Any support utility ideas other than heal & shields?

[Tehmon]

A teleporter could be a pretty good situational skill.

[AnotherPerson]

A support role skill I can see working:

1. Reduce the duration of Brink of Death/Weakness debuff, or temporarily nullify the effects with a second buff for a duration (synergizes with recovery for burst meta DPS, or for needing more healing power after dying on the healer's end). This separates the difference of raise utility between other roles and healers better. Other roles can raise allies, but only healers can effectively reduce the impact that comes with coming back from dying.

[ForsakenRoe]

It would be nice to get movement support as a healer so far aside from sprint sage is the only healer with a movement skill. Scholar has there level 90 but its basically just another sprint. A dash for all the healers would be nice. A cool one would be to give a support ability thats something like fury bound from FF7 where the healer can restore 1 party members longest cooldown actions, you would probably need to put it on a long cooldown itself or make it a complex side mechanic to get though to balance it out.

I was spitballing an idea for a AST card rework that included one of the cards being 'you get to use a gauge spender for free, even if it's on CD' effect to give to a DPS, like a DRG gets a free Stardiver, or a NIN gets a free Trick Attack, or such. Very hard to balance, but it'd be funny to see a meme run of a 24man or something with, say, a GNB and 7 ASTs feeding that card to him, so he can Blasting Zone constantly

A support role skill I can see working:

1. Reduce the duration of Brink of Death/Weakness debuff, or temporarily nullify the effects with a second buff for a duration (synergizes with recovery for burst meta DPS, or for needing more healing power after dying on the healer's end). This separates the difference of raise utility between other roles and healers better. Other roles can raise allies, but only healers can effectively reduce the impact that comes with coming back from dying.

Last time this was suggested, it was as 'what if WHM had this advantage over other healers' and it was shot down instantly because 'this doesn't help with damage in fully optimized speedruns, once everyone's learned the fight 110%'. Though I am guilty of similar ideas, I thought back in SHB 'what if we make Bene a role action, and give WHM something super strong to compensate' and the thing I came up with was 'res, but without weakness'. It's a very WHM thing in older games, isn't it, to be 'very good at raising dead allies'. Life, FullLife, Auto-Life, etc. Oh well, as long as SE insists on keeping it as the 'babbys first healer' I guess it's kinda inevitable we gravitate towards that kind of idea. 'Do damage' is kinda hard to come up with fresh ideas for, especially on healer, and doubly so on 'healer that isnt allowed a raidbuff because that's AST identity!'

[AnotherPerson]

Last time this was suggested, it was as 'what if WHM had this advantage over other healers' and it was shot down instantly because 'this doesn't help with damage in fully optimized speedruns, once everyone's learned the fight 110%'. Though I am guilty of similar ideas, I thought back in SHB 'what if we make Bene a role action, and give WHM something super strong to compensate' and the thing I came up with was 'res, but without weakness'. It's a very WHM thing in older games, isn't it, to be 'very good at raising dead allies'. Life, FullLife, Auto-Life, etc. Oh well, as long as SE insists on keeping it as the 'babbys first healer' I guess it's kinda inevitable we gravitate towards that kind of idea. 'Do damage' is kinda hard to come up with fresh ideas for, especially on healer, and doubly so on 'healer that isnt allowed a raidbuff because that's AST identity!'

Which is why I suggested temporarily removing ress debuff for a role action - all healers will get this skill. We have Esuna for crying out loud, and Esuna can be directly merged into Cure 1 / Physick / Diagnosis / Benefic with nothing of value lost since every job has it. Giving every healer the ability to reduce ress weakness is not a loss. It's a gain for prog and a gain for recovery. Just because it doesn't help with damage in fully optimized speedruns, doesn't mean speedruns are the only content that exists in the game and everyone plays perfectly in every piece of content. It's not a gamechanger, but it's something that can see more use than Esuna within the current system. This also isn't a ress - which highlights a key difference in its utility. Just because someone else raised someone, it doesn't mean you are unable to help alleviate some of that ress debuff. For balance sake, I would assume the debuff isn't removed, just temporarily nullified until this buff skill wears off. Additionally, to prevent overlapping of this skill by 2 healers, it can just extend the total time of the stat nullification buff.

Assuming I'm reading this right... As for WHM-specific skills and why this skill would be shot down, I think that's because you're trying to take benediction away from WHM, which has different implications to this story entirely. Benediction is one of those key identity skills (big heal regardless of stats) that WHM posses. By changing it into a role action for another action, you also reduced WHM's innate healing power and increased the healing to other healer jobs (thereby weakening WHM's healing output in relation to the other healers). If you want to add something into WHM to give it an advantage over the other healers, it would have to be an additional hotbar skill that they don't have to lose a skill for. To be honest, WHM lacks skills in general, so it's not particularly a bad thing to give it another skill.


