What are alternative healing options you want to see on a new healer class?

[Allegor]

Kardia is literally just a set heal tick value, effectively per GCD, which then punishes you further for using any healing GCDs. It leads to, apart from the sole exception of Eukrasian Diagnosis, an even higher cost to using healing GCDs than any of the other three healers.

And, yes, locking healing behind damage (or otherwise making direct healing even less worthwhile) rarely produces good results, design wise. Since it's already a part of Sage, though, it might as well be expanded upon on that particular job, ideally by having Kardia instead scale with damage (or offensive potency) dealt and opening up its dps kit such that Kardia then becomes capable of banking and burst(ier) healing.

The way Kardia is implemented is meh, I give you that. It's a set small potency, doesn't stack per target hit, and there isn't even an aoe variant - it's basically just a less effective and more restricted Eos, but that doesn't mean the concept of healing through dealing damage is bad. If anything, the playstyle is meant so you wouldn't ever need to gcd heal, since you're literally already "gcd healing" by attacking.

Other games have effectively achieved this playstyle too so it's not some brand new idea only XIV came up with either. It would do well if the devs look at their competition and take a few notes, but that'd require them to actually care for the healing role to begin with.

[Shurrikhan]

The way Kardia is implemented is meh, I give you that. It's a set small potency, doesn't stack per target hit, and there isn't even an aoe variant - it's basically just a less effective and more restricted Eos, but that doesn't mean the concept of healing through dealing damage is bad. If anything, the playstyle is meant so you wouldn't ever need to gcd heal, since you're literally already "gcd healing" by attacking.

Oh, I'm not judging the concept off of Kardia, alone, of all things. I'm judging it off of what I've seen in that vein from:

• Aion
• EQ2
• Ragnorak Online
• Rift
• WoW
• and probably a couple others that are slipping out of memory for the moment.

If anything, the playstyle is meant so you wouldn't ever need to gcd heal, since you're literally already "gcd healing" by attacking.

And THAT is actually the biggest problem.

The tuning for healers is essentially a combination of long-term contribution (which is only ever damage in this game) and short-term [spikes of] contribution (enough mitigation/healing not to have anyone die and thus lose damage to downtime and Weakness).

So what happens when you have a healer that always does damage and always does healing?

Simply put, the swing between outputs (curative and offensive) available to said healer becomes painfully minimal, making them far less flexible (and, in many cases, less engaging) than more traditional healers (if just not done so poorly as, say, XIV's).

Need more healing? Your damage is already maxed out, so your healing is too. Need more damage? Your healing is already maxed out, so your damage is too. The most you'd have available is to, say, pop a banked haste buff and just hope your damage will be sufficient to keep everyone alive.

It therefore tends towards both the inflexible and quickly stale.

It's not whether a damage-based healer CAN keep up or not that makes it a bad design. It's that it's a kit designed to have minimal opportunity to change its throughput (profile).

(Though yes, the fact that you'd often have to hold onto damage CDs for healing checks, making such jobs either undertuned when you do or overtuned in fights in which you need not, thus effectively barring them from prog and/or obliging their presence in farm is also a problem.

[Sani2341]

While I seriously doubt SE's competency to do it at all, let alone well, an actually HoT focused Healer would be nice imho.

While all Healers currently have a Regen effect or two, ime, they all usually jsut use their various direct heal oGCDs first, with regens just to let people tick up to full.

What I'm more looking for would be a Healer that stacks various HoTs on people somewhat proactively instead of just pressing big heal x or y after damage. Ideally they'd have emergency tools that took the HoTs and maybe applied them immediatly at a certain %tage for emergency Heals. Then again, this is FFXIV, and we can't have Healing kits where spells inter act with each other beyond 'press this cd to heal more'

[UkcsAlias]

A concept i came up with:

A barrier healer which uses MP directly as the barrier. Abilities generaly focus on restoring MP to enable more healing. Has 2 basic offensive abilities: a slow cast without MP cost, and an instant cast that costs MP. And one amplified DPS ability that does cost quite a bit of MP, but does require team members to have higher HP as the damage is decided by team health (this is ment as a DPS increase on teams that barely take damage). As the MP is used as shield itself, most abilities are on a GCD, including additional healing capabilities outside of using MP (panic heals). Some abilities allow you to mark a DPS which through damage can also recharge your MP. Some traits would be better conversion rates for MP. And getting additional marks on the DPS classes to get even more MP from them. Later on as trait, when out of MP, damage does still get mitigated, but at a reduced value (to allow the player to drain the MP more reliably to get more damage).

