Healer Suggestions Megathread

[Aravell]

Bringing back this thread for another of my (very likely terrible) ideas.

Main points
- All GCD heals are now free
- All OGCD heals now cost MP
- Healers can no longer autoattack
- Healers now siphon 500 MP every 3 seconds when they're not casting
- More damage spells are added with different effects and MP costs

All OGCDs now costing MP means the benefits are now power, movement or utility. If you mismanage and fall behind on MP, you have the option to fall back to the MP-free GCD heals, this means the newer healers aren't left behind while giving more experienced healers something to think about and optimise. Every heal also now only grants the additional effect when HP is actually healed, so Lustrate will only grant fairy gauge if HP is healed and Afflatus Rapture only grants a charge to the blood lily if HP is healed and so on, this means people can't just throw them away and get the benefit from it still. If a less experienced player runs low on MP or an experienced player makes a mistake and runs low on MP, they have the option to just cast nothing and gain MP back, this is a failstate if MP isn't balanced properly, you can still fulfill your primary purpose of healing while in this failstate because GCD healing is free, but you won't be able to do any damage or OGCDs.

Damage spells added in will interact with the healing kit, such as buffing your OGCD heals. Buffs can range from refunding the MP cost to increasing potency to other effects. Damage spells will all cost MP, the greater the effect, the greater the MP cost will be. Damage optimisation will involve using GCD heals to conserve MP where possible while also using OGCDs where it's the most impactful, because you don't want to spam OGCDs since it now shares a resource cost with your damage spells.

The purpose of this is to try and satisfy both sides of the argument. The side who only enjoys healing will be allowed to do so, they can engage with the MP juggling with their OGCD play while spamming the cheapest nuke, much like the playstyle we have right now. The side who enjoys the balancing act will have more engagement by juggling damage spell costs with OGCD costs with the threat of entering a failstate where they can't do either things.

[Shurrikhan]

Bringing back this thread for another of my (very likely terrible) ideas.

Main points

1. All GCD heals are now free
2. All OGCD heals now cost MP
3. Healers can no longer autoattack
4. Healers now siphon 500 MP every 3 seconds when they're not casting
5. More damage spells are added with different effects and MP costs

* Original post altered to feature a numbered list instead of bullets, for ease of reference to each point.

A quick critique on the relationship between [1] "All GCD heals are now free" and [4] "Healers now siphon 500 MP every 3 seconds when they're not casting":


If you go with [4], you'll also need to determine if this is a server tick or is based on the time since casting, and if the latter, whether progress is saved and therefore accumulates, in which case swiftcasts and shorter casts mean more mana regenerated. Which... is not terribly intuitive. (And if you nonetheless want the gameplay implications of that, there are far clearer ways to make those win conditions visible to players.)

More importantly, though, there's no need for [4] if you just take a softer approach to [1].

Just fixing Spell Speed's MP inefficiency by having MP tick per GCD (a 20+% increase to MP generation) instead of per a fixed 3 seconds, and/or a base buff to MP regen or Lucid Dreaming, would net you enough MP for a sustainable oGCDs even while giving them a cost proportionate to their potencies or higher (e.g., at least a Cure II's cost for a Tetragrammaton).

Else, it would seem more reasonable to greatly reduce the CDs of the oGCDs and spend MP only on them oGCDs and Raise, while similarly retooling other casters to share cooldowns, in a sense, via MP affecting their abilities more so than their basic spells.

_________

Tl;dr:

Rather than seemingly to arbitrarily punish the use of filler attacks and requiring the occasional extra pause of .5s after an instant-cast as to qualify for having "not casted" for 3s, etc., I'd pick either

1. a system by which the cost of abilities are essentially their net cost or their excess over the minimum cost per GCD (if you spend 200 MP per average GCD but regenerate 250 MP per average GCD, you're still net positive) and you needn't mess with the base cost per GCD or
2. a system by which they're the only cost.

________


The rest seems fine.

[ForsakenRoe]

I think we should just remove Lucid Dreaming entirely, and compensate it's regen-per-min effect with buffing things like Assize's MP restore effect, natural MP ticks, or both. It's not an interesting button, it only serves to make 'pressed it and died right after' more punishing, and it's effect of 'restores 3850MP per minute' (or, averaged out over 1min, 192.5 per 3s, less than the base regen amount of 200mp per tick) is not worth having a hotbar slot dedicated to it, especially given the main opposition to several good suggestions has been 'we don't have the hotbar space for something like that'

Remove Lucid, make filler spells cost nothing (or like, 100mp), use the hotbar slot for something more interesting

[Aravell]

Tl;dr:

Rather than seemingly to arbitrarily punish the use of filler attacks and requiring the occasional extra pause of .5s after an instant-cast as to qualify for having "not casted" for 3s, etc., I'd pick either

1. a system by which the cost of abilities are essentially their net cost or their excess over the minimum cost per GCD (if you spend 200 MP per average GCD but regenerate 250 MP per average GCD, you're still net positive) and you needn't mess with the base cost per GCD or
2. a system by which they're the only cost.

The idea I had is 3 seconds straight of no casting before MP is restored, this prevents people from bottoming out for extended periods of time, GCD healing being free also means that they're not prevented from performing their role responsibilities while running on nothing. If it seems a bit extreme, that's what I was going for, bottoming out on MP is meant to be the critical fail state where you actually can't do anything but GCD heal. I want it to be punishing so you absolutely want to avoid it happening.

I personally see this as negative reinforcement. John Medica can still get by with completely free GCD healing while everyone else has to balance resources to avoid hitting critical failure and having to idle to get MP back. I think it would improve engagement quite a bit since you have to actually manage your resources. Proper play could also be slightly MP-negative to encourage usage of GCD heals to avoid excessive MP burn. Optimal play would require both healers working in tandem. Also, a healer bottoming out on MP will have enough healing output to get by, but not soloheal, this would solve the problem of 2 healers being unnecessary most of the time.