Shield/Pure Healer Split Feedback

[Renathras]

It's...an _interesting IDEA_. When properly executed and in a game that actually leans int/allows it.

Yes, those are caveats that mean, yes, it didn't work for FFXIV.

Having dichotomies like "main tank/off tank" work in games with more complex (e.g. less scripted) battle systems and more varied gameplay styles. For example, consider WoW circa Wrath of the Lich King. At that time, there was a dual tank healer (Holy Paladin) that had only a few single target healing spells (and no AOE to speak of), but they were hyper efficient and very powerful, meaning in a large (25 person) raid with 4-6 healers, bringing one was a no-brainer. Restoration Druid worked as a heal over time focused healer whose main job was to keep several HoTs on the tanks to smooth their recovery and "roll HoTs" across the raid group to ensure stable health values (no one getting and staying too low, recovery to max health over prolonged time periods of no damage). Restoration Shaman maintained buffs and assisted with party mana restoration (so did Druid in a pinch with Enervation, I think it was, and Paladins could help with Judgement of Wisdom on the boss that would proc MP gain for raid members striking the boss), and was good at AOE healing party members with the affectionately named "banana beam" (Chain Heal) among others. And Priest had two healing specs, Holy which was kind of the jack of all trades of healers, and Discipline, which for the first time was actually somewhat useful (it was mainly just used for leveling in Vanilla and BC) as a shield tank to smooth damage and a passable tank healer if you couldn't find a Paladin despite them being everywhere. It fully came into its role through Cataclysm and into Mists of Pandaria, the following expansions.

Now, I say this not to praise WoW or condemn FFXIV, but more to point out that a game that ALLOWS AND EMBRACES NICHES can work if the game plays into that AND the encounters support it.

FFXIV does neither.

The longer GCD filled with oGCDs completely alters the dynamic, and the scripted fight damage and low tank auto-attack damage collectively mean you don't need things like tank healers or party healers. All healers in FFXIV, even the powerful barrier healers, have effective and potent HoTs. They aren't spamable, but they don't need to be as there's no case in FFXIV where a Resto Druid-like "rolling" of a single target instant cast HoT (Rejuvination, which was basically Regen) is ever needed or useful to a party. While WHM _could_ do that...they could just cast a Rapture, Assize, or Medica 2 and call it a day in most cases.

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There's too much overlap (all barrier healers have regens, AST has barriers, WHM is the only odd one out), the fight design doesn't really allow that flexibility (barriers can't be MANDATORY or WHM can't heal an encounter, Cure 3 can't be mandatory or SGE can't heal an encounter, etc), and with fight damage that can be easily covered with oGCD healing in most cases anyway, regardless of if there's a barrier or HoT attached or not.

Every healer but WHM is an effective barrier healer. That includes AST. Every healer is an effective HoT healer. Every healer is an effective AOE healer. Every healer is an effective single target healer (in the few cases that's called for). Every healer has effective throughput/on-demand healing. Every healer has effective MP regen for their mainly used healing tools.

So you don't need an efficient single target Holy Paladin or a Hot Rolling Druid, an AOE specialized Shaman or a damage smoothing Discipline Priest, and a generalist Holy Priest doesn't come into play because ALL of our healers are basically generalist Holy Priests. It helps when the raid size is 25 as you're EXPECTED to have roughly one of each healer in your 4-6 person strong healing team.

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So it's a nice idea. I see what they were going for.

But the healer design (everyone has all the tools anyway), encounter design (scripted fights with rigid damage in predictable patters that can all be handled with oGCDs), and rigid class design (because every Job in FFXIV does every thing, there's no niche expression to speak of, and where there is, like SCH having extremely powerful shields, they aren't used in encounters because the other healers would then be unable to clear content)

As such, the idea failed.

FFXIV's combat system is just too rigid right now for specializations to work.

[Ironically, the main-tank/off-tank thing CAN work because raid groups CAN optimize to have one tank that just eats damage and the other that deals more and this be moderately effective. While gearing allows that to shift to just using 2x off-tanks for the greater damage leveraging their support skills to keep each other alive, at least during prog that dynamic actually IS useful, whereas the Pure/Barrier split never really is because the Barrier healers can match the Pure healers in throughput when using CDs, and the times you have those heal checks are both infrequent and scripted, meaning it's easy to have those CDs ready. This is why SCH/SGE actually is effective despite both having, on paper, less throughput. Because they have it when they NEED it, and that's all that matters. And as others have said, AST is only useful because of the party buffs and that it has a lot of mitigation for a Pure healer as well. WHM is only there because it's still easy and that matters to a lot of people, but it does less party damage contribution and has weaker mitigation meaning it's harder in prog AND farm. Somehow. <_< ]

[Deceptus]

FFXIV's combat system is just too rigid right now for specializations to work.

