A summary of healer issues

[Post]

I would agree except that I think going a step further to make them "not an item" and just exist as a general action would be a good idea, because otherwise it's just clogging up inventory space and providing folks with a reason to not bring them (ran out of them, didn't know about them etc. Heck, almost every week I run into a new player that doesn't know about Limit Break and that's for free). Having them as a reward from roulettes would also make them feel even more scarce, making players less likely to use them or more grudging of players that need a rez, or it would make the classic double/triple/quadruple rez a real facepalm moment.

Others have mentioned using Antidotes, Spine Drops, Smelling Salts and Echo Drops and the like, which are all really great tools very, very occasionally, but most players don't use them because they take up space and don't know they exist, and maybe a smidge of 'elixir syndrome' where you just don't wanna use consumables, ever.

I think the idea is to make rezzing more available so that healers don't have to shoulder that burden. Their job should be focused on preventing death in the first place. I also don't see a reason to arbitrarily restrict its use in all but the most specific of difficult duties like Savage Criterion, because enrage timers basically already exist in high end content to prevent sandbagging with rezzes forever. So, allowing more people to rez doesn't guarantee that you'll win those encounters, just that you'll have more opportunities to see more of them, and help your group learn them quicker.

[ty_taurus]

I would agree except that I think going a step further to make them "not an item" and just exist as a general action would be a good idea, because otherwise it's just clogging up inventory space and providing folks with a reason to not bring them (ran out of them, didn't know about them etc. Heck, almost every week I run into a new player that doesn't know about Limit Break and that's for free). Having them as a reward from roulettes would also make them feel even more scarce, making players less likely to use them or more grudging of players that need a rez, or it would make the classic double/triple/quadruple rez a real facepalm moment.

Others have mentioned using Antidotes, Spine Drops, Smelling Salts and Echo Drops and the like, which are all really great tools very, very occasionally, but most players don't use them because they take up space and don't know they exist, and maybe a smidge of 'elixir syndrome' where you just don't wanna use consumables, ever.

I think the idea is to make rezzing more available so that healers don't have to shoulder that burden. Their job should be focused on preventing death in the first place. I also don't see a reason to arbitrarily restrict its use in all but the most specific of difficult duties like Savage Criterion, because enrage timers basically already exist in high end content to prevent sandbagging with rezzes forever. So, allowing more people to rez doesn't guarantee that you'll win those encounters, just that you'll have more opportunities to see more of them, and help your group learn them quicker.

The roulette reward was meant to be a way to get them for free. You could still buy them, but the inventory argument does make sense, or make it a collectable like the aether compass. Either case if item phoenix downs are no longer needed, removing them does also reduce server load slighly, which is a growing concern as the inventory expands, but they'll eventually need a more long-term solution other than just converting a few inventory items into an action or collectable item.

[Shurrikhan]

Either case if item phoenix downs are no longer needed, removing them does also reduce server load slighly, which is a growing concern as the inventory expands, but they'll eventually need a more long-term solution other than just converting a few inventory items into an action or collectable item.

That feels like such a tiny thing, though compared to all the low-hanging fruit, so to speak, by which to reduce inventory bloat already?

I mean, just look at Materia, for instance. It's about the most bloated way possible by which to allow players a means of customizing their secondary stats independently of their (un)lock with gear drops.


Or the many items that are just redyes of a former, undyable set. There's no need to have 9 colors of Shisui Bikini with only three tiny variations outside of color. Just have the 3 sets, based on those actual featural differences, each dyable and usable by multiple gear types' jobs.

The so-frequently shared Striking/Scouting or Striking/Maiming or Aiming/Casting or or Scouting/Aiming or Casting/Healing appearances? Should every dungeon be required to have 7 gear sets despite having as few as 3 appearances between them and to make those sets undyable just to try to differentiate them unnecessarily? All just to add to the grind and inventory space required with no increase in appearances available to players?

That said, I can mostly agree with making Phoenix Down usable in more content, though I might advise sharing a cooldown party-wide on its use. So long as hard enrages remain, even if we make MP more of a mechanic, it shouldn't make things too cheese-able.

