Healer Suggestions Megathread

[Conchoidal]

Here's a few ideas on how to improve the levelling experience of ARR healers (which people are more likely to start with) which wouldn't require much work to implement aside from ability icons.

White Mage:

• Water is a spell unlocked at level 6. With a 2s cast time and 600 MP cost, Water deals 50 potency of water damage to target and all surrounding enemies within 5y. Water upgrades to Water II (70 potency of water damage), Water III (90 potency of water damage), and Banish (100-110 potency of unaspected damage) at levels 15, 64, and 74-84 respectively.
• The trait “Fluid Aura” is unlocked at level 15 and upgrades Water to Water II (70 potency of water damage) and triples the potency of Water or Banish spells when attacking a single target.
• The trait "Freecure" now eliminates the MP cost of the next Cure II or Cure III spell upon casting Cure (100% chance).

Scholar

• Aetherflow and Energy Drain are now Arcanist abilities learnt at level 10. Aetherflow restores 15% of maximum MP and grants Aetherflow II, and Energy Drain now deals 150 potency of unaspected damage whilst restoring 5% of maximum MP.
• The trait "Aetherdam" is learnt at level 45, and now grants Aetherflow III upon executing Aetherflow (allows for an additional Aetherflow stack).
• Outburst is now available to Scholar at level 26, and upgrades to Art of War at level 46.
• Shadow Flare is an Arcanist spell unlocked at level 50. With a 2s cast time and 600 MP cost, Shadow Flare creates an area beneath the target which deals 50 potency of damage over time for 15s to all enemies within.

[TheDustyOne]

Most of the suggestions I can offer have been stated ad nauseum for the past few years now, but I'll try to bring up my own pet peeves with the healers I don't see talked about often as well what I'd like to see. I'll try to keep this general to healers as a whole rather than talking about specific healers, as the problem with healers now is across the entire role rather than just 1 or 2 jobs. And while I'm not a professional healer by any means, pretty much all of my healing done nowadays is in casual content, I've seen many of the complaints and discussions about healers both here and in-game, so I'd like to think I can offer a few meaningful suggestions as someone who enjoyed Scholar and Astrologian back in Stormblood.

1: More to do during downtime
I don't care whether this is an engaging DPS rotation, keeping up buffs on allies, or whatever else that provides a meaningful contribution to the fight when we don't need to heal, we need more than Glaroilificosis spam + DoT. I would however, personally prefer every healer get a simple and unique rotation with at least 1 defining mechanic to tie their damage kit together.

2: Increased frequency of incoming damage
The problem I've seen recently is that Square have addressed the complaint of having nothing to heal by increasing the sheer amount of damage that gets dealt, but not the frequency with which it gets dealt. What this change has done is increased the amount of mitigation checks in fights, but not actually given us much in the way of extra heal checks.

Barb EX is an exception to this because rather than dealing a ton of damage in a single hit, it's now spread over a longer period of time where it can't be simply mitigated away, and instead requires more attention to the slowly dwindling health bars. We need more fights like this where the frequency of damage is high, rather than blasting it all at once in a single raidwide. Even the DoT busters from the last tier were a good example of this in action.

Increasing the damage from autos and more tankbusters would be nice too, especially in casual content.

3: Reduce the amount of oGCD heals we have
Not everyone will consider this a problem, but in my opinion, oGCD heals serve only to further highlight how dull our downtime is and takes value away from our GCD heals. The reward for properly managing them is that we get to ignore half of our kit (our GCD heals) so we can spend more time doing the dull thing (Glaroilificosis).

4: More interaction in our kits
Have my regens proc an attack, have my attacks build up a heal gauge, have our kits come together in a cohesive whole rather than making half of our healing kit go unused and our attacks end up as pure filler. There's a lot you can do with this on every healer to make them have unique playstyles while still providing similar output amongst each other.

