How would you solve the boring "damage rotation" of the healers?

[Lailani_Fey]

In WoW, damage delivered to party members is done somewhat consistently throughout a fight. [...]

There's another thing to be said about WoW healing design: Incoming raidwide magical damage is the norm there as it is here but the average gear does not have magical mitigation.
They do have increased HP by virtue of Item Level though.

[Lailani_Fey]

"We received feedback that healer players often felt like they needed more to do in their downtime. Because of this, we have added Water, which upgrades to Banish, since many of our players who enjoy the lore noted that WHM does not have Water spells in their repertoire now, but used to in the past. [...]

While I appreciate the reference to job fantasy and would like to try out if this suggestion also works well in practice I cannot help but notice still that accepting this as only solution to the current problems would amounht to admitting defeat. Defeat to the ongoing threat of the healer role getting gutted of its distinguishing properties.

I think the focus needs to be much more on making the healer role feel needed, valued and powerful again. I get that people prefer self-sustain versus being reliant on few others but the degree this has taken on is simply depressing. It feels to me like, taking P11S as an example, two healers are only brought because its a habit and there are mechanics that need to target two non-tank players predictably.

The push for mitigations and shields surely has not helped this either because it makes pure healers ever more obsolete. Looking at Criterion, to bring a pure healer is actually a liability compared to a shield healer.

[Haventale]

I just feel that it really sounds like Stormblood job design is the most ideal middle ground for what everyone wants. Not as complex as HW, but not so drastically simplified as ShB/EW?

The other thing that just truly baffles me is how this dev team (or maybe just yoship, I dunno who controls these things) actively refuses to admit their redesign of healers has like, objectively failed? After FOUR years of doubling down on it.

Like everyone remembers how it was in StB (that’s when I started playing, so I can’t speak for anything before that), where tanks got instant queues because I guess a lot of people found them too intimidating. And healers had to wait a few minutes. But then with the over-simplification/homogenization of healers in ShB, now healers get instant queues, and tanks have to wait a few minutes. So their idea of “lets make healing so easy and simple that eveyone wants to play them,” has failed. Like the queue times can’t lie? It proves that objectively LESS people play healers now than when they were more complex. So what’s the dev teams’s logic for keeping healers the way they are? I just don’t understand it at all. ._.

[ForsakenRoe]

While I appreciate the reference to job fantasy and would like to try out if this suggestion also works well in practice I cannot help but notice still that accepting this as only solution to the current problems would amounht to admitting defeat. Defeat to the ongoing threat of the healer role getting gutted of its distinguishing properties.

I think the focus needs to be much more on making the healer role feel needed, valued and powerful again. I get that people prefer self-sustain versus being reliant on few others but the degree this has taken on is simply depressing. It feels to me like, taking P11S as an example, two healers are only brought because its a habit and there are mechanics that need to target two non-tank players predictably.

The push for mitigations and shields surely has not helped this either because it makes pure healers ever more obsolete. Looking at Criterion, to bring a pure healer is actually a liability compared to a shield healer.

I would tend to agree, but as has been mentioned before, I think that if we were to focus on the 'distinguishing properties' of the healer role as the sole focus for the 'solution', that being, that they heal the party, then it will fall somewhere on the sliding scale of 'too much for lower skill level players to handle' and 'won't have much lasting power with skilled players'. If we increase the healign required in EX roulettes by, say, 50%, I'm still going to be able to handle way too much of it as SGE with my, what is it, 8 OGCDs? Once the 'extra healing required' is adapted to, we're back to where we are now: the rotation we're complaining about. I don't think that my idea for WHM is the only one that works, but I think that it's the underlying philosophy of the idea: that we WILL have to do damage at some point, so we should try and tie it back into the healing in some way. Do better healing, get chances to damage more. Do more damage, get access to healing tools to slot in and keep the damage rolling. A self-feeding cycle, that would feel satisfying to 'maintain' as it were, while also being easy to 'get back into' if you accidentally fall off the loop (eg had to do Medica spam for something like a Styx). Some people might want, say, +100% healing required in all content. Some might want, say, 4 more damage buttons in the rotation for WHM for the excessive downtime we get between mandated 'heal now' moments. I'm looking at it as like... what if we do 40-50% more healing required, and 1-2 more buttons? Sort of a 'bit of both', and while it might not be enough on one side or the other by itself, the combination of the two, and the interlinking of the two (Lilies are a good example of it in action), allows for 'greater than the sum of their parts'. EG, I say 50% increased healing. But maybe, with the gauge and heal I suggested (or something similar in function), that allows SE to design the harder raids to push more towards 75% increased healing, because of that extra healing tool being available. It creates not just a solution to the current problems, but a solid foundation and identity in the jobs to build from for later expansions

