#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[Shurrikhan]

Honestly instead of everyone getting 1.5 AST should have swapped to 2.5 and and be given the extra charge of lightspeed it has now to compensate for its card weaves without really giving it free reign to have limitless free healing

Ehh, given how large an advantage Lightspeed could already be in the context of movement requirements during decently high healing requirements back in Stormblood, I'd rather the solution not come with even more imbalance in mobility.

I'd rather they had just... tuned AST around typical in-practice uptime costs of using those Card actions. If undertuned because too much weaving... just buff AST proportionately. No need to restructure the whole casting paradigm among healers over it.

As for in-practice gains being ignored due to losses in theoretical-maximum (vs. striking dummy) output... Keep the 2.5s casts and just get rid of the additional delay from roundtrip ping, provide a couple brief lessons and tips on uptime so that it's painfully obvious to someone that losing a third of a GCD to use Assize without timing it to an instant-cast would matter far more (at ~110 potency) than the third of a Misery's loss relative to filler spam, and you're golden.

If there's to be any broader casting reforms, they should come from partial client trust and QoL: let the server better trust the client when it comes to having ended movement and provide, say, the ability to briefly lock movement in place until a cast is actuated (also client-predictive) and/or until a movement command is started anew, so one can't so easily accidentally cancel a would-be start-of-cast on controller and so latency doesn't so delay the start of one's casting in general.

[GartredZW]

to be honest I'm not so against lossless healing in of itself, and am more bothered by the fact they decided they do it exactly the same way AST did when WHM had lilies and SCH had RuinII + Energy Drain

And despite all that SGE adderstings aren't dps neutral

Adderstings are a pretty interesting concept. If they really lean into that sort of thing, I think I'd enjoy healing more.
Your reward for GCD healing isn't more damage, but free-er movement. In such a scenario that you'd need to GCD heal anyway, and there's a movement mechanic that you can't slidecast through, then Toxicon is very useful. You can remain DPS neutral through that movement.
It's just not much of a factor at all in reality. Most of the time either a movement can be stutter-stepped to, or it's so great and immediate that three toxicons might not be enough.

[Shurrikhan]

Adderstings are a pretty interesting concept. If they really lean into that sort of thing, I think I'd enjoy healing more.
Your reward for GCD healing isn't more damage, but free-er movement. In such a scenario that you'd need to GCD heal anyway, and there's a movement mechanic that you can't slidecast through, then Toxicon is very useful. You can remain DPS neutral through that movement.

This. Exactly this.

Though, it makes me wish all the more that there were more interesting flavor of (A) barrier use on the job's end and (B) occasional needs for maintaining range, another advantage Toxicon provides above Dykresis, via encounter incidence/tuning/design (prevalence of PB AoEs, need to make time for a safe healing GCD later, etc.). Though, in the latter point, we're getting back into the "Why are AoE attacks basically just wasted keys in a majority of raid fights?" territory.

...I also wouldn't mind, though, if Addersting and/or Toxicon were to be revised somewhat to have other means of generation, and perhaps even to do something more obviously related to the shield('s destruction), though I'm not sure what the latter would best be.

[Kacho_Nacho]

That’s the problem. Energy drain and ruin 2 as well as Lilys were ways to generate weave space (you can also include miasma 2 when SCH had mana management) that you were compensated for to overcome restrictions. the idea of AST having 1.5 was because it had so many weaves with its cards but it also allowed for free healing

Honestly instead of everyone getting 1.5 AST should have swapped to 2.5 and and be given the extra charge of lightspeed it has now to compensate for its card weaves without really giving it free reign to have limitless free healing

Either that or ignore all the complainers and let Astrologians be Astrologians. It's individuals excessively obsessed with job balance who bent the job designer's ear and led us to where we are now.

It's also important to note, given the sheer amount of odd or unasked for changes in our jobs, these individuals were highly likely to have been family members or co-workers of the job designers than anyone from outside of Square Enix's workforce.

We're in a classic ivory tower situation all around.

[Kes13a]

personally, I agree. screw balance... aside from pvp which they have shown they can do different than pve... we are all on the same side. who cares if someone does more damage or has more healing or tanks better. the primary concern should be.. is it fun to play?

right now... none of the healing jobs make me happy to be a healer. they are all mid sized cars of a different colour. no, they arent all the exact same... except in the concept of how dull they are. if that was SE's intent, they have succeeded.

[Kacho_Nacho]

personally, I agree. screw balance... aside from pvp which they have shown they can do different than pve... we are all on the same side. who cares if someone does more damage or has more healing or tanks better. the primary concern should be.. is it fun to play?

Yes! A thousand times yes!

It should have been pushed from the very top person in Square Enix to the lowest office intern to the player base that FFXIV is not a competitive game like World of Warcraft. The focus should have always been is the job fun and does its functionality match its job fantasy via lore, party role, and the feel of its play?

Game balance has shown itself to be a cancer. Players are unhappy with the constant changes to their favorite jobs. FFXIV is losing its veteran players across the boards as a result.

Developers need to change their total approach to this MMO and go back to the question of what makes a job enjoyable and proceed from there.

right now... none of the healing jobs make me happy to be a healer. they are all midsize cars of a different colour. no, they aren't all the exact same... except in the concept of how dull they are. if that was SE's intent, they have succeeded.

Total agree. Playing a healer is terribly dull. I've haven't even finished DT's MSQ on my main. I feel no joy playing a white mage right now.

[TheDustyOne]

personally, I agree. screw balance...

I've had this mindset for job design for a long time; I don't care about the jobs being hyper balanced, but I do care about how fun they are. Now we're currently in a situation where not only are they not fun, but they're incredibly homogenous and badly balanced. We've got the unholy trifecta of bad design.

I'll take some balance hiccups in favour of highly diverse jobs any day of the week. That doesn't mean we shouldn't strive to have balance, but that balance should be secondary to engaging gameplay.

[Shurrikhan]

Yes! A thousand times yes!

It should have been pushed from the very top person in Square Enix to the lowest office intern to the player base that FFXIV is not a competitive game like World of Warcraft.

...Why, though? Why would competitiveness be bad for the game?

And why are we pretending that being a "competitive" game means less fun or job identity? WoW tends to be far more based around both than XIV, "competitive" or not. And that's just broadly -- not even focused on the far better healing experience.

[BabyYoda]

guys please understand FFXIV is a side project that SE is working on they have a main project called NFT project that's the plan for SE for next 10 years

[AmiableApkallu]

who cares if someone does more damage or has more healing or tanks better. the primary concern should be.. is it fun to play?

Inter-role balance is important. It's not fun being the healer in a dungeon run when the tank can take care of all the mitigation and healing that's required.

Intra-role balance is important. It's not fun being told, "Aw, that's baby's first healer. All the other healers are just better."

The balance problem is, itself, one of balance. By all accounts, it's not been healthy for the game to try and balance damage output on a knife's edge, so that every possible party composition can clear an enrage with some seconds to spare. On the other hand, no amount of "gameplay" can make up for a job that's consistently the worst in its role.

It's fine if one job is simply better at some task or in some particular scenario. It just also needs to be the case that these opportunities to shine are spread out somewhat fairly across all the jobs.