How can we really define Healers?

[Rithy255]

All this would do is replace healers in 4 mans with RDM, and in 8 mans replace a healer with RDM.

(Quote Shortened for the purpose of reply)

You're completely missing the point.

>White Shift wouldn't replace healers, in theory it would be on the same level as other healers damage output and healing effectiveness. I don't know why I have to state this but oh well, Did you ignore the whole "black shift gives more spells and potency / White shift gives more healing potency and a lot of the healing spells (required to being a healer), did you assume white shift would do the same amount as damage as current RDM? Because that makes no sense, why would I want RDM to be ahead of healers as a healer?

The concept would need work but it would also possibly effect healer Jobs allowing them to also spec into damage builds or a different sort of healing build.

Current RDM doesn't work as a effective healer in 4 man dugeons, It might work well with a Tank to compliment them such as warrior or pld, but I can't imagine a Red Mage healing a dark knight through a 4 man dugeon without feeling like garbage, it would also ruin any sort of damage output that the red mage has, healers can DPS while healing RDM in it's current state can't, if you think current design has problems where healers don't feel useful enough. I agree, abilites such as Blood whetting in it's current form (only in dugeons) really don't take healers into account, the damage output is a joke, there needs to be changes in general in "casual content" Verraise could also be tweaked in ways that make it so RDM couldn't spam it (as a healer)

Talent trees with support options and stuff, yes a lot of fights might have a "optimal" skill depending on the fight but Ideally all skills would perform well and learning what would work best in a certain encounter would make it fine.

The goal wouldn't be to Replace healer, it would be like adding in a new healer, Of course right now the way healers are designed with very meh rotations, you'd either have to simplify it or give healers something a bit more.

Also this was just a example of how RDM could in theory spec into a healer build or a DPS build, It's not meant to be a in depth, I also don't think it should be something added in current ff14, I personally would love the idea of being able to adapt class skills into fitting more roles in game, Problem is the games so rigid and design is so different you'd have to rework a lot of things from the ground up, which yeah the devs wouldn't do, they've stepped away from even small selectable like role actions, I don't think any of this is even realistic

[Renathras]

(Quote Shortened for the purpose of reply)

>White Shift wouldn't replace healers, in theory it would be on the same level as other healers damage output and healing effectiveness. I don't know why I have to state this but oh well, Did you ignore the whole "black shift gives more spells and potency / White shift gives more healing potency and a lot of the healing spells (required to being a healer), did you assume white shift would do the same amount as damage as current RDM? Because that makes no sense, why would I want RDM to be ahead of healers as a healer?

I guess my issue is that if RDM provides SOME healing, but not ENOUGH healing, then why bring the heal spec instead of the damage spec?

Which makes more sense to bring, a RDM that does 10% less damage but offers about 10% of the HPS of a healer (thus being unable to replace a healer) or a RDM that does 10% more damage but adds no healing?

It has to either do ENOUGH healing to make the damage loss worthwhile, or the damage spec will always be seen as better. If it doesn't do that much healing, then the DPS spec is always better. And if it DOES do enough healing, then it causes issues with healers.

[Risvertasashi]

In that scenario, they would always go for option A unless there was some really specific fight mechanic that just happened to be perfect for B. At least in high level play.

As for options 1 & 2. Well that would go to the Secret World example mentioned before. "White shift for this one boss that has higher healing requirements, black shift for everything else" or similar.

Divorcing specs from affecting damage would help. But I'm still pretty skeptical of it overall.

[Rithy255]

In that scenario, they would always go for option A unless there was some really specific fight mechanic that just happened to be perfect for B. At least in high level play.

As for options 1 & 2. Well that would go to the Secret World example mentioned before. "White shift for this one boss that has higher healing requirements, black shift for everything else" or similar.

Divorcing specs from affecting damage would help. But I'm still pretty skeptical of it overall.

Well you couldn't really heal in black shift (lets say black shift would give you current RDM without raise) do you think that would even be healable? vercure alone wouldn't make a lot of content healable (Obviously you could give it slight healing and support but only to the extension of current DPS Jobs),It really wouldn't be able to replace a really healer even in casual content, I guess casual with like a warrior tank could be? (War would be the healer?) but the point is one build would heavily lean into healing elements the other would lean into a DPS element

Warrior is generally a big problem with healer design in content like dugeons, I know people enjoy being op but it doesn't feel good as a healer, they also would in theory need to increase boss damage, as dugeon bosses don't even hit hard.

