How to easily have healers dps engaged ( yet another thread)

[Renathras]

Yes, altough a niche game, I LOVED Geomancer in FF Explorers. ...

Never played that game, but agree all around with your points on FFXIV and healing in general. I've played a number of MMOs, and while none are perfect, some do a better job of having healers kind of sub-spec into other roles. Everquest had healers that were sub-defined as being able to off-dps, off-buff, off-debuff. WoW had some healers a bit better at DPSing with some having more buff options. FFXI has several healer sub-specs (largely based on which secondary Job you pick for WHM and SCH, the two "actual healer" Jobs, though some others have managed to poke into healing from time to time, like RDM), where they can double down on healer or branch into buffing the party, debuffing the enemy, or flex into being decent at additional party damage.

We have 4 healing Jobs in FFXIV. The players make the meta all about damage (and everything being slapped with an Enrage mechanic kind of nudges that unhealthy direction along), but having a healer or two focused on something other than damage in their off-time would go a long way to making the role more diverse and interesting and really appeal to different player types.

AST already kind of flexes into that buffer role and has the weakest personal DPS, but it's also arguably the most complex of the healers, its buffs are a little random and wonky to use, and the aesthetic of a Tarot reader doesn't appeal to everyone. It's one of the reasons I argued for Chemist as the 4th healer, as it could have an off-buff focus role of short duration potion effects it could apply to allies via a Mix command that I think would have appealed a lot. The trick is to make the buffs as spamable as damage spells are now so the healer that does buffs can really feel like that's what they do when not actively healing.

EDIT:

1) 2) 3)

1) Eh...not from their lore. But I guess to each their own.

2) In what world does Art of War look like Holy 3? Adlo like Cure 2? Medica 2 like Succor? You have to squint REALLY hard before their abilities look alike.

3) It's about the player. I find MCH fun to play and BRD a headache because my brain doesn't track DoT timers well. On healers, my DoTs often fall off - probably for just a sec or two - but I have no idea how long. When I try to play BRD, I catch myself refreshing my DoTs when they have about 12-15 seconds on them (meaning my brain DOES do the 30 sec thing moderately well...), but then I'm playing BRD bad. But MCH I find easy. Metronome 1-2-3. I think this really comes down to taste. You may LOVE pressing one button every 29 seconds like clockwork and pressing the same 1 button over and over again for the 27.5 seconds in between. Me personally, I hate that and would much prefer a 1-2-3 I can hit over and over to have my animations change up a smidge and feel slightly more engaged but in a good way as opposed to the DoT, which is a bad way.

Also, no you didn't used to have to weave as much as now. We didn't have even half this many oGCDs in HW, I don't think, especially not on WHM. I think it was ShB when we went to having more oGCDs than GCDs. Part of that was making abilities force upgrade (e.g. Stone 1 -> Stone 2) cutting down on some of the GCDs that were redundant anyway, but we simply didn't have that many oGCDs. At the end of ARR, SCH had Atherflow, Lustrate, Sacred Soil, and Bane (AF spenders), and 4 Faerie abilities, 2 from each Faerie, and something else (was Shadow Flare oGCD? I genuinely don't recall...) vs Ruin, Ruin 2, Leeches, Physic, Adlo, Succor, Resurrection, Bio, Bio 2, and Miasma. And that's not counting cross-class spells. I believe the oGCD > GCD became a thing in ShB, though it might have been SB for SCH. For WHM, it was absolutely ShB.

I'm not opposed to SCH having DoTs, I'm just confused why a person would think DoTs are its lore (when the actual Job quests don't mention DoTs directly in any way I can think of) but that Faeries AREN'T part of their lore, when the Job quests REVOLVE around helping Lily get back her memories as the initial crux of the SCH lore the player is introduced to, and the lore continues this, going into how the Faeries were each tied to a different Job Stone, Amdapor kidnapping them, and so on and so forth. I just don't understand how you could NOT see Faeries as part of SCH lore when their lore is centered on them.

...and, for the record, if you read my posts again, you'd see I'm talking about healers collectively and DoTs, not just SCH. I even said (and have multiple times) with 4 healers, why not have a DoT one, a 1-2-3 one, a priority system (e.g. RDM Stone/Fire procs) one (probably SGE for that one), and a simple nuke spell, possibly with a second spell proc or single DoT. That's been my argument for a while. We have 4 healers, why must they all have identical DPS kits?

There's a fairly easy way to fix it: add MP cost to Toxikon.

Maybe, but then it becomes an optimization issue and arguably reduces the use case of Toxicon.

