Healing Magic Potency for non-healers

[Madrone]

So Cure and Physick may be changed when we roll into 4.0 with a new Role & Shared Role skill system. Right now Casters and PLD have access to these spells. And if you look at how they scaled in 2.x i70-130 gear at level 50 and now at level 60 in i180-270 gear, you'll immediately notice that our hp pools have grown tremendously, but that the power of these spells has barely increased at all in the hands of non-Healers.

Are we supposed to keep these spells slotted on PLD, SMN, BLM, and maybe RDM as utility heals? Or maybe just for use in low level and solo content? Because they've lost their effectiveness and it will only be worse in 4.0 without some kind of adjustment. Following the hp/mnd curve established, I think we could expect non-tanks to have around 70k hp by the end of 4.x and for these spells to barely be breaking the 650 hp mark.

I see this as less of a problem for PLD who got their own strong Healing spell, Clemency. Cure is still useless as a cross class skill for them, and useless things need to be addressed.


i70 low-hp jobs had around 3.5k hp or so and these spells healed close to around 300 or so (at least from Casters with bigger weapon D than PLD)

i130 we went to more like 6k hp and Cure/Physick power was more like 350 due to weapon D.

i180 we had around 14k hp I believe, and base MND only went up a tiny bit, maybe to 440 or so.

i270's top of 3.0 gear brings us to 20-22k hp and a Caster's Physick is doing a little more than 500 hp.


As a percentage of hp healed, these spells have become worthless. HP has increased by a factor of 7. Hp healed has increased by less than a factor of 2. And yet there are opportunities to slip them in when bosses jump, or in an emergency, and they could be very valuable in solo activities like PotD if they just scaled more effectively while hp pools increase. Pretty much everyone has access to an emergency heal skill, but Physick/Cure are the weakest. DRK is a little lacking, and MCN lacks Second Wind, but no doubt will get it after the 4.0 changes.

Aside from just adding MND or Healing Magic potency to Casters & PLD at the base level or on their gear, how can this be handled? Ideally these Spells should stay underpowered, at least around/under the 50% mark of a Healer casting them.

So could they scale off of 50% of the STR/VIT split and 50% of INT when used cross class by the jobs that can access them?


Does anyone agree this is a problem for the Role skill system overhaul to handle? Should these spells just be removed in the Role/Shared Role skill system? Should they be adjusted or replaced by native spells or abilities, so that pretty much everyone has some level of emergency healing that is effective? And by effective, I mean a self-heal oGCD cooldown doing about 20-25% (~3-4k in the current ilvl) of your max hp, or a spammable GCD spell doing more like 10% of a healer or dps' max hp (~1.8k in the current ilvl) .

Optimized boss combat, Healer's purpose, and avoiding damage arguments aside, is a very small measure of healing aside from potions a necessary thing for every job, even for just QOL for fates, questing, and potd type activities?


The same kind of scaling issue exists for Cleric's Stance's widening gap when using it for the wrong spells. It use to be less of a difference when level and ilvl were lower. DoM auto-attacks also, because base STR hasn't increased relative to the damage we do with our main stat-based attacks. A stick slap for 70 damage was relatively more when your spells did a few hundred damage, vs when they do 4-7k damage but the stick slap is still exactly the same. I don't think these matter as much as a cross class healing spell, but they are an example of how specializing in one stat and VIT (on our gear) make anything that uses a different stat for its output get pitifully weak as level and ilvl increase.

[Xyno]

I realy dont understand why healing skills were given to "not healers" as a cross skill. They are fully useless, because of the low MIND

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

They arent meant to be used beyond low level getting to your first dungeon stuff really.

[Yeol]

4.0 will bring updates regarding cross class skills and battle system. Hopefully they will fix it.

[Madrone]

I realy dont understand why healing skills were given to "not healers" as a cross skill. They are fully useless, because of the low MIND

So, your vote is remove them? They serve no purpose for a Caster, aren't part of those schools of magic, and are now too weak because of MND/hp scaling badly. PLD got a native heal anyway.

