Yoshi-P: "If you want more engaging content, go play Ultimate"

[Shurrikhan]

If we look at the distribution of buttons, I think its fair to assume that the devs think that healing should be the core of the role and dps should be auxiliary (disregarding how they have designed fights with enrage timers).

To be fair, there's no real mutual exclusivity here --Are we meant to heal OR are we meant to deal damage?-- except when those two things share a resource (be that Aetherflow or just sheer GCD time). Every kit is <long-term throughput> plus an assemblage of <short-term throughput capacities of capped or greatly diminishing returns> by which to less tax their <long-term throughput>. In other games, that <long-term throughput> might sometimes be healing, but every fight in this game is solely a matter of reducing the enemy cylinder's life-metric to 0, making it always damage.

Then we look at Lilies and we see that the reward for using 3 lily abilities to heal is dps neutrality/boost (I forget how the current numbers balance out). So its a auxiliary reward for performing the core role.
This feels super weird if you are using all your healing abilities then I would expect you to be in a part of the fight where you need more healing but instead you are throwing heals out and you get a shiny button saying "hit them hard" while you are focused on keeping folks alive.

Is it any weirder, though, than oGCD heals? An oGCD heal says "Here, use this so you don't have to spend would-be offensive time to heal." Both are ultimately just ways of making that healing cost no damage. Heck, this is true even for building up to a gigaheal (a la Undulating Tides) if such wouldn't involve waste. All bigger heals are designed to do more in less time, as to be able to --so long as you don't specifically need it for a heal check-- spend more time attacking.

The only differences are (A) that one doesn't care when you use it, so long as it still prunes would-be GCDs of healing (especially if those would be necessary during raid buffs) and the other wants to be specifically used during raid buffs and (B) that one consumes weave space and the other produces it.

WoW Holy priest have a Talent called "Surge of Light" that I think shows a much better reward system. The talent give a 8% chance for both your healing spells and your single target dps button to give you a charge for 1 instant free heal that stacks twice. Its everything Freecure should be.

How I would translate this to FFXIV: Freecure would give a 25% chance(to account for GCD difference) for any cure/cure II or Glare to grant a free, instant, oGCD Cure II. (balance numbers as needed)

That still would change very little, though, save in that this would

1. double Lilies' healing power by simply overbuffing it relative to the existing system,
2. gate much of WHM's free healing (in terms of not costing the WHM damage) behind RNG,
3. further punish downtime,
4. slightly further punish the MP efficiency of healing GCDs [SIZE="1"(all MP costs would be, in effect, reduced by 250 through the 25% chance of a free 1k MP spell so long as you would need to use that healing anyways, but that's a much bigger difference relative to natural MP gen for Glare III than it is for Cure II)[/SIZE]
5. cost WHM's their AoE free-healing option,
6. cost WHM 3 instant casts (for mobility and weave space) per minute,
7. cost WHM an average of 3 oGCD weave-slots per minute,
8. cost WHM a non-Glare offensive cast per minute, exchanging it for another Glare, and
9. lock normal Cure II casts behind having consumed all Freecure procs, as opposed to having a separate button for that purpose.

Time, itself, is a damage AND/OR healing resource. Lily generation doesn't care where that time was spent, only that it's been 20 seconds. At present that's every 8th GCD. Sticking an equivalent chance onto each spell would net a 12.5% Freecure chance. If the free Cure II itself no longer consumes a GCD, we don't even have to make room for those GCDs nor allow it to proc itself. But that's all it would be. Rather than getting your free 800 potency of healing per 20 seconds, you'd get it from an average of 20 seconds' uptime. Rather than getting weave space, you'd lose it. Rather than building towards a unique and impressive spell, you'd be building towards maintaining the ability to cast nothing but Glare and Dia.

That's the main problem here: There's simply nothing warranting further heals to be cast. Changing the impression those heals give off isn't going to make much difference so long as there is virtually no reason ever to sacrifice direct/clear-capped/long-term throughput (damage) for capped/short-term throughput (healing, in our case here).

