Shield/Pure Healer Split Feedback

[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. . .

[Supersnow845]

Sage should have been the dps oriented healer as promised.

SGE was never going to be the DPS healer because square refuses to leave the “I spam diagnosis and nothing else” people behind

These people would get eaten alive on disc priest which is why “DPS healer” basically became “I can force eos to target only the tank”

[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.

[Supersnow845]

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.

Honest question, do you play any savage or ultimate, literally every single raidwide will one shot you without at least one mitigation, third and fourth floor generally need at least 2, ultimate can need up to 4, and this is just the raidwides, mechanics need mitigation as well, P4S for example has around 30 instances of one shot damage in a 14 minute fight, temperance ain’t coveting that mitigation is king over strong healing, getting one shot by a mechanic makes your healing throughput completely useless and that’s where WHM struggles.

Free mitigation is just so much more useful than anything WHM can offer because again getting one shot by a mechanic invalidates all other healing

And on the subject of spreadlo like I said under dissipation it’s free because you get three aetherflow that refund you the damage lost by one broil