That's a perfectly valid perspective.

[Seniade]

Honestly, I see this as a non-issue.

PLD has Clemency and can cross class Bloodbath and Mercy Stroke.
BLM has Physic for low level content.
SMN only has access to Physic due to the shared base with SCH, which they've admitted was a mistake due to any changes to the base class abilities affecting both.
For RDM, we have no information on its kit, so even bringing it up is pointless.

Bringing up Solo PotD, that has only every been set as a challenge, not something the game should be balanced around.

[Xyno]

So, your vote is remove them? They serve no purpose for a Caster, aren't part of those schools of magic, and are now too weak because of MND/hp scaling badly. PLD got a native heal anyway.

That's a perfectly valid perspective.

I think, that SE could gave something more useful as cross skill, not healing

[RubyScarlett]

The healer part of me that wants to stay in cleric more so I can throw out Holy and Gravity bombs wants to say that we need this, but that's also the part of me that's bitter over people being lazy and eating easily avoidable AOE's.

In reality, they will probably just remove these for cross class skills. The problem with buffing them too much is that it challenges the 3 role trinity. There's already a population of players that thinks DPS is outside the scope of healing. Letting other party members cure themselves just swings that meta to the opposite end of the pendalum. Could you imagine if every DPS class had a fulling functioning cure spell? "Oh, you died to Pyretic. Should have cured yourself, not my problem, I was too busy Stone 3-ing."

Sure PLD has Clemancy, but it's high MP costs also means that it can't be relied on to heal a dungeon with, it's only to be used in a pinch. The low potency effectively places the same limit on the spells and keeps the trinity in tact.

I know the argument can also be made that having a cure spell would help in solo content and POTD, but there are also have potions that are higher in level to restore more HP. That's the resource for those situations, rather than putting in something that has a far greater opportunity to be abused and cause problems with a group.

[Madrone]

@Seniade I mentioned RDM, because like PLD it historically has at least a basic Cure spell, which even SMN and BLM have right now. So if they do, why would RDM not? I think most people expect it will be most like a Caster from what we've seen, but that with cross skills changing we can't guess that it'll pull from two of ARC/CNJ/ACN/THM, because more likely there will be blending across the lines for both Casters and Healers and changes to what skills are even in the mix. There's too much potential change to guess at how things will shake out. Could very well be removed/not an option.

I mentioned solo potd because its a great example of feeling Physick get weaker while you level up rapidly in the course of running the early floors, and because there's a big disparity between the difficulty of solo progression among the jobs, primarily in how effectively they can heal themselves. I don't expect SE to balance solo potd. I hope SE will tune the most basic healing skills that non-healers have natively or can use via shared/cross skills, which might make things a little smoother for some jobs in a place like solo potd or other solo activity.

I'm more curious about people's opinions of if/why/how much dps should be able to heal themselves and/or others. My own opinion of limited healing and a relative % of max hp I expect is in the original post. Up to 25% for a self oGCD cooldown, more like 10% for a GCD spell. I feel capping the effectiveness limits how much/when a healing spell would be used by a dps, i.e. emergency situations only. Whereas a cooldown has its own timered limitation. I feel that removing this kind of utility simplifies the dps role, when the game is already very simple. It takes away an option you have to maybe survive when in dire straights. It detracts from your versatility and lowers your solo ability.

@RubyScarlett Blurring that line is the thing to avoid. Healers should still take responsibility for healing and dps when they can, not having dps healing themselves enabling healers to dps(!?). Timers, high resource costs, breaking/relying on combos, and low efficiency are all ways that non-Healers heals are kept in check. As for healing potions, they should have slightly shorter timers or be split from stat potion cooldowns. Might see more use that way, in which case some of the non-healer healing could more easily be removed.

[Madrone]

I think, that SE could gave something more useful as cross skill, not healing

I can get behind that. Current Caster choices are really just Raging Strikes, Virus(maybe), and Swiftcast. The rest is junk. If there were more effective skills, I wouldn't mind dropping Physick and could accept being completely helpless to heal myself.