Healer role design change?

[Sebazy]

IMO BarbEX is still quite different to Coil, the main similarity is the often rapid pace and lack of long periods of downtime. I stand by my prior comments that she still doesn't hit hard enough, especially on tanks.

[Silver-Strider]

I didn't do Coils in ARR, but did do some synced during HW. For comparison's sake, is Barb EX remotely like what you're looking for, in terms of a more recent addition? Cos if so, I'd agree that Barb EX felt pretty good to heal (the extra ilvl from this tier of raid probably kills that a bit, but that's the nature of vertical progression)

The main difference between Coils and Barb was how much damage the MT was taking in comparison to the rest of the party.
Taking T9 as an example, Nael can use Ravensbeak (Tank Buster) while a Stardust meteor is falling that deals raid wide damage and is STILL auto attacking the MT.
That means the tank is eating a Tank buster, getting hit by Stardust AND is taking Auto attack damage all at the same time.
Compare that to Barb that will either attack the Tank with a Tank Buster or is using an AoE attack. Auto attacks stop entirely so it's typically just 1 form of damage that is hitting the tank at any given time. Massive difference.
Then, we also have to take into account factors that once existed in ARR/HW that aren't present anymore. Things like Crit from Bosses and Darkness Damage, Tank Stances themselves providing mitigation at the cost of reduced DPS which made Stance Dancing a thing to increase a Tank's damage at the risk of taking more damage themselves, etc.

No modern fight will ever be equivalent to the damage Coils used to do without a major overhaul to combat design.

[Aravell]

The difference in tank damage received in old and new content can very easily be seen by looking at Golbez and Zurvan.

- Golbez does a hefty amount of tank damage during his busters, but the rest of the time, his autoattacks are non-threatening.
- Zurvan can easily destroy a tank that's not paying attention, his autos hit hard, his untelegraphed cleave hits hard, his tankbuster also hits hard. It's very common to see a tank die in unreal, because a lot of the newer tank and healer players aren't prepared for the amount of damage he can do.

It's also quite unfortunate that they reduced tank damage via 2 ways in ShB+EW.
- Removal of crit damage from bosses, removal of non-telegraphed cleaves and reduction of tank damage received from autos.
- Giving tanks massive self-healing and a very potent short CD.

I think the 2 points listed above are actually SE's way of making tanking more approachable, but it also damaged the healer role because tanks are taking a lot less damage than before.

[Shurrikhan]

It's also quite unfortunate that they reduced tank damage via 2 ways in ShB+EW.
- Removal of crit damage from bosses, removal of non-telegraphed cleaves and reduction of tank damage received from autos.
- Giving tanks massive self-healing and a very potent short CD.

I think the 2 points listed above are actually SE's way of making tanking more approachable, but it also damaged the healer role because tanks are taking a lot less damage than before.

Aye, but... just to be clear, we don't need to go back in time tanks-mechanics-wise in order to make tanks require as much healing as they did before.

We can still skip the randomness of auto-attacks crits or the wonkiness of auto-attacks occurring in the middle of tank-buster animations such that a TB can appear to randomly do 25-50% more damage... and have significant external healing required for tanks. Similarly, we can retain our powerful 25-second defensives and still push tanks to far tighter limits.


Personally, I'm not a fan of ghost-AAs, and am glad they're gone, and largely the same for AA crits as both basically just meant that the eHP margins required to live simultaneously caused significant heal-waste, whereas just having a higher but less wonky damage intake would feel, imo, more compelling. Similarly, I like the pacing of our modern on-demands, and would sooner have even more frequent active mitigation.


As for the question of self-healing, it's mostly a matter of two different styles of timing. I don't feel like high healing is itself an issue, per se -- just... likely to be less worthwhile to give to tanks (unless particularly fitting for their kits and theme) than sticking to just mostly mitigation.

Percentile mitigation (and flat mitigation if limited enough that survival depends on its timing) is time-sensitive around the content. Healing is personal throughput, and is time-sensitive only around one's kit at most (as per Shadowbringer's Nascent Flash, which I much prefer over Endwalker's slew of flat per-hit cure potency or HoTs).

The first is going to feel more tanky in the sense of a timely defender; the second, though, potentially more brawly (which is why it fits fine, imo, on Warrior, though I feel it should go back to kit-sensitive timing).

I don't think hefty tank self-healing capacity is necessarily a bad thing; I'd just argue that form of sustain is obviously harder to make impressive (especially, in ways that party play wasn't already capable of through timely external heals), making it easily feel... redundant/played-out if it's not really tailored to kit and theme, both. A balance/intensity issue? Not likely. A gameplay opportunity partly wasted? Situationally, sure.

[Aravell]

Aye, but... just to be clear, we don't need to go back in time tanks-mechanics-wise in order to make tanks require as much healing as they did before.

