Healer Mechanics You Want to See Become Common

[ty_taurus]

So one thing we're talking about a lot is downtime from healing and how we have way too much of it. In most of the game's content, if things are running smoothly, the healers are stuck mashing Glare/Broil/Malefic like it's a hack and slash game. We can talk about adding more raid wide damage to fights or reducing the number of OGCD healing or the potency of OGCD healing to combat this, but adding other jobs for healers to accomplish can also work too. Here are some ideas:

Esuna:
We have the ability to dispel debuffs, but debuffs are rarely impactful in fights unless they're punishments for failing mechanics and thus cannot be removed by Esuna, but why not add more of these conditions during segments of the fight where there's less damage being done to the party? One argument is that many healers simply ignore these unless they're doom, but I think that also has to do with the lack of clarity about who is debuffed, with what, and for how long. The icons are there, but they're very small. One thing that I think could encourage players to be more aware of debuffs is to change how they're displayed on the UI. Take a look at this:
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/fi...20120304003129
In Final Fantasy 12, debuffs are displayed largely and clearly over the afflicted party member's name and it blinks. We could change how cleansable debuffs are displayed by making them follow this system, possibly with an added countdown on the time remaining. Healers are already focused on the party member, so doing this would really help especially newer players understand what is removable through Esuna and respond appropriately. If this were done, we can justify making cleanseable debuffs more common.

Dispel:
Much like how adding removable debuffs is a thing, why not incorporate removable buffs on bosses and add a new Role action in Dispel? We've seen this mechanic get introduced with Blue Mage, but I think it has the potential to help give us some added objectives to look out for in encounters. Obviously not all buffs need to be removable, such as ones that are attached to mechanics, but adding in buffs that increase an enemy's damage output or reduce the damage they receive for short duration that can be removed through a healer's Dispel is another simple way to add more reoccuring tasks to be done.

Repose:
Just like how we've seen Dispel mechanics be used for the Blue Mage, we've also seen Sleep be used in the Blue Carnivale and in the healer Role Quests in Shadowbringers. Imagine that some bosses start summoning adds that cannot be damaged that stick around for 30 seconds and maybe pulsate damage or heal the boss that can be placated with Repose to negate their presence? We can even make specific adds--disrupted aether, that are designed for healers to put to sleep and cannot be harmed in other means. If this becomes the standard of how these adds are handled, it becomes easier for healers to recognize what these adds are and what they need to do to handle them while also making their use more universal so more bosses can justify using them.

Briny Mirror:
Back during the ARR days of 2.X, I did quite a bit of farming Leviathan EX who has a mechanic that applies a debuff called "Briny Mirror" to the off tank. This mirror debuffs healers that heal that target with reduced range on their spells including AoE heals. If you healed that tank too much, you actually would become unable to heal anyone but yourself until the debuff expired, and a part of being a healer for that fight was managing that debuff with your co healer. This was actually a really cool mechanic, and I'd love to see that concept return for more fights.

Healing 3rd Party Targets:
We've seen these a few times, such as Estinien during The Aery and Shinryu EX's dragon heads where the healer needs to heal a 3rd party target, either to keep them alive or having to heal them to full. This is a great way to give healers a role-specific objective while also giving other jobs like Bard (Nature's Minne) and Dancer (Cure Waltz), a way to help the healers do this more quickly.

I don't want to imply that this would fix all the healer problems, but encounter design has nearly as much of an impact on the engagement of playing a healer as their kits do. I know there's a bit of a fear about making any role have intimidating responsibilities, but we also don't need to have all of these mechanics in every fight, and for dungeon bosses and hard trials, they can be less common and more forgiving.

Do you like these concepts, and are there any others you think could be worth looking into?

[phantomr23]

I've got a few ideas, most pretty simple.

1) Increase the outgoing damage. This is probably the easiest way to reconcile the healing issues right now. You want healers to heal more? Well, go ahead and actually make them by making damage actually matter. Stop having raidwides be huge telegraphed mechanics that take up solid amounts of the fight and instead have them come out more frequently. At the same time increase tank damage on both tanks and bam, you're actually reconciling the sheer flexibility and power of (most) of the healing kits with the amount of healing needed per fight. Obviously you vaguely mentioned this in the post but it's really important - before any mechanical changes we first just need healers to actually have to... heal, since we certainly won't get complex damage rotations.

