A summary of healer issues

[Aravell]

I recall there being a massive outcry against the change to Mug/Trick, though that might be mostly because it was another 'make everything fit the 2min window' thing. I think NINs enjoyed their raidbuff being 1min, though that may also be a case of 'they enjoyed being meta for 'every raid tier since NIN was introduced', idk. Though you have to also remember that NIN did have utility in the past too, with Shadewalker and Smokescreen, Aggro manipulation tools. Aggro isn't exactly a thing now, but there can be room to give NIN some interesting thematic utility, like a buff to throw on tanks where the next X autoattacks are negated (they hit a shadowclone, or they do the log-substitute thing). I always felt like NIN was less 'direct' in it's damage thematically, rather working to sabotage the enemy, so maybe it's 'support' can be debuff themed, rather than 'buff ally' themed? Fair observation on MNK though

As for MCH, as funny as old Hypercharge was, it was also kinda just...there. It'd be like stapling a vuln onto Queen's Autoattacks. I feel like, as above, it'd be a better idea to just lean fully into MCH being, literally, 'the big guns' of P-Ranged and ramp their potencies up, with cast times to justify if needed. 900 might be too much, maybe 750 on AA/Drill/Chainsaw (since there's reassemble), and making Wildfire guaranteed to Crit/DirectHit (and therefore also able to scale off of Crit/Dhit increases like Battle Voice/Battle Litany)

There were 1 or 2 threads pushing back against the NIN changes, but they were drowned out by the 500 Kaiten threads because it happened at the same time, quite unfortunate, I was one of the people speaking out against the NIN changes. NIN as a saboteur would fit thematically, I agree, but I'm not sure how they can really implement it effectively and how they would balance non-offensive utility, also depending on the type of utility, it might step on healers' toes even more, especially if they decide to stack NIN with mitigation and other damage reduction debuffs.

Regarding MCH, the supportive aspects of old MCH did feel a bit tacked on, it felt like their vision was always to make MCH a hard-hitter, if castbars on most of their kit is the price, then so be it. On the bloat of potencies, they could very easily split it up, Drill hits twice (on impact and when it flies through), Chainsaw hits twice (2 saws) etc.

[Shurrikhan]

There were 1 or 2 threads pushing back against the NIN changes, but they were drowned out by the 500 Kaiten threads because it happened at the same time, quite unfortunate, I was one of the people speaking out against the NIN changes. NIN as a saboteur would fit thematically, I agree, but I'm not sure how they can really implement it effectively and how they would balance non-offensive utility, also depending on the type of utility, it might step on healers' toes even more, especially if they decide to stack NIN with mitigation and other damage reduction debuffs.

I would assume as a "saboteur", there'd be little stepping on healer toes that isn't already done by MCH and any tank, even a heal-less one (via Reprisal, old Storm's Path/Halone/HW Delirium, etc.) -- i.e., via suppressive mitigation.

That said, the non-offensive utility is a worthwhile question, not just because of how wide a spread its value might take but also... how we could even create a non-offensive means these days for that value that wouldn't seem gimmicky and/or done to death?


Aside: Personally, I thought the best base for NIN was probably HW's with a more fluid mudra system (gamewide change to no longer add roundtrip ping to one's uptime costs per action), maybe a removal of bunny (since it's basically just ping / packet-loss punishment), Dream Within a Dream and Shadewalker revitalized to actually make a full and interesting use of those thematic levers/button-spaces (in whatever new functions they might take), and maybe Armor Crush reworked or scrapped (since it just made bloat out of Huton itself... or make Gust Blade a brief Haste buff that Dancing Blade cements into a much longer buff up to 60s max while Huton is replaced by a situationally powerful Bunshin while Armor Crush becomes your modern vuln debuff equivalent and Aeolian remains the nuke, etc.).

[Absurdity]

I wouldn't increase MCH potency but lower the potency of everyone else, we could use less potency bloat in general.

[ForsakenRoe]

On the bloat of potencies, they could very easily split it up, Drill hits twice (on impact and when it flies through), Chainsaw hits twice (2 saws) etc.

There was a video I saw once, someone had used Aftereffects or other video editing software to demonstrate the concept of 'what if damage numbers were 'segmented', that is, staggered into multiple hits. Rather than Carve and Spit being displayed as one hit of 450p, it'd be 3 hits of 150 each with the total shown bigger at the end. Drill would be a number that gets bigger and bigger until hitting about 50% of it's actual damage, then the 'real' damage appears when the drill 'breaks through' the enemy. It'd all be clientside display shenanigans if it were an actual thing, and could presumably be turned off by the player if they don't want it, but I think it'd be nice to have the option, so that skills that clearly hit several times could 'feel' like they are hitting several times. It's always slightly odd to me, to see something like Bootshine with it's 4 punches deal only 1 instance of damage, even if it's only a visual thing having it 'appear to hit 4 times' would be nice.

