#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[ForsakenRoe]

Yeah, I don't get the hate directed at Medica 2. White Mages are supposed to use their gcd heals too, right?

As an aside, I wonder if a big step toward making healing interesting again would be to scrap most of the ogcd heals and barriers from our kits? It seems that relying so much on them is why a lot players feel bored. There is no decision making when you are pushing buttons which make the green bars go up instantly.

Medica 2 is a case-by-case thing. If it's possible to handle the healing via Rapture only, then that's the better option (because it refunds the lost damage). The main thing that works against Medica 2/3, is the gear level of the group compared to the content you're doing. If you outgear it like crazy (eg you have BIS), you take less damage, you know the fight better, you have your other healing tools better mapped out, so M2 loses a lot of its allure. In early prog, or content like an Ultimate where you're forced to a certain item level, the usefulness of the GCD HOTs massively increases. There's not really much that can be done to 'make the GCD HOTs better in all scenarios', because some content just doesn't need them. For example, an EX roulette dungeon you're never going to need those HOTs. I once tried to do the maths of what would be required, to 'force' the player to need to use that HOT in an EX roulette (back when Aetherfont was the latest dungeon in EW), and it worked out as something like 'the first boss has to throw out a raidwide for 25k damage, once per 15s, on top of all the damage it already does with the way it's currently designed'. That extra damage is just to burn through all the OGCD options we have at our disposal. And the amount of extra damage would be vastly different between healers, so what might be 'enough to be a solution' for one healer might be too much for another, or too little for a third. An AST can handle a lot more incoming damage with damage neutral healing a lot easier than WHM, as it has 3 different 700-ish potency options with a 1min CD (CO, CU, Star), so it can simply rotate one of those per 15s, and then cover that last 15s raidwide with Horoscope (200p) plus digging up 500p from somewhere else in its ridiculous DT kit. Lady of Crowns is 400p on its own, but it could also dip into the ST heals like the THREE charges of ED, TWO charges of CI, Exaltation, or any of the 3 'healing-related' cards (not you Arrow) and spread those across the party to handle that last raidwide. So then we're back where we started, with AST able to completely handle that massively increased damage intake via OGCDs, meanwhile WHM is struggling to keep up because 3 Lilies per minute is 400p each (600 with PI, but it won't be up for all 3 unless you play risky and don't heal the raidwides right as they happen), Asylum (900p, 90s CD) and Lilybell (180s, and it'd only catch a max of 2 raidwides due to the auto-detonate)


I think that, after so many years of designing healers in this direction, to have free, accessible, numerous OGCD tools to deal with the majority of the healing requirements in a fight, I don't know how feasible it'd be to switch over to a more GCD focused design for the entire role. It can be argued when the direction began, whether it started in ARR thanks to SCH fairy actions like Whispering Dawn, started in Heavensward with the addition of things like Asylum/Tetra and SCH got Indomitability, or cemented itself in Stormblood when AST got Earthly Star, SCH got Fey Union, and WHM got shafted, due to remaining in the 'GCDs that cost damage' phase. Either way, it's been well over 6 years of this design, and certain 'evergreen' content like Ultimates is dependent on such a kit existing in its current form. For example, if they were to remove a lot of the OGCD actions from, say, SGE, and make it a lot more focused on E.Prognosis/E.Diagnosis casts, a fight like TOP would likely fall apart, because of things like the DPS check, the Mitigation checks that already expect such a barrier with every raidwide, etc. Everything would have to be rebalanced and rechecked, and it just seems like far too monumental an undertaking to complete, when the team's already struggling to keep up with the current content pipeline

I feel like the idea of 'GCD healing focus' isn't really strong enough to be a role-wide thing, the way it is now (where it's 'WHM's thing') makes more sense to me, it makes WHM feel unique from the other healers. As much as I give WHM flak for being dull in its gameplay, the Lily system undeniably gives WHM the advantage over the other healers, in terms of 'GCDs that are not the filler spell', thereby reducing how often we press Glare per 2 minutes. In a scenario where you're just hitting the boss and trying to maximise damage (with no 'damage-loss GCD healing' required), a SCH presses Broil 44 times per 2min, a WHM presses Glare 3 just 35 times (33 Glare3, 3 Glare4, 4 Dia, 6 Lily heals, 2 Miseries, 2 bonus Glare3's due to POM's speed boost).

