The concept of pure healers

[Fernosaur]

Then again, why should WHM worry about trivializing damage when SCH can put up shields worth more than the entirety of a DPS' HP or an AST can put up cards that can up your DPS to the point where DPS checks are steamrolled?

You say this as if a crit Adlo is something we can just poop any time we want, lmao.


Disregarding that and getting back to the main thread, I think WHM will have some form of party buff utility that will be tied to their healing. This would keep the "pure healer" concept without making them healbots. I mean, if you look closely, WHM has a lot of utility already in the form of Repose, Fluid Aura and Stone (soon to be replaced by Break). Of course, I know that none of this matters in most of the game, but it really shined in PvP, for example. This leads me to believe the dev team won't refuse to give WHM actual utility. In their eyes, the job's core concept is that of a pure healing class, which can be interpreted as not having any gimmick attached to their main mechanics. This doesn't prevent them from gaining some form of utility spell, so I think that we'll see some new spells that aren't just more heal heal heal.

At the same time, I'm almost entirely sure that AST's healing output is gonna go down, and that Balance is going to be toned down too. As Ghishlain said, the problem in the current meta isn't WHM being bad, it's that AST can do literally everything. A relatively heavy-handed nerf on AST's healing potencies could do wonders for WHM even if Balance was left as is. AST would still be optimal, yes, but it would be a risky choice for progression. Then again, I do think Balance has to go entirely: a healer has no place buffing damage output better than a DPS can.

I guess we have 18 days to go to see what they do to adress this problem.

[Ghishlain]

Yes this is something to keep in mind. No matter what happens, we shouldn't be looking for WHM to just outright be better than AST or SCH. It should just be competitive enough to seriously be considered rather than scoffed at instantly. I just believe that a job that specializes in just healing is simply a non competitive identity. Unless of course the healing is so strong it has the ability to trivialize damage, which again would be unbalanced...

If we go with the premise that "pure healer" = "Stronger healer" then WHM should have a healing power that's stronger than AST and SCH, though not necessarily the power to trivialize healing checks (though I do relish the idea of WHMs being able to create 2-1-5 groups).

Take raid mechanics and meta composition out of the equation at this time - WHM is currently suffering because it's a shadow of AST. Take WHM out of that shadow and increase their healing power and your choices go from SCH, AST, and "weaker AST" in the current iteration to SCH, AST, and WHM. Then raid groups pick the healer pairs they want to run based on their preferences and skill sets.

[Lyrica_Ashtine]

But how would you design a raid that allowed for such... I mean, if 1 WHM can solo heal it, what stops groups bringing 2 WHMs (or a WHM and a AST/SCH) and making it trivial?

Well if one white mage could do it alone, you don't have a reason to bring another. Unless you meant why bother bringing two at all, it's quite simple. Two healers would have twice as many GCDs at their disposal. Unless both healer's healing potency are exactly half of a white mage, they'll have GCDs excess that they can put into damage - Like with the current meta. Additionally, a single healer composition isn't without demerit for it's merits. One of them being safety nets.

Besides, they've designed content before that had flexible mechanic duty. Whether it was intended or not is up for debate:
Binding coil of Bahamut Turn 1 - Bards were popular snake feeders, but not limited to
Binding coil of Bahamut Turn 2 - You had multiple paths to take to take buffs off the final boss
Binding coil of Bahamut Turn 4 - While ideally you'd bring two casters, two physical damage dealers, it was not impossible. You could even run one tank or one healer for this
Second coil of Bahamut Turn 2 - Bards, Summoners, and Scholars had the ability to kite the Renaud
Second coil of Bahamut Turn 3 - You had sets of towers you could determine the order with that suits your party's needs. You only needed four players for most sets of the towers, six for the last stretch. Any role would do. This encounter could have been solo tanked too, but made mine sweeping somewhat more brutal to heal through (which a tank just bulldozes through)
Second coil of Bahamut Turn 4 - Could have been solo tanked. Just made raven blight a bit more of a pain and upped the ante for the DPS to push through the phase before the tank's CD runs out. Or simply run a single healer and two tanks for the same effect.
Final coil of Bahamut Turn 3 - Red fire/blue fire could have been done by pretty much any role and the same with the fountains

And then came Alexander that forced a tank+dps combo into quarantine
Required casters in caster jails, physical damage roles in their respective jail, tank roles in the tank jails
Content designed heavily in favor of the strengths of certain jobs
Artificially tried to give healers something to do by just throwing more AoE damage at the group at regular intervals
A vast increase of instant punishment mechanics for what a single player did wrong with no chance for recovery at all.

