A summary of healer issues

[Renathras]

So, how little downtime do you think healers can have while ensuring that content is clearable by its intended audience

A LOT LESS THAN NOW.

Need I point you back to Sabezy's timeline of the Byregot fight's damage profile? The content has the same intended audience as the Halone fight, which already has something like 2x as much damage and is still clearable.

There will be people bored no matter what, but for people playing content designed for their skill level, the answer is a lot less. Ex 5 is an Extreme yet there's a point in that fight where there's something like 45-60 seconds with no unavoidable damage. You think that's a good idea for fight design?

The across the board argument is the problem. You would need a full on DPS role (not "DPS at home") rotation before many people would not be bored running casual content. That's always going to be true. The answer is simply to give people that are more hardcore more hardcore content to run instead for their farms. Even WoW has normal dungeons and LFR difficulty raids, and did even back when healers were designed to not use DPS abilities in groups (high Mana costs making them prohibitive).

Healing requirements in casual content could be 2x or even 3x what they are now and still be survivable with literal Medica 2 spam.

Overheal Weed

Lol, never heard this before, but I love it.

When a raidwide happened, and it's safe to just wait for Rapture/Assize, but your cohealer is spamming AHelios/Medica II (heal over time? what's that?), or the melees are turning on Bloodbath..... I'm not a "but did you die?" type healer but some people just REALLY can't stand an HP bar being below 90%

To be fair, most avoidable damage does something like 70-90% (depending on role) of a health bar's worth of damage, meaning not having people at 100% means any mistake is death. It also means that unavoidable raidwides (which do 50-80% depending on role and mitigation used) are also death if not healed. You have all the way until the next attack to get people to 100%, but if people aren't 100% (or close-ish to it) when that attack comes, people die. It's the way damage is stupidly tuned now to be infrequent but very very high instead of frequent but smaller in magnitude.

EDIT:

The internet either ate part of my post...

Fair. My bad. I was thinking of / looking at the earlier version without the active modifier cast. This, for the single button gained, gives up a bit of responsiveness and weave space, but... that's nothing awful. Would probably keep the current version over that since we'd only be saving one button for that loss, but it's fine.

My apologies, Ren.

I...thank you.

Honestly, if we could free up 2 buttons, we could add Aero 3 and I'd be more or less content. One for Afflatus, one for Cure 1 -> either Cure 2 (lower MP so that WHM actually is "the efficient healer" again) or Esuna (as discussed before). Then have Aero 3 in there, upgrade to Banish if we need to keep the holy element theme for whatever reason, done. Everyone wins. I think.

Not saying that's the end-all-be-all, but...seems like an idea that could be worthwhile, anyway.

EDIT2:

I had it the other way round: After using a specific new GCD heal tool (costs 50 of a new gauge),...

Please no.

Not every Job needs an Oath/Beast/Blood/Dragon/Ninki/Kinki/Shroud/Battery/WH-BLMana/Faerie Gauge that goes from 0-100 and has a spender that costs 50. Please no. We need the ones that currently exist to have interesting uses before we add more. Beast/Blood/Dragoon/Ninki/and mostly Kinki already are almost identical (blow during burst, don't overcap, spenders cost 50 each) to the point they're extremely samey. Let's not get more of that. Find ways to make Faerie Gauge legitimately useful first.

.

A simple solution, if we REALLY want this, though:

Filler spam spell: Earth
DoT: Aero
AOE: Water

Under Presence of Mind, empowers all your damage spells:

Filler: Glare
DoT: Dia
AOE: Holy

...granted, this doesn't have a spot for Aero 3, but it is what it is. Make PoM into Requiescat/Manification where it uprates your spells to more advanced forms. That would already be more unique than a gauge with 50 point spenders.

[AmiableApkallu]

A LOT LESS THAN NOW.

Need I point you back to Sabezy's timeline of the Byregot fight's damage profile? The content has the same intended audience as the Halone fight, which already has something like 2x as much damage and is still clearable.

Read my linked comment. I was asking for answers to the questions posed therein. Or, alternatively, pushback against my own answers to my own questions. Because we can all handwave and go "A LOT", "2x", "3x"…, but at the end of the day, when I plugged in what I thought were reasonable answers (at least at the time), I cranked up required healing to a measly 30 seconds out of every 60. Which is probably approaching a literal order of magnitude more required GCDs spent healing than what "casual" content requires now.

There will be people bored no matter what, but for people playing content designed for their skill level, the answer is a lot less. Ex 5 is an Extreme yet there's a point in that fight where there's something like 45-60 seconds with no unavoidable damage. You think that's a good idea for fight design?

