Would Discipline Priest Mechanics work in FFXIV?

[Shurrikhan]

>> For: Duelle

2. I'm...not sure what you're trying to ask here.

3. I'm not sure why anyone would want that, but while this would work in the original Armoury System (because class design was very open-ended), you do run the risk of everyone being "nothing". Sort of how the "Bare" class in FFV was basically the "best" because it could equip any and all job actions and traits. The Secret World saw this when random builds overpowered their version of Jobs, called Decks. As someone who enjoys job identity and the aesthetics that come with it, I'd hate to see that happen here.

4. I guess you're trying to edge in the direction of passive mechanics. I have no problem with such things (I once suggested Shadowskin be turned into a trait that gave DRK a damage shield when they were healed), but with the relatively slower pacing plus the way people clamor for engaging gameplay, I don't see this getting far.

5. I don't think you can avoid what Warlords saw. As long as one option/talent/trait is mathematically better than others, you're going to have a predetermined route. And even if SE somehow removed theorycrafting from existence, you'd go from math ruling the playerbase to superstition ruling the playerbase.

6. This is a very vague question. I'd need an example to give an opinion on this.

2. Thus far in XIV, getting to know everything generally means getting to know each ability of each job. That much wouldn't change. I'm just talking about if you moved the discussion of abilities from "it's like <ability X> with <element Y> added" to a specific, more universal names for each, would that somehow make jobs sound less unique? Essentially, broader knowledge of mechanics that might later be involved in abilities through more front-loaded nomenclature. Or secondly, if each job asks you to in some way deal with certain complexities that were previously limited to certain classes (e.g. if it were important for a DPS in certain fights to try to reduce the healing received on a mob surrounded by healers, or to debuff the outputs of the healing mob before a nuke heal, or if in a given encounter DPS also might want to wait for a buffed HoT before moving out of ground effect that increased healing received but at slightly reduced damage dealt while inside — previously an issue limited to Defiance), would the fact that those abilities are no longer our sole way to explore or discuss those mechanics make them feel less unique?

3. Alright, understood. For me, personally, it increases job identity, by allowing you to fill the archetype of the job in any of quite a few different ways. But that's probably just difference in preference at that point. For instance, I'd want to be able to attach, say, a mechanical trait from GLD or LNC onto my DRK that gives me a bit more variance in how I played. Now, that added freedom, especially in the context of trying to make the elements of each ability more universally understood or interacted with, might also make for some more obvious choices based on a given fight, which is why I expect that what follows, as with any system of customization, has a whole lot to do with the feel of "talent-switching".

4. I'm just trying to 'edge in the direction' of ease of discussion and understanding of what would then be a larger set of cross-class-able skills and traits. You could think of the (t) and (s) being like the passive and active functions of Signets in GW2. They could be referred to seperately, but in many cases it's just a lot simpler and understandable to say "Cover that guy" and leave it up to the PLD as to whether he just wants to stand in front of the projectile, making use of his trait for, say, a larger retroactive hitbox when the attack would otherwise hit allies behind him and causes a portion of his mitigation to be applied to those behind, or actually use the Cover ability. The issue I worry about, again, is whether that kind of simplification in nomenclature, especially if say "Cover" as a trait is available to anyone, or is an outright universal mechanic, detracts from the apparent importance of job skills.

5. I don't doubt theory-crafting and forum specs are here to stay, but my concerns were about the appearance of such a system. Take the Legion talent debacle for example. Originally the intent was to make choices easy to grasp as not to have players alt-tabbing to their guides every single trash or boss fight to pick their talents and swap them accordingly. But this ended up meaning that you had talents that varied only in niche while doing virtually nothing for gameplay. With time, that philosophy mostly reverted itself, and those specs that still follow niche over playstyle variance tend to be much less favorably looked upon in design. Between front-loading complexity and making 'talent' (core and cross-class trait, and cross-class ability choices) effects and uses more obvious, I'd hope to approach something similar, but still be focused primarily on playstyle rather that niche variance.
The other issue Legion wanted to tackle, especially once it started reverting its obvious ST/Cleave/AoE layouts and the like, was how pointless talents felt when freely swappable. They were essentially abilities that you could take all of, but then just had shared cooldowns. The only issue was to make sure you had the right one ready at the start of each fight. The result was that you felt like you spent some 5% of your entire gametime just talent swapping, and all that panel-sliding felt clunky as hell. At first, Legion thought the appropriate way to stop this (in complete conflict with the obvious loadout system of talents they'd made just prior) was to lock in talent choices completely, with no escape via consumable items. But, many would argue that if the clunkiness was the chief issue, they could have gone an entirely different way: they could have just addressed the clunkiness through QoL changes that made you see far less of the talent panel in a given raid. What I was curious about, and again I'm sorry for how vague I wrote this all out, was how best one should limit choices for the appearance of simultaneous freedom and personal identity.

