#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[Tigore]

@ Kacho_Nacho

It's not that I hate Medica 2/3 or Regen. If there is a use case for it, I will do so. Although the cases are quite slim for high level normal difficulty when I levelled the 4 classes. Plus just using Medica 3 once will not dip my mana due to the Thin Air cooldown stack >.> I believe AST's equivalent to sustaining that one or two Helios Conjunction is the mana gains from Astral Draw, right? From what I notice, the final bosses for level 95 and 100 story dungeons are about the only times I notice more actual intensive healing needed. The level 100 one is a question mark still since a good group with a VPR and PCT could potentially skip a lot of the chaos with the high DPS output. Regen typically gets used when a player makes a mistake on a vuln stacker (which still competes with Tetragrammaton and Afflatus stuff) or the damage of the group is low and everything from the wall to wall pull is still alive from the burst. The latter case is super rare since I generally see the sprouts doing a great job still.

It was why we were brainstorming how we could increase the damage taken for the group without treading into instant death territory. Since that still generally involves a dance that can be completely avoided with the boss doing no damage wasting their time casting something. A few others suggested the cast bar on the boss inhibiting the auto attacks is one thing that could go if it's a dance mech and just spawn them. As long as the tells for where to go are still clear enough. ForsakenRoe suggested a healing absorb debuff called Aetherblight. We could also increase everyone's max HP so we can make the enemies hit a bit harder without one shotting us too.

[Kacho_Nacho]

Thank you, Forsaken Roe, Alice Rivers, and Tigor for engaging with me.

On first glance, Medica II seems the way to go. As Alice Rivers pointed out, it seems a no-brainer Medica II and III should be kept up 100% of the time.

Yet, it is clear that it isn't always the case. I've been caught in a trap and I didn't even realize it. Thank you for teaching me! I appreciate it.

[AmiableApkallu]

On first glance, Medica II seems the way to go. As Alice Rivers pointed out, it seems a no-brainer Medica II and III should be kept up 100% of the time.

Yet, it is clear that it isn't always the case. I've been caught in a trap and I didn't even realize it.

I wouldn't even call it a trap, necessarily.

My background prior to FFXIV was a smattering of the single-player Final Fantasy games, where damage is distributed more randomly, with crits, and the mobs and bosses might get in quite a few hits before the healer's turn comes up again.

The habits and practices I picked up there have no useful place in FFXIV's far more scripted damage model. It was an adjustment I had to make, though it's been long enough that I can't remember whether I learned to from "The Internet" or figured it out for myself. (It's probably the former. )

[Kacho_Nacho]

*snip*The habits and practices I picked up there have no useful place in FFXIV's far more scripted damage model. It was an adjustment I had to make, though it's been long enough that I can't remember whether I learned to from "The Internet" or figured it out for myself. (It's probably the former. )

Same. I was a healer in WoW, Dofus, and Wakfu. So, I came into FFXIV with a lot of knowledge about how to heal in those games and winged it from there.

[Tigore]

It's no problem. I had also been caught up in the trap too when I was transitioning from Heavensward to Stormblood and Shadowbringers. For some reason, I did not see Afflatus Solace when it first released. I did notice Afflatus Rapture, though. I kept looking over time since it didn't make sense to have lilies if there was really no spell using it for the lvl 52 ish gap >.>

My previous experience also came from solo FF games and Warcraft. The Druid spell Wild Growth as the equivalent to Medica 2 was used on cooldown a lot more often since there was enough damage thrown at the party to justify it. I still overhealed a bit since it was their mechanic to throw out a lot of HoTs to heal.

[Aravell]

I think it's not right to spread that Medica II/III is a trap. Its actual purpose is a safety net.

If you're about to be hit by a multi-hit stack and want a safety net of a constant heal on everyone, you pop a Medica II/III. If you're comfortable enough to drop everyone low then burst with a Plenary-buffed Rapture, then you can do so.

I think we should stop teaching newer players that things that lose you damage are traps, that just breeds terrible healers who refuse to hardcast a raise or cast a GCD heal on a DPS that made a mistake because it would lose them personal damage. Everything in the kit can have a use, whether as a safety net, a prog tool or a niche recovery tool like Rescue, it just depends on your own mindset and how much safety you like in your gameplay.

[Tigore]

I'm a bit confused about your bottom paragraph, Aravell. For the safety net reasoning, I won't yell at the player for using it just in case of uncertainty of unfamiliar mechanics and / or party gear strength towards the dungeon at hand.

I was discussing what healing tools end up being most efficient to use. When it comes down to it, Medica 2 / 3 and Regen along with the equivalents for AST usually end up being middle of the road. Not just because it uses GCDs that DPS tools use, but also because of the mana usage. Apologies if the mana usage intent reason wasn't clear enough from me. There was even a time on SGE I used Haima on the tank for extra safety on a final boss so I could hard cast a raise (Egeiro?) on the dead DPS with no worries. I believe the boss wasn't doing any AoE damage at the time, so the Eukrasian Prognosis wasn't needed yet. We gotta remember that raising players is thirsty on mana, so teaching the new players to be mana efficient can also help with this. I understand WHM may have a little less issue with this due to Thin Air again, but we don't always have one with us.

