A List of Fixes and Ideas for Healers

[NocturniaUzuki]

Hello.

I've been thinking a lot about problems with healers lately, and thought I should post a list of interesting QoL/other fixes and even brand new ideas that I've had for healer mechanics. Under this list, a "Fix" is a change to an existing mechanic, or a new system to fix existing mechanics, while an "Idea" is for entirely new concepts. Though some of them could belong under either, I suppose.

Fixes

General

• Re-instate the ability to reduce cooldowns (prev. "The Spear") via another healer ability. The exact mechanics of which may vary from the original, to prevent its previous issues (messing with peoples' rotations). Possible solutions:
  - Allow an easy toggle-off for allies who receive the buff, and/or add an "Ally Assist" allowance toggle (which exists in many other games), which will disable all Assistance spells cast on you if it is 'Disabled' (i.e. Rescue, Cooldown Reduction).
  - Make the skill reduce the cooldown of only the next 1-# abilities cast.
  - Make the skill reduce the cooldown of only the previous 1-# abilities cast.
  
• Add an "Ally Assist" enable/disable toggle. When disabled, all assistance skills that interfere with a players' control of their character are nullified. This resolves the 'Rescue' trolling issue without removing 'Rescue' entirely, and also allows for many more versatile skills of its nature to be added in the future, without worrying about anxiety over griefing in PUGs. Note: This system has been successfully implemented in other games.
  
• Remove or alter the RNG aspect of Eye for an Eye. Possible solutions:
  - Remove the 20% chance and make it a direct 10% damage reduction, but reduce the duration to 5 seconds.
  - The first damage taken while under the effect of Eye for an Eye triggers a 5 second version of the damage reduction buff. All subsequent damage taken only has a 20% chance of activating another 5-second buff.
  - Add something to the skill that is more akin to its name, for example "20% chance that when the barrier is struck, the attacker deals 10% less damage, and damage equal to the amount of damage reduced is inflicted on the attacker.

WHM

• Allow Asylum to be visible when players have the "Limited" option set for other players' visual effects. Currently we are forced to choose between excessive effects blinding our view, and limited effects blinding our party coordination.

SCH

• Allow Eos and Selene to 'lock-on' to a target, either permanently (with a toggle), or via a temporary buff. The fairy will focus all of its heals on this target until either the toggle is disabled, or the temporary buff wears off. Heals will be cast regardless of the target's remaining HP. Note: Yes, Fey Union does exactly this; however, that is only available at Lv70, and therefore does not fix the underlying issue. Essentially, make a Lv50 version of Fey Union, which only heals as much as Embrace (and perhaps which allows access to other fairy skills at the same time, but if that's impossible then fine).
• Allow Sacred Soil to be visible when players have the "Limited" option set for other players' visual effects. Currently we are forced to choose between excessive effects blinding our view, and limited effects blinding our party coordination.

AST[LIST][*]
Make Collective Unconscious grant its buffs either immediately or after a brief, but consistent, amount of time to any players within the shield radius when it is cast. The regen timer still resets every game tick as before. Fixed in Patch 4.4 for AST and all other ground effects.

Ideas

General

• An ability which changes one DoT effect on a single target into a HoT with a potency of 100 instead. The duration is equal to the time remaining on the DoT effect, but cannot be longer than 15s.
• Some players really lament the loss of the old stance-dancing of Cleric Stance and its constant damage increase potential, and dislike the new, less engaging and less impactful Cleric Stance. However, Cleric Stance was always plagued by having to turn it off to do any reactionary healing, and the 5 second recast time. Here is a suggestion to reinstate a constant damage buff mechanic, controlled by the player, that will not impact reactionary heals:
  
  - Each cast of a damage spell grants 1 stack of Condensed Aether, up to a cap of 15.
  - Each cast of a healing spell removes 1 stack of Condensed Aether.
  - Attack magic potency is increased by 1% per stack, up to a cap of 15%.
  
