both healing mechanics and encounters, especially with the long GCD on top of it.

SE doesn't seem to have a lot of interest in making healing more engaging, given the way it works and how all the healers have the least interesting DPS abilities in the game (Holy aside).

[Kacho_Nacho]

Nerfing healing is where I'd start. With the standard 2 healer comp the game wants to give you, you can heal people so fast that damage just doesn't last. That really limits what can be done for both healing mechanics and encounters, especially with the long GCD on top of it.

SE doesn't seem to have a lot of interest in making healing more engaging, given the way it works and how all the healers have the least interesting DPS abilities in the game (Holy aside).

In a vacuum, nerfing healing is an excellent way to make healing more engaging. However, it would require players to work together to share in their character's survival. Is that a realistic expectation of the players today?

I wouldn't say SE doesn't have a lot of interest in making healing engaging. I'd say that they are stumped on how to do it without having to go through another ARR level overhaul of the game.

Right now, damage dealers are the most popular role. This means that complexity can be introduced to make the classes more engaging to play.

But, healing and tanking are both less popular. It seems that SE's strategy has been to keep these roles less complicated so the roles aren't so intimidating. In addition, do we want more complexity put into roles in which our character survival depends?

[RichardButte]

I'd say that they are stumped on how to do it without having to go through another ARR level overhaul of the game.

I think this is exactly what's happening. It all boils down to that 2.5sec GCD making it prohibitively difficult to change the way healing functions.

...Unless they started adding oGCD healing abilities with super short CDs that either apply a small HoT or heal a small amount (and that's a horrible idea because of how overloaded most classes are with oGCD abilities and how hard of a time they have with latency already...).

But, healing and tanking are both less popular. It seems that SE's strategy has been to keep these roles less complicated so the roles aren't so intimidating. In addition, do we want more complexity put into roles in which our character survival depends?

FWIW, I shelved my AST because I found healing so incredibly boring and leveled MCH (which is crippled by even a small amount of latency, so now I'm leveling RDM) because I wanted to play something that was actually engaging.

Tanking and DPS are both engaging enough to be enjoyable for me, but even AST with its card buffs wasn't enough to keep me from nearly falling asleep at the keyboard.

Maybe if healers had more interesting DPS rotations, or did something like recover mana through a damage rotation, but as it stands it's just "Is someone injured? If not, DoT and press your damaging spell until someone is."

There's "uncomplicated" and then there's "Zzzzzzzzz...".