Expanded Alternate Healing Idea and Potential New Class Idea

[DoubleDown]

In FFXIV there are 3 primary forms of healing: direct healing (cast->heal), healing over time (regen), and shields; with direct healing being the most prevalent of the 3. Additionally, there have been a few different ways healing has been done, such as: combining forms of healing (heal + regen / shield), combining healing with damage, conditional healing (heal if hp falls below 50%), and delayed healing (heal after a certain amount of time has expired).

Delayed healing is the one I want to focus on for now. This isn't to say that the other methods couldn't have kits built around them, but I think this one has a lot of potential and would be interesting to explore in greater detail.

So what would delayed healing look like?
Well SCH and DRK each already have a delayed healing skill so there are examples and a precedent for this type of effect. SCH's Excogitation either heals when the buffed target's HP falls below 50% or when its 45 second duration expires while DRK's Sole Survivor either heals its max amount when the buffed target dies or its min amount when its 15 second duration expires. While these skills each have combined conditions, they show that it is possible for delayed healing to exist.

There could be more healing skills that heal after a certain amount of time has passed and there could even be an entire skill kit based around it. In the same way that a regen or a shield could be used as passive healing in order to do other things, delayed healing would work in much the same way.

How could this be expanded on further?
There could be other effects tied to the skill as well and combinations of forms of healing. Some concepts are:

- A delayed direct heal
- A delayed regen or shield
- A DoT (Damage over Time) effect with a delayed AoE (Area of Effect) heal
- A regen with a delayed heal
- A buff while the duration timer is ticking down followed by a form of healing at the end
- A damage skill with a delayed direct heal to the caster

What would be the some advantages of this type of healing?
Similar to regen and shields, it would allow for performing other actions during the skills' duration such as attacking or moving. It could potentially create even larger gaps of free time than regen and shielding with the ability for someone who is very familiar with a fight to time the heals to happen exactly when they're needed.

What are some disadvantages of this type of healing?
Contrary to how healing is usually done, this is a very indirect way of going about it. Even with regen and shields, their effects happen quickly and so there's a near immediate benefit. This lets them fit the role of simultaneously being proactive when you know what to expect as well as reactive when they're needed right away. Delayed healing on its own is purely proactive and does not lend itself well to immediacy.

On the topic of proactive and reactive healing, regen and shields are both inherently proactive while direct healing is inherently reactive. While it's certainly possible to pre-cast direct heals when you know damage is coming or react to incoming damage using a regen or a shield, this is how they are by nature and it's only through how they're used that can end up changing the role they fulfill.

How would the overall implementation of delayed healing be balanced?
All skills work as either cast, gcd instants, and ogcd instants, so delayed healing skills would have to conform to this. Any gcd skills are ones that the player is expected to always have access to on a regular time interval while ogcd skills are ones that players are expected to have occasionally but can use almost anytime they want.

As such, the main gcd healing skills would have to have a short timer to keep it somewhat quick and reliable and an above average potency to make up for the delay. The more advanced healing skills could / would have longer times and not necessarily have above average potency to make up for the "downside" of it being delayed, however the main healing skills need to give any class using them the ability to still properly fulfill their role. For the sake of ease of use and to make the skills more interesting and flow better, there would additionally need to be support skills which alter the timer in some way or make them activate their healing effect instantly.

For clarity, the main gcd healing skills refer to the basic set of skills every healer has to heal with and with which they could use to fulfill their role even with the absence of their other skills. For WHM these would be Cure, Cure II, and Medica, for SCH these would be Summon, Summon II, Physick, Adloquium, and Succor, and for AST these would be Benefic, Benefic II, and Helios. The key similarities here are that every healer needs a basic single target heal for general use, a stronger version of that heal for when the incoming damage becomes too much for the basic heal to keep up with, and an AoE heal for when multiple party members need to be healed.