If you want proof positive of this, look no further than Tanks.

Last expansion the Devs said their "vision" was for there to be two Main Tanks, and two Off Tanks (more support oriented). Look how quickly that dissolved into meaningless tripe.

From the Mr. Happy Interview 3 years ago:

Mr.Happy) Mostly because we really expected it to be both a tank and a healer for the expansion.

Yoshi-P) Simply we only had two ranged physical DPS so we wanted to add another. We have 4 tanks and 4 melee dps, 3 casters and 3 healers, and yet there were only 2 ranged dps. We wanted to balance the number of jobs across the board.

We also really wanted to add another tank to balance the tanks more. With 4 tanks, we can better balance the tank role, with two main tanks and two off-tanks.

When players decide which role or job to play. Even a small difference in abilities and attribute make a big difference. People like to take Paladin as an off-tank thanks to abilities like Cover, so the Warrior and Dark Knight are fighting for the main-tank spot most commonly.

So hypothetically speaking, if we rebalance things and put Warrior as MT, then the Paladin and Dark Knight would be fighting for off-tank. No matter what we really needed to balance this with two and two. Its much more fair this way, so its two jobs between main tank and two between off-tank. This is very tentative so please convey this is no indication at all of our final plans.

When looking at this history of healing jobs. Making strong balance between three jobs it has been tough. With three its been tough, so with a 4th the balance might get even worse. Instead of doing this, we want to prioritize balancing them better this expansion so we didn’t want to add a new healer at 4.0 or 5.0. We really think we need to restructure the way healers are handled. We can’t keep this strict division between pure healer and barrier healer. Something needs to change here so we can maintain good balance. Thats the main reason we didn’t have a healer. First priority was to add a 3rd ranged, then a 4th tank while we balance the healers better.

They gave up on the MT / OT system and doubled down on the Barrier / Regen healer systems. . .

[Renathras]

They gave up on the MT / OT system and doubled down on the Barrier / Regen healer systems. . .

I feel like we need that Palpatine "Ironic..." meme here.

I had forgotten Yoshi P basically said NOT to do what they ended up doing in EW. XD

[Deceptus]

I feel like we need that Palpatine "Ironic..." meme here.

I had forgotten Yoshi P basically said NOT to do what they ended up doing in EW. XD

When people point out that Yoshi has no idea what his people under him are doing, stuff like that is a prime example. And it's not like it's rare, it has happened more than once.

[Gemina]

I can't speak for Savage or Ultimate, and was actually hoping that shields would have some kind of relevance in that content, but it would seem there are very niche situations where they are actually useful, and even fewer where a regen is not preferred.

The really disappointing aspect about shields is that the shield skills that I find the most useful are on WHM and AST. The friggin pure healers. It's because they have oGCD shields that can give a little bit of breathing room before needing a full heal.

The healers are homogenized. There is no pure healer/shield healer split. If they want to truly do that, they'd have to take regens away from the shield healers, and shields away from the pure healers. Probably not the best idea to do that at this point.

[Renathras]

I can't speak for Savage or Ultimate, and was actually hoping that shields would have some kind of relevance in that content, but it would seem there are very niche situations where they are actually useful, and even fewer where a regen is not preferred.

I agree with your overall position (especially the last paragraph), but I wanted to correct something here:

It's not so much the SHIELDS that are useful (though they can be in Extremes and Savages, especially extremes where someone can mess up but you can clutch save them and still beat enrage reliably; I can't speak to Ultimates because I haven't done those), it's the MITIGATION that's useful. Things like Sacred Soil are far more useful than things like Succor. Special mention goes to Deployment Tactics Crit-Adlos with Seraph Consolation, but that's the exception that proves the rule. Crit Spreadlo is a meme/notable BECAUSE of how powerful it is.

But the real benefit is the mitigation. Which is also why WHM is in the dust. AST has party buffs and some mitigation. SGE has no buffs but lots of mitigation. SCH has a buff AND lots of mitigation. So it's no surprise why AST/SCH and/or SGE/SCH are the go-to "meta" picks right now, with AST/SGE having honorable mention.

WHM has Temperance and no other form of actual mitigation (Benison is nice, but you only have 2 of them at a time, with Aquaveil floating around, leaving 5 party members with no protection), and it has no party buff to make up for lacking out on the mitigation front.

[Gemina]

I agree with your overall position (especially the last paragraph), but I wanted to correct something here:

It's not so much the SHIELDS that are useful (though they can be in Extremes and Savages, especially extremes where someone can mess up but you can clutch save them and still beat enrage reliably; I can't speak to Ultimates because I haven't done those), it's the MITIGATION that's useful. Things like Sacred Soil are far more useful than things like Succor. Special mention goes to Deployment Tactics Crit-Adlos with Seraph Consolation, but that's the exception that proves the rule. Crit Spreadlo is a meme/notable BECAUSE of how powerful it is.

