Healer identity in 5.0

[Gemina]

They would have to find a way to make hard-casting heals actually interesting to entice people to play healers.
I really hope they don't do this... =A=

What do you mean? Needing to hard cast cures is what actually feels enticing as a healer. It's what makes me feel like an actual healer. A recent Orbonne run I had left me little time to cast anything offensively. I still was, but the 90/10 DPS/healing ratio easily adjusted to about 40/60. I hardly casted Broil at all, and focused more on DoT upkeep to sustain damage to the last boss. It was so fun, and I felt I had purpose outside of a green DPS. I'm not even going to say that it was unfortunate that I had to rely on player derps for this change in ratio. I welcome it. We're not perfect, and mechanics that confuse players and unavoidable damage is how the CPU provides challenge. Such things need to be accounted for when designing healers.

I know a lot of players will feel like this kind of adjustment would feel like a nerf, but I am hard pressed to call this role a healing role when in the majority of content we spend 90% of the time DPSing. Which when you think about it, a good portion of that time is spent either spamming Stone/Broil/Malefic against single target, or Holy/Miasma II/Gravity against multiple targets. How is that enticing? And the answer is not to give us more DPS options. We are healers, and none of the three even have this identity, let alone their own. They're all green DPS.

With a reduction to the reliance on ogcd heals, time spent hard casting curative abilities will undoubtedly go up. The question then remains how do they diversify our healers and also leave room for a fourth in the future? Unfortunately, I don't have this answer. I'm not a game designer. It could come from utility but they really have to be careful when it comes to how healers benefit raids outside of healing. It's part of the problem we currently have.

[tesni_g]

What do you mean? Needing to hard cast cures is what actually feels enticing as a healer.

I'm not the person you asked, but for me the enticement of healing isn't the hard casting because anyone can play whack a mole on the green bars. It's using the whole class's package to best effect.

FFXIV does not have enough hard casting.

If healers are "forced" back into a lot of hard casting with a removal of ogcds, the game would feel really slow. Especially when every other role does a lot of weaving and juggling.

At least right now, AST and SCH feel like the other jobs in FFXIV in how 'busy' they stay. Not as busy as BRD or anything, but there's stuff do. Removing those would make it play like a completely different game.

A considerably higher ratio of direct healing would be great. Healing more would make me forget how mind numbing Malefic spam is. Sometimes.

But I suspect the way to accomplish this is less with class design and more with encounters. Even in savage modes, the mechanics are paced far enough apart that somebody has a cooldown that alleviates the need to direct heal. So we could see damage patterns that happen more frequently--less of those would be devastating, meaning that Star and Indom still shine for the big ones... but there's still a lot going on in between, and the only thing that's "up" will be Medica or Emergency Tactics + Succor.

Healer DPS is still the elephant in the room. So long as we have metrics, we will have optimization. We will have the push to heal "as little as possible". They could do like other MMOs, which is to make healer's damage output so awful that there's no point, but solo duties and open world play are already boring and long enough as it is. And even then, the community that plays higher end content is still going to say that pitiful stone spam is better than no stone spam.

I think to encourage more direct healing, tough encounters need to deal out low-grade damage at near-constant frequencies. Direct heals would need to heal for less against large HP pools, but also cost less MP to encourage near-constant casting. It sounds counter intuitive to healing more, but I want healer dps to be buffed--not Malefic and Stone and Broil per se, but all the dots and abilities, and maybe even give healers more ogcd/gated abilities. Then the healer DPS game becomes more about keeping up dots and using abilities in between heals, and there's a lot of room for identity development there. If Combust/Star/Lord/burst phase ability are the bulk of AST damage, the question "should I cast Malefic or top people off" won't always be answered "duh cast Malefic."

"Duh cast Malefic" isn't fun.

tl;dr I want more direct healing too! But I want to see it through encounter design instead of ability nerfs

[Kalise]

tl;dr I want more direct healing too! But I want to see it through encounter design instead of ability nerfs

Though, irregardless of if priority was shifted from oGCD via nerfs or via encounter design, the overall outcome would be that people will think of it as a nerf.

Since, going from DPSing 80% of the time to DPSing like 40-60% of the time will be a loss of DPS no matter what the case is that is making you shift.

That said, if the issue against going towards more GCD healing is merely how "Slow" the gameplay would feel without oGCDs... Then the problem isn't even that big.

You don't need to remove oGCD's to promote GCD healing. You merely need to shift the power of oGCD vs GCD healing.

At the moment, oGCD reign supreme because they're MASSIVE heals that make GCD heals plain not necessary. It's not just Benediction that is doing ridiculous burst healing, but all oGCD heals.

If you reduced the power of oGCD's, you can still keep them in healers kits, just they can then become supplementary healing skills, rather than the primary source of healing output.

Much like how DPS jobs have their primary damage coming from GCD skills and oGCD skills are less powerful but get weaved in alongside their GCD skills during the small periods between ability usage and GCD resets.