White Mages lily system, while basic, at least attempts to have a couple of heal spells feed into our damage, as well as providing some movement when it's necessary and keeps the GCD rolling. If we also had more interesting heals to spend our lilies on, as well as a more interesting dps rotation, you could make an engaging kit, even with most of the oGCD heals removed. Sage tries to do this with Toxikon, but the execution is poor and we often don't end up building up our Adderstings as part of our regular gameplay, a fix for this would be to turn Toxikon into an oGCD attack with no change in potency, although that would also have issues with pre-fight shields as well as the free Adderstings at the start of instances, we'd need more changes to Addersting to make this work, but the potential is there.

To add a bit more to the 3rd point I made in this post, I'd rather see more oGCD actions like Deployment Tactics or Neutral Sect where, instead of direct healing, it's about adding more value to our GCD heals and making them go further.

5: MP shouldn't be an afterthought
This ties in with the 3rd point as well, because of how much free healing we have, most of our MP is spent on Glaroilificosis. Sometimes we'll have those groups that love the colour orange and want to spend as much time on the floor, but even those seldom feel like they put a dent to MP outside rezes, especially if you have any amount of Piety on your gear. The only time MP feels like it matters is after a personal death and Lucid is on cooldown.

When I'm in a situation where I need to heal, make me think about not just what kind of heal is needed, but how much MP I should spend. Can I get away with a cheap Regen? Or do I need to burst up quickly with Cure III and make my MP suffer? Do I have tools to mitigate the high MP cost? A relatively simple scenario, but often times, especially in casual content, the situation can be solved by slapping on any AoE oGCD and calling it a day. Or not healing at all and letting natural regen do the job.

This can also extend to our damage kit. Ideally we'll want to use our MP positive attacks to let our MP regenerate, but maybe we can spend the extra MP on a Ruin II that's now damage neutral and lets us move freely, but costs 900 MP. Maybe that high MP spell with that long cast time that screams "only use this with the appropriate proc" could be used with Swiftcast. These suggestions have problems, but it's more to think about in our regular gameplay and offers some form of skill expression and risk assessment.

I can probably talk about the individual healers and how I'd go about designing them in another post in the future. I'm not sure how many of you guys are sick of seeing "here's my healer rework" posts and threads, but the theorycrafting could be fun.

[ty_taurus]

I added my own White Mage theorycraft on the original post for anyone interested. Was experimenting with a few ideas on playing with the lily system more.

[TheDustyOne]

Welp, I have some spare time and this is what I've come up with for Yet Another White Mage Rework™. Potencies described aren't meant to be balanced with the game as-is, but rather to make the kit balanced with itself. Anyway, here's what I've got after about a day of brainstorming.

The general aim of this rework was to make WHM something of a mirror to BLM, while still keeping it relatively simple to play, with the new mechanics more or less replicating some of the mechanics from BLM, but tweaked to better fit with healers.

The theme of the rework is to bring WHM back to its elemental roots (pun intended) while having it grow into something more "holy" with its spells. It should feel a little more like a hybrid of a priest and druid with elemental spells that eventually charge holy spells, and heal spells that imbue their elemental spells into holy spells via procs.

The new mechanic for WHM is called Baptism, granted after casting Water. A 15s timer that can be extended up to 30s that increases damage and healing, allows you to stack Justification, and allows for procs from your healing skills. You use Stone to build up stacks of Justification, which is then used to spend on Glare, assuming you can stand still long enough to get away with it. The Lily mechanic has been mostly removed, but Blood Lilies are still here.

There are 2 new procs that come from your heal spells; Purification from Regens and Esuna, and Sanctification from Cures. These change Aero to Dia and Water to Banish respectively. These procs are of course inspired by (read: stolen from) BLM Thundercloud and Firestarter. Banish and Dia also charge the Blood Lily. Because of the timers involved with both your DoT and Baptism buff, you can't simply spam back-to-back heals and expect to use Misery constantly, it will not only eat your MP, but will be a damage loss from Dia ticks and overcapping Baptism, better to stagger your heals. These procs effectively replace the old Lily system and better incorporate the main healing spells.

