Healer kit adjustment idea, 40% dps to 60% heals/utility

[ForsakenRoe]

Just to make sure all of the pertinent details of my post are being taken into account, I want to clarify two things: first, that I don't want to get too caught up on the specific numbers I mentioned in my initial post, so "80-95% of cast time healing" should be replaced with "most of cast time healing". Second, that for this example we are literally only casting Cure 2, Medica 2, Regen, and Assize to do the needed healing, meaning any player actually tapping into a modicum of the breadth of their healing potential is going to spend less time healing. With those details taken into account, I don't think I'm proposing anything that my fellow casual players (even those who are very unskilled) would be unable to keep up with in casual content.

Oh I see, so if we took, let's say, an AST with their 4 different 60s OGCDs as the example, they'd be able to use those OGCDs and lower that 80% down to something closer to say, 60%? Which seems a lot more manageable, I'd agree. I guess the issue then, is that this would specifically screw over WHM and their relative lack of OGCDs (but what's new there?)

On a personal note, I'm grinning ear-to-ear to see your post have so much support when it contains this idea. I made a thread proposing this kind of thing and the response was pretty negative! But yeah, I like this idea: make the damage I'm dealing tie back into my healing gameplay, so that damage serves a healing purpose.

I dunno why, it's the whole foundation of what SGE was 'meant to be' in most people's minds, but I don't think it's necessarily 'SGE only' as a design element. I think WHM, for example, could benefit greatly from such a mechanic, since if the healing move was damage neutral in the same way Misery is, it allows a new identity for the job to form: use your healing tools in the right order, and you can dump absolutely disgusting amounts of compiled damage inside the burst window. When I first proposed the idea, I also got an earful about it, and how I was 'forcing people to DPS to get access to the new healing move', which, yeh kinda the point? But at the same time, being told that did make me think about how we have certain times where we literally cannot do damage, because we are healing so hard (Harrowing Hell/Styx), and I agreed that it would suck for the player to be unable to generate gauge during that moment. In fact, that moment would be the most important time to get access to that healing move, so I went back and added gauge gain rates to all of the non-Lily heals at a much faster rate (eg a Medica2 would give 15 over it's full duration, whereas spamming Glare would give 1 per cast).

I wonder if the reason you got such a negative reaction was the method by which you proposed making the damage skill feed back into the healing. Pneuma, for example, is not interesting to me, because the two are linked, you don't get to choose when to deal damage and when to heal with it, you just use it, and it is equal to a Dosis there and then. But this Cure4 thing I described, you'd be able to pool it, you'd be able to shift the refund into damage buffs with skilled play, you'd be able to spend the gauge at a differing time from when you did the damage. Just the implementation of a 0-100 gauge on WHM would open design paths for the dev team. A CD that adds gauge, a CD that doubles gauge gain rate for a time, a new attack that has a CD attached, but generates a much larger amount of gauge compared to Glare, etc

[Shurrikhan]

When I first proposed the idea, I also got an earful about it, and how I was 'forcing people to DPS to get access to the new healing move', which, yeh kinda the point?

Tbf, that's more a matter of bottling more interesting and contextual-value actions (that one would almost always want to have responsive) behind banal filler. It's much like not wanting Pneuma to be a burst heal first and foremost because that means having to hold onto your laser cannon for until (A) after sufficient damage has been dealt and potentially also (B) after one's better potency-per-second-of-recharge oGCD heals are all used up.

Moreover, if the damage and healing were to be entwined in that way, making the healing less responsive / more dependent on prior attacks, we'd usually expect that relationship to be more mechanically and thematically relevant. A 1.x style stat- and life-stealing Thaumaturge (more akin to a Shadow Priest than merely a stepping stone for Black Mage) would provide appropriate thematic context for that, sure, but White Mage?

Just the implementation of a 0-100 gauge on WHM would open design paths for the dev team. A CD that adds gauge, a CD that doubles gauge gain rate for a time, a new attack that has a CD attached, but generates a much larger amount of gauge compared to Glare, etc

It could, but the more value you attach to it, the more value with which WHM uniquely starts the fight with, in effect, its skills on cooldown. Unless, of course, like MP, it starts from 100(%).

[ForsakenRoe]

A 1.x style stat- and life-stealing Thaumaturge would provide appropriate thematic context for that, sure, but White Mage?

It could, but the more value you attach to it, the more value with which WHM uniquely starts the fight with, in effect, its skills on cooldown. Unless, of course, like MP, it starts from 100(%).