  Those numbers may need to be adjusted a bit to make it balanced, but the core idea remains the same. The idea being that more experienced healers could optimize their healing rotations to minimize necessary heal casts, and maximize uptime in order to increase their DPS. Experienced healers with an interest in raising their own DPS output already do this. This new system simply rewards them directly for doing so, instead of forcing them to toggle a buff to access it. At the same time, it does not prevent them from dealing with reactionary scenarios, such as when a party member makes a mistake. While DPSing on Healer is a crucial part of optimizing one's gameplay, it should not come at the expense of being able to react properly to actual healing issues.
• An ability (possibly for all healers) that allows casts of AoE heals from a position that is not the player. There are some skills unique to each healer that allow this already; however, they are restricted to their specific effects only (i.e. Earthly Star is great, but can only cast Earthly Star, not Aspected Helios, for example). Since this would be overpowered without having fights designed around it, it would work best as an expansion skill. There are numerous ways to introduce this, but here's just one example:
  
  Aetheric Echo
  Places an orb of resonating aether on the ground at a targeted location. This orb absorbs AoE heals near it (spells only, not abilities), and detonates after 10 seconds, replicating the effect of the last heal cast on it. For added complexity, and following the recent push towards more party utility across the board, this could also be introduced as a party-wide ability, similar to LB, but using only a portion of the LB bar, instead of all of it.

WHM

SCH

AST

[NocturniaUzuki]

reserved for future ideas

[NocturniaUzuki]

reserved for later

[NocturniaUzuki]

reserved for more ideas

[MoroMurasaki]

Allow significantly more (or even all) healer spells and abilities to function cross-alliance.

This would generate such a crazy amount of threat it wouldn't be funny. A WHM with Medica II ticking on 24 people is going to have a bad time, and that's not even taking into account the burst from healing something like a stack with a Cure III. I also personally think it would necessitate a huge incoming damage buff to alliance raids in general (as every player would go from having two healers to six) or it would become incredibly boring.

Could be fun in a niche situation though, like solo healing a raid. That alone does not make this an okay change though imo.

Re-instate the ability to reduce cooldowns (prev. "The Spear") via another healer ability. The exact mechanics of which may vary from the original, to prevent its previous issues (messing with peoples' rotations). Possible solutions:
- Allow an easy toggle-off for allies who receive the buff, and/or add an "Ally Assist" allowance toggle (which exists in many other games), which will disable all Assistance spells cast on you if it is 'Disabled' (i.e. Rescue, Cooldown Reduction).
- Make the skill reduce the cooldown of only the next 1-# abilities cast.
- Make the skill reduce the cooldown of only the previous 1-# abilities cast.

Add an "Ally Assist" enable/disable toggle. When disabled, all assistance skills that interfere with a players' control of their character are nullified. This resolves the 'Rescue' trolling issue without removing 'Rescue' entirely, and also allows for many more versatile skills of its nature to be added in the future, without worrying about anxiety over griefing in PUGs. Note: This system has been successfully implemented in other games.

I remember outright arguing with you about the usefulness of the old Spear buff. I don't want to go down that rabbit hole again, especially now that the problem is solved, but I just think this section is nonsense. It only kind of made sense on AST because of their Time Mage aesthetic, a WHM reducing CDs wouldn't only be useless but also thematically weird. No thanks.

Remove or alter the RNG aspect of Eye for an Eye. Possible solutions:
- Remove the 20% chance and make it a direct 10% damage reduction, but reduce the duration to 5 seconds.
- The first damage taken while under the effect of Eye for an Eye triggers a 5 second version of the damage reduction buff. All subsequent damage taken only has a 20% chance of activating another 5-second buff.
- Add something to the skill that is more akin to its name, for example "20% chance that when the barrier is struck, the attacker deals 10% less damage, and damage equal to the amount of damage reduced is inflicted on the attacker.

I haven't done any math about how this would work. Seems okay in theory. I think E4E is in need of some help. As it stands I will have access to it soon and am unenthused.

Make Collective Unconscious grant its buffs either immediately or after a brief, but consistent amount of time, to any players within the shield radius when it is cast. The regen timer still resets every game tick as before.
[*]Reset the GCD if a spell is used at the end of the Lightspeed buff, and fails to cast properly. Either that, or resolve the issue of cast effects being cancelled when used at the end of Lightspeed.

I'm pretty sure these things stem from the way the game handles information. It's the same reason you get a shield like Shake it Off more or less instantly once it's cast but something like the reduction from Sacred Soil takes until the next server tick to register. One is an ability casted on you, the other is a ground effect. I agree it's annoying, just that I don't think there is anything to be done for it without a larger infrastructure rework.

