#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[CaptainLagbeard]

I think the only channeled skills we have are Flamethrower on MCH and Improvisation on DNC... And I suppose Phantom Flurry and Apokalypsis on BLU...

[Kacho_Nacho]

I think the only channeled skills we have are Flamethrower on MCH and Improvisation on DNC... And I suppose Phantom Flurry and Apokalypsis on BLU...

Also, Collective Unconscious on AST and Aetherpact on SCH come to mind. Channeled skills would be interesting additions to healers thematically since healing is often portrayed as channeling energy into a person to make them well again.

[IDontPetLalas]

I don't think that it's coincidental that there aren't many channelled skills given that encounters are becoming more "stressful" i.e. dynamic. I would expect that Square likely would avoid those skills because they would likely require more skill in those situations. Since you mentioned AST, AST was more interesting in the past partially because unlkie WHM, timing of its skills to get the maximum effect was part of what made it fun to optimize. A lot of that has been removed.

[Somnolence]

Yeah channeled heals missing is weird. Only fairy has something similar. Maybe its not used more because all channeled skills that exists in the game are so damn clunky.

I remember SWTOR had very nice channeled heal for Sorcerer healing spec - Innervate, which had a talent that allowed to use it while moving.

Not sure if replicating that in FFXIV engine is even possible.

[Tigore]

I barely use even Collective Consciousness. I did use it on the 95 dungeon final boss when the stack mechanic happened. Sometimes, it wasn't necessary since some of our tanks were able to take it alone like as if it was just a tower mechanic. I didn't even have to spam cast Benefic 2 on them, so yeah. The tanks were telling the truth. I think I did give them a regen and shield still.

I do know that Warcraft was able to make channelled heals work too. The Druid has Tranquility to pulse 3 - 4 decent burst heals on the raid with an additional stacking HoT as well. Priests have Divine Hymn and Symbol of Hope to restore HP and MP respectively. Pretty much the obvious weakness was one PvP flagged Druid once tried to channel Tranq in front of my Tauren Warrior who could slap them with a Shield Bash interrupt >.> Since all of the Physical Ranged here can also interrupt, it might carry that risk for PvP here too if those spells still transfer over. The weakness will largely be unnoticed in PvE as long as the tanks are doing their jobs. I found a couple links for the animations of the channel spells. The videos are 10-ish years old, but the data banks say the classes still have them.

Another thing to note is the healers here may need another rework if they are getting channelled heals. As it currently stands, said GCD channels would compete with the oGCDs Asylum, Sacred Soil, Celestial Opposition and Kerachole. It's highly unlikely a simple channelled heal would ever be used over those oGCDs unless absolutely necessary. The suggestion for Esuna getting it would likely be one of the only few times it would work with the current model.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6pjn_X9kIc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lg4Xz4M8V4Q

[Alice_Rivers]

I use AST bubble all the time, just not for the heal, I put it up for the burst of mitigation. But I don't really think that's the fault of the ability rather than the encounter design, there's not enough sustain damage and if we had more instances things like the final M4 stack or that thing from M3 where AST and SGE bubbles in particular shine maybe we'd channel it for longer instead of just treating it like an oGCD mit.

[Tigore]

Yeah. I used that AST bubble for the mitigation too. I'm not saying channelled heals would never work. It's just that oGCD heals allow us to heal and deal damage at the same time. In order to compare with that, the channel would either have to buff the party with a damage buff, place a long lasting and juicy party damage reduction / shield up so you have more GCD DPS up time afterwards or deal damage to enemies at the same time as healing allies. Option 4 would be to remove some oGCDs from an existing healer or design a new healer with less of them, of course >.>.

Healers with more reliance on DoTs would be able to afford to use the channels more liberally with less loss on their GCDs. One might say SCH for that, but the class' Aether mechanic using oGCD heals may clash with adding channelled heals unless it does one of the three additional things I listed. It would run the risk of the channel being used right at the start of combat just for those buffs if that route is taken.

[Alice_Rivers]

They could also do some interation with the healer gauges, so if a sage decided to use a channeled heal then it adds to it's toxicon tokens, WHM grows it's blood lily, etc so that it stays damage neutral.

[Supersnow845]

Channeled healing or mitigation needs to be much much stronger than flashing it to make it worth it. Ironically despite how underpowered it is the best example of this is improvisation and another example is nocturnal collective unconsciousness. These two provide tangible benefits to continuing to channel them (improvisation stacks the shield nocturnal collective unconsciousness only applied the regen as long as you channeled it for) while diurnal collective and POA provide no difference between flashing them and channeling them because you only ever use them for one mechanic anyway (outside of downtime in which case it doesn’t even matter anyway)

As a really simple example if they did something like the first 3 seconds of POA was 5% mitigation then after that it jumped to 20% in certain circumstances it would actually be worth channeling it because the massively increased mitigation could save healer GCD’s later on (the same way casting spreadlo can be an rDPS gain for the raid)

That or a channeling system that a lot of MMO’s use for their healers or support casters (which we used to have in a form of mana shift) in which you can channel HP sharing, either sharing the HP of the entire raid or channeling the off tanks HP to the main tank. That type of channeling is always worth it because mechanics are designed around that sort of channeling

[LynxDubh]

I used to use Collective Unconscious on heavy dungeon pulls in HW/SB. The regen stacked with the others and you could use Time Dilation and Celestial Opposition to really get some hefty HoT numbers in Diurnal, then go into Gravity spam. It's always kinda been a skill you just flash to get the benefits, even way back then.