Edit:

And on the topic of dots: one advantage of them is, that if you have multiple dots on different timers, you have a constantly shifting rotation which I find far more engaging than a basic, generic 123 combo. And unlike cooldowns, there is also the option to refresh them earlier to take a lower dps loss than losing a full GCD.
Ideally they also offer something like Thundercloud proc or any form of interaction with the kit but even without that, 3 dots on different timers offer more engagement for me than a 123 combo where I can only ever press 2 after 1 and 3 after 2.
If we're talking about multiple branching combos like MNK had, then I'm down for it. It would need more buttons but constantly switching between branching combos would offer more variety for downtime as well.
It all boils down to breaking up monotony for me, anything that isn't easily predictable and rigid.

I think this mainly depends on the player.

When I'm doing DPS, I want it as close to rigid as possible. My mind doesn't work for DPS - that's why I play healers and occasionally tanks. If my brain worked well for complex DPS rotations, I'd be playing MNK. I like simple, and rigid means easy to keep my place in. As such, I far prefer a 1-2-3 static rotation to something bouncing all over the place.

In ShB, wanna know what my go-to DPS Job was?

SMN.

Yes, SMN.

Because say what you will about complexity, the Job was rigid in a 2 min window. There was a little flexibility, but it was STATIC flexibility. There weren't procs, the rotation didn't CHANGE. You had some instant casts and you needed to use 4 of them per 1 min cycle (and stock 4 for Bahamut in the back half of that cycle), but once you figured out fights, you could map them out to where you were always using them at the same place. Or you could Yolo it and press them for movement, with the caveat if you were within 15 sec of the next Trance, you'd blow through any you still had unless you wanted to get fancy with the log ping crazy-weave going into Firebird.

Point is, things that seem complex to some people can seem simple to others AND vice verse; things that seem easy to some may be complex to others.

Some of you like variability to prevent "boredom", some of us like consistency and a set pattern since it's for a thing we're being forced to do that we really don't even like doing anyway.

Everyone's different.

Again, it's why I think we should really flex us having four healers to address this - we could easily have both a multi-DoT rotation, no-DoT rigid rotation, a no-DoT proc/variable rotation, and a EW era nuke+DoT rotation. Having 4 healers means these four playstyles could coexist side by side by side by side, and players could then pick the one they like best from there.

The thing is though is that the healers as they stand are very badly designed for the combat system of XIV and no job should be subjected to 1 button being roughly 80% of their casting focus. It's just not healthy design. Every healer should be reworked to have a healthy library of GCD actions they rely on, and the undeniable truth of FFXIV's foundational design is that it does not require much healing even in some of the hardest fights in the game. So while not every healer needs to have a DPS focus, all of them need to be designed within respects to DPS contributions, hense the AST example I've vomited more than enough times on the forum rewarding buff usage with passive Malefic-potency damage. There still has to be restrictions on that system though, whether that be MP, cooldowns, or external resources like lilies, there can't just be free, unlimited healing that also deals as much damage as filler spells. Every healer will need to eventually return to some filler spell usage. There is a lot we can do to reduce that from 80% down to something far more manageable, but the healers can't just stay as they are if we ever want to see healthier design.

The problem with this argument is, it's you wanting everything to be EXACTLY like you want and you wanting to actively exclude anyone who plays different.

That'd be like a GNB main demanding all four tanks have a cartridge system and 1 min burst, or a BLM main demanding every dps Job have a DoT with procs and two phases of burn and regen that they shift between. No other role has all Jobs within it having an identical rotation. Why should healers?

Considering balance is ultimately just a matter of numbers, they could legitimately make all healers have the same DPS contributions if they wanted to based off of that. The only place it gets wonky is group buffs because if the DNC buffs a SAM vs buffing a MCH, the end result will be rather different.

And I'm not sure ONE healer staying as it is ISN'T healthy. Keep in mind that the problem is arguably that the healers are all identical. Meaning having 3 change and 1 remain the same would remove that problem and thus be an improvement. But if 3 changed to be exactly the same, or if all 4 changed to be the same, just different than the same that they are now, neither of those are particularly good "improvements".

AGAIN: We have FOUR healers.

Let's have them each be different.

To wit:

SCH began its identity as a healer that focused on DoT management and enfeebling enemies with debuffs that made them weaker with tools like Virus and Eye for an Eye and this was the core aspect of SCH's identity up until ShB. That's a playstyle many people enjoyed, myself included, and now it's gone and we're not allowed to play it. I think that's something that should've been respected, and if it's not a playstyle you enjoyed, then it probably wasn't the best job for you. It would be nice if each healer had their own unique styles, that way if one healer didn't appeal to you, there's a chance another might. And that's also why I hope we continue to see new healers in the future, even if they're released slowly. But that does of course imply that healers gain the freedom to have unique playstyles apart from one another.

THIS I actually agree with.

.

