Healers, then and now:

[Icecylee]

So...I'm not sure how to take this other than Fluid Aura was not generally seen by the community as a particularly amazing ability overall (even before its nerf), and when it was removed, most seemed to be either okay with it or actively asking why it hadn't been already. Basically the same general "I don't get why you guys love X when it seemed at the time, everyone hated X". I genuinely am curious, if they removed Repose and/or Rescue in 7.0, how many of you would start talking up how useful Repose and/or Rescue were and how it was a travesty for them to be removed, even though most people today consider Repose to be a niche Deep Dungeon ability and Rescue to be active griefing. Would be an interesting experiment to see how people kinda tick on this sorta thing.

I don't think that anyone is trying to claim that by itself, Fluid Aura was this amazing, peak design ability that they feel monumental loss over. More so, it's more of a death by a thousand cuts sort of thing. It wasn't hugely important, but it was a fun little niche tool that you could play around with and try and find ways to optimize it's use. And it by itself being removed isn't a big deal. But at the same time, so many of the game's more niche skills have just been outright removed and not replaced by, well, anything. So it's easy to look back at these smaller skills from time to time and go "yeah I kinda miss fucking around with pushing casters into packs or figuring out which bosses were immune to knock back so I could get a dps crank". Again not overly important and you could easy just not bothered, but when there's several things like that which get removed and nothing replaces it, it can kind of add up you know?

[Renathras]

I don't think that anyone is trying to claim that by itself, Fluid Aura was this amazing, peak design ability that they feel monumental loss over. More so, it's more of a death by a thousand cuts sort of thing. It wasn't hugely important, but it was a fun little niche tool that you could play around with and try and find ways to optimize it's use. And it by itself being removed isn't a big deal. But at the same time, so many of the game's more niche skills have just been outright removed and not replaced by, well, anything. So it's easy to look back at these smaller skills from time to time and go "yeah I kinda miss fucking around with pushing casters into packs or figuring out which bosses were immune to knock back so I could get a dps crank". Again not overly important and you could easy just not bothered, but when there's several things like that which get removed and nothing replaces it, it can kind of add up you know?

Maybe. It's kind of hard to tell sometimes. There's a bit of a Chicken Little thing whenever anything related to Healers happens. The issue to me isn't even that people are complaining about Healers so much as when ALMOST EVERYTHING is complained about, it makes it hard to see what the real and true problems are. An oGCD damage ability doesn't really change anything - WHM still has one with Assize and that's entirely how it works and how it's used. At least Assize also does healing and gives MP, which in theory would make it more interesting, but it's just "use on CD". If even the more superior and more interesting Assize is "use on CD" and considered "boring" by people here, I have every confidence if damage Fluid Aura still existed, people here would be complaining it's a boring "use on CD" oGCD that has a secondary effect (KB) that is either trouble or useless in equal measure and how boring and uninteresting the button is and how it has no tie-in to the rest of the kit. Assize is already a far better and far more interesting oGCD than Fluid Aura generally was, and yet people here poo poo it as a thing you use on CD without thought (which is accurate) and don't credit it with being a break from Glarespam or a good design.

I think if most people here were honest, they'd realize it, too. Which is why I think that the Chicken Littling needs to stop.

Hm...perhaps "honest" isn't the right word - I don't think anyone's being deceitful, I just am not sure how sober-minded people are about it. It's easy to get a little myopic on stuff like that...

But because there ARE good answers and important topics, and they're being occluded by the Chicken Littling.

For example, ForsakenRoe has the suggestion of Fluid Aura/Water/Banish being a Plegma-like GCD with a CD, which would be a far better solution and actually break up the Glare spam, automatically making it better. This both addresses the Healer issue at present (lots of presses of a single button) and offers a solution (having a GCD CD damage spell to break it up) without the rose tinted goggles (how extremely rare good uses for Fluid Aura were and how no one was really losing sleep over that one caster mob in Paglthan) to overstate her case. Honestly, it's a solution I could get behind, and I've proposed something similar in the past (in that case it was Aero 3, but six one way/half a dozen the other). Granted, that could make WHM more like SGE, but I'm not sure that's a terrible thing inherently...

