Gear and Progression: A Discussion

[Sylvain]

An initial thought might be to just ramp up damage and/or reduce healing output, so that it's less likely that a Healer will be able to rely on oGCD's for the majority of their healing output. However, this merely just delays the issue eventually, people will reach a gear level where the tank isn't in danger and healers will get to a point where they just want to squeeze in damage spells when they can.

Well, I do not totally agree there. If this happens only through hefty optimisation and top tier gear (for instance, let say that having 390+ ilv) allows you to do "some" dps, I don't think this would be an issue. The healer being able to dps here could be seen as a reward for proper planing and good gear.



The current situation is a bit different. You may enter the content with minimim ilv and even without any kind of cd management with your group, still manage to spend at the very least 50%+ of the fight spamming dps skills.
(note that I said "at the very least")

Ramping up raid damage could be a solution if well done, but I don't think casting 20 more helios per fight will make the encounter more thrilling. On the other hand, the boss AA damage could be increased. While different healers will have different opinion on the matter, I don't see any difference (in term of gameplay) between spamming maleficIII on the boss or spamming benefic1-2 on a tank being wreck by heavy hitting AA.

This is what healer do in most mmo rpg and they don't see to have issue with it.
In WoW end game, a healer will spend 90% of its time healing, and not dpsing. At best they manage to squeeze a few DoT / powerful cd there and there. Every few seconds.

As an Ast for instance, I wouldn't mind having to spam the tank and only being able to squeeze a few malefic/dot there and there. (Bring Stella back as a 350 potency burst with a 12-15s cd)

As a side note : What FF raid design miss however is spot damage. It is very very hard that we have to heal 1-2 player only(not including tank). This is definitely something that would take away dps time without making us simply spam more medica/helios

An idea would could be something like Stagger from FFXIII? A Tank specific mechanic to let them boost the damage a boss takes after stacking up a specific amount of "Stagger" that they can improve the rate of stacking by utilizing role stats. If given visual feedback for improvement, then this could be an alternative to raw damage output that still leads to the one infinitely scaling variable, the TTK of a boss.

This is actually a very interesting idea that could make tanking more interesting.
It still all revolves around dps, but I like the idea

Then for healers... A suggestion I've heard is to give them buffs/debuffs to apply in lieu of damage to fill in the periods of time where spending GCD's on heals aren't necessary. Though, what these buffs/debuffs could be are tricky to think of, given that they need to be worthwhile to cast (I.e. They need to end up not only scaling from their stats, in a way that feels rewarding as you progress in gear, but also accomplish to the main objective of progression, which is making bosses die faster)

I don't know about that, just taking Ast again as an example, the card system being only every 30s already keep my quite busy and it would obviously make Ast less unique (as a buffer)
I also don't think that shooting buffs arounds on allies would make for a better gameplay, we're just changing what button we press.

I think that simply making healer more busy would work fine
1-What we need is basically make healer heal more
2-Give healer powerful and rewarding fillers

If your average party goes from healer spending 90% of their time dpsing to 30-40% while keeping an appreciable dps then we could have a win win situation. (I suppose)
In other words, I want to spend more time healing but still contribute to the party dps in an appreciable way. If I have to work really hard to barely do 1k dps, welp I would say any healer not trying to push the lastsavage won't bother. On the other hand if I can still do 2.5-3k by simply playing well and being slightly coordinated with my co-heal that would be nice.

Beside giving healers some sort of burst skill I don't see how that could be done.

On the other hand, giving healer decent dps when doing solo content wouldn't hurt either, it's kinda dull to cast 10 dps skill on 1 mob to get it down.

But healer are probably the hardest to... "fix". Because not every healer agree on the topic of wether or not we should dps.
No matter what they do, some will like it, some will hate it.

[Kalise]

If your average party goes from healer spending 90% of their time dpsing to 30-40% while keeping an appreciable dps then we could have a win win situation. (I suppose)
In other words, I want to spend more time healing but still contribute to the party dps in an appreciable way. If I have to work really hard to barely do 1k dps, welp I would say any healer not trying to push the lastsavage won't bother. On the other hand if I can still do 2.5-3k by simply playing well and being slightly coordinated with my co-heal that would be nice.

