#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[Azurarok]

In terms of not using our healing GCDs I think the truckload of oGCD healing we've got is more the problem than anything else right now. I've tried healing Chaotic a few times, and some of the strats, the mixed item levels, and the amount of mistakes (towers) that can happen make it much easier to run out of oGCDs, and I've consistently had to resort to casted heals so my GCD usage has been quite a bit more mixed there. I'm sure I'm also overhealing quite a bit but I also don't trust a 24-player pug group enough to not do that.

It takes that much chaos to make the role engaging. Maybe if we learned another attack or two instead of yet another heal every 20 levels we'd have a better balance of skills.

[ForsakenRoe]

Then again, i said nerf, not nerfing to the ground
Since Shake it off was took an exemple, just revert back to the way it was at the start : without the group heal.
Remove the level 94 boost of Second wind, make some CD longer, remove some potency, remove some stack.

Make the skills still usefull, but less powerfull.

As others have pointed out, the point I was trying to illustrate is, if we can outright remove these non-healer actions like SIO, Second Wind etc, and it has very little/no tangible improvement to our healer gameplay, then nerfing the actions (less removal of power compared to removing the actions) would have even less effect on our healer gameplay. It's not just that Shake It Off now heals for a total of 800p that is causing our healer gameplay to stagnate, it's the addition of things like 'here's a free 10% boost to healing to anyone in Asylum' or 'here's 500p of regen if you stand in Soil/Kera', or 'here's 2000p of healing that you can use versus multi-stacks/DOTs (Lilybell)'. That last one is especially egregious, as what used to be 'ok it's time to use Cure3 a couple of times', and thereby involved the slightest amount of MP management (can I afford Cure3 here or should I use Medica as it costs less), now it's 'use funny plant'

It's all well and good saying 'nerfing/removing Tank/DPS utility actions would make us have to press healing GCDs more' and while it might be true in the literal definition of 'is this statement true or false', a solution that decreases my Broils per minute from 22 to 21 (or even, let's say 18) is not really a 'solution' IMO, as even at 18 per minute that's 75% of my GCDs being used on the same action per minute

As for your example of SIO, removing the healing and making it just the barrier effect again, the reason they added the healing (specifically the HOT part, few people seemed to complain about the initial healing when that was added) was because SIO sucked, pretty badly, against Bleed-raidwides in Abyssos. Removing it entirely wouldn't solve anything for healers, and would just make WAR 'not as good' vs Bleed-Raidwides or Multistacks, leading to outrage from WAR players for no gain to anyone else. I agree that it could be changed in its effect though, so as to retain its current power, but change how it interacts with our HP bar. I'd make it like Panhaima, so rather than the barrier, 300p of healing and 5 ticks of 100p regen, I'd have it as the initial barrier, then 300p of healing once that barrier is destroyed, and 5 stacks of 100p barrier Panhaima style after the initial barrier breaks. This makes the burst heal contingent on timing, makes it thematic as the heal triggers when you 'shake off the damage' you took that broke the barrier, and the Panhaima style barrier protects from DOTs/multistacks without encroaching on Healer responsibilities (because if a stack is not consumed by damage and expires, it doesn't heal the HP bar of the person it was on, unlike the current regen)

Same for the Equilibrium HOT, 5 stacks of a self-Haima for 300p per layer, instead of 1500p of Regen

[AmiableApkallu]

Maybe if we learned another attack or two instead of yet another heal every 20 levels we'd have a better balance of skills.

Recently, I've been thinking (to myself) about this whole "healer DPS kit" thing in two ways:

1. Animations matter. PCT's filler pseudo-combo, PLD's Atonement (as of Dawntrail) and Blade pseudo-combos, these are all mechanically 1-1-1, but the animations vary and thus distract from the mechanical simplicity. For healers, I think there's a relatively easy win to be had here, even if it doesn't address any core issues.

2. It's about "dimensions" or "building blocks" or "interactions", not literal attacks. PCT shows us how we can have an interesting DPS kit without relying on a large number of buttons. Pseudo-combos certainly help with that, but I think it's also helpful to look at the leveling experience:

• Lv.30 First motif.
• Lv.50 Second motif.
• Lv.60 Subtractive palette.

Each of those adds what I might call a new "dimension" or "building block" that breaks up PCT's 1-1-1 filler. The healers don't need to copy PCT's literal mechanics, but their leveling experience should similarly introduce a new dimension or two to the DPS kits.

The closest we currently have on healers might be WHM's Afflatus Misery (Lv.74) and AST's cards (Lv.30), both which I feel are underdeveloped as DPS mechanics. Dawntrail gave the healers new damage actions, but not a new dimension.

[Azurarok]

1. Animations matter.

I've voiced this quite a few times but I'm not a fan of PCT's 1-button combo system since Water in Blue functions to add gauge, and I have a harder time tracking where I am in the combo with it. I do want earth and wind spells back on WHM, but I prefer their purpose to not be just for flavor on a spam button also.

