#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[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

[Azurarok]

I'd chalk that one up to pure ignorance.

I'm sure a modder would know better but I believe the game has casting animations and executing animations as separate things, and just blends the animations when the cast finishes and the spell goes off. So it uses the same cast animation as Holy and Glare and switches to the execution animation used for Regen and such. They must've never bothered to make an actual animation for it and just went with the usual healing spell one. They probably should've just gone with HolyIII's.

[Rueby]

I tried...

It might be better to attach a gif or link/record a video when reporting what you believe is bugs to better communicate it? (I don't have WHM at 100)
It got chucked in insufficient info then they probably didn't understand/see what you meant rather than 'working as intended' which means it truly is a feature not a bug?

As someone who used to gpose back when I was in HW/SB alot of casting/combat animations look kinda cursed....

I always try to include pics/vids and detail my bug reports because I don't know if I'm communicating it properly, I don't know if the person reviewing the bug understood what I meant. Sometimes, even when thorough, it gets chucked into working as intended despite it not making much sense. I'm guessing those fall into nitpicks rather than bugs.

Edit:
In the insufficient information forum the stickied thread is
Bug reports that do not follow the report template or are lacking the required information will be moved here.

Example
This is technically a nitpick despite being thorough but felt like a bug (chucked into working as intended), copium that graphical update to eulmore will fix it
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...elicts-Eulmore

Actually a bug
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...-when-blinking
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...ed-to-his-head
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...pper-La-Noscea