Because why not: A Moderate Proposal - SCH

[Semirhage]

Regardless, from my side, it's removing clunk and making abilities that are more useful and a bit more interesting, and removing the anti-synergies of the kit as a whole.

This concept is proof that can dovetail with increasing DPS complexity and engagement, simultaneously raising the skill ceiling, but not to the point that people are being terribly left behind, and without needing busywork or unintuitive optimizations.

These are all goals I can get behind. The summary of my major bone of contention with modern healer kits is that I think nobody, nobody should look forward to their (if we're going back to D&D/Baldur's Gate) level 20 gameplay being "I cast Mass Heal!.........Magic Missile. Magic Missile. Magic Missile. Magic Missile. Magic Missile. Magic Missile. Magic Missile. Magic Missile. Cure Moderate Wounds! Magic Missile. Magic Missile. Magic Missile. Magic Missile. Magic Missile."

Edit: And the reasons for that are all over the place. It's not *just* the repetitiveness (and that's an issue too), it's also that GlareBroilEficOsis Missile is a boring spell. It doesn't alter the battlefield, it doesn't force your enemy to switch tactics, it doesn't change what you do next, it doesn't have any measurable effect on what anyone is doing other than "well I guess this is a better use of time than standing around". It's perhaps the smallest bump in engagement you could do apart from autoattacking. That's my major opposition to current spammy healer design.

[ForsakenRoe]

Roe also threw in a suggestion to make Energy Drain potentially alter the rotation further by making the DoTs tick faster. This in turn could further reduce 1 or 2 Broil casts per minute for 1 - 2 DoT casts. I think it might need to consume at least 6 seconds. This makes the damage to be around 140 if it chooses Biolysis to 60 for Miasma. That way the damage kind of levels out close to a 100 average that it does now. I can imagine there to be some approval since we are attempting to reduce more Broil casts.

I went to bed after posting, but while in bed I was thinking about the difference in damage based on which DOT it chooses. I would be concerned about the short duration of Miasma though, removing 40% of it per ED used (potentially) is quite a lot. This is such an issue because SE decided to make the DOT tick potency bloody 70 per tick.

Hmm, rather than choosing randomly, maybe it just taking one tick from each? It'd roughly equal 100 potency when combined, puts more of a focus on 'keep the DOTs up', I'm not sure, maybe it's just a scuffed idea, I did have it right before going to bed so it's probably got some unresolveable flaws

Edit: And the reasons for that are all over the place. It's not *just* the repetitiveness (and that's an issue too), it's also that GlareBroilEficOsis Missile is a boring spell. It doesn't alter the battlefield, it doesn't force your enemy to switch tactics, it doesn't change what you do next, it doesn't have any measurable effect on what anyone is doing other than "well I guess this is a better use of time than standing around". It's perhaps the smallest bump in engagement you could do apart from autoattacking. That's my major opposition to current spammy healer design.

This is the crux of the matter, isn't it. We press Fire 4 a lot more than anything else in the BLM kit, but due to a combination of factors. One is that unlike healers, BLMs are 'pressing other buttons too' like Xenoglossy, Thunder 3 procs, doing stuff in Ice to buy time to restore MP, it's not as egregious (looking at a P7S run by a top BLM has this:

On the flipside, we're using 130+ Glares, Broils, whatever. But the main issue isn't just that. It's that Fire 4 feels good to press, it has impact. Broil/Glare/the other two just... don't. They sound weak, they look weak, they feel weak.

I was thinking, while waking up today, a sort of 'thought experiment' but not really. A simple question, with a simple answer: What is the filler spell for RDM? The obvious answer is 'Jolt' because that's what you use when you don't get any procs, but it's also your absolutely last resort option to use. It's used less times than the other four Ver-spells. Same for SMN, it can be argued that it's filler is Ruin 3, and you only use that once per minute to realign the rotation. So the question I'd ask is, we have a filler skill for each healer (Glare etc), but that doesn't necessarily mean it has to be the majority of our spells cast, to the extent it currently is, right?

edit: i did some maths on my WHM proposal on the above topic (healer filler spell lacks impact), I'll whack it in HB because I don't want it to derail the thread too much

So I took a 'reasonably alright' run of mine from P7S (as that is the fight I used for the BLM example above). This is my number of casts used for damage:



Additionally, I have 20 Raptures, 4 Solaces, 1 Medica 2, and the fight was 10:57 duration. Yes, I missed two whole Miserys, sue me. Point is, working off of the design I pitched (so, Dia 12s duration, new Banish with 15s CD, that GCD heal tool, you know the drill), I came up with these numbers:

204 glares
21 dia
8 misery (24 GCDs to prep)

