Changing all or almost all heals to off-global cooldowns

[PondHollow]

As of 5.0, tanks only have a couple gcd actions that contribute to tanking. Defense and enmity actions, with a couple exceptions, are handled on ogcd weaving.

However, despite that not being quite accommodated for healers (the tanks have a decent portfolio of instant gcd offensive actions), healers basically play like that to the extent that they can. We avoid gcd heals as much as possible. So it seems like a natural convergence is in order there. So it makes sense to make healers just like tanks in that regard: have a good amount of instant gcd offensive actions, and then do most of the healing via ogcd weaving.

[Rufalus]

I think that's the way to go if they want to let healers evolve to match the way players use them. Increase the variety of GCD dps moves in their rotation, while bolstering the oGCD healing kit so that healing is done through instant abilities alone except in the most extreme cases that a pause in dpsing is needed for a GCD spell type heal. So basically just accepting the way they are already being used and double down on it, make it more fun.

[Hereon]

The only problem would be, if, in an emergency, you would need to spam them. B ut you could allways make a 1 sec CD out of it and slap some MP costs onto them. Which we know they can due to lustrate and Darkknight skills.

[Brandedblade]

I see where you're coming from, but I'd argue we'd still need at least one or two gcd heals for emergency use. Yes yes they will never be touched under ideal circumstances, but not every player is playing under ideal circumstances.

[MaraD_]

Technically you dont "NEED" emergency heals, since the oGCD IS the emergency heal. (Unless im misunderstanding what the request is.)
If they actually allowed for an oGCD healer, that would open up the possibility of 3 different healing styles.
(1) Heals mostly on the GCD, and nukes mostly oGCD
(2) Heals mostly oGCD, and nukes mostly on the GCD
(3) Pet heals, both nukes and heals on the GCD.
(technically a few other combos, such as 50-50 etc)

Personally felt this was one of the better ways to handle the DPS healer design. (Not to be confused with how i think healers should be handled as a healer role. but how they should be handled in FF14)

[Gemina]

As of 5.0, tanks only have a couple gcd actions that contribute to tanking. Defense and enmity actions, with a couple exceptions, are handled on ogcd weaving.

However, despite that not being quite accommodated for healers (the tanks have a decent portfolio of instant gcd offensive actions), healers basically play like that to the extent that they can. We avoid gcd heals as much as possible. So it seems like a natural convergence is in order there. So it makes sense to make healers just like tanks in that regard: have a good amount of instant gcd offensive actions, and then do most of the healing via ogcd weaving.

As of 5.0, everything a tank does contributes to tanking so long as their enmity generator is active. GCD, OGCD; hell, sometimes I think they could just stand there and look intimidating and they would still keep hate. It seems these two roles are constantly compared to one another when it's like comparing apples to potatoes. There is very little that is the same between the two.

I felt that ogcd heals were part of the problem pre ShB. I assumed that in an attempt to make healers use their GCD heals more, SE would either increase outgoing raid damage, CD durations, or reduce the potencies on these skills. They didn't really do any of that. OGCD heals nurture the green DPS aspect to our healers, which is why I felt so strongly that they would get some kind of adjustment since SE wants healers to be more like traditional healers.

The way I feel about ogcd and gcd heals right now is that it is the wrong combination to a lock. I feel that ogcd heals should serve to assist with healing, not outright take care of the brunt of the work. GCD heals should be really powerful due to the cast time, and ogcd heals should be weaker than gcd heals because they are instant and free of resources other than time. With healing the way it is now, devs need to figure out how to consume healer downtime, not free it up.

[Dzian]

I felt that ogcd heals were part of the problem pre ShB. I assumed that in an attempt to make healers use their GCD heals more, SE would either increase outgoing raid damage, CD durations, or reduce the potencies on these skills. They didn't really do any of that. OGCD heals nurture the green DPS aspect to our healers, which is why I felt so strongly that they would get some kind of adjustment since SE wants healers to be more like traditional healers.

The way I feel about ogcd and gcd heals right now is that it is the wrong combination to a lock. I feel that ogcd heals should serve to assist with healing, not outright take care of the brunt of the work. GCD heals should be really powerful due to the cast time, and ogcd heals should be weaker than gcd heals because they are instant and free of resources other than time. With healing the way it is now, devs need to figure out how to consume healer downtime, not free it up.

