A summary of healer issues

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

Snip

I was a DPS Bard main in that game's private server. Their core mechanics at the time I quitted was still clear as day.

DPS kits consist of:

1. Glaroilfisis equivalent, instant cast with low cooldown. This is what they spam to murder everything in addition to keep a -def% down at all time.
2. DoT nuke: useless, as is any DoT in that game (it scales very poorly as the game grows older).
3. Instant AoE stun around caster. Semi spammable making them an exceptional monster at stun locking packs of dangerous mobs in nightmare contents. No other jobs that is better for this duty other than Bards.
4. Casted frontal AoE (Spec locked): moderate damage. When fully charged they place a crucial debuff for a short period of time. Doesn't see much use anywhere but nightmare content.

Each of these spells generate 1 stack of buff to next healing spell potency & the effective range. In FFXIV the equivalent buff would be somewhere like 10% healing magic potency & 3 extra yalm every stack. Stacks up to 3 times. This means the single target heal spell can turn into an AoE healing spell. One use of healing spell consumes one of these stacks.

While the healing kits consist of:

1. Single target strong heal. Moderate cast time, almost guaranteed to heal anybody to full. Also spammable. With the right spec this also increases whoever affected with extra damage buff.
2. Instant moderate heal with small cooldown. With correct build this will also heal just enough to near full health without sacrificing DPS. With spec buff they gain a percentage based damage mitigation for next few attacks. Super handy in nightmare contents.
3. Slowcast partywide moderate heal. This is a Medica equivalent. Very low in priority for their impracticality, weak potency, and weak spec buff which reduce damage taken insignificantly. This is usually what gets somebody killed for their many downsides.
4. Instant strong partywide heal (Spec locked): this comes with a buff that grants a short window of death immunity one time. To counter-balance this they have a very long cooldown.
5. Partywide regen. Our equivalent of SCH's whispering dawn but with attached damage buff that stacks up to 3 times. It's free damage, they are required to keep this up all the time.

For each healing spell used, they generate 1 stack that buffs their next DPS spell. In FFXIV the equivalent buff would be an increase to damage dealt by approximately 10% each stack. Stacks up to 3 times. Like their counterpart, 1 use of DPS spell will consume 1 stack.

There are no MP in the game so mana management is nihil. Timing the usage of those mitigations, keeping up free damage buffs, and/or death immunity are best thing I could think of any 'management' from the gameplay.

The game however includes secondary job into the mix so that game has far more customability compared to... here, where everything are streamlined. By the time I quitted the game, DPS was a king. Pure healers builds are 99.99% deadweight, period. DPS Bards are tanky enough to survive extended pressure in the absence of dedicated tanks (but obviously cannot be a main tank). They deal respectable amount of damage and can sometimes snatch aggro away, or even keep it against other jobs for a while. Subjobs were never picked to increase the Bard's healing capabilities, because they never needed anymore than what they have. Instead everything are funneled to either boost overall party's damage or their own. The main joy of Bards mainly comes from nightmare contents (that would be FFXIV's equivalent of Unreal/EX/Savage contents). The difference is, number of time they press their heal buttons are about the same as they spam their main dps button due to how much frequent the damage spikes are. There's also that kind of 'pressure' of something's bound to go wrong real quick if I stop upkeeping the damage mitigation.

Unbalanced? Definitely. More depth? Absolutely.