2. It's about "dimensions" or "building blocks" or "interactions", not literal attacks.

It doesn't necessarily need to be a new button, it can be traits or adjusting what we currently have and when we learn them too. Like with WHM I wish we'd have Afflatus Misery at least within the same expac as when we unlock lilies, learned Glare~GlareIV as a proc skill from using casted heals (with 100% proc rate when used with Thin Air) instead of it replacing Stone, gotten a trait that grants stacks of Glare with PoM, then a trait to shorten PoM's recast to 60s.

[Tigore]

@ Lorika

I understand that you want the simplest solution possible so the healers are fixed quickly. Our problems are more deep rooted than the WAR taking our role though.

The relative damage thrown out to the parties obeying dance mechs still feels like it's barely over what occured for ARR and Heavensward. We have more dance mechs, yes, but the damage they deal to the party is "not reliable" so to speak. The goal is to take zero damage from them still. We probably have double to triple the healing output we did compared to ARR as well.

We can still keep some dance mechs. I understand they are there to hold everyone accountable for paying attention the best they can... With some forgiveness for first timers and lag. The Devs may need to take notes from the trial perma DoT, the multi hit tank buster in our current Savage and the level 95 final dungeon boss. More damage needs to be unavoidable if they want us to use the higher healing power given to us.

Since Max HP is currently capping how we can do this, they may need other methods to bypass this like multi hits, raising Max HP and using special mechs like Roe's Aetherblight. Maybe even use debuff enfeeblements when we are in a fight that shrinks us as an example. A certain boss in the World of Darkness Alliance Raid comes to mind here >.>

[Lorika]

A certain boss in the World of Darkness Alliance Raid comes to mind here >.>

Getting belly is the most fun part of this raid
And you get a damage down debuff when you are under Mini

[Absurdity]

Nerfing the regen off shake it off would do nothing to change the nature of the skill for example

That’s the problem here, damage is already so low that tanks and DPS having ANYTHING is going to immediately infringe on the healers

The only thing that would be “enough” to fix the healers with the current damage output is to delete everything off the non healers. Even with no regen (or even upfront heal) on SIO that’s one less GCD heal or mitigation the healer has to apply and with how little damage comes out that’s just less actions for the healer

I wouldn't call the damage "low", if it were actually low you wouldn't need things like SiO, Reprisal, Addle, Feint or Shield Samba to get through raid wide AoEs without someone kissing the ground.

I would call it "too infrequent" because once you've made sure to survive the AoE in the first place there is nothing else happening for a good minute.

[ForsakenRoe]

I wouldn't call the damage "low", if it were actually low you wouldn't need things like SiO, Reprisal, Addle, Feint or Shield Samba to get through raid wide AoEs without someone kissing the ground.

I would call it "too infrequent" because once you've made sure to survive the AoE in the first place there is nothing else happening for a good minute.

Which is bizarre, because occasionally they have a flash of design where they do 'small damage amounts, but very fast' like Barb EX, but so often they seem to end up just falling back to the tried-and-tested (and thoroughly worn out at this point) design of 'raidwide damage hits you for 115% of your Max HP (forcing you to use multiple mitigations to barely survive it), then nothing really happens for another 30s'. Like, look at M4S, after the second big raidwide (the Wrath of Zeus after the Witch Hunt stomps), which happens at 1:40ish into the fight, you have until 2:15 before the spread/stack damage of 'stand in the safe corner for Electrope Edge' hits you. That's 35s of the boss doing nothing but autoattacks vs the MainTank, and channelling random castbars which don't do damage, instead only setting up aspects of the mechanic (eg Electrope Edge summons the cubes in the corners, Witchgleam is the lines toward the cubes that we can simply avoid standing in, etc), but during this time even the MT isn't taking damage because the boss is busy casting.

They should consider having bosses have an invisible add that handles doing the autoattacks, such that when the boss starts a castbar it doesn't stop autoattacking the MT for 5 seconds at a time. I remember P3S had such a thing, where whoever was 2nd on threat would get autoattacked by the little black orb thingys while #1 on threat would get attacked by the main boss, so it'd be something similar to that

[AmiableApkallu]

lol. At one point, I had a mind to file that as a bug report. (But then, doing my day job when I'm not actually at work struck me as Not Fun, and I let it drop…)

I tried...

[ForsakenRoe]

I tried...

At least with Seraphism removing Male Au Ra jaws entirely, it was limited to one race, one gender of that race, and possibly one specific jaw shape/face option etc. Very specific conditions that may have somehow slipped past QA

But with this Medica 3 animation, it's like this on every race, every gender. The only way for it to have got through like this is that either they didn't test it at all, or that it's somehow intentional that it's just two old animations stitched together