A summary of healer issues

[ForsakenRoe]

Like, don't fix what isn't broken and all that, but the 8.4 raid will give item level 920 (assuming no squish). The fact I can tell you that number, with about 3 mins of simple math, being able to predict a raid tier's item level reward four years from now, is probably a telling sign that they're sticking too close to the 'established pattern'

Next expansion we'll get grade 11 and 12 materia, and they'll be functionally identical to 9/10. Alternatively, we could have something like High Materia, which you can only have ONE of per job, and you can only meld it on the weapon (they're unique to each job, unless you want to remeld your chest every time you want to omnitank). And these High Materia (make like 4 of them per job) have unique effects on your skills, ala traits. Nothing too crazy, just 'the heal from Sheltron is increased by 150 (total goes from 1000 to 1600)', or 'the Gauge cost of Cover is reduced to 0', or 'the base% mitigation of Intervention is increased from 10% to 15%', idk. I could probably come up with 3 or 4 of these for each job, and keep them to being 'not throughput focused' because if one of them is 'X move does more damage' then that one's the insta-locked one, no deviation allowed. With them all being small utility/defensive/etc stuff as above, then the choice becomes 'do you want these effects, or do you want 36 more crit', and some people probably would want the tiny crit boost, but a lot of people would go for a unique effect, because it might allow for better DPS gains than that crit boost. Like, maybe the ones for SGE can be 'Kardia heals are reduced from 170 to 100, but each Kardia proc triggered now applies a Haima layer for 100 potency (stacks up to 5)', 'Kardia's potency increased from 170 to 250', and 'Pneuma has 2 charges'. Pretty bad ideas I know, I'm not really putting thought into them, but they'd give you choices between stabilizing the tank a bit more (good for a big selfheal machine like a WAR), adding more flat throughput to Kardia (synergises with DRK more, also has synergy with Soteria/Krasis), or more access to burst healing on demand with a second Pneuma charge (good for those enrage damage-spams like Curtain Call). Actually, instead of Materia, it'd work better as a talent tree on the soul crystal that we can respec at will (outside of combat), but that'd take more engine work

TLDR they play it so unbelievably safe it loops around to being a risky strategy again, and it might be starting to show

[ty_taurus]

Like, don't fix what isn't broken and all that, but the 8.4 raid will give item level 920 (assuming no squish). The fact I can tell you that number, with about 3 mins of simple math, being able to predict a raid tier's item level reward four years from now, is probably a telling sign that they're sticking too close to the 'established pattern'

Next expansion we'll get grade 11 and 12 materia, and they'll be functionally identical to 9/10. Alternatively, we could have something like High Materia, which you can only have ONE of per job, and you can only meld it on the weapon (they're unique to each job, unless you want to remeld your chest every time you want to omnitank). And these High Materia (make like 4 of them per job) have unique effects on your skills, ala traits. Nothing too crazy, just 'the heal from Sheltron is increased by 150 (total goes from 1000 to 1600)', or 'the Gauge cost of Cover is reduced to 0', or 'the base% mitigation of Intervention is increased from 10% to 15%', idk. I could probably come up with 3 or 4 of these for each job, and keep them to being 'not throughput focused' because if one of them is 'X move does more damage' then that one's the insta-locked one, no deviation allowed. With them all being small utility/defensive/etc stuff as above, then the choice becomes 'do you want these effects, or do you want 36 more crit', and some people probably would want the tiny crit boost, but a lot of people would go for a unique effect, because it might allow for better DPS gains than that crit boost. Like, maybe the ones for SGE can be 'Kardia heals are reduced from 170 to 100, but each Kardia proc triggered now applies a Haima layer for 100 potency (stacks up to 5)', 'Kardia's potency increased from 170 to 250', and 'Pneuma has 2 charges'. Pretty bad ideas I know, I'm not really putting thought into them, but they'd give you choices between stabilizing the tank a bit more (good for a big selfheal machine like a WAR), adding more flat throughput to Kardia (synergises with DRK more, also has synergy with Soteria/Krasis), or more access to burst healing on demand with a second Pneuma charge (good for those enrage damage-spams like Curtain Call). Actually, instead of Materia, it'd work better as a talent tree on the soul crystal that we can respec at will (outside of combat), but that'd take more engine work

TLDR they play it so unbelievably safe it loops around to being a risky strategy again, and it might be starting to show

You know, I was actually thinking about something similar with Genshin's constellations in mind. In Genshin, getting duplicates of a character unlocks new perks that are generally flat upgrades to your character.

