Suggestion for re-balancing four Healer jobs

[Seraphor]

So they're focusing on balance for now, and waiting until 6.0 to add a fourth healer. it is what it is, but how will we balance these jobs? We have a 'pure healer' and 'shield healer' and a combination of the two, and that's the main problem.

My suggestion:

Split the healing paradigms up into healing modes and mitigation modes:

Regens: Set up a heal over time, a regular amount at a standard rate, more reliable, less control
Preheals: Set up a delayed heal that triggers a certain amount of healing after time/circumstance met, less reliable, more control

Resistance: Sustained mitigation, mitigating a percentage of all incoming damage, more reliable, less control
Shields: Set up a damage buffer, mitigating a set finite amount of damage that is expended, less reliable, more control

Give each healer their own combination of the two:

WHM - Regens/Resistance
SCH - Preheals/Shields
AST - Regens/Shields
??? - Preheals/Resistance

This way, each healer has it’s ‘niche’, each healer has complete function for light-party content, and any combination of healers can be coordinated similar to how twin-AST currently is.
One healer choses to focus on regen/preheals, the other focuses on mitigation. This is because regens/preheals would clash(can’t time your preheal if HP is ticking up) and resistance/shields would clash (resistance is wasted if damage is completely absorbed) but healing/mitigation wouldn’t.

I think this sort of set up is very possible.
If you take Protect away from the others and make it WHM exclusive again, put it on a cooldown and buff up the mitigation, that’s your main ‘resistance’. Add in Shell as a single target version and you’re done. Ideally, WHM would also need a complete Lily rework, and these could tie into the functions of Shell and Protect, and ideally provide better mobility, with instacast Cures or something.
AST is pretty much there already, and SCH would simply need a little more focus on this Preheal concept, maybe tweak Selene to provide it, add in something else similar to Excogitation or Emergency Tactics.
They would still keep their gimmicks, WHM is the GCD healer, AST has cards, SCH has the pet.

This would mean our fourth healer would be a Prehealer with Resistance buffs and another ‘gimmick’.

[OcieKo]

~Snip~

This would exacerbate issues with Tank involvement in mitigating incoming damage. Lowering incoming damage further would cause more problems than it would solve. Unless incoming damage is vastly increased to get Tanks and Healers back to needing to care about their primary purpose, this will simply get rid of a healer.

Not against it per say, but in the current implementation it doesn't help.

[Seraphor]

This would exacerbate issues with Tank involvement in mitigating incoming damage. Lowering incoming damage further would cause more problems than it would solve. Unless incoming damage is vastly increased to get Tanks and Healers back to needing to care about their primary purpose, this will simply get rid of a healer.

Not against it per say, but in the current implementation it doesn't help.

How is it lowering incoming damage further?
SCH and AST already have shields, and damage resistance is canceled out by the use of shields, so it's not like they stack...
Actually I've just clocked what you mean, less damage via resistance means shields last longer.

They could make it so that damage resistance doesn't apply to shielded damage, only overflow damage or damage that directly hits the targets HP.

Or simply nerf shields by around 10% to account for the added resistance, they're already superior anyway.

[Reiryuu]

I thought about posting this and made a long post in a text file... I was debating on posting it, but... meh. I'll post it here. Please keep in mind it's not as thoroughly thought through as I would have done it if it were an original post, and I am only really posting it because this thread popped up first. =p

I. Variety in healing methods.
As the devs have stated and as the player base clearly knows by now, there are only really 2 primary methods of healing in FFXIV: direct heals (cure, benefic, etc.) and sheilding heals (adlo). Regens are present too, but no one healer uses that as a primary method of healing. Thus, first, I would like to present some methods of healing I have encountered in my MMO experience.
- Direct Heals (self explanatory)
- Heals over Time (HoTs)
- Shielding Heals (Adlo)
- Healing Damage Shields (Mark of Karn (EQ), Radiant Spores (RIFT)- Chloromancer)
- Damage Converted to Healing (RIFT Chloromancer)
- Transfer health to other (Blood Mage- Vanguard and others)
- Transfer Some/All Damage to Self
- Detonating Heals
- Time-Delay Heals
- Channeled Heals (Arch Mage Warhammer Online, etc.)

* For the purpose of this post Area of Effect Healing is not a category since you can have an AoE version of any of the above methods of healing. If something seems redundant here, please feel free to mention that.

II. Creating Synergy.
Synergy between healers means that healers are working together to heal and prevent damage instead of stepping over each other's toes. FFXIV has a major problem with this as Astrologian has the healing kits of both Scholar and WHM and its shields don't stack with scholars and the regens with the WHM are basically the same and redundant.
Synergies are usually best when one healer makes up for the flaws of another. White Mage and Scholar are a primary example as the WHM's regens work while the SCH's shields prevent damage and give the WHM time to drop a big heal on whoever needs a tank since most of its heals require a GCD or cast time. AST is the thorn in the balance here since it can do everything in the WHM kit and more. So if the healing potencies are equal and the AST has utility, there's no place for the WHM. But that's something for later.