The push for mitigation and shields is entirely SE's end, and if they're going to keep pushing it like they have for the past... several years at this point, why not just play into it? Let's take my idea, because I can describe it better than other examples. We have a suggested 'Afflatus Sanctuary', a 200p shield at the cost of one Lily. Now, this is weaker than SGE/SCH shields (which are 320p), but has the upside of being damage neutral. This provides options for the two healers, the WHM and the SCH/SGE in a team, to say 'I can cover this one with a Sanc so you can get an extra GCD of damage in here'. Additionally, it means that, even when a WHM finds their team is fully healed, they can spend a Lily to prep Misery, and still get some use out of it, because shields last 30s, whereas atm it's forced to be 100% overheal at times (wasteful).

And, my personal desire, giving every healer some access to shielding, allows for SE to create what I refer to as 'Shield Checks'. If you've done content, sometimes you notice that a debuff doesn't apply, because the damage was not taken from the hit that applies it. The Soccer vulns in E6S, the UpDog strat in E10S, the Vulcan Bursts of Ifrit in any version he appears in, when the damage is fully blocked by a shield the debuff doesn't apply (or KB, for Ifrit). Rather than being 'haha that's a funny quirk', SE would gain the ability to design around that interaction. Where tanks see castbars flash red and know 'I should Interrupt this', we could have a bar that flashes, say, green, and has a little shield icon at the left side of it or something, to indicate 'Block this with a Succor or such, and you'll mitigate the effect (or part of it). Here's an example. Imagine a raidwide from a dungeon boss that deals it's damage in two hits. The first hit deals exactly 200 damage, unchanged by % mitigations, it's an exact amount every time. One game-frame later, it deals the actual raidwide damage of however much. But, that 200 damage also applies a Doom to everyone with a, let's say 20s duration, that can be cleansed by topping everyone to full, or by Esuna. You as a healer now have THREE options. One, you Esuna everyone individually who got the debuff. Perhaps one healer gets an AOE Esuna that comes in handy for this, and makes this option more appealing to use? Two, you heal everyone with AOE healing to top them up to full. This takes resources, but is likely less GCDs invested than the Esuna strat, assuming you SingleTarget Esuna all four people. Third, the new option, you block the 200 damage with a shielding spell, such that the Doom wasn't applied in the first place. This can extend to raids too, UWU Ifrit originally was designed to 'ask the player to shield the KB', but now we can just Arm's/Surecast it, but there can be certain mechanics designed around the fact that shields block debuff application sometimes

I think Pure/Barrier split was a bad idea, because they gave Barrier too much throughput healing. But they HAD to, for it to be able to clear content. So Pure just got left in the dust. I'd rather do a slight 'homogenization' of giving back some Barrier capabilities (WHM did have Protect and Stoneskin after all), if it opens design doors for new encounter design options like above

I just feel that it really sounds like Stormblood job design is the most ideal middle ground for what everyone wants. Not as complex as HW, but not so drastically simplified as ShB/EW?

The other thing that just truly baffles me is how this dev team (or maybe just yoship, I dunno who controls these things) actively refuses to admit their redesign of healers has like, objectively failed? After FOUR years of doubling down on it.

