#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[MisterNublet]

But I also don't want the healers to all feel the same either. As you say, Black Mage, Summoner, and Red Mage are different. The healers should be too.

I agree with that, but such a change would likely require tearing out the entire foundation and rebuilding each healer from the ground up. Building four new gameplay systems revolving around job mechanics/gauges will take time that I don't think will happen until at least 8.0 with this job design team. Adding a new 2.5s cast spell, a new 15-18 second dot, and a new instant ability with a cooldown could be done in a month or two which would take some of the sting off in DawnTrail from having to wait until then.

If I had to give new mechanics to each healer, I would have to say it would be something to the effect of.

WHM would have to alternate between Earth and Water, while building into light (black mage like).

Scholar would have a "Offensive command" rotation and a "Defensive command" rotation, using 3 abilities, depending on the order how they're cast. 1-2-3 would be offensive (damage increase for Sch), 3-2-1 defensive (self shielding and healing increase for sch).

Astrologian would have a combo system. Ast would accumulate "stars" by casting 1.5s Malefic and two stars for casting 2.5s Malefic which they can then spend these "stars" on different abilities. (5 stars to summon Meteor, hah.)

Sage would be an "offshoot" of Red Mage's gameplay. Healing through Kardia will build to and unlock their "melee" combo which will in turn help them build Addersting.

[ForsakenRoe]

Their first question is do we want recovery from the tanks removed, or do we want to just reduce how often they can provide sustain?

Their second question is if we want DPS on healers to be more complicated, how complicated should it be? If we also want to heal with the GCD, how often should we be healing with the GCD? For example, would we want a healer with a DPS rotation like Warrior's where healing is added to the job? Or a DPS rotation like Summoner's where only healing is added to the job? Or would we want new healer job mechanics?

They also saw us referencing "5 years," so were we happy with healers in Stormblood? If so, what was good about healers in Stormblood?

First: I would not want to see the recovery 'removed', as now that players have experienced what gameplay is like 'with' the tool, removing it will just feel bad. I would rather see the tools be reduced in power using the concept of 'opportunity cost'. As others have mentioned, Clemency for PLD is a very strong healing tool, but its power is kept in check because it costs MP and is a Spell (on the GCD), whereas Nascent Flash is 'OP' not just because it can heal once-per-enemy-hit, but because it has no associated 'opportunity cost', it is an Ability (oGCD), just 25s CD, and doesn't cost any MP or Gauge. Additionally, back in Shadowbringers, Nascent Flash healed based on the damage dealt, not a flat amount per hit, and this meant that the incoming healing was very dependent on using good burst abilities while Nascent Flash was active. I would like to see Nascent Flash/Bloodwhetting go back to using this design again, so that pressing the simplest AOE skill (Overpower) doesn't result in many thousands of HP healed for free.

Second: I would like to see our rotations be slightly improved in variety, but nothing too crazy. I would look at the tanks such as WAR as a good example of how our rotations should look as a healer. WAR has 2 Abilities it can weave in quite often (Upheaval, Onslaught), a Gauge to build up and spend on powerful moves (FellCleave), buttons to instantly give Gauge and to make Gauge costs 0 for a time (Infuriate/Inner Release). A simple Builder/Spender gameplay loop on one of the healers would go a long way to alleviating the 'tedium' of pressing the same attack spell. Additionally, I would look at Stormblood healers for some inspiration. Stormblood was, in my opinion, a good middle ground between the complexity of Heavesnward and the over-simplification of Shadowbringers.

Third: As others have mentioned, Stormblood Healers were a sort of 'happy medium'. AST had many tools to interact with its cards, such as sacrificing one to empower the next, holding one until later, extending their durations with Celestial Opposition. Scholar had many Damage over Time effects to apply to the enemy, and a way to easily spread them in a dungeon (Bane), resulting in a very different gameplay feel. And White Mage was experimenting with the idea of Cooldown Reduction via its Lilies. While the system ended up being a failure, the concept had some potential, if the Cooldown Reduction effects had been guaranteed. Regardless, the Shadowbringers Lily rework for WHM was universally accepted to be a 'massive improvement', and we should keep the aspects of Shadowbringers/Endwalker design that work well, not just roll everything back to Stormblood exactly as it was.

[Maltothoris]

One thing I would want to say is that Damage isn't random at all. I could forgive the simplistic tools and healing if there was any variance or randomness but there is not.

