A summary of healer issues

[ForsakenRoe]

Rather I quickly learned that the bean counters in finance were the true development leads, not any of us on the top floor.

Just had the brainworm of 'what if Bean Counter was a job in FFXIV'. You'd have a bunch of skills with properties (like BLU), elements, additional effects, etc. You have two phases, one where you press a button to cast a simple GCD to restore your MP to full. The other is the main meat of the job though, you press the button to start the phase, and the job gauge gives you your orders: do this element, or this status effect, or both, etc. So you have to 'mix' a combo of attacks, like a NIN mudra of sorts, that fulfills the conditions. The more conditions met, the more damage that attack does. But every Bean Counter knows, you can't go over budget, so your total can go as close to 10000mp cost as you like, but if you go over, the project is considered a failure due to financial mismanagement (and the higher ups are angry)

maybe next April Fools eh

[ty_taurus]

You know, originally I thought it would be hard to conceptualize more different types of attacks for Sage that aren't just more of the same lasers over and over, but scrolling through that FF8 video, there are really great animations where you could take inspiration...

Some Examples:
Link A
Link B
Link C
Link D (Similiar to the other example of a water beam)
Link E

Just to name a few. There's also quite a few different takes on vibration attacks as well. This one's nice and flashy, and the sound effects in this one are kinda fun.

[ForsakenRoe]

You know, originally I thought it would be hard to conceptualize more different types of attacks for Sage that aren't just more of the same lasers over and over, but scrolling through that FF8 video, there are really great animations where you could take inspiration...

Was just on a bit of a tokusatsu memory lane, and had a thought, idk if there's room for a 'single target melee range' skill in your design anywhere, but I thought this would be pretty cool, just punch an idiot (with a noulith instead of a plastic bee). Alternatively, one of the 'line aoe attacks' could be the four nouliths aligning into a spear sort of formation, and then Wyrmwind Thrust style throw 'em through the enemy. I know they're meant to be like, delicate medical equipment, but it'd be great if they had a more physical application too

God tokusatsu has like, so many ideas for animations to take inspiration from, its such a rabbithole

[ty_taurus]

Here's another really interest discussion point.... Here's a video from Xenosys that is very worth watching. For the record, he's not exactly my favorite creator. I think he's very abrasive at times, but this is still a very solid discussion point about the importance of change and evolution in an MMO, and I am in full agreement with his points about this expansion. This video is also 10 months old now. It was from the beginning of EW, and already there's talk of the expansion feeling stale, because it doesn't really feel different at the same time.

This is kinda where I was going when I brought up the importance of adding and changing actions with each new expansion.

[AmiableApkallu]

Here's another really interest discussion point.... Here's a video from Xenosys that is very worth watching. ...

This is kinda where I was going when I brought up the importance of adding and changing actions with each new expansion.

Taking that video in a different direction...

I'm reminded of my first days, starting in the post-ShB era, coming from the single-player games in the franchise, when I looked at jobs like CNJ/WHM, THM/BLM, and RDM, and wondered: Don't elemental affinities make these jobs all sorts of weird/complicated/hard to play? And I thought, challenge accepted.

I was quite disappointed to learn that the elements were just flavor text.

Balance and viability are worthy goals, but hasn't something been lost along the way?

[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.

[ForsakenRoe]

I'd imagine that if they were to do something like this, it'd be 'not necessary' in terms of balance. That is, it's possible to clear the fight without any of those effects active, they're just 'a nice little bonus'. Maybe Ultimate and Week 1 Savage would require 'one of them', but not 'a specific one tailored to the fight's design', you know? If one's 'necessary' from a balance perspective, then there's no choice to be made, and the point of the system falls apart. Of course, one or another will be 'the best' for a certain fight, that's just how maths goes. But as long as each of the effects has it's place, then there's potential. As an additional example, let's take those SGE examples from before. Now, we also have a WHM cohealer, who has the choices of 'Thin Air now affects the next 3 spells instead of 1', 'Each cast of Stone or Holy reduces the CD of Tetragrammaton by 1 second, and Misery reduces it by 5 seconds', and 'Lilybell's CD is reduced to 60s, and no longer suffers the potency penalty for early detonation, however it now only has 3 charges instead of 5'. (again, crap off the cuff examples)