Damage spells

Stone IV
200 MP -- Spell -- 2.5s Cast Time
Deals earth aspected damage with a potency of 300
Grants a stack of Justification while under the effect of Baptism, up to a maximum of 5 stacks

Water IV
400 MP -- Spell -- 1.5s Cast time
Deals water aspected damage to target and all enemies nearby it with a potency of 250 for the first enemy, and 50% less for all remaining enemies
Grants the effect of Baptism, increasing damage dealt and healing magic potency by 10%, 15s, maximum of 30s
*Becomes Banish under the effect of Sanctification*

Banish
0 MP -- Spell -- 0s Cast time
Deals unaspected damage to target and all enemies nearby it with a potency of 450 for the first enemy, and 50% less for all remaining enemies
Increases the Baptism timer by 15s
Grants a stack of Justification while under the effect of Baptism, up to a maximum of 5
Nourishes the Blood Lily
*Can only be used under the effect of Sanctification*
*Cannot be placed on the hotbar*

Aero IV
400 MP-- Spell -- 0s Cast time
Deals wind aspected damage with a potency of 70
Wind aspected damage over time with a potency of 70, 21s
*Becomes Dia under the effect of Purification*

Dia
0 MP -- Spell -- 0s Cast time
Deals unaspected damage to target and all enemies nearby it with a potency of 270 for the first enemy, and 50% less for all remaining enemies
Unaspected damage over time with a potency of 70, 21s
Grants a stack of Justification while under the effect of Baptism, up to a maximum of 5
Nourishes the Blood Lily
*Can only be used under the effect of Purification*
*Cannot be placed on the hotbar*

Glare
3 Justification -- Spell -- 3s Cast time
Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 480
Can only be used while under the effect of Baptism

Afflatus Misery
3 Blood Lilies -- Spell -- 0s Cast time
Deals unaspected damage to target and all enemies nearby it with a potency of 600 for the first enemy, and 75% less for all remaining enemies
Grants 2 stacks of Justification while under the effect of Baptism, up to a maximum of 5

Stone III
300 MP -- Spell -- 1.5s Cast Time
Deals earth aspected damage to all nearby enemies with a potency of 140
Grants a stack of Justification while under the effect of Baptism, up to a maximum of 5 stacks
Stun, 4s

Holy III
3 Justification -- Spell -- 2.5s Cast Time
Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 200 to all nearby enemies
Can only be used under the effect of Baptism

Fluid Aura
200 MP -- Spell -- 0s Cast time
Increases the Baptism timer by 15s, up to a maximum of 30s
Pauses Baptism timer until another action is performed, 30s

Downtime skill

Healing spells

Cure II
1000 MP -- Spell -- 2s Cast time
Restores target's HP with a potency of 800
Grants Sanctification while under the effect of Baptism, allowing the use of Banish

Cure III
1300 MP -- Spell -- 2s Cast time
Restores own HP and the HP of all nearby party members with a potency of 600
Grants Sanctification while under the effect of Baptism, allowing the use of Banish

I would also extend the range of this to be more like Medica

Cure IV
1400 MP -- Spell -- 0s Cast time
Restores target's HP with a potency of 800
Grants Sanctification while under the effect of Baptism, allowing the use of Banish

My reason for including a spell like this is to still keep the effect of Solace as an instant heal for movement or emergencies without the lily system, but incorporating a hefty MP cost with it instead

Regen
700 MP -- Spell -- 0s Cast time
Restores target's HP with a potency of 250
Grants healing over time effect to target with a potency of 250, 15s
Grants Purification while under the effect of Baptism, allowing the use of Dia

Regen III
1200 MP -- Spell -- 2s Cast time
Restores own HP and the HP of all nearby party members with a potency of 100
Grants healing over time effect to all nearby party members with a potency of 150, 15s
Grants Purification while under the effect of Baptism, allowing the use of Dia

Effectively a renamed Medica II, there's no Medica I in this kit (yet)

Esuna
700 MP -- Spell -- 0s Cast time
Removes a single detrimental effect from target
Grants Purification if an effect was cleansed while under the effect of Baptism, allowing the use of Dia

