Healers need an overhaul

[Shurrikhan]

Now, before anyone gonna jump and pick apart the above proposals, save the effort. What I have just said is nothing more but an illustration of the kind of rework that I would like to see.

Ok, I'll bite, in good faith.


A - Turn "play" into a GCD instead of an oGCD.
Reasons: One, reduce the excessive weaving that AST has to do comparing to other healers. Two, make play easier for people who on controller or don't play with macro (targets switching). Three, allow draw to be weaved with play instead of over 2 GCD or risk double weaving (QoA for high ping).


B - Each time a card is played, give AST 1 stack of buff that makes the next Melafic hit for twice potency. Cap this stack at certain # so AST has to manage it instead of just stack it infinitely for buff window.
Reasons: one, reduce the #of Melafic spam with an equivalent number of card play while has no DPS loss. AST can strategically manage their stack for optimization. This is somewhat similar to WHM Lily.


C - Astrodyne will give a timed and stack-able buff up to 3 stacks. A 3 seal astrodyne will increase the stack value (up to three). 2 Seal astrodyne will simply extend the timer of the current stack but not increase its value, otherwise the stack will decrease by 1 each time the counter reach zero. (Think about the old MNK Gease Lighting, but with a twitch). Adjust timing of cards so that AST has to pace out Astrodyne, save and pump out 2 Astrodyne back to back will risk not have enough seal to refresh the stack in time.
Reason: reward good effort without being too punishing on bad RNG. Allow AST to has their own mini-window without clutch play.


D - Astrodyne stack can give 1 of these 2 buffs: a haste buff that allow more cast, or a % damage buff to melafic but also increase its MP cost. The math should be worked out that while it improve output, it can not be sustained with a zero piety build.
Reason: One: I had said it before, when the role ignore its supposed main 2nd stat (piety) in favor of a non-relevant stat (DH) then there is something really wrong on a fundamental level of the design, that has to be fixed. Two: provide an alternative option that make DET/PIE a viable competitor to the CRT build- similar to how the SpS vs Crit option on BLM. For example: a CRT build would favor to maintain a 2 stack Adstrodyne while a DET/PIE built would prefer a full 3 stack up time. Or, high level of play can have AST juggle the stacks throughout the fight to find the ideal sweat spot between output and MP regen ratio ala ram up for buff window, drop down to conserve MP. (This is my idea of active MP management, not just pressing some buttons).



Now, before anyone gonna jump and pick apart the above proposals, save the effort. What I have just said is nothing more but an illustration of the kind of rework that I would like to see. I do not claim these will solve the issue, or if they are even good fixes. I simply want to show (per request) why I don't believe the fix to be simply adding one or two more DPS button. I had worked on a few total conversion mod in the Total War series, that's why even though I'm not a dev, I'm not naive enough to think a complex problem can be solved by just throwing around some on the spot suggestions, be it mine or yours.


For me, engagement start from the planning, to approach, and deliberation, not just merely how many button to press. I also want it to remain accessible to new healers, but provide enough depth for the veteran to optimize (not unlike Yoshi's vision for BLM). The last point is more about my own personal issue that I had raised a month ago about the role identity. You can not have a "proper" healer with a flaw design at the very first and basic step.

I will attempt to approach it as such. I hope you will consider my comments likewise, as roughly illustrative.

So that you can double-check my interpretation, from which my later comments are based:

It seems to me that you are more or less following two goals (or, a primary goal and a constraint):

• Reduce the GCD time (or, more broadly, the perceptible attention) spent on offensive (or at least, repetitive filler) actions, replacing them with more "healer-like" uses thereof.
• Attempt to realistically meet the constraints of present systems (Piety as a lackluster/shit stat, difficulty is basically limited to predominantly-single-target encounters anyways, relative healing requirements cannot be increased, and no new technical innovations/affordances are likely).

I will continue from that interpretation, but if that interpretation has been made in significant error, feel free to simply stop me there and ignore what follows.

Comments:

First, I would recommend that you consider how large of changes you want to make and what arbitrary constraints that goal would already outstrip. You seem to be accounting for constraints that are just far more negligible than the sum or trend of what "pennies" would be necessary to get your "dollar" of healing changes. [See C and D, especially, and their seeming to try to salvage Piety.]