But the real benefit is the mitigation. Which is also why WHM is in the dust. AST has party buffs and some mitigation. SGE has no buffs but lots of mitigation. SCH has a buff AND lots of mitigation. So it's no surprise why AST/SCH and/or SGE/SCH are the go-to "meta" picks right now, with AST/SGE having honorable mention.

WHM has Temperance and no other form of actual mitigation (Benison is nice, but you only have 2 of them at a time, with Aquaveil floating around, leaving 5 party members with no protection), and it has no party buff to make up for lacking out on the mitigation front.

Recently I had to unleash some praying mantis kung-fu when I mentioned that WHM isn't in a bad place among the other healers despite their lack of mitigation ability. It's almost like players want this job to be in a bad place, and in perpetual misery. Mitigation has been the chief go-to argument in this regard.

Mitigation comes in two forms, and two methods of application from my observation. The first are barriers that are actually capable of extending the max HP of the target. These have their own HP and 'break' once this amount is depleted. Examples would be SCH Adlo, or AST Celestial Intersect. The second is straight damage reduction. This kind of mitigation remains active so long as the duration timer is not at zero. Examples would be SCH Sacred Soil, or WHM Temperance. Application comes via the GCD or oGCDs, which is also important when it comes to evaluating their effectiveness. While barrier type mitigation can be applied by both methods, straight damage reduction only come via oGCD.

When it comes to mitigation, in order for it to be effective utility, it needs to somehow translate to faster death to the opposition. It isn't death prevention. I strongly dislike this fact, but it is a fact nonetheless. If the ability is an oGCD, then there is no discussion to be had when it comes to their effectiveness, and there is nothing to compare the ability to. It is free mitigation every XX seconds, so there is no point to not use these skills. The true battle takes place with GCD mitigation, and whether to use them vs a straight heal via GCD (assuming you are exhausted of oGCD heals), or if you should be using it for damage.

In the case of a GCD shield vs a GCD heal, they both essentially do the same thing, and they provide HP to the target to prevent them from getting KO'd from an incoming attack. All that matters in this scenario is that the target has enough HP to survive the upcoming attack, making the shield completely irrelevant. We have to start to look at MP economy in order to make comparisons at this point.

In the case of GCD shield vs damage, the latter wins every time so long as the GCD being used for damage does not translate to a player dying because you did not heal them. In this case, it reverts back to GCD shield vs GCD heal.

What all this means is GCD mitigation serves no purpose in FFXIV, and the cases where it would actually beat out a GCD heal that does the same thing, or straight damage are so few and far between that it warrants being looked at by the dev team. Especially if they truly want to have a barrier/pure healer dichotomy. Right now, this line is so blurred it may as well not even be there. The good news about that is it leaves WHM in a much better place than some players will give it credit for.

Healing in FFXIV = (Enough HP to survive attack + 1)

[Supersnow845]

When it comes to mitigation, in order for it to be effective utility, it needs to somehow translate to faster death to the opposition. It isn't death prevention. I strongly dislike this fact, but it is a fact nonetheless. If the ability is an oGCD, then there is no discussion to be had when it comes to their effectiveness, and there is nothing to compare the ability to. It is free mitigation every XX seconds, so there is no point to not use these skills. The true battle takes place with GCD mitigation, and whether to use them vs a straight heal via GCD (assuming you are exhausted of oGCD heals), or if you should be using it for damage.

In the case of a GCD shield vs a GCD heal, they both essentially do the same thing, and they provide HP to the target to prevent them from getting KO'd from an incoming attack. All that matters in this scenario is that the target has enough HP to survive the upcoming attack, making the shield completely irrelevant. We have to start to look at MP economy in order to make comparisons at this point.

In the case of GCD shield vs damage, the latter wins every time so long as the GCD being used for damage does not translate to a player dying because you did not heal them. In this case, it reverts back to GCD shield vs GCD heal.

What all this means is GCD mitigation serves no purpose in FFXIV, and the cases where it would actually beat out a GCD heal that does the same thing, or straight damage are so few and far between that it warrants being looked at by the dev team. Especially if they truly want to have a barrier/pure healer dichotomy. Right now, this line is so blurred it may as well not even be there. The good news about that is it leaves WHM in a much better place than some players will give it credit for.

