Discussion: Healer Identities & Implementation of Healing Roles in FFXIV

[Seraphyel]

The title says it all. Since ~ 2008 I am a healer in MMORPGs. Started back in WoW and then in basically every MMORPG I played since then (I'd say a dozen or more).

It's quite easy to give healer jobs an own identity when there are only three. And I really hope they're going to do this in 5.0 but I'm not sure about it. I mean WHM and SCH seem to have some sort of identity but AST is just a mix of the former two and I don't know why.

What route could they go with each healer? I think it's not nearly as difficult as SE seems to think when there are only three healing jobs and none of them is very elaborate yet.

I just returned to the game and I am sure a lot of players already made a lot of suggestions but I want to add mine and maybe discuss the future (identity) of healers in this game.


What kind of healers are there in other games and how could they be implemented in FFXIV?


1. Healing over time (HoT): having several HoTs that keep players alive, for both single and multi target; the whole class fantasy revolves around healing over time with instant / short cast spells

2. Direct healing: the most straight-forward healer; having strong heals that heal a lot of HP directly, mostly bound to long(er) casting times; focus is on single target but with multi target capabilities

3. Absorption / Shields: when you're able to prevent damage you don't have to heal through it; having several shields of different strenght and multitude available to prevent your allies from getting any damage

4. Pet-/Totem-/AI-based healing: a pet or another kind of AI mechanic helps you with healing by either having its own distinctive nature like a pet or being a static object like a totem which add direct healing / healing over time or whatever; you have to pop them and they do their job even if you as the healer do nothing; you still have healing skills to complement your pet / totem

5. Healing-via-damage-dealing: you basically heal with your damage; you're not as potent as a damage dealer but your damage skills heal for a percentage of your damage done

6. Leech / Sacrifice-own-health-to-heal-others: to heal your allies you sacrifice your own health / become fragile towards damage while you prevent others from getting damage

7. Buffer / Off-healer: not as potent as pure healers but having the ability to deliver powerful buffs to your allies makes up for the lesser amount of healing you throw out


[8., 9., etc.]




Post 1/3

[Seraphyel]

How are those identities and roles implemented in FFXIV / how can they be implemented or further improved upon?


1. White Mage

What is it right now? Mix of healing over time + direct healing.

What could it be? The HoT-based healer

In other games this niche is very well covered (WoW: Druid / Monk, ESO: Nightblade, LotRO: Runekeeper) and one of the most popular healing roles in MMORPGs.

I don't know why SE isn't going the route of the Hot-based healer further with WHM. Lilies could be turned into some kind of mechanic that adds HoTs of different potencies to your basic / direct healing spells or easily enhance Regen's duration or potency overall. How do I imagine this?

For example: Regen

1 Lily: Increases Regen's duration by 6s / potency by 20%
2 Lilies: Increases Regen's duration by 9s / potency by 35%
3 Lilies: Increases Regen's duration by 12s / potency by 50%

For example: Medica II

1 Lily: Increases the potency of the Medica II HoT by 40%
2 Lilies: Increases the potency of the Medica II HoT by 70%
3 Lilies: Increases the potency of the Medica III HoT by 100%

For example: Cure II

1 Lily: Your Cure II leaves a 6s HoT on the target for 35% of its initial heal
2 Lilies: Your Cure II leaves a 6s HoT on the target for 50% of its initial heal
3 Lilies: Your Cure II leaves a 6s HoT on the target for 75% of its initial heal

For my suggestion the use of Lilies must be triggered by a new skill so that you can deliberately alter / enhance your healing skills when needed; after so you lose the Lilies you stacked.


2. Scholar

What is it right now? Mix of absorption / shields + pet / AI-based healing.

What could it be? Pure pet / AI-based healer.

In other games this is a frequent type of healer as well (WoW: Shaman).

I think the fairy / pet theme fits scholar very well and should be the base to build upon. For that case remove the absorption / shield skills and hand them to AST.

I don't have as detailed suggestions as for White Mage but I think the first thing would be to give SCH some short-timed healing pets / totems or something in that regard; Aetherflow could then increase the duration / potency of those summoned idols / things to improve them furher. Eos / Selene stay and SCH maybe get an additional permanent pet on top of that.


3. Astrologian

What is it right now? a mix of WHM and SCH.

What could it be? Buffer + absorption / shield healer

In other games this is a popular type of healer (WoW: Discipline Pries, ESO: Dragon Knight, LotRO: Runekeeper).

Instead of making AST a mashup of WHM and SCH they could very well have their own identiy by keeping the buffer-nature they already have and get on top of that the absorption / shield component SCH have while losing the WHM healing component. I haven't thought about it in detail yet but might update this section later on.