I never said Byregot or EX5 were good fight designs?

I literally linked to a comment proposing more outgoing damage in agreement. My own comment that I linked is literally a framework for thinking about how high we can crank up required healing.

A DPS kit that needs to fill only 5 seconds out every 60 can look very different from a kit that needs to fill 55 out of 60. Is it not interesting to think about where on that spectrum we should be designing for?

The across the board argument is the problem. You would need a full on DPS role (not "DPS at home") rotation before many people would not be bored running casual content. That's always going to be true. The answer is simply to give people that are more hardcore more hardcore content to run instead for their farms.

You'll have to forgive me if I don't hold my breath waiting for the day SE delivers on that vision.

[Supersnow845]

https://reddit.com/r/ffxiv/s/OuogcTQXoU

Just for a bit of fun here is mainsub discussing healers, the most GCBTW of the the major Internet communication sites for 14 and even they are 80/20 or so split on healers being trash

If you have lost mainsub wheye are you getting your ideas that anyone likes healers anymore

[Aravell]

Generally, because of the sheer volume of ogcd heals, if you're forced to use a gcd that isnt a required one, then it means you and/or your co healer messed something up since in 95% of content, that's all you need to an extent even taking into account dps standing in the bad or someone getting killed (eg zoning out when byregot moves his arena and falling)

The one exception here is whm for blood lily.

I know why GCD healing is bad. What I want to know is why the people who don't care about chasing numbers on the funny number website feel bad for pressing their GCD heals. If you're not chasing numbers, why would you be upset at losing numbers? That's what I don't get.

[Azurarok]

It still feels bad to do something when there's an obviously better thing to use that doesn't even remotely require using the funny number tool to know that it is.

Healer damage contribution isn't large, but it's also not so low that every extra hit can still make a difference in how fast you can clear content.

And personally, I'd rather skip limit cuts or Nald'thal's scales

[Shurrikhan]

While this is also possible (its the same idea just roles reversed), I feel like it's harder to make the holy/light thematics look more 'powerful', given they've gone with this airy 'graceful' kind of vibe for the spells we have already.

That seems like an issue of insufficient shockwaves. /shrug

Glare doesn't really have 'punch' like the earth spells did, it's more 'wispy'. Same with Dia vs Aero, and especially Aero3.

Oh, it is, for sure. I just don't think that's the limit of the aesthetic. And even then, you're going to run into some conflict. First, if the previous spam was Stone IV, for instance, and you replace it with just 'wispy' it's still going to sound like it should hit for less. More importantly, though, why the heck would Stone IV be a spammed animation. It looks like it should punt enemies skyward via sudden creation of earthen pillars capable of breaking line of sight! At which point, you're really comparing Glare to whatever seems like it should be the filler, if only to allow the cooler animations to have effects befitting their appearance.

Though, all this is tangential; I'd be fine with either take. I just feel like the HolyLight theme could play on some established thematic aspects that have been budding from the start, especially if used as a sort of upgraded state that's temporarily unlocked via buffs.

[Recon1o6]

snip

With stone at least, I think we had too big of a gap between stone 2 and stone 3. We went from small ground spike to massive floating stellation of rock. Stone 4, though visually less impressive had the sound effect of that gorgeous crunch which made it feel more powerful.
So its not just visually, its sfx and as you say camera shake.

This is why glare 1 and glare 3 feel like glare 1 and glare 1.5, they are just too visually piddly, their sound is dainty and there's no tertiary attributes to make them feel stronger than rock pillar go crunch
Holy is an example of a strong light spell. I'm not just talking about the flashbang here, but the rest of it. It has an audible and visually notable charge up. Its a spell so strong it charges up after its cast. Then there's the sound when it blasts. At least for holy. Idk about holy 3 because I haven't touched whm since I quit none blu healing and I play with party fx limited.

I know why GCD healing is bad. What I want to know is why the people who don't care about chasing numbers on the funny number website feel bad for pressing their GCD heals. If you're not chasing numbers, why would you be upset at losing numbers? That's what I don't get.

As I just said. It means you've messed up your healing (abilities) and you're playing rubbish. Or your party is that bad. That's nothing to do with parse, that's "I've been wasting my good healing, now I got to use my crap stuff".
I'm a good healer, I should be dismissing the dps' booboos with a emet selch wave of my hand between my glare/malefic/broil/dosis, that feels good. Im such a good healer I don't need to cast to heal. If I wanted to cast a heal, then I have to take a big chunk of my mana out and that sucks because I can't rez the idiotic dps when they all ignored me and got cleaved to death.
My mana is valuable. I use that to give myself carpal tunnel or to pick up the poor bastard who got clipped by the tankbuster.