[Reylah]

To be fair, there's no real mutual exclusivity here --Are we meant to heal OR are we meant to deal damage?-- except when those two things share a resource ...

Time was the resource it was looking at and mostly from a overarching "when I play this job what is expected of me" stance for that particular sentence.

Is it any weirder, though, than oGCD heals?

Ugh this is where my wishful thinking shows because I still fall into the trap of thinking that the oGCD on heals is to make it a better emergence heal so you can panic and hit it without having to think about the consequences on your GCD time. But as a consequence of the power of those oGCDs relative to the GCDs they can often replace the need for GCDs in a particular heal check and then its just a matter of is the cooldown of in time for the next one and can you stagger your oGCDs so cover all of the heal checks.

That still would change very little, though, save in that this would ...

Oh my primals. Suddenly I realize I have not played WHM since Stormblood and lilies aren't actually generated by abilities anymore so scratch the lily generation ideas for now, I goofed big on that. That said:

1. scratch my lilies ideas, I need to rethink them
2. you're right but that's because of the scuffed damage centric paradigm this game has. If rng is the problem make it stacks. Try things dang it. I feel like the devs are too afraid to experiment with minor mechanical tweaks and wait until there is a build up before doing a sweeping rework.
3. Downtime is already punished under the ABC mentality. The purpose of this is luring players who aren't into always casting with rewards and give more to those who are.
4. this speaks more to the need for the mp cost reduction for WHM than anything else. if they won't give WHM actually bigger heals they should at least give them bigger heals per MP.
5. What option? I don't recall a free AoE heal unless you mean free from costing damage
6. what were you using those for? healing or dmg? at a certain point the fact that you have to make a choice isn't actually a bad thing.
7. ^
8. That's either a dot you cast twice a minute or an AoE. what is the lost? the AoE is worth more than Glare on 3+ targets anyways and that dot should have higher priority for dps over a glare. Again I don't think its a bad thing if you have to make a choice.
9. Button bloat is an excuse the devs use all the time I was trying to avoid that. I am beginning to understand that because oGCDs CAN be woven after a cast that has been taken by players as it should be so I shouldn't count oGCDs as free of GCD consequences but rather requiring a GCD to be rolling to be optimal. My mistake. I guess you could drop the oGCD part and see how that shakes.

The numbers and fine tuning of all the mechanics SHOULD be up for grabs and subject to change I honestly don't care about the specific numbers without the ability to test feel. The core of what I'm going for is that I think the devs should consider adding a reward for auxiliary behavior that ties into core behavior so that the auxiliary feels better to do beyond the "yay I am contributing damage because I hit my damage button". I realize that sounds a tad shallow but I swapped from WHM to AST in Stormblood (when I was but a whee healer that only healed until I became bored while nobodies health dropped) because I was tired just casting Stone and the Cards gave me something I could do that rewarded me for learning about the game like what cards did for other jobs. If casting stone gave me something for whenever I had to go back to healing it would have felt less like I was casting it just to not be bored.

You're right, in the end, that all this revolves around a scuffed approach to combat design. The impression the devs have been giving is that they don't want new healers to be too stressed so that more people will pick up healing. The problem is the only thing that stresses me during a fight is when I am new and don't know what the damage profile is but the damage is almost always either deadly so I can't solve that with healing or so low I can solve it in 1-2 GCD. As you learn the fights you get better, sure, but I so infrequently see the same dungeon fight that I rarely memorize any given fight. If they don't want to stress me they shouldn't always drop hp bars below 30% for dramatic effect, giving me a heart attack because I can't tell if we scuffed a mechanic or not.
The devs need to stop designing combat for healers like a bad haunted house, relying on cheap jump-scares that mean nothing after the first few times through.

[ty_taurus]

I would love to talk point for point but these blasted character limits. The real gist is that I think the

You can type up your full response, then copy the majority of it and delete that. Post the first part of your response, then edit your message and paste in the remaining text and you'll be able to share your full thoughts. That's how many of us bypass the character limit.