III. Theming and balancing within these points.
Healers should have a theme and stick to that theme. This is probably the easiest way to balance them especially when these themes either 1) do not overlap at all or 2) only very slightly overlap. So let's put some themes onto our current healers and see what we come up with:

WHM- SE's self proclaimed "Pure Healer". Since "Pure Healer" is vague and meaningless. Let's assume SE's intention is to make the WHM the Direct Heal Healer.
SCH- The shield healer... with a pet.
AST- WHM and SCH's Hurculean child... Since the current AST has a lot of abilities that consist of extending duration and such, let's make AST the HoT healer.
IMO, each healer should have:
1) a primary -and- secondary means of healing.
2) A primary -and possibly- secondary means of damage.
3) Some form of utility be it in the form of buffs / preventing damage / mitigating damage / etc.

So, let's assign and apply:
WHM-
Primary heals: Direct Heals
Secondary Heals: Healing over Time
SCH-
Primary Heals: Shielding heals
Secondary Heals: Pet Heals
AST
Primary Heals: Heal over Time
Secondary Heals: Detonating/Time Delay Heals
Some of you might be exploding right now saying that WHM shouldn't have HoTs if AST does. That's OK, you'll see what I mean when I come to how they would synergize.
For now, let's strip all of the healers of any abilities other than spells and abilities that do heals. Forget they exist and we'll deal with them later.
WHM can pretty much stay as is. It's healing powerhouse and lacks utility.
SCH can stay pretty much where it is too, I feel. With a few small exceptions such as:
Give Eos and Selene a different effect for Embrace.
- Perhaps Eos would have a channeled heal where she could not perform other things while channeling to heal a certain amount per tick each tick she is channeling.
- Perhaps Selene could have a similar effect to strengthen or replenish an existing shield.
AST would have the most changes. Here are the ideas for that:
- Benefic I and II are now Heals over Time. They cure the same amount (or perhaps slightly more) than they would currently over 30 seconds. Shorter cast times, lower MP costs.

- Diurnal Sect make Benefic and Benefic II heal their full payload of healing in half the number of ticks. This makes them a large, fast HoT that could stack with the slower, longer duration HoTs of the White Mage. These HoTs could also keep damaged players alive long enough for the WHM to get a big heal out or happily heal a player up while the SCH has a shield up on the player. (Think of the Celestial Elixir line of spells from Everquest)

- Noctournal Sect would change them to a buff that creates 3 "Healing Satellites" around the player for 1 minute. These would explode for a burst of healing when a certain condition is met (for example: after a time, when hit and take damage, below a certain health threshold, etc.)

Adding an Xth healer:
Pick a new primary role of healing and a secondary method so that you have something to supplement when you're solo healing. This way your primary method of healing doesn't interfere with another healer and your secondary can compliment or augment each other.
Let's say our 4th healer is something like the Chloromancer from RIFT. A lot of the chloromancer from RIFT's healing came from little ticks off all the dots, healing damage shields and such that it had. The primary way of healing was to heal from the damage you did. You had one ability to channel most of your healing dealt through damage to a single target while the rest splashed to nearby party members. Since you're not actually healing through buffs or such on other players, you don't interfere with shields, HoTs or direct healing means. Your numbers may be smaller than the other healers, but your damage numbers will be higher and all the little ticks you are doing all at the same time in rapid succession will add up.

IV: Utility.
With healing methods not overlapping or overwriting one another, each class gets some utility buffs. Some of these can overlap a little bit, but so long as you're not having the exact same effect and make sure that similar effects aren't way too overpowered, you're golden.
Put that dmg up buff on one class and put the defense down debuff on a job that heals in a similar fashion to the first buff. Perhaps our AST and Chloromancer would be candidates for these as they would prefer to work with someone with either big heals for emergencies or shields to block incomming damage.

Anyway, I'm kinda tired and as I said this was more or less a draft. So apologies if it meanders off topic or sounds rambly.

[CelestaRosa]

stop yoshi-p from rebaliencing them

[Gemina]

I don't really have suggestions on how to balance them. At least not in a way to format a constructive post that I would pitch to the devs, which would ultimately just be a message in a bottle. I know of the issues healers currently have and that with our current conditions, balance is not possible. A lot of suggestions I have seen tossed around would only perpetuate the imbalance because they do not address the core issues that our healers currently have, or are suggested in a way that doesn't change anything. Core issues are things like ogcd heals, 90% DPS uptime/low healing requirement, role skills, and barrier/HoT dynamics. That is a lot to deal with, and I can't even begin to wrap my head around all of it.

Examples of suggestions that don't really help the situation is trying to add in a 4th healer, single target DPS, utility, DPS rotations, clipping, AoE damage spells; pretty much anything to do with DPS. While an issue within itself due to boredom, our DPS is not a relevant problem that keeps healers in an unbalanced state.

Balance is ultimately obtained through synergy. It entails one force of energy being strong in one aspect and weak in another, the balancing force makes up for the deficiency with its own strengths but carries its own disadvantages that are complimented by the strengths of the other force. Think of a teetertotter where one person has a greater BMI than the person across from him. The result is the person with the lesser BMI is the one in the air. But if the heavier person slides more towards the center, the gravitational force is eventually adjusted until they are both parallel. But what happens when the lighter person moves more towards the center? Nothing at all. This has been SE's previous attempts at balance - if they can even be called attempts.

Behind this analogy, what SE needs to do is move the heavier person towards the center, and what this means is a greater shift in energy. That is why I feel things like ogcd heals are going to be greatly affected by the reworking of our healers. These abilities carry the heaviest of our healing burden, as does shields and regens. These things need to drastically change if we are to obtain balance.

I hope this makes sense.