6. Take some of the more annoyance-provoking abilities like Enochian, it's sister Blood of the Dragon, Wanderer's Minuet, or Meditation (assuming it were given some in-combat usability as well through slight rebalancing). Let's say, for Blood of the Dragon, you simply had the option of applying the ability at 30 seconds' duration, (all forms now) extending to a maximum of 40 seconds' duration, but each WT or F&C only extended it by 12 seconds, down from 15. The regular form would catch up at 5 WT/F&Cs, or in approximately 50 seconds, both producing 90 seconds of duration per minute at a 2.4s GCD, and then exceed it from there. The regular form ends up preferred for stacking up for a Blood for Blood with full uptime or in abnormally high Skill Speed sets, while the new one may be preferred for on demand Geirskogul burst, especially paired with a BFB after a period of downtime. You could even have a third version that starts at 20 seconds, and then extends only by 10 seconds each time, but on a 30 second cooldown, giving you 50 seconds from WT/F&C and an addition 40 seconds from the cast itself per minute, or another 90s per minute, with less to lose for using the skill or losing the duration but an extra oGCD to weave per minute. Granted, this would all need additional testing to determine skill-cap and opportunity. The last, for instance, should probably generally be the inferior option in duration production, balancing itself instead on some new rotational options, being basically unable to have an unbuffed Jump, and being twice as able to blow remainder (sub-10s) duration on Geirskogul, the cast total over time being a much better benchmark for balance, and overall dps gain the only true benchmark.

Opportunities could obviously go further. For instance, you could do away with duration entirely, and instead use stacks. It wouldn't be optimal, but it shouldn't be more than 10% lower, either, while having a much more reduced skill cap, and might even just barely balance itself out in specific fights due to the intervals of downtime.

Now, in the case of Enochian, perhaps something a little more drastic might be worthwhile, like allowing Fire IV and Blizzard IV at all times, but using Enochian as a ramp-up mechanic instead. Whatever, as long as its balanced and may attract more players who like BLM as a whole but dislike that one particular mechanic.

Meditation might be traded out for over time (perhaps hastened when not attacking) or per-coeurl generation of stacks. Again, whatever works.

The possible variations on Wanderer's Minuet I leave to your imagination.

Would those adaptations kill job identity for you, even if balanced?

[loreleidiangelo]

Disc is doing pretty poorly in Legion ATM due to the changes they made to Power Word:Shield and stuff. They're struggling at getting Atonement on enough people quickly enough and doing enough burst DPS to heal them to full. Compared to SCH's insane toolkit of ETactics Succor, WDawn and Indom a Disc-type healer wouldn't be able to compete unless they copied over some aspects of Holy healing, as well. (Pugs were dropping Mythic 5-mans if they got a Disc as a healer who wouldn't swap to Holy; it was that bad.)

I can't say I'm a fan of tying a class's sole form of healing into how much DPS they can do. It either means their DPS is too strong or their healing suffers. They'd be great "off-healers" in an 8-man but if the devs ever come out with any 4-mans that aren't a drooling faceroll a disc-type healer would start to show some struggle.

[Masekase_Hurricane]

http://ffxiclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Dancer

Like someone pointed out priest sounds like the FFXI equivalent Dancer. The problem with dancer in 11 was it never really found it's place in party's (not sure if that's the case now). It was more of a hybrid job/ jack of all trades master of none in party's. In a way Dancer reminded me of Red Mage they started with an idea and then never really knew where they was going with the class.

[FoxyAreku]

I apologize but I really don't understand what is difficult to understand about what I'm saying, to those of you having trouble. =S

I want a healer that converts damage into healing like Disc, I had a lot of fun in pandaria just doing DPS and it healing people, the shielding was also nice-but we already have that with scholar...I want the atonement mechanic. That's really all I mean here.

Doesn't even have to be a 'main focus', I'd settle for it just being a helpful gimmick..

[Duelle]

I want a healer that converts damage into healing like Disc, I had a lot of fun in pandaria just doing DPS and it healing people, the shielding was also nice-but we already have that with scholar...I want the atonement mechanic. That's really all I mean here.

Doesn't even have to be a 'main focus', I'd settle for it just being a helpful gimmick.

Fair enough. Of course, with the DPS obsession raids have so that they can push content, it's going to create a problem unless you do something like making Atonement only work when out of Cleric Stance. Even then, if having our Disc analogue increases raid DPS, Disc becomes mandatory and WHM, AST and SCH get to fight over who is the second healer in an 8-man group.

[Reinha]

Fair enough. Of course, with the DPS obsession raids have so that they can push content, it's going to create a problem unless you do something like making Atonement only work when out of Cleric Stance. Even then, if having our Disc analogue increases raid DPS, Disc becomes mandatory and WHM, AST and SCH get to fight over who is the second healer in an 8-man group.

Make Disc automatically heal a bit smaller heals than a fairy for every damage cast (which come a bit faster than a fairy's heals). Make that heal be a reactive or absorbing shield on a random target that overwrites and prevents the application of SCH/Noct shields.