The issue isn't the heals so much, it's the highly scripted and predictable nature of the encounters that poses the problems with many things within the game. healing being one.

when damage is as predictable as it is you simply don't need to heal, you can simply toss out an ogd to cover the next few autos and let some form of regen or fairy embrace top up all the rest safe in the knowledge there's no real damage incoming for a good 25-30 seconds or so depending on the particular encounter you happen to be in.

increasing raid damage or weakening heals wouldn't or even hasn't really change anything as the damage is still far to predictable and thus safe to just let regens or pets take care of it. whether it takes 15 seconds to top people off with a strong regen or 30 seconds with a lower potency regen. It makes absolutely no difference when you know theres no damage incoming for the next 40 seconds.... and thus weakeing potencies or increasing how hard things hit wouldn't change anything if encounters were still just as predictable.

[Gemina]

The issue isn't the heals so much, it's the highly scripted and predictable nature of the encounters that poses the problems with many things within the game. healing being one.

when damage is as predictable as it is you simply don't need to heal, you can simply toss out an ogd to cover the next few autos and let some form of regen or fairy embrace top up all the rest safe in the knowledge there's no real damage incoming for a good 25-30 seconds or so depending on the particular encounter you happen to be in.

increasing raid damage or weakening heals wouldn't or even hasn't really change anything as the damage is still far to predictable and thus safe to just let regens or pets take care of it. whether it takes 15 seconds to top people off with a strong regen or 30 seconds with a lower potency regen. It makes absolutely no difference when you know theres no damage incoming for the next 40 seconds.... and thus weakeing potencies or increasing how hard things hit wouldn't change anything if encounters were still just as predictable.

I partially agree, only because even if mechanics were left predictable, things could still be adjusted to keep healers on their toes. Encounter design being faulty is something I bring up often, and if potencies, durations and such were adjusted, healers would have to plan differently to handle them. Basically a situation where you know big damage is coming in 15-20, but your ogcd heals are either not potent enough to bring everyone to safety, or will still be on CD, so you are forced to use GCD heals to get the job done.

Again, right now ogcd heals taking care of the majority of the payload is a big problem. Dare I say healing would be way more interesting/stressful/fun/whatever one chooses to color it if ogcd heals were just straight up removed from the game entirely. I'm not even kidding. I already did this running some content (not current raid content). Basically I was curious how healing would feel if I disabled my ogcd heals and ran some dungeons and trials with some FC mates. I can speak for only me, but being forced to use my gcds to heal made me feel SOOOOO much more like an actual healer. I honestly was a gorilla out of the cage, and hadn't had that much fun healing outside 24-man in a long time.

[Samsta]

The issue isn't the heals so much, it's the highly scripted and predictable nature of the encounters that poses the problems with many things within the game. healing being one.

Yes scripted fights is part of the problem, however it also enables cool interactions between different abilities and that is what actually makes some encounters "hard" in the first place, learning how to deal with that specific combination of abilities.

However, I still feel like there could be parts in the fights where there would be more randomness in damage, like there could easily be fights where the boss just randomly tosses raidwide damage and tankbusters during the enocounter during certain parts, this has to be done in a way though that doesn't screw with other mechanics. The fight design is really peculiar in this game since the scripted fights enable really sick looking abilities and combinations where when you see them first time you are like "wtf is this I don't undestand anything" but after a couple of tries you get it. Now imagine if the boss would just randomly throw abilities around, it would create 3 things:

1. encounter difficulty would be rng based. If the boss would do it's attacks randomly, you would get better and easier patterns and harder patterns.

2. Certain cool combinations would not be possible. Some fights rely on showing you the individual mechanics and then comboing them later on, without scripting this wouldn't really be possible.

3. Fights would overall be harder if the current abilities stayed the same. They would probably need to nerf the mechanics somewhat if the boss would do them randomly, dealing with mechanics on the fly rather than memorizing them and when they come out would just straight up be harder, and I am not sure that is what they want.

What I think would be the right way to do it is somewhere in the middle, retain the scripted combinations, but in between them have bosses do a certain rotation of abilities in random order, and have him replace certain abilities with others randomly. Like for example in start of levi he does raidwide, tankbuster, knockback, platform destruction, now let him randomly choose between raidwide and tankbuster in place of first 2 abilties, so the fight could go: raidwide/tankbuster -> raidwide/tankbuster -> knockback -> platform destruction and after that let him deliver the scripted sequence of abilities. We can take a look what would happen if we let him retain the random ability picking here, like you could have 2 temporary currents and then the puddles, or the puddles first and then the temporary currents. However we immediately see here that the other option is much easier than the other one later on when the puddles actually drop, which some people will dislike, it is a good example of comboing abilities that scripted fights allow and the reason scripting should stay to a certain extent.

[Schan]

Changing all or almost all heals to off-global cooldowns.

I thought that's basically what we have right now and what is causing the problems. My opinion is that all heals except for the oh sh%&£ button should be GCDs.