Like everyone remembers how it was in StB (that’s when I started playing, so I can’t speak for anything before that), where tanks got instant queues because I guess a lot of people found them too intimidating. And healers had to wait a few minutes. But then with the over-simplification/homogenization of healers in ShB, now healers get instant queues, and tanks have to wait a few minutes. So their idea of “lets make healing so easy and simple that eveyone wants to play them,” has failed. Like the queue times can’t lie? It proves that objectively LESS people play healers now than when they were more complex. So what’s the dev teams’s logic for keeping healers the way they are? I just don’t understand it at all. ._.

SB is the middle ground that I'd look at. I don't want SB exactly, because that admits we've wasted four years. And some of the things we got since have been damn good (cough Lilies getting fixed, AST cards being more easily balanceable against one another). So, the 'ideal' I think is to look at what SB did right, and build off of that as the baseline, while keeping 'the things everyone appreciates about SHB/EW' in some regard. Examples are, SB WHM had Aero 3. 'SB might hold the answers' doesn't necessarily mean we HAVE to go back to SB Lilies. We could instead look at something like 'what if we had SB WHM, with EW Lilies, and then maybe one expansion of stuff to expand on that?' EG, if 'Minute-ly Misery prep and fire' is the intended gameplay loop, play into it with a rework of Cleric Stance, as a 1min CD that boosts damage by 10% for 4 GCDs or something. That way, we have a 1min mini-burst (like No Mercy or Trick Attack), and a 2min burst where it lines up with POM (which is our 2min like Bloodfest and Mug)

And for AST, the lesson I'd take (and hope SE takes) is that AOE Balance was not actually the problem, so much as it being AOE Balance. Divination, as 'ehh' as it now is, keeps the 2min window predictable, which is good for balancing the job's output. So, if the cards remain single target, it's a lot easier to add damage effects to all of them, such that they have their individual traits (Bole gives mit, Ewer gives MP, etc), while also keeping them balanced against each other in output such that you don't keep rerolling for one specific one. I linked what I'd do a lot of pages back, but as a refresher:

Major Arcana: now autodraws one every 60s. If you have one already, it's discarded and a new one is drawn. Use it or lose it

Minor Arcana: now draws a Minor Arcana every 15s. Unlike Majors, you can stock an additional Minor Arcana. When one is held in reserve, the timer pauses (like capping on Lilies), so its not for holding to dump in burst, just to help prevent overcap

Playing Major Arcana is still OGCD, but Minor Arcana are GCD.

Additionally, Sleeve Draw would return, becoming a 2charge, 60s charge time action. When you use it, your currently drawn Minor Arcana becomes a Lady of it's suit. Just to make sure it's got some juice for the burst window

Now for Card effects (im not good with names):

Balance: 10% damage, 15s

Bole: 20% damage mitigation, 15s. Additionally, grants 3 stacks of Bole's Bulwark, causing the enemy that strikes the bearer of this buff to take 10% of that ally's Max HP as damage and consuming one stack.

Arrow: Grants 10 stacks of 'Arrow's Assault' (12 if the target is PhysRanged), increasing Autoattack rate by 400%. One stack is consumed for each Autoattack dealt under it's effect, and upon consuming all stacks, the Autoattack rate returns to normal.
Additionally, if the target of this card is the AST, grants 5 stacks of Arrow's Assault, speeding up the recast time of the AST to 1.5s for the next 5 GCD attacks, and making cast times of those spells instant.

Ewer: Grants 1000mp over 15s. Additionally, Grants 3 stacks of Ewer Overflowing, causing the next 3 attacks dealt by a healer to strike a second time for 100% of the spell's potency. Additional effects are not applied. This second strike cannot crit or DHit

Spear: 10% Physical damage, 15s. Additionally, if the target of this card is the AST, all instances of magic damage for it's duration are instead considered physical, allowing them to benefit from this effect

Spire: 10% Magic damage, 15s

A Note on Minor Arcana: Knaves, Lords, Ladies are 7 8 and 9 respectively. Due to not having a duration, these effects will last on the target until they are overwritten by another card, or KO removes them.

X of Staves: Increases the next 5 attacks dealt by the target ally by 60p. Additionally, increases the damage of the first attack dealt by target ally after this effect is applied, by 5 potency, multiplied by the face value of the arcana.