Edit2: How could this form of healing interact with others and how could they be combined?
-WIP

What kind of class and / or themes could delayed healing fit?
Due to its proactive and predictive nature, it would fit best with a class that relies on similar concepts. A potential option that comes to mind would be Oracle; Oracles being the premier class based on foretelling coming events. They haven't been seen in many games and have played both a mostly offensive role and a mostly supportive role. Since in FFXIV all healers have damaging skills in addition to their healing skills, it would certainly be possible to have an Oracle class that heals and still does damage.

What are some skills this class could have?
Similar to some of the ideas that were mentioned above, there are many things that could be done. Ultimately though it would need a core set of healing skills and ways to support getting that healing done.

Ideas for skills:
- A 2.0 second gcd skill that puts a buff on the target party member which counts down for 3 seconds and heals for 550 potency

- A 2.0 second gcd advanced version of the previous skill (like Cure II to Cure) that puts a buff on the target party member which counts down for 3 seconds and heals for 800 potency

- A 2.5 second gcd skill that puts a buff on all party members within a certain radius of the caster which counts down for 3 seconds and heals for 400 potency

- WIP, more to come. Edit2: Admittedly, I'm not that well versed in the nitty-gritty and exact balanced number effects on skills (mp vs. potency vs. duration vs. effect) so these skills will be more conceptual than specific. Anyone who feels inspired to come up with ideas, make any suggestions, or start any discussions on the matter is more than welcome to do so and will be credited accordingly.

If some of these look similar to existing healing skills then they should, since again all healers need and are more likely than not going to have a very similar core set of skills to be able to ensure they can fulfill their role.

This post is still a work in progress. I'll edit it more later on when I have the time. For now I just wanted to get the idea out there. Even so, feedback, ideas, and discussions are still very much welcome. I will also edit this post to include posts from other people and / or paraphrase them and credit people for their ideas should any really good points be made.

I feel like this way of healing has the potential to be a core concept instead of just an extra thing on the side and would help to introduce something new into the current core healing triangle of direct healing, regen, and shields.

Edit2: Thank you to everyone so far, there have been some very interesting points made.

Astrologian also has Earthly Star as delayed healing (With the caveat that it can be detonated early if necessary. Including having 2 separate potencies depending on how long you leave it before detonating)

Yes my mistake, Earthly Star is for sure another example. Thank you for the reminder.

I think the main issue with this type of healing, is one of, where does it fit in?

Like, the main draw from something like this is to gate higher healing values behind a wall that requires preparation and knowledge of incoming damage - Such as a boss standing there glowing and basically saying "Ooooh watch out I'm about to do an AoE!!!!"

To which, Shields already provide an effective form of pre-emptive healing (Especially given their 30s durations. I often re-apply shields right AFTER an AoE because they'll literally last through to the next AoE usage and it means that the minor healing the skill does heals up any damage that made it through the shields)

While at the same time, oGCD heals allow people to react to the damage instantly having functionally the same effect as a perfectly timed delayed heal, only with expanded viability since you can then also use them to react to some unexpected damage too, similar to Shields (Unexpected damage comes in, pop on a shield to prevent further damage, then heal up with direct heals)

Like, given how things work, there's not really much of a need for time gated healing, especially if you have to use a GCD to cast the thing in the first place (At which point, why not simply pre-cast a normal direct heal just as the damage is coming in?)

Which is why the current delayed healing is tied in as merely a failsafe for conditional triggers: Sole Survivor being about getting the target killed, but if it doesn't die you get a reduced heal eventually. Excogitation being a safety net that procs when a target drops low but if they don't then you get the heal eventually. Earthly Star being an oGCD trigger you control, but if you don't press it you'll get the heal eventually.

So I could easily see more of this kind of thing, conditional healing skills that have a delayed healing as a back up plan. Rather than the main focus. For example, shields that if they don't break from damage and time out, provide healing.

