A summary of healer issues

[ForsakenRoe]

FFXIV already has a borderline Support role, it's the Ranged Physical (less MCH since the rework in ShB), and arguably RDM.

Couple of people I've talked to said something similar actually. If they were to implement a Support role, it'd actually help fix the disparity in the DPS classes right now (apparently). What they said was to split the DPS not based on melee v ranged v caster, but selfish and support. So I guess you'd have NIN DRG BRD DNC RDM SMN moved to this new 'support' role, and the others double down on being more selfish. It'd at least open up the opportunity for interesting class design ideas I guess, like SMN getting additional support based summons, like Carbuncle applying a reflective barrier to bounce damage back, or RDM getting it's En-spells from 11 back. I don't think it'd go down well this point into the game's life though

IDK if I agree with the idea as I've not put much thought into it, DPS classes aren't exactly my thing

[Renathras]

Couple of people I've talked to said something similar actually. If they were to implement a Support role, it'd actually help fix the disparity in the DPS classes right now (apparently). What they said was to split the DPS not based on melee v ranged v caster, but selfish and support. So I guess you'd have NIN DRG BRD DNC RDM SMN moved to this new 'support' role, and the others double down on being more selfish. It'd at least open up the opportunity for interesting class design ideas I guess, like SMN getting additional support based summons, like Carbuncle applying a reflective barrier to bounce damage back, or RDM getting it's En-spells from 11 back.

Yeah, something like this. I've seen various takes on it, but generally BRD, DNC, and RDM make the Support list, with various other candidates (NIN, AST, and SMN are the next runners up, for example). MOST of these Jobs (RDM aside) are already balanced around this idea of bringing support leading to lower personal DPS. BRD and DNC completely rely on that, as does AST.

I think the general idea/pitch is that it fills the 4th party slot in 4 mans (being 3-6 Jobs, it would obviously have the representation to be worth that), and 1 or 2 slots in an 8 man party (1 a given, with the second being one of your choices for the 4th DPS flex slot like we have now). BRD has been "arguably Support" since ARR, if not 1.0. I think BRD could use Protect at one point, even, and used to use the Healer LB3. For all of FFXIV's life, it was treated as a de-facto Support by players. MCH when introduced had some support abilities with the Turrets (for the life of me I can't remember it now, but I remember it being a thing then), further cementing "Ranged Physical" as the Support role of the game.

And, as you say, it could open up a decent chunk of Job changes and gameplay styles, like SMN having various support Summons, like FF games tend to have between buffing/defensive/haste/etc Summons balancing out the offensive ones in a lot of iterations of the Job. Offhand, Tactics had 2 healing, a shield one, and something else. FF9 Eiko had Carby for all three barrier types (Reflect, Protect, Shell) and also Haste (changed based on what accessory she had equipped), etc.

It would also help out a lot of the players that really do yearn for that playstyle. I don't think it's coincidence that a lot of the players who want Healers to be Supports tend to main (or speak highly of) DNC and RDM. I think it's a design fault that SE doesn't decide to actually embrace that. RDM, for example, is the perfect vehicle for "DPS that throws support heals" due to its nature and lore, which is what a lot of people asking for Healers to become Supports are genuinely asking for. Granted, the encounter design would need to be changed so that HEALING ACTUALLY MATTERS, but if RDM had, for example, Vermedica (at a 1000 MP cost so they couldn't just outright replace a Healer as they'd OOM rather quickly), it would give RDM's the ability to stand in for Healers in a pinch or support healing in situations that actually demanded it.

...that does, of course, require encounter design to actually demand it.

Likewise, BRD and DNC getting stuff like combat Pelaton and enemy debuffs.

I dunno, I think it's something worth considering, at the very least.

[Shurrikhan]

Couple of people I've talked to said something similar actually. If they were to implement a Support role, it'd actually help fix the disparity in the DPS classes right now (apparently). What they said was to split the DPS not based on melee v ranged v caster, but selfish and support.

I really don't think theirs is at all a solid claim.

Neither support nor selfishness have a consistent complexity factor. Nor is the one necessarily harder than the other, especially in any context with both.