Most rehauls requested here --even limiting that survey to those offering more illustrative examples-- would be so much larger of changes than the likes of adjusting or removing Piety that it would not be worth anchoring those suggestions around something like Piety unless its current implementation, or one given even just a very small tweak, would be desirable. Whether those rehauls be the likes of <siphon excess healing tools towards non-healing uses> or <make us feel more like actual healers™>, they're still pretty big changes even before touching on any sort of encounter redesign.

Consider Piety, for instance. You seem to be going out of your way to attempt to give it relevance through small changes elsewhere, perhaps on the hope that it could allow for meaningful MP management in some new way, but if the stat itself is terribly designed, efforts made around that stat will be that much less effective. Unless the problems with the stat are precisely the issues you wish to fix on a larger scale (and I suspect you may believe so, but I would offer a warning, in mirror, shortly), I'd recommend you first instead treat Piety as if it didn't exist. You'll need to later account for the threat of the stat's existing, but unless it offers a unique advantage to gameplay for existing, tentatively axe it.

Note: Piety essentially exists to increasingly remove active MP management, replacing it instead with a pre-fight gamble. Essentially, it's a commission, alike to Enmity when that was sort of a mechanic. One "wins" by guessing as nearly as possible, without falling short, how much MP they will need over the course of the fight and swapping gear out accordingly (within their limited means). That much is fundamental to Piety. No small tweak will replace that function. Piety's gains are finnicky and rather obscure, likely falling short of its issues (outsized tryhard pretensions/gear-spotting, a "waste" stat, and/or reduced engagement with future/possible MP management in gameplay). Is that worth keeping?

(If not, consider also whether Direct Hit and Tenacity actually improve the game at all, or likewise make it worse in their current form. Remember also that you can also later add back what functions, or the desired parts thereof, these stats actually meet as you wish. It's just easier to build upon a blank state than a marred one.)

Second (though it's partly connected to the first), I have to wonder why [in parts A and B] you'd pigeonhole the rDPS-recuperation from Cards into ST damage, rather than simply putting that value into the Card itself.

I get the intention in turning cards into GCDs, but you will have two sticking points:

1. By being turned into oGCDs, the Cards will feel that much less responsive.
2. The oGCD Cards, and the APM and 'rush' they provide, have always been iconic to AST. Removing that may feel like removing something of the "essence" of AST.

Moreover, the GCD paired with a card was previously variable. Now, you have forced it into a bundle with Malefic, specifically. This can make it more difficult to find space for in healing-intense situations, should they ever arise, and can make the Cards feel in some ways less "healer-like," as they may feel like a 30s damage "Malefic+" CD first and a card second.

Why not simply buff the cards nearer to their old value? That would make them more sensitive to party dynamics, of course, but (A) as they are on a fixed timer, they would not disproportionately bleed into a 2-minute meta and (B) awareness of one's party's dynamics is iconic to supportive gameplay, and of course to AST.

I do not ask this in hopes of some sort of "gotcha!" I am not even certain the choice was wholly deliberate on your part. I just hope these questions may, on answer, clarify your intent.

______________________________

For me, engagement start from the planning, to approach, and deliberation, not just merely how many button to press. I also want it to remain accessible to new healers, but provide enough depth for the veteran to optimize (not unlike Yoshi's vision for BLM).

I think you and I, and probably most here, are in agreement on that. Adding more buttons has always seemed, across more suggestions here, to be a means to an ends, not an end in itself, and most are wary of overburdening new healers in terms of their immediate responsibilities / more vital capacities.

The contrast has simply been on whether less immediately essential aspects, like an increased ceiling on damage optimization beyond improving effective healing efficiency, would increase learner stress more so than an excess of tools that are difficult to find a (especially, non-redundant) place/slot for (as per our glut of oGCD heals). The general consensus seems to be that an excess (variably defined, ofc) of healing tools both makes healing less intuitive and makes healing capacity harder to balance (since it creates that much larger a gap between those familiar with each of those tools and those still learning).

:: Moving away from just what thoughts I'm seeing here to my own takes:

In short, for there to be any seemingly "significant" healing to be done at the high end (let us very tentatively define this as a combination of cognitive load [depth and count of decision made and/or tracking/tasks which inform those decisions] and palpable impression [such as from portion of uptime or actions spent on healing]), there has to be a smaller gap in ability to meet relative healing requirements between those who have become familiar with those healing tools and those who have not yet done so.