I feel that it fits in within a gap between direct healing, regen, and shields which requires some different thinking in terms of healing. It arguably also combines the application concepts of these 3 forms of healing and creates its own risk vs. reward system.

To more directly answer the question of why it would be worth using a gcd delayed heal over a gcd direct heal, shield heal, or regen heal, the answer is that you can apply the delayed heal before you would need its effect (therefore no wasted healing at that time), you can perform other actions while the duration is still going (therefore you aren't locked into that skill animation or delay when the effect happens), and it provides more of an direct impact to hp (therefore putting yourself and your targets further away from being ko'd)

- Direct healing is used to recover from damage already taken and to keep hp amounts above the "KO point"; though they can buy the player time by being powerful enough to heal up the target party member(s) to an hp point before they need to be healed again. It has a single impact, but it adds to the hp bar a great deal which works to push their target(s) further from the KO point. *You can think of it as an instant gain in hp

- Shields and regen buy the player time to either toss out more heals or to do something different with the time. They have an ongoing impact as long as they're active, but don't directly add to the hp bar much or at all (regen increases it slowly or effectively not at all and shields prevent it from being reduced at all for their duration). *You can think of shields as a delay in hp and regen as a stabilizer in hp

- Delayed healing; in simplest terms, allows a direct heal to be setup before the effect is needed while the effect (ideally) occurs at a time when it's then needed. It buys the player time to either toss out more heals or to do something different with the time. It has a single, delayed impact which can be applied ahead of when the effect is needed and would add a great deal to the hp bar. *You can think of it as a future gain in hp

They all also change the order of a player's action priority in different ways:

- A direct heal requires the player to wait to act until hp damage has been taken and need to be used at points when more hp damage is taken (ie: wait{damage} -> heal[effect] -> wait{damage}).

- Shields require the player to act when hp damage is expected to be taken during the shield's duration and need to be used to stop hp from dropping further; additionally with the need to be refreshed at some time after they break or their duration expires (ie: shield -> [effect]wait{damage} -> shield).

- Regen requires the player to act when hp damage has been or is expected to be taken during the regen's duration and needs to be used either when constant damage is happening or when damage is not constantly happening but hp is needed; additionally with the need to be refreshed at some time after the duration expires (ie: regen -> [effect]wait{damage} -> regen).

- A delayed heal would require the player to wait to act until hp damage is expected to be taken and to be used at points where more hp damage is expected to be taken (ie: heal -> wait{damage} -> [effect]heal).

To be fair, healing in this game could simply rely on direct healing by pre-casting all gcd heals and / or reacting to everything immediately with ogcd heals and I think the end result wouldn't change much if at all. The key here is to provide an alternate method of healing which (ideally) has interesting mechanics and interesting ways of thinking about how to best use them; even though it ends up at the same goal either way (ie: keeping the party from wiping).

The way I see it; at it's fundamental level, delayed heals would combine the requirement of needing to plan your heals accordingly with the reward of buying time to do other things and shifting around the necessary order of actions. It has the benefit of pre-emptive application with the direct-to-HP impact of a regular heal, but without a constant or immediate effect.

As far as pre-emptive healing goes, I feel a better focus would be on triggered healing.

Wherein, like Excogitation there will be triggers for a heal that you applied at a previous point in time. So, instead of having Regen which can do a lot of overhealing if a target isn't taking damage at the same (Or faster) rate it ticks at, you'd have a spell that you'd apply with a certain number of triggers that heals when the target receives damage. Potentially even with a minimum health threshold (I.e. They have to take at least 5% of their max health for the trigger and weaker fluff damage doesn't proc them)

Maybe a debuff on an enemy where after they take a certain amount of damage, procs a heal around them.

You could even link it to other forms of healing such as having a spell that triggers a heal when the target receives a Shield.

