Healers need an overhaul

[Sunhwapark]

Would love seeing more stuff like the Heartless Archangel mechanic in O8s.

[Maltothoris]

I found this old post from years ago back when Patch 3.4 came out (or as I would call the downfall of FFXIV healer design) https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...xt_of_endgame/

It is really kinda sad that this never really evolved beyond and it is really starting to show its age. Of course the big issue being

S-E relies too heavily numbers buffs. Ability X potency is now increased. Ability Y's duration is now extended. Ability Z's cooldown is now reduced. These buffs are lazy, sloppy, and boring. They often fail to address the issues.

[flowerfairy]

This comment right here is why you were being called out as gaslighting. Not the "green dps" comment. You were essentially saying that we don't want more to heal and we just want to DPS.

I think that’s what they’ve been intentionally ignoring. More downtime buttons does not mean less healing. I never said that I didn’t want more heal-intensive mechanics, but what I did say is that only adding that to future fights won’t fix the fundamental issue healers face in every crevice of the game, not just endgame.

The point is that we have a bunch of oGCDs that are extremely powerful AoE heals and they all come off cooldown really fast. This is actually more DPS centric then what I’m asking for. I want there to be meaningful choices between either doing damage or healing the party. That’s what well-designed healers and supports do across any genre of video games.

I want the healing tools we have to be more significant than a bunch of generic X potency heals. This doesn’t make me any less of a healer… It’s gaslighting, plain and simple. It’s invalidating what I want as a healer player, even more so than you keep claiming that we’re doing to your ideas (which we aren’t, we’re telling you we asked for it before and SE refused.)

[Semirhage]

I think that’s what they’ve been intentionally ignoring. More downtime buttons does not mean less healing. I never said that I didn’t want more heal-intensive mechanics, but what I did say is that only adding that to future fights won’t fix the fundamental issue healers face in every crevice of the game, not just endgame.

The point is that we have a bunch of oGCDs that are extremely powerful AoE heals and they all come off cooldown really fast. This is actually more DPS centric then what I’m asking for. I want there to be meaningful choices between either doing damage or healing the party. That’s what well-designed healers and supports do across any genre of video games.

I want the healing tools we have to be more significant than a bunch of generic X potency heals. This doesn’t make me any less of a healer… It’s gaslighting, plain and simple. It’s invalidating what I want as a healer player, even more so than you keep claiming that we’re doing to your ideas (which we aren’t, we’re telling you we asked for it before and SE refused.)

I can tell someone isn't worth having a discussion with when they open with this "you aren't a REAL HEALER unlike meeeeeeeeeee" bunkum. It's bog-standard Sylphie smug posturing, not a discussion opener. It also perfectly illustrates that said Sylphie doesn't actually understand how skilled healers play but is proudly declaring that they do. There's no "discussion" there. It's just a Sylphie farting out "HeALeRs ShOULd HeAL OnLy" and sticking their nose in the air, which is all they ever do.

[Maltothoris]

They won't add back the whole mp management or anything like because of something we learned in Mizzteq's interview during the Endwalker Media Tour.

If we make it too intense, the number of people who can clear the content will be very limited. We don’t want to have a situation where somebody is just healing the whole time or have to have to manage MP constantly,” s

It goes against the accessibility they're pushing for and you can see that with all the changes. Aggro too hard? Just get rid of the damage penalty and have tanks in tank stance. Also no need for Diversion anymore since that was appartently too hard for dps to press even though it lasted 30 seconds and had a huge effect. This also reduced the burden on tanks to make sure they manage their provke+shirk. MP too hard to manage? Lower cost of all the spells, add new ways to gain mp back and reduce Lucid's cd from 2 minites to 1.

[ASkellington]

They won't add back the whole mp management or anything like because of something we learned in Mizzteq's interview during the Endwalker Media Tour.



It goes against the accessibility they're pushing for and you can see that with all the changes. Aggro too hard? Just get rid of the damage penalty and have tanks in tank stance. Also no need for Diversion anymore since that was appartently too hard for dps to press even though it lasted 30 seconds and had a huge effect. This also reduced the burden on tanks to make sure they manage their provke+shirk. MP too hard to manage? Lower cost of all the spells, add new ways to gain mp back and reduce Lucid's cd from 2 minites to 1.