Esuna III
1000 MP -- Spell -- 1.5s Cast time
Removes a single detrimental effect from self and all nearby party members
Grants Purification if an effect was cleansed while under the effect of Baptism, allowing the use of Dia

Because I hate it when Puppets Bunker has me spamming Esuna on my party over and over because SOMEONE didn't interrupt

Raise
2400 MP -- Spell -- 8s Cast time
Resurrects target to a weakened state
Grants Sanctification while under the effect of Baptism, allowing the use of Banish

Abilities:

Presence of Mind
Ability -- 120s Recast
Reduces spell cast time and recast time by 20%, 15s

Thin Air
Ability -- 40s Recast, 3 Charges
Next spell is executed without MP cost

More reliance on high MP heals compared to before means this needed to be more prevalent

Temperance
Ability -- 120s Recast
Increases healing action potency by 20%, 20s
Reduces damage taken by self and nearby party members by 10%

Now also boosts oGCD heals.

Plenary Indulgence
Ability -- 60s Recast
Grants Confession to self and nearby party members
Upon receiving HP recovery via Cure III or Regen III cast by self, Confession triggers an additional healing effect with a potency of 200, 10s
Reduces damage taken by self and nearby party members by 10%

Now provides a much needed mitigation.

Benediction
Ability -- 180s Recast
Restores all of a target's HP

Divine Benison
Ability -- 45s Recast, 2 Charges
Reduce healing magic potency of the next healing spell by 50% and create a barrier around all targets affected, nullifying damage equaling 150% of the amount of HP restored

A big change that can let WHM choose to either massively shield one person via Cure II, or massively shield the whole party via Cure III

Assize
Ability -- 60s Recast, 2 Charges
Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 300 to all nearby enemies
Restores own HP and the HP of all nearby party members with a potency of 400
Restores 800 MP

60s Recast is a nerf overall, same with the damage reduction, but the extra charge will make it more usable for healing and MP regen is increased to compensate for recast change

Liturgy of the Bell
Ability -- 180s Recast
Places a healing blossom at the designated location and grants 5 stacks of Lilybell to self
Taking damage will expend 1 stack of Lilybell to heal self and all nearby party members with a potency of 400
Any remaining stacks of Lilybell will trigger an additional healing effect when time expires or upon executing this action a second time

Removed skills

Cure I - Has been a noob-trap for far too long, would rather just see it traited into Cure II at 30.
Asylum - I find Lilybell more interesting as a placement skill over this, so I put this on the chopping block for oGCD heals to remove, Regen III already does what this does.
Tetragrammaton - Another oGCD to remove, already does what Cure II and now Cure IV does
Aquaveil - Not needed with Plenary now giving another mitigation effect and a stronger Divine Benison doing the job.
Afflatus Solace - Cure IV does the job
Afflatus Rapture - No direct analogue, but with Plenary Indulgence still existing and with more charges on Thin Air, Cure III and Regen III should be able to do what this does. Except for move, feedback on whether to still have an instant cast Medica would be appreciated
Medica - Medica II already heals most of what this would heal after 1 tick and Cure III is now a better option if a burst heal is vital. There's still room for a potential instant cast variant.

With the exception of Esuna, role skills are unchanged, I'd rather every healer have their own variant on Esuna. I would give Scholar something like Warden's Paean from bard as a status shield that can be deployed via Deployment Tactics. But I'll save that for a potential Yet Another Scholar Rework™.

The general flow of WHM would be relatively simple; can Baptism be refreshed without overcapping? Use Water (or Banish if the proc is available). Is Aero about to expire? Use Aero (or Dia if the proc is available). Otherwise, continue to spam Stone and Glare. I'll make an updated flowchart some other time, but I think people can get an idea of how my WHM might play.

Thoughts?

Edits: I've made a few changes to my WHM rework after feedback and because I feel I've gotten better at this. The rotation is changed as a result, and I'll need a new flowchart.

Stone IV
200 MP -- Spell -- 2.5s Cast Time
Deals earth aspected damage with a potency of 300
Grants a stack of Justification while under the effect of Baptism, up to a maximum of 5 stacks

Stone is now the filler spell instead of Glare and grants a stack of Justification, a new mechanic that's in theme with the other procs. After 3 uses you can use Glare, which has moved to be a powerful finisher-type spell. Cast time is to emphasize WHM as a 'turret' healer.

