How can we really define Healers?

[Renathras]

Red Mage
Option 1: White Shift, Will grant you a lot of healing spells and a healing potency increase passive, maybe some choose able healing spells aswell
Option 2: Black Shift, Will grant you a lot of damage spells and a damage increase, Potency increase ect.

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

We even see this with FFXI, which does allow this, where RDMs are often healers in small party content because they can heal well enough for the content while also doing more damage than the main healer Jobs. If you can't heal enough in White Shift, then there's no reason to be in White Shift - bring a healer to heal and stay in Black Shift the whole time. On the other hand, if you CAN heal well enough in White Shift you don't need a healer, then why would any party bring a healer when they can White Shift RDM it and get more damage? Not to mention RDM as healers would be amazing in FFXIV since they would be able to chain Raise, freeing up that "utility Raise" Caster slot for BLM. This would also make SMN useless in 8 man groups that had a RDM healer.

All the other would do is the theorycrafters would say which is better for a given fight and everyone would slot it. We had this in FFXIV in SB and there was always a "BiS" for the Role Abilities for each fight. WoW tends to even have this where there's always a "best Talent choices" for any given fight, though there's often an "here's a second set that doesn't math as high but is easier/safer to pull off".

The reason WoW got rid of the in-depth talent trees years ago is because they said it was an "illusion of choice" as most of the time, there was a right and wrong way, and if you weren't doing it the right way, you were bad. Some spects had a handful of points you could move around, but they were pretty insignificant, like Wrath Holy Paladin (healer) getting to pick between "Do I want to make Wisdom better or do I want to make Kings better?", and if you had more than one Paladin in your raid team, it was irrelevant anyway since one brought one and the other brought the other and that ended the debate.

EDIT: You say that White Shift RDM wouldn't be able to replace a healer in even 4 man content (other than with a WAR tank), so what would be the point of White Shift? Why would anyone ever use it? "I'm going to do less damage so I can provide a utility that the party doesn't need and which doesn't actually let us trade out a healer for more damage"? It's kind of like how PLD can absolutely heal with Clemency in 4 mans today. But...no one ("good") does because it's a DPS loss and you have healers healing instead. If Clemency could REPLACE healers, then it would be more valuable even at a DPS loss (the solo AST healing Ultimate had their PLD using Clemency quite a bit, but it was a DPS gain since they were able to sub out the second healer slot with another DPSer), but it isn't.

Likewise, if White Shift COULD replace a healer, then it would be valuable, but if it doesn't, then no one would use it. And if it COULD, they everyone would be replacing healers and you'd open that whole can of worms. :ENDEDIT

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Stuff like that works in more free-form MMOs like Everquest, but not in "polished" ones with well established theorycrafting communities like most modern MMOs.

NOTE: I say this as a person that LOVES that about old school MMOs. I would LOVE if that was viable in FFXIV. The problem is that FFXIV's combat system is too rigid and its theorycrafting community too entrenched (and too obsessed) for that to not be highly disruptive and destructive in FFXIV.

[ty_taurus]

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

We even see this with FFXI, which does allow this, where RDMs are often healers in small party content because they can heal well enough for the content while also doing more damage than the main healer Jobs. If you can't heal enough in White Shift, then there's no reason to be in White Shift - bring a healer to heal and stay in Black Shift the whole time. On the other hand, if you CAN heal well enough in White Shift you don't need a healer, then why would any party bring a healer when they can White Shift RDM it and get more damage? Not to mention RDM as healers would be amazing in FFXIV since they would be able to chain Raise, freeing up that "utility Raise" Caster slot for BLM. This would also make SMN useless in 8 man groups that had a RDM healer.

All the other would do is the theorycrafters would say which is better for a given fight and everyone would slot it. We had this in FFXIV in SB and there was always a "BiS" for the Role Abilities for each fight. WoW tends to even have this where there's always a "best Talent choices" for any given fight, though there's often an "here's a second set that doesn't math as high but is easier/safer to pull off".

The reason WoW got rid of the in-depth talent trees years ago is because they said it was an "illusion of choice" as most of the time, there was a right and wrong way, and if you weren't doing it the right way, you were bad. Some spects had a handful of points you could move around, but they were pretty insignificant, like Wrath Holy Paladin (healer) getting to pick between "Do I want to make Wisdom better or do I want to make Kings better?", and if you had more than one Paladin in your raid team, it was irrelevant anyway since one brought one and the other brought the other and that ended the debate.