4. Future healing job: Necromancer? Chemist?

Could be based on the yet missing healing types of healing-via-damage or sacrificing own health to heal others.




Post 2/3

[Seraphyel]

TL;DR:

1. Make White Mage a purely HoT-based healer

2. Make Scholar a pet-based healer

3. Make Astrologian a buffer / absorption+shield healer

--> this opens up space for new healer jobs (e.g. healing-via-damage, leech-/self-sacrifice healing)

___________________


As you can see, FFXIV at the moment only implements roughly 5 / 7 healing roles I mentioned above. And even then they're mostly done half-hearted and not very in depth. By giving each healer job their own identiy there's open space for at least two more healing jobs in this game that would make sense and give SquareEnix an idea of what they could bring into the game with 6.0 and onwards.

Please feel free to discuss any of my points in this thread, add upon my ideas or dismiss my suggestions with elaborate posts that show why I am wrong.

As you might have noticed, I am a very devoted healer...




Post 3/3

[CelestaRosa]

TL;DR:

1. Make White Mage a purely HoT-based healer

2. Make Scholar a pet-based healer

3. Make Astrologian a buffer / absorption+shield healer

--> this opens up space for new healer jobs (e.g. healing-via-damage, leech-/self-sacrifice healing)

___________________


As you can see, FFXIV at the moment only implements roughly 5 / 7 healing roles I mentioned above. And even then they're mostly done half-hearted and not very in depth. By giving each healer job their own identiy there's open space for at least two more healing jobs in this game that would make sense and give SquareEnix an idea of what they could bring into the game with 6.0 and onwards.

Please feel free to discuss any of my points in this thread, add upon my ideas or dismiss my suggestions with elaborate posts that show why I am wrong.

As you might have noticed, I am a very devoted healer...




Post 3/3

fact is astra is buffer that we have this imbalience in first place their complete and total ulitity whore with bouderline overpowered buffs. compared to whm that as close to No raid ulitity asta deal mroe damage astra heal better astra buff better that why whm is kicked to curve high end stuff


shouldn't have talk about how unfair and broken balance card is and many things you can do with send card. compared to white mage. what does white mage over that astra dont do better that want needs be fixed not making their heals do different things end results meaning have same proud they started

ppl will see sch/asta as better healer and whm will curve stomped out of end game end game stuff
what can you people not understand? that it isn't so much healing as it the ulitity with no team buffing or ulitity helps their team mates might as well make it a limited job

its not just the healing thats issue its whole class as a whole that broken and unbalance level 1-70 their are over all issues with its design how the class so post function

just fixing the heals isnt going to be enough to make white mage usable again. cause ppl run savage teams wont even bat eye lid at you unless you offer more then just healing. and your sch and asta cause no one gives a fuck bout white mage mains.

[Cerenessus]

1. Hots - while they can be efficient and powerfull - need time to do the job. in scenarios where alot of healing is required, you need ogcd heals to make a hot-healer work: something like "removes all hots and grants healing equal to the x% of the hots heal-effect"
which would actually fit WHM pretty good. The mainproblem is: there must be a constant need for healing and comparable big hp-pool to make hots work, or else its just useless overheal.

2. direkt heals are simple - they are the go-to- tools of most healers so everyone need at least a base amount of them, in case their other tools dont work. the more hots/shields/fairys/totems/or whatever you got, the less dh you need and viciversa...

3. Shields are basically direkt heals with the disadvantage of a greater chance of overhealing (because their duration can run out etc.) but with with the big advantage of keeping people alive even if something goes wrong.
they are hard to balance, because if you make them to strong no one will take WHM over SCH :P so you would need to limit their use like " cant be reapplied for 30sec" and add more direkt healing in order to close the gap.

4. all pets, totem, ai´s or whatever are basically stylish hots that can die. they have the disadvantage of a more or less capable ai and the advantage of a more or less capable ai.
the worse your ai, the slower your pet reacts, the more healingpower and dmg-reduction is needed for them to be usefull.

5. Healing- via Dmg need a capable ai to, because you would have the switch targets ingredible fast to make it work otherwise. also you need some sort of buffer, that lets you charge up your heal and use them the moment you need them, or you have all the problems of hots again. also you would need a specific minimum amount of dps to clear content , which could also make WHM less competetive again^^

6. while nice and edgy it has several disadvantages that makes it VERY errorprone: like all mechanics that reduce you to 1hp.