Which I think is stupid on their part. The MP management anyway. We have tools in game to assist in mana management. Also, if you won't add back mp management, WTF is piety for then?!

[Raven2014]

Which I think is stupid on their part. The MP management anyway. We have tools in game to assist in mana management. Also, if you won't add back mp management, WTF is piety for then?!

Meme. But seriously, like I said one can clearly see a major disconnect in the ethos and the implementation of the role when the supposed #2 stat is a potato no one want. Not only people don't meld it, healers actively "avoid" picking up gear piece with it.

And remember, both Piety and Battledance had already gone through a revision to make them more useful. (not)

[Shurrikhan]

They won't add back the whole mp management or anything like because of something we learned in Mizzteq's interview during the Endwalker Media Tour.

It goes against the accessibility they're pushing for and you can see that with all the changes. Aggro too hard? Just get rid of the damage penalty and have tanks in tank stance.

I'm actually mostly fine with both those changes / reductions, unless they'd be willing to actually make something interesting out of them.

The only thing interesting about MP management was the damage penalty attached to Ballad / Promoted Bishop (lost AoE damage / Rook uptime). It was purely a physical ranged mechanic. At no point did MP existing make Cure I / Benefic / Physick interesting or worthwhile.

Similarly, enmity and enmity combos, due to how straightforward and permanent Enmity works in this game, were never nuanced or interesting. You stacked multipliers, achieving a giant enmity lead early in the fight, dropped stance, and then left it off for the rest of the fight. Enmity combos were even worse, in that they consumed up to 4 keys just for alternatives that you used only under the similarly underutilized tank stance state, to the point that we'd spend 5 buttons on a 20-second stretch of hitting 456 instead of 123. It was bloat.

A context for actual MP management, on the other hand, would probably look something like...

• Hefty MP costs attached to most abilities. %MP restoration removed from abilities outside of Lucid Dreaming (as attaching MPR to abilities only makes it even more costly not to just blow them mindlessly on cooldown). [SIZE="1"]Pure damage abilities would have only negligible cost, as their addition to average ppgcd was just siphoned out of Glare/Broil/Mal/Dos spam anyways, so they need only be balanced around the portion of damage they can still produce during intensive healing, due to being moved to oGCD means of output, relative to other jobs.
  
  
• Compensatory flat MP reduction on all other spells (disproportionately benefiting the likes of Cure and offensive spells and hurting the likes of costly AoEs). [SIZE="1"]This adjusts the MP economy such that using the burst of healing provided by abilities
  
  
• Slightly curtail the power of AoE heals, such as by splitting a portion of their potency among all wounded allies within their area of effect. [SIZE="1"]This means that fewer spot-healing requirements can be addressed at equal or lower cost by just blandly AoE spamming.
  
  
• An undermechanic that mostly prevents outright MP starvation, perhaps sacrificing potency for more than proportionately enhanced MP rate as MP increasingly falls below 50%. For instance, up to 6% more MP but 1% less throughput for each %MP missing, starting from 50%. [300% MPR but 50% potency at 0% MP.] This way we can have a mechanic for which failure is obvious and palpable without literally locking people out of gameplay upon failure.
  
  
• Finite means of receiving MP from outside sources that are not simply primarily bottlenecked by their cooldowns (no Stormblood Refresh, etc.).
  
  
• Ideally, remove Lucid Dreaming and just add its average effect to base MPR (unless the chance that someone might forget to hit it per minute, its negligible weave cost, and the risk of being PKed immediately after casting it and therefore being screwed for the next minute despite being rezzed are somehow worth its bloat).

Similarly, for enmity to be of any interest, adds would have to be able to spawn relatively frequently with some default, targeted enmity, and/or there'd have to be enmity resets, and/or mob manipulation based on enmity. Ultimately, though, if we were to have alternate combos, I'd still rather see them used for anything other than enmity (such as stagger, active suppression/mitigation, part-break, etc), or for a bit of bonus enmity to just be one of multiple bonuses by which those combos would compete with higher-damage or higher-resource-generation combos.