Water IV
400 MP -- Spell -- 1.5s Cast Time
Deals water aspected damage to target and all enemies nearby it with a potency of 250 for the first enemy and 60% less for all remaining enemies
Grants the effect of Baptism, increasing damage dealt and healing magic potency by 10%, 15s, up to a maximum of 30s
*Becomes Banish under the effect of Sanctification*

I didn't like how the initial Water spell was opener only and was only really going to be used under niche Swiftcast optimization. It's now the primary spell for Baptism rather than Stone being the refresh. Can also be used for creating a weave window.

Banish
0 MP -- Spell -- 0s Cast Time
Deals unaspected damage to target and all enemies nearby it with a potency of 450 for the first enemy and 60% less for all remaining enemies.
Increases the Baptism timer by 15s, up to a maximum of 30s
Nourishes the Blood Lily
Grants a stack of Justification while under the effect of Baptism, up to a maximum of 5 stacks
*Can only be used under the effect of Sanctification*
*Cannot be placed on the hotbar*

Banish now grants a Justification stack as part of its partial 'refund' effect.

Aero IV
400 MP -- Spell -- 0s Cast Time
Deals wind aspected damage with a potency of 70
Wind aspected damage over time with a potency of 70, 21s, cannot be stacked with Dia
*Becomes Dia under the effect of Purification*

Minor changes to duration and potency, slightly stronger, but the extra GCD time between uses is to help balance better with the other healer reworks I made.

Dia
0 MP -- Spell -- 0s Cast Time
Deals unaspected damage to target and all enemies nearby it with a potency of 270 for the first and 60% less for all remaining enemies
Unaspected damage over time with a potency of 70, 21s, cannot be stacked with Aero IV
Nourishes the Blood Lily
Grants a stack of Justification while under the effect of Baptism, up to a maximum of 5 stacks
*Can only be used under the effect of Purification*
*Cannot be placed on the hotbar*

Potency changes to line up with the Aero changes, and Justification as part of the partial refund.

Glare
3 Justification -- Spell -- 3s Cast Time
Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 480
Can only be used while under the effect of Baptism

Glare is now a finisher spell of sorts. Swiftcast usage can still be a damage gain in optimized settings.

*Stone III*
300 MP -- Spell -- 1.5s Cast Time
Deals earth aspected damage to all nearby enemies with a potency of 140
Grants a stack of Justification while under the effect of Baptism, up to a maximum of 5 stacks
Stun, 4s

New AoE filler spell to go with the Justification mechanic. Replaces the stun on Holy III

Holy III
3 Justification -- Spell -- 2.5s Cast Time
Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 200 to all nearby enemies
Can only be used under the effect of Baptism
Stun, 4s

Big change to Holy, it is now a finisher spell in AoE for the Justification mechanic. I opted for Glare and Holy to be distinct instead of combined since I wanted to keep the AoE combo risky and point blank, but with shorter casts to make up for it, while ST is still fully ranged.

Afflatus Misery
3 Blood Lilies -- Spell -- 0s Cast time
Deals unaspected damage to target and all enemies nearby it with a potency of 600 for the first enemy, and 75% less for all remaining enemies
Grants 2 stacks of Justification while under the effect of Baptism, up to a maximum of 5

Misery now gives the final missing Justification stacks from the lost Stone casts. Make sure not to overcap them.

Protect is removed

Going off of what Roe said, and I can agree, it's better to have the mitigation be a part of an oGCD rather than the GCD, not to mention keeping up a permanent 10% mitigation was too trivial with Protect as spammable.