On the other hand, tools for shared and/or uncapped throughputs (in XIV's case, damage dealt, be that directly or indirectly) are far more forgiving to those gaps; a single healer who has only become familiar with a small part of their offensive tools and therefore underperforms in damage still has 7 other players to buoy their performance, and --filling an uncapped need-- familiarity with those damage tools does not render lower level tools (those that are earlier and more easily learned but are less efficient) redundant.

An 8-way, uncapped responsibility [here, damage] --the failings from which will almost never wipe a party through a short-term check-- is simply far more capable of allowing for sophistication without negative effects (inaccessibility, redundancy, etc.) than a mostly 2-way responsibility [healing] that acts only through short-term checks. As such, siphoning some of the gap in throughput from mastery of healing tools to other areas would probably both help the feel of healing (less redundancy while still having about roughly equal ceiling just by returning relevance to lower-level tools -- or even increasing that ceiling once permitted by that lower relevant throughput gap, such as through returning a space for pre-cast healing, by finally introducing MP management, etc.) while also improving the skill ceiling of healers' collective tasks (damage and utility also included) without asking too much of healers in their most immediate/iconic/assumed responsibilities.

__________

Similarly, I don't think anyone here is claiming that "simply adding one or two more DPS buttons" would fix everything, only that it would have an outsized positive impact given the constraints we're working under and the largest present pain points.

[Zebraoracle]

Man, playing other games always makes me miss Guild Wars 1's style of doing things... Ignoring the engagement of building your own build for a moment (because obviously that comes with a bunch of engagement)

Most skills had an energy (MP) cost, outside of specific ones such as signet abilities and adrenaline (rage) abilities.
Almost every skill had a cooldown of some sort, the only one I can think of off the top of my head that didn't was the elementalist's flare spell, which was a super basic one second cast no recharge damage spell.

Healers had to really think about the skills they brought. Sometimes they had a basic "main heal" spell, but not always, and every ability on their eight slot skill bar had a purpose (or at least should have a purpose).

Like, look at this: https://gwpvx.fandom.com/wiki/Build:...romise_Support
(you can mouse over abilities to see descriptions)

This monk build takes the assassin class as a secondary class and uses an elite assassin spell to generate energy and recharge skills, particularly the party-wide 50% block chance buff.

Alternatively, here's a ritualist healing build that focuses on energy management so the ritualist can reliably put out healing. Resource management is much more of a thing in GW1 than FF14, fwiw:
https://gwpvx.fandom.com/wiki/Build:...Songkai_Healer


The skills just generally feed off each other or have synergy within the build, unlike FF14 where most healing skills don't really have anything to do with each other outside of things like eukrasia, krasis, and zoe. I think that's one of the biggest issues people have with FF14 healing - the skills don't really have synergy. The damage spells don't really do anything with each other, the healing spells don't really do anything with each other and many of which are just reskins of the others. You don't have much in the way of resource management. You don't have creative/interesting ways to handle your healing through other means (such as the monk using an assassin skill to recharge all of their cooldowns).

[Raven2014]

First, I would recommend that you consider how large of changes you want to make and what arbitrary constraints that goal would already outstrip. You seem to be accounting for constraints that are just far more negligible than the sum or trend of what "pennies" would be necessary to get your "dollar" of healing changes. [See C and D, especially, and their seeming to try to salvage Piety.]

And here is the problem: I don't consider anything as "negligible". Let's say, if each marker can draw 1 color, consider this:

- If you have 1 marker: you can make 1 color.
- If you have 2 markers: you can make 3 color. (one for each, and a third one as a combination).
- If you have 3 markers: you can make 3(of 1) + 3(of 2) + 1 (of 3) = 7 colors.


The point is, when you remove one element from the set, you don't just simply lose "one" element, you also lose every subsets that contained that element. Like I said, I had pointed out many examples of extra element, and each and everytime you always dismiss it as "oh it's not meaningful, oh it's just a bloat .etc.". And maybe you are right, but only if you look at each element as if they're isolated in a vacuum.

Like I said, I played enough MMO to know there can be a lot more to healer play beyond just DPS and healing. And it's not because they have a ton of features that FF14 don't have. They simply kept the elements that FF14 used to have, but discarded. And because of that they can draw a far more colorful canvas. That's why I'm being particular critical about the binary track mindset exhibit by both SE and the people in this thread. With just 2 colors, all you gonna have is black, white, and a shade of gray.