Stronger healing output vs mitigation and barriers both have their uses, that was a general example obviously they can have a strong heal to compete with a barrier/mit effect, hence me leaving out potencies in general, Obviously you need a certain degree of mitigation for fights but you also really want a certain amount of healing output, that's OCGD so you do have time for attacking spells, Would make bringing certain spells depending on gear and the fight more important.

Speccing different DPS stuff might be more harder I think theirs a few examples like you could give a job a "Dot" or a outright hard hitting move, but that would generally be harder to even balance.

[Renathras]

The irony is, as I said before, I would actually like a system where you COULD just go healer on RDM like you can on BLU. Your icon goes green, you que green, and you have healing actions set. When RDM was first released as "a healer that uses White Magic to cure allies and has Black Magic to attack enemies", I seriously thought "So like WHM, just with Stone and Aero replaced with Fire and Thunder?" Given FFXIV's focus of healers as somewhat hybrids that are damage dealing casters + healing spells, RDM as a healer would actually have fit FFXIV's healing model at the time, SB, pretty well. Before healing shifted to being almost entirely oGCDs, anyway.

I'm more just saying the idea to switch - unless it's an actual full on switch like that - won't work in FFXIV, or really in very many modern MMOs. If a RDM could go White Shift and ACTUALLY fill a healer slot AS A HEALER (that is, for the entire instance run, you're in the healer slot and healing the party and doing so as a healer, not a hybrid dpser), that could actually work.

But if it's just "some abilities do some splash healing", it wouldn't work outside of solo content like PotD or some Eureka/Bozja type content that allows for more flexibility. So it would need to be a complete shift. While qued as White Shift, you're in White Shift the whole instance and you're a healer, not a DPSer.

Kind of like SCH shifting to SMN or SMN shifting to SCH.

And honestly, RDM's damage kit I like okay, so making a "healer version" of that with less steps would honestly be kind of cool.

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EDIT because of post limit:

Honestly at that point it sounds like you're just describing the class/job system as initializally envisioned, but uh... we never got more than ACN -> SMN or SCH, and, well, we've all seen how that got built off of. (it didn't, and also, they've been doing everything in their power to scrub it out. Wouldn't be surprise if 7.0 finally completely removed SCH from ACN tbh).

Basically, yeah. Thing is, it's not a terrible concept. Most old school MMOs had hybrids that could heal in small man content and COULD heal in higher end content but usually went DPS. While that has issues of its own, considering how FFXIV groups like pushing "one healer" clears, it would actually work into the meta more here where people WOULD want to try these healer specs out if they're at least passingly viable in high end content. As long as they are treated AS A HEALER (as opposed to replacing/crowding out healers), I think it would be fine conceptually...

I don't think it would work in practice because of a "this is why we can't have nice things", but the concept is still interesting to me.

Imagine if you go "healer spec" on RDM and lose Verfire/stone/scorch/thenewone but instead got Vermedica, Vercure2, and all your healing spells generate White Mana? (Probably some other changes like Fletche and Contre turned into something like Tetra and Assize, but keeping it simple for the sake of discussion)

Now you'd have a Job that is healer focused and has single and party heals and mitigation (Magick Barrier) and party buff (Embolden) where your gameplay is Jolt - Verthunder - Jolt - Veraero, and you can replace the Jolts/Veraeros with Vercure, Verucure2, or Vermedica to adapt to party needs and it would give you White Mana to help keep your DPS rotation moving forward. You then go into your melee combo in a simplified form since it just ends with Holy/Flare, and the rotation can be set up where casting heals doesn't break the combo. AOE would be Impact -> Veraero2/thunder2 (I know it works the other way in live RDM but I hate that, darnit! No, seriously, I hate that the AOE rotation feels "backwards" from the single target, that kinda thing sets my OCD off... XD), where again you could use heals and get White Mana from doing so. If Mana imbalance is a concern, they could just give both (like Jolt/Impact do), then go into an Enchanted Moulin spam before capping it off with a Holy/Flare.

A more engaging damage kit, a slim but effective healing kit, and where the healing kit doesn't interfere with your damage kit AND healing contributes to damage via Mana generation.

I feel like that would be fun to a lot of people kind of like how GNB as a "tank that plays like a DPS" is fun to a lot of people.

[Icecylee]

Honestly at that point it sounds like you're just describing the class/job system as initializally envisioned, but uh... we never got more than ACN -> SMN or SCH, and, well, we've all seen how that got built off of. (it didn't, and also, they've been doing everything in their power to scrub it out. Wouldn't be surprise if 7.0 finally completely removed SCH from ACN tbh).