Also, how does this balance feed into 4 man content, where WHM would be absolutely OP and AST/SCH utility doesn't scale nearly as well?

Four player content has hardly been in the scope of content that players struggle with. Concerning healing anyway. It's not like White Mage can't cast Holy like they do now. They'll just have a stupidly high HPS ceiling that they won't be utilizing at it's full potential. In fact, they might very well spend less GCDs on healing and end up putting more GCDs into damage. Four player content can just stay as it is, as far as I'm concerned. Unless significantly more difficult content will be introduced limited to a small party.

[ty_taurus]

Of course its not unreasonable, considering ASTs get that 5% cast time reduction just by flipping on a stance XD.

Actually, the buff on Diurnal stance is a 5% attack speed buff. If I recall correctly, the lilies were described as shortening cast times. If this is a literal description, that's way bigger than the attack speed boost. I know it seems silly to nitpick this, but attack speed is a stat that calculates a number of things including cast time. Just straight chopping off 0.125 seconds (if the buff is indeed 5%), is more than what the attack speed buff is calculating.

Of course, this is all hypothetical.

[Acidblood]

...

So, what you're saying is that you would be happy to have a class in the game that could only ever be considered 'balanced' in the latest tier of savage raiding, and all other content is easy anyway, so it doesn't matter if it gets made even easier by removing any semblance of healing challenge from the equation (while still leaving WHM with nothing to do in lesser content but regen and spam Holy)?

It's also worth noting that most of the group content in FFXIV is done via the duty finder (the merits of which is a whole other discussion), and I hardly think it is worth balancing for raid statics at the expense of wildly different healing ability in duty finder groups (Inc. 24 man raids), especially when there is such a better alternative; i.e. added WHM utility.

As I said, until FFXIV fully adopts support roles, with dedicated slots* for such, the idea of pure vs. support just doesn't work (especially with the Devs track record of continually buffing 'support' jobs until they equal (or even exceed) the 'pure' jobs in their primary role).

* By dedicated slots I mean something like turning 4-mans into 5-mans, with the additional slot being 'support' and / or having hybrid support slots (similar to what you can do with the party finder) that can be filled by either a pure job or one of the support jobs... e.g. instead of simply a second 'healer' slot, there would be a 'healer / support' slot that could be either WHM, SCH (hypothetical pure healers) or BRD, RDM, NIN, AST, WAR (hypothetical 'support' jobs).

[DreamWeaver]

Actually, the buff on Diurnal stance is a 5% attack speed buff. If I recall correctly, the lilies were described as shortening cast times. If this is a literal description, that's way bigger than the attack speed boost. I know it seems silly to nitpick this, but attack speed is a stat that calculates a number of things including cast time. Just straight chopping off 0.125 seconds (if the buff is indeed 5%), is more than what the attack speed buff is calculating.

Of course, this is all hypothetical.

Attack Speed is same as casting speed in this game FYI, you can easily test it, check your GCD before Diurnal and after Diurnal.

Additionally the 5% GCD reduction is AFTER the reduction by Spell Speed, just an interesting thing to note.

[Ghishlain]

Attack Speed is same as casting speed in this game FYI, you can easily test it, check your GCD before Diurnal and after Diurnal.

Additionally the 5% GCD reduction is AFTER the reduction by Spell Speed, just an interesting thing to note.

Attack Speed also reduces both your recast and cast time (and WS cast time and recast, and auto attack delay, lol...) while Casting Speed only affects your cast time. You can see attack speed type buffs (though not directly called Attack Speed) on things like Ley Lines, Diurnal Sect, The Arrow, Presence of Mind, Huton, Greased Lightning, etc. while Cast Speed I believe is only present on Lightspeed which is a flat reduction of 2.5s with no change to recast (please correct me if I'm wrong if there are other abilities that directly change cast time, I can't recall ATM).

It's a small little semantic but important little distinction when trying to compare apples to apples. Whether the lilies are a cast time or attack speed buff - well, that's up in the air as the translator or even YoshiP might not be aware of the acute differences when it was spoken of.

[IttyBitty]

As far as healing is concerned, mitigation is king, and always will be king. You can play catch up on healing for as long as it takes; so long as you keep HP above the critical threshold, you're golden. You can't do anything to outheal an attack that does 25k damage while 6/8 party members have 21k HP.

Therein lies the problem. WHM could have infinite HPS - all it would take is one mechanic that requires mitigation to survive and you make its ability to "solo heal" unviable. This has always been the case, and will always be the case. It is so frustrating and unfair to be unable to save a run that's gone a bit wrong when you're placed into a WHM/WHM party when there's a mechanic like Seph EX's limit break or Rav EX's swords, when you know that a AST/AST or SCH/SCH party have the tools to survive. Yes, it's true that DPS classes could have mitigation skills baked into their kits, but that also means that SCH/AST now have even more mitigation to complement their own.

