Most Important Dawntrail Change to Keep me in FFXIV

[Aravell]

Okay I have a question and I’m not trying to throw shade or anything. Just an honest question here. In HW/SB when the healers were pretty different from each other, wasn’t there issues. Like raiding when AST had crazy card buffs that could extend, spread etc. Whm was excluded from raids etc. People complained saying just being whm up to where ast was but how exactly would that have worked? When everyone is so dead on not keeping them similar ast bought buffs and whm didn’t. Giving whm buffs would have just made them similar and people would have been mad. So how would you have resolved that if you were one of the devs?

Except that WHM wasn't excluded. WHM was memed on for the entirety of the expansion, yes, but never outright excluded aside from log runs (which a lot of other jobs get excluded for as well) and also excluded by people who look up the meta comp and blindly follow it. I used to main WHM in Deltascape, when WHM was at its worst, I never had any issue joining random savage parties.

Also, people were asking for different support for WHM, not a carbon copy of the card system. IIRC, people asked for Shell to go with Protect, Bravery for physical damage increase and Faith for magical damage increase. But I believe most people were just asking for the lilies to get fixed.

[ty_taurus]

Okay I have a question and I’m not trying to throw shade or anything. Just an honest question here. In HW/SB when the healers were pretty different from each other, wasn’t there issues.

...

So how would you have resolved that if you were one of the devs?

One healer having buffs while another doesn't isn't actually a problem. Buffs are the same as damage, the only difference is in how that damage is applied. As long as the personal damage of a healer without buffs is scaled correctly, then there isn't an issue. Now, there are some perks to buffs, namely that the damage gained through buffs is dealt through the lens of another player. For healers in premade groups challenging savage, this has an advantage because the healers with buffs can forfeit their rolls on gear chests to give that gear to their DPS and still benefit, because the damage gained through their buffs will increase as a result of their DPS allies getting stronger. Personal DPS healers can only get stronger by improving their own gear. This gives buffing healers an advantage early in a raid tier, but only in premade groups. Party Finder is free-for-all, and personal DPS healers may end up being stronger for reclears once they're geared up. And that's not a bad thing, really.

The bigger issue was moreso that Astro's buffs outclassed White Mage's personal damage, and White Mage offered nothing in return. Their healing was virtually the same, and while White Mage offered basically nothing outside of raw healing, Astro also had potentially helpful utility with well-timed Boles and Ewers.

I think the key to ensuring healers have more distinct differences isn't necessarily in the balance of their damage, but rather, the other side of their kit. For example, I would like to see Sage lose access to larger, raw barriers completely. Instead of E. Diagnosis and E. Prognosis granting Adloquium/Succor-like barriers, they should be weak, layered barriers instead. Remove Haima and Panhaima as separate actions and make those effects your E. Diag/E. Prog. Scholar applies larger one-time barriers while Sage applies layers of small barriers. But even more importantly than that, I think each healer needs a clearly defined strength in the form of unique utility.

We see how powerful Expedient is, and yet there's nothing about it that's necessary in a fight. It's strong because what it offers is room for error. Your party can afford to be less precise and less perfect during windows in which you use it, and the effect of Expedient is very universal to harder fights. There's always at least a few different mechanics where movement is key. If we focus on establishing a clear utility advantage for each healer, that can also do really well at making the healers feel balanced while also maintaining their own identities.

For Scholar, we already have Expedient. It's consistent, it's universal, and it's a fantastic tool. I'd just consider lowering it to level 70 so that Scholar's advantage is available for all ultimates.

For White Mage, we already have free raises, which is something even if not nearly as valuable. For that reason, I'd recommend giving it an AoE Esuna and make it so that bleeds inflicted by raidwides can be cleansed. This allows White Mage to erase bleedwides, which can be especially useful if those bleedwides occured unmitigated. This could be OGCD with a cooldown, thus also not consuming a cast, or we could let it be GCD and allow White Mage to be able to remove those at any time if we want. But if it's OGCD, it also is a more advantageous way of resolving individual debuffs without interrupting their casts, and can be more responsive for really short debuffs, like the dooms that can occur during P10S. Alternatively, I've also suggested "Float" for White Mage before as well. Float, in this case, allows the party to ignore puddle damage and hazardous floor mechanics. It would be more niche than Expedient, but in a fight like P2S, it would allow you to run across the water without getting the DoT, or allow you to cross the poison bridges in P10S without webs.

For Astrologian, I think Macrocosmos can be considered a form of utility in a way. Even though it's healing, something all healers can do, its ability to ignore Infirmity mechanics like P3S's death's toll is something that I don't think is a bad thing. It's criticized now because White Mage has nothing to compete with that, but if we were to give White Mage the above suggestions, allowing Astro to be able to undo certain healing checks is something I would label as "Utility" because you are effectively negating certain fight requirements. We could also take Lightspeed further and allow Astrologian to have multiple instant raises, a la Red Mage. It's not the most well-loved form of utility, but that is utility. If MP were ever made more prominent again, allowing them to restore their co-healer's MP again can also be utility to consider.

