Fixing Every Healer Job

[pikalovr]

how would we feel about a change like katoar suggested for WHM?

[Shurrikhan]

how would we feel about a change like katoar suggested for WHM?

Where was this suggestion made? Maybe I'm going blind, but I'm not seeing that name here as I scroll through the pages.

(Inb4 "see the link". There was no link at the time I made this reply.)

Edit: Nevermind; here it is. Reading through it now.

...

At a glance, it looks better than what we have, but I'm not fully sold on the Tesco-mudra design of Wind, Water, and Earth.

Moreover, if going that route anyway, one could add 3-5 (technically, up to 9) additional options at no additional button cost (Wind alone, Water alone, Earth alone, and perhaps the two missing trios if order were to matter for the trios), so I'm curious why it was left at just pairs and a single (ordered?) trio.

I'd also, especially if not going for more than just 4 total combinations, like to see some impact on the playflow outside of just what WHM-Jutsu the combinations produce. Haste, Crit, and Potency (perhaps flat bonus) buffs, with some windows and crit-procs to synergize with either, would be a start.

[pikalovr]

snip

this was my suggested changes to it

honestly instead of HP make it cost MP it'd put far more thought into using it optimally as it will affect rez potential and make any mistakes from the party more punishing than popping it 5 times out of the gate with no worry cause you can. you know no raidwides are coming up so might as well just pop all 5 since you have no worries for 25 seconds unlike making it an MP cost where any number of mechanics can affect someone else and hurt you more by draining unneccessary MP. it would also give lucid dreaming and thin air alot more use cases than just being used for rezzes. especially if you force each special move we'll call it cost MP since they are GCDs

also you really need to add more to the special moves (GCDs) unless spiritual ray is super powerful most people will just go earth+wind for the halfing of the effect of the next blissful sacrifice. if they need it, and seraph strike should honestly just be the single target attack that grants faith stacks and another 2 blissful sacrifice stacks to the WHM and WHM having a seperate dash ability. especially if you want "casual" players to be able to use it. you need to balance the damage to a point where for example making sure spiritual ray (10 cost overall) is more powerful than a seraph strike drought combo (10 cost overall) and making sure drought is more powerful than quad seraph strike

the main point of a setup like this is to allow the player to push their MP as far as they feel comfortable with alot of WHMs just using the 5 stacks and call it a day. but the more experienced WHM in better groups might use multiple seraph strikes (since it is inded a faith stack increase at the cost of MP) and i would add a mana regen/max MP return effect to spiritual ray to help those who really wanna "greed" a way to not go OOM if they're smart about it. yes you basically only use bene once and on CD but if you do for example need to use exaltation (which you can now get even more effect out of now since you can build stacks using bene and seraph strikes) even without using bene on CD you need a way to reenter that loop. and you still wanna keep up your dots and occasional nukes for blood spilled procs if you don't feel you can sustain enough droughts

[Shurrikhan]

...

I'm honestly a bit confused about the point of the Sacrifice mechanic in the first place.

I'm not sure how trading one's HP for special attacks sounds particularly "WHM". It also doesn't match up with the lore, given that those special attacks are all obviously (Tornado, Earthquake, etc.) or framed as (as per Water+Wind = Seraph Strike) elemental. The lore hints that the only thing for which we can directly sacrifice our soul(force)/aether for is healing, as an alternative to Water-based or Water-hybrid elemental magics.

It also feels odd to me that the burst options would be locked behind a 30-second oGCD that then gives 5 opportunities for said special-attacks-at-HP-cost, which seems clunky. And the HP-loss as some sort of alleged frequency-limiting factor seems... horrible to try to balance. Is it supposed to be balanced around maximum uptime, whereby one can use a special attack for 40% of one's uptime? If balanced around that HP loss being significant and thus overtuned as soon as one can really spend 25 per 60 seconds on special attacks?

I don't feel like the HP-sacrificing part of the iteration would survive obvious clunk or scalability checks. (Which is why my focus turned more to just the element-mixing component itself.)

[pikalovr]

I'm honestly a bit confused about the point of the Sacrifice mechanic in the first place.

I'm not sure how trading one's HP for special attacks sounds particularly "WHM". It also doesn't match up with the lore, given that those special attacks are all obviously (Tornado, Earthquake, etc.) or framed as (as per Water+Wind = Seraph Strike) elemental. The lore hints that the only thing for which we can directly sacrifice our soul(force)/aether for is healing, as an alternative to Water-based or Water-hybrid elemental magics.