Yes, White Mage. My reasoning would be that, given WHM has always struggled to have an actual identity beyond 'it heals hard', this would give it an actual solid one: it can bank damage by using various damage-neutral GCD healing skills, and then unload all of that banked damage at once for massive burst in the raidbuff window. Effectively making it the 'king of ADPS', like how DRK currently functions. Whether it thematically suits WHM is down to personal preference, I'd think. I'd also have liked for it to be a Necromancer healer or something that had a system like this, but we aren't getting Necromancer for various reasons, so WHM's the next best choice imo. Again, I would not mind having healing generate the gauge too, so that people can get access to the healing skill even in high pressure moments like HH. I'd just have worries about making it feel like doing those GCD heals is too enticing because of the gauge gain rate. With full damage uptime, I'd mathed it out that you'd get 60 gauge a minute. I'd also made it so that Medica 2 gives 15 per full duration, so equal gauge gain, but using only 4 GCDs instead of 24. The idea was to create something that would both reward the player for doing damage, incentivise those that don't do damage to at least try to dip their toes in with small steps like 'keep up your DOT', and create some freeform decisionmaking on how/when to spend that gauge so that optimizers can find some enjoyment with it

Wouldn't mind seeing WHM start with 100 gauge either, your opening salvo would be like, precast Glare, spend, spend (POM), Tornado (Assize), <Quake, Quake, Flood, Flood>, Tornado, Glare and continue as usual (with the bit in <> being rearrangeable for mobility purposes, but who needs mobility in the first 20s of the fight). That's assuming you don't need/want the healing from the gauge and can afford to dump it early like that, if you need to save the gauge then you'd drop one or both 'spends' and the Tornado/Quake/Flood would be reverted to their regular Dia/Glare/Banish forms, and the net loss of damage would be 'the amount of damage gained by casting Glare in raidbuffs, minus the damage that Glare does without any raidbuffs' (because that 'spend' is replaced by a Glare), so absolutely miniscule (but still high enough for optimizers to care about). Additionally, WHM does not start with Lilies, whereas SCH can instantly get 3 Aetherflow (plus 3 more with Dissipation), AST can start with 3 cards for a full Astrodyne in the opener, and SGE starts with 3 of both Adderblobs. Having WHM start with 100 of this hypothetical gauge wouldn't uniquely benefit it, if anything it'd even the playing field. I can understand why Lilies start at 0, because Misery pushes 3 bonus Glares of damage into raidbuffs. But the damage gain of optimizing this hypothetical gauge would be so low, I don't see the harm in letting the WHM start with 100. Or just 50 if it's that big a deal

[Shurrikhan]

Yes, White Mage. My reasoning would be that, given WHM has always struggled to have an actual identity beyond 'it heals hard', this would give it an actual solid one: it can bank damage by using various damage-neutral GCD healing skills, and then unload all of that banked damage at once for massive burst in the raidbuff window. Effectively making it the 'king of ADPS', like how DRK currently functions.

All that is totally separate from its more powerful/interesting heals being locked behind dealing damage, though.

WHM is only a single CD attack away from "King of ADPS" already, even if that had no impact on their personal potency per minute (e.g., even if its potency were just siphoned from Glare). SCH and AST both sit well behind it at <90% and <80% of WHM's aDPS (despite edging out its rDPS by only ~0.4%).

And none of that requires restricting heals behind those attacks.

I'd also have liked for it to be a Necromancer healer or something that had a system like this, but we aren't getting Necromancer for various reasons, so WHM's the next best choice imo.

That stuff was stripped from original Thaumaturge not so much because "Shadowy/Vampiric/Necrotic arts bad" but simply because Yoshida wanted to simplify everything into franchise-standard analogs asap. We could still easily get a job for which it'd make sense for healing resources to be drawn from prior attacks. I just don't feel like WHM is even close to that. SCH and SGE both seem better fits, thematically.

Wouldn't mind seeing WHM start with 100 gauge either, your opening salvo would be like, precast Glare, spend, spend (POM), Tornado (Assize), <Quake, Quake, Flood, Flood>, Tornado, Glare and continue as usual (with the bit in <> being rearrangeable for mobility purposes, but who needs mobility in the first 20s of the fight). That's assuming you don't need/want the healing from the gauge and can afford to dump it early like that, if you need to save the gauge then you'd drop one or both 'spends' and the Tornado/Quake/Flood would be reverted to their regular Dia/Glare/Banish forms, and the net loss of damage would be 'the amount of damage gained by casting Glare in raidbuffs, minus the damage that Glare does without any raidbuffs' (because that 'spend' is replaced by a Glare), so absolutely miniscule (but still high enough for optimizers to care about).

This all sounds decent to me. I just still don't see why it'd want to have heals locked behind damage in almost any way. If you, say, formed a healing spring and then used a Tornado around it to vary its effect, or a Quake to spread it, etc., that'd be pretty neat; I just don't get why Tornado would unlock a particular heal or even why you'd necessarily want to have the nuke damage skills/CDs to be mere gauge-builders on an "aDPS healer" instead of having them be the gauge-spenders (far more bankable, flexible, exploitable).

