Mogtalk interview with yoshi p

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Get your red mage up to 70, try vercuring some. That's probably what, 50-75% of a healer cure potency, and the first thing you notice is that it's a weak ass heal. It's only real benefit is that it can be instant; notice there's never any "only rdm to heal" clears posted anywhere.

My signature pic isn't updated. I actually have Red Mage at level 70, and it heals at roughly the equivalent of Cure I. You know, the ability we largely ignore because White Mages never have mana issues anymore. I have kept Tanks alive with Vercure. Certainly more of a struggle, however that's the whole point. I actually have to stop DPSing. On White Mage? Eh, Regen will be good enough.

With dedicated healers, the potency would have to be even lower due to HoT and off gcsd. You'd have to make it 3-5k effective HP to more or less force healers to use heals, and you;d need to nerf off gcd healing a lot. SCH in particular would need to be gutted, since it relies mainly on non-direct cures.

You guys really don;t sit down and actually think what stuff like this may mean in practice. It's easy to say "healing potency is too much" but you need to sit down and actually post some kind of rough model people can agree or disagree with; not just say something needs to happen and not define a plan.

And yet the most popular MMO ever created plays this precise way with little issue. Kind of pokes some rather large holes in your argument. Regardless, why would heals need to be even weaker than Vercure because of HoTs? Now you're just setting up a strawman. If potencies were reduced across the board to roughly that equivalent, all that changes is healers having to dedicate more time to actually casting heals and worrying over their MP. This doom and gloom scenario simply doesn't exist, or has WoW been a figment of our imaginations?

As Tridus said, you would think healers should focus on healing, not spend 80% of their time casting Stone IV, Broil or Holy.

They can edit rezzing so it is way more punishing. Right now you can essentially rez as much as you want. An example would be that the mana cost doubles when cast infight or sth like that.

This only encourages people to wipe and reset the boss. In fact, a primary reason Red Mage's utility is overstated is because once you have three or four raises going out, few groups want to keep going.

They can also rebalance mana consumption to make overhealing more of an issue.

And make overhealing cost more MP? Although, I am all for encouraging less overhealing. Chances are, this will make people less inclined to heal...

They can definitely up encounter damage in non savage content so we get to cast more.

Absolutely. However, we then run into the problem which prompted this discussion: heals being so strong everything that doesn't borderline OHKO is non-threatening. God Kefka reduces everyone to a 1HP before casting a 20k raid wide. Cure III and Succor will cover it. And this assumes you don't have an Adlo. If said Adlo Crits, you literally don't have to heal at all. What makes First Forsaken scary is being forced to heal the DPS up to full HP. In both Savage encounters the devs used gimmicks that literally demand you overheal because raid wide AoEs just aren't enough. This also why so many mechanics in Savage kill you. They have to, otherwise damage isn't a threat.

I feel potencies can be reduced without going the WoW route. Like I said, there is a middle ground. Currently, you will spend more time DPSing, which kind of defeats the point of being a healer.