Why not simply buff the cards nearer to their old value? That would make them more sensitive to party dynamics, of course, but (A) as they are on a fixed timer, they would not disproportionately bleed into a 2-minute meta and (B) awareness of one's party's dynamics is iconic to supportive gameplay, and of course to AST.

Sure, why not? Doesn't matter to me. Hell I'm pretty sure there gonna some balance issue there if oyu just took what I suggested and just blindly implement it. But again, the detail of the method here isn't the point. Make it rDPS, or personal DPS. I even gave option for (C) to either give a straight %buff or a haste buff. Those are irrelevant details. What I was trying to show is "there are ways to create depth beyond just adding button". You had repeatedly dismiss the extra elements (emity management, MP management, Cleansing .etc.) as busy work or bloat buttons and asked me to elaborate, so here is it. MP is simply being use as an example of how it can be something that be done dynamically, with at least a couple option, and not just "please remember to hit Lucid on CD".

There were only 2 consideration I kept in mind in the previous post.

- The change is strictly local to the healer, and will not affect other classes or the fight design themselves.
- It will not be necessary to add any extra abilities, rather just give the existing one more connection and depth. They're not meant to change the output (healing or damage), rather just make the path for a player to hit the max potential more involved and interesting.


But like I said, designing a game is a 5 digit salary job for people working in a team over months or even years to come up with a solution, don't expect a guy on the internet to do it in 30min for free.

The skills just generally feed off each other or have synergy within the build, unlike FF14 where most healing skills don't really have anything to do with each other outside of things like eukrasia, krasis, and zoe. I think that's one of the biggest issues people have with FF14 healing - the skills don't really have synergy. The damage spells don't really do anything with each other, the healing spells don't really do anything with each other and many of which are just reskins of the others. You don't have much in the way of resource management. You don't have creative/interesting ways to handle your healing through other means (such as the monk using an assassin skill to recharge all of their cooldowns).

Yes! 100 or 1000 times this!

I would much prefer to have a limited 5-6 skill that bounce of each others, that can be dynamically and thematically adjusted depending on built or even fights. Rather having 10 different skills that pretty much work independently that the only consideration is to press them on cool down.

[Deceptus]

I think you and I, and probably most here, are in agreement on that. Adding more buttons has always seemed, across more suggestions here, to be a means to an ends, not an end in itself, and most are wary of overburdening new healers in terms of their immediate responsibilities / more vital capacities.

The contrast has simply been on whether less immediately essential aspects, like an increased ceiling on damage optimization beyond improving effective healing efficiency, would increase learner stress more so than an excess of tools that are difficult to find a (especially, non-redundant) place/slot for (as per our glut of oGCD heals). The general consensus seems to be that an excess (variably defined, ofc) of healing tools both makes healing less intuitive and makes healing capacity harder to balance (since it creates that much larger a gap between those familiar with each of those tools and those still learning).

Just want to chime in on this specific point.

Adding more DPS options literally doesn't affect the people who don't want to DPS. They don't do it now, they won't do it no matter how many extra buttons get added.

And the higher content you play, quite frankly the more is expected out of you (for any role). That means optimization and better play. Don't want to make that improvement? Don't step into that content, or look for it only via the Duty Finder, because no one owes you a group.

Basically if the FFXIV devs refuse to add DPS options I hope they start adding more buffing / debuffing actions.

• Bravery (short duration physical damage increase)
• Faith (short duration magic damage increase)
• Protect (short duration party physical mitigation)
• Shell (short duration party magic mitigation)
• Virus (Enemy damage down)

[Shurrikhan]

Adding more DPS options literally doesn't affect the people who don't want to DPS. They don't do it now, they won't do it no matter how many extra buttons get added.

Agreed, especially given how quick communities typically are to single out "unique" role responsibilities first (sometime beyond their actual value towards long-term goals, wherein every role exists only to leverage what tools they have to complete the duty at the best equilibrium they can manage between reliability and speed).

Basically if the FFXIV devs refuse to add DPS options I hope they start adding more buffing / debuffing actions.

