#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[Kes13a]

While I understand why people want to have more fun while playing their classes, I don't understand why people want this game to be a copy of an X game. If the combat/healing is more engaging for you there, just play that game.

I would like to actually see more innovation, a different approach, and a way to make things engaging. Also, keep in mind this game generally doesn't have the target audience set on people who have played every single piece of content for 11 years.

Making classes overcomplicated and with a zillion systems to watch for and manage will eventually just drive out a lot of "casual" players and some roles will see significant shortages. Healing by definition is the hardest job simply because you aren't just responsible for yourself but also for everyone else. Playing a healer is a completely different experience than playing a DPS for example in terms of how fights go.

PS: In case it needs to be spelled out, I don't mean classes should be braindead either.

generally speaking these days.. SE has removed responsibility from healers. and yes, healer is different, but not that much.. we have, after all, 2 damage buttons, 1, 2 and occasionally a third.

its about as braindead as you get without it actually just being an npc

[Derio]

The healer dps rotation is so bad that you need to place the same button to 4 different locations just so you dont destroy that one button on your keyboard or controller from being beat to death.

[ForsakenRoe]

While I understand why people want to have more fun while playing their classes, I don't understand why people want this game to be a copy of an X game. If the combat/healing is more engaging for you there, just play that game.

Originally, FFXIV had a unique take on Healers, where we had a lot more freedom (in terms of available GCDs) to throw out damage spells. Having the ability to actually help in dungeon pulls by using Holy to stunlock mobs, felt very unique compared to WOW. People would say 'I don't want to DPS, I want to Heal because I'm Healer' (as in, they're asking for a more WOW style gameplay in FFXIV), and the irony is that WOW has now adopted a more FFXIV style of healing (where Healers have time to deal damage, or have reasons to such as building resources to spend on heals).

But for anyone who wants the Cataclysm style of 'you don't even have time to do damage, because there's so much healing to do', I agree, Cata Classic is out right now, and could be played to satisfy the hunger for that design. But the game I want FFXIV to be like in Healer design, is the FFXIV I joined, and enjoyed Healer in precisely because it did 'something different from the rest' (that being, I could do actually respectable damage as a healer to help speed the dungeon up). HW is too complex according to SE (because Cleric Stance, most likely), but we haven't heard anything about Stormblood, why not take a look at, say, Scholar of SB, and see what made that design so popular that some content creators still refer to it as the gold standard for kit design

I would like to actually see more innovation, a different approach, and a way to make things engaging. Also, keep in mind this game generally doesn't have the target audience set on people who have played every single piece of content for 11 years.

I don't think anyone's expecting SE to focus on the 'players who have played every piece of content for 11 years' when it comes to revitalizing the role. I also don't think they necessarily need to overthink the 'be innovative' thing, as what they had in previous expansions, a Healer design where you had time to do damage, and the damage is actually quite respectable (as a percentage of other role's output), WAS innovative at the time. They just moved away from it over the years, in the hopes of appealing to non-healer players. I don't think this is a 'be innovative and do something new and crazy' moment, I think it's a simple 'go back to your roots, remember why it was a success in the first place' moment

Making classes overcomplicated and with a zillion systems to watch for and manage will eventually just drive out a lot of "casual" players and some roles will see significant shortages.

This is only true if A: the game does a bad job teaching, and B: the players refuse to go back and learn the new systems. The problem isn't that 'there's so much to learn, casuals won't be able to keep up' IMO, as a learning player going through the levelling process would get each action one at a time. Looking at one of my designs as an example, the WHM:

At level 4, the player gets Aero and it has a 12s Duration. This teaches them that Aero should be used every 5th GCD ideally
At level 8, the player gets Protect. This teaches the player that there's more to Healing, than 'Healing'. Protecting your allies with damage reduction is also an aspect of being a Healer
At level 15, the player gets Water and it has a 15s Cooldown. This teaches them that Water should be used every 6th GCD ideally, but it can also be held onto, to use while running so you can keep your GCD rolling
At level 30, the player gets the Lily Gauge (down from 52), and a barrier action tied to it (Stoneskin). This teaches them that 'some actions require a limited resource'

At level 50, the player gets Blessing of the Elementals, and the Nature's Vigilance Gauge. At this point, the player is taught that every non-Lily spell gives them some gauge, and that Healing spells give more.
They are also taught that 'using this healing move gives access to powerful damage moves', incentivizing using damage, and opening the idea of 'what if I build up to that healing move with damage attacks'

At level 60, the player gets Afflatus Tragedy, giving a partial refund to the Lilies they spend. This teaches the player that the Lilies are not just for protection/healing, but also for dealing a big damage refund.
At this point, the player might also realize that 'if I use Lilies while I can't hit the boss, it still blooms the Blood Lily, so it's like free damage in a way'