[Nethereal]

Provide high-end instances where medica 2/3 is a better option than Afflatus Rapture is for example.

There is no reason not to do Rapture considering it's a DPS gain overall with a 20s replenish.




Sure. because there are better spells that achieve better results. The only instance where Medica 2, regen, and Cure 2 are valuable is in low-level dungeons. Otherwise, there is very little incentive to use them.

Another example is Physis 2 where what you want is not necessarily the HOT but the 10% extra heal which not only strengthens your shield but makes subsequent spells heal more when you have a timeframe where you take repeated raidwides. (like intermission into multiple strong hits in phase 2 of m4s).

Literally any ultimate with a heal check.

No idea why you're talking like you've done all the content in the game when Medica 2/3 is one of the best healing spells in the game due to it being a readily available 20 yalm regen that pairs flawlessly with plenary allowing you to top most anyone if not the entire party at the cost of a slight mana increase to medica.

Edit:

For clarities sake for new healers when dealing with medica and medica 2 specifically there is no initial difference in healing potency between the two spells.
The reason for this is because by the time you finish casting another medica 2 you will have gotten at least 1 regen tic from medica 2.

If you were to use medica 2 3 times in a row you would end up with 1,200 potency at the 3rd GCD after the 3rd tic of the regen.
Because you keep refreshing it you'll end up with a total potency of 1,950 if you were to stop at 3.
If you were to use medica 3 times in a row you would end up with 1,200 potency.
If you were to use medica 2 1 time and medica 2 times you would end up with 1,500 potency at the 3rd GCD after the 3rd tic of regen.
The difference between the spells is 100 mana and 5 yalms.

5 yalms is a big deal, it's the difference between 0 and 1, between healing someone and the entire party dying because you didn't want to over heal and spend 100 more mana.

So what you're considering isn't mana or potency necessarily but range, range that allows your party to ignore the restraints of healing, though that's not such a big deal anymore.

[ForsakenRoe]

For clarities sake for new healers when dealing with medica and medica 2 specifically there is no initial difference in healing potency between the two spells.
The reason for this is because by the time you finish casting another medica 2 you will have gotten at least 1 regen tic from medica 2.

Exactly this, Medica 2 is equal to Medica 1 after a single tick. It is for this reason, I advocate for merging Medica 1 and Medica 2, such that at level 50 (or ideally, move it down to level 30), you go from 'Medica 1, which is 300p' to 'Medica 2, which is 300p, plus 4 ticks of 100p'. Just shorten the HOT by 3 sec, add the potency of that tick that was removed into the base cast of the spell, and that allows M1 to upgrade seamlessly into M2 (and then M3). The same applies to AST's Helios/Aspected Helios

Additionally, because it is THE Final Fantasy healing action, I advocate a trait for WHM with the effect 'When you have Medica 2/3's HOT effect on you, Cure 3's MP cost is halved'. So you'd do M2, then up to 4 Cure3 casts at 750MP each. This would be good for newer players as it'd allow them a very powerful 'spammable' heal, the numbers are big from Cure3 so it feels meaty to use, and it teaches them to put up a HOT first, which then might lead to them noticing 'oh actually the HOT can handle the healing on its own, I don't necessarily need to use that many Cure3'

[Shurrikhan]

I don't really see the point in punishing players for using a single, quick X potency heal without having first used the slower X+Y potency heal. That seems like that's just devalue ability to estimate incoming damage and C3's capacity to, say, heal a weak but short White Hole mechanic without needing oGCDs (so long as the team stacks). I don't want heal combos or arbitrary need to save something for after the very thing most likely to make it redundant.

If the problem is button count, then just allowing Medica (and perhaps M2) to center on others and deal double the initial (or an additional 400p) healing to the target and those within n yalms seems a plenty iconic capacity already, saving just as many keys without the loss of choice in timing.

Meanwhile, I'd go the opposite way for M2, reducing the initial potency and shuffling that into ticks, perhaps via some indirect benefit (say, overheal ticks increase maximum HP for the remainder of the original M2 cast's duration). That way there's still a measure of choice.

Else, if you really want a unique but button-dense approach, just extend off WHM's conjury theme and introduce some related traits that can spread and/or duplicate-over-time their overheating. Perhaps even allow them to convert the HoT to other things (say, by allowing Benison to absorb incoming periodic healing up to X% of target HP) and/or apply brief buffs to allies that would incentive bursting a heal off of one vs. another, etc. perhaps do so only off of crits, with some heals having higher crit chances than others or ramping their chance towards a guaranteed crit and giving a bonus to a(ny) other heal once they Crit, etc.

Heck, have healing potency done (perhaps taking the best recent per target cast) briefly increase your Offensive Magic Power so that you can seed a Regen or empowered Cure II just before a burst damage phase, while Wind spells in turn can increase access to early cast completions for healing spells or access to instant heals (say, by having each tick reduce Cure's cast time by .1 GCDs, etc, as not to need the Afflatus buttons and to be more distinct from SGE.