[Rithy255]

The irony is, as I said before, I would actually like a system where you COULD just go healer on RDM like you can on BLU. Your icon goes green, you que green, and you have healing actions set. When RDM was first released as "a healer that uses White Magic to cure allies and has Black Magic to attack enemies", I seriously thought "So like WHM, just with Stone and Aero replaced with Fire and Thunder?" Given FFXIV's focus of healers as somewhat hybrids that are damage dealing casters + healing spells, RDM as a healer would actually have fit FFXIV's healing model at the time, SB, pretty well. Before healing shifted to being almost entirely oGCDs, anyway.

I'm more just saying the idea to switch - unless it's an actual full on switch like that - won't work in FFXIV, or really in very many modern MMOs. If a RDM could go White Shift and ACTUALLY fill a healer slot AS A HEALER (that is, for the entire instance run, you're in the healer slot and healing the party and doing so as a healer, not a hybrid dpser), that could actually work.

But if it's just "some abilities do some splash healing", it wouldn't work outside of solo content like PotD or some Eureka/Bozja type content that allows for more flexibility. So it would need to be a complete shift. While qued as White Shift, you're in White Shift the whole instance and you're a healer, not a DPSer.

Kind of like SCH shifting to SMN or SMN shifting to SCH.

And honestly, RDM's damage kit I like okay, so making a "healer version" of that with less steps would honestly be kind of cool.

Problem also would be healer rotations are non existent in the current game, I wouldn't want a "in theory" healer rdm to press one button and a dot.

You could easily make "simple" rotations or procs to give healers a lil bit more to do, I generally just don't think healer design is well thought out, I'd really love to play healer as a "second main" as it sounds fun I enjoy tanking generally because you play a more support role that has to focus on other things then rotation, but the rotations are also decent enough that It feels interesting to play.

Healers I wish had more in this game, even if they want to stick with one button spam they need to up the healing requirements in dugeons, normal raids and just general casual content, this also has the postive to train a healer players mentality for savage, as current savage vs normal healer is completely different. (obviously savage is meant to be super duper hard but normal content should help teach the basics, all casual content teaches about you healing in raids is throw in a few ogcd heals, keep dpsing).

[Anxin]

Perhaps we ought to look at how healers could work within the mechanics-based system we have. For example, white mage could create a stone encasement that would absorb a ground-based AOE hit or even cast "Float" to make an AOE mechanic miss. AST could roll back time on an AOE hit or even, if we want to get overpowered, even roll back the boss's mechanics script a step or increase the cast time for the mechanic. Sage could disrupt the next script step. Scholar could use the fairy to pester the boss to make the next AOE hit itself instead of casting. Healers may prove to be more interesting if they could influence the script mechanics directly. Perhaps the a shield that halves the next aoe damage at the cost of dps output for the player it is cast upon. The balance could come at a cost to dps output in some way or maybe the next attack by the enemy will have 2x damage. There's a lot SE could do beyond the standard healing and buffing methods.

[T-Owl]

Perhaps we ought to look at how healers could work within the mechanics-based system we have. For example, white mage could create a stone encasement that would absorb a ground-based AOE hit or even cast "Float" to make an AOE mechanic miss. AST could roll back time on an AOE hit or even, if we want to get overpowered, even roll back the boss's mechanics script a step or increase the cast time for the mechanic. Sage could disrupt the next script step. Scholar could use the fairy to pester the boss to make the next AOE hit itself instead of casting. Healers may prove to be more interesting if they could influence the script mechanics directly. Perhaps the a shield that halves the next aoe damage at the cost of dps output for the player it is cast upon. The balance could come at a cost to dps output in some way or maybe the next attack by the enemy will have 2x damage. There's a lot SE could do beyond the standard healing and buffing methods.

Wouldn't that just lead back towards tactics in which partys let certain dps, back in the day I think it was BLM, ignore mechanics to fish for higher dps output?

[Anxin]

Wouldn't that just lead back towards tactics in which partys let certain dps, back in the day I think it was BLM, ignore mechanics to fish for higher dps output?

Perhaps, but this would require the DPS and the healers to coordinate again. People always fish for higher dps output; that is, after all, part of the puzzle of encounters. I can also see healers griefing parties by disrupting the boss's script in ways to get "lols". However, I just wanted to point out that there is a lot more SE could do beyond the current range of thinking without changing their encounter design philosophy. Namely, introduce control-skills that have impact. That said, I believe that philosophy is part of the problem.