Healing in FFXIV = (Enough HP to survive attack + 1)

I mean even if you ignore GCD shields in two minutes SGE has 5 instances of 10% group wide mitigation (of which you can stack 2 of these 5), SCH has 5 10% and 1 5% of which 2 of the 10% and the 5% can all be stacked, AST has 2 10% and WHM has 1 10%

So even coming from the perspective of “only free mitigation is useful” (and this is ignoring things like how spreadlo is free under dissipation because the energy drain refunds the cost of 1 broil) then WHM is still left far behind the shield healers and behind AST’s much more functional and flexible 2 times (to say nothing of AST’s shields), in comparison WHM offers nothing of benefit

[Gemina]

I mean even if you ignore GCD shields in two minutes SGE has 5 instances of 10% group wide mitigation (of which you can stack 2 of these 5), SCH has 5 10% and 1 5% of which 2 of the 10% and the 5% can all be stacked, AST has 2 10% and WHM has 1 10%

So even coming from the perspective of “only free mitigation is useful” (and this is ignoring things like how spreadlo is free under dissipation because the energy drain refunds the cost of 1 broil) then WHM is still left far behind the shield healers and behind AST’s much more functional and flexible 2 times (to say nothing of AST’s shields), in comparison WHM offers nothing of benefit

Spreadlo still costs the initial GCD. It is never free. You will now have to compare spreadlo to damage if optimizing your own kit, or vs WHM you would have to compare it simply to each healer's ability to keep the party alive, and that boils down to making sure the party has enough HP to survive an incoming attack. When you look at things through this lens, you then can see where WHM at worst is dead even with the other healers due to their ability to quickly restore health to the party.

Stacked mitigation also means nothing. Even 100% mitigation means next to nothing if the incoming attack doesn't wipe out the HP bars. If GCD mitigation, and mitigation in general was as useful as you're making it out to be, then yes, WHM would be left behind the other healers. This isn't the case though. In addition because WHM is straight forward with an entirely passive job gauge, along with its raw healing power; it is very easy for a new player to pick this job and be just as effective as a seasoned SCH, SGE, or AST. I know you strongly dislike WHM. The game doesn't though, as much as you would like to believe that.

[Deceptus]

Recently I had to unleash some praying mantis kung-fu when I mentioned that WHM isn't in a bad place among the other healers despite their lack of mitigation ability. It's almost like players want this job to be in a bad place, and in perpetual misery. Mitigation has been the chief go-to argument in this regard.

Mitigation comes in two forms, and two methods of application from my observation. The first are barriers that are actually capable of extending the max HP of the target. These have their own HP and 'break' once this amount is depleted. Examples would be SCH Adlo, or AST Celestial Intersect. The second is straight damage reduction. This kind of mitigation remains active so long as the duration timer is not at zero. Examples would be SCH Sacred Soil, or WHM Temperance. Application comes via the GCD or oGCDs, which is also important when it comes to evaluating their effectiveness. While barrier type mitigation can be applied by both methods, straight damage reduction only come via oGCD.

When it comes to mitigation, in order for it to be effective utility, it needs to somehow translate to faster death to the opposition. It isn't death prevention. I strongly dislike this fact, but it is a fact nonetheless. If the ability is an oGCD, then there is no discussion to be had when it comes to their effectiveness, and there is nothing to compare the ability to. It is free mitigation every XX seconds, so there is no point to not use these skills. The true battle takes place with GCD mitigation, and whether to use them vs a straight heal via GCD (assuming you are exhausted of oGCD heals), or if you should be using it for damage.

In the case of a GCD shield vs a GCD heal, they both essentially do the same thing, and they provide HP to the target to prevent them from getting KO'd from an incoming attack. All that matters in this scenario is that the target has enough HP to survive the upcoming attack, making the shield completely irrelevant. We have to start to look at MP economy in order to make comparisons at this point.

In the case of GCD shield vs damage, the latter wins every time so long as the GCD being used for damage does not translate to a player dying because you did not heal them. In this case, it reverts back to GCD shield vs GCD heal.

What all this means is GCD mitigation serves no purpose in FFXIV, and the cases where it would actually beat out a GCD heal that does the same thing, or straight damage are so few and far between that it warrants being looked at by the dev team. Especially if they truly want to have a barrier/pure healer dichotomy. Right now, this line is so blurred it may as well not even be there. The good news about that is it leaves WHM in a much better place than some players will give it credit for.

Healing in FFXIV = (Enough HP to survive attack + 1)

Had a discussion on reddit with someone who basically took that line of argument. Claimed that I "didn't know how to play a shield healer properly". To which I replied:

AoE shield is less than 10% of your hp bar at most gear levels, even less than that for a tank. If that is the difference between life and death in your group, they need to learn what reprisal / feint-addle / troubadour / sacred soil (etc) are.

If you're a SCH and you need an aoe shield, you're going to deploy a Critlo or at a base level, an Adlo or just not shield and fey blessing / Indom the damage.

But please, tell me how I don't know how to shield /s