For Sage, I would actually like to go the Black Mage route and completely sacrifice their access to any powerful utility in exchange for noticeably higher damage. I know that the balance between Black Mage and Red Mage is not and has not been great on Red Mage, but that's not because having a utility tax is a bad thing, but because the utility tax Red Mage suffers has always been overtuned. If Red Mage got a properly balanced buff so that it was still weaker than Black Mage in terms of raw damage, but the gap wasn't so egregious, it would actually be quite healthy. Black Mage offers an extra chunk of damage, which makes enrages easier to clear, while Red Mage offers extra room for error, allowing the party to recover from mistakes that would otherwise force a wipe. I can't tell you how many times during P7S prog did both healers get killed during a harvest, even if by someone else's mistake, and our Black Mage lived. Had he been a Red Mage, there are runs we may have cleared that we otherwise didn't. But if Sage's advantage was that it had no utility outside of the bare mimimum mitigation requirements, but had an extra 300, maybe 400 DPS over the other healers (after calculating buffs from Astro and Scholar), that could feel like a healthy trade off for not having Expedient, Float, AoE Esuna, Free or Instant Raising, or Macrocosmos.

[Eastwall]

Abyssos' healing difficulty was short-lived and more a result of the surprise to seeing the healing requirements increase at all when it seems like Shadowbringers and Endwalker have done everything they can to make healers heal less. But even if Abyssos was enough to make healing fun there, that's only four fights. I want healing to be fun in the entire game, something I felt was true of Scholar and Astrologian before Shadowbringers. I'm not interested in the "just play savage/ultimate" argument. I want to love healers whether I'm soloing the MSQ, farming treasure maps, running Eureka/Bozja, doing roulettes, progging savage, or grinding out bicolor gems. And that's just not true of healers in these last two expansions.

The point of a game is to have fun. I want "healing is fun." No caveats. No 'ifs'. just "healing is fun" period.



I don't really see what that has to do with my feedback particularly. Job design is a separate discussion to repeatable content.

Even yoshi's "play ultimate fell apart" because Top can br cleared without healers,lol

[ty_taurus]

Even yoshi's "play ultimate fell apart" because Top can br cleared without healers,lol

I will never understand that response.

[Allegor]

I will never understand that response.

Easy. It implies you'll be healing a lot... until you get better gear and/or everyone gets accustomed to the fight and don't need to heal or raise any oopsies (like...literally even normal mode trials and dungeons when the patch is new...) but don't think about it! you'll be healing more!!!

[ty_taurus]

Easy. It implies you'll be healing a lot... until you get better gear and/or everyone gets accustomed to the fight and don't need to heal or raise any oopsies (like...literally even normal mode trials and dungeons when the patch is new...) but don't think about it! you'll be healing more!!!

Even if that was actually true, how does that make me heal more in a dungeon roulette? Or the MSQ? or during FATEs?

[Allegor]

Even if that was actually true, how does that make me heal more in a dungeon roulette? Or the MSQ? or during FATEs?

You can always rely on how bad your teammates perform

(I'm being sarcastic btw)

[Calysto]

For Scholar, we already have Expedient. It's consistent, it's universal, and it's a fantastic tool. I'd just consider lowering it to level 70 so that Scholar's advantage is available for all ultimates.

For White Mage, we already have free raises, which is something even if not nearly as valuable. For that reason, I'd recommend giving it an AoE Esuna and make it so that bleeds inflicted by raidwides can be cleansed.[...].

For Astrologian, [...]

For Sage, [...]

(had to trim for post length)

One of the problem here is that you're giving AoE esuna to WHM, while it used to exists as a SCH ability. Just with that healers will never get to a "consensus" that Y-P asked (why didn't He ask for a consensus before butchering the role is the question...)
We're at a point of homogenization and so much thing already got lost by most job it's hard to not upset anyone. I'm at a point I'm willing to accept homogenization if it's done right. (well, lately I'm thinking that just getting spirit dart as a healer role action would be better that whatever we get in 7.0 will probably just be 120s bs)

Keeping AoE esuna as an example (bleed, vuln, etc could be removable)
One solution would be to just have different approaches. like for an : (theses could be switched or whatever)
-WHM - gcd spell, standard mp cost
-SCH - 15s CD that use whatever gauge
-AST - 30s CD with 2 charges
-SGE - added effect of an eukrasia-spell, higher mp cost

It does means that in this example, WHM and SGE would have to use a gcd on it. so it's a cost as long as there is not much need for it. the more erasable debuff, the easier and less cost for them ; after that it's a battle design issue to balance things right.

As a side note, you didn't learn about Y-P mistake there : one line for SCH, nothing new, "there wasn't much we could do about the job"

rep edit :
-esunaga making more sense on whm is valid, but it already existing on 14's SCH is too, there was an error at some point, so now correcting it is hard without upsetting people.
-for it being a WHM exclusive, I mean sure, if we ignore the sch backlash (there will be one most certainly whatever SE does XD), but then that means there won't be many case it's useful ; your "float" could also fill that role. there are lot of possibilities for a niche on utility...

[ty_taurus]

AoE Esuna is 1000 times more thematically a White Mage ability than it is a Scholar ability. Esuna was originally White Mage’s debuff cleanse, and I’d give it Esunaga, or Esuna III. So I see it as correcting a mistake.

The point I was making was to give White Mage AoE Esuna as a unique form of utility. Ironically, the suggestion to give that to every healer instead is literally how White Mage has been treated for its entire existence. How dare White Mage even think of having something it can do that the other healers cant!

As for not adding any new utility to Scholar… First, my post was not to suggest that those would be the only changes I would make if k were in charge. It was specifically about how to approach balance. And Scholar already got the king of utility in Expedient. It doesn’t need to swap that for something else or add on top of that. Expedient is far more versatile and universally applicable than the other examples I gave. Scholar doesn’t need more, but that’s only when talking about utility balance. It is not me “not knowing what to do with it.”

[Teno]

Sage pvp gameplay identity in pve please. It's perfect.