And I don't wanna hear about 'oh but WHMs cant use water cos of the lore and the war of the magi and the bla bla', the lore gets mangled every time it needs to, just look what happened to the AST card lore

Wait...is THAT why CNJ's don't use Water spells in the lore? o.O

I was honestly always confused about that and just figured it was because Water was a rare spell line in FF games in general. FF8 and FF9 each only have one Water spell that I'm aware of, and it's around a 2.5 level of damage, between a -a and -aga of the normal Fire/Blizzard/Thunder lines.

But a Plegma equivalent spell? That wouldn't be so bad. Upgrades to Banish, everyone wins I guess. Though I still think that idea I had before about Water being low level Holy would be a good one. Give it a 40 sec CD, remove Assize, call it a day.

See this is what annoys me,...

To be fair, they removed getting abilities through Job quests around the same time they added BLU, so clearly they WERE concerned about that. You might say it's a stupid concern and they're dumb to be worried about it, but you can't say it was a BS reason since they seem to genuinely believe it and act consistent with that belief.

Heck if they made it so it was like, 'in addition to Sleep, it inflicts 5% damage down for 10 seconds', so that if you're hella undergeared you can slightly mitigate with it, you would want to avoid it due to it being a GCD but it's a nice emergency tool. And make it instantcast so you can have a better chance of seeing 'oh we don't have Feint up, let me cover that with Repose' in time

NGL, I'd actually like this. Though I can already hear people saying a spamable damage down would be broken.

In a vacuum, removed with no other changes, a few people might complain, because 'oh look see they're removing another healer thing great thanks SE'.

Yeah, but that's my point. They aren't key to the role, most people don't use them - I can count the number of times I saved someone with Rescue in high end content on one hand, and the only thing I use it for these days is on Hunt Trains with Yilan and Mousse Princess to try and save people from being killed from the seduce effects. And it's not like I couldn't just raise them and the CD is so long I only get one use out of it (I'll try to Rescue another healer or RDM/SMN, given the choices, so they can help raise), and even THEN the timing has to be good because both effects have the character sprint to the Mark so if you Rescue too soon, they just run back in and eat it anyway. And with these gear levels, Tanks and a lot of DPSers don't even die, so I could just Succor/Eukrasia Prognosis and that might actually save them all just as well anyway. And Repose...if it's not a Deep Dungeon, no one uses it, and we all know no one uses it.

...everyone rags on them as useless abilities. Yet 100% guaranteed if they announced they were removing them, people would be on these forums complaining about it.

I'm not saying ALL complaints about Healers are hyperbolic reactionary nonsense...but some very much are.

Jokes aside, context is important as is the implementation. My suggestions were given during a point when WHM was in a bad spot, having lost so many useful tools, getting the dumpster fire that was the SB Lily System and Fluid Aura becoming the worst it has ever been, losing the Knockback effect entirely for a crappy bind effect. Aqua Veil came in at a point when Tanks were stronger than ever, having very little need for extra mitigation tools and 70 levels after Fluid Aura, resulting in the skill being a poor replacement since it just isn't needed anymore.

As for my remarkable comment, that was more towards the fact that a scenario where Old Fluid Aura could've been useful even existed.

Why set aside the jokes? That's a good one.

I more meant you pretty much called it/got what you wanted, just perhaps not in the way or time you wanted it in. It wasn't even meant as a gotcha - when I saw the first reply and realized it was you who I was replying to here, it kinda just seemed poetic somehow, and I was actually complementing you calling it. Though I didn't notice the date. That was in SB heading into ShB? I'm trying to remember WHEN ShB came out. I guess it was around there somewhere...

06/27/2019: https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...6712a499e97484

Looks like 07/02/2019 given the date here, so maybe June 27th were the prelim notes and July 2nd were the final ones: https://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/wiki/Patch_5.0

Anyway, your post was from 2 days later, I guess?

...and yeah, agree SB WHM was terribad.

[ForsakenRoe]

I'm so glad I learned about the power of HB tag

I think if most people here were honest, they'd realize it, too. Which is why I think that the Chicken Littling needs to stop.

Hm...perhaps "honest" isn't the right word - I don't think anyone's being deceitful, I just am not sure how sober-minded people are about it. It's easy to get a little myopic on stuff like that...

But because there ARE good answers and important topics, and they're being occluded by the Chicken Littling.