The issue is trying to balance that.

Like, say with your 40% uptime on DPSing you're pushing out 3k DPS. Sounds fine right?

But what happens if you're then able to spend 100% uptime on DPSing because you've taken the spot of a DD class? You're doing what? 6-7k? The same DPS as a DD class, with the extra utility of healing capability if necessary?

It's the same problem with "Tanks doing too much damage". While they're currently doing 5-6k, much more and they'll be competitive with DPS classes 7-8k meaning people will just take additional tanks over squishy DPS.

The flip side is bosses start to be designed with Tank/Healer damage being factored in for enrage timers. Meaning that you then start to get pressured to not perform your role because you need to push out so much DPS in order to get through the encounter.

Which is where my thoughts behind buffs and Stagger came from, ways to make the end goal being to improve party DPS, but in a way that stems from actively playing your role. I.e. Tanks do tank things and stack Enmity (Which could get boosted by "Tank" stats like Tenacity and Vitality), Healers do healer things and heal and support while DD's do DD things and pew pew.

Of course, not to say that pushing out DPS wouldn't also be utilized. I mean, in my example, something like having a boss get Staggered and then people popping DPS cooldowns like Chain Strategem, Foe Requiem, Battle Voice, Brotherhood etc. Then everyone focuses on DPS to capitalize on the additional damage output they can bring for the durations.

So it's not as if personal DPS should become meaningless, but rather, more limited in the scope of the main goal for the role.

But again, healers are the hardest role to try and do this for, because there's only so much you can heal someone (Stacking overhealing/shields also has inherent issues) as well as there needing to be a baseline amount of healing to be done that is achievable the moment you enter the duty (Otherwise, you won't be able to complete it even though you meet all the requirements), so the issue is trying to figure out how to balance their fillers (However much they need to use them).

I suppose one way of addressing them would be to link their DPS skill(s) into their job healing mechanics (Sort of like Cataclysm era WoW where there was talents to make your heals proc damage skills having bonuses and make your damage skills proc healing bonuses. Or, like Warhammer Online's Shaman/Archmage that had Force/Tranquility and uhh... WAAAGH!)

For example, allowing Stone to generate Lilies somehow (Be it RNG, on crits or some other conditional) so they can have more access to their Lilly skills. Perhaps even add in another Lily skill that deals damage (Alongside Assize)

Allowing Ruin/Broil to generate Aetherflow so again, they can have more access to Aetherflow skills and more easily use damaging Aetherflow skills (Perhaps give them a new damaging Aetherflow skill that can deal some nice damage as opposed to well... Energy Drain and its whopping 150 Pot...)

Allowing Malefic to reduce the CD of Draw so they can toss out more cards (They already can get DPS/HPS boosts from Minor Arcana which has a 5s CD already, so they don't necessarily need another skill to allow them to make use of their cards more often. That said, another skill akin to Royal Road to allow them to turn cards into other effects would work well with having more cards to draw, allowing you to enhance, store, turn into minor arcana or this new effect to improve options and diversity with what you do with your cards)

So, in this case, the filler is still going to be damage, however, that filler will still ultimately result in pushing out more healing. Which could be combined with higher AA damage from bosses (Especially if combined with the Tank changes I posited which promote using Tank Stance and stacking defensive stats instead of just STR/DH/Crit) so that this extra healing output feels useful if you're geared enough to be able to get away with DPSing as filler as opposed to using Cure/Benefic/Psychik/Adloquium as filler)

[Sylvain]

The issue is trying to balance that.

Like, say with your 40% uptime on DPSing you're pushing out 3k DPS. Sounds fine right?

But what happens if you're then able to spend 100% uptime on DPSing because you've taken the spot of a DD class? You're doing what? 6-7k? The same DPS as a DD class, with the extra utility of healing capability if necessary?