• Bravery (short duration physical damage increase)
• Faith (short duration magic damage increase)
• Protect (short duration party physical mitigation)
• Shell (short duration party magic mitigation)
• Virus (Enemy damage down)

This, on the other hand, I'm a bit more worried about, for a few reasons:

1. Job identity.

   As all jobs move their rDPS towards non-situational but indirect (pure damage, just not done yourself) means (a la Cards, Divination, and Chain Strategem), job distinctions get that much more blurred. No, I'm not a fan of WHM being a job whose identity is practically a lack thereof (slight hyperbole) and would be fine with them getting some utility, but I'd much rather that utility not simply be a more direct "Cards-lite", etc. I'd much rather, say, see more situational and virtually untaxed utility tools (such as oGCD single-target movement speed buffs, etc.) while keeping WHM rDPS firmly grounded in its direct damage.
   
   Bravery/Faith is basically the existing Cards mechanic as is (except that it applies to roughly equal halves of the job base, instead of 3/4s vs. 1/4 thereof with PLD and DRK being inherently screwed over).

2. (De)buff bloat.

   Admittedly, this works off the assumption that these additions, like their traditional forms, would have no CD. That, however, puts them at a narrow balancing point. If overpowered, they become a maintenance mechanic. Such maintenance mechanics tend to devolve into rather stale gameplay far, far more crippling to freedom to heal than any trio of DoTs, since they're applied across up to 8 allies instead of 1-3 enemies (AoEs outpacing DoTs thereafter), or else lose all target priority/selection by being applied via AoE buffs instead, equally gutting their available depth. Even if "perfectly" balanced, a spammable GCD Virus over a typical span of a boss's damage should prevent slightly less damage than filler healer (a Cure II-equivalent) would replenish, such that it becomes mildly obligatory in damage-dense periods and is largely wasteful otherwise.

3. Redundancy and the Role Action problem.

   Even if having balanced spammable fensive (de)buffs perfectly so as to reward timing and target selection, what exactly would, say, (a spammable, GCD) Protect accomplish that a gauge-based Aquaveil would not? Bankable but non-spammable tools offer similar flexibility while also having more impact available per cast. Moreover, they already follow the visual themes of those jobs, rather than using old generics.

None of that is to say adding more buff/debuff actions would be bad, but simply that --given the examples in question-- there are some points of concern.

[ThaCa]

They should just make all DPS greedy DPS with personal buffs and move the party Buffs to Healers to mitigate the boredom. Maybe some AST style spesific target buffs mixed in or basic boss Debuffs. Throw a few DPS skills or make it loop with proper mitigation and healing giving you big nukes and basic dpsing build big heal.

That would also allow for breaking down the 2 minute meta and make healers more proper supports and still have few buttons to do damage with during generic gameplay.

[Anxin]

Man, playing other games always makes me miss Guild Wars 1's style of doing things... Ignoring the engagement of building your own build for a moment (because obviously that comes with a bunch of engagement)...

I also miss Guild Wars 1's way of healing. I loved solo healing teams of 8 as a monk or a ritualist. The synergy of the skills, as you mention, made build planning fun. The AI of the enemies and the unpredictability of nearly every run made healing engaging. Contrast that with the scripted nature of FF14. You could almost write a bash keyboard script for each of the boss fights. Actually, I suspect you could write a coordinated keyboard script for each member of a static for many of the fights. Guild Wars 1 lacked that predictability even during the scripted moments of the game because of the simple AI mixing it up.

With the way healing works, we need perhaps 4 healing skills: a scaling single-target heal, a scaling AOE heal, an ogcd, and a shield/regen. The ogcd could even be dropped. This would free the rest of the buttons for buffing/damage rotations.

[Shurrikhan]

That would also allow for breaking down the 2 minute meta and make healers more proper supports and still have few buttons to do damage with during generic gameplay.

When we have an AST, we already bank what we can bank that would otherwise fall out of damage buffs for getting a Card. Chain Strategem is (within) the 2-minute meta and would have to be scrapped or rehauled.

Remove the "2-minute meta" altogether and everything works exactly as before, except with a slightly lower ceiling to gameplay. Now, instead of being rewarded for using skills at time X (which was usually on-CD) while banking what you can for 2-minute buffs or the healer buffs between them, you are rewarded for using skills on CD while banking what you can for 2-minute buffs or the healer buffs between them.

