#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[Shurrikhan]

This is why Aetherblight, or a system like it, has so much potential IMO.

I've been trying to imagine this every which way and I still can't really find any significant appeal to building so much around Aetherblight, specifically, when I imagine it out relative to other options that would likely be mostly mutually exclusive with it.

Ultimately, Aetherblight just adds Esuna-able sustain requirements. Which is essentially a way to further take the myriad of healing choices by which to deal with that given portion/source of damage and suborn them instead behind something that ignores the magnitude of that damage to heal it all at once. That in itself seems... a downgrade. The only redeeming points to me are that at least this then-spammable-healing-nuke, Esuna, is (A) normally just single-target and (B) only affects that portion of damage and therefore might be less obligatory... when the given healing absorption is insignificant anyways.

More importantly, aside from propping up Esuna (and increasing the relative power of barriers not generated based on healing done while gutting the relative power of barriers generated based on healing done), I have to wonder what, if any, impact Aetherblight would have relative to just... making HP bars less zingy by nerfing both burst incoming damage and outgoing healing. Both slow how long it takes to heal someone to full and increase the relative value of --again, Esuna aside-- healers with greater optional (e.g., uptime-spending / at-cost) HPS.

And as for its impact on Esuna, it seems to devalue a more meaningful decision pathway (e.g., reduce the total damage that'd need to be healed by removing the DoT now vs. just ensuring the target has HP enough to survive the next hit between ticks, purging a bind or snare so that the target can dodge the otherwise unavoidable AoE vs. just shielding them enough to survive it regardless, etc.) with one for which the "decision" comes down to a simple strength computation a la reducing overheal (Would my heal have covered all the Aetherblight and then some anyways? Would I still progress further against the party's Aetherblight afflictions in total by spamming AoEs).

It feels like it just tries to solve too many issues at once through an unnecessary convolution and in doing so makes both the healing and Esuna a bit less interesting, especially when considering the net effect going in that direction would have relative to (at least partly) mutually exclusive options.

More concretely/analytically:

• Healing absorption typically rewards only knowledgeable greeding, which we already have a glut of rewards for by nature of the usual rhythm and tuning of damage intake in XIV encounters. I'd therefore prefer it be used sparingly and with deliberate (anti-)synergies with other mechanics in the fights in which it is used.
  
  
• Even when well situated, the considerations by which to weigh cleansing vs. healing through healing absorption effects are typically lesser than the kinds of considerations (in action choice and timings) offered already by virtually any other kind of debuff in their fitting contexts (slows, snares, vulnerability, damage down, etc.). It's essentially an especially lackluster cleansible.
  
  
• When you allow Esuna to remove a mechanic that would otherwise interact with your whole healing kit, allowing for any competing options requires the amount to be cleansed to be almost negligible as to allow the occasional nuke heal to surpass Esuna or for AOE heals to remain so overpowered as to have them, at least, be a competing option. Else, you replace an entire healing kit with one spammable OP button each time its opportunity for use appears.
  
  
• The upside would appear to be the accumulation of damage absorption across multiple contributing attacks allowing the priority to shift somewhat granularly from healing through to Esuna, with a healer being able to play chicken with the accumulated effect to Esuna once before nuke healing, but that effectively just limits the occurrence of actual heals even further, encourages far more risk of death for party members, and makes Esuna feel more like a Cleric Stance toggle than an action in its own right (e.g., one of situational more so than just scaled sustain value). I.e., it'd still be a downgrade in terms of QoL, action bloat, lost nuance, kit interactivity (especially in evenness of weighting across actions), etc. relative to just... not having that and instead increasing sustain action (or non-attack healer GCD action) requirements by any other means.

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General Opinion:

We don't need healing absorption effects, let alone as a broad undermechanic, to make healers more necessary or engaging. We just need (A) opportunity/use-case for a greater number of sustain actions(' casts) as to outscale what can be provided by non-healers and/or --similarly but more about gameplay than mere role balance-- (B) more meaningful real use cases for non-offensive actions among healers (and perhaps a few more non-healing actions against which they could broadly compete to add further nuance to timing/greeding decisions and fight knowledge rewards among those increasingly needed heals).

(To be clear, we can have healing absorption effects, absolutely, though I'd argue that may be something better specifically not cleansible by Esuna, while if we feel Esuna ought to see more use, it should do so through more situationally sustain-costing debuffs or through actual DoTs. But healing absorption ought to just be a singular mechanic among many, not a specific answer to broad issues in the relative balance of healing outputs vs. damage intake.)

Ideally, you leverage that even further by giving healers some non-healing outputs to actually look forward to and to occasionally make decisions that might have lesser efficiency in terms of MP or total healing output in order to maximize their rDPS contribution through buffs, debuffs, etc., when the healing in that moment would not add greater rDPS potential down the line (from healer GCDs saved, target uptime saved, lives saved, etc.).

And if giving more to heal would overwhelm healers because of how quickly that would mean health bars depleting, then you just nerf both burst damage intake and healing output so that there's less common waste to overhealing among healer GCD actions and more of an ongoing fight between curative and non-curative priority conflicts.