This would actually let you make healers busier, since you can afford to reduce oGCD skills actual CD's so they can be used more frequently, when they're not healing for 50%+ of someone's life.

Essentially, turn oGCD's into something that you use to quickly top up someone who went critical HP to buy time for a GCD heal to replenish their health, or something you use after a GCD heal to get that extra burst of healing to for example, get a Warrior back from 1HP after a successful Holmgang.

Thus making optimal Healer play be about balancing usage of your entire kit. DPS GCD's, Healing GCD's and oGCD's.

Which can then be further played upon with encounter designs that focus less on singular large bursts of damage, but more frequent, random, damage spikes.

[Coltvoyance]

I fully support SE implementing more random damage spikes. Hell, just making fights more random. But SE scripts their fights down to the tiniest details you'd think they we're making movies instead of challenging encounters.

It's just a big round of "Simon Says". It's how they design encounters. It lets them make sure they're "Exactly this difficult". But if it's always exactly that difficult, then it's always that predictable. And predictability is boring. "Simon says its time to heal! Simon says move here. Simon says DPS, then DPS while moving! Simon says move again, then Heal."

SE is so adamant about forcing you to stick to the script that they just guarantee you get killed if you mess up more than once. They do this in the form of Vulnerability stacks. Get hit once? You'll live, but heres a Vulnerability stack. So if you get hit again, you're likely gonna get 1-Hit KO. This does two things: 1) Ensures you can't cheese through mechanics by just healing through them. 2) Forces SE to make the damage/mechanic avoidable, making healing less relevant. I can't heal if people don't get hurt.

Some damage is unavoidable, but it's so pitiful that everything solves itself in one GCD. So taking "scripted damage" is just a nuisance, not a life threatening situation; and thus, trivial and boring.

At one point, SE used to design parts of the encounter specifically around healers. Like Ifrit EX tethers or Leviathan EX healing debuff. I don't think there was a single mechanic in any of the Stormblood fights that inhibited, changed, or impacted healers in a meaningful way. Tanks get Tank Swaps and Tank busters. Healers get... to just move around and dodge things like DPS do? Where are our mechanics?

[Ceasaria]

At one point, SE used to design parts of the encounter specifically around healers. Like Ifrit EX tethers or Leviathan EX healing debuff. I don't think there was a single mechanic in any of the Stormblood fights that inhibited, changed, or impacted healers in a meaningful way. Tanks get Tank Swaps and Tank busters. Healers get... to just move around and dodge things like DPS do? Where are our mechanics?

Don't need to put all the burden on Healers again.
I'am happy that everybody have the same mecanics to do, or if we have role mecanic, then every role should have the same amount.

[Coltvoyance]

Don't need to put all the burden on Healers again.
I'am happy that everybody have the same mecanics to do, or if we have role mecanic, then every role should have the same amount.

But thats the thing, Healers are a role of responsibility. In fact, some would argue it has the most responsibility, or is at least equal in burden to that of a Tank. But it doesn't feel that way in FFXIV.

I agree that if Healers are dealing with a mechanic designed for them, they shouldn't have to do the same mechanic as a DPS on top of that. Keep it equal. But we're a unique role and we should have unique mechanics to deal with other than "Oh no! We took everyone's HP down to 1! What are you gonn--- Oh they're completely healed already...".

I get it. Making healing easier makes it more approachable. It also helps protect healers from being blamed, criticized, and berated by sloppy players. People can be down right nasty when trying to scapegoat a healer for their mistakes. But if healing is so easy and approachable, then you can't judge someones merit by it, and players end up looking for a different way to judge you, like if you have poor DPS *Cough* WHM *Cough*. And that's even more unfair because it's not what we signed up for to be judged on.

[tesni_g]

That said, if the issue against going towards more GCD healing is merely how "Slow" the gameplay would feel without oGCDs... Then the problem isn't even that big.

You don't need to remove oGCD's to promote GCD healing. You merely need to shift the power of oGCD vs GCD healing.

At the moment, oGCD reign supreme because they're MASSIVE heals that make GCD heals plain not necessary. It's not just Benediction that is doing ridiculous burst healing, but all oGCD heals.

One of the more common complaints WHMs voiced has been how slow WHM feels. And as far as ogcd weaving, yes, ogcds do supplement what DPS and tanks do and not dominate their potential like healing ogcds do now, but my point is still rather that DPS and tanks get lots of things to juggle, and if the ogcd healing abilities are nerfed to the point that they're just kind of whatever, (which I think will happen), then healing becomes this slow as molasses, static thing.

More and dynamic damage patterns would definitely help though, because any time we can't align ogcds to the mechanics, those direct heals come to play.

[Kalise]

One of the more common complaints WHMs voiced has been how slow WHM feels. And as far as ogcd weaving, yes, ogcds do supplement what DPS and tanks do and not dominate their potential like healing ogcds do now, but my point is still rather that DPS and tanks get lots of things to juggle, and if the ogcd healing abilities are nerfed to the point that they're just kind of whatever, (which I think will happen), then healing becomes this slow as molasses, static thing.