I didn't say it was the only way to bring back required tank healing, I remember the jank where your tank gets 80% HP deleted in 1 GCD because a crit auto was queued up for immediately after a crit tankbuster. That said, I personally think crits are fine if just on autos, it's crit autos+busters that can occasionally cause terrible issues. We can still increase damage intake and make it work along with crit autos, current autoattacks are not threatening at all and can be entirely ignored most of the time, which contributes to HoT healers not really having to use their single target HoTs on the tanks lately. The last autoattack that was semi-threatening to tanks was the stack auto in P8S, and even that didn't require any tank HoT.

As for the question of self-healing, it's mostly a matter of two different styles of timing. I don't feel like high healing is itself an issue, per se -- just... likely to be less worthwhile to give to tanks (unless particularly fitting for their kits and theme) than sticking to just mostly mitigation.

I think it's fine for tanks to have self-healing and strong mitigation, but the content has to match the power that they have. Recall that WAR had Bloodbath in ARR and HW, they still required external healing to live, Bloodwhetting is just a bit too ridiculous with the amount of value it gives, but even that would be fine if they didn't also have Equilibrium (which also gives a HoT).

I'm not advocating for removing the tools that tanks have, they also want an evolution of their kit and feeling like they're becoming stronger, that's fine. What I'm advocating for is for the damage tanks take to stress their tools and make it so they can't self-sustain for extended periods without any external help. If the tank's tools aren't stressed then there's no way to dip into the tools that healers have, which is a bad thing for the healer role.

[Silver-Strider]

I think it's fine for tanks to have self-healing and strong mitigation, but the content has to match the power that they have. Recall that WAR had Bloodbath in ARR and HW, they still required external healing to live, Bloodwhetting is just a bit too ridiculous with the amount of value it gives, but even that would be fine if they didn't also have Equilibrium (which also gives a HoT)

TBF, Defiance back in ARR/HW just increased the WAR's Health/Healing received and didn't have the same mitigation as PLD/DRK did so the self healing was just a means of offsetting that lack of mitigation as opposed to now where it's thrown on top of the mitigation.

[ForsakenRoe]

I'm not advocating for removing the tools that tanks have, they also want an evolution of their kit and feeling like they're becoming stronger, that's fine. What I'm advocating for is for the damage tanks take to stress their tools and make it so they can't self-sustain for extended periods without any external help. If the tank's tools aren't stressed then there's no way to dip into the tools that healers have, which is a bad thing for the healer role.

What could be done then, to balance the 'selfhealing' a bit, is for autoattacks to be more threatening, and for the focus of the 25s CDs (Sheltron, TBN, etc) to be on mitigating those autos, like the 'active mitigation' concept from WOW. Maybe they need to be reduced in CD, and/or how fast the resource for them is gained/cost reduced, but I think there's a chance this would actually give more 'identity' to the jobs, coincidentally, because the way they deal with the autoattacks could be different per job. WAR selfheals through it with Bloodwhetting, but has less flat mitigation, leading to a more pingpongy HP bar (see: Blood DK). DRK focuses entirely on absorb barrier generation with TBN (see: Ignore Pain/Celestial Brew). Paladin is flat mitigation from Sheltron (or goes back to blocking), and GNB could be flat mit%. This would also mean that, since the Sheltron is used for autoattacks mainly, the Tankbusters would now be missing that Mit, meaning they'll be hitting a bit harder too.

Can have some interplay in the kits too, so that 'the better you do your rotation the more mit you get to use'. Eg, TBN is a 15s CD. Obviously, we can't just reduce the CD because it costs MP. We can't reduce the MP cost because then it becomes a DPS gain to use it instead of Edge, due to it giving a free Edge anyway. So what if we remove the Dark Arts effect entirely, make it MP free, and then add a trait that says 'when you use Bloodspiller or Quietus, TBN's CD is reduced by 1s', or some such? Then Living Shadow's copies of that skill also would count for that trait, so there'd be interplay there too, Living Shadow feels like something more than just a DOT

[Aravell]

TBF, Defiance back in ARR/HW just increased the WAR's Health/Healing received and didn't have the same mitigation as PLD/DRK did so the self healing was just a means of offsetting that lack of mitigation as opposed to now where it's thrown on top of the mitigation.

I wouldn't say WAR lacked mitigation back then, Inner Beast was a heal with 20% mitigation tacked on, they just didn't have everything (Shields, self heals, regens, mitigation). Although Foresight was pretty bad compared to Rampart/Shadowskin.

What could be done then, to balance the 'selfhealing' a bit, is for autoattacks to be more threatening, and for the focus of the 25s CDs (Sheltron, TBN, etc) to be on mitigating those autos, like the 'active mitigation' concept from WOW.

