Any support utility ideas other than heal & shields?

[Marxam]

The only option they have is utility beyond heals and shields. Things that create synergy between the two. AST used to have a skill that best exemplified this called Time Dilation. It would extend the duration of buffs which included cards, HoTs and barriers. It was mostly used to increase the duration of that one dps with the enhanced balance but in some cases if you had a HoT on a tank that was buffed by something like neutral sect you can toss them a bole and TD for longer mitigation and HoT.

However that is job exclusive concept but something I think all healers can benefit from is more ground aoes. Some examples:

WHM Lit Bell has two charges but shorter yalm aoe range. This would open up scenarios where the party is split far to cover healing in those areas or stack both for double healing when stacked.
SGE Pneuma dropping a line aoe (after its blast) that has a regen effect when stood in it.
SCH having both faeries out at the same time healing players within its short range. Eos embrace casts a heal and Selene embrace casts a shield. Can be used in the same scenarios as WHM.

As for AST it has the best option for this via the cards. It can place cards face up for a ground aoe buff or face down (eventually flipping face up) and have it act like earthly star to have a stronger buff.

Ultimately I feel like they peaked with healing and shields and the only option is just to diversify when and how those can be used in more creative ways.

[NYCLouisGamer]

If you can't immediately see the problems with a certain type of AOE heal range beyond proximity that's on you, not ne

That is what you have to offer, Firemage? Absurdity offers an idea and rather than support it or at least explain why it is not viable, you scorn them instead? It feels like you expect to receive patience and understanding for your contributions to the forums, while refusing to give patience and understanding in return.

Moving on, healing probably suffers from what every other role suffers in FFXIV. A lack of direction. The devs do what the player base wants and then the player base is still unhappy. Yoshida then almost whines about it. If the dev team had a clear vision and was willing to stick to it, they would be able to figure out which feedback is useful to them. Trying to incorporate changes that please ALL feedback is impossible and will result in the game getting over-simplified.

Semirhage provided a list of interesting suggestions, along with many other commenters. I would take virtually any of the suggestions posted in this thread. If FF14 was an investment, it would be the most risk-averse mutual fund ever. Also, no MMO I know of has ever had the situation of WHM (a class designed for an entirely different game than the one being played.)

A healer having a life tap ability that lets them sacrifice their own precious health to channel HP to a party member would be exciting! Who heals the healer?!

[Absurdity]

That is what you have to offer, Firemage? Absurdity offers an idea and rather than support it or at least explain why it is not viable, you scorn them instead? It feels like you expect to receive patience and understanding for your contributions to the forums, while refusing to give patience and understanding in return.

I honestly didn't bother replying because it was a non-argument, it essentially boiled down to "AOE heals that aren't proximity based don't work because they don't work".

Let's take Pneuma for example, if the instead of being a big line aoe with a 25 yalm proximity aoe heal it would instead be a line aoe and line aoe heal, requiring your party to stand in front of the Sage (or anywhere on the line) to receive the healing, but for the added difficulty of actually hitting everyone it could be bumped up to 900 cure potency instead. It would make the ability somewhat more difficult to use since it requires your party to stack up properly, and depending on what mechanic currently needs executing might not even be possible to use, in exchange for a lot more output.

Or maybe we could make it a bit more interesting, we keep the 600 potency 25 yalm proximity heal, but if you're standing on the line of Pneuma it applies a 300 potency barrier to you on top.

I still don't see how that couldn't function in this game besides "now I can't just use it whenever"

[NYCLouisGamer]

Let's take Pneuma for example, if the instead of being a big line aoe with a 25 yalm proximity aoe heal it would instead be a line aoe and line aoe heal, requiring your party to stand in front of the Sage (or anywhere on the line) to receive the healing, but for the added difficulty of actually hitting everyone it could be bumped up to 900 cure potency instead.

Aimed heals. Skill-shot heals. I like it. It would be a dramatic increase in engagement for healers while they are healing. People love BLM so much because its gameplay is like its own game. BLM (while not perfect!) is probably the only job that is not reskinned copy of another job. It is a miracle.

Time for some more miracles.

[Liam_Harper]

Or maybe we could make it a bit more interesting, we keep the 600 potency 25 yalm proximity heal, but if you're standing on the line of Pneuma it applies a 300 potency barrier to you on top.

I still don't see how that couldn't function in this game besides "now I can't just use it whenever"

That's a fair idea. It's the same strong burst heal but you get a bonus if your group is able to stack and coordinates. I'm not a fan of Pneuma being only a line aoe heal because the game is so incredibly scripted that there are many times where you simply wouldn't be able to use it for certain mechanics. Rather than being a skill reward in aiming it, it'd just be unavailable half the fight. And it'd be useless outside of statics in endgame because you have no power over random players scattering around.