Without automatic sync, an exploiter would have to play around buffs just as much as a single-target buffer would want to play around that exploiter. Takes two hands to clap, and buffer and exploiter each have only one function hand, so to speak.

Limited range is consistently an additional factor of difficulty compared to unlimited range, even if to variable/contextual effect. Having cast times is consistently an additional factor of difficulty compared to not have cast times, even if to variable/contextual effect...

...But as long as you have a buffer, getting buffs out before potency and getting in potency after buffs... are just mirror images of each other.

Pseudo-exceptions: If you have single-target, unsynced buffs but a large disparity in average potency to be dealt within n seconds, the buffers decision can be made much more immediately and automatically, while the exploiter's decision (e.g., when to spend gauge and procs) can be a bit more tracking-heavy. Of course, if that best recipient varies, then the buffer will usually have more to be aware of, while the exploiter need only bank as able and up to the point they'd waste larger raid cycle potential.

[Aravell]

So I guess you'd have NIN DRG BRD DNC RDM SMN moved to this new 'support' role, and the others double down on being more selfish.

I don't think turning NIN back into a support would go down well with the current NIN players, most of them seemed to be thrilled when the Trick Attack changes occurred since they want to do more personal damage. NIN has also been stripped of a majority of their support abilities, in fact, MNK has 1 more than NIN atm. NIN's Mug against MNK's Brotherhood + Mantra.

MCH when introduced had some support abilities with the Turrets (for the life of me I can't remember it now, but I remember it being a thing then)

MCH had Hypercharge, which made the Rook turret give phys vuln and the Bishop turret give an AoE magic vuln. They also had Promotion, which stopped all turret autoattacks to pulse a restoration wave for TP (Rook) or MP (Bishop).

[ForsakenRoe]

I think the gist was meant to be that, raidbuffers can outscale 'selfish' DPS atm, because the raidbuffs are multiplicative and balloon out of control balancewise. With this change, the idea (I think) is that to reach 'the maximum potential', raidbuffers need a Selfish to take advantage of their buffs, and Selfish's need Raidbuffers to push them to the next level, in a symbiotic relationship. In such a balance that you'd presumably want 2 of each for Savage and such. You could still throw whatever comp at EX trials and lower, but yeh. I assume the buffs would be more... integral? to the gameplay loop of these 'supports', rather than being almost an afterthought as they are now. You'd still have your Battle Voices and your Emboldens for 2min windows, but having gameplay more revolving around buffing allies more 'actively' I can see. Like, instead of BRD just getting 'play this song for your rotation and it happens to buff your allies', having the old songs back which restore MP, restore TP, apply Vuln (how we miss you, foe's requiem), and giving the class MP management to try and keep the Foe buff up as much as possible (perhaps by having your song procs trigger an MP restore effect, if only that was still tied to DOT ticks). RDM having to enchant allies with En-spells which also grant Black/White mana, so it doesn't throw out your rotation or stop you from using 'the cool zorro moves' as much, stuff like that

This would also necessitate another minirework to MCH to fully cement it as 'the selfish P-Ranged', likely by giving it cast times on it's multitool hits and buffing their potencies. Though, a 900p Chainsaw with a 1.5s cast time would probably feel pretty good, thinking about it, especially with Reassemble

IDK it's just kinda annoying seeing the same song and dance play out every tier, SAM is at the top of the charts because it's personal DPS is highest, everyone feeds it the gear in statics, then 10 weeks later once everyone has BIS it drops off the charts as 'raidbuff stacking' takes over and scales past it

I don't think turning NIN back into a support would go down well with the current NIN players, most of them seemed to be thrilled when the Trick Attack changes occurred since they want to do more personal damage. NIN has also been stripped of a majority of their support abilities, in fact, MNK has 1 more than NIN atm. NIN's Mug against MNK's Brotherhood + Mantra.

MCH had Hypercharge, which made the Rook turret give phys vuln and the Bishop turret give an AoE magic vuln. They also had Promotion, which stopped all turret autoattacks to pulse a restoration wave for TP (Rook) or MP (Bishop).

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)

[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.

[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

[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.).

[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.