204 glares baseline
10 misery, plus 30 prep GCDs (8 less glare)
55 dia (34 less glare)
44 banish (44 less glare)

new total glares = 118

---------------------------------
hypothetical 'optimization' zone
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note, I casted one medica 2, so that would be replaced by one of the below BOTE casts. beyond that, this assumes that the player is popping BOTE
right before 1min windows, to put the damage in burst window (in case my Cleric Stance 60s CD selfbuff idea gets in)

10 BOTE casts (10 less glares)
10 quake casts (same button but it looks cooler, 10 less glare vfx instances)

Final result: 98 glares to look at instead of 204, we've over halved the count. Does this 'fix' the lack of impact? Not really. But it does get the spread of damage actions on the 'Casts used' chart on the log to look more like the BLM one, and that's a success of it's own I'd argue

[Semirhage]

edit: i did some maths on my WHM proposal on the above topic (healer filler spell lacks impact), I'll whack it in HB because I don't want it to derail the thread too much

I wouldn't say no to fewer casts of the filler spell. Not really so much a criticism as a comment that springs to mind though. One of the tiny but incredibly important bits sorely missing from the healer kits that makes the sheer number of Fire 4 casts feel WAY better than the healer filler casts is just that: Fire 4 isn't filler. It actually flows naturally with how the kit works. It's letting your MP bar fill in ice mode so you can swap to your mega blaster mode and start firing on all cylinders, riding that attack wave as long as you can, using your Umbral Hearts and such to ensure you can ride that wave as long as possible before cooling off again. You get the feeling that it's what you're supposed to be doing. The healer kits do the opposite. They do their damnedest to make you feel like healing for its own sake, the floor of your skill, is what you're "supposed" to be working toward. The downtime activity is tacked on there as an afterthought because *grumble grumble* fine I guess healers have downtime after they've become skilled at it or something *grumble grumble*. This utter reticence to acknowledge that creating downtime is your goal just murders the hell out of their endgame engagement. The downtime doesn't even have to be dealing direct damage, but it's the easiest thing to aim at in FFXIV's damage-centered combat system. Downtime exists, it exists in large quantities, and these quantities only get larger the longer you play and the more skilled you become. Every time I look at these kits as they exist in Endwalker again it makes me wish they were designed with that consideration in mind, instead of as a resentful afterthought that the person tackling them grudgingly admits that FINE, maybe you need a wimpy attack spell or something because these healers keep telling me that spamming healing spells all day isn't the only thing they want to do for some kuh-raaaaaaaaazy reason. I fully appreciate that generating that feeling is far more than an adjustment to a skill or two. It's a matter of whole-kit cohesion that's much easier to nail on a DPS than it is on a healer.

tl;dr the healer kits are designed to make you feel like your downtime is just sitting and spinning on your thumbs waiting for the next outgoing damage instead of a reward for playing well. That's why they're not fun. You feel like you're working toward more sit-'n-spin instead of something that actually feels good to do.

[Renathras]

One caveat I've been thinking about the Broil/Bane...it MIGHT be better to put that on Art of War. Boring, but the reason is I'm thinking there MIGHT be some cases where you don't want to spread DoTs (e.g. some add pops up that you DON'T wan to damage; it's rare, but like the bird with the eggs boss in Pharos where attacking the eggs builds enrage stacks on the boss), whereas any time you're using Art of War, you're intentionally AOEing. While more...frankly boring...it might be the better solution given that. Otherwise, if you had a boss fight with adds, the SCH would be left spamming Miasma. And while not the WORST thing ever, it wouldn't be ideal.

...

When I did the math, this proposal would have us going from 22 to 18 Broil IV casts per minute (that's assuming we AREN'T using Miasma for extra movement/weaves), which isn't too far off from SB (a bit more Broil, but compared to 14, 18 isn't too bad when the alternative has been 22). Looking at the top team's 99 SCH from P5S (I like using P5S since I think it's an example of the "hard content, but still effectively all worked out and on farm" making a good "worse case scenario" to compare against), he/she used 146 Broil IVs over a just over 6:30 fight, so, 146 / 6.5 = 22.46..., so the 22 Broil IVs per minute seems to hold up well. 18 x 6.5 comes out to 117, which is still a lot, but now instead of just 13 Biolyses, we have another 26 Miasmas. And this is the "worst case" scenario, meaning in fights we actually would do things like some Spreadlos or the like (this person in this fight didn't use a GCD heal as far as I can tell; there's some Galvanize listed, but I THINK that may be from Seraph for whatever reason...? That or they used an Adlo during the Ultimate that did no healing and ONLY the shields spread by Deploy counted, perhaps...) But in any case, 117 is a reduction of 19.86%, so basically ~1/5th or ~20%, and with more Energy Drains up more often to weave hopefully making the flow more interesting.