At level 68, Protect upgrades to Plenary Indulgence.
This additional healing effect teaches the player that they should try to activate Protect quite close to the damage coming out, as they can then use Plenary's bonus healing to help heal up after

At level 74, Afflatus Tragedy upgrades to Misery, and becomes fully damage neutral.
This teaches the player that they should be as proactive as possible with Lily spending, so they can generate as many Miseries as possible (to put in raidbuffs)

As shown above, the learning player would learn these lessons, in sequence, not all at once. There's time between these level brackets, to internalize the knowledge of the previous lesson. For example, there's a lot to learn with Blessing of the Elementals, as it gives every spell thus far (Cure2, Regen, Medica2, Cure3, Stone, Water, Aero, Holy) values of 'this is how much Gauge you build by using this action'. But at level 50, the player also has the whole Post-ARR quest to get through, so there's plenty of time, and instances/dungeons, for the player to get used to this extra knowledge.

If the problem is 'I already got to level 100 and now I'm being forced to learn all these gauge build values at once this is too much', there's solutions for that in the game already. The player could do a Trust run of certain key levelling brackets, for example, a level 30 dungeon, a level 50 dungeon, and a level 70 dungeon, to get used to the new stuff at each level bracket and 'speedrun the levelling process' in a sense. The player could do the same with real players, in actual dungeon runs. When I first unlocked SGE, I did a run of a Level 50 dungeon (don't remember which), and then a run of Holminster Switch (71) before spamming Bozja to 80, to make sure I understood the fundamentals of how the class worked.

I don't think that 'oh a player will refuse to learn the new stuff, and also refuse to use the ingame systems that aid in learning the new stuff, and then be not-good in current content and complain that they're not-good' is a reason to avoid changes. Especially since, with the above examples, the WHM could simply play as they do currently and still clear all content.

[Kohashi]

generally speaking these days.. SE has removed responsibility from healers. and yes, healer is different, but not that much.. we have, after all, 2 damage buttons, 1, 2 and occasionally a third.

its about as braindead as you get without it actually just being an npc

How to say you haven't left Limsa in a long time without saying it.

Anyway,...

Snip

As long as FF14 has the casual philosophy ingrained in it, it will never even come close to what you have been suggesting. Sure, on paper it sounds interesting however in reality it will simply create a shortage of the role.

Personally, I have always played support classes (tank/heal) in all of the games that I played (except Blade and Soul which lacks the holy trinity) and I wouldn't mind it being stupidly complicated but I also appreciate how FF 14 approaches healers.

And while healers can get a bit boring if everyone performs perfectly, you can always go into PF and solve that aspect pretty quickly.

When it came to FF14, the combat system was always the weakest link for me because of the sheer artificial complexity integrated into the game.

If you are able to design a fun, complex, customizable, rewarding system that requires no more than 10 buttons, and which has the "perfect" balance of damage and healing, I will be happy to hear your ideas.

[Tigore]

@ ForsakenRoe

I can understand being careful with how much healing requirements should increase. After all, a main reason to tackle the encounter damage first is to keep the easiest activities like solo treasure hunts, FATEs and society / beast tribe dailies at the intended easy difficulty. I can actually post a lot of details on what was said too, but I elected to just say it amounted to a 1 button spam for Priest and Warrior that time. Healers actually had a sub role of tank healer and raid healer in the old days too. Holy Paladin players were even asking if they could get something to at least help with raid healing without needing to spam Flash of Light or Holy Light. Some cooldowns were experimented on, but Blizz ultimately went with the gauge route for the Holy Power resource on all 3 specs of Paladin. Cone of Light and Word of Glory allowed an AoE and single target version. The HP generators were typically Holy Shock (could be a damage spell or a heal) and Crusader Strike. The Crusader Strike definitely encouraged them to debate if they can get in melee range to deal damage and charge HP up faster.

I have also had the "pleasure" of getting "lectured" by a DPS for pwning enemies with Flame Shock DoTs and Lava Bursts (guaranteed crit) while on my Shaman during the Legion expansion (something like the 6th expansion). They claimed to have been speaking for the tank too. Sigh, they probably used to heal back in the day when Shamans were spamming nothing but Chain Heal (Jesus beams nickname) for raid healing and didn't notice my Healing Stream Totem, Healing Rain and Riptide HoTs on the tank. I pointed out the tank was a bit hypocritical by spending way more rage on Revenge DPS hits rather than Ignore Pain shield absorbs >.> Plus no one was ever in any danger of dying anyways. The other spells were still sufficient, so I didn't need to use Chain Heal. It was nerfed to be very expensive to use for that expansion.