Basicly using MP in a completely diffirent method compared to other healers, while in its basics is still being played quite similar to a scholar (until beyond a certain level your trait behaviour starts to truly take over).

[Lyth]

This is an important topic to people not currently playing a healer as well. I would love to main a healer for an expansion or two for variety, but none of the current archetypes really click for me personally.

I think part of the problem is that FFXIV's healer design never really got over ARR's WHM/SCH dichotomy and tries to compartmentalize healers into these pre-existing categories, rather than breaking the mold and creating more diverse playstyles. Why do healers have to be casters? I've seen games with melee range, aura-based healers before. When people were speculating on DNC's release during the lead in to Shadowbringers, that was my expectation on where they would take the job. Start up a dance step, and then launch into melee combos and oGCDs that proc dance effects on nearby allies.

Likewise, there was an interview leading in to Endwalker where Yoshi-p stated that the initial design for SGE was similar to the FFT Chemist concept that players suggested (i.e. to carry a medicine box and throw different potions.) The main issue with a non-magical healer like Chemist is how you do resource management. But that's quite naturally resolved using an ammo/reload system where the potential downtime from reloading forces you to make decisions on how to allocate your resources. And the Mix mechanic could very easily have been executed by combining ground effects from two potions. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if the idea makes its way over to Physical Ranged instead. It's as if anything that involves the slightest bit of experimentation or risk finds its way on to DPS instead, which is why the role has a lot more variety and fun.

I probably wouldn't main a caster healer no matter how exciting the rotation, but I would 100% be willing to try out a melee-range aura healer or a Chemist/Ana style sniper healer with healing grenades. Perhaps even something with a edgier theme like using vampiric lifesteal to heal your allies (oh wait, that's WAR).

[Sunhwapark]

I loved playing a Chanter in Aion. It would be cool if we had a healer a bit like that, they had very nice melee combos and supportive spells.

[RayneBoemir]

Regen healer?

When I throw regents up so me and the other healer in the party can dps they don’t they just totally waste my regen and heal all the hp back.

[ASkellington]

Regen healer?

When I throw regents up so me and the other healer in the party can dps they don’t they just totally waste my regen and heal all the hp back.

Hey man if they wanna waste mana, let them.

[Absurdity]

The way Kardia is implemented is meh, I give you that. It's a set small potency, doesn't stack per target hit, and there isn't even an aoe variant - it's basically just a less effective and more restricted Eos

Saying that Kardia is less effective and more restrictive than Eos is debatable, if we compare it to Embrace (because you really can't compare it to Eos' full kit) I'd argue that Kardia comes out on top, atleast with how healers are currently played. Now if healing involved GCDs all the time it would be a different story.


-Kardia is 170 potency and while Embrace should in theory be 180 potency your pet doesn't gain 100% of your stats but only 89%, so in reality Embrace heals for less than it should.
-While Kardia does absolutely nothing if you're casting healing GCDs you also don't lose access to it just because you used Dissipation and it can be targeted, unlike Embrace, so you remain full control over who gets your heal.

[QooEr]

So what happens when you have a healer that always does damage and always does healing?

Simply put, the swing between outputs (curative and offensive) available to said healer becomes painfully minimal, making them far less flexible (and, in many cases, less engaging) than more traditional healers (if just not done so poorly as, say, XIV's).

Need more healing? Your damage is already maxed out, so your healing is too. Need more damage? Your healing is already maxed out, so your damage is too. The most you'd have available is to, say, pop a banked haste buff and just hope your damage will be sufficient to keep everyone alive.

It therefore tends towards both the inflexible and quickly stale.

It's not whether a damage-based healer CAN keep up or not that makes it a bad design. It's that it's a kit designed to have minimal opportunity to change its throughput (profile).

a damage-based healer doesnt mean that damage translates into healing all the time, or even in the same way for every single spell. it doesnt have to be a 1:1 translation of damage done to healing done. any design problem can be fixed with enough creativity.

just off the top of my head, having more skills like zoe that purely increase healing would affect the healing output without caring for the damage output. having more variation of kardia healing effects would also help (like if e.dosis gave a shield like in pvp, if phlegma gave a regen, if toxicon did aoe healing, etc). the basis for making sage lean more into "healing with damage spells" is there, and it could work if they doubled down more on that aspect instead of copying scholar's homework.