It also feels odd to me that the burst options would be locked behind a 30-second oGCD that then gives 5 opportunities for said special-attacks-at-HP-cost, which seems clunky. And the HP-loss as some sort of alleged frequency-limiting factor seems... horrible to try to balance. Is it supposed to be balanced around maximum uptime, whereby one can use a special attack for 40% of one's uptime? If balanced around that HP loss being significant and thus overtuned as soon as one can really spend 25 per 60 seconds on special attacks?

I don't feel like the HP-sacrificing part of the iteration would survive obvious clunk or scalability checks. (Which is why my focus turned more to just the element-mixing component itself.)

thats why i turned it into a MP cost cause we're "offering" up our residual aether to the elementals to assist us. plus MP will be way more thought provoking and risk reward heavy without feeling unfair in certain cases.

the lock on sacrifices and faith is circumvented with my changes to seraph strike and spiritula ray allowing you to drain as much MP as you feel comfortable with and you can sustain it back if you're efficient enough spiritual ray returns 25% max MP back (not in actual MP just you can get back 25% of your max MP) and a boost to mana regen which ontop of things like lucid dreaming and thin air should make for quite challenging game MP management. seraph strike granting the 3 faith stacks and 2 sacrifice stacks

[Katoar]

this was my suggested changes to it

honestly instead of HP make it cost MP it'd put far more thought into using it optimally as it will affect rez potential and make any mistakes from the party more punishing than popping it 5 times out of the gate with no worry cause you can. you know no raidwides are coming up so might as well just pop all 5 since you have no worries for 25 seconds unlike making it an MP cost where any number of mechanics can affect someone else and hurt you more by draining unneccessary MP. it would also give lucid dreaming and thin air alot more use cases than just being used for rezzes. especially if you force each special move we'll call it cost MP since they are GCDs

While I agree MP needs to be of use, if the end goal is to prevent popping all 5 stacks right away we can simply add uncleansable Grievous wounds debuff if 3 or more stacks have been activated without the Aura of The of Life if Hp cost and reduction is not enough.
Grievous Wounds: Healing and Shielding received is reduced by 80%
Duration: 1 minute
This will kill you in current savage and extreme content unless you spam heal yourself to full HP. Note that I don't mind MP being the resource to be managed but I do not understand how risking not having MP for rezzes is relevant outside of prog.

Also, Benediction can be made GCD Button with a 5-second recast time. This is a minor detail. And the cleansing can be removed as well.

That Thread started out with me wanting a change in benediction and I ended up writing some DPS kit.

[SirShady]

His proposed rework

Please, stop trying to make White Mages commit self-harm. It is a bad concept that doesn't fit the job at all. If you can't see how this would break certain fights, especially Ultimate, I don't know what to tell you. Imagine all the "bad" White Mages killing themselves to mechanics because they wanted to ink out some extra damage. We do not want something that could be used as a griefing tool as part of a basic DPS rotation. We want skill expression but not at the cost of making White Mage suicidal. Even as percent MP/max MP, this would be bad.

Benediction can stay as it is, because it's fine. It's an iconic full health heal. You remove that and there would be rioting in Gridania.

[Katoar]

Please, stop trying to make White Mages commit self-harm. It is a bad concept that doesn't fit the job at all. If you can't see how this would break certain fights, especially Ultimate, I don't know what to tell you. Imagine all the "bad" White Mages killing themselves to mechanics because they wanted to ink out some extra damage. We do not want something that could be used as a griefing tool as part of a basic DPS rotation. We want skill expression but not at the cost of making White Mage suicidal. Even as percent MP/max MP, this would be bad..

That being said, I'm thinking of just saying screw it and going Summoner. I'm just absolutely completely fed up with how they keep treating healers and it just keeps getting worse. They keep balancing for the lowest common denominator of skill, and those people STILL cant keep up with Healer. Enough is enough Square, make the game more complex and allow people who dont care or keep up to fail. We still kick people who are bad, and nothing you can do will make us stop doing that, no amount of dumbing down, no amount of homogenization.

Thread: Has anyone quit healing?

[SirShady]

Thread: Has anyone quit healing?

Bro, this entire thread is about adding complexity to healers. Go read it. There's a difference between wanting a higher skillcap for healers and having them actively kill themselves to deal damage. As I already said, losing % max HP would completely screw you over in certain content, and it has NOTHING to do with White Mage's identity. Drop it. It's a bad idea.

Find another way to add skill expression besides a clunky self-damage system. Just because I think your current idea is bad, doesn't mean I don't want changes. Obviously.

[Shurrikhan]

Thread: Has anyone quit healing?

Ahh, yes, anyone noting problems with an auxiliary and ill-fit mechanic's involvement in/with a given kit = They must just not want skill ceiling!



Again, Katoar, there's a lot of really good stuff in what you've suggested on your thread. I think the take-away here is just that the Sacrifice mechanic might not be among them.