A list of non-healer supportive skills...should healers steal them?

[Morningstar1337]

Okay I'm feeling like the Devil's advocate today and want to entertain the idea of removing (or tweaking so that they only work on the user) all the supportive skills form DPS and Tanks and having them be the domain of healers. As well as the side effects that this would entail.

I'm mainly looking at skills that (can) buff teammates and skills that can heal and res teammates. CC abilities and damage self buffs will be spared.

• Phys Ranged DPS: the changes will have the most apparent effects on them due to the whole "support tax" thing occurs mostly with them (though I think the real reason is due to mobility). The removal of the following would coincide with a potency increase for BRD and DNC.
  • Role-wise: Peloton (movement speed increase outside combat)
  • MCH: Tactician (an AoE defense buff with clones across the role).
  • DNC: Shield Samba (See Tactician). Curing Waltz (Aoe Heal). Devilment (Crit buff). Dance Partner (which enables most of the skills o affect teammates, Devilment in particular). As well as the finish and Esprit buffs
  • BRD: Wanderer's Minuit, Army's Paeon, Mages Ballad (all songs that increase the party's DPS), Warden's Paean (debuff remover), Battle Voice (Crit buff) and Nature's Minne (Healing buff)
• Caster DPS: BLM is unaffected because they lost their only support skills by now. But RDM and SNM will suffer a few losses
  • SNM: Physick, Resserection
  • RDM: Vercure, Verraise, Embolden (Melee dps buff)
• Melee DPS: A few do have the utility skills where the aim of the thread is to cull and grant to healers. NIN and SAM are in
  • MNK: Mantra (Healing buff), Brotherhood (AOE damage buff)
  • DRG: Battle Litany (crit buff), Dragon Sight, (buff a specific teammate).
• Tanks: A few of hem have curative skills for survivability reasons, however somefot hose can be used on allies....
  • PLD: Clemency (Cure clone), Divine Veil, Cover, Intervention, and maybe Passage of arms (AOE damage mitigation)
  • WAR: Shake it Off (similar to Passage), Nasciant Flash (a form of healingfor target party member)
  • DRK: Dark Missionary (similar as Passage)
  • GNB: Aurora (Regen oGCD)

I might be missing a few...

Anyway I think if most of these were taken from the current owners and given to healers it would have a few effects.

1. Less downtime, as healers would be placed in a buffer role overall
2. AST might get some sense of Flavor back to its cards, albeit in DNC's expense, and it would still have a lot of homogeneity to work on.
3. Ranged DPS would not have their DPS be hindered by having support tools, so they can be closer to Selfish DPS like SAM and BLM
4. However it would enforce a larger dependency on the healer as SNM and RDM can no longer be the lifeline for the lifelines. Meaning that is all healer kick the bucket, the rest of the party are on a time limit to end the boss quickly or wipe.

However as I'm playing devil's advocate I expect and desire there to be counterarguments to the idea of Healers stealing the support tools of the DPS and Tanks, so please express them in this thread. (corrections of any misconceptions in my post would also be appreciated)

[Imragarn]

Some of them are really hard to see as healer skill IMO

Brotherhood for exemple buff PHYSICAL damage, something you don't have when you play healer, that will be 100% useless in solo duty

Nasciant Flash heal when you deal damage, for like 7 sec ? 6 ? Not sure sorry, but that like 2, maybe 3 GCD, don't know how many Hp this can heal... And it's only for you and 50% off what you heal for ONE people in the group. Not sure if that would make some diff in the end ? And again, you NEED to cast it on someone else, so in solo duty it's useless

Clemency... why would you want cure 2 for twice the mana cost ?