For stuff that isn't a direct raidbuff but can serve as utility and speedruns, SE have to open the possibility for allowing mistakes that normally cannot happen as a separate skill since WHM's gimmick is all about super powerful healing ability (cause you know, support utility is meant to alter the way you handle mechanics). Dunno how well that would work when they're quite adamant on not allowing support utility on fight design though.. seeing how they nerfed SCH's expedient. :/ But here's an idea in its rudimentary state:

A skill that allows a positioning placement that can increase melee DPS if it was possible (bigger boss hitboxes are a mistake and I will probably die on this hill). SCH has mitigation and movement speed for all party members. What if WHM has uptime and increased maximum survival for one party member? We can think of something along the lines of The Heroes' Gauntlet stack markers. WHM can target a party member, summon a rock (aetheric construct) on the party member, and the rock applies something like PLD Cover to the party member. 50% of the damage the party member takes is moved to the rock (debuffs caused by regular hits and aoe like vulnerability up and damage down are fully transferred over to allow this to work), but the rock has its own HP bar (scaled by WHM stats), so it can also be used as a stack marker & healed. If the rock is still alive by the end of the skill duration, reduce this skill's cooldown by [x] seconds. You can use it to save an ally from cleaves, you can use it for single target multi-hit attacks, you can use it for tankbuster stacks, and you can use it to substitute a party member for smaller stack markers. That being said, if you use it for heavy hitting mechanics to undo a mistake, the cooldown for its next use becomes longer because the rock will definitely die before the duration expires, but it can also lead to different ways to approach the fight with a WHM over AST's card buffs because this is both uptime utility and simultaneously doubles as a big external HP bar skill but for only one ally. The mitigation is powerful, but it also isn't available as an AoE skill so its purpose is more focused.

Though that may be pushing support utility too much, but I put it out here cause we're just trying to think of any support utility for healers at all.

[Rithy255]

I think the best "support" outside of healing, Mit, shields would be buffing, Astrologian I feel like does this better then scholar as raid wide buffs generally require no thought other then pressing it, but with a single target DPS buff you need to put in many factors on who to give that card to (beyond just melee vs ranged, depending on card), Scholars speed boost is a great example of Support that feels good for the entire party as well.

I think theirs only so much things you can do with "support" in FF14's current game design, the main way to make healers more intresting right now is give them procs or a few more buttons to press or something, I just want to feel interactive when playing healer not falling asleep, I generally enjoy "supporting the party" but I'll just go play Tank if I wanna support and also have a fun rotation

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

A teleporter could be a pretty good situational skill.

I was thinking this when I first read Rescue's tooltip couple of years ago.

It would also be nice if I can use Rescue against enemies, too. To yank in that stray caster probably. Urianger can do this to Ran'jit in CS -.- Lemme do it too.

[ForsakenRoe]

Stuff about WHM and Bene

I probably should have mentioned, that at the time I thought 'hey what if Bene was a role action', it was when Living Dead was trash horrible to heal as anything that wasn't WHM. Now it's 'fixed' (though not in the way I'd have done it), the need for Bene to be role-skill'd is gone. Besides, you're right, the amount of stuff WHM has had removed and given back as roleskills over the years is obscene. Adding Bene to the pile wouldn't help at all I guess. I like your idea of a rock-friend, a lot actually, not just for 'it helps with stack markers' but also you could use it as a pseudo-waymark. Throw it down for, eg, Poly-whatsit Sigmoid, the one where there's 2 safespots and 2 stack markers, and not only are you helping mitigate the stack, you're also able to show your team 'hey this is the safespot!'

I think the best "support" outside of healing, Mit, shields would be buffing, Astrologian I feel like does this better then scholar as raid wide buffs generally require no thought other then pressing it, but with a single target DPS buff you need to put in many factors on who to give that card to (beyond just melee vs ranged, depending on card), Scholars speed boost is a great example of Support that feels good for the entire party as well.

We need the playerbase to realise that 'buffs allies' is not as much of an 'identity' as they think it is, before that can happen. Yeh, AST's been about 'buff allies' since its release, but if WHM got a way to buff allies like Bravery or Faith or whatever, some people would complain that it's 'infringing on AST identity', not realizing that Mug, Embolden, Brotherhood, Arcane Circle, Radiant Coda, Technical Step all have the same effect at the end of the day: make allies do more damage for 20s. The amount of % increase might be slightly different, or the difference might be 'oh this one's a debuff on an enemy, the others are buff on ally', but at the end of the day, they're very similar effect buffs. And nobody went on the warpath about how RPR was infringing on MNK identity for having '2min buff, with side effect of 'ally attacks help build you up to big hit'.