Here are some images of what that looks like:

What if instead of getting 1 new action or trait at levels 92, 94, 96, 98, and 100, you instead have something like this, but instead of 1 option, each level is associated with two similar perks, and you have to choose only 1 of them. The menu would look kinda like this:


Each side would have a theme. For White Mage, this could be the Astral path and the Umbral path. The top two icons linked are what you get at level 92. So let's say those effects look like this:

Umbral Path: Mhachi Light
Increases the potency of Glare III by 10, increases the potency of Afflatus Misery by 40, and increases the potency of Dia's damage over time effect by 5.

Astral Path: Floral Force
Decreases the potency of Glare III by 10 and the potency of Afflatus Misery by 40, and unlocks the use of the action Tempest.

Tempest: Deals unaspected damage to the target and all enemies nearby it with a potency of 510 for the first enemy and 40% less for all remaining enemies. Each time a lily is added to the Healing Gauge, enables 1 use of Tempest.

The Umbral Path is easier and offers a smaller damage variance based on performance while the Astral Path creates more room to optimize and thus has a slightly higher high but also a lower low, and your performance makes a bigger difference. The difference in these two options, if my math is correct, is the Umbral Path is a potential gain of 340 damage per minute if every GCD is used on damage or lily heals while the Astral path is a gain of 360 per minute if every GCD is used on damage or lily heals, but also gets a little more out of buffs this way as well. The difference is small, but the player has an easier path or a harder path. This kind of system would hopefully allow the design team to give healers a more aggressive route without worrying about scaring away the novice healers since they can just take the easy road.

[AnotherPerson]

Alternatively, we could have something like High Materia, which you can only have ONE of per job, and you can only meld it on the weapon (they're unique to each job, unless you want to remeld your chest every time you want to omnitank). And these High Materia (make like 4 of them per job) have unique effects on your skills, ala traits. Nothing too crazy, just 'the heal from Sheltron is increased by 150 (total goes from 1000 to 1600)', or 'the Gauge cost of Cover is reduced to 0', or 'the base% mitigation of Intervention is increased from 10% to 15%', idk. I could probably come up with 3 or 4 of these for each job, and keep them to being 'not throughput focused' because if one of them is 'X move does more damage' then that one's the insta-locked one, no deviation allowed. With them all being small utility/defensive/etc stuff as above, then the choice becomes 'do you want these effects, or do you want 36 more crit', and some people probably would want the tiny crit boost, but a lot of people would go for a unique effect, because it might allow for better DPS gains than that crit boost. Like, maybe the ones for SGE can be 'Kardia heals are reduced from 170 to 100, but each Kardia proc triggered now applies a Haima layer for 100 potency (stacks up to 5)', 'Kardia's potency increased from 170 to 250', and 'Pneuma has 2 charges'.

Honestly, if they gave us variant build paths, that would be so much cooler and fun. It will also mean they have to put looser fight designs - which actually would not be so bad in terms of giving players unique ways to approach the fight with the way they want to play, but make a headache in design. ... Not that it's much of an issue at any rate with how stagnant job design has been as of late all having to fit into a 120 second mold and barely any variation to gameplay... Bozja and Eureka has actually shown stuff like deep essences can work, and materia can be a more simpler version of this.

I would not be against that if we can get some whacky combinations going and open up new possibilities. I figure if that's the route they want to take, effect materia slots can be more varied, but have to be weaker in comparison to not deviate too much from existing paths to make them all work. All materia will also be incompatible at lower levels, which can prove to be a bigger headache when doing lower level content synced down at some future expansion unless materia effects are also synced down as well.