Temperance
Ability -- 120s Recast
Increases healing action potency by 20%, 20s
Reduces damage taken by self and nearby party members by 10%

Temperance is back, now that Protect is gone, it needs to be back, and with it Divine Seal is upgraded. Cooldown is back to 120s

Plenary Indulgence
Ability -- 60s Recast
Grants Confession to self and nearby party members
Upon receiving HP recovery via Cure III or Regen III cast by self, Confession triggers an additional healing effect with a potency of 200, 10s
Reduces damage taken by self and nearby party members by 10%

Plenary has been buffed and now also provides a mitigation effect. Cooldown is back to 60s, but the duration is also reduced to 10s.

[ForsakenRoe]

I for one appreciate the choice to use MSPaint to illustrate the gameplay loop, truly the art program of champions

Only thing I'd criticize really is that Protect is a GCD spell (the instant, not-locked-by-GCD aspect of OGCD mitigation is a very key thing for reacting fast to things), and the fact it's technically spammable at a cost of 6 GCDs per minute to get permanent 10% damage down is kinda not ideal from a battle design perspective I think. Other than that it's just tiny nitpicks like MP economy and stuff that is adjustable with numbers tuning I think

[ty_taurus]

Something I was thinking about in regards to that theorycraft I posted was thinking about a trait that looked something like the following:

100% of your gear Piety is added to Determination to a maximum of 20% of your Determination stat.

Something like that to actually encourage some amount of Piety usage. I'm curious if something like that would work well, perhaps doing that with different stats for other healers.

AST gear Piety gets added to up to 20% of your Spell Speed and SCH gear Piety gets added to up to 12% of your critical hit, for example. The numbers are just for show. You'd need to actually number crunch the actual benefits of these to ensure that they make a certain amount of Piety desirable without disrupting the balance. Spell speed especially is a tricky one.

[TheDustyOne]

I for one appreciate the choice to use MSPaint to illustrate the gameplay loop, truly the art program of champions

Glad someone appreciates my artistry, 'tis truly a thing of beauty.

Only thing I'd criticize really is that Protect is a GCD spell (the instant, not-locked-by-GCD aspect of OGCD mitigation is a very key thing for reacting fast to things), and the fact it's technically spammable at a cost of 6 GCDs per minute to get permanent 10% damage down is kinda not ideal from a battle design perspective I think. Other than that it's just tiny nitpicks like MP economy and stuff that is adjustable with numbers tuning I think

Fair, Protect was the one spell I wasn't all that happy with; make the MP cost too high and you'd be better using Regen III or Cure III for the cost outside specific mitigation checks, too low and it becomes a permanent defence buff. It's probably better to leave the mitigation on Temperance and bring back Aquaveil than to work around that. What if Protect was instant cast and had a 60s cooldown with it?

As for the MP, yeah my numbers weren't thought through at all outside Cure II still costing the same as it is now. The main thing I wanted to try and get across was not to have healing be something spammable, that MP is a major factor in your decision making when deciding on heals, and that if you don't need to heal, better to conserve MP with your damage as it should now be MP positive.

[ForsakenRoe]

Fair, Protect was the one spell I wasn't all that happy with; make the MP cost too high and you'd be better using Regen III or Cure III for the cost outside specific mitigation checks, too low and it becomes a permanent defence buff. It's probably better to leave the mitigation on Temperance and bring back Aquaveil than to work around that. What if Protect was instant cast and had a 60s cooldown with it?

A general consensus that came up seemed to be the idea of merging Protect's effect onto Plenary, since Plenary's effect (as it is now) is kinda ehh. 200p extra AOE healing whenever we use our 'already pretty damn strong' AOE healing is ok, but if that also came with 'and you mitigate 10% of the damage, so the 200p helps you to heal the remainder afterwards' it'd be really strong feeling. Might be too much for a 60s as it stands, moving it to 90 as in your suggestion might be necessary to balance it. Though, that also was working on the assumption that Protect's mitigation effect is competing with AST's bubble (and temperance with neutral sect), rather than functioning as a replacement for Temperance.

Something I was thinking about in regards to that theorycraft I posted was thinking about a trait that looked something like the following:

100% of your gear Piety is added to Determination to a maximum of 20% of your Determination stat.