This ensures that:
1) Disc will be a competitor for SCH for the off healer spot. If its passive healing while doing dps is exactly as good as a fairy then there will be no problem. If its active healing is exactly as good as a Scholar's active healing + the fairy (gimped raw healing and some gimmicks + passive heals) then there will be no problem. Think of atonement as the replacement for what the fairy does.
2) It won't be a good idea to have a Disc and a SCH for their dps. If taking both off healers is a bad idea, then AST and WHM still have a place in the meta. Every healer would have an equal chance for a raid spot (50%).

[Dumbledoremd]

would the main stat be mind then crit and det ?

[Sylvain]

It would definitely work but with some tweaking obviously.


First, you obviously can't allow a healer to pull tons of heal and damage at the same time. Not in a game with so many dps check. WoW doesn't suffer from that many DPS check in most encounters, it's more about dodging and doing mechanic properly. Also, the dps from the Disc priest is very low compared to what a FFIV healer can pull. Something like 1/5 - 1/6 of a normal dps. Which means that you can't allow him to damage in cleric stance and heal at the same time.
Heal should be heavily tuned down (if not removed) in priest stance. And his normal damaging skills should be tuned around being not in cleric stance.


Also, as you might know, the Disc Priest doesn't only dps. He needs to apply a buff in order to make his damage. Compared to WoW, FFIV suffers from an outreagously long global cooldown.
I'm not saying it has to be exactly the same, but in fact, there's need to be more than just DPS. The healer still needs to decide who he heals. DPS is the mean, but he still needs to focus the heal on specific target.
With a 2.5sec GCD and a 8man party. You would need to properly tune how the job would apply such effect. (I pray for a smaller GCD in stormblood...)

This kind of mechanic would fit extremly well the dancer.
But again, unless FFIV evolves to be more like WOW (less dps check, more mechanic check), having a healer who's heal is based on DPS is extremely risked.
You'd risk making a new favorite DPS heal combo again, Astro + Dancer or Dancer + Scholar. Again leaving the WHM in the dust.

Finally, while I pointed "Dancer" (since it's highly requested and we know they'll implement highly requested jobs), a melee healer would be tricky to introduce in this game.
So I don't really know how well they could adapt it. But it is definitely possible, Blizzard prooved it.

I wouldn,t be surprised SE is well aware of WoW Disc Priest. And again, I would bet my money on the Dancer following this kind of mechanic.
It would leave one spot for themed healer, the Resto Druids (HoTS).
With these 5 healers, all playstyle would be well covered
WHM - Generic Big Heal
Scholar - Shield Pet
Astro - Buffer
Dancer - DPS heal
[INSERTNEWHEALJOB] - HoTs

[Aylis]

As much as I adore talent tree and spec systems, I fear they wouldn't work in this game. Not without rebuilding the combat system from the ground. Which I don't see happening, not without making an entirely new game. That and I recall Yoshida saying at one point he wants to keep the roles as even as possible. To avoid one from outshining or out performing another so as not to create raid and party class favoritism.

Realistically within the game and something I would love however is a way to spec effects to a base weapon skill to spec in and out of as needed on the fly faster for fights that may require a specific debuff. As well as removing excess clutter from the skill bar. Meaning like I have one attack that does a silence effect, one that does a paralyze effect and one that does a stun effect. Three different skills on the hotbar and each with a base damage to them. I'd so much love to have them all congregated into one base damage ability. A fight comes up and it's like "Oh! I need silence for this one. Let me open up my spec window and spec this one singular damage ability to include silence" No sifting through action windows and no waiting on a cool down to reset.

[LineageRazor]

While I could easily see a melee DPS job given a greatly-toned-down ability of this type (basically, an aoe Bloodbath), the concept of a melee healer in general is one that would require quite a few adjustments to pull off. Folks have already brought up the difficulty with certain mechanics in older fights (Ifrit Ex, Leviathan, Midas 4), and while it's tempting to say "screw 'em" since they're older, irrelevant content, it doesn't change the fact that SE may well want to use similar mechanics in the future.

I actually don't think it's that big a problem. SE just needs to make some new categories - split the "Healer" category into "Ranged Healer" and "Melee Healer", just as DPS is already split into "Ranged DPS" and "Melee DPS". Then, for fights like Ifrit, change the targeting preference from Healer to Ranged Healer, targeting Melee Healers only if no Ranged Healer is present (or is present, but dead).

Naturally, melee-based healers will need to have ranged heals of some kind, as well, in order to target far flung casters and healers, but I think it can be assumed that melee healers will have as robust a variety of abilities as any other healer does.

I think a melee-based healer would be awesome, and doable - but I'm not the one who needs to be convinced. SE would need to jump through quite a few hoops to make such a thing viable, and they've been developing this game SUPER conservatively, with great reluctance in straying from the balance they've currently struck among jobs.