[NYCLouisGamer]

the game is so incredibly scripted

That's probably the largest problem that FF14 has right now.

It is why healers are punished with worse gameplay as they get better. Glare with a nice side of Glare and some Glare on top, sir/madam/enby?

It is why mobility is overpowered in comparison with other MMOs. That same mobility is hit with a nasty DPS tax if you aren't melee. Who cares if your DPS is crap and PF groups block you! You can move, can't you!

It is one of the reasons why there is constantly a tank shortage. A person is put in the position of having to study the fights in advance as if they were a school assignment/part-time job, especially if they are tanking. You mean you DON'T want to have tedious spoilers for every single boss fight in the game? Madness!

It causes stagnation and it is why SE jumped through a zillion hoops to try to keep the veterans playing low-level content as part of the experience. If they don't do this, low-level zones will be dead for new players because veterans will refuse to queue up for low-level roulettes. This takes up precious time and resources that could be used towards developing satisfying job mechanics for each job. If each fight is identical once understood, why do it again. SE finally gave up and decided to turn FF14 into a more single-player experience. They still left the boring pieces in. No other MMO has been required to create a Duty Support system that staffs a multiplayer dungeon with NPC party members. Are we at SE willing to realize that turning an entire game into 1 big visual novel is why doing old instances is as dry as melba toast? Are we at SE willing to realize that we are busy putting out fires that we at SE started? Nope! (^_^)

We are going to need some good 'ol risk-taking if things are to improve.

[ForsakenRoe]

I did have a 'dream' in the literal sense where I was playing Sage, couple of days after it was announced. In that dream, it was not Pneuma, but 'the skill that would later become known as Prognosis' that was a Line AOE.

Consider, we have 20y range on the circular heal of Pneuma. What if we had a 50y range on a LINE heal instead? So while you can't stand in the middle of everyone and heal, you could stand on the outside of everyone and heal. A good example would be 'Ruby Light 5' in P5S. You wait for the orange AOEs to hit the squares, spread out into the safe area, take an untelegraphed spread mark, stack up somewhere (usually the healer) to bait circle AOEs on the floor, then move in to the center as 2 groups for 'healer stacks'. So what if, at the point where you bait the circle AOES, you could hit both teams with the line AOE



Something like this? Though I do prefer the idea of the line providing additional bonus, rather than being the full functionality

And it'd be useless outside of statics in endgame because you have no power over random players scattering around.

The unspoken rule of MMOs: if a class has ranged attacks, there will be players who decide they're going to use the full range of the attacks. Standing in Narnia doesn't exempt you from the mechanics, Mr BeastMastery Hunter

[elioaiko]

Alternatively they should just start by making healing not just a reactive thing or something to be planned out.

What I mean is that there should be some synergy in a healers kit (a gimmick) that delivers the same baseline healing but in that job's flare.

I only say this because they want healers to be the same playing field. AST kind of has this as Macrocosmos/Earthly Star is unique and feels different from what we've seen. SGE with Pan/haima and their dmg to healing.

Idk it just feels interactive in their kits rather than pop when damage happens.

But I think aside from utility differences, they should start with making healers feel different from one another, especially with the filler, dot and nuke.

[Katish]

How about killing two birds with one stone (in terms of giving whm a buff skill).
Convert Temperance's mitigation function to the functionality of the warrior skill Vengeance where it reflects a certain amount of potency, so when it applies, everyone "reflects" damage for a certain of amount of time. Allow for it to take the damage of the person the effect is applied on so it can be furthered with buffs if need be.
Then add the mitigation removed from Temperance or rather exchanged from Temperance to a new skill for white mage that allows them to also apply a party shield on top of that mitigation.
For the reflection portion of temperance, you'll have to time when AoEs go off on the usage to get its full effect (but technically we already do this so not much really changing here).

This way, it makes whm unique in regards to how they do damage vs AST's buff, it allows them to balance the skill easier, it allows whm to have a shield, and it diversifies the healers more.
There would be other changes I would do to whm, but this one just sticks out (the lack of a shield and a buff). WHM personal DPS also doesn't make up for the lack of utility especially when compared to their Sage personal DPS counterparts. (They are in a bad place here as Sage doesn't have to lose DPS to heal. And the DPS is too similar for the lack of safe healing). but honestly both WHM and SGE fall way off meta given lacks of buffs which is unfortunate. Idk what I would even give to SGE to balance it. (This is why this two minute meta is really a bad idea or at least one of the reasons why and also why healer "sameness" is also a bad idea)

[SenzorialBoundries]

Best designed healer in mmo i have ever seen was the Disciple of Khaine in age of reckoning.
You could wield dual daggers and heal a designated player much like kardia and also give the whole group lifeleech and you had some interesting skills as well or you could go blood chalice and dagger and attacking enemies would fill your blood chalice empowering your heals which were also mostly melee.