I believe the lightspeed thing is because of the MP reduction wearing off. I haven't seen this much myself but then I don't often play AST. Seems like rather than pro-rating mp reduction based on remaining cast time it was easier to just interrupt the cast? Again, I don't believe this to be a balance choice as much as one necessitated by the game's coding. I can't stress how much this is speculation on my part.

[NocturniaUzuki]

Allow significantly more (or even all) healer spells and abilities to function cross-alliance.

I had solo healing alliance raids in mind when I suggested that, but now that you mention it, yes, it would cause massive enmity issues and therefore isn't viable.

One thing that is viable, however, is fixing the extremely limiting PF options to allow people to form parties of any type. For example, last time I ran 8-player Ridorana, I had to get 16 players to volunteer to help launch it. The same goes for the horrendously-named "Undersized" option, which needlessly conjoins "Undersized" and "Unsynced" into one option. I really don't see any reason to block players from doing things their own way. The mainstream meta is well-established by now, so new players are not going to get confused. Certainly not if the defaults remain in place as a guide. It already takes quite a bit of menu wrangling to customize the PF. At this point, maintaining the restrictive options merely serves to alienate the part of the playerbase that enjoys challenging themselves outside of what SQEX puts in front of them.

I don't want to go down that rabbit hole again

Yeah, I don't either. Though frankly, this is already reminding me why I try to avoid the forums now. It leans heavily towards conservative views on gaming, and most of my ideas get criticized on the basis of a partisan conflict of opinion, rather than clear-cut points like the enmity issue you mentioned. Some of my ideas may seem "useless" to many of you, but to myself and many of the 180 (and growing) members of my guild, they are far more important than mere DPS buffs. I suggest them to try to improve the QoL of gameplay from our perspective, not to troll other people.

It's the same reason you get a shield like Shake it Off more or less instantly once it's cast but something like the reduction from Sacred Soil takes until the next server tick to register.

Good point. However, thinking about it now, abilities like Regen apply the effect instantly. It may not actually heal the target until the next server tick, but the actual effect appears immediately. Would it not be possible to have Collective Unconscious act as both a regen-applying ability like Regen, while also functioning as it currently does? I'm not sure how exactly the system works, of course, but it does seem plausible that they could have it do both, so long as it wasn't both a "spell" and "ability" at the same time. As for the ground-cast versus player-cast issue, seeing as the spell locks the caster in place, they could just change it from a ground spell to a repeated player cast. Every server tick, the ability recasts, until the player moves and cancels the effect. That might run afoul of macro systems, though, since it would essentially be a built-in macro.

[MoroMurasaki]

I would say Collective Unconscious is strong enough as it currently exists and doesn't really need that increased precision but as you talked yourself through I don't think there is really a fully viable way to change it to apply instantly without messing with it in some way that could have other impacts on it. Though frankly anyone macroing their battle skills apart from a few party-member targeting abilities should probably reevaluate.

I don't mean to be rude but I couldn't come up with a more tactful way to put this - just because some other people that play like you exist doesn't mean your suggestions would be positive QoL changes. They may for you all, though I would argue something like reverting to old Spear is a nerf in any situation, but for the playerbase at large these sorts of things are gimmicky at best and a source of confusion for some. At the end of the day 180 people isn't even a drop in the bucket.

Ultimately this game is about killing the thing before it can kill you. At the higher end that means playing a game of maximizing group dps. I'm not saying something more nuanced like what you enjoy doing wouldn't be fun but it certainly doesn't fit into FFXIV alongside the "burn it down asap" mentality that is forced on us eventually by things like dps checks and enrage timers.

You can claim that these things are more important to you than dps buffs but when you're repeatedly wiping to 3% enrage on a fight you aren't going to be clamoring for an ability to reduce a cooldown- you want something to punch it in the face 3% harder.

[Eloah]

Your only idea for SCH is sorta moot, since that's exactly what the fairie does as long as that target, ideally the tank, has the lowest HP below 80%, i think that's the number. Granted the AI is a bit flawed and she'll heal a DPS at 75% instead of the Tank at 20% sometimes, but she has a "gambit" if you will, if you played XII you know what I mean, but she has one that is rather solid for the most part.