And if we were to go that route, using them as roulette rewards might make the roulettes seem a tiny bit more attractive, though I have to agree with Post that we'd probably also want to make the option more obvious / visible.

[ty_taurus]

That feels like such a tiny thing, though compared to all the low-hanging fruit, so to speak, by which to reduce inventory bloat already?

I mean, just look at Materia, for instance. It's about the most bloated way possible by which to allow players a means of customizing their secondary stats independently of their (un)lock with gear drops.


Or the many items that are just redyes of a former, undyable set. There's no need to have 9 colors of Shisui Bikini with only three tiny variations outside of color. Just have the 3 sets, based on those actual featural differences, each dyable and usable by multiple gear types' jobs.

The so-frequently shared Striking/Scouting or Striking/Maiming or Aiming/Casting or or Scouting/Aiming or Casting/Healing appearances? Should every dungeon be required to have 7 gear sets despite having as few as 3 appearances between them and to make those sets undyable just to try to differentiate them unnecessarily? All just to add to the grind and inventory space required with no increase in appearances available to players?

That said, I can mostly agree with making Phoenix Down usable in more content, though I might advise sharing a cooldown party-wide on its use. So long as hard enrages remain, even if we make MP more of a mechanic, it shouldn't make things too cheese-able.

And if we were to go that route, using them as roulette rewards might make the roulettes seem a tiny bit more attractive, though I have to agree with Post that we'd probably also want to make the option more obvious / visible.

You're not wrong, but they did it with the Aether Compass as well. There are definitely bigger areas that could be addressed, but it's still worth mentioning. And it does also help the player's inventory as well.

And as for hard enrage, I suggested that phoenix downs be disabled for high-end duties, at least initially. Allowing them is very big uncharted territory that also devalues RDM and SMN, though depending on who you ask, that could be a good thing. Honestly, it'd be up to the devs to decide if they want them or not, I just think it's worth mentioning that we can simply have them disabled to dismiss any concerns about how it affects raiding.

[Katish]

I don't know if it'd be a great idea to have Phoenix Feathers continually be usable nor do I think it'd be balanced as one per person, that sounds devaluing as mentioned above. Having it as a party cooldown also sounds complicated and I don't know if they would implement a unique whole functionality for just one item, they don't even do that to most class skills lel. Plus I can see someone totally just wasting the action if they did do so. However, I'd be totally okay with them implementing the usage of them in all types of content if it was a hard cap as a party utility over a personal one. Another way to look at it is the party can only use Phoenix Feathers up to three times collectively during the fight, dungeon, what have you. Where each person has a long cooldown for their personal item and therefore cannot spam it. As it's a binary check of true or false, it would be easier to implement. That way it'd keep the value of bringing a res mage to prog and it would be ideal to implement. Additionally, they should also be adding to res mages to further their stance in the party. I could see red mage, smn, and the healers gaining a beneficial damage potency buff as a give for resing someone as a benefit for them wasting their efforts to do so, this solidifying them to be prog mages.


To differentiate Phoenix Feathers from Resing further you could make Phoenix feathers lower cast time or instant cast, probably better as the former.

[Post]

I think infinite rezzes would be just fine for most content because you already can rez people forever. The only reason I'd slap a cooldown on it is because so many jobs don't even use MP, which is its only limiting factor normally. Keep a cast time on it so there's no reason for a dps or tank to be the first player to rez as a healer'd still have their Swiftcast combo.

The whole reason I'd suggest the change is because it puts less pressure on newer healer players. It would mostly help 4 man groups where it's least likely to have another player that can rez your healer if they go down, especially if it's their first time and the group just carries on to victory with them dead. It would also mean that they could afford to make more n

The most noticeable difference would be in alliance raid release weeks, where deaths are most prevalent. Any 'serious' content would basically be unaffected because of enrage timers.