I recall quite a few tanks asking for active mitigation systems a while back, so tanks mains would probably appreciate having that. They could really stand to make autoattacks more diverse outside of just adding crits back as well, like P8S stack autos or O6S where both tanks are taking constant autos.

[ForsakenRoe]

Actually that gives me an idea for WAR: imagine every '% mit' CD is instead retooled to a Thrill style HP boosting effect. Yes, this homogenizes them with Thrill, BUT! It un-homogenizes WAR from the other tanks. So where a PLD would put up all these %mit effects, to reduce the damage through martial prowess/defensive skill, taking a 200k TB because they're able to block the brunt of the damage with their shield technique, the WAR aesthetic is 'I can take this 200k TB because I'm so pumped up on adrenaline I'm at 250k max HP'. Basically, a combo of Bear and Blood DK, big lifesteal, big HP pool. 2.0 WAR sucked because it didn't have enough mit, sure, but that's because instead of Sentinel's 40% mit, it had 0% mit from Vengeance. Instead, I'd propose making it 30% (or 50% why not let's go crazy) Max/Current HP boost. Bloodwhetting is 10% Max HP, plus a bonus 10% for the first 4 seconds. All this extra HP pool justifies BW and Equil's ridiculous healing power too.

Is there any WAR that would be annoyed that, instead of having the same %mit CDs as other tanks, they have like 250% as much HP pool as any of the other tanks? I think it'd play into the WAR player mindset of 'me ungabunga' pretty well

[Shurrikhan]

I'm not advocating for removing the tools that tanks have, they also want an evolution of their kit and feeling like they're becoming stronger, that's fine.

All good and fully agreed, then. I was just worried by the framing of your Changes (removal of ghost AAs and crit AAs*; addition of on-demands and more tank self-healing) -> Problem (too little to heal) earlier.

*I have no memory of TB crits unless counting individual attacks in a flurry as collectively a TB or if old Raw Intuition was facing the wrong way, and most threads from ARR-HW, too, point out that crit TBs were not a thing. A TB being capable of critting simultaneously with a 'ghost' (no animation) crit AA would have essentially left survival --even from tank stance and stacking defensives as much as possible over a fight-- purely up to luck given their relative power at the time.

Personally, I want more frequent interaction with mitigation tools --both in terms of what's worth defending against and how frequently they'd be available-- rather than simply a scheduling of Defensive A for Tankbuster A, and so on.

Large amounts of self-healing I'm less sold on outside of perhaps WAR and DRK, because I think its being less sensitive to content/timing just puts it at a disadvantage in gameplay value relative to mitigation, though I appreciate it when a given kit is tailored well to it.

TBF, Defiance back in ARR/HW just increased the WAR's Health/Healing received and didn't have the same mitigation as PLD/DRK did so the self healing was just a means of offsetting that lack of mitigation as opposed to now where it's thrown on top of the mitigation.

Aye. Which would have been fine... if it actually gave comparable eHP. Instead, Shield Oath was a net increase of 25% increased eHP and heal-efficiency from both spells and abilities, while Defiance was only a 20% eHP increase and merely up to a 20% healing increase from spells only (no effect on abilities, though at least healing all ability healing in ARR outside of Whispering Dawn was %HP-based, making the matter moot until HW).

Actually that gives me an idea for WAR: imagine every '% mit' CD is instead retooled to a Thrill style HP boosting effect. Yes, this homogenizes them with Thrill, BUT! It un-homogenizes WAR from the other tanks. So where a PLD would put up all these %mit effects, to reduce the damage through martial prowess/defensive skill, taking a 200k TB because they're able to block the brunt of the damage with their shield technique, the WAR aesthetic is 'I can take this 200k TB because I'm so pumped up on adrenaline I'm at 250k max HP'. Basically, a combo of Bear and Blood DK, big lifesteal, big HP pool. 2.0 WAR sucked because it didn't have enough mit, sure, but that's because instead of Sentinel's 40% mit, it had 0% mit from Vengeance. Instead, I'd propose making it 30% (or 50% why not let's go crazy) Max/Current HP boost.

A 25% mitigation buff and a +25% max and current HP buff differ in more than just flavor. They're the difference between something like Rampart and something like The Blackest Night; the first increases the relative efficiency of any HP gained prior and consumed over the buff, while the second simply adds a flat amount of sustain, with both able to regenerate max eHP chipped away over the buff until that buff has ended.

The first is superior past a given balancing point (say, where 100% of HP would otherwise be consumed over the buff's duration), the second superior up until that balancing point.

Giving WAR solely flat sustain (which would scale only with their gear, not with the content) would run the same problem for which WAR was changed, rather than merely duly buffed, back in 2.1: it'd be underpowered until progression point X, and overpowered thereafter.

That might not ultimately be a huge issue, but it's something worth thinking about.