And, to even hold onto those two-thirds of complexity, every viable 8-man composition would need to have at least one (non-2-minute) buffer, which means making jobs like AST and SCH less unique (and thus SGE and WHM less distinct from them -- in more ways, of course, than just being inferior in their mitigation kit and rDPS, respectively).

Moreover, though, why would having only a few damage buttons be a good thing anyways? XIV's are largely the outlier among "healer" classes/jobs/specs across MMOs. Most have more offensive actions and non-curative agency available to them, and not just through shuffling their would-be DPS to another player in ACT to then be sorted back to them on fflogs.

[Zebraoracle]

So after mentioning GW1 and thinking about healing in other MMOs, I did a stupid thing today. I remade each healer with the idea of having eight spells each and three main passive traits. The idea behind this is damage in 14 is more consistent (no big raid wide that wipes you without mit and then nothing for 20 seconds, but rather smaller raidwides that need to be addressed and other mechanics that deal damage to single players/multiple players that need to be addressed), most abilities have cooldowns ranging from a few seconds to half a minute to a minute, and resource management is more of a necessity. The aim was to generate synergistic builds based off of the general concept behind each healer. I mostly went with in game spell names because I didn't want to spend time thinking of names, except for healer #5 where some of the spells I just... didn't name because the concepts don't quite exist in game.

Note that this was just for fun, isn't a serious recommendation, and obviously would need all sorts of balancing and whatnot for it to actually work, and obviously a lot of this would not work with how FF14's combat is designed.

Also, sorry for the multiple incoming posts, these take up a lot of space sadly...

White Mage - THE quintessential healer.

Trait - whenever the white mage crits, restore X% MP
Trait - each direct healing spell places a small HoT on the target based on the healing dealt
Trait - Healing spells empower the next damage spell and vice versa.


Cure - Basic heal, empowered guarantees crit heal with no mp cost
Medica - Party-wide heal, empowered doubles healing of passive HoT effect
Regen - Places a strong regen on the target, can crit and when it does its remaining duration increases by X, empowered doubles duration and increases potency
Asylum - places an AoE that grants a HoT to those inside the area and heals those inside whenever they suffer damage, empowered causes any healing done to a player inside the effect to be chained to all other players inside the area and split between them
Plenary Indulgence - Grants the white mage a haste buff, each single target heal grants the target a short duration and lesser effect of this and then heals them at the end of the duration based on the combined potency of their actions.
Dia - basic damage spell, empowered adds a short duration DoT at twice the potency
Glare - bigger damage spell, AoE, empowered gains a second charge immediately upon being cast.
Holy - Nuke, must build up gauge to use, gauge is gained based on the effective healing of any of the white mage's HoTs, empowered causes a massive heal to all players within a certain distance of the target

[Zebraoracle]

Scholar - The tactician that shields the party

Trait - whenever the scholar's barriers from spells that directly apply barriers expire or are broken, the scholar recovers X% or ½X% MP respectively
Trait - The scholar's direct, non-shielding heals grant the target a small barrier based on the healing done
Trait - Whenever the scholar deals non-DoT damage to a target, the target is marked, taking X additional % damage from the next damage it takes from any player.

Succor - strong heal, places a buff on target that mirrors a portion of any shield the scholar causes
Adlo - less powerful heal than physick, shields for double the amount healed. If energy drain grants a barrier, this spell becomes party-wide
Excog - places a large barrier on the target for a short duration, if the barrier is not broken the target receives a large heal, overflow damage of the attack that breaks the barrier is negated if a regular attack or reduced if a TB/raidwide.
Sacred Soil - places an AoE that grants all party members inside it a self-building barrier and % damage reduction. Barrier build speed based on spell speed and barrier strength based on duration of effect (so more speed = stronger barriers)
Deployment Tactics - for a brief period, the scholar's spells echo, repeating after a few seconds. Spells may echo more than once based on the scholar's spell speed.
Broil - Damage spell, target takes X% additional damage from players for a few seconds, if energy drain grants a damage buff, this spell deals AoE damage and the % damage bonus is increased
Shadow Flare - Places an AoE that deals damage to all enemies inside it. Any damage dealt to them causes a small DoT based on the damage dealt
Energy Drain - Damage spell, drains target's strength and applies it to the party based on the scholar's last cast spell - a healing/barrier spell grants the party a barrier, a damage spell grants the party a brief damage buff, in addition this spell empowers certain spells