Would you rather healers get more complex healing kits or more complex DPS kits?

[Shurrikhan]

You could have tank self-sustain exist, but come at a cost of personal DPS, like with Clemency. Tools to help you survive in a pinch, or when solo, but relying on your healer is more efficient when possible.

Just to be clear, do we really mean to limit all self-sustain in that way? (And by sustain do you mean everything that sustains you --increases current or current and maximum eHP-- or solely healing / healing+barriers?)

If tanks didn't have any sustain (if the term isn't reduced to be redundant with healing), wouldn't that leave them just as high aggro DPS?

In the end, nullifying damage and recovering from damage are still both just sustain, and I feel like we'd unnecessarily narrow available job themes and differences to say, for example, that free %DR is okay but free healing (even if timing-sensitive) is inherently not, leading to get more homogenization.

Just ensuring decent parity in tank sustain and keeping total tank sustain in check relative to incoming damage across all serious content types and the excess wouldn't harm other roles' gameplay (so, no nonsense like Bloodwhetting scaling linearly with target count, even if its excess is limited to non-serious content, not the least because it makes WAR itself less skill-expressive) seems guidelines/stricture enough, and would avoid purposely homogenizing tanks further (as disallowing half of tanks' free sustain forms would do).


The problem with WAR right now, to me, is simply that it's OP, not that it self-heals (though Nascent Flash's means of external healing thematically makes zero sense and I'd therefore happily rehaul it). All means of equal total sustain in practice nonetheless equally reduce the amount of healing a given job requires, so it's not as if a balanced WAR steps on healers' toes any more than a balanced DRK.

[ty_taurus]

Just to be clear, do we really mean to limit all self-sustain in that way? (And by sustain do you mean everything that sustains you --increases current or current and maximum eHP-- or solely healing / healing+barriers?)

If tanks didn't have any sustain (if the term isn't reduced to be redundant with healing), wouldn't that leave them just as high aggro DPS?

In the end, nullifying damage and recovering from damage are still both just sustain, and I feel like we'd unnecessarily narrow available job themes and differences to say, for example, that free %DR is okay but free healing (even if timing-sensitive) is inherently not, leading to get more homogenization.

Just ensuring decent parity in tank sustain and keeping total tank sustain in check relative to incoming damage across all serious content types and the excess wouldn't harm other roles' gameplay (so, no nonsense like Bloodwhetting scaling linearly with target count, even if its excess is limited to non-serious content, not the least because it makes WAR itself less skill-expressive) seems guidelines/stricture enough, and would avoid purposely homogenizing tanks further (as disallowing half of tanks' free sustain forms would do).


The problem with WAR right now, to me, is simply that it's OP, not that it self-heals (though Nascent Flash's means of external healing thematically makes zero sense and I'd therefore happily rehaul it). All means of equal total sustain in practice nonetheless equally reduce the amount of healing a given job requires, so it's not as if a balanced WAR steps on healers' toes any more than a balanced DRK.

I would break it down:

You can have tools restricted by cooldowns that are not a loss, but the cooldowns need to be longer or have some additional resource cost attached to them. FFXIV does not dish out damage all that frequently, so something like Bloodwhetting having a cooldown of 25 seconds is insane because you might as well just have it up permanently for how it's available for literally every mechanic. Maybe you give it an MP cost. As pretty as the MP bar is on the UI, having it actually do something is more important than having a window decal.

You can also have tools that have some sort of opportunity cost, and they don't always have to be flat GCDs like Clemency. In fact, I kinda wish Clemency perhaps costed Oath Gauge, to give Oath Gauge more things to actually be used on. But when it comes at the cost of gauge, you have to ask about what the alternative is, and having those choices can be a good thing. Clemency specifically and other of Paladin's tools would need adjustments to make that work, but the point stands.