I don't think anything Healers do short of Misery will ever have the impact of Fire 4 or Despair, much less Xenoglossy. It's kind of a role thing, though WHM does have Misery and Tanks have gotten into the action with stuff like Swords and Double Down.

The thing is, I'm not sure it IS a good thing for Healers - or at least all Healers - to do. Yes yes, I know, broken record, but hear me out on this one:

What just happened in 6.3?

The PLD rework. The PLD rework made a Job that was unique in its Role into...being less unique. The response has been somewhere between mixed milquetoast and tepid, but the one thing everyone agreed on was that it IS further homogenization of the Tanks and the game losing just that extra little bit of uniqueness in a Job that was, before, more unique. It went from being a sustain damage profile into a builder/spender 1 min CD burst damage profile. It's a thing BLM players are terrified will happen to BLM, as it's the only DPS Job/last man standing that still has a kind of sustained damage profile. Technically, it has a builder/spender and a lot of "micro-bursts" (with the uniqueness of the Job being that OF ALL THE JOBS IN THE GAME, BLM has the most agency in choosing when it wants to enter/end these mini phases while everyone else is chained to the 1 min/2 min cycles of their Job), but the point is, that uniqueness is good, and if Healers get shunted more into the WHM Misery system, it will mean more the burst/2 min meta game that, I think[?], we all agree we want to get away from.

THAT SAID: Having a Healer Job or two that work that way isn't bad - Roe's idea of the elementalist WHM with the 1 min burst profile could fit that, for example, as could various SGE ideas - but one thing I think SCH does well is that it DOESN'T (really) have a burst, it has a nice smoothed sustained damage profile, and would even moreso with this proposed rework adding Miasma's DoT to the mix (it might require Broil damage to be reduced or something to not be overtuned, but that just furthers the idea of a sustained damage profile), even as it still fits into the 2 min meta system with Chain Strat guaranteeing it won't be sidelined for a 1 min burst WHM/SGE, necessarily. I think that's a dichotomy that's good for the game, not bad for it.

Ask any GNB who has a burst phase where Double Down doesn't crit or direct hit how that feels.

So I think this is a place where it's fine to have some of that, but perhaps we can agree that a Healer Job or two NOT doing that (probably SCH and AST since they have their party buffs instead), like pre-6.3 PLD or present BLM, is preferable to having all Healers have their own versions of Xenoglossy. Just like all Casters being SMN would be bad, all Healers being whatever the Healer version of BLM is might be bad as well.

And as you guys have said before - and I somewhat agree - if we make a Healer somewhat like BLM, WHM would be the ideal candidate to have a Mhach/Amdapor, Black/White Magic dichotomy going.

...though I'll also note probably AT LEAST a little of that is on the VFX. The Stone spells feel increasingly impactful from Stone 1 to Stone 2 to Stone 3. IMO Stone 3 is the best at this, and it vaguely reminds me of the Earthquake Element (spell) from Chrono Cross, the one with the three giant pillars of stone rising out of the ground and then slamming down on the enemy party. Stone 4 somehow doesn't have quite that feel to me, somehow, it just doesn't feel as meaty, and then Glare doesn't at all, and Glare III is like two sets of the little Glare thingies. While that's not necessarily BAD - Bahamut's cataclysm tendril things also don't look that devastating until they hit the countryside with a cascade of massive explosions... - Stone 3 definitely FEELS impactful, even if it mechanically/by the numbers isn't.

Never underestimate how some good VFX can help. I know a lot of people don't like Broil IV, but at least it feels a little juicier and the projectiles look like they could do some more damage, and it's largely an improvement over Broil III (which was more like Glare) or Broil II (which was like Broil IV, just the projectiles were smaller). I've said many times that Broil IV reminds me of the plasma turrets from Halo, and those things are nasty, so I'm good with that.

Though, I should note:

BLM's "filler" spells, if I had to pick them, would be Fire 1 and Blizzard 3, I think. Fire 1 is a pretty bog standard spell, on par with 1/4th of Broil II or with Ruin 1/2 just yellow-orange instead of black. Indeed, Blizzard 3 looks much more impactful than Fire 1. Fire 1 is the spell you use to sustain/maintain Astral Fire if you don't get a Fire 3 proc, and Blizzard 3 gets you into Umbral Ice for free as well as sustaining you in it. So I'd think those are the filler spells. You ideally don't want to USE Fire 1, but it's the closest thing to a filler spell when in Astral Fire. I'm...not sure why Blizzard 1 exists after level 35...