I guess the main thing is that it feels like you could easily just have WHM have some serious MP-burst-spending options via burst damage tools while making it wildly MP-positive otherwise and accomplish largely the same result -- flexible, seriously unloadable burst damage with a side of situational utility. Attach some costs to oGCD heals and grant MP-spending burst heals a bit of damage-refund value (e.g., via more water magic, which all heals are to some extent, in the effect of Tornado = higher potency Tornado, etc.) and you're already there. And since WHM would be balanced around (generating and) spending much more MP than most healers, it'd still also be your "prog healer", more capable of mass-/chain-rezzing than most.

Additionally, WHM does not start with Lilies, whereas SCH can instantly get 3 Aetherflow (plus 3 more with Dissipation), AST can start with 3 cards for a full Astrodyne in the opener, and SGE starts with 3 of both Adderblobs.

Oh, I didn't mean to make it sound like starting from 100 gauge would be unreasonable (only that it'd then be mildly redundant with MP). WHM should start with 3 Lilies and should be able to generate Lilies even outside of combat. It just probably shouldn't be able to generate Blood Lilies except within X seconds of having been in combat (should be indicated with an action/button flash/highlight or subtle change in icon), as not to delay combat for a minute to build a Misery and keep 3 Lilies. That'd be a far fairer way to handle that.

[ForsakenRoe]

This all sounds decent to me. I just still don't see why it'd want to have heals locked behind damage in almost any way. If you, say, formed a healing spring and then used a Tornado around it to vary its effect, or a Quake to spread it, etc., that'd be pretty neat; I just don't get why Tornado would unlock a particular heal or even why you'd necessarily want to have the nuke damage skills/CDs to be mere gauge-builders on an "aDPS healer" instead of having them be the gauge-spenders (far more bankable, flexible, exploitable).

Sorry, sometimes I forget how long it's been since I first made that post, let me clarify: this hypothetical gauge, the 'builders' would be 'every spell in your kit that is not a Lily spell', be that damage or healing, with varying gauge generation rates. The 'spender' would be this instant cast heal, probably around the same power as Cure3 but without the scuffed range. The 'Quake, Tornado, Flood' spells are not CDs, but upgraded versions of Glare, Dia and Banish, in the same way that after using Infuriate, FellCleave turns into Inner Chaos for one use. The purpose of those spells is not to be a damage gain per se, but to make that 'spender healing GCD' be damage neutral. Being able to move the 'refund' into raidbuffs is a happy coincidence that most players would not need to worry about, but the few that would take notice of it would find enjoyment in rejigging their Lily spend timings to work around that heal, such that they get both it's refund and Misery into raidbuffs. It would be nice to have spells affect things as you describe, eg 'Quake adds potency, Tornado adds range, Flood adds duration' or something, but I had originally made the idea based on how cautious SE plays when it comes to making changes. I went with 'baby steps' on purpose, because I wouldn't expect SE to add a complexity of that level to WHM, the supposed 'babby's first healer'

I'd look at 'what does this healer have to build an identity out of in it's kit right now', and work from there. SCH has two fairies, and in FF11, Black/White Grimoire, which could lead to some kind of stance-dancing gameplay (with less punishment factor than Cleric used to have). AST has it's cards which could have some additional gameplay added to them again. SGE has Kardia, and SE could make it have a gameplay that revolves more around that. What does WHM have? Cure 3. That's fine and all, but I feel like it needs something a little... more, than just Cure 3, hence why I think something like this would fit best on WHM. Sure, we could have SGE have it, or have SCH generate Fairy Gauge each time one of it's 4 recently re-added DOTs tick. But then the question is, if that healer gets this new system which helps interlink the two halves of their kit (damage and healing), what does WHM get to play with that makes it retain all levels of player? If WHM has no 'thing' that SE could build off of, like the Fairies, or the Cards, or the Kardia, then it needs to be given one, is how I see it, otherwise WHM remains doomed to be 'the boring one, the function-over-form one, the 'it just works' one' and I'd personally like to see it achieve more than 'barely scraped a passing grade'

[Shurrikhan]

If WHM has no 'thing' that SE could build off of, like the Fairies, or the Cards, or the Kardia, then it needs to be given one, is how I see it, otherwise WHM remains doomed to be 'the boring one, the function-over-form one, the 'it just works' one' and I'd personally like to see it achieve more than 'barely scraped a passing grade'

I feel like it always has, though -- the Elements, themselves. I just don't necessarily want to see them relegated to something redundant with Lilies as a refund measure (even if partial and without any CD, as opposed to Lilies' full but CD-limited refund).

Will probably edit in more further; only had a brief moment between shifts today.