Of course, given how these trigger skills work, you could still incorporate you vision of delayed healing as failsafes for if they time out without proccing (Or using up all their triggers)

I somewhat agree, however the main issue I have with triggered healing is that there aren't many options to go with and it could feel like jumping through unnecessary hoops just to get the healing effect. In fairness, it certainly has the potential to require interesting co-ordination between yourself and party members / enemies, however I feel that this concept is best suited to one-of skills instead of entire skillsets.

The reason for me advocating for delayed healing instead is because of the potential to require interesting timing, planning, and risk vs. reward scenarios for the healer.

A healer who specializes in delayed healing would replace all other healers. The concept is too OP.
Your heals automatically go off when needed (but you can cast them at your leisure). This removes most challenge to healing, because you just need to have the right buffs on people which trigger as needed.
How can any of the other healers compete, when they are all more or less reactively healing.

This is a fair point. For the record, shields are very proactive and regen is quite proactive with both being able to be used reactively. They have a continuous effect while they're active as well which means they're doing something while you as the healer are able to do something else. Delayed healing on the other hand trades immediate benefit for future benefit and the flexibility in available actions is counter-balanced by the inability to instantly react in a reliable manner if something goes wrong.

I don't think it would remove the difficulty of healing any more than direct healing or shields do now. It's absolutely possible as things stand to spam Adloquium or Regen (when their duration expire) or Cure II for as long as mp will allow.

Admittedly, I have been internally debating whether or not the delayed healing buffs stacking would be too op, but now I think a fair compromise would be to set a stack limit and / or stack restrictions. For example, there could only be 3 delayed skill effects from a specific group of skills active at one time.

[Kalise]

Astrologian also has Earthly Star as delayed healing (With the caveat that it can be detonated early if necessary. Including having 2 separate potencies depending on how long you leave it before detonating)

I think the main issue with this type of healing, is one of, where does it fit in?

Like, the main draw from something like this is to gate higher healing values behind a wall that requires preparation and knowledge of incoming damage - Such as a boss standing there glowing and basically saying "Ooooh watch out I'm about to do an AoE!!!!"

To which, Shields already provide an effective form of pre-emptive healing (Especially given their 30s durations. I often re-apply shields right AFTER an AoE because they'll literally last through to the next AoE usage and it means that the minor healing the skill does heals up any damage that made it through the shields)

While at the same time, oGCD heals allow people to react to the damage instantly having functionally the same effect as a perfectly timed delayed heal, only with expanded viability since you can then also use them to react to some unexpected damage too, similar to Shields (Unexpected damage comes in, pop on a shield to prevent further damage, then heal up with direct heals)

Like, given how things work, there's not really much of a need for time gated healing, especially if you have to use a GCD to cast the thing in the first place (At which point, why not simply pre-cast a normal direct heal just as the damage is coming in?)

Which is why the current delayed healing is tied in as merely a failsafe for conditional triggers: Sole Survivor being about getting the target killed, but if it doesn't die you get a reduced heal eventually. Excogitation being a safety net that procs when a target drops low but if they don't then you get the heal eventually. Earthly Star being an oGCD trigger you control, but if you don't press it you'll get the heal eventually.

So I could easily see more of this kind of thing, conditional healing skills that have a delayed healing as a back up plan. Rather than the main focus. For example, shields that if they don't break from damage and time out, provide healing.

As far as pre-emptive healing goes, I feel a better focus would be on triggered healing.

Wherein, like Excogitation there will be triggers for a heal that you applied at a previous point in time. So, instead of having Regen which can do a lot of overhealing if a target isn't taking damage at the same (Or faster) rate it ticks at, you'd have a spell that you'd apply with a certain number of triggers that heals when the target receives damage. Potentially even with a minimum health threshold (I.e. They have to take at least 5% of their max health for the trigger and weaker fluff damage doesn't proc them)

Maybe a debuff on an enemy where after they take a certain amount of damage, procs a heal around them.

You could even link it to other forms of healing such as having a spell that triggers a heal when the target receives a Shield.