Encounter and kit design would have to change DRASTICALLY (not necessarily for the better) to accommodate a "pure healer" being able to solo heal while simultaneously restricting the other two healers from doing so in a full party. As soon as one of them is capable of it? You've once again pushed the "pure healer" out of its ever-narrowing niche in the party dynamic. That's not even considering the consequences in light party duties, where healing requirements are already so ridiculously low.

I am obviously reserving judgement until we have more info about what is happening, but things simply aren't looking good right now. We don't know if we're keeping Stoneskin (and if so, if HP% will go up or cast time will go down. It needs one or the other), we have no idea how potent the barrier from the lilies will be. Maybe it'll be just enough. But I sincerely doubt that healing potencies are going to change anywhere near enough (WHM up, AST/SCH down) to make WHM "shine" as a pure healer.

[Lyrica_Ashtine]

while still leaving WHM with nothing to do in lesser content but regen and spam Holy?

How is it any different from what we're doing right now? The HPS requirement for small party content is rather low. Low enough hat healers spend about 20% of their potential actions (if not less) into healing.

It's also worth noting that most of the group content in FFXIV is done via the duty finder (the merits of which is a whole other discussion), and I hardly think it is worth balancing for raid statics at the expense of wildly different healing ability in duty finder groups (Inc. 24 man raids), especially when there is such a better alternative; i.e. added WHM utility.

Remember when I mentioned that groups compositions not following the meta does not translate into impossible? In any case, sure, let's assume two healers still for some sort of extreme content - Savage content hasn't been accessible to Duty Finder till later in the patch when people start to (over)gear for it.
We'd have either a White Mage with an Astrologian or Scholar, a combination of two Astrologians and/or Scholars, or two White Mages.
White Mage + Astrologian/Scholar - Same thing as we have right now. Although slightly different now as White Mage will have superior GCD efficiency with healing, they'll probably take the brunt of it. A bit of assisted healing from the other healer through mitigation or healing over time and they'll have some GCDs free to throw out some damage spells of their own.
Astrologian/Scholar + Scholar/Astrologian - If their healing potency aren't as good as White Mage, it simply means they'll end up with more GCDs spend into healing. And unless their potency is exactly half of White Mage, it's not like they'll spend twice as much GCDs into healing. Some of it can still be put into damage. Not that different when there's a White Mage around, slightly less GCD efficient if anything.
White Mage + White Mage - A bit of a terrible example as having two of the same healer has demerits regardless of the job, but sure. This is probably the least worst combination of the other two when confronted with the same healing job. Regens and Medica II stack, unlike cards and mitigation effects. You could almost treat it like a white mage + anything else combination. There's just a lot more overhealing present.
I'm not going to bother reaching out for full alliance content. There's already too much potential healing present already.

The mindset of needing two healers is exactly the issue I've repeated twice in my original post, or the very least the idea that all healers must be equal in whichever combination: The boxed in thinking of 2-2-4 and how players are forced to respect it. As long content is designed for 2-2-4 in mind and not 2-1-5, 1-2-5 or even 3-2-3, the concept of pure healers simply doesn't work

As far as healing is concerned, mitigation is king, and always will be king. You can play catch up on healing for as long as it takes; so long as you keep HP above the critical threshold, you're golden. You can't do anything to outheal an attack that does 25k damage while 6/8 party members have 21k HP.

It's not like other jobs have mitigation, right? Or is the argument that it's not their job to mitigate?

[Bonbalon_Burcaso]

The issue with "Pure" vs "Hybrid" characters is a never changing issue of balance.

Either the content is balanced for a "pure" healer, pushing the other healers into a secondary role in which you'll always see WHM +AST or SCH, or it's balanced for hybrids, pushing WHM out of the picture entirely.

Considering they want to keep Paladin a "pure tank" and WHM a "pure healer" I get the feeling that SE is going to balance around that and push DRK/WAR into offtank roles and AST/SCH into off healer roles.

At that point, it's a question of whether the AST or SCH ends up as the benchwarmer. If they're fairly well balanced against each other, it could be an Either/or situation, but considering how people want "optimal" even if it's a 1% difference, we'll see.

Even so, We don't know what the new skills really do or how things will be balanced so it's all speculation. For all we know, WHM could hit so hard that it displaces SCH as the offhealer of choice. Not likely, but I've seen stranger.