X of Rings: Deals 100p in counterattack damage each time the target ally is struck, up to 3 times. Additionally, deals an additional 5 potency, multiplied by the face value of the arcana, for the first counterattack only.

X of Knives: Causes the next 6 Autoattacks to deal a second strike for 50p. Additionally, a bonus potency equal to the arcana face value is applied to each of these bonus strikes.
if the concept of 'potency value not divisible by 5' is too much for the engine, make it 'first autoattack has bonus damage of '5 x face value'' like the rest

X of Cups: Causes the next 3 healer damage spells to cost half MP, and to strike a second time for 100p. Additional effects are not applied twice. Additionally, the first of these spells deals bonus damage equal to 5 potency, multiplied by the face value of the arcana

X of Crowns: Increases the next 5 instances of Magic damage dealt by 60p. Additionally, a bonus potency equal to the arcana face value is applied to each of these bonus strikes.
see arrow if game can't handle non-5 values

X of Irons: Increases the next 5 instances of Physical damage dealt by 60p. Additionally, a bonus potency equal to the arcana face value is applied to each of these bonus strikes. Additionally, if the target of this card is the AST, the next 5 instances of magic damage are instead considered physical, allowing them to benefit from this effect

Lastly, Astrodyne would be condensed so that rather than being three buffs with one effect each, the reward for getting more seals is still one buff, but it consolidates all previous 'reward buffs' into itself. Buff cap is already straining at the thought of these extra Minor Arcana effects. Additionally, Astrodyne's effects are lowered in potency (in my mind) because they'd be up more often. This is because I'd have Minor Arcana give seals too, leading to much higher uptime on Astrodyne


So instead of just 'is it melee vs ranged', the cards would be Role based (Balance being the 'wildcard' and working on any role to varying effectiveness), but you'd have the freedom to eat a slight damage loss to play a more 'optimal' card choice (eg giving Bole to a Melee who's targetted by a Prey instead of a tank) I can't say for sure without trying it, but the extra speed of Minor Arcana coming in (and having to target allies to play it) might actually be too much, even with one filler spell and one DOT. Like, I genuinely think that it might necessitate the removal of Combust to free up the mental load to keep up with it. IDK if anyone would miss Combust as a gameplay element, I sure wouldn't, especially if it meant getting a more interesting card system. And with Seals potentially being generated via Minor as well as Major Arcana, maybe the gameplay loop could be shifted over to 'try to maintain the speed buff of Astrodyne by getting at least 2 seals, and aim for 100% uptime' instead of it being a scuffed 'self buff burst window' that contributes less than 1% of our total damage output

SB really was like, the ideal middle ground in hindsight. We ditched old Cleric Stance clunk, and had healer damage scale off of MND, that should have been the change needed to 'help newer healers try to do some damage when it's safe to'. I'm not sure why they went so much further in SHB. Maybe they saw the data on 'percentage of playerbase playing healer as their main' drop and panicked, not realizing 'yeh that was probably because you added RDM and SAM in the same expansion, two VERY highly revered jobs from older games, so of course some healers would change mains to one of those two and not go back'. But hey, if they were able to admit their idea hasn't worked, they'd have done so after their idea of making WHM 'have a more 'Pure Healing' focus' in SB, where it was criticized heavily. It's like, because WHM is 'the posterchild healer' of the FF series, whatever IT is, is what 'healing' is in their minds. And that means since 'healing' is whatever 'WHM is', maybe they've just trapped themselves in a feedback loop of 'well we can't change it because this is what it should be'


...I gotta stop being so invested in this stuff, these posts are getting too long

[SargeTheSeagull]

Frankly something i wouldn't mind seeing WHM get would be like empowering rift from destiny. A 20/30 second cooldown with two charges where you put a 6y aoe at your feet and while standing in it you deal extra damage or healing. Perhaps anyone who stands in it gets an autoattack speed boost or their mitigations/self heals cooldown faster or their damage increases by 1% but it only applies to one or two other people.

