Healer identity in 5.0

[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?

[Gemina]

Hard-casting Heals in a meta where literally more damage = Less Healing is a prospect that was picked up in Gordias when we had the overtuning issue. This carried on all throughout Stormblood.

If they take less emphasis off oGCDs being the only thing you need to worry about and make GCD matter again for Healers it’ll shift people’s mindsets. They may not like the change, but don’t we all remember HW BRD? Everyone hated it, but they adapted over time.

If WHM is going to have an identity or competitive place at all, they will have to tune down oGCD healing going forward.

I believe many healers share my mindset and want to feel like a healer again. I am not proposing that ogcds be eliminated. However, I am suggesting they be tuned down. WAY down. I am sure there are also offensive minded healers who will indeed feel like such a change would be a massive nerf to healers. We'll find out who our true healers are, and who are the DPS disguised in healer gowns. No doubt about it. The meta in this game will always be heal as little as possible, and I am ok with that. What I am not ok with is that figure being represented by 10-15% of the encounter.

I remember 3.0 BRD. I didn't play the job but I remember how much bowmage was despised. They never adapted to that playstyle, and SE gave them their mobility back. This is different though. We are casters, not marksman with a fundamental need for mobility. With mechanics scripted the way they are, the true need for mobility is not as great as many think it is.

WHM has an identity that was striped from them. We want it back. And I agree that tuning down ogcds across the board for healers is going to help with that.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[tesni_g]

In my opinion the ogcd heals should really be oh crap! buttons. You save them for certain mechanics and moments. They shouldn’t be as they are now so healers can play at being another dps. Dpsing and healing is fun I agree. The ratio at the moment is way way off though.

I think oh crap! buttons are a terrible waste of a toolkit. I don't want to sit on my hands waiting for someone else to screw up so I can justify using them. And so many of the ogcds are completely ineffective without proper planning (Earthly Star, cards, Excog, Deployment Tactics, Fey Illumination/Covenant, Benison, Asylum).

We already do save them for certain mechanics. The problem we have is that aren't enough mechanics in between those cooldowns that really push healers to cast direct heals.

[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.

[TenraiNagi]

As a WHM main, they should give us our identity back after it was torn apart and shared with the SCH and AST.
WHM has a lot of party utility in older FF games it’s surprising that we do not get any here. SCH can keep their barriers and AST their party buffs and these work well for them. WHM could use some dps buff for sure but it’s original party utility should be introduced in here.
Some include:
Esunaga; party wide ailement removal
Invis; target dodges next hit 100%
NulAll; magic damage mitigation 50% for target
Full-life; target raised to full hp/ mp and no weakness debuff (should be on a long CD)
Dispel; remove stats buff from enemy
Banish; potency doubled on voidsent enemies
Dia; reduces enemy’s DEF and apply a DoT
Reraise; raise target automatically if KO’ed as if normal raise used on them
Haste; increases targets skill/ spellspeed and movement speed
Fear; inflict hysteria on all mobs around you (for fun xD)

And these are just to name a few of what white mages were capable of. Seriously, all we get are more and more heals when we are already oversaturated with them. The other two healers have a strong identity which is great, can we get ours now?

[Feidam]

I think oh crap! buttons are a terrible waste of a toolkit. I don't want to sit on my hands waiting for someone else to screw up so I can justify using them. And so many of the ogcds are completely ineffective without proper planning (Earthly Star, cards, Excog, Deployment Tactics, Fey Illumination/Covenant, Benison, Asylum).

We already do save them for certain mechanics. The problem we have is that aren't enough mechanics in between those cooldowns that really push healers to cast direct heals.

Here is the thing though why does a class’s kit need to be 100% used all the time? Gets way too static imo. I like having a bit a strategy that must be employed, as well as moments that make your stomach drop where you have to react in a major way.

[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)