But this...not so much:

Absolutely incorrect. The Scholars of Nym were Arcanists to begin with, you can go to the Lodestone page for Scholar to read the blurb that says - "In an age long past, when mankind flourished under the radiance of arcane mastery, the island of Vylbrand was home to a city-state called Nym."
The link to ACN to SCH isn't in name alone, it's built into the lore and still is, regardless of you liking that or not. In fact, the original 1.0 lore for Arcanist was supposed to be centered around a plague - Las Vegas Fanfest 2014: “In Limsa Lominsa, the original Arcanist quest that was supposed to be released in 1.0 was actually about this disease spreading around La Noscea called the Green Rot. It would infect all of these people and they would die. To make money off of this, a bunch of merchants would try to smuggle in snake oils and tonics and things like that, and try to sell those to the people dying so they could get their money because they knew they were going to die anyway and were desperate."
Sound familiar? Seems almost like how Scholar's entire job questline and lore is dealing with plagues... so fitting for Miasma, Shadow Flare, Bane, etc to be apart of SCH's kit. Much more than Eos or Selene using attacks - something they have NEVER done.

If we're going to bring up the "lore" argument when it comes to gameplay, this is why wanting the fae gauge to have damage associated with it wouldn't work. "These learned men and women defended the freedom of their tiny nation with their unique command over spell-weaving faeries, utilizing the creatures' magicks to heal the wounded and bolster the strength of their allies." Outside of that, the faeries shouldn't have damage associated with them at all, because it throws Scholar's healing priority out of alignment when the faeries have always been Scholar's main source of totally free healing.



Scholar has not moved forward at all, it has been a continual worsening of the job. For every one good thing Scholar gets, it gets two good things taken away from it. I have no idea why you would think that something like SB SCH wouldn't be viable in today's content - is that based off of your experiences healing in Savage on SCH this tier?

Just a couple points:

"arcane" in this context means "magic". It's talking about the Fifth Era which was dominated by Mage nations, of which there were 12 that gradually whittled down to 3 - the Black Mage nation of Mhach ("'Mhach, Mhach, beware the dark! Stay away or lose your heart...' THAT Mhach?!"), the White Mage nation of Amdapor, and the Scholar/Marine nation of Nym. The age that ended in the "War of the Magi" and the Calamity of Water because of how overtapped out the magical reserves of the land were from all that magic being thrown around. That's what it means there, not "Arcanist".

The 1.0 lore that never was doesn't have much bearing on the 2.0 lore that is. The lore that they wanted to keep they kept, and the lore they didn't, they either retconned out or ignored so it would quietly go away. Moreover, "dealing with plagues" can mean "curing plagues". Doctors giving people vaccines so they don't die isn't the same thing as doctors spreading bioweapons. While the knowledge to cure a plague might include the ability to start one, that doesn't mean HEALERS trying to HEAL people suffering from a plague actively traffic in spreading plagues, either. That's like arguing doctors that treat gunshot wounds actively go out and get into gunfights with people on the daily.

I do agree that the Faeries shouldn't deal damage...directly. One could argue "bolster their allies" could include party damage buffs like haste or the like. Which is bad under the modern gearing/meta, but buffs that increase damage could fall under "bolster the strength of their allies" just fine.

And SCH has not "been a continual worsening of the job". I get that some people REALLY DON'T LIKE IT, but SCH is still the top of the healing game now as it was in SB. The Job has improved in quite a few ways. Whether the net result is positive or negative is subjective, not objective. It's far less clunky than HW/SB era SCH was, for example.

because literally nobody likes new SCH better than old SCH

I'm not sure you know what the definition of the word "literally" is.

Well strictly from a game design standpoint, the assets associated with Miasma (as well as Miasma II and Miasma III) and Shadowflare were made and still exist for use. That's not to say new abilities shouldn't be made, but if we're trying to restore SCH's identity as a more offensive healer, then why not use the tools already at their disposal? Because you specifically are not a fan of them? And I don't meant that to sound mean or harsh, but there's not a real reason as to why those tools don't work on SCH. And SCH's identity also included those spells. SCH's identity as an offensive DoT healer was defined by its combination of those spells and its barriers.

I think, if we really distill it, SCH is defined thus:

A healer who leverages their Faerie to assist them in combat and has a general command of defensive and healing magics, with some skill in offensive magics.

This is (minus the Faerie, I believe), also how FFXI SCH works (which...I believe was the more or less OG incarnation of the Job as the only one prior to it in the series was, what, FF3's?). I've only read about it, but FFXI's SCH basically has a light and dark stance for healing and damage, making it decent with both white and black magic. Basically like FFXIV RDM if PvE RDM played a smidge more like PvP RDM.

I also agree reusing existing assets isn't at terrible idea, but that's just for leveling. Broil IV isn't Ruin 6. Indeed, the Ruin spell-line DOES continue...for SMN...into Ruin 3 and 4. SCH's Job spells tend to all switch up the names anyway, and EVERY Job switches up animations. Even Dosis 3 doesn't look much like Dosis 1.

As far as her sass - she's responding to where someone told her she was probably playing the wrong Job earlier, I'd wager.