7. buff-healers are... well it depands on the buffs, the more buffs you can give others, the more valuable you are, with the potential of making all other healers useless. therefore their playstyle would revolve around sharing a limited number of buffs with partymenbers.


right now the mainproblem is more the low healingrequirement (also due to the heavyly skripted fights) where you need powerfull heals but only once a minute.
this gives healers with buffs, pets and shield the advantage over heals with high direct heals... hi WHM!...

in order to make more room for different healers you would need to randomize attackpatterns, ingrease hp-pools and increase incoming dmg over the raidbuster every 60sec that eos can take care of herself while i can keep spaming broil2 - i miss my HW-dots -.-

[Hasrat]

I still want to see them lift an element from classic older games and create a healer from a "attack your own party members to heal them" mechanic. Back in the days, there'd always be a small handful of weapons/ways to accomplish this. Could even allow for a healer that doesn't need to be DoM. Although, DNC prolly woulda fit that bill best... (plus, obviously, at this point, that would also require creating entire new gear sets and progression. Bit of a shame, that, realizing all future healers will almost certainly be shoved into a "Mind is primary stat" role...)

But anyway, that option sounds to me like a grand way of making healing engaging. Basically, do the work of a DPS, but on your party. =p Combos, rotations for potency, AoEs, gap closers, the works.
Would require some consideration for solo play and otherwise contributing to group dps, but, eh, technicalities. Ones I don't need to consider since the idea will never go anywhere.

[Mansion]

The problem is that each healer cannot rely on only one form of healing because of the way damage happens in FFXIV.

Being HoT based is not sufficient for healing intensive phases on certain fights (Heartless Angel of O8S, Pantokrator II on O11S, Akh Morns...), while it's handy in downtimes.
Direct heals are the easy route, and all healers have them. But they kinda hinder DPSing, buffing, whatever you should do when you don't heal (and FFXIV doe snot require that much heal overall).
Shields are most of the time too mana consuming to be efficient compared to partywide mitigation (Shake it off, Retorsion, Dismantle, Addle etc.), unless a mechanic forces you to do so.
Pet healing is fine, but pet AI in FFXIV can be stubborn sometimes, although it had been addressed it still needs some refinements.

I'm not into healers being "specialized" in forms of healing. I'd give them all minimal shields, regens and direct heals. Then I'd focus on identity, gameplay for each one. Be a bit more extensive on Scholar pet and damage prevention. More card things for the astro. And then White mage needs to find a spot between those two.

[lordcruxis]

The problem is that each healer cannot rely on only one form of healing because of the way damage happens in FFXIV.

Being HoT based is not sufficient for healing intensive phases on certain fights (Heartless Angel of O8S, Pantokrator II on O11S, Akh Morns...), while it's handy in downtimes.
Direct heals are the easy route, and all healers have them. But they kinda hinder DPSing, buffing, whatever you should do when you don't heal (and FFXIV doe snot require that much heal overall).
Shields are most of the time too mana consuming to be efficient compared to partywide mitigation (Shake it off, Retorsion, Dismantle, Addle etc.), unless a mechanic forces you to do so.
Pet healing is fine, but pet AI in FFXIV can be stubborn sometimes, although it had been addressed it still needs some refinements.

I'm not into healers being "specialized" in forms of healing. I'd give them all minimal shields, regens and direct heals. Then I'd focus on identity, gameplay for each one. Be a bit more extensive on Scholar pet and damage prevention. More card things for the astro. And then White mage needs to find a spot between those two.

This post unintentionally points out the exact problem with SCH, in that it gets multiple identities, while the other healers are expected to have 1

[Mansion]

This post unintentionally points out the exact problem with SCH, in that it gets multiple identities, while the other healers are expected to have 1

Well AST regardless of the Sect will have "minimal" function of the other one through Collective Uncounscious, that both shields and regens, with a longer CD though. But AST's strength currently is Earthly Star, Essential Dignity and cards (with Time Dilatation, Opposition included), and Regens because Noct Ast is not too interesting. Anyway, its identity is covering several aspects.
SCH also has several identities because being specialized in one would make it a bit too boring I guess. I don't think that's a problem for SCH, it's even a strength.

And as Bobsmiaw says, WHM just throws rocks. And it's not even it's power because both SCH and AST outDPS WHM in a raid context.

[Bobsmiaw]

This post unintentionally points out the exact problem with SCH, in that it gets multiple identities, while the other healers are expected to have 1

True. SCH has everything.
Free regen/HoT in the form of fairy
The god of mitigation and oGCD heal
The only healer that can debuff a boss (Chain and Shadow Flare).
They even have delayed heal (Excog).
How about buff? Well, they have Fey Wind.

SCH utility is only gated by cooldown or AF which can be planned properly.
AST utility is gated by RNG which is harder to control.
Meanwhile, WHM throws a giant rock to the gate.