So now you have options. If you're the SGE (and the WHM is actually communicating), you can coordinate stuff so you don't overlap. You as the SGE are probably better suited for Tank Babysitting because Kardia automatically handles that to an extent, and WHM would have to lose a GCD if they wanted to put up regen. Therefore, you coordinate that you, the SGE, would take 'Kardia also applies a layered shield', and then the WHM is free to focus more on raidwide healing with something like the Lilybell changeup. On the flipside, maybe the enrage is absolutely disgusting amounts of constant damage pulsing out, so you instead both come to the decision that the WHM will handle the tanks through the fight by doing big Glare Gaming, and taking advantage of the extra Tetra casts they can get from that, whereas you as the SGE will be taking the double Pneuma effectPepsis perk for the constant raidwide healing, since you'd be forced to spend almost every GCD on shields at that point anyway. And later, when you get more gear, you can work out that 'oh hey, we don't need as much healing/shielding for the enrage cos of gear, so the SGE can swap to AOE Kardia perk if they want (or they can stay on Pepsis perk for safety)'

You know, stuff like that. The tanks would get a similar thing to the healers, a communication between them on what each will take, to enhance their interplay with the other. Stuff like a DRK taking more mit they can throw to their WAR ally, and the WAR in turn boosting the selfhealing power of Nascent to help the DRK (who naturally has a little less selfhealing power comparatively). Or, better yet, ways for certain nonWAR tanks to reduce the CD on their invulns, so that WAR doesn't get to monopolise the 'I can invuln an extra TB and noone else can' thing, but it comes at a cost for the other tanks as they're giving up their 'High Materia' trait to be able to do what WAR naturally can. Meanwhile, the WAR can just laugh it off, and take something else that feeds their ego even more, like, idk 'Each time the WAR uses Storm's Path/Eye, Equilibrium's CD is reduced by 2 seconds'.

The hard part is the DPS. Like, we can't give them damage because then one of them is 'the right one' instantly. So wtf do we do for the role who's entire job is 'damage'? IDK if they'd be too thrilled if it was just random utility stuff, like a BRD choosing between buffs to Minne, Paean or Troubadour. But it could be cool to have something like, 'Peloton now works in combat, but it has a 120s CD', so you could theoretically get the sprint effect without a SCH, but the advantage is that the SCH has it natively and therefore doesn't need to 'waste a slot' to get it, y'know?

Edit: Im an actual muppet why didn't I think of this sooner, instead of the 'Kardia flat potency is increased' boring ass one from before for SGE, change it to 'Kardia affects all allies within 20y of the Kardia'd target, but now heals for only 75 potency instead of 170', a partywide gradual healing as you DPS, at the cost of the throughput of regular Kardia. With my gear (bis), Kardia heals me for about 4k, with the reduction to 75p, it'd be 1.8k ish on the party. If that's too much, well, adjust numbers as needed for 'balance' I guess

Edit2: Also scratch the 2 Pneuma charges idea cos that's boring as hell too, change it to my Pepsis Shakeup idea from a few days ago

[GrimGale]

So, when I think of "interactivity", I think of something different -- I think of Black Mage. In normal mode content, even as a casual, it's possible to end up in various recognizable "failure" states. For example:

• You greed in Astral Fire a bit too much, the timer drops to zero, and all of a sudden, you realize you're at zero MP and can't easily get into Umbral Ice.
• You transition from Umbral Ice to Astral Fire, only to notice that you forgot about Umbral Hearts.
• You got distracted by mechanics and let Enochian drop right before generating a Polyglot stack.

There's this definite feeling that it matters what buttons get pushed when and which order. Which is to say, there's some sort of interaction happening, even if it's not always literally "push this button to modify this other button."

In that same normal mode content, I can't say I feel the same for White Mage or Scholar. (I don't touch Sage or Astrologian, so I won't comment on them.) There are no real failure states that come to mind.* And beyond that...

I routinely forget that Fey Union exists, so it makes no difference to me that there are buttons that feed the fairy gauge. Dissipation just feels bad to me, which means I don't push it, so asking whether it interacts with my kit is like asking whether a tree falling in a forest with no around makes a sound. When (or if) I push Temperance and Plenery Indulgence generally feels irrelevant. There's nothing to make me feel bad about overcapping on lillies.

*True, when I push Swiftcast and Thin Air matters, but it's always before Raise, and this is so rote that it fails to register as a "real" interaction.

I'm interested in the interactivity within a job's kit because it seemed the players largely enjoyed the PvP healer rework. Many in this forum praised the PvP design for healers for its level of simplicity (Having fewer skills), and abundant interactivity with itself, which granted the jobs an distinct and engaging gameplay.

I'm not a PvP player but I was tempted to try the new skill sets back when they were new and they felt really cohesive and interesting. Ofc the mindset is different in PvP than it is in PvE. We have a different focus regarding our role and our skills were changed accordingly. We can no longer spam heal our allies, instead we were given limited healing or shielding resources so as to not make PvP fights drag forever-

Still, I wonder how much the proportion of skill interactivity has changed within the kits when compared to PVE skill sets.