Battle voice from BRD up Direct hit, something heal and tank don't have without materia, would be really strange if they can give it IMO

Wanderer's Minuit, Army's Paeon, Mages Ballad not only give team buff, they also give acces to perfect pitch, refresh bloodletter and give some skillspeed bonus. and come on, you are actually casting, you don't have time to sing

Some are... nice i think, Mantra or Aurora can totally go in the healer kit (not that i actually want GnB and MNK to lose the spell, just, i can totally see someone cast that as a heal)

For some like Dragon Sight... DS give 10% dmg up for the DRG and 5% for the one you choose. if he can stay close enough to you. But you can't be sure to cast DPS spell for all the duration. So you will have to change it to look like presence of mind i think... so you cast better heal and DPS ? (But them, why not give presence to the three heal ?)

[Katie_Kitty]

I hate this idea in general, but going along with the theme of the thread, I'd argue that Red Mage should be excluded. RDM has long been considered a versatile "jack of all trades" job throughout the final fantasy series. Therefore, if any DPS is going to maintain utility, it should be them.

[ForteNightshade]

While I do like the approach of giving healers support tools, they would need to tread very carefully outright stealing what other jobs have. Otherwise, you risk making said jobs feel more shallow by comparison. Furthermore, giving buffs and debuffs can't simply be a press and forget type system. Giving Battle Litany to healers won't make them any more interesting considering it's a three minute CD. I'd prefer either having healers increase existing buffs and/or debuff the boss but there's a system in place where they actively have to engage to keep said buffs and/or debuffs going. Say the Fairy gauge could put Piercing on bosses, thus buffing DRG, BRD and MCH. I imagine it'd be difficult to balance but at least debuffs might make healer gameplay revolving around more than spamming a single GCD over and over.

[Liam_Harper]

If they decided that players could actually handle juggling a support tookit simultaneously with healing, then why choose that over having more frequent damage that would push us to use our healing toolkit far more instead?

The main argument for why we can't have more frequent damage to heal, is because bad players couldn't handle it. But those bad players certainly aren't going to put a support toolkit to much use either. I feel if we're going to suggest they add depth to healers, we should be looking at how to make healing engaging, instead of dancing around the issue and trying to fix it with other random things because we've given up on ever having things to heal.

I don't feel like ripping depth away from other classes to try and patch healers up with something that isn't healing, is the answer.

[althenawhm]

It's high time WHM steals skills from other jobs instead of being stolen from.

[Awha]

I know why we do not have a pure support debuff / buff class in the game. Though that is one role I miss the most from older mmo's.

[ForteNightshade]

I know why we do not have a pure support debuff / buff class in the game. Though that is one role I miss the most from older mmo's.

Because they are impossible to balance with how FFXIV is structured. Either their buffs/debuff are extremely valuable, thus they become mandatory or their overall contribution is less than simply bringing a proper DPS. Which makes them worthless. A support role might work since bringing one could be made mandatory without impacting the other jobs but that means restructuring the whole party dynamic. And they aren't going to do that.

This is why people are started asking for healers to shift into a more support oriented role. Not only does it add the support aspect people want to see more of but it potentially solves healer engagement feeling lackluster.

[Awha]

Because they are impossible to balance with how FFXIV is structured. Either their buffs/debuff are extremely valuable, thus they become mandatory or their overall contribution is less than simply bringing a proper DPS. Which makes them worthless. A support role might work since bringing one could be made mandatory without impacting the other jobs but that means restructuring the whole party dynamic. And they aren't going to do that.

This is why people are started asking for healers to shift into a more support oriented role. Not only does it add the support aspect people want to see more of but it potentially solves healer engagement feeling lackluster.

As I said i know why we do not have them, but one can still miss the role. Sure making healsrs more support oriented, could work. Though idk not sure all healera wish for that level of activity buff debuff support may not be the desired direction some healera would like to to down. If they force it on healers I get the feeling it will create another dynamic similar to healer dps. Not sure SE will want to go down that rabbit hole.

Idk it seems hard to ground what healers really want in this vame. I know some that wish for more healing intensive play. I have some friends that simply like to solo heal pug content for that very reason. I would not mind having healers focus on support, but I do understand that level of support that would result in meaningful increase in activity may not be for everyone. Seems like a risky switch from the current status quo.

[RicaRuin]

As a SMN, I'd even gift-wrap Physick for Healers. They can have it, sure, no use for us anyway.