So rather than removing the OGCDs from SCH/AST/SGE, and effectively 'trying to make them more like WHM', I think it'd be better to look at other things that can be improved about the healers. And one of the most Glaring (ha) issues, is how often we press our filler action compared to others, when we have the inevitable downtime between required healing. One of the biggest things about this current healer design direction they've got, is how little space they have to actually add anything to healers now. For example, we see for SCH, we got a new super-powered CD where its effect is... we heal super hard (literally stronger than Cure3, and for less MP!). But SCH already had crazy access to healing, so this action feels quite unnecessary in a lot of situations. It's also incredibly divisive, in terms of its VFX. I think that when SE removed so much damage options from each healer, they also closed a lot of design doors on themselves. By having a tiny bit more depth in what we can do to deal damage, a lot of space opens up to create new interactions within the kit.

I keep using an example, of a 0-100 gauge I made for WHM that builds by casting non-Lily spells (with healing spells generating it faster). Just by adding that gauge (and a spender that costs 50 gauge), it allows for:

- Different attack actions that build gauge faster compared to the filler spell (for example, I suggest a 15s CD GCD, Water, that gives 5 gauge, while Stone gives 1 gauge)
- Incentive to keep the DOT active, beyond 'it does more damage-per-GCD than the filler' (for example, I suggest that Aero/Dia be 12s Duration, and grant 5 total gauge over that duration (1 on cast, 1 per tick))
- Space to add an action that increases the gauge instantly by X (EG Infuriate on WAR)
- Space to add alternative actions that spend gauge, potentially with varying costs. For example, a gauge spender takes all the currently accumulated gauge, that scales based on gauge consumed
- Space to add actions that synergise with the gauge, or the spender (for example, my suggested spender (damage neutral AOE GCD heal) could trigger Plenary Indulgence's healing effect, or be boosted by Temperance)

When we look at something like WAR's gauge in single target, it's very simple, you build 50 and you press Fell Cleave. But it also has Infuriate to grant 50 instantly, it upgrades your FC to Inner Chaos for one strike, it has a feedback loop where FCs reduce the CD on Infuriate, the existence of FC allows for Inner Release, Inner Release existing allows for Primal Rend, and now in DT, Fell Cleave and Inner Release existing also allows for Primal Wrath and Primal Ruination to now be added. All of this, from a simple idea back in ARR/HW of 'Hit enemy, get stacks. Get 5 stacks, do big hit'. I'd like to see interactions like that within the Healer damage kit, not just because it'd make our damage-dealing more interesting, but because it'd allow our gameplay to more smoothly 'flow' between damage, and healing. Especially on WHM, we'd be able to 'heal to fuel our damage' via Misery, and then 'damage to fuel our healing' with this gauge, creating a 'cycle' in our gameplay

this got long sorry

[Alice_Rivers]

It kind of makes sense that Medica gets a lot of scorn, it costs a lot of MP and most of the time is completely unwarranted, as others have said Rapture does it better and isn't a dps loss (a mentality we probably shouldn't have as healers but with little meaningful healing to do I guess that's inevitable), I was one of those people who kept 100% uptime on it until someone said I didn't have to and eventually I reconsidered. The thing is for a new healer it's a trap, they see the partywide regen and it looks like a no-brainer, not realising that it's a complete waste of MP and GCDs in the same way as Cure 1 spamming instead of transitioning to Cure 2 - The game does nothing to disabuse people of this practice either.

I think if damage were higher and more frequent then people who do spam these things would routinely run out of MP and have to reconsider their strategies, or stop healing.

[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.