I look at it as more like the parable of 'the boy who cried wolf'. Sure, everyone stops believing the boy, but in the end, there were indeed wolves, and by the time they realized the boy was right on the one occasion that would turn out to be fatal, it was too late to save the boy. In this case, maybe we're crying wolf over all these changes that are the 'death by a thousand cuts', but eventually, one of those changes will be the 'wolf' that kills us. Also, I assume most people would be aware of the idea of 'chicken little' because of the Disney movie where he was actually right, and that the sky WAS falling, rather than the original version of the tale

For example, ForsakenRoe has the suggestion of Fluid Aura/Water/Banish being a Plegma-like GCD with a CD, which would be a far better solution and actually break up the Glare spam, automatically making it better. This both addresses the Healer issue at present (lots of presses of a single button) and offers a solution (having a GCD CD damage spell to break it up) without the rose tinted goggles (how extremely rare good uses for Fluid Aura were and how no one was really losing sleep over that one caster mob in Paglthan) to overstate her case. Honestly, it's a solution I could get behind, and I've proposed something similar in the past (in that case it was Aero 3, but six one way/half a dozen the other). Granted, that could make WHM more like SGE, but I'm not sure that's a terrible thing inherently...

Don't get too excited, cos my previous ask included Banish being a 15-20s CD, not 30 like stupid Dia (so it's used pretty often), Dia being reduced in duration because a 30s DOT does not fit with the 'bursty' vibe of WHM, and for this new Banish whatever to also generate resources to use on a different damage neutral healing tool, that would be another way to replace Medica's. And no, 'forcing people to damage in order to heal is bad' does not work against the idea, as the tool wouldn't be any stronger than any current tool. I had it at 500p AOE. For AOE, Cure3 is readily accessible and 600p. For ST, Cure2 is 800p.

For re-positioning mobs, I'd rather just look at reducing the CD on Rescue, and making it possible to use on enemies as well as allies. A combination of both Leap of Faith and Death Grip from WoW. Of course, some stuff would be immune to knockbacks and pulls, like bosses, boss's adds (unless the devs design fights in a way where 'pull the add to X location' is part of the solution), etc. It'd also be nice to have in deep dungeons, being able to instantly drag a mob over to a location, rather than aggroing it and waiting for it to walk over. Or maybe stuff like Sleeping the mob, and repositioning it while it's asleep. Other people might miss the funny pingpong KB effect on Fluid Aura. I'm of the opinion that it was a nice utility to have, but aiming the angle was finicky, you might knock them wonky and now they're 'outside the group but on a different side', we couldn't use it for damage without knocking things that were in the pack, out of the pack, etc. So having a move that 'pulls enemy to you' would be better, considering we're going to be in the middle of the pack as 3/4 of the healers due to Holy/AOW/Dyskrasia being PBAOEs

Wait...is THAT why CNJ's don't use Water spells in the lore? o.O

I was honestly always confused about that and just figured it was because Water was a rare spell line in FF games in general. FF8 and FF9 each only have one Water spell that I'm aware of, and it's around a 2.5 level of damage, between a -a and -aga of the normal Fire/Blizzard/Thunder lines.

Some people say it's cos 'oh the BLMs used Fire Thunder Blizzard aether, WHMs used Earth and Wind but not Water, so Water excess built up and manifested the calamity as a flood. I'm pretty sure I saw some other lore that said that 'actually, maybe it was unrelated to the actions taken in the war, and the elementals just took credit for it to imply to people they're stronger than they actually are to enforce subservience'. IDK what the actual explanation is, but I don't really care either. Lore bends to suit gameplay, not the other way around, you can guide the gameplay with lore, sure, but if the lore is an obstacle to the gameplay being fun, the lore is the factor that should yield

But a Plegma equivalent spell? That wouldn't be so bad. Upgrades to Banish, everyone wins I guess. Though I still think that idea I had before about Water being low level Holy would be a good one. Give it a 40 sec CD, remove Assize, call it a day.

This is another example of what we don't need. It's fine having a lower level version of Holy, or a new Phlegma-like. But then you say 'remove Assize' and it all falls apart. It's what your SB retrospective deepdive showed too, we use roughly the same number of non-Glares as now, but they got changed from being Aero 3 casts over to Solace/Raptures and Miserys. We don't need 'X cast is replaced by Y cast', when we should be getting X AND Y casts in the same kit. DRK had the same thing happen, when they tied Carve and Abyssal Drain's CDs together. Before that they were two seperate skills you'd use in damage windows, now they're shared, and for the longest time AD was so piss weak you'd only use it on FOUR targets or above.

