The Pure/Barrier Split and my inane ramblings about it

[Payotz]

(Necro bump, as is promised)

Heyo, as promised, I read through your WHM post. I'm still processing all of it because it's honestly a LOT to take in since it's a lot of text.
But initial impressions, good ideas, but I have some thoughts

A new HUD element, the 'Nature Gauge' (name is WIP), a simple 0-100 gauge that fills by doing certain actions. Stone/Glare gives 1 point. Aero/Dia gives 1 point on cast, and 1 per tick (5 total over full duration). Water would give 5 due to being used less often than Stone. edit: Forgot dungeons exist, perhaps something for Holy like 'Each enemy hit by Holy grants 2 gauge' so bigger pulls = more gauge per Holy bomb thrown, the 2 instead of 1 would be to compensate for the fact we're probably not multi-DOTting in a pull of 8+ mobs. As a side note, Dia's ticks giving gauge would only count for the first enemy, so having multiple mobs DOT'd would not increase the speed you gain gauge. This is important to note for later

Upon reaching 50 gauge, you can use a new skill: Blessing of the Elementals (also WIP). This would be a new GCD AOE heal that heals for 500p, restoring 500MP to the WHM, and granting them 3 buffs. These buffs can stack, so if you need to use the skill twice back to back for some insane burst AOE healing, you won't be kicking yourself for losing stacks. The buffs would also have no duration, so they'll last as long as needed during downtime, and be consumed the next time you're able to hit the boss. These three buffs would be named after the three elements the WHM controls, maybe 'Rage of the River, Ire of the Earth and Wrath of the Winds' or something like that. The three buffs would essentially be consolation prizes so that casting the GCD heal isnt a DPS loss. The 'water one' would turn the next Water/Banish into Flood (yes Banish would go back to being an elemental spell for a second, because our natural roots shouldn't be completely forgotten in favor of pretty lights), 'earth buff' would turn the next Stone/Glare into Quake, and 'wind buff' would turn the next Aero/Dia into Tornado. These skills would replace your Glare, Dia and Banish keybinds for the next cast, similar to how Inner Chaos replaces Fell Cleave on your bars when you have the Nascent Chaos buff. No button bloat worries.

First things first, I feel like out of every role that needs to break out of the 60 seconds loop meta, Healers should definitely be the top contender. The 60 seconds loop constraints creativity because it all boils down to "how much damage potency can you dump every 60 seconds." It would be a lot more engaging if it's like BLM wherein you can fit it in raid buffs if you really want to, but you have freedom to do whatever you want. Gameplay designed around parsers lead to stale gameplay, so they can eat shit for all I care.

The gauge thing is a very interesting idea, but I think this doesn't really solve the issue that WHM gameplay has right now. It's still Afflatus Misery, but spread across 3 buttons.

I propose a different mindset for the system. Rather than let the WHM build resources off just DPS, I propose that the WHM builds resources off everything they do, and rather than just 1 gauge and 3 buffs, I propose we'd have 3 gauges that builds up stacks of buffs that virtually have no limit, and propose that WHM should have that decision making aspect of when to heal and when to dps.

Terminology

I'll lay out the terminology here just so it's easier to understand.

Rage of the River - Water buff.
Ire of the Earth - Earth buff
Wrath of the Winds - Wind Buff

Stone - Basic filler GCD. Similar to what we have now.
Aero - DoT. Similar to what we have now.
Water - Insta cast GCD with 15 seconds Recast timer.

Gauge Systems

Overview

There will be 3 gauges that when filled up to 50, will generate a Water Buff, Wind Buff or Earth buff depending on what type of gauge gets filled.
These buffs will never run out, and there is virtually no limit (maybe a hard limit of 15 or 20) so there's player freedom if they want to dump a gauge or not.

The default toolkit for a WHM would therefore be 3 damage GCDs, and 3 healing GCDs. No OGCDs available until they've interacted with the system.

Gauge Generation

Gauge Generation will be unpredictable. You can get more gauge depending on several factors that are completely out of your control, but there is a baseline generation rate so you don't get gimped if you don't have it. It's reliable, but bonus gauge gain is unreliable, resulting in more thought processes and decision making for the player, and thus leading to more dynamic moment to moment gameplay.

Stone will fill up the Earth Gauge. Baseline generation gain will be a + 10. A DH will add +5, A Crit will add +5. A Crit/DH will add +20.
Aero will full up The Wind Gauge. Baseline generation gain will be a +5. A Crit tick will add a +10.
Water will fill up the Water Gauge. Baseline generation gain will be a +20. A DH will add +5. A crit will add +5. A Crit/DH will add +20.
Holy will fill up all 3 gauges. Baseline generation will be a +2, increased by how many targets have been affected by Holy.

