Healer Suggestions Megathread

[fulminating]

Things that don't really work well:

1) substats
. a) crit recursion
. b) elements
. c) meldable main stat
. d) tank main stat getting fixed at the end of hw only to be broken for stormblood
. e) accuracy
. f) piety/tenacity are jokes
. h) speed interactions
. . i) dot scaling is a bit underwhelming
. . ii) edge case paladin/drk where they have a mix of spells and skills
. . iii) hardly anyone wants speed
. i) direct hit tbqh - doesn't scale heals, doesn't appear natively on tanks/healers except for beast gauge related attacks

2) job identities - essentially the more balance they strive for the less they're permitted to exist. If every shape has to fit into the square hole well enough then just why bother?
. a) why add more jobs when there's such a narrow range of holes for them to fit into?
. b) roles and role identities are limiting. [role] has to be able to deal with x, y and z so must all have a, b and c capabilities.
. c) cutting away at the foundation of the job to add a new capstone skill causes issues with balancing in lower level content that potency bloat is being used to paper over.
. d) repeated reworks gut what differentiation there has been to present increasingly streamlined and alien palette swaps.
. e) there is a lack of diversity in damage type/profile. Surely they could have just buffed atonement instead of killing paladin's playstyle etc.

3) healer kits seem designed for a non-existent or at the very least other game (formerly 2a). Healing is not required nearly enough to justify either the power of the healing side or the anaemia of the damage side.

4) synchronised swimming doesn't quite seem like the best thing to have the raids aspire to. Why should failing a mechanic result in an instant wipe - it removes agency from the healers and the potential to save the run.
. a) "Oh gosh an 8 man raid where you beat up a lone guy standing in a circular or square room. How very unique. I'll put it with the others."

5) 2 minute burst lmao. Who's it really for? If it's to make things easier for casuals then why include mechanics during it even in casual content. If it's to make raid balancing easier then who sent that without thinking that the enormous swings during the burst would cause more issues than it would fix. If it's their way of addressing E6S and the awkward burst there then jfc.

e: if you could pretend things indented properly that would be appreciated.
also the conclusion I forgot.
I just don't think they have the manpower to deal with it, seems like they spend all their time running from one fire to another with no time to think or plan ahead with the ever-increasing workload.

[ForsakenRoe]

stuff

So, WOW does actually have a flat 'it increases numbers a bit' stat, called Versatility. It makes tanks tankier, healers heal a bit harder, dps do a little more damage. But, thanks to... whatever wizardry they've done in the backend, Vers is not bottom of the barrel as a stat. In fact, some classes actually want it as their top priority. Most tanks do, for example. I think Windwalker does too, usually. More recently, they've added a diminishing returns system to try and get people to 'please stop stacking only your best stat, we beg', perhaps we need similar.

We could also do Crit Split, the other way around: have Crit Rate scale from materia, and the multiplier be a static value. ATM, it's base amount is 1.4x, so let's make it a 1.5x multiplier. Issue is, some classes have guaranteed crits in their kit. SAM, WAR, etc. This means that increasing crit rate has less value to them. If we have the system where 'going over 100% affects crit damage instead of crit rate' they had to add to fix the problem of their own making (after kaiten was removed), then we now have the Benthic dilemma: one specific way to increase Crit Strength. And having that 'you can only boost the multiplier by doing THIS' means that THAT becomes far and away the best. Crit Rate, on a class that has guaranteed crits in it's rotation, becomes Crit Str in those crits, and so the stat is by far the best for that class, removing the choice we're aiming to get. This is why my original desire was to have both halves meldable, so that guaranteed crit jobs could get the STR, and the jobs that don't have guaranteed crits (or too few for it to affect them) would want the Rate. MNK for example, while having a guaranteed crit on Bootshine, would stack the hell out of Crit Rate, not STR, because more crits means more Chakra procs. It'd also lead to potential build diversity on some classes. My original idea was from back when BRD had songs proc via crits. Two builds were imagined: One, a build where the player has stacked the hell out of Crit Rate, meaning loads of procs. The other, a build where they focused Crit Strength, and so instead, they have less procs, but the procs they DO get, hit way harder when they crit. A third build, where they just don't think too much about the Repertoire procs at all, and instead focus on their Refulgent procs, by building Skillspeed (for more Heavy Shot GCDs) could also be possible

Let's go back to Vers for my final point. It raises tank's tankiness. It raises Healer's healyness, and it raises everyone's damage numbers. That sounds an awful lot like DET, right? But there's a part missing: it doesn't affect how tanky a tank is. So, for tanks, Tenacity is more like Vers than DET is. So, if we merged DET's effectiveness into TEN and PIE, those two stats are now the flat 'Vers' style buff for those roles. TEN would be 'increases tankiness, damage output (and maybe even selfhealing a little)'. PIE would be 'increases healing power, damage dealt, and MP restore rate'. DHIT remains as it is, a flat 'you have a chance to deal 1.25x damage', because folding DET's damage boost into DHIT would just lead to DHIT being the new Crit for DPS classes (scales in two ways, not just one).

