Can Healer Balance Survive a 4th Healer?

[Semirhage]

Somebody said something about Paladin back in Heavensward, and I don't remember the exact quote so I'll butcher it paraphrasing anyway. "Paladin is a really well-designed, fun job with a great set of strengths. It's a pity that it just happens to not be good at any of the things that predict a party's success." My takeaway there is, there are plenty of strengths we can design jobs to have. It won't matter much if those strengths are something the game never leans into. FFXIV leans heavily into scripted, preplanned healing. High damage output. Scripted, preplanned mitigation. Mobility. Those are the big four I can think of off the top of my head. If a job has even one of those four things as an explicit weakness? It'd better have some pretty hefty strengths in the others to make up for it, because being bad at any of those things tanks how much your job meshes with the content real fast.

[Lyth]

...

There's absolutely no point in comparing GCDs with oGCDs. You might as well be comparing Cure 2 with Benediction. The overabundance of instant cast healing/shielding is a different issue altogether.

Shielding has less of an advantage over direct healing now than it did in Stormblood, largely as a function of changes to LB gauge generation during speedruns. All things being equal, though, it's much more convenient to be able to toss up a shield during a bit of downtime and let it do its thing, rather than trying to play catch up after the fact. Decay/cap systems in games are typically designed to offset that.

[Gobio]

In FF14 what do you need healing diversity for? None of you are healing anything except the scripted moments and all jobs heals through the scripted moment pretty much the same. All the favors are illusions.

If you want class diversity, demand it in things that you do majority of your time, like how white mage actually use its conjurer root to do elemental damage, sage activates seed mode and do the gundam thing, and scholar gets to sacrifice the captured fairy one by one to the dark god to do damage, AST get to actually use time magic, etc...

[hynaku]

I don't know why there always worry about balance. Healing is healing all healing spells does samething. I don't care if another job is better than another. I will always play the classes I like best. Another healer is just fine with me till they steal skills from other healers for it.

[Absurdity]

There's absolutely no point in comparing GCDs with oGCDs. You might as well be comparing Cure 2 with Benediction. The overabundance of instant cast healing/shielding is a different issue altogether.

Shielding has less of an advantage over direct healing now than it did in Stormblood, largely as a function of changes to LB gauge generation during speedruns. All things being equal, though, it's much more convenient to be able to toss up a shield during a bit of downtime and let it do its thing, rather than trying to play catch up after the fact. Decay/cap systems in games are typically designed to offset that.

I can unfortunately not compare it with something that does not exist. If we ever get oGCD shields that aren't just on a 120 second cooldown but also require 2 weave slots then this would be a lot easier to determine.

Is it convenient to toss out a shield during downtime? Of course it is, since you don't actually lose anything during downtime so it simply becomes free mitigation. But as it currently stands every GCD wasted on a shield that does not prevent a death or saves other healing cooldowns, which it doesn't in most cases, is simply not preferable.

[ItMe]

In FF14 what do you need healing diversity for? None of you are healing anything except the scripted moments and all jobs heals through the scripted moment pretty much the same. All the favors are illusions.

If you want class diversity, demand it in things that you do majority of your time, like how white mage actually use its conjurer root to do elemental damage, sage activates seed mode and do the gundam thing, and scholar gets to sacrifice the captured fairy one by one to the dark god to do damage, AST get to actually use time magic, etc...

That's actually a really keen point...

[Dearche]

In FF14 what do you need healing diversity for? None of you are healing anything except the scripted moments and all jobs heals through the scripted moment pretty much the same. All the favors are illusions.

If you want class diversity, demand it in things that you do majority of your time, like how white mage actually use its conjurer root to do elemental damage, sage activates seed mode and do the gundam thing, and scholar gets to sacrifice the captured fairy one by one to the dark god to do damage, AST get to actually use time magic, etc...

I haven't said it here, but it is something which I talk about all the time to my FC mates, but what's important when it comes to class design in FF I believe, is for the classes to feel the same to other players, but feel different to the one who's actually playing them.

It's like, all DPS does damage. As long as they do the damage they need in the time they need, for all I care, one could be litterally playing Guitar Hero complete with the controller and to Queen's We Are the Champions, and the other just pressing one button once every minute to set off a nuclear bomb on the boss. To the rest of the party, they're exactly the same, but to the ones actually playing the class, there're nothing alike.

This is the sort of diversity we need in healers, and frankly shouldn't be so hard to do in theory. Everyone has a HPS that they're supposed to maintain in between everything else they do, as well as have a certain capacity to heal major damage instances. AST could literally have cards that do everything from healing to damage or something, and as long as they could reliably get the heals they need out, good for them if it feels good. WHM could be forced to constantly do GCD heals nearly constantly and good for them if it feels good.

SCH and SGE should be built with the same idea (though with a shield preference I suppose).

What's frustrating is that you can clearly see SE putting so much work into the DPS to attempt this (mostly just melee and casters, but damn a lot of it is good), and yet tanks and healers just get shit on for the sake of being newbie friendly? SE's got their priorities wrong if they think that simply simplifying our roles is a great way to bring new players into them. Frankly, if SCH or SGE doesn't end up being a lot of good work to play effectively, I'll probably finally drop healers in EW after maining healing since ARR.

[Shurrikhan]

In FF14 what do you need healing diversity for? None of you are healing anything except the scripted moments and all jobs heals through the scripted moment pretty much the same. All the favors are illusions.

If you want class diversity, demand it in things that you do majority of your time, like how white mage actually use its conjurer root to do elemental damage, sage activates seed mode and do the gundam thing, and scholar gets to sacrifice the captured fairy one by one to the dark god to do damage, AST get to actually use time magic, etc...

While this is spot on, let's keep in mind that all interactions with content are first and foremost dependent on the content, and the content itself is changeable, even if the devs may be disturbingly hesitant to do so.

We've already seen what trimming the available undermechanics, such virtually any and all forms of CC outside of stuns, can do to the ways by which jobs can be diversified.

Let's not allow the devs to make complexity in healing, in its entirety, into a similarly vestigial and soon-to-be-trimmed-away element of play.

If it comes down to healers only being able to distinguish themselves in/through their damage-dealing, then the primary issue -- healing having been gutted in its range of meaningful interactions or points of decision -- needs to be addressed.

By all means, healers should be distinguish themselves however they can -- be that in damage, utility, healing, or whatever else -- while being fun to play and having similarly competitive value in a majority of fights, individually, and across any given raid tier or content span. But we shouldn't just be rolling with the punches (accepting the loss of C so long as we can improve on B and A and then B as long as we can improve on A, etc.) when we're talking about more than half our kits being effectively removed or taxidermized.

[KDSilver]

I think the most exciting use I had with shield is that moment you knew other alliances would screw a mechanics that would wipe the whole raid, and you shield your party so much you carry the weight.

Otherwise... meh
in HW when it used to be a thing because we had less oGCD.