Healing GCDs will fill up all 3 gauges:

Baseline values:

Cure 2 will fill up the Gauge by a +10.
Cure 3 will fill up the Gauge by a +20.
Medica will fill up the Gauge by a +10
Medica 2 will fill up the Gauge by a +20.

Healing GCD gauge gain will either scale with how low the players were at the time of healing applied OR how much they crit. Idk, haven't decided yet.


What does the buff do?

Now that we have the buffs, what can we do with them?

The buffs will change the damage GCDs as you described but with more additions. A major one would be that there would be gauge gain if the GCDs crit, DH or crit DH. A baseline hit would give no gauge, but a DH would give + 5, a Crit would give a +10, and a Crit/DH would give a +20.
(They'd also become faster to cast or instant GCDs, I haven't really decided yet.)

Now onto more specific actions.

Stone will just hit harder. +200 potency. Crit multipliers would be higher for this skill. Uses one stack of Stone buff.

Tornado will make your GCD recast time and cast time faster while your DoT will be on the target, akin to Presence of Mind, but it can stack with it. Uses one stack of Wind buff.

Flood will be a cone GCD that will increase the spell vuln up of every target caught into it. Uses one stack of Water buff.

Healing

All the healer GCDs will still be available, the buff just unlocks additional healing OGCDs.

Earth buff will unlock Stoneskin II and Stoneskin I. If the Stoneskin breaks, it refunds +10. If half of its durability is gone and it runs out, it refunds +5.

Water buff will unlock Afflatus Solace and Afflatus Rapture. Baseline refunds a +5 and it scales depending on how much HP has recovered up to a +20.

Wind buff will unlock Asylum and Assize. Baseline refunds a +2 per tick for Asylum, scaes depending on how much HP has recovered up to a +20.
Assize will refund a +5 from a baseline DPS or healing hit. +10 if it crits or DH. +15 if it Crit DH.
Assize will also recover mana, as it is now.

Big cooldowns

Temperance, Thin Air, Lily Bell and Benediction will be available through the buff system as well.

Temperance will function the same, have the same cooldown, but will require 2 Stone buffs, 1 Wind buff and 1 Water buff.
Lily Bell will function the same, have the same cooldown, but will require 2 Water buffs, 1 Wind buff and 1 Stone buff.
Thin Air will function the same, have the same cooldown, but will require 2 Wind buffs, 1 Stone buff and 1 Water buff.

Benediction will function the same, have the same cooldown, but will require 3 of each buffs.

--

Obviously values would have to change, but I feel like this would add a little bit more juggling for a WHM.
It requires a lot of decision making in the job, which adds a lot to the engagement factor.

Overall though, good job. I'd have to think about the AST and SCH and SGE ideas, but that's it for now.

[Niroken]

What if "pure" healers had a slightly higher base amount of healing then barrier healers but augments them by HoT while "barrier" healers had a slightly lower base amount of healing that is augmented by damage reduction instead of straight up damage negation?
You could still have damage negating barriers but as capstone abilities and pure healers would have burst healing on their capstone abilities.

For future healers, I would love a non-casting healer. All our healers are magic based.

[ForsakenRoe]

What if "pure" healers had a slightly higher base amount of healing then barrier healers but augments them by HoT while "barrier" healers had a slightly lower base amount of healing that is augmented by damage reduction instead of straight up damage negation?
You could still have damage negating barriers but as capstone abilities and pure healers would have burst healing on their capstone abilities.

For future healers, I would love a non-casting healer. All our healers are magic based.

I think that was the original intention, Succor was 200p plus a shield, Medica was 300, Medica2 was 150, plus 50 per tick for 30s. Recovering HP took effort back then. Then over time they've boosted every facet of healer kits to be more 'burst heal', even the shield healers. Succor fell to the wayside as Indom was added, Fey Union helps to make Adlo less desireable, etc. On the other side, WHM got the trait that boosts every AOE heal from 300p to 400p, combine that with Plenary's +200 and you go from a raidwide that asks for two Medica's, to a raidwide that asks for one PI > Rapture, and Rapture's now also damage neutral. Lilybell can heal for up to 2000 if you're up against a multihit/bleed mechanic, Medica 2 does it's regen effect in half the time. And then you have SGE, the 'barrier healer', with a capstone that lets them do 900p healing in a burst, if they Zoe it. They need to just remove the Pure/Barrier split and be done with it.