[Shougun]

Oh yeah, I agree. It should be possible to build a Job design round using such a mechanic. It doesn't need to be something on every healer, but a healer Job having some mechanic of that nature, where it was more thought out and explicitly designed around, could very much work. I'm really big on "Different people like different things, and we have more than one Healer Job, so we should make different ones represent/have different playstyles such that everyone, of most any taste, can find at least one that appeals to them and they can enjoy playing". I would 100% support a healer Job designed around and having a Cleric Stance mechanic since some people want that. Long as it's not all of them, I don't see the issue with it.

And yeah, personally, I hate Moon Flute. Conversely, I like Diamondback (sorta like how I like Passage of Arms). Everyone has different tastes. I'd say the beauty of BLU is you can pick what you want to bring...but Diamondback is binary, you either MUST have (and use) it, or you don't need it. So that one isn't really optional in a somewhat general sense... "emotionally pressured into using them", that's a pretty good description. I feel that's the thing that Jobs/roles shouldn't do to people.

Not to turn a healer thread into a BLU thread lol, but my rebuttal to Diamondback would be why can't I cancel it (and it goes on cooldown, so I don't abuse on / off) and or why does Diamondback not have the reflect / thorn effect that the boss that uses the ability has? I thought it was a limited job so we could do wicked cool stuff :/, and particularly get to use monster's abilities? In my mind, a skill we get shouldn't be aggressively worse than the source lol.

In one of the few threads I had suggested Diamondback effect would persist through Loom (teleport, loom itself which would be oGCD and remove one debuff), and damage taken while Diamondback would allow you to reflect damage via an ability (as you are damaged you get stacks to reflect back, single target, but if you cancel or expire the ability it will deal less potency but in an AoE- if you were going to die it will consume the stacks for self healing). Moon Flute was with similar thought process.. Something about self locking your character without recourse, especially for extended periods of time*, feels like applying bullet ants to your bottom (). *I am fine with temporary locks, like used in Fromsoft games, but those have really short locks and are also usually avoidable via skilled play (animation canceling). I also look at Diamondback, as it is currently for BLU, akin to Ice Block in WoW which is a Mage spell that they can cancel.. besides the multiple other reasons why Diamondback causes me to be a little annoyed I also just look "hey a normal job has the power of a limited job!" (it's not entirely fair but at this point I'm just salty about it lol).

I think stun locks work fine in classic FF games since you control multiple characters, but uh.. you don't here.. so... .. No plz don't. lol. Moonflute isn't as needed as Diamondback, for the most part, but they both felt like "that could have been thematic, yet less awkward- this is unnecessarily awkward and I have hard time believing locking your character out of actions is a great choice".


Scholar is going to get whiplash soon but they would be an example in my mind of a job that had more offensive interactions that was then stripped, meanwhile WHM and AST have always been primarily team buds (more so AST, WHM has just been consistently straight forward). When I was thinking of SCH/SGE (bloody healers) and WHM/AST (team cheerleaders) I was even thinking about that might be a point where you can end the idea of shield vs non-shield healing differences (leaving healers with more heal choices in their own kit, that are better for different situations- perhaps accentuating that difference to ensure it rewards skilled play). Though obviously the difference between shield vs pure would be replaced with offensive focus vs team focus.

Not that there has to be a strict difference, but it would be nice to allow vibe differences enough that healers don't feel like different coats of paint (and that can be part of it).

I think I pretty much agree with this 100%.

We've seen what happens when playstyles are removed (e.g. SMN). The game is pretty much always worse for it. Even if they're diminished (fewer Jobs having such playstyles), as long as people enjoy that, it shouldn't be removed. And yeah, win some lose some. I think the trick is design that lets everyone win some and doesn't have anyone losing all.

I liked ARR SMN gameplaywise, I just thought thematically it was a bad SMN. I liked all the SMN gameplaywise lol. The most recent SMN (once you get the full primal aetherpact effects) is fun, imo, but it was shockingly "button insanity" to "massively button simplicity" in patch shift.. I wouldn't blame people for getting whiplash. I think the most recent SMN has been the best SMN thematically we've had yet, and visually it's lovely, but the gameplay difference was pretty stark. "for me" at max level I still enjoy it, but I did relatively quickly comment on that it was pretty strong whiplash and that below max level is quite quiet lol.