@Absurdity

I was first in WoW for Burning Crusade, but I have heard from other players how the Priests took turns keeping the Warrior tanks up. When they needed mana back after switching duties, they activated the "auto attack" wand on the boss. Druids were mostly there to use their Innervate cooldown on the Priests to get mana back. The out of combat system to regen mana fast in FF14 is not in WoW last I recall. We actually had to buy food and water items and eat them to regenerate the mana back over 10 - 20ish seconds. This was also a niche for Mages to get in parties since they can conjure food for free to fulfill this purpose. Since trading with 4+ other players became an annoyance, they got a Summon Ritual for a Refreshment Table that needs 1 other person to click on the spawned portal to help complete the ritual.


In any case, Stormblood does look like a good place to start to draw some inspiration from ... Well, excluding the old lily system back then. It basically just randomly reduced the cooldown timer of things like Asylum and Assize and I almost just played like I did in Heavensward minus the Cleric Stance stuff. Some discussion on how much oGCDs we should still have could be helpful too. I can preface to say that almost no oGCD healing and extremely stripped tank tools might be too far. It will probably cause a Cure spam like it did with the WoW Cata Priest spamming Heal on the tank. I would recommend just borrowing some mechs in Warcraft to augment the systems that worked in FF14. Some examples to look at are empowered casts, expanding on the Max HP increase effect that SCH has in Protraction and partially converting the overheals of the Druid HoTs to make another burst heal (efflorescence mushroom) better if overheals are unavoidable. Warcraft also used spells that damaged enemies and healed allies at the same time like Assize and Earthly Star do except using the GCD.

[ForsakenRoe]

If you are able to design a fun, complex, customizable, rewarding system that requires no more than 10 buttons, and which has the "perfect" balance of damage and healing, I will be happy to hear your ideas.

I PF Savage for prog, I know about how people can be more/less easy to heal. Problem is, I can handle the unexpected 'someone standing in the wrong place' with one of my many OGCDs as a SCH, or as SGE. It's only on WHM, where we are very heavily constrained to the GCD timer, that we cannot respond as effectively. So it doesn't help the problem of 'I have to press Broil 22 times per minute', unless enough people stand in the wrong place that I've burned through all of my OGCD actions and am forced to resort to Adloquium and Succor.

If you mean Damage AND Healing have to both be covered by that 10 button count, that seems to me to just be 'stacking the deck' to try and engineer a 'ha see you can't do it' result. FFXIV works on button counts of 24+ and always has, even in ARR. Nevertheless, they say 'restrictions breed innovation', so here's my attempt at it:

1: Stone/Glare (empowers into Quake): Filler spell, grants 1 Vigilance (a new 0-100 gauge)
1B: Quake: Deals (current potency of Stone/Glare) + 110, and 50% less to nearby enemies

2: Aero/Dia (empowers into Tornado): 12s DOT, grants 1 Vigilance, plus 1 per tick (total 5)
2B: Tornado: Deals (current potency of Aero/Dia) + 30, and 50% less to nearby enemies. Applies Aero/Dia DOT with +20p per tick, and with 50% of that damage per tick to nearby enemies

3: Water/Banish (empowers into Flood): 15s CD attack, grants 5 Vigilance
3B: Flood: Deals (current potency of Water/Banish) + 110, and 50% less to nearby enemies

4: Blessing of the Elementals: AOE damage-neutral Heal, costs 50 Vigilance. Empowers the 3 attacks into their 'ultimate' form, causing them to deal more damage and be AOE

(Quake, Flood, Tornado added together, add up to deal the damage of the Glare/Dia/Banish, plus the Glare that would be lost casting Blessing of the Elementals.)


5: Cure 2: Single Target Heal, grants 10 Vigilance

6: Medica 3: AOE Heal of Medica1, plus the Regen of Medica3, 12s duration. Grants 3 Vigilance on cast, 3 per tick (total 15)

7: Afflatus Solace: ST Heal, Lily Spender. Lilies are generated every 20s

8: Afflatus Rapture: AOE Heal, Lily spender

9: Afflatus Bastion: AOE Barrier-applying Lily spender (doesn't heal HP, only applies the barrier effect)

10: Holy (turns into Afflatus Misery when Blood Lily is prepared): Deals AOE damage, stuns for 4s. Grants 2 Vigilance per enemy hit
10B: Afflatus Misery: Big damage AOE hit, functions as a refund for the damage lost by spending Lilies. Also stuns like Holy. Grants 2 Vigilance gauge per enemy hit

10 buttons. It's got the basic stuff (healing allies, protecting allies, having an actual rotation, interplay between damage and healing actions). There's room for complexity built in, via things like 'try to line up the order you use Lilies/Gauge, so that Misery Quake Flood and Tornado all get used in raidbuffs'. I would argue that the above would be fun (which is a subjective metric so I expect you'd disagree), complex (what one finds complex another might not, so again subjective metric), and rewarding (subjective metric). It's not customizeable because A: I don't know what you even mean by that, like taking an action out and putting another one in from a selection? And B: FFXIV does not handle 'player has an actual choice' very well, which is why we had the 'allocate main stat' system removed so early on (because 'your main stat' was the only correct choice). I'm surprised Materia still exist at this point

[Kohashi]

snip

In between lack of mits (party is averse to using any faint, addle..) to a healer that is actually afk or not properly responding to mechanics, happening and/or upcoming, how do you carry and how do you keep your sanity?