I was thinking about things again recently, and I gave the examples of 'shield checks' like a debuff application you can block with a shield, or the 'already in the game' knockback prevention of Vulcan Burst. But then I remembered another shield check we already have: A11S Photons. The floor's on fire, you're taking damage over time constantly, and the boss has a mechanic that drops you to 1HP. If you're not shielded, you die to the next DOT tick. It's simple, it works, it's proven to get people to use shields. I guess the issue is now, we have so many sources of OGCD shielding that we wouldn't really care. Oh Photon's coming? Shake/Veil/Consolation/Panhaima/Holos, any one of these and problem's solved.

[Niroken]

I think that was the original intention, Succor was 200p plus a shield, Medica was 300, Medica2 was 150, plus 50 per tick for 30s. Recovering HP took effort back then. Then over time they've boosted every facet of healer kits to be more 'burst heal', even the shield healers. Succor fell to the wayside as Indom was added, Fey Union helps to make Adlo less desireable, etc. On the other side, WHM got the trait that boosts every AOE heal from 300p to 400p, combine that with Plenary's +200 and you go from a raidwide that asks for two Medica's, to a raidwide that asks for one PI > Rapture, and Rapture's now also damage neutral. Lilybell can heal for up to 2000 if you're up against a multihit/bleed mechanic, Medica 2 does it's regen effect in half the time. And then you have SGE, the 'barrier healer', with a capstone that lets them do 900p healing in a burst, if they Zoe it. They need to just remove the Pure/Barrier split and be done with it.

I was thinking about things again recently, and I gave the examples of 'shield checks' like a debuff application you can block with a shield, or the 'already in the game' knockback prevention of Vulcan Burst. But then I remembered another shield check we already have: A11S Photons. The floor's on fire, you're taking damage over time constantly, and the boss has a mechanic that drops you to 1HP. If you're not shielded, you die to the next DOT tick. It's simple, it works, it's proven to get people to use shields. I guess the issue is now, we have so many sources of OGCD shielding that we wouldn't really care. Oh Photon's coming? Shake/Veil/Consolation/Panhaima/Holos, any one of these and problem's solved.

Personally I think shielding shouldn't be something you can have all the time since it's so powerful. Like a single target OGCD shield and one AoE shield would be fine. The two issues I have with shielding is that with two barrier healers you can't double your shields because that would obviously be broken, so one healer has a chunk of their kit be a waste of mana should they use their full kit. The second issue is that with shielding, if you just keep it up even the pure healer has nothing to do because all the damage is being taken by the barrier. This would be a more casual complaint then Savage and above.

[ToodlesElNoodles]

I agree with that.

I think Pure/Barrier (Regen/Shield originally) made sense when there was 2 healers and eventually a flex healer.

I don’t think that’s the right direction to continue.

Additionally, EW is EXTREMELY different for all healers due to the 1.5 sec cast time. That means abilities are much more easier to use.

That means, make heal spells baseline homogenized for all healers (Cure = fast/weak/cheap, Cure II = standard heal, Cure III = AoE heal).

Then, make abilities the means of showing their identities. Cut back on the number of abilities to our favorites and reduce the cooldowns significantly.

Funny thing is, I think they did a great job on PvP in going with the identities of healers (SGE get to be Disc priests, SCH get to strategically deploy shields/buffs/dots and expedient, AST gets cards and speed casting, WHM gets raw heals and pure annoyance DPS).

[UkcsAlias]

That means, make heal spells baseline homogenized for all healers (Cure = fast/weak/cheap, Cure II = standard heal, Cure III = AoE heal).

The cure1/2 problem is nearly always going to remain a problem. Players will just take what is most efficient and spam that.

For example:
cure 1, 400p, 1.5s vs cure 2, 800p, 3s -> cure 1 (equal ppm means shortest timer wins)
cure 1, 400p, 1.5s vs cure 2, 800p, 2.9s -> cure 2
cure 1, 400p, 1.5s vs cure 2, 810p, 3s -> cure 2

Now luckily its not as extreme since a half time is quite a diffirence, but in the end its ppm that matters most, and there is a treshold at which the balance no longer is there.

There are ways to get around this:
- Make cure 1 and 2 a chain. Cure 1 gets the cure 2 potencies, and cure 2 becomes a boosted version, but otherwise worse stats (horrible cast time/mana costs). But once cure 1 is used, cure 2 gets a buff in which it gets the normal recast timer applied, which makes it effectively stronger than cure 1 at that point, but weaker than cure 1 without that buff. Cure 3 can even be part of the chain (has its AoE which can truly be a nice effect). But this fix is most likely not usable on this like sage (how to easily identify the combo on the UI then?).