(it had 5 ranks, so it caps at 25%)

If anything, you give me the counter idea: what if we have a job who's gameplay is to swap it's substats around? Like Morphling from DOTA who can swap between STR (has more hp, stun lasts longer) or AGI (less HP, but more physical defense cos armor, more damage but less stun duration), what if there's a healer who could, for example, 'attribute shift' between Piety and another stat eg DET? yeh yeh 'you just go full det and never touch it' what if the devs actually balanced the class so that MP costs were a factor for once? What if the gameplay loop was such that you'd shift to full DET for the burst window, then shift to Piety for downtime/waiting for the next burst, as a sort of 'burn and conserve' cycle? Actually I'm just describing BLM aren't I nvm

Anything would work really to make Piety more desireable, be that 'make it affect damage as much as DET (and delete DET cos it's boring af), back in the 2.5s cast time days for WHM I occasionally thought 'what if we have Banish as a Ruin2 of sorts, but it costs 1000mp, and has a higher potency than Glare, so that if you have too much PIE, you can make up the damage by weaving more Banish's into your rotation?'

Wait, I just had an idea, the combination of me mentioning BLM, Piety, what if we reworked Ethers (or had a different variety), so that instead of being a burst of MP, they accelerate your MP regen? What if, we scale the effect of these new Ethers in such a way, and give incentives to healers to dump MP faster (ie, Banish but it costs a lot of MP), that these new Ethers would potentially be better than our current Mind/Int potions (in specifc situations, current pots would have their place too)? For example, take a BLM. Normally you'd use your INT potion and it'd make you do big damage under the raidbuff window, once at 0 min (or 2 if delaying) and once at 6min (or 8min). But that's if there IS a raidbuff window. If you're running, say, SAM RPR MCH BLM for DPS, WHM SGE for healers, the 'raidbuff window' is a measly 3% from the RPR only. So, a Regenether (name WIP) that, for example, buys you one extra cast of Fire4 per AF window, for a duration, would potentially be better damage. Well, with the way things are now it'd absolutely be better damage. Imagine if you get to the end of your first AF phase and because of this hypothetical regen effect you're able to just back-to-back cast like 8 Despair's in a row that'd be hilarious

Anyway yeh I'd suggest just making Piety scale as hard as Det currently does, same for tanks with Tenacity, then lock Direct hit to DPS only, split Crit into Crit Rate and Crit Strength, and delete DET for being bland. It'd be cool if the stat priority ended up in such a way that you want to kind of keep things equal. Too much crit focus (either type) means your noncrits are noodle hits, so you're subject to wild variances. Too much Piety without enough SpS means you're overcapping on mana, mana that could be converted to damage with a faster GCD. Conversely, too much SPS and not enough Piety means you're running MP negative, and rely on downtimes to stabilize the MP bleedout. Stuff like that. WOW has a diminishing return on stats now, so even if you see 'oh my class is Haste, Vers, Crit, Mastery', the Mastery/Vers piece might be better damage for you than the Haste Crit, because you're already so damn stacked on Haste from your other slots that the DR has heavily kicked in, and here, instead we have Crit which has the exact opposite design, it gets better the more of it you have, which leads to the current problem of 'crit is king'

[Shurrikhan]

...

Or just... get rid of Piety (and DHit, as it's similarly a bloat-stat), and have MP ticks scale with SpS as well, as not to leave it needlessly inefficient relative to Crit and Det? Then make Tenacity a fall-back stat option for everyone (similar to Versatility for any/all specs that aren't utterly screwed over by their Mastery *cough* SV Hunters *cough*), but not naturally attached to any gear (or at least, still none but Tank gear, with only Tanks getting the offensive value from it, but everyone getting the full defensive value, ideally at greater scaling).

Personally, I'd rather keep Det, as it's inherently a Crit size modifier by nature of modifying all output, over the bloated convolution that is DHit, but I'd like it if we were to return Crit to just Crit Chance, especially if more jobs regained related procs (ideally, of *roughly* equal value).