2) Give shields some love. Scholar's in a bad place and it's largely because shields drop off hard after prog is done. WHM never has to worry about it because regens are so strong, and AST can pivot as it pleases, but SCH is just substantially less useful because shields are outright weaker than regens. I'd give WHM one very small AOE shield ability and then start making mechanics that actually require shielding. UWU has a good example - shield Vulcan Burst or the party is knocked back. This would also go hand in hand with increasing outgoing damage - if some raidwides would consistently kill you without shielding, there sure would be a lot more use for shields, which could lead to some interesting mechanics.

3) Mechanics designed with Rescue in mind. This is probably my dumbest idea but it's also one I really think could be quite fun. I'd like Rescue to be given some priority in terms of the Healer's role as general "manager" of the party. Imagine a mechanic where a tank has to stand to soak a tower but that tower immediately results in an AOE they have to leave, so the Healer has to rescue them into the party. I suspect the design team wants to avoid mechanics that outright require the use of one single ability, but it's a part of the healer's kit that might as well not exist outside of griefing, so it would be fun to see it used somehow.

(Also, I think the "Dispel" mechanic could even just use Esuna - have it be able to target the boss and pull double duty on removing certain enemy buffs and allied debuffs.)

[Recon1o6]

I'm definately in agreement with cleanable debuffs. Bring back Leeches and Exalted detriment too while we are at it
Dispel too is a great idea. I remember monk had it as well and it was useless because it was never used. If we have stun/silence why not dispel as well?

As for the other two mechanics, briny mirror and 3rd party targets. The latter is interesting. It could be a nice spot for shield mechanics- X spawns and is going to take so much damage in 10 seconds, protect it as much as you can. So shields would be good but it starts out with low health anyway so whm isn't buggered.

Briny...eh it was interesting but at the same time it could be a nuisance. It would need to be finely tuned which i dont trust the devs on.



Edit: Make shields equal to heals, not better/worse

[Shurrikhan]

1. Shields as a stackable but self-compressive mechanic:

   Background Change: Shield HP generated now has its own (blue) combat text and may vary from (a multiplier of) the initial heal.
   
   One can now spam shields on the same target without having further applications only ever replace the previous or be ignored, but the higher the target's existing shield HP, the less further shield HP can be generated. Effectively, a crit from the highest effective potency shield in the game would be the "limit", while anything short of that would still allow you to stack it, albeit at diminishing returns.
   
   For instance, if a 9k HP CritAdlo shield were the limit (with a regular Adlo thereby doing 3k), I could instead stack a regular Adlo 4 times for 3k, 5k (+2k), 6.3k (+1.3k), and 7.2k (+0.9k) total shielding respectively. Each time, the shield effect is reduced by %progress towards that shield cap, but it is nonetheless stackable.
   
   This is primarily meant as a flexibility buff to dual shield-healers, as it'd still be rather difficult to cheese most mechanics off this alone, and non-shielders would gain their own means to contribute to such "cheese" themselves (such as below).

2. Maximum HP increases.

   Pretty self-explanatory, but could come via a plethora of means/mechanics, from a lingering self-compressive mechanic on WHM healing taken that doesn't have reverse synergy with Doom or the like (i.e. would be considered 112% HP rather than exceeding normal HP yet being called 89%) to a standard raid-wide Thrill of Battle sort of effect.

3. Life-sharing.

   It allows you to turn previously single-target mechanics into "stacking" or "split" mechanics, albeit typically with certain penalties. Think Spirit-link totem, but ideally with far more directed (e.g. specific target) options. For instance, imagine if Bole were given this feature in place of its former Tank-only usefulness (or its current minute damage bonus...). That'd be pretty worth holding in Spread.

4. Damage compression.

   The lower that damage would have reduced the target ally's health to, the more that damage is mitigated -- particularly good for Holmgang and Living Dead cheese.

5. (Directional) movement assistance.

   Let's say this were attached to WHM's Wind (or later White Wind) spells. One could use a Wind spell in a given direction, on an ally, or strike an enemy through an ally to provide them with a directional or omni-directional movement buff. Regardless, movement across the area and in the direction the spell travelled is accelerated, while any allies it passes in the course of the initial cast have movement in any direction augmented for a brief duration descending with each ally thus affected (with your primary allied target, if any, always receiving the full effect).