Eh I dunno. I'd say making Glarebroil spectacularly visually snappy spells would quickly feel old and kill any sense of spectacle after the 10th cast in a row. Much like SMN's design no amount of spectacle will save a mechanical gameplay that is repetitive.

Having highs and lows is what makes things special. That's why "builder>spender" classes are an easy way to create gameplay flow because doing things right to get that "I now finally blast everything" feels satisfying.

Of course, you have to match that visually spectacular thing with a significant gameplay impact or else you'll make the player feel like crap.

I think this isn't universal. While having some big hits can feel nice, people often DO like sustained damage Jobs. Old PLD did have its burst phase, but it wasn't over the top (before 6.0's Unlimited Swordworks, anyway). It felt consistent, steady, sturdy, and reliable; it wasn't your friend's brand new hotrod that cost more than your house, but it gets you to work and back safely, occasionally to and from your family vacation, and is relaxing to drive on weekends.

Again as I say above, it's nice to have Job diversity, and I think that's important here as well. Notwithstanding THAT:

You feel like you're working toward more sit-'n-spin instead of something that actually feels good to do.

This is why I think the Energy Drain change here is so important. While it isn't exploding Flares left and right, it can feel good to bump out some extra damage, and being rewarded by good play with more EDs you can powerweave might scratch that itch, even if it's in a sustained damage profile Job rather than a burst one. Granted, you can also pool Faerie Gauge to machine gun the things during burst windows with Chain Strat, and that might feel decent, too.

Maybe even some trait where ED does +100% damage (2x) to targets inflicted by Chain Strat could be fun (just a spur of the moment suggestion, don't take it seriously...although.......that does sound kind of fun, even if it's basically just machine gunning Miasmas, lol)

Oh, as an aside on VFX:

Would be cool if the Energy Drains came from Eos/Selene, like they were casting Ruin 2s or something. Just a nice little touch...mainly because I miss SMN Carbie attacking enemies.

.

I absolutely think there's a place for a Healer to have that "build up, spend on big hit" playstyle, though. SGE and then WHM are the two candidates I'd probably suggest for build suggestions to do that. I think Roe's for WHM kind of did that with the Elemental burst thing it had going for it with Flood/Quake/Tornado, and SGE's Pneuma has no right to hit like a wet noodle with a VFX that awesome and a CD that long...that should definitely be a big hit you just plaster enemies with.

Royal Road Balance+Spread used to be that high after the build up. Where you'd unleash a mega buff and all your party members would see their numbers skyrocket. That felt impactful (Maybe too much so) but was visually kind of underwhelming.

I've always felt this on SCH using Deploy Critlos. Something about the visual effect of the Adlo shield, and the visual and sound que of Deploy, AND how it's immediately visible looking at the party health bars and seeing those nice yellow shield bars, and then the big enemy it comes in and...does no damage to the party.

Feelsgood, man, feelsgood.

.

Anyway: TL;DR:

It's probably good to have some Healer Jobs that work more like BLM, but I think it's also fine for SCH to be more like pre-EW PLD with an "Ol' Reliable" sustained damage profile instead using Chain to slot into the party's burst (being a synergist) rather than its own big hit spells, per se (again, the Energy Drain x2 under Chain could help when soloing to get a little of that feel...)

Embrace (no pun intended... XD) the diversity.

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EDIT2:

What about 'Energy Drain is guaranteed to crit if the enemy is afflicted with Chain Stratagem'? That way, it's not only doing 1.45 to 1.75 (depending on crit rate) times damage because it's going to crit, but is also boosted by 15% more damage (multiplicatively) because of Chain's crit rate increase overflowing past the 100% and being converted to flat damage % increase. It's not quite double damage but it still incentivizes 'use in raidbuffs'

I like that idea. Elegant solution.

[Tigore]

I was just thinking of ideas that might work if a healer were to build up more mana than they do now. Lucid Dreaming and an additional method (Assize, Addergall, Card mana, Aetherflow) pretty much offers what is needed for all 4 healers to use their DPS rotation while using their efficient heal cooldowns. Extra mana regen after that would likely encourage a big mana spell finisher. With Roe's increased Energy Drain idea, it may be best to keep it to just self HP heals for this case.

[Tigore]

@ForsakenRoe

Judging by the like responses, it looks like it the Energy Drain idea has some potential rather than being scuffed for some players. Taking 1 tick from each DoT solves the random problem. It looks like others may want a 1% or so mana regen returned to it so it is more than just making DoTs tick faster. We haven't really introduced any new high mana spells yet to capitalize on it though. Pretty much just getting mana back from raising someone currently.