From the forbidden site, I decided to look at some stuff from p11s. There is only one time the boss uses Blinding Light after Dark and Light. In all of those logs I went through, blinding light always did about 51k to me when I was a healer. On one time, it did 35k, so I went into looking what I and there was a 10 percent and a shield on me when I took it. If you remove those mits and shields, it came back to 51k. Now it should be mention that of course these are rounded from the forbidden and it's just one move from one fight but I think that always bares in mind in the 17 times I cleared the fight and of the 14 I did as healer, the damage of Blinding Light always was 51k or close to it before mitigations and shields were taken into account.

[aiqa]

I general I think tanks should have some ogcd/inherent selfhealing. But overall that should never rival what healers can do. It should never be enough to handle tank busters. It should never be (even close to) enough to do the biggest pulls in dungeons. It is fine if tanks can handle stuff like selfhealing the damage from auto attacks from bosses.

I'd prefer if none of the tank heals were completely removed. But healing potencies should be lowered a lot mostly on PLD and WAR but also GNB and probably DRK, and no more heals per target hit, and no more OGCD teamheals. If they want to give tanks stronger (still lower potency then heals from healers) emergency (self)heals, those should be GCD.

[JanineBeckinsale]

what if we just nerfed bloodwhetting lol

Wait until someone realize how much self-sustain & mit a lv90 PLD has

[Galvuu]

Wait until someone realize how much self-sustain & mit a lv90 PLD has

It's a transversal problem to the role.
Honestly, to the game. XIV is becoming obsessed with removing job fail states, and fail states in "casual" content, and then slamming a myriad of body checks and instant wipes in high-end content (Hello Near/Far World instantly exploding instead of just giving you DD that forces enrage so you can at least practice the phase is downright criminal design, imho).
This all compounds to reduce the impact healers have. In A6S you could literally save pulls on Brawler if your party messed the orbs up as SCH/WHM if you were on top of your healing...

[Nyome]

Ever since Cleric Stance was removed it has felt like the FFXIV team has been handholding healers and afraid to let WoL choose between healing and DPS actions. I often wonder if the team is too afraid that if a party wipes due to a healer being too aggressive with DPS that it would lead to a negative experience and that they are trying to "protect" healers by making their job "easy."

I wish the team would reintroduce actions that would allow healers decide how they balance their time between healing and DPS. In practice a good party shouldn't need a ton of healing and the healer should be able to participate in DPS without becoming bored with spamming a single action (*GLARE*) or two (*DIA*).

As a WHM main, I was excited when they introduced the lily system, since it added extra resource management to healing, and had been hoping for years that they would finally allow us to balance healing and DPS options... yet Dawntrail has once again become disappointing. We were given a "safe" DPS option to make us happy while still having zero trust in healers...

I wished the FFXIV team would consider skills like the ones below I mocked up that allow healers to balance healing and DPS (not just make DPS spam busy work). Skills like these allow new players to focus on healing while experience healers have the option to sacrifice resources ususally needed for healing to be spent on DPS during down times and adjust their play style to their skill levels.


Note: Images are just concepts. The potency, level, and specifics aren't important.

[WeakestZenosEnjoyer]

I wished the FFXIV team would consider skills like the ones below I mocked up that allow healers to balance healing and DPS (not just make DPS spam busy work). Skills like these allow new players to focus on healing while experience healers have the option to sacrifice resources ususally needed for healing to be spent on DPS during down times and adjust their play style to their skill levels.


Note: Images are just concepts. The potency, level, and specifics aren't important.

It's part of why Energy Drain is so important to SCH despite being 100 potency while Broil approaches 300, actions like this serve to vent excess heals instead of just throwing them out because they're free.

Right now it would just mean we want to use the lily solely for damage but coupled with changes to tank sustain and the frequency of damage it can become something you actually want to think about and encourage you to use your whole kit.

[aiqa]

Strongly disagree on the blood lilly suggestions. The whole idea about the blood lilly is that is makes lilly heals dps neutral. Basically giving lilly heals the same function as ogcd heals, without making them ogcd. Adding that mechanics into an attack spell gives lilly heals an opportunity costs like any other gcd. And then they'd have to nerf WHM damage to keep its dps in line with other healers, and it once again lacks "ogcd" healing compared to other healers.

[Kazmarek]

Yeah paladin and warrior have absolutely 0 issue staying alive in mob pulls, which mean they have 0 issue staying alive in bosses. Gunbreaker's a little harder to self heal through mob pulls, but with a bit of luck and good enough dps, it's doable. When it comes to staying alive in bosses, again, gunbreaker's a little harder to do so... but only a little. I remember playing gunbreaker in the grand cosmos, final boss. The healer and both dps die and the boss still has a good chunk of health left, probably about 40 or 50%. It was difficult, it was tedious, but I brought the boss all the way down and kept myself decently healthy the entire time. So dark knight's definitely the least survivable tank but I'm sure with the right people it, too, could replicate what the other 3 can do.