Of course, given how these trigger skills work, you could still incorporate you vision of delayed healing as failsafes for if they time out without proccing (Or using up all their triggers)

[Grimoire-M]

I did make a Dancer concept based on two mechanics: Telemarks, which were a pair of passive healing and damage marks that were triggered by casting spells or using weaponskills. They also had heals that instantly applied temporary Damage Reduction during their cast animations. I guess to distinguish them we can call them Guard Heals. Rather than link the whole thread again, I'll pull out the main four abilities that showcase these two concepts. The rest of the kit was designed around these abilities, and featured a plethora of dual-purpose cooldowns, sometimes letting you or an ally trigger both Telemarks at once, triggering their own effects off of those telemarks, or having a party buff & enemy debuff component that often synergized with one another without directly conflicting with their Guard Heals. I'll keep the notes I had with them in too.


Telemarks

Level 30 - Tandem Telemark: Ability
Cast: Instant Recast 5s Range 30y Radius 0y Cost None
Bestows target party member with a Tandem Telemark. Each time you use a weaponskill, the ally with whom you have the telemark will be healed. Only one Tandem Telemark can be active at a time. Effect removed if target dies.
Cure Potency: 100
Duration: Infinite

Notes: Think of this as the Fairy equivalent. It's not as accessible or as strong as the Fairy for now. Notably, without a cooldown you can't use it if you are out of reach of an enemy target (Unless you wanna spam Chaines, no one's stopping you). Nor can you use it on yourself. You will rely on your other healer to make up for this somewhat. It's good at what you need it to be good at for this level.


Level 50 - Tension Telemark: Ability
Cast: Instant Recast 5s Range 30y Radius 0y Cost None
Bestows target enemy with a Tension Telemark. Each time you cast a spell, the enemy with whom you have the telemark will take damage. Only one Tension Telemark can be active at a time. Effect removed if target dies.
Potency: 80
Duration: Infinite

Notes: This is -free- damage. Since it procs off of all of your spells you'll be better suited to GCD healing than your co-healer generally speaking simply because this ability enables you to keep on dpsing even when you're handling the bulk of the healing load.

Guard Heals

Level 35 - Warden's Waltz: Spell
Cast 3.0s Recast 2.5s Range 25y Radius 0y Cost X MP (Same as Adloquium)
Restores target's HP.
Cure Potency: 500
Additional Effect: Reduces damage taken by party member or self by 25%. Applied immediately in addition to mana cost.
Duration: 6s

Notes: Functionally speaking, this is the Healer equivalent of Inner Beast. All the benefits of pre-casting a shield, plus a decent heal behind it. If you convert the damage reduction into effective shield potency it's on par with Adloquium and Noct Benefic as long as the affected player is only taking one hit during its duration. Practically speaking however, this is absolutely better than any shielding ability we have currently. And they -stack-. I opted for 25% specifically because it fit in that range. It's worse than a crit from either shield healer but better than both otherwise. Hence why its healing potency is barely an upgrade over Waltz. Hell, there's an argument to be made to downgrade its potency and reduction, but I worry (not by much) this will make it worse with a WHM as a result. Really though if something like this was added, I'd expect potency-based shields and it to be weaker and for Noct AST and SCH's shields to be able to stack in order to keep up with the sheer power-creep this ability and it's AoE equivalent represent.

The only thing somewhat keeping it in check is the fact the mana is spent instantly and the duration is still relatively short. Otherwise this wouldn't work, or be as powerful. The Mana Cost has to be applied immediately in order to make this ability fair. Not getting the damage reduction instantly defeats the purpose of this skill, but if it doesn't cost mana as well, then you can intentionally cancel the cast and keep the damage reduction up exactly when you need it for free. It's a compromise to prevent abuse.