The devs need to stop designing combat for healers like a bad haunted house, relying on cheap jump-scares that mean nothing after the first few times through.

There's an issue with changing how content is designed at this point which is that it fails to address all of the content that currently exists. If we were to adjust future fight design to compliment the way healers are currently designed, it would do nothing to address the issues with healing design vs content design in everything that led up to now. Changing how healers work is far more logical because reworking them in a way that compliments the current content design model can enable them to always be fun and engaging if done correctly, not just in content that we add from this point forward.

[Reylah]

You can type up your full response, then copy the majority of it and delete that. Post the first part of your response, then edit your message and paste in the remaining text and you'll be able to share your full thoughts. That's how many of us bypass the character limit.

Thanks.

There's an issue with changing how content is designed at this point which is that it fails to address all of the content that currently exists. If we were to adjust future fight design to compliment the way healers are currently designed, it would do nothing to address the issues with healing design vs content design in everything that led up to now. Changing how healers work is far more logical because reworking them in a way that compliments the current content design model can enable them to always be fun and engaging if done correctly, not just in content that we add from this point forward.

Unfortunately that holds for any design change not just content or healing. That's why we rarely see utility changes to classes and when we do its always in the new level bracket. If they make changes to how healers play before lvl 50 that effects the synched min ilvl no echo whatever runs of Coil and the whole point of those is that you can "experience it as it was" to a certain degree and FFXIV end game relies a lot on being able to redo old content in various forms to make up for slower a new content pace. At a certain point something has to give if any big change is to occur. If you check out the old non-MSQ dungeons and raids from ARR and HW they still have an older design requiring more healing and dispels with more Damage over time effects. If they only make changes that won't affect older content then we will only see new abilities or traits for the new expac content and while that will be fine for that stuff I guess, it will lead to a weird stratification of the healing experience as you level and whenever you get synced.

[ty_taurus]

Thanks.



Unfortunately that holds for any design change not just content or healing. That's why we rarely see utility changes to classes and when we do its always in the new level bracket. If they make changes to how healers play before lvl 50 that effects the synched min ilvl no echo whatever runs of Coil and the whole point of those is that you can "experience it as it was" to a certain degree and FFXIV end game relies a lot on being able to redo old content in various forms to make up for slower a new content pace. At a certain point something has to give if any big change is to occur. If you check out the old non-MSQ dungeons and raids from ARR and HW they still have an older design requiring more healing and dispels with more Damage over time effects. If they only make changes that won't affect older content then we will only see new abilities or traits for the new expac content and while that will be fine for that stuff I guess, it will lead to a weird stratification of the healing experience as you level and whenever you get synced.

Honestly, the biggest difference between old and new content is the removal of enemies landing critical hits and how certain enemies will stay facing in the direction of their target when casting certain actions (this matters for tanks as they can dodge things like conal cleaves and whatnot by walking through the boss or enemy). There really aren't many instances of cleansable debuffs early on, especially ones worth cleansing. DoTs, as you brought up, deal so little damage outside of Savage that it's a waste of time cleansing them.

Regardless, healers and and should be designed in a way that provides players with a consistent gameplay loop regardless of the amount of healing required. That is the only way to not only make all content more enjoyable, but also make healing more enjoyable for solo instances and the MSQ. I'd be down with seeing more damage in the future but I don't want there to be this schism between old and new content where healing becomes unplayable when synched down to a certain point.