We can actually already see that this idea might work: AST, despite Crit being as godly a stat as it is, actually melds some spellspeed to its gear. It's natural MP economy is so damn high, that it cannot spend all of it's MP income fast enough. So by melding some spellspeed (not focusing it on gear, just materia), it's able to get more GCDs per minute, to dump more of that MP, and that's apparently more damage than just adding more Crit/DHIT and overcapping on MP constantly. I find that fascinating, and it gives me hope that a split Crit stat, into CritRate/CritStrength, would be competitive, but not overpowering, compared to a build that uses Spellspeed/Piety

2) job identities - essentially the more balance they strive for the less they're permitted to exist. If every shape has to fit into the square hole well enough then just why bother?

You give me a mental image: where other MMOs have healers fitting into different holes (ie: Holy paladin used to fit into the Triangle (tank heal focus) hole, and Druid fit into the Square (raid heal focus) hole), we've now got every healer fitting into the Square (heh) hole. The difference we get is that the blocks are different colours, not different shapes. Wow, I fit the red square into the square hole, and also now I can put the blue square in the square hole, epic and cool

As for PLD, I think the way they solved it is... kinda bleh? Like, it works, sure. But it's bleh. Here's how I'd have done it:

3 Combos
Fast-Riot-Goring-Atonement would be your standard damage MP restoration combo
Fast-ShieldBash-Royal-HolySpirit would be your higher damage MP spender combo
Confiteor-Blade-Blade-Blade would be the burst combo, once per 60s (Conf has a cooldown, make Req a GCD and have it trait upgrade to Conf at 80)
For lower levels, Req/Conf would allow for you to cast Holy Spirit 3 times without regard to it's combo requirement or MP cost (maybe have reduced MP cost, not removed, so you have to have 'pool MP for burst' to consider)

Yes, Shield Bash would become an interesting part of the gameplay instead of just being the side thing. Each of these 'blocks' is 10s. So you'd build a 60s rotation out of 6 of them. What has to be considered though, is that you have an imbalance between MP spend and MP restore. If you do 2 spends, 3 restores, maybe you overcap. If you do 2 restores and 3 spends, maybe you'll eventually run out of MP. So you'd be managing your pool so as not to go too high or too low. Additionally, and this is the part I think is what everyone misses: Lets say that in 30s, High Concept 2 is coming up. You can do 3 combos before it becomes untargetable. So you do 3 spenders. You no longer need to worry about 'oh I need to do a restore combo cos my MP economy' because the downtime means you'll be regenerating MP anyway. So being able to adjust your spending/restoring balance to take advantage of downtimes. Also, only using Atonement once, because I think using 3 back to back looks pretty goofy

Maybe it's not the best idea, I've not put too much thought into it. But surely people have to agree, it's better than Goring Blade's current incarnation

[vetch]

. a) why add more jobs when there's such a narrow range of holes for them to fit into?

Hot new job in the job trailer equals more sales of the expansion. Look at how many people gush over Sage for its pew pew laser audiovisuals even though it just copied Scholar and White Mage's homework. It can't even auto-attack from range, lmao.

. c) cutting away at the foundation of the job to add a new capstone skill causes issues with balancing in lower level content that potency bloat is being used to paper over.

And cutting away at old jobs to have enough ideas to fill out a new expansion's job.

. e) there is a lack of diversity in damage type/profile. Surely they could have just buffed atonement instead of killing paladin's playstyle etc.

"Let's have half the jobs be builder-spenders! Give them gauges!"
"Let's have burst-based combat!"
"Our builder-spenders can't do openers under the incredibly important buffs because they have to build before they can spend! Let's give them all a skill that instantly generates a huge chunk of gauge!"

Snoozefest.

4) synchronised swimming doesn't quite seem like the best thing to have the raids aspire to. Why should failing a mechanic result in an instant wipe - it removes agency from the healers and the potential to save the run.

Every 'solution' the devs put forward shrieks of how much they hate and fear player agency, so it's no surprise it shows in the combat design.

Remember when people were using wrong job accessories to bypass required ilevels in DF and so instead of allowing other players to kick or chastise people who did it, they 'solved' it by creating their very own glamour nightmare from StB onwards: splitting all accessories into fending/slaying/aiming/healing and completely locking out all DoH/DoL gear from being worn by non-DoH/DoL. That's three expacs worth of cool DoH/DoL outfits that can't be used in glam unless your aspiration is to stand in Ligma Lominsa all day.

I just don't think they have the manpower to deal with it, seems like they spend all their time running from one fire to another with no time to think or plan ahead with the ever-increasing workload.

Bingo. Everything begins to make more sense when you stop thinking of them as an adequately-staffed team of creatives and instead think of them as a skeleton crew tasked with keeping a massive billion-yen-a-month videogame profitable for as long as possible with as little expediture as possible. (Two games, actually. Hi FF16 fans!)

That sensible solution of letting other players refuse to group with ilevel cheesers? It requires more paid GMs to judge edge cases and make sure players aren't abusing it, so nope, no way, nohow are we doing that.