EDIT: You say that White Shift RDM wouldn't be able to replace a healer in even 4 man content (other than with a WAR tank), so what would be the point of White Shift? Why would anyone ever use it? "I'm going to do less damage so I can provide a utility that the party doesn't need and which doesn't actually let us trade out a healer for more damage"? It's kind of like how PLD can absolutely heal with Clemency in 4 mans today. But...no one ("good") does because it's a DPS loss and you have healers healing instead. If Clemency could REPLACE healers, then it would be more valuable even at a DPS loss (the solo AST healing Ultimate had their PLD using Clemency quite a bit, but it was a DPS gain since they were able to sub out the second healer slot with another DPSer), but it isn't.

Likewise, if White Shift COULD replace a healer, then it would be valuable, but if it doesn't, then no one would use it. And if it COULD, they everyone would be replacing healers and you'd open that whole can of worms. :ENDEDIT

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Stuff like that works in more free-form MMOs like Everquest, but not in "polished" ones with well established theorycrafting communities like most modern MMOs.

NOTE: I say this as a person that LOVES that about old school MMOs. I would LOVE if that was viable in FFXIV. The problem is that FFXIV's combat system is too rigid and its theorycrafting community too entrenched (and too obsessed) for that to not be highly disruptive and destructive in FFXIV.

Something you could more effectively do with the RDM example...

You could set up Black Shift and White Shift in a way where Black Shift offers Verblizzard and Verfoul, where Verfoul has a cooldown and requires a large quantity of MP, and you sprinkle in Verblizzard to give yourself an MP regen, or something along those lines where you get more damage, though not by too much, and White Shift offers Verwater and Verraise in place of Verblizzard and Verfoul, where Verwater can be used to deal damage and provide a soft regen on the party, and Verraise is self explanitory. It makes White Shift a great option for progging fights, and then once your party has made good progress, you can switch to Black Shift.

Maybe not this exact example, but White Shift and Black Shift could work with that kind of mentality--something that adds more utility to help learn fights, but can drop that to get a little stronger. RDM would still have tools like Magic Barrier and Embolden so it wouldn't be raised up to BLM levels or anything during Black Shift.

[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.

[Rithy255]

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.

You think current rdm vercure/magick barrier would be enough as a damage spec, would outright replace healer? then that's a problem with current design of healers. That's what I would generally give it, possible to add more but you'd need to be careful for reasons you have stated, you don't want a RDM in a DPS build to replace or be good enough that it can act as a healer

The healing Spec would
1. add healing trait abilities and healing spells, so basically what healers currently have.
2. add a general healing buff to

The Damage spec would
1. Add a strong magical damage potency (To generally make it on par with other dps)
2. Some damaging spells, mainly strong burst options.

Imagine a sort of skill tree where you can go into two directions one being a (healer) orientated abilities this would include healing potency biists, the other would be (DPS) orientated abilities, this would Include damaging potency passives
a Red mage using the "Black Shift" would not have most healing spells (likely just vercure/magick barrier) while a white shift RDM, would have generally weak potency spells and lack some of the real bursty ones (to the point where it's dps would be the same as your average healer), White shift RDM.

I'm mainly using Red Mage as a baseline as it already has "healing" abilities it's easier to imagine RDM as a healer, but this could apply to tanks giving up defensives ect. PLD would trade in it's Hp, stance ect. But retain some of it's rotational and baseline abilities and be more adapt at healing.

Like I said this would be pretty difficult and unrealistic to balance. But yeah I do think hypothetically it could work? It just would never be implemented into current ff14, the current design is super rigid and wouldn't allow for choice expression and difference specs, having to balance 2 specs per job (with optional stuff inside those specs) would be very tremendous to balance, it wouldn't likely be "good" for the game unless they manage to actually balance it well, which again is a high task, I just like the idea of Jobs being more flexible and having different builds, (Crazy I would enjoy something that not everyone else would).

EDIT: Strictly for arguments sake you couldn't use any abilities or passives of "White Shift" while you are using the "Black shift" action (vise versa), think of it like selectable role actions, you choose white shift and have access to a lot of Red mage healing traits (you couldn't change mid duty)

[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?