Why Esuna is so under-utilize? Why is it whenever we have a DOT mechanic, it's simply a matter of overpowering it with healing? Why do Ultimate Impulse + Hell Sting or Dominion + Aigonina or Quietus + Pulsar not become a more standard healing mechanic rather than soft enrage mechanic?

Esuna, as it's currently implemented, is more one-note than any other way of addressing a given debuff, so I'm honestly glad it's rarely used in its current form. Heal check? Nah, just use that special button that's otherwise wasted bloat.

The only thing I particularly like it for is timed on-debuff-cleanse explosions. In any other case, Esuna's being usable just makes the debuff more dull.

Because it at least has that, though, I'd rather see Esuna expanded in its functionality (just not on what it can be used for without actually changing how it can be used).

[Raven2014]

I'm actually mostly fine with both those changes / reductions, unless they'd be willing to actually make something interesting out of them.

...

Esuna, as it's currently implemented, is more one-note than any other way of addressing a given debuff, so I'm honestly glad it's rarely used in its current form. Heal check? Nah, just use that special button that's otherwise wasted bloat.

And ... that's exactly why I'm taking the stance that I'm making. Your first sentence ... if you present that as the choice to SE: either make it more interesting, or remove it then throughout the last 7 years they had left little room for doubt which option SE will pick. And that's exactly why we arrive at the barebone state that we are currently.

- Fix an jaggy ability to make it work smooth or remove it: SE will remove it.
- Have something interesting but still raw, should it be refined or remove: it will be remove.
- Have an ability that does something, should content be designed to make use of it or just sideline it: it will be sidelined.

AND, there is very clear pattern to how these decisions are made: to make it easy and easier to DPS. Being MP management, Aggro management or whatsoever, if it gets in the way of easing DPS, it'll get the axe. At this point, regardless of which role you play, it's very obvious DPS is the holy grail for SE.


And where it will actually stop?

This I also don't get. Never has removing tools from most, in the long run, made the few who still get to hold onto their forms of those tools feel any more complex, nuanced, or fun due to their removal elsewhere.

That's not what I'm suggesting. What I'm suggesting is to concentrate the abilities into classes that make them more identifiable with its role, for example:

- Why all DPS should be selfish DPS, party buff should be removed from every role and give it to support only. The current mess of buff window, meta comp is because this split between selfish classes and utility classes. The game already have a soft enforcement to encourage party to bring every roles, so this would help the balance issues between different comp. That may also help plucking MCH out of the eternal hole it has been stuck in since inception because it never really have a clear identity.

- Why only healers should be in charge of party wide mitigation: yes, they should be remove from DPS and tanks, but that doesn't mean the fight have to adjust down. In stead of melee feint here, caster addle there, tank reprisal later, put all of that on a Regen healer. Instead of Shake here, Samba there, Magic Barrier somewhere else, put all of that on the shield healer. For once, like I said this will help reinforce the role identity. For two, I believe it would open more door for "healer exclusive" mechanic. Why play a healer and dream for a DPS rotation, what about a healing rotation? Right now healing rotation simply amount to mapping your oGCD into a fixed time line of a fight. What about combo action? For example, if I use ability A follow by ability B, it will proc an ability C that will give me a bigger shield for the next big hit? Or if I cast the heals in this sequence, it will give me a powerful regen bundle with a mit so I don't have to cast each of the separately the next time I need it?

[Shurrikhan]

And ... that's exactly why I'm taking the stance that I'm making. Your first sentence...

My first sentence was very much entwined with the last that you so handily cropped:

Because it at least has that, though, I'd rather see Esuna expanded in its functionality (just not on what it can be used for without actually changing how it can be used).

It's not just a matter of "make it more interesting, or remove it."

It's a matter of "When would such a tool have a positive effect on gameplay? How can the tool or its context be adjusted for more interesting gameplay?"