I know this might seem like a strange thing to push for, but I'd hope a change like this would give them less of an excuse to make every healer a copy of WHM where 80% of your spells and abilities are just "restore HP" and they'd feel more free to be creative with the way healers play, which is what this is all really about in the end.

[Katish]

I think infinite rezzes would be just fine for most content because you already can rez people forever. The only reason I'd slap a cooldown on it is because so many jobs don't even use MP, which is its only limiting factor normally. Keep a cast time on it so there no reason for a dps or tank to be the first player to rez as a healer'd still have their Swiftcast .

The problem with everyone being able to infinitely rez with Phoenix feathers is that it devalues those with raise or some equivalent and removes any possible risk. Those with raise have the trade of less dps or as a healer generally less to do overall (which is a flaw in ffxiv). Which is why I reccomended adding to the value of rezing as rez mage and perhaps even expanding that value to make way for differentiating the two slots to help keep that identity. The only time a Phoenix feather should be used is when your rezers are down, thus should be limited somehow, when your rezers are up they should be incentivized to use their rez as needed rather than at random, this adding to the identity as rez mage.

[ForsakenRoe]

The problem with everyone being able to infinitely rez with Phoenix feathers is that it devalues those with raise or some equivalent and removes any possible risk. Those with raise have the trade of less dps or as a healer generally less to do overall (which is a flaw in ffxiv). Which is why I reccomended adding to the value of rezing as rez mage and perhaps even expanding that value to make way for differentiating the two slots to help keep that identity. The only time a Phoenix feather should be used is when your rezers are down, thus should be limited somehow, when your rezers are up they should be incentivized to use their rez as needed rather than at random, this adding to the identity as rez mage.

It wouldn't because while 'anyone can res', it'd be limited, RDM and healers would be still able to cast their res as many times as they like (presumably). I would suggest making the 'phoenix feather' charges be shared across the party, so if someone uses it, it depletes a charge from everyone, that makes it the final 'absolute emergency' button

I mean, just look at Materia, for instance. It's about the most bloated way possible by which to allow players a means of customizing their secondary stats independently of their (un)lock with gear drops.

Or the many items that are just redyes of a former, undyable set. There's no need to have 9 colors of Shisui Bikini with only three tiny variations outside of color. Just have the 3 sets, based on those actual featural differences, each dyable and usable by multiple gear types' jobs.

The so-frequently shared Striking/Scouting or Striking/Maiming or Aiming/Casting or or Scouting/Aiming or Casting/Healing appearances? Should every dungeon be required to have 7 gear sets despite having as few as 3 appearances between them and to make those sets undyable just to try to differentiate them unnecessarily? All just to add to the grind and inventory space required with no increase in appearances available to players?[/INDENT][/INDENT]
That said, I can mostly agree with making Phoenix Down usable in more content, though I might advise sharing a cooldown party-wide on its use. So long as hard enrages remain, even if we make MP more of a mechanic, it shouldn't make things too cheese-able.

1: I want SE to do the obvious, and merge Grade 1-5 into a new 'Grade 1', and then subtract 4 from each current grade of materia. 6 becomes 2, 7 to 3, 8 to 4, 9 becomes the new 5, 10 the new 6. This doesn't fix the issue per se, because SE is going to add another two grades and repeat the issue again next expansion most likely. I've suggested a 'High Materia' that can only be melded to the weapon, and you can only have one, which provides a Job specific buff to something (ideally not damage unless you're a DPS for balance reasons). Stuff like a choice between 'Kardia is now AOE but slightly weaker' versus 'You can activate Pepsis right after a shield breaks to get partial healing still', or 'Dark Mind now has 10% physical mitigation too' versus 'Living Dead CD reduced by 1 minute so you can do WAR exclusive cheese strats as DRK too'. Instead we'll get grade 11 and grade 12 materia, which will give +15 and +60 stats respectively

Also, by merging lower levels of materia, the ARR relic becomes a lot easier, as you'd use the new Grade 1 for the full 75 materia. Grade 5 (which would become Grade 1 with the merge) is a potential reward via Mhachi Matter, which can be obtained via Wondrous Tails and other sources, so we don't need to rely on weird methods to earn the weird grades, like afaik the best way to get grade 3 is via submarines, and grade 2 is 'spiritbond or bust' probably