6. Further effects based on target ally's (would-be) damage taken.

   This could be an Power buff based on damage taken or that would have been taken if not for mitigation. This could be damage reflection. You could generate MP based on the target's damage taken. Whatever. Any and all contenders may come forth.

7. Supportive actions that are manually triggerable by one's allies.

   This might use the Duty Action key (especially if caused to detect events in which one might need to use a regular Duty Action and to replace that only when the original action is not viable, though that would add a cheesy fight-learning aid), a new Team Action key, or (if controller support to that effect were improved) just clicking off a buff. In any case, that would allow an ally to choose when they want a given effect, especially ones that might otherwise allow for griefing (imagine all the Rescue horror stories, but via a slew of other effects that could be really fun if not for [or really, even despite] the occasional griefer).

8. No Role Actions; everything job-specific

   A bit more controversial, I'm sure, but I prefer the idea of each job having their own means of generating bankable cast-time reduction and, say, Leeches allowing you to store a debuff in your Aetherpool to then give to an enemy with your next Energy Drain (then "Energy Spike") and Exalted Detriment reversing the effect of debuffs (albeit each within reason, rather than reversing a 30-second 50% slow verbatim or inflicting the same to a mini-boss, for instance), with WHM having its own oGCD cleansing interactions via Fluid Aura (literally a watery second self that can be launched through allies and enemies alike for damage, healing, cleansing, and/or purging, albeit at gauge cost each).

I'm sure I'll think of more, but those are what come to mind for now.

[Recon1o6]

No Role Actions; everything job-specific

There's nothing controversial about wanting unique things in each job, especially when they function the same. It helps differentiate

Its when the unique aspects clearly outshines the other jobs ability to make up for them, this is why all healers should have a utility or niche equally valuable to the others

[Shurrikhan]

There's nothing controversial about wanting unique things in each job, especially when they function the same. It helps differentiate

Its when the unique aspects clearly outshines the other jobs ability to make up for them, this is why all healers should have a utility or niche equally valuable to the others

It just gets real annoying when certain players will white knight the lack of something as a job's unique identity (e.g. a lack of utility, even if in a totally different form, on WHM prior to Temperance)...

Personally, I'd just give all three deep, self-synergetic, and meaningful utility, albeit with an eye on whatever the fourth will be.

[ItMe]

Give me a mechanic where someone needs to be waaaaay out there to catch a meteor or whatever, and then get to another spot impossibly fast.
Give me something where I NEED rescue.

[Urthdigger]

Something I've thought of for Repose... imagine an adds phase with adds that continually buff themselves (Think Shiva Unreal, but on a faster timeframe,) with the intended strategy being to sleep one and have the whole party focus on down before tackling the one left alive. A situation where sure, killing them all fast would be ideal, but since that's unfeasible your best bet is to keep them from doing anything for a while.

[Shurrikhan]

Something I've thought of for Repose... imagine an adds phase with adds that continually buff themselves (Think Shiva Unreal, but on a faster timeframe,) with the intended strategy being to sleep one and have the whole party focus on down before tackling the one left alive. A situation where sure, killing them all fast would be ideal, but since that's unfeasible your best bet is to keep them from doing anything for a while.

Would also love to see a return to sleep persisting through all actions except those that apply potency on application, e.g. applying DoTs that have no direct damage, further CC, debuffs, enmity effects.

CC in general I'd love to see revised slightly and returned to the fore.

[manamoppet]

I like the suggestions regarding shields, Dispel, and Repose; though Repose has the weakness that it takes only one attack (auto or manual) to wake the target up again immediately. In ARR one tactic that needed to be used on the second boss in Brayflox's Longstop was that either the healer or the magic dps cast a sleep spell on the dragon (which is unnecessary now because of stats and tank changes) to burn the add down. The problem with that was that often the tank and/or the dps didn't pick up that the target was sleeping, making everything more difficult for everyone. There is a need to make it more visible and communicable that the target is put to sleep (e.g. npc shouting "Quick! Put it to sleep!" and "You put it to sleep! Good job!" or something, and not just macro <Sleep><Just used it><.se3> in chat), along with a "cooldown" before the target can wake up like a condition like "Deep Sleep" where the target doesn't immediately wake up and tank and dps can have time to stop attacking, followed by "Light Sleep" where any attacks (except for dots already ticking) wake it up.