(Trim Lucid Dreaming, too, while we're at it, as that is probably the best example of to be found in this game short of perhaps DRK's single-path combo.)
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If we need future proofing for the odd chance that Piety would actually be needed thereafter ---granted, this is a rehash of an old ARR/1.x idea-- just turn MP into less of a starvation mechanic and more of a power-balance one? Take the old XIV "Critical" thresholds of >80% (per "Vigor" bonuses) and <20% (per old LB bonuses from healing critical HP allies or mitigating attacks that [would otherwise] decrease you to "Critical" HP), or maybe shift them to >75% and <25% for ease of calculation. As %MP decreases below 75%, effective potency of MP-costing actions decreases by 1% per %MP missing, but MP regen increases by 3%, until reaching 25% MP (resulting in as little as 50% potency but 400% MP regen). Voila. It's then nigh impossible to actually starve, but MP conservation remains worthwhile.

(Yes, MP|HP regained from a rez spell would also thus scale from 15% HP [at 25-% MP] to 30% [at 80+% MP]. Esuna's relative efficiency opposite just using a Regen or w/e on a DoT would technically increase as %MP decreases, but w/e.)

[ForsakenRoe]

What I was thinking is that basically, DHIT sucks cos it's 'crit but smaller' yes, but it's at least interesting as compared to determination, which is a flat 'everything' boost. So we'd have 4 stats per role:

Tanks would have Crit Rate, Crit Strength, Tenacity, Skillspeed
Healers would have Crit Rate, Crit Strength, Piety, Spellspeed
DPS would have Crit Rate, Crit Strength, Direct Hit, Skill/Spellspeed

Ideally I'd rather have something as 'unique to each class' as Mastery but it'd be a nightmare to balance. Stuff like 'Your Cartridge spenders are now more volatile, doing X% more damage', or 'Your punches fly as fast as the winds themselves, granting you a X% chance to strike with an additional autoattack each time you land a Weaponskill'. So instead, working with 'what we're stuck with', DHit being meldable on any non-DPS seems like it wasn't intentional, and now they just roll with it.

The alternative would be that Crit becomes Crit STR, and DHit becomes the new Crit Chance (which is how they should have done it when they axed Accuracy), but doing that would leave us with Rate, STR, DET, Speed on DPS. Which would then lead us to 'Crit (STR) where you can, Crit Rate (currently Dhit) where you can't, and if you somehow can't fit either, dump it into DET'. Which is exactly what we have now. At least, if we have Crit seperated into two things that compete with DHIT, there'd be potential pause for thought about if the investment is worth it, as compared to focusing more on DHIT. I recall SAM used to have the potential to go DHIT SKS for a speed build in SB, or CRIT for a heavy hitting slower build. BLM does similar occasionally, depending how much Crit they can get their hands on I think.

What were we on about? Oh yeh, Piety being trash. If we make it as good as DET currently is (lets be real, the only way to make it remotely appealing at this point, besides giving us a reason to have more MP), then there's no point in DET existing, PIE can be the new dump stat. Similarly for TEN on tanks, if melding 12 DET gives you the same DPS increase as 12 TEN, but TEN gives you a tiny bit of mitigation too, why meld DET? One solution is that we have a way to have that extra MP we get from PIE melds/gear actually useful for something, at all times, not just for raising in prog.

As an example, I did a SGE idea where you'd spend MP only on augmenting your Dosis to have effects via Kardia. Spending the stacks of those effects creates Toxicon charge (0-100 gauge now). Pressing Toxicon amplifies the damage of the next 4 Dosis strikes by X, with X being 'the amount of Toxicon Gauge at the time', resetting it to 0. So, by having more MP to spare via Piety, you'd be able to use more Augment skills, spend more stacks (even if they're surplus to requirements), burn them for more Toxicon, spend to get more damage. The damage you're 'losing' by not having those 'potential substat allocations' be in Crit, is made up for (partially) by the fact you're using more Toxicon, to offset the difference. It likely wouldn't make up the whole difference, but it's better than nothing, which is what we have now. But while I can make something like this for SGE and have it be thematic and such, I can't necessarily do the same for all the healers. So reworking how Piety functions as a stat, at a fundamental level, might actually be the easier option, ironically