2/3: I wish they'd just merge Scouting into Aiming, and Maiming into Striking. They should have done it a long time ago, if they're going to keep refusing to add another DEX melee. Heck, SAM could have been that DEX melee. Or RPR could. But yeh, just make DRG/MNK/SAM/RPR share gear (SAMs now able to get more armored looks), merge NIN with the Aiming set (so NIN mains can actually flex to a different job with their earned gear). Also fix the glamour system properly instead of constantly band-aiding it with 'we gave you more space'

4: Just copy other-game: you start with 1 charge. After X minutes of combat, you earn another charge. Healers and RDM/SMN keep their 'utility' as their res is not affected by the charge system, they can use as many as they like. The only real issue I foresee with a system like this is that in a situation like A4S, the healers would be first to be sacrificed to 'cheese' a mechanic, as the issue of 'well if we sac them we cant res' is gone, and they're the lowest damage. On the flipside, I guess that's technically possible now as SMN and RDM would just use their current res options to res the healers.

For balance, maybe the Phoenix Feather res always resses people straight into Brink of Death (the 50% penalty)? You would want to have a proper res if possible, but if worst comes to worst, you burn this instead.

[Shurrikhan]

1: I want SE to do the obvious, and merge Grade 1-5 into a new 'Grade 1', and then subtract 4 from each current grade of materia. 6 becomes 2, 7 to 3, 8 to 4, 9 becomes the new 5, 10 the new 6.

That'd be quite an improvement, but I honestly just wish they'd entirely remove Materia-as-items. There are a number of ways to go about that, though, from the minimalistic to more ambitious.

The Minimalistic:

Let it take after job-specific Bonus (Secondary) Attributes. As one does content --be they quests, instances, leves, or anything else that previously granted Materia-- they generate AP*. Each tier, the AP cap increases (e.g. 600 in the Abyssos tier, maybe 640 by next). This customization is done through job-specific plates, whereby one sets up to 5 stat goals in order, such that the last is the dump stat (e.g., 6.33% Haste if possible -> 12.5% Haste if possible -> 20% Crit if possible -> Equal Crit and DHit dump).

I.e., a customization system done in the most convenient way possible... that also happens to slightly shrink the brief, minor inertial advantage of raid gear. No Extract Materia chores.

Gil sink and crafter privilege to be made up elsewhere (e.g., by offering enhancements to the armor itself, attachable without item trades).

* (AP = Aetherial Power, per old FF Ability Points, since Materia Points would look like Magic/Mana Points; Dynamis [Points] is likewise spoiler-y and has a not-great acronym.)

Slightly More Ambitious:

The same as above, but the stats are applied through actual Materia. Each job can select up to 5 materia and spend any amount on each. But, since it's actual materia now, we should go a little further. For instance, we might create a few classes of these.

Common would be your plain secondary stats: Haste, Determination, Critical Hit, etc.

Rare might be limited to just 1 or 2 and might feature things like the ability to self-raise or to offer an additional charge to Swiftcast, Bloodbath, Second Wind, etc.

Because these would be situational and either actively cast or conditional, they might not even take on AP themselves, but simply drain AP from the materia slotted below them upon use / if used. In that way, they come at cost, temporarily draining from one's dump-stat Materia with the amount trickling back to the drained Materia over time.

Finally, Epic grade of materia that we might take only one of and which is specific to one's job in order to offer some simple change in power that nonetheless varies one's rotation at some scale.

For instance, reducing the damage of Twin Snakes and Dragon Kick themselves in order to increase the modifier of Twin Snakes would allow for one to drop Twin Snakes before DK and TwS and thereby allow for different optimal GCD thresholds. By supporting only a few of these, with very simple rules in themselves despite decently pervasive rotational effects, the devs can allow for tweaks to playflow for jobs that would otherwise just barely fail to attract certain players without creating new balancing nightmares.