By all means, combine stuff when it's sensible to do so, like our previous discussion on the merits of merging Medica/Medica2, or Cure1/2, or Physick/Adlo. But adding a skill, and then removing a different one for whatever reason needs serious justification, and 'call it a day' isn't cutting it with something like Assize. In fact, due to it's 40s CD, you could consider Assize to already BE our Phlegma, it just doesn't have the second stack. Which I've asked for in the past (along with a second Tetra stack please and thank you)

To be fair, they removed getting abilities through Job quests around the same time they added BLU, so clearly they WERE concerned about that. You might say it's a stupid concern and they're dumb to be worried about it, but you can't say it was a BS reason since they seem to genuinely believe it and act consistent with that belief.

Learn them from levelling then, doesn't matter. My point is, there's ways to solve the issue of 'player might not have the full skillset' that could be taken. They just didn't, for whatever reason. Quests, level-ups, 'you reached X level now you can get a totem from the guy that teaches you, like with Doom and White Wind etc', multiple options already exist. They took 'none of the above' for the sake of 'identity', and it's an identity that is in the absolute minority of representations. The 'identity' of BLU is 'learn skill from enemy, use it against enemy', not even the method that you learn skills with is consistent

Do I have to do this for every class cos at this rate I'm going I'll have pitched a rework for every class before 7.0 even releases

NGL, I'd actually like this. Though I can already hear people saying a spamable damage down would be broken.

I say this in the nicest possible terms, 'F*** em, it's a 10s duration'. If someone wants to spend 25% of their GCDs maintaining a 5% damage down on the boss, more power to em. Even if they don't, and only put it up for raidwides, that just gives parity with the poor bastard SCH who has to suck up using a safety Succor on each raidwide.

[Sebazy]

Aside from that, a thread on Reddit where the vast majority seem to think it's worthless, and even those talking it up are often countered by people saying it was annoying: https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...lities_on_whm/

I enjoyed having the power to shunt mobs around with it either to CC them in the very early days, to help gather loose casters (of which there used to be plenty) or even having to engage my brain a little to get that extra oGCD damage without annoying and hampering the group overall.

The key point is engaging my brain because movement things like that are anything but predictable.

It also gave the illusion of feeling impactful, another facet of healer life in casual content that's suffering lately.

Call it trite, cite a reddit post made by someone who wasn't even out of the free trial yet or whatever, it doesn't change the fact that it was an engaging ability and you had to pay attention to use it well, something which is sorely lacking in healing casual content now.

Again to emphasise my point here. A lot of people didn't bother exploring it's potential because DPS wasn't valued the same way that it is now or they were too lazy to care.

There is almost nothing worth paying attention for. AoEs on the floor? Eh who cares. DPS takes a vuln stack? Eh who cares.

I do believe if Repose or Rescue was removed, people would legitimately be in here complaining about it.

Uh, you might want to change that to just repose sir.

As much as I wish SE would bring CC and Repose back to relevance, I doubt it's ever going to happen in anything more than a gimmick quest bullet point. /shrug.

Rescue though? You do realise that Rescue is actually a pretty sweet optimisation tool in raids right? So uh yeah, I'd definitely be complaining if Rescue were to be removed, and yes, it'd be legitimate

[ty_taurus]

On the topic of the water spell and its rarity in the series....

Water is a spell on the same level as Fire, Blizzard, and Thunder in FFX and FFX-2, FFXI, FFXIII, and technically Watera and Waterga exist in FFXII, they just aren't available to the player (along with Aerora for some reason despite both Aero and Aeroga being available to the player). This isn't digging into the mobile Final Fantasy games where there aren't concrete spell lines, but each element is generally treated with equal value (Record Keeper, Brave Exvius, and Opera Omnia as far as my experience with mobile Final Fantasy has reached). Generally, prior to FFX, Earth, Wind, and Water are limited to the Blue Mage or are in specific, potent spells for the Black Mage. I really can't speak as to why Earth, Wind, and Water were regularly restricted that way. I can't see any logic to adding elements that are inherently difficult for the player to utilize other than Holy, and I only say that because Holy is generally the element most enemies are weak to and no enemy resists, or at least very few resist.

The most logic that I can come up with is based on lore. Fire, Ice, and Lightning are elements that can be generated, whereas Earth and Water specifically are meant to come from a source that isn't always available in certain environments. Like it's weird casting Earthquake while fighting on an Airship where there's no ground to shake. But that logic doesn't make sense for Wind, and Earth and Water still end up being usable in some capacity anyway.