[Shurrikhan]

Oh my primals. Suddenly I realize I have not played WHM since Stormblood and lilies aren't actually generated by abilities anymore so scratch the lily generation ideas for now, I goofed big on that. That said:

1. scratch my lilies ideas, I need to rethink them
2. you're right but that's because of the scuffed damage centric paradigm this game has. If rng is the problem make it stacks. Try things dang it. I feel like the devs are too afraid to experiment with minor mechanical tweaks and wait until there is a build up before doing a sweeping rework.
3. Downtime is already punished under the ABC mentality. The purpose of this is luring players who aren't into always casting with rewards and give more to those who are.
4. this speaks more to the need for the mp cost reduction for WHM than anything else. if they won't give WHM actually bigger heals they should at least give them bigger heals per MP.
5. What option? I don't recall a free AoE heal unless you mean free from costing damage
6. what were you using those for? healing or dmg? at a certain point the fact that you have to make a choice isn't actually a bad thing.
7. ^
8. That's either a dot you cast twice a minute or an AoE. what is the lost? the AoE is worth more than Glare on 3+ targets anyways and that dot should have higher priority for dps over a glare. Again I don't think its a bad thing if you have to make a choice.
9. Button bloat is an excuse the devs use all the time I was trying to avoid that. I am beginning to understand that because oGCDs CAN be woven after a cast that has been taken by players as it should be so I shouldn't count oGCDs as free of GCD consequences but rather requiring a GCD to be rolling to be optimal. My mistake. I guess you could drop the oGCD part and see how that shakes.

Quick replies:

1. Fair enough.
   
   
2. The developers would have to give us more of substance to do in the short and mid-term before the game could possibly avoid gravitating towards fixation on uncapped throughput (damage, always damage, in XIV's case, as that is the only thing that can actually ultimately clear any dungeon).
   
   
3. Right, but giving a single job a further disadvantage (further dependence on uptime) without fitting compensation (and the options for that are few and far between) should never been considered a boon or mark of identity, nor should any job's kit be sacrificed just to slightly reframe an issue one (or, the devs) refuses to tackle head-on.
   
   
4. WHM gets roughly 2400-2700 MP worth of free healing per minute from Lilies, all without potency cost (technically at mild potency gain if one has raid buffs available). While I'll agree that WHM should perhaps still have the likes of Cure III made cheaper, that is significant. Having bigger heals or more MP-efficient heals also wouldn't change the fact that no other healer would need to sacrifice GCDs of damage to meet healing needs (or, for that matter, need to use MP beyond the extent of Broil/Malefic/Dosis spam outside of the odd Recitation-Adlo-Deployment cast). At present, neither does WHM, so long as you account for those GCD's redemption via Misery, but if you gate Lilies behind regular GCD heals, then that becomes a much greater issue.
   
   
5. Afflatus Rapture. Its the Lily-Medica. If your replacement for ALL Lily heals and Misery is to be, in effect, just an oGCD Cure II (which therefore would be impossible to bank), then you'd lose any AoE usage of this system.
   
   
6. They're instant casts. They're still on the GCD. They provide neither extra damage nor healing beyond the mobility or weave-space provided. But, that is significant. By removing GCD Lilies, you'd have removed 3 opportunities for mobility/weaving per minute (4 if you count Misery), and cost a further 3 weave slots per minute.
7. ^
   
   
8. I'm referring to Afflatus Misery, which was previously used once per minute. It therefore at least gave us one more thing to hit besides just 2 Dias and 18 (or 22, with your suggestion) Glares per minute. By moving the Lilies to oGCD heals (gated behind regular GCD healing) and removing Misery, you've increased Glare's frequency from 75% of our GCDs to 92%.
   
   
9. If you already know button bloat is a terrible excuse (especially for lost capacities or controls within gameplay), then let's kindly leave it out -- especially in cases like this where you'd otherwise sacrifice the ability to utilize burst or mobility when you need it most.

The problem is the only thing that stresses me during a fight is when I am new and don't know what the damage profile is but the damage is almost always either deadly so I can't solve that with healing or so low I can solve it in 1-2 GCD. As you learn the fights you get better, sure, but I so infrequently see the same dungeon fight that I rarely memorize any given fight. If they don't want to stress me they shouldn't always drop hp bars below 30% for dramatic effect, giving me a heart attack because I can't tell if we scuffed a mechanic or not.
The devs need to stop designing combat for healers like a bad haunted house, relying on cheap jump-scares that mean nothing after the first few times through.

Fully agreed.