More and dynamic damage patterns would definitely help though, because any time we can't align ogcds to the mechanics, those direct heals come to play.

Well, the cool thing is, that if you're not wholly reliant upon oGCD heals as your primary healing source, it opens up the opportunity to allow for some oGCD damage/support skills to weave in between your GCD heals/damage.

As well as the whole thing about currently, some oGCD's have relatively long timers, which makes some sense when they're designed to line up with boss mechanics to completely heal them... But with less emphasis on having such high throughput on oGCD's you can have shorter timers, meaning you weave them in more frequently.

To say nothing about also getting better job gauges that go into this new type of oGCD usage. For example, WHM not having trash Lilies (Which would actually be somewhat solved by Cure I/II now being used) that allows them to juggle those as a mechanic. SCH having more Aetherflow synergy to play with (Due to shorter CD on Aetherflow to cast more oGCD's), perhaps allowing it to interact with their Fairy in some way (*Cough*Demi-Titania*Cough* ). AST being able to draw Lord/Lady more often in addition to their buff cards.

P.S. Tanks don't get a lot of things to juggle. In fact, 2/3 don't even have many oGCD's to use outside their defensive CD's (WAR has only 1 oGCD damage skill for example)

[Gemina]

tl;dr I want more direct healing too! But I want to see it through encounter design instead of ability nerfs

What I want for our healers are not ability nerfs. I don't want our DPS skill potencies decreased or pruned. In fact, I would like to see more options here. WHM is a great example of AoE done correctly. They have three to choose from and each provide different advantages/disadvantages. Holy causes damage and stuns. It's ability to mitigate damage from multiple targets is through the roof, but its damage potency decreases with the number of targets and stun eventually gets resisted. Plus the ability is pretty useless against bosses. Assize has no damage reduction based on number of targets while simultaneously healing and providing MP. However, it's damage potential goes down the fewer targets there are. It's still valid against single target for the MP, but has a high chance to heal more than what's necessary if used for such. Aero 3 inflicts a DoT and is useful even on single targets. However, it's cast time is high and has a very small range; nabbing all targets with it requires cooperation from your party members. Now if they can just balance all healers in the same way.

I'd like to see something similar with our single target DPS potential as well. There is certainly no need to nerf our DPS to the ground to the point we will need other players to take care of our solo needs - if at all.

Actual combat should be slower for healers because they have a lot of information they need to process at any given time. The combination of ogcds with scripted mechanics makes this need less so. Indeed I would like encounter design to change a bit to accommodate these changes. Optimization would still be key for higher end content, and much like free crafting we would want to use the skill that best suits the current need of the raid. We'll just have far less time to make this decision. I see no reason why this cannot be fun and engaging gameplay if not more so than what we have currently; being able to plan 3, 4, even 5 moves ahead. I find loading encounters with one-shot mechanics a very weak and lazy way to make encounters challenging. Especially for healers. They should be strong against magical attacks and weak against physical. I LOVED this aspect about mages in the days of old.

[Hustensaft]

With a reduction to the reliance on ogcd heals, time spent hard casting curative abilities will undoubtedly go up. The question then remains how do they diversify our healers and also leave room for a fourth in the future? Unfortunately, I don't have this answer. I'm not a game designer. It could come from utility but they really have to be careful when it comes to how healers benefit raids outside of healing. It's part of the problem we currently have.

You can also argue what's even technically possible for FFXIV heals do to.

For example, I'd argue that HoTs are already mechnically poor in FFXIV and loose one of their major advantage. HoTs generally give you a rather smooth HP curve, esp. if several are on a target. In FFXIV though, HoTs and DoTs tick on a global interval. They heal a large junk of HP on every global 3 second server tick. Instead of a smooth curve, you just heal large junks in between casted heals. In combinations with FFXIVs encounter design where lots of damage happens in short intervals, HoTs aren't much more then a massive overheal generator. (A WoWs resto druid Hots will overheal 10-25% - a WHMS HoT generally are at 40-50% overhealing - if he ). WoW at some point changed encounter design, while signficantly increasing player HP (or reducing healing done), to allow for more then just instant/casted heals to heal. ou could also question the total lack of even one single channelled spell being a consequence of technicaly limitations...

Then there are more philosophical question about what Absorbs should do. WoW had strong absorbs on two specs at one point, we're now down to one weak single-target absorb spell on one single healing spec - general gist is that strong absorbs either take any danger out of encounter mechanics, or you tune mechanics around them, and they become mandatory. In FFXIV you have strong absorbs, and a generally poor state of HoTs.

Further you can argue about how many buttons does a healer need to perform it's task. I personally believe, and that's why many other games don't have healers with more then ~5 core buttons), that the required number to heal 90% of all stuff thrown at you is just that low. Anything past that is redundancy, that ultimately only allows to counter more failures by other players.