[Mimilu]

I'd take something like having Stone as the standard attack, then using a non-lily GCD heal gives a buff that turns your next Stone into Glare (Banish on earlier levels?).

Then bring back AeroIII as an AoE DoT while keeping Dia the main DoT maybe?

Would also like Water somewhere too though

I had an idea that might work like this: Have WHM's regular DPS tools be elemental spells, then bring back Cleric Stance as a Eukrasia button that changes them into light spells with debuffs.
An example of how they could work is:
-Stone for single target turns into Glare under Cleric Stance which decreases the target's attack by 5% for 10 seconds. (I thought about having it have a slow effect but then it wouldn't see any use against bosses/raids)
-Aero for DoT, which turns into Dia under Cleric Stance which places a Dia DoT on all enemies with in 5-yalms of the target. (This would work as Aero III essentially)
-Water for AoE, which turns into Holy under Cleric Stance, damaging and Stunning nearby enemies.

They would all still do damage but not as much as their elemental counterpart.
I think this would also fit with the game's lore because light is the element of stagnation and stasis. （*´▽｀*）

[ForsakenRoe]

There will be people bored no matter what, but for people playing content designed for their skill level, the answer is a lot less. Ex 5 is an Extreme yet there's a point in that fight where there's something like 45-60 seconds with no unavoidable damage. You think that's a good idea for fight design?

The across the board argument is the problem. You would need a full on DPS role (not "DPS at home") rotation before many people would not be bored running casual content. That's always going to be true. The answer is simply to give people that are more hardcore more hardcore content to run instead for their farms. Even WoW has normal dungeons and LFR difficulty raids, and did even back when healers were designed to not use DPS abilities in groups (high Mana costs making them prohibitive).

Not every Job needs an Oath/Beast/Blood/Dragon/Ninki/Kinki/Shroud/Battery/WH-BLMana/Faerie Gauge that goes from 0-100 and has a spender that costs 50. Please no. We need the ones that currently exist to have interesting uses before we add more. Beast/Blood/Dragoon/Ninki/and mostly Kinki already are almost identical (blow during burst, don't overcap, spenders cost 50 each) to the point they're extremely samey. Let's not get more of that. Find ways to make Faerie Gauge legitimately useful first.

No, I don't think having such massive gaps in unavoidable damage is necessarily a good thing for fight design, but consider that it's not because the boss is doing nothing, he's doing multiple instances of avoidable damage. Dodging those avoidable attacks feels good because 'I'm helping the healer by not taking this damage, so they don't have to worry about saving me from death constantly'. The ratio of avoidable/unavoidable damage might need some work, but just making there be more 'unavoidable damage' might actually be a worse feeling overall. Imagine every 5 seconds, Golbez stomps his foot and a shockwave does 10k damage to everyone. It's 'unavoidable damage', it eventually stacks up, it gets to the point where it's a threat in combination with an avoidable mechanic (eg it drops people low enough that failing to dodge the halfroom slice would kill), but it sure as hell isn't going to be creating 'interesting gameplay'.

Again you claim people like me would need DPS-Adjacent levels of complexity, despite all the times to the contrary. Oh well. As for the 'solution' here, lmao, simply. 'Instead of the dev time of giving more hardcore players an extra section of the job kit to optimize (something that takes dev time for expansion launch and, if well balanced, can be left alone for the whole expansion), we should instead be giving them more content, that takes more dev time from the whole team, and requires that time every patch because players can eat through content faster than devs can cook it up'. Why didn't any of us think of that? If you mean that there should be more 'midcore' content to act as a bridge into Savage since one EX trial every 4 months isn't cutting it, yeh agreed but that's not the point here.

For gauges, yes it sucks that certain gauges have one use and exactly one use. But that's SE's fault for not capitalizing on them more. Beast is a good example. It used to be used for Upheaval and Overpower, but some people who were not good at WAR complained so hard that 'it sucks to use the gauge for the gapcloser also it's a damage loss waaah' that now we have to spam 3 of them in raidbuffs and the gauge is now only used on FC. WHM having a 0-100 gauge barely even counts as an issue IMO, because it's current gauge is so hollow as it is. Functionally, you could just have Solace say 'has 3 charges, 20s recharge time, shares a CD with Rapture' and vice versa, and its the same thing, just with a pretty flower picture to show it. Adding an extra gauge would take a bit of dev time, art team has to draw a pretty version etc, but it opens doors to actually have more interesting things. An AOE heal is the suggestion, yes, but there's other things that could be added to also spend gauge on. Maybe shields, maybe a more powerful regen effect, maybe mitigations. Also, you know that the Fairy gauge is a second gauge on SCH right? We have Aetherflow gauge too. So it's not like there's zero precedent for adding a second gauge element to a healer. And yes, I would like to see Fairy gauge get more uses. But the current lack of uses of that gauge, doesn't immediately lock us out from other things on an entirely separate class, especially one who's only gauge can be turned off entirely and still play almost identically.