Perhaps Yet More Ambitious:

Scrap the Materia system entirely and do something around AP instead. No firm idea what that'd look like yet, though. /shrug

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I wish they'd just merge Scouting into Aiming, and Maiming into Striking.

I wouldn't mind that they're different sets... so long as they actually look different and if they would (again) have a noticeably different niche/fixture/impact in/on combat, much like back when those armor ranks were created (Lancer being a half-tank about as distinct in its kit and purpose from Pugilist as it was from Archer).

But, so long as homogeneity is to be the only path forward from here out, then, sure. Or even just have Maiming and Striking be the same gear (both "Striking"), but inexplicably look different on Dragoon, and Aiming and Scouting both merge into "Scouting"* but have Machinist, Bard, and maybe Dancer* look different (per old Aiming armor instead).

* All are Scout-y, but not all look like they aim. And Dancer as often seems to be better fit to the current sleeker/lighter/unencumbered Scouting aesthetic than the current Aiming aesthetic.

I just hate that despite previously significant differences, all three melee sub-roles are now treated as the same thing while the ranged sub-roles are not... and yet "melee" then is charged three times the amount of gear to deck out that role. All for the purposes of what now amounts only to gear bloat.
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4: Just copy other-game: you start with 1 charge. After X minutes of combat, you earn another charge. Healers and RDM/SMN keep their 'utility' as their res is not affected by the charge system, they can use as many as they like. The only real issue I foresee with a system like this is that in a situation like A4S, the healers would be first to be sacrificed to 'cheese' a mechanic, as the issue of 'well if we sac them we cant res' is gone, and they're the lowest damage. On the flipside, I guess that's technically possible now as SMN and RDM would just use their current res options to res the healers.

For balance, maybe the Phoenix Feather res always resses people straight into Brink of Death (the 50% penalty)? You would want to have a proper res if possible, but if worst comes to worst, you burn this instead.

I feel like the charge limitations would probably be plenty. (If we're blowing past Swift-Rezzes so early on as to be quite worried about the charge limitations on the speed/efficiency of PD rezzes, Brink of Death seems practically a given anyways.)

[Post]

1: I want SE to do the obvious, and merge Grade 1-5 into a new 'Grade 1', and then subtract 4 from each current grade of materia...
...'High Materia' ...

2/3: I wish they'd just merge Scouting into Aiming, and Maiming into Striking..

Honestly, this game's never been about interesting gear decisions, but that's often been to its benefit. It's almost always been 'pick the thing with the most weapon damage/primary stat', and then 'the thing with the most crit.' They even got rid of Accuracy because it was too intrusive for their otherwise streamlined system. The main reason materia exists at all is because it was a holdover from 1.0, and since crafters and gatherers could make use of it they eventually decided to expand it to all gear (while also making sure they were easy to obtain) back in 3.2.

Materia gave some flexibility while Accuracy existed, but its biggest impacts now are to spread gil around, grant Direct Hit to healers and tanks who arbitrarily aren't allowed it, and trick poor new players that might think Tenacity and Piety matter (this is kind of the worst thing about any complex gearing system in an MMO: you can be 'wrong'). It probably won't be heavily iterated upon because it's streamlined to take a backseat to the actual focus of the battle system: great encounters, fun-to-play jobs (as sarcastic as that sounds in this thread).

The more gear and gear management they add to the game, the more laborious it is to enjoy swapping and trying new jobs, which is a major strength of FFXIV. Accuracy requirements were a barrier, and different desirable melds jobs within a group (WAR being the only tank hating Direct Hit for a long time; BLM's flirting with SpS while SMN and RDM despise it) can still be annoying. At least nowadays the main thing separating jobs is their weapon and credit where it's due, if there were a unique meld system for the weapon that'd be the perfect place to put it!

Ultimately, I always want them to make it easier to swap jobs. Anything they can do to support this is good imo, from merging more gearsets together, or streamlining materia further. I think more uniform rez availability to non-healers helps this as well, at least for someone that's swapping based on their group's composition.