Okay. now tell how the healing goes in any ultimate/savage where you have to heal multiple raid wides like the AOE at the end of EE2, into Ion Cannon, into intermission into p2 while you don't effectively have a mana regen spell, swiftcast, or anything to speed up casting (I am not seeing one). Also, where is the raise? No more raising? What do you do? Also, how do you respond when Tank or a person with worse gear is in the party? Will your aoe shield be enough or is that not your job at all now?

[Tigore]

I mean, you did ask her what spell list could be used with a max of 10. The questions you asked is the reason why we have at least 24+ as Roe said in our toolkit. She was listing some of the important buttons for a 10 list from her suggestions and I rarely ever had to use Raise when the party generally knew where to dance to and what buttons to push.

She already has a thread discussing the real list of spells she would like to see with all 4 healers. I am on my phone now, but I can try to find the link later when I get home in several hours.

[ForsakenRoe]

In between lack of mits (party is averse to using any faint, addle..) to a healer that is actually afk or not properly responding to mechanics, happening and/or upcoming, how do you carry and how do you keep your sanity?


Okay. now tell how the healing goes in any ultimate/savage where you have to heal multiple raid wides like the AOE at the end of EE2, into Ion Cannon, into intermission into p2 while you don't effectively have a mana regen spell, swiftcast, or anything to speed up casting (I am not seeing one). Also, where is the raise? No more raising? What do you do? Also, how do you respond when Tank or a person with worse gear is in the party? Will your aoe shield be enough or is that not your job at all now?

For the first question, I've been a healer for several years. I don't think there's much sanity left to keep at this point.

For the second, MP economy could be changed to suit the lack of Lucid Dreaming. We're already making massive sweeping changes by reducing the button count to less than a third of its current (I have at least 30 buttons on WHM hotbars I'm sure), so why not throw 'we are also reworking MP income/spending ratios to make this hypothetical kit work' in there, too? Blessing of the Elementals could restore MP on use, Stone/Aero/Water and the higher levels of those could have their MP costs be... not 400 per cast. I don't think Swiftcast is necessary for anything except Raise. I did indeed miss Raise off the list, but you could solve that with something like Afflatus Solace having 'Additional Effect: If used on someone who is KO, they are returned to life with 10% HP and 10% MP'. Then it's instantcast by default. I added the AOE shield because WHM used to have Stoneskin in the past and I think we could have it back. For the most part, I'd expect that you'd rely more on healing with Rapture rather than protecting with Bastion, and a SCH/SGE would handle barriers more (as is implied by the Pure/Barrier split).

All of the listed damage sources (stack mark after EE2, Ion Cannon, Intermission) could be handled by Medica 3, Rapture and Blessing of the Elementals. Whether we can handle them without losing damage, using the 10button kit, was not the question asked. You might be thinking that we'd be screwed without Temperance or Liturgy of the Bell, but we survived 3 expansions and 2 Ultimates without Temperance, and 4 expansions/3 Ultimates without the overheal plant, and we did it by hitting things like Medica1 and Cure3 several times to get through the healing check. If the initial heal of Medica3 was made equal to Medica1 (Which is as simple as adding one tick of the HOT to the on-cast potency, then shortening the HOT by 3s), we can use it multiple times in a row if necessary, or we can use one for the HOT at the start, then use Rapture/Blessing as the HOT ticks

If button count is truly such a massive issue, we can do without some of the buttons clogging up the bars, like Repose, Rescue, Lucid (rework MP costs and/or regen rate to compensate), Swiftcast (just attach the instantcast effect to Thin Air), Aetherial Shift (I don't think WHM needed an En Avant move), and we also don't need Cure 1 and Medica 1 when we could just have them upgrade into their sequels (Cure3 can stay though, it's iconic)

[AmiableApkallu]

Why even are we trying to cram a job's entire kit into 10 buttons? Button count has no special relation to "complexity." Button count is mainly concerned with "bloat."

My PvP SCH has 12 buttons total, and I believe there's a broad sense that PvP kits, in general, contain pared-down kits that attempt to get at the true essence of a job.

My PvE PCT has 24 buttons total, and that's a job that's generally regarded as well-designed (if overpowered in some specific encounters...).