As for why CNJ and WHM never had access to Water even back during ARR, I really can't say. It makes no sense given the lore they were trying to communicate with this game's lore and the job's focus. The Japanese name of the action did indeed translate to "Aqua Aura" so I have no idea why Water was neglected, and it's kind of a pet peeve of mine.

[Calysto]

On the topic of the water spell and its rarity in the series....

They have to remove earth/wind/water so they can add them as "bold new flavors" in some time (lul GEO)

The most logic that I can come up with is based on lore. Fire, Ice, and Lightning are elements that can be generated, whereas Earth and Water specifically are meant to come from a source that isn't always available in certain environments. Like it's weird casting Earthquake while fighting on an Airship where there's no ground to shake. But that logic doesn't make sense for Wind, and Earth and Water still end up being usable in some capacity anyway.

I kinda disagree on Ice, you can't do that without Water.
(not exactly related, but in XI I had a rule regarding elements/alignments : "can you hold it ? no -> light ; yes -> dark" ; too bad it doesn't works in XIV)

[Renathras]

(not exactly related, but in XI I had a rule regarding elements/alignments : "can you hold it ? no -> light ; yes -> dark" ; too bad it doesn't works in XIV)

To be fair, FFXIV doesn't have it exactly right, either:

Is it active? Astral.
Is it passive (or generally PLACID)? Umbra.

The thing is, Earth, Water, and Ice are considered passive; Fire, Thunder, and Wind are considered active.

That is, Earth and Ice are generally motionless, and Water (a still pool, gentle waves) is generally placid unless being acted on by other elements (specifically, Fire/molten for Earthquakes or Wind for Waves/Floods).

And, indeed, Earth, Water, and Ice ARE considered Umbral. Even on BLM, "Umbral Ice". This kind of makes Wind/Aero out of place on WHM and Ice/Blizzard out of place on BLM, but it's just...kinda the way it is.

So instead, we got "nature" (which is vague as "the natural world" includes all six) of Earth, Water, and Wind, and......"not-nature-y?" for BLM's Fire, Blizzard, and Thunder (which ARE the normal elements for traditional Final Fantasy Black Mages.)

[ty_taurus]

Earth, Wind, and Water can be seen in a certain lens as the elements of life... seeds grow in soil, water nourishes the seeds, and wind carries seeds to new locations either directly like with a dandelion or indirectly by carrying the pollinators around. Fire, Ice, and Lightning can be seen as the elements of death as those elements destroy nature, burning, freezing, or obliterating plants in fires, blizzards, and lightning strikes. Though this is also somewhat limited in concept. Earthquakes, Floods, and Hurricanes are far more destructive than fires, blizzards, or thunderstorms.

[ForsakenRoe]

Far as I understand it, every element in FFXIV can appear in either the passive (umbral) or active (astral) form, some just trend more towards a certain polarity naturally. So while Fire is often found as it's astral form (explosive force), 'umbral fire' could theoretically exist too. In practice, that'd be the difference between a spell being packed with explosive power (our fire spells) versus something more akin to 'raise the internal temperature of a being until it cooks from the inside'. Similarly, umbral ice refers to the sheer cold of the ice spell, but astral ice would be like, idk, the rapid expansion of the ice as it freezes blasting apart whatever it's inside at the time? 'astral and umbral' in their pure unaspected forms refer to just the forces of stasis and entropy

Maybe that's just some fanmade BS I saw and internalised as 'actual lore' though, or maybe it was actual lore but got retconned idk, it'd be interesting to see it as a twist for a new job, where one might use elements in their astral form (BLM), this one instead uses them in their umbral form

[Renathras]

Maybe that's just some fanmade BS I saw and internalised as 'actual lore' though, or maybe it was actual lore but got retconned idk, it'd be interesting to see it as a twist for a new job, where one might use elements in their astral form (BLM), this one instead uses them in their umbral form

No, I think that's right. Or, at least, a logical interpretation of Urianger's element wheel discussion when you find his house in Il Mehg. It also mostlly works out to the Shards. That the Rejoinings used each of the six elements aspected to Astral or Umbral (as the case may be), but the other six (to get us to 12) would have been using the other polarity versions of those elements. Though there would also be one more to account for at that point, and we know that "non-elemental" Umbral was happening on the First, and presumably non-elemental Astral on the 13th. Which actually suggests one too many element pairs, unless the Source itself accounts for the last one...