Well that's obviously why it should be the "aim", like, we shouldn't be able to do more (unless doing very low level content)
This could be done in a number of way. One simple that I keep bring back is increasing boss AA. Like, there is a treshold where a boss AA can keep a healer busy the entire fight simply spamming him (with a few time there and there for DoT weaving)


You can very hardly go from "I need to be spammed with cure" to "the current situation" without heavily overgearing the fight (and by that I mean, probably an entire expansion + 10lv worth of gear).
Sure a tank 390ilv takes less dmg than a 330 one, but not 90% less (which is what you would need to go from full spam heal to the current "only ogcd + AoE heal are enough)

They could also nerf healing in 5.0

WoW healing works fine and even without a ogcd healing the entire raid for 75% of their hp.

All I'm saying is, for relevant content, this can be done. Ofc, some healing stapple from FF14 must change, noticeably, boss AA and healers output (raid burster are fine as they are... they already nearly wipe the raid every min)

As a side note, I don't see the problem with a healer being able to push nearly dps level dps if allowed to dps 100% of the time since this usually what happens in solo content, and I'm sure many healer would like to be able to kill mobs faster ...

It's the same problem with "Tanks doing too much damage". While they're currently doing 5-6k, much more and they'll be competitive with DPS classes 7-8k meaning people will just take additional tanks over squishy DPS.

The flip side is bosses start to be designed with Tank/Healer damage being factored in for enrage timers. Meaning that you then start to get pressured to not perform your role because you need to push out so much DPS in order to get through the encounter.

As much as they say "we don't factor in healer dps"
They do, (unless they expect 90% parse to be the norm). There's no way you can beat os11/os12 enrage timer with 380-390ilb if your group has a MT in tank stance + 0 healer dps. They simply don't for the first and second boss I would say. But I don't believe they don't factor a bit of healer dps for the last 2. I mean, only upkeeping a DoT and doing a tiny winny bit of malefic/stone/boil makes you do 1000dps.
While 1000 alone isn't a lot, it's very very easy to have healers contribute at least 2k dps. os11 has what? 38k rdps requirement? Even with only 2k from healers that's still 5% of the boss health. That's not negligble
So I don't believe them for one second when they say they don't consider it (for the last 2 boss + ultimate at least), they surely do consider a small amount (DoT upkeep + a few gcd worht of dps per minute)

Which is where my thoughts behind buffs and Stagger came from, ways to make the end goal being to improve party DPS, but in a way that stems from actively playing your role. I.e. Tanks do tank things and stack Enmity (Which could get boosted by "Tank" stats like Tenacity and Vitality), Healers do healer things and heal and support while DD's do DD things and pew pew.

As I said, this is actually a very nice idea (imo)
I even talkde about it to our MT (who is a diehard tank) and he was also seduced by the idea.

It's just that, doing healers things, beside healing... what does it mean? As you said people proposed "buffing"
Without considering the issue with AST identity as a buffer, is that an actual desired gameplay? Clicking player to grant them haste buff or crit buff when there are downtime? I mean, the pressure would be the same "keep the raid alive while upkeeping rdps buff as much as possible". Worse, you would probably start seeing meta comp around certain healer/dps synergies regarding what buff they could bring.

I don't think healer dpsing the boss is an issue. The issue is the amount. We spend too much time dpsing.
As far as I'm concerned, being able to dps should be a reward for good play, not the default stance.
Which is usually what happens when I play WoW, healhealheal DoT a bit, "oh everyone dodged properly, I have a few sec of down time, catform dot stabstab combo dot" then I rush back to healing.
It is engaging, I spend most of my time healing and when i see an opening I shoot a bit of dps and I still manage to do a decent number (especially considering the time I spend doing it)
Since most healer in WoW have a mean to burst, these short dps windows can be fun. (ofc I'm not talking about very very high end mythic there...)

I suppose one way of addressing them would be to link their DPS skill(s) into their job healing mechanics (Sort of like Cataclysm era WoW where there was talents to make your heals proc damage skills having bonuses and make your damage skills proc healing bonuses.
For example, allowing Stone to generate Lilies somehow (Be it RNG, on crits or some other conditional) so they can have more access to their Lilly skills. Perhaps even add in another Lily skill that deals damage (Alongside Assize)

Yeah that could be a way. (I wish we'd get a minor arcana everytime we draw XD)