But I also think, rather than having all self-sustain be directly healing oneself, a tank like Warrior could instead replace some of that healing with buffs that increase healing received. Like if Equilibrium increased the amount of HP Warriors receive from all healing sources by 25%, then they could interact with that themselves through other actions, or give the healer a boost. That also synergizes nicely with Scholar which some might appreciate given the relationship they had during the Scholar quests, or perhaps they have ways of increasing the amount of HP they restore the lower their HP is. Pair that with an action that converts a major chunk of their HP into a barrier, and you have a really unique combo where the Warrior lowers their actual HP, gains a barrier for what they lose, and that in turn increases the healing they'd receive to get them back up.

I know we collectively recoil at the idea of self-harm mechanics, but the more Fontaine characters that come out in Genshin that play around with party HP, the more fun I feel that type of stuff can be. Furina came out recently, a character who can summon three pets to attack enemies with Hydro--water attacks. Each pet's attacks also drains the HP of one of your other four party members, and her burst grants the party a damage buff that's represented by a cheering crowd of water pets on your UI that continue to cheer for you louder and louder the more your party's HP increases and decreases. Pair that with someone like Wriothesley who's a fast-paced martial artist whose normal attack punches reduce his HP, but also grant him a buff that restores his HP when he uses a charged attack, and you have the UI audience going ballistic while in battle, and also gives your healer a ton of value in enabling you to go on like that endlessly without worrying about losing too much HP. It's such a fun combination.

[Shurrikhan]

I would break it down:

You can have tools restricted by cooldowns that are not a loss, but the cooldowns need to be longer or have some additional resource cost attached to them. FFXIV does not dish out damage all that frequently, so something like Bloodwhetting having a cooldown of 25 seconds is insane because you might as well just have it up permanently for how it's available for literally every mechanic. Maybe you give it an MP cost. As pretty as the MP bar is on the UI, having it actually do something is more important than having a window decal.

This I could mostly agree with, though I would rather just have more damage taken (and perhaps even more defensive button-presses, given further intake increase accordingly) than give tanks even fewer tank button-presses per average minute.

You can also have tools that have some sort of opportunity cost, and they don't always have to be flat GCDs like Clemency. In fact, I kinda wish Clemency perhaps costed Oath Gauge, to give Oath Gauge more things to actually be used on. But when it comes at the cost of gauge, you have to ask about what the alternative is, and having those choices can be a good thing. Clemency specifically and other of Paladin's tools would need adjustments to make that work, but the point stands.

I wouldn't mind that, but the reason for Clemency not costing gauge is simple enough: it'd be redundant with Intervention, which heals for the same amount atop granting, what, 43% more eHP (for the first 4 seconds, less after).

Like if Equilibrium increased the amount of HP Warriors receive from all healing sources by 25%, then they could interact with that themselves through other actions, or give the healer a boost.

My issue with alleged "self-synergies" is that they so often get reduced to mere bundles (a la FoF-Goring-Req-Confiteor, all effectively a single button of 4 button-presses), at which point the extra button can often feel like mere bloat. Within limitations, that'd be fine, though.

Pair that with an action that converts a major chunk of their HP into a barrier, and you have a really unique combo where the Warrior lowers their actual HP, gains a barrier for what they lose, and that in turn increases the healing they'd receive to get them back up.

Sounds fine, even if a bit redundant with the benefit of TBN to avoid debuffs (albeit in a more [original] "shrug it off" flavor).

I know we collectively recoil at the idea of self-harm mechanics,

I feel like it's only the babysitters (healers with shit parties who feel like they're doing everything themselves) who actually recoil at self-harm mechanics (and even then, only outside of their job). For my part, I'm fine with them as long as they don't devolve into simply a maintenance loop (healers keeps Regen on you to make you slightly OP, without which you're slightly UP, etc.). So, in any other game, I'd be pretty optimistic about their results.

And I'd still like to see DRK play around with that (or would, if it weren't simply a less flexible version --with virtually no novel affordances-- relative to using MP for that, which leaves me instead at an impasse even if I think HP spending is thematically cooler).