[NocturniaUzuki]

You can claim that these things are more important to you than dps buffs but when you're repeatedly wiping to 3% enrage on a fight you aren't going to be clamoring for an ability to reduce a cooldown- you want something to punch it in the face 3% harder.

On the contrary, I wouldn't be. I would either be clamouring for a better party, or reevaluating my own gameplay to see where I can increase DPS. Or both.

I have been thinking lately of making a video of some content clears where nobody uses any of their damage buffs, but rather only weapon skills and abilities. The main point I try to make about DPS being not that important is that, while you are absolutely right that the game is about "Kill the boss before it kills you (with it's enrage)", there is a great deal of leniency there in order to accommodate players of differing skill levels. Ultimately, DPS buff skills have two purposes in most cases:

1) To help players who can't clear the fight without a damage boost actually meet the damage checks.

This is the purpose that I refer to when I call DPS buffs "useless". Because in the grand scheme of things, they are not actually required to clear to the vast majority of fights in the game. You might need one or two of them, at times. But meeting enrage should be very much possible without them.

2) To simply make the game more fun. People enjoy using abilities to make themselves do more damage. If they didn't exist, DPS gameplay would not feel very impactful.

I am by no means advocating for the removal of all damage buffs. That would simply make the game too hard for the vast majority of the playerbase, and would also be anti-fun on an extreme scale. However, just because one or two buffs aren't considered "fun" by the majority of players, that doesn't mean they are necessarily bad on a global scale and need to be changed. There are also players who will be disappointed if those "useless" buffs are removed.

Also, be careful of assigning numbers arbitrarily. Just because my guild has "only" 180 members, that does not mean that there are only 180 players who share our values. My guild is just one group of players. There are surely others, and many more who have no group. It may not be a huge number, but I doubt it's as insignificant as you may think. And even minorities are valuable. If the game caters only to one view, it stagnates over time. In FFXIV, for example, as with many other games, vast portions of the population quit the game after completing the newest updates. Players who do things besides the mainstream are valuable in their own right for preserving player activity during down times.

So no, my suggestions may not be positive QoL changes just because I say so. Certainly, I believe they are. But that's me. The same goes for everyone else though, including the "majority". Just because the majority thinks something is a great idea, that doesn't mean that it is. It just means they like the idea. Game developers are the ones that have to make the final call. Ultimately, that too is their own opinion. But their job is to find a balance between what they feel is a good idea, and what they need to realistically do to keep the playerbase happy enough that they don't quit over it and subsequently damage the revenue stream. All we do is make suggestions in the hope that one of those developers will share our view, or be convinced by it, and have it shape their opinion going forward.

[NocturniaUzuki]

Your only idea for SCH is sorta moot, since that's exactly what the fairie does as long as that target, ideally the tank, has the lowest HP below 80%, i think that's the number. Granted the AI is a bit flawed and she'll heal a DPS at 75% instead of the Tank at 20% sometimes, but she has a "gambit" if you will, if you played XII you know what I mean, but she has one that is rather solid for the most part.

I'm not 100% clear on why the fairy targets who she does at any given time. However, I do know that if there are a large number of low HP targets, she will effectively start healing random players. This isn't as big an issue in standard contexts, because two healers can typically powerheal every boss attack immediately without relying on regens, resulting in the tank always having the lowest HP. However, if you're doing something like solo healing and/or if you want to optimize for DPS, you will often want to use Whispering Dawn to recover from heavy party damage when you know that there will not be more party damage in the immediate future. Meanwhile, the tank is still taking hits, forcing you to focus heal the tank while Eos runs wild on random players who don't need her help. This is why they introduced Fey Union - a very useful skill that allows you to override Eos' crappy AI and force her to heal the tank. However, as a Lv70 skill, this only solves the Fairy AI issue for Lv70+ content. For lower level content, the AI is still a massive handicap that is infuriating to deal with.

A random example of when this can be a royal pain in the butt is solo healing T9. Party damage goes out and I cast Whispering Dawn to heal it up in the break between mechanic sets. Meanwhile, Nael's auto attacks and cleaves are extremely powerful, and yet Eos is off having a party healing the DPS who will be fully healed from regens in 10-15s anyways.