- Alternatively cure 1 gets an additional side effect that for cure 2 use would mean a 2nd cast. For example cure 1 also esuna's the target. As in this case its realy more down to the type of heal needed. And sure, this change would make esuna obsolete, which can be countered by boosting esuna (capable of removing multiple effects at once, or maybe it no longer requires you standing still, or applies a immunity buff, or aoe), and then SE adding more of such stacking effects to bosses. (and even without that, im quite sure there are ways to keep abilities in a usefull state by making them excel at certain situations)

Its not an easy change to do, as everything will always have a result elsewhere. But at least it would make things more complicated to compare which is good for balance.

[ForsakenRoe]

I'd rather just use the trait system to upgrade Cure 1 into Cure 2 and free up hotbar spaces for more interesting things. Consider older FF games. Once you get Curaga, you're almost NEVER going to press Cure or Cura again. The opportunity cost of 'they both take one turn to cast', like the GCD here, means you might as well do the stronger one, even if it overheals, rather than the weaker one, if there's even a slight chance that you don't reach 100% off of it. And if you WOULD reach 100% off of the Cura, you'd rather just do something else with the turn, then use the Curaga in 2 turns time when there's more missing HP to heal.

So with that in mind, I'd just do this:
Cure 1 is 500p, at 30 it becomes Cure 2 with exact same stats (MP cost, cast/recast, etc) but is now 700p, at 85 it goes up to 800p because of the trait you get there
Medica 1 is 300p, at 50 it becomes Medica 2 with exact same stats, but instead of boosting the potency, it attaches the HOT effect to the original Medica1. This means going from 300p, to 300p+150 per tick. At 84 it becomes 400+150pertick

At this point, Medica 1 is pointless. It's equal to Medica 2, as long as M2 has ONE TICK go out. By merging the two, it also gives more room for something to be done to incentivize using Cure 3 as your 'pump HPS even if it costs me damage' skill. ATM it's kinda not used so much, partially because Lilies can keep up with a lot of things, and partially because of the obscene MP requirement. I'd suggest something like 'when the Medica 2 HOT is on the WHM, Cure3's MP cost is reduced by 50%' to incentivize letting the HOT do it's work instead of the whole 'spam Medica' we see from newbobs sometimes.

And also do the same for other healers, like upgrade Physick into Adlo, Benefic 1 into 2, Helios into Asp. Helios, etc. SGE is ok-ish because it's got Eukrasia to help with it's hotbar realestate

[NobleWinter]

I agree with merging all the skills you mentioned except Physic on Scholar. In leveling dungeons you will eventually hit a point where you meet a paper tank in DPS gear and keeping them alive will require you to spam Adlo to keep up with damage. Adlo has that extra effect on a critical though that gives insane shielding and when that happens Physic is great to replenish raw health while the giant shield dwindles away. Physic isn't a button you press all the time but I have no reservations about using it when I'm outta Aetherflow and people need pure healing with an abundance of shielding already present. If we were to get rid of Physic I would need to have Emergency Tactics much earlier and on a shorter cooldown to compensate at the very least. For a long time I wanted Scholar to get a "Free Cure" trait that had a 30% chance to double the potency of Physic for using Adloquium. That would make so much more sense to help keep tanks alive in a pinch if you're playing correctly. The 30% chance for a free Sacred Soil for using Succor in ARR was never very useful for me back then.

[ty_taurus]

The suggestion I've made in the past was leaving in Cure/Physick/Benefic/Dosis but replace Esuna with a trait that adds status removal to these tier 1 heals. Yes, they're still incredibly niche, but it accomplishes the task of merging two buttons that are basically irrelevant 95% of the time. I'd also have them upgrade to be instant cast and have no MP cost as well. They will still be incredibly infrequently used even with all those bells and whistles, but it allows them to actually exist and have a back-pocket use.

[SerephinaBlossom]

A simple fix would be to make the dallies Unable to double stack same que roles, this would help with roles that have Party buffs Like Reaper, dancer Etc.
it may add more of a wait time which may effect low world and barren dead Data centres (looking at you Materia) to it but i feel it would stop roles stacking on top of each other. This isn't the first time ive seen someone mention it or ask for the fights to be tweaked in case there is two of the same healers or dps. Because you can't stack the current buffs on-top and it just refreshes is also another annoying thing.