Also, while Beast and Blood are very similar (because DRK became WAR2 after all), Ninki had previously a cost of 80 iirc for TCJ (now removed), Kenki used to have Kaiten at 20 Seigan at 15 Guren at 50. Two are removed, and one's been reduced to 25, equal to Shinten. Dragoon's gauge doesn't even 'spend' anything, it displays a timer. But basically you're asking for Stormblood back

[ForsakenRoe]

sorry if this is a doublepost, I'm sure we can appreciate why

Though, all this is tangential; I'd be fine with either take. I just feel like the HolyLight theme could play on some established thematic aspects that have been budding from the start, especially if used as a sort of upgraded state that's temporarily unlocked via buffs.

Yes, there's ways to make light look cooler. Like, Chrono Trigger's got Luminaire and that is very visually spectacular, as an example. I get the feeling that swapping from 'light is the spammable' back to 'elements are the spammable, light is now the empowered version' would be more jarring than to just add elemental finishers at earlier levels that don't upgrade to light, and have light remain as the spams, so we level up from elements/big elements, to light/big elements.

As I put in another thread in general, the animations would be suitably flashy, specifically because they're so gated behind time/resource. Stone4 was a bit over the top in VFX compared to how often it's spammable, but I figured it was to mirror the VFX of things like Blizzard4 and Fire4 on it's foil, BLM. But I'll relink my thinking for the animations here since it's a more suitable location for them:

I've been thinking about what animations the player would do for a theoretical Quake, Tornado and Flood to make them 'feel powerful', and what would get people excited if they saw them in a job action trailer. So far my thinking is something like:

Quake: Raise left hand to sky during cast time, earth energy/aether swirling around fist. Upon cast completion, jump, punch floor, rocks/faultlines shoot out toward enemy, giant spikes of earth erupt from the ground and then explode into fragments. An example of what I'm imagining is the first attack of everyone's favorite fictional member of the US political system, Senator Armstrong. The big final 'spike' at the end can reuse the Dominion spikes in P8S, though I wouldn't object to a 'Blade of Valor' style one where many small ones appear first, then one massive one

Tornado: There's plenty of wind attack animations to reuse throughout the game, pick any that look like they are powerful enough to be worthy of the mantle of 'the most powerful of Wind Magicks'. Or recolor Tail Screw, or Charybdis. For player animation, just reuse Aero 3 (the cane spin), since Aero 3 was also a wind attack it stands to reason

Flood: Hand outstretched as if offering something to another, with water aether in palm. Massive sphere of water lands on enemy. Draw hand towards chest, crushing water aether in hand. At the same time as the 'crush', the big water droplet on the enemy condenses in under the pressure, then explodes violently in several directions because the pressure within got so high. Example of the player's movement would be, again an MGR reference, when you 'absorb electrolytes' (specifically the version at the timestamp, not the midair variants etc)

I reckon if those were shown in a job action trailer people'd be losing their mind like it's a Super Smash Bros character reveal. Well, some people at least

Im such a good healer I don't need to cast to heal.

This is an interesting aspect to consider. If we saw two SGEs in a trailer, one who's working overtime to heal people, and one who's using their nouliths in multiple ways, eg one is shooting enemies, one is drawing shields on someone as they charge in, and two are helping heal people in the back who are injured, multitasking all four at the same time... Which of the two SGEs is the 'better healer'? I'd argue it's the one that is keeping up with the healing, while also going on the offensive to prevent any more healing from being needed. Alternatively, healer 1 is focused on healing allies in a battle, healer 2 walks through the battlefield, healing allies as they pass automatically (the nouliths do it for them) but they don't stop walking, or look down or anything, they just keep walking. Healer 2 would probably 'look cooler' in a trailer setting, because they're clearly a very capable healer if they don't even need to focus on the task of healing, yet are able to perform it regardless. Imagine the WOL's a SGE in a trailer, and no matter how many attacks are thrown by how many enemies, the nouliths keep drawing shields, sniping at straggling enemies on the sides etc, and the WOL isn't even fazed by the attacks, nothing makes him flinch or slow down or anything. Everyone watching would be like 'wow he's so cool'