Level 42 - Shepherd's Samba: Spell
Cast 3.0s Recast 2.5s Range 0y Radius 15y Cost X MP (Same as Cure III)
Restores own HP and the HP of all nearby party members.
Cure Potency: 400
Additional Effect: Radiates an aura around the caster, granting 15% damage reduction for any party member who enters. Aura applied immediately in addition to mana cost.
Aura Duration: 3s
Damage Reduction Duration: 3s.

Notes: This ability basically operates in a similar manner as Collective Unconscious. Take that how you will. Mathematically it's somewhere between Noct-Helios and Cure III in power, again depending on how much damage is dealt during its duration. One simple change I'd like to see implemented is showing each healer's AoE range when they cast each respective GCD AoE heal. Not just for Earthly Star. It would be a minor pain to accomplish but I believe adding a faint perimeter to the cast animation is worth it. This is the kind of ability that would push adding it in.

[OcieKo]

Need this concept from EQ2 Clerics (all this time I've been claiming it was shamans... just had to look it up didn't I), but as the primary "job unique" healing focus. So basically your Regen/Medica II, Adloq/Succor, A. Benefic/A. Helios comparable heal.

Vital Intercession: Augmentation that heals an ally when they are attacked, and has a limited number of heals before expiring.

It's basically a weak Excog with more than one charge. Also back then it was pretty bad for healing multi-target pulls since damage per hit is low but fast, so you basically had to let your tank eat a few hits before putting one up or you just flat overhealed 80% with it.

[deadman1204]

A healer who specializes in delayed healing would replace all other healers. The concept is too OP.
Your heals automatically go off when needed (but you can cast them at your leisure). This removes most challenge to healing, because you just need to have the right buffs on people which trigger as needed.
How can any of the other healers compete, when they are all more or less reactively healing.

[OcieKo]

A healer who specializes in delayed healing would replace all other healers. The concept is too OP.
Your heals automatically go off when needed (but you can cast them at your leisure). This removes most challenge to healing, because you just need to have the right buffs on people which trigger as needed.
How can any of the other healers compete, when they are all more or less reactively healing.

First rofl... reactive healing in this game rofl... At the high end people avoid GCD heals and pre-plan use of OGCD heals, that's only slightly more reactive than having a AI control your healing clicks.

Downsides to system:
1. They tend to be weaker in potency than regens.
2. The timer on it can be quite questionable, one of the perks of regens are the consistent duration of effect and speed of procs, quote "Reliability". In the EQ2 Cleric case that 30s buff could last 5s or do nothing in 30s. Think more before the unnecessary Excogitation buffs.
3. If no damage registers no healing offered. Which may seem like an upside, but take into consideration the damage input surpassing the proc value, then no damage registers for a while, dodges, shields, etc... that missing health remains missing, which unlike a regen would just tick regardless. If they delivered it with the worthless Excogitation over-buff then well... bad design...
4. Nearly worthless for slow heavy hits, and if one was say single charge and high potency, it'd end up in a similar state of usefulness as Excogitation/Lustrate, Tetragrammaton/Benediction, Essential Dignity/The Lady/Earthly Star. All of which can/do simply get either set just ahead with excog like something similar in this case, or they key bind will just be hovered over until the damage registers.

[Seraphor]

There's also another form of 'healing' or more accurately, mitigation, because there's two forms of 'shield'.
There's a finite damage buffer, or there's damage reduction.
E.g. prevent x amount of damage, or, prevent x% of incoming damage for x seconds.

[Grimoire-M]

There's also another form of 'healing' or more accurately, mitigation, because there's two forms of 'shield'.
There's a finite damage buffer, or there's damage reduction.
E.g. prevent x amount of damage, or, prevent x% of incoming damage for x seconds.

This is basically what my Guard Heal concept above does. The problem with % mitigation is its full value appreciates over multiple hits unlike a pure buffer, unless you treat it the exact same way as a shield with a one-time expense. This makes it rather awkward as a GCD-based heal however, unless it's applied instantly and comes bundled with a heal that pops at the same time.