Though some skills could stand to be multiple hits just to lower the crit variance, like make Double Down 2 hits of 600 instead of 1 hit of 1200, for example. Or make Akh Morn be, well, actually Akh Morn, a multi hitting attack. Make it 3 hits instead of just 1, as it is atm it should be called Morn Afah, or better yet (maybe), just fold Wyrmwave's damage into Akh Morn, and make it so summoning Bahamut causes him to just Akh Morn the targetted enemy for 15 seconds. Probably make him only throw out one blast every 2s, plus 3s for summoning animation, so 6 blasts total, y'know, for 'balance'

I wouldn't increase MCH potency but lower the potency of everyone else, we could use less potency bloat in general.

Probably a good idea, but the perfect time for it was with the statsquish and they didn't take the opportunity then, instead they seem to have doubled down on it at that time, so we're probably going to be looking at 1000+ potencies for another couple of years

[Aravell]

Though some skills could stand to be multiple hits just to lower the crit variance

The funniest part is that they already have the technology to do this, they're just stuck on the big potency burst hit design. Look at this:



And then they do this:



Note how they both say "threefold attack".

It would immediately solve so many issues with the big crit swings that are causing issues at the moment if they just used the same damage splitting they used on Dream within a Dream. Just look at the animations on some skills, Double Down could be a 3-hitter (Swing, swing, boom), Hyosho Ranryu could be a 2-hit, it would be the quickest way to solve potency bloat until they ever decide to scrap the 2 minute burst meta.

That said, the non-offensive utility is a worthwhile question, not just because of how wide a spread its value might take but also... how we could even create a non-offensive means these days for that value that wouldn't seem gimmicky and/or done to death?

I'm more concerned about the weighting they use to balance non-offensive utility in relation to damage potential. RDM is currently suffering really hard from this weighting, meanwhile, MNK and RPR have non-offensive utility that don't even seem to be weighted at all, so NIN will probably also have no weighting in the end. Some decisions the dev team makes is really baffling to me tbh.

[GrimGale]

Note how they both say "threefold attack".

It would immediately solve so many issues with the big crit swings that are causing issues at the moment if they just used the same damage splitting they used on Dream within a Dream. Just look at the animations on some skills, Double Down could be a 3-hitter (Swing, swing, boom), Hyosho Ranryu could be a 2-hit, it would be the quickest way to solve potency bloat until they ever decide to scrap the 2 minute burst meta.

https://youtu.be/8u7gXIOfcWQ

Shhh don't tell anyone about this.

[Shurrikhan]

https://youtu.be/8u7gXIOfcWQ

Shhh don't tell anyone about this.

I'd probably keep the single display number, personally, but damage segmentation under the hood at least would go a long way to averaging out crits, so long as guaranteed crit abilities still applied to each hit within the affected action.

The only --very minor / presently irrelevant-- downside to that would be that Crit would increasingly act as just Determination in what few potential contexts chance burst damage could matter in the future (e.g., in PvP and on enemies with low TTK HP thresholds, like T4 Knights' physical absorb breaking causing them to be stunned).

[ty_taurus]

I'd probably keep the single display number, personally, but damage segmentation under the hood at least would go a long way to averaging out crits, so long as guaranteed crit abilities still applied to each hit within the affected action.

The only --very minor / presently irrelevant-- downside to that would be that Crit would increasingly act as just Determination in what few potential contexts chance burst damage could matter in the future (e.g., in PvP and on enemies with low TTK HP thresholds, like T4 Knights' physical absorb breaking causing them to be stunned).

You could streamline segmented damage across all jobs, then create a UI option that shows you total damage or individual damage. Each hit would still appear in the log.

Tales of Graces displayed the total damage you dealt in a combo, for example, which could be a UI option for multihit attacks in Final Fantasy. This is a bit of a silly example of Tales of Grace's UI display, but it was a better quality option than the alternative.

[Shurrikhan]

You could streamline segmented damage across all jobs, then create a UI option that shows you total damage or individual damage. Each hit would still appear in the log.

Tales of Graces displayed the total damage you dealt in a combo, for example, which could be a UI option for multihit attacks in Final Fantasy. This is a bit of a silly example of Tales of Grace's UI display, but it was a better quality option than the alternative.

I feel it should be an option, either way, of course (individual hits only, cumulative, individual + sum, sum only).

I just meant that even if, for whatever reason, everyone preferred for things to look as they do now (sum only), that wouldn't prevent the reduced RNG deviation as could be had by divying up the potency of multi-hit attacks across its individual hits.



Aside/Tangent:

Personally, I don't really care one way or the other that Crits/DHits can make such a difference to a given parse, and would think that it would be plenty just to remove the bloat that is Direct Hits, return Crits to just a flat 50% damage bonus except on Guaranteed Crits (where it'd then act like Determination). And maybe also make Speed more competitive so that we still have 3 real options, and perhaps DHit, Tenacity, and Piety alike with some manner of Mastery buff (e.g., MNK's "Flowing Strikes' benefit to your damage is X% more effective and now also grants mitigation equal to X% of its damage buff").

For me, though, the largest benefit of having multi-hit skills act as multiple hits is that it seeds the ground for further potential mechanics that may be interesting in turn.

[Videra]

Well, this is my last hurrah here, for now. I'm not here to contribute to the discussion, but just to say my farewells. Take care, healer mains - I hope we can be a fun role again in the future. Adieu!