I think the hardest part for some is that a job that is mechanically more intricate, to be for those players that want some level of intricacies, doesn't mean it should be more powerful because of that- it's a multiplayer game so it can't be that 1:1 unlike a single player might be. "Yeah you can play WHM, but it's not as good as SCH intentionally because it's easier for the noobs", that'll create really terrible feelings.

Personally I don't mind skillful opportunities, especially as the game is MSQ balanced around basically having at least 1 tank or 1 healer paying attention (so someone can be at the skill floor and it would likely not matter to MSQ content). SE has shaved off quite a few skill points over time, yet Warrior's Berserk or the original Cleric Stance I feel are some of the less ideal examples of that. Samurai's lost skill or SCH's kit, I feel are more fair examples.

[Aravell]

And for AST, the lesson I'd take (and hope SE takes) is that AOE Balance was not actually the problem, so much as it being AOE Balance.

Had an interesting thought, what if they brought Royal Road effects back, but instead of an effect that turns the card into AoE, what if it was an effect that shortens the duration of the next card played but adds the effect of the burned card in addition to the next card played? So if you burned Spear and played Balance, the target would get a shortened duration Spear and Balance.

Might be too imbalanced, didn't think much about it, just an idea that popped up.

[Shougun]

Had an interesting thought, what if they brought Royal Road effects back, but instead of an effect that turns the card into AoE, what if it was an effect that shortens the duration of the next card played but adds the effect of the burned card in addition to the next card played? So if you burned Spear and played Balance, the target would get a shortened duration Spear and Balance.

Might be too imbalanced, didn't think much about it, just an idea that popped up.

Didn't tie it directly to balance but a suggestion earlier, and my Dark Healer thread (long ago), specifically used some buffs that were potency restricted so that you didn't have to worry about AoE issues as much. In a way it adds reliable way to balance the value, as you could have it be potent bursty buff and that would be fine because it'll still end up doing a maximum.

Balance, AoE buff that increases damage by 50% up to 1,000 potency. I exaggerated numbers just to show that you could be a bit wild and it still has a ceiling that allows stronger understanding of maximum potential. Rather than generic %s that might bias groups. Of course you can still have a general %, though you'd never want to cast 10% damage buff on your healer bud but if you had a 30 second 50 potency enfire spell that dealt up to 500 potency.. you might even cast that on your Sage cause he'll probably get it done.

Naturally evaluating who is doing better, or a job that has higher X value, is part of the potential fun so I'm not suggesting you remove the % ideas entirely- just that you can add a lot more buffs, especially wonky sounding ones, and worry less if this is 'one of' the tools in the tool box.

[Raikai]

I feel like we could say this about every Job/role. Yet they keep finding new things to give people. In ShB, who would have thought Expedient for SCH? Yet we got it and it was unexpected and highly lauded.

The reason why I asked in this thread in specific, that healing is a binary functionality. You need heals until the HP bars are full, which is something already achievable with probably a single oGCD from both healers. So, in that front... there's literally nothing else to add without being redundant.

Tank mitigation, is not as capped as a healing parameter... you can have more and more, and even if isn't exactly that, they aren't shy on giving tanks more damage oriented toys. Dpsers, or at least some of them, are at capacity already with stuff to shove into the 2min meta, but they still have a lot of room to expand outside of that. This matter is more egregious on healers because of the nature of healing itself.

You mentioned Expedient, and yeah it's a nice addition. But what other kind of utilities can appear in an 'on leashes' design like XIV's? So, if there's nothing new to add on the 'healing' front, and not a lot to think about new utilities that aren't covered yet, all that remains, with clear room for growth, is simply giving more dps tools, even if they are cooldown based.

[Nabril]

I agree. Healers in this game should have their healing simplified so that they can do a more engaging DPS rotation. DPS is more important for a healer than actual healing. That's been a staple in this game since the beginning and everyone will tell you that. Give them an engaging DPS rotation with the occasional healing spell for the Tank and an AoE spell for the raid group. That's all a healer needs.