We can differentiate WHM vs AST if both had a buff, based on many factors, just like with the DPS classes. How long the buff lasts, how often you're using them, how strong the buff is vs how much damage comes from your spam-nuke spell, what the buff even DOES (what if WHM had DHit version of Chain Strat, would SCH players complain about identity?), etc. 'Other MMO' has their healers all bringing different buffs, Priest has +10% HP for 1 hour (press it before pull and forget about it) and Power infusion, a 2min singletarget 20% haste buff to juice one specific friend and pad their logs, Paladin has 3% damage reduction aura (can be increased to 15% temporarily with a 3min CD), Druid has a 1h 3% Vers (our version: Determination) buff, Shaman has... Whatever totems they have, not massively familiar with retail Shaman (in Wrath they had stuff like Spell Haste, Melee Haste, bonus STR/AGI, Damage reduction, Movespeed, 10min CD ones that would summon powerful allied adds to punch enemies with you, etc), Monk is suffering and lost it's buff a while back (used to have a 1h Mastery buff), and the new class Evoker has a 1h 'reduce CD of mobility skills by 15%', so Heroic Leap on Warrior, or Roll on Monk. Don't think anyone was complaining when it was announced that Evoker would have a 1h buff like the other healers.

The point isn't necessarily 'we need to have all these various buffs', as most of them wouldn't be compatible with this game, or would be instalocked slots. If only one class brought +10% VIT buff, either the damage is tuned around having it, which makes the fight unclearable without that class, or it's tuned around NOT having it, in which case you would never need to shield, as the bonus VIT would be 'the shield', and you could get away with 2 regen healers. Actually 'any comp of healers is functional, even in week 1' sounds kinda cool, maybe that's a bad example to use

[Rithy255]

The way Astrologian "buffs allies" (obviously outside your raid wide buff) is more active and fun then any other Job who presses one button and forgets about it.

Theirs a clear difference between Melee DPS "push out one raid wide buff" vs "Actively choosing a target with each card, targets can change also depending on what card" that's why it's a big reason it's apart of Astros identity, while it's not the old days astro, I think it's actually quite a nice thing astro still has going for it that feels really unique to the job.

[Connor]

The kind of support utility I’d like to see:

SCH getting more enemy debuffs, like Libra increasing damage taken by [whatever]% to complement Chain Stratagem, something like Eye for an Eye that deals x potency when struck, maybe Virus as a DoT spell with additional effect that either overwrites Biolysis or has a very short duration (idk something balanced lol). I’d love to see the Fairy get more buffs too; I always loved the concept of Scholars having naturally weaker healing but buffing the party with the fairy to compensate for that. I’d love to see a physical defense variation of Fey Illumination, maybe with an additional effect like increasing shield potency on party members instead of healing spell potency. They could even give it to Selene to make her a distinct entity again lol. Maybe Fey Wind could return but Hastes are problematic to say the least; maybe like a flat 3% damage buff or something lol. As an aside, as an XI player I think it’d be cool to have Kaustra and Embrava as throwback spells. Kaustra could be a high potency DoT with base damage that procs from Recitation, whilst Embrava could act as a regen with an additional damage buff attached (resource restoration isn’t really a thing in ffxiv so can’t really use that as inspiration lol) available during Dissipation or Chain Stratagem

For Astrologian, I’d love to see the return of the card duration manipulation abilities like Time Dilation or the old version of Celestial Opposition. I also really liked the skill Retrogradation from HW PvP, which reduced the buff duration from all enemies and reduced duration of all negative effects on party members (at least I think that’s what it did lol). Though that wouldn’t really work for current content design unfortunately, since there isn’t anything it would affect lol. More varied card buffs of course, too. Like maybe Astrologian could get a second ‘Draw’ ability, (maybe a ‘Reverse Draw’ or w/e) that’s defensive and varied as a counterpart to standard draw being the same effect for every card. Like Bole could do damage shield, Ewer increases HP restored, Balance increases defense by [something]%, etc

I play Sage and White Mage much less (WHM isn’t even level 90 yet lol) so I can only give a vague idea for those jobs.
Sage naturally I could see having more offensive utility that synergises with its (supposed) ‘dps healer’ style.

As for White Mage, literally anything would be nice lol. White Mages traditionally do have a lot of support magic associated with them though - Protect, Shell, Reflect, Berserk, Haste (again, problematic but still lol), so there’s definitely plenty for them to draw on

[glamazon]

There's an ocean of great stuff out there that's completely off the table because of the way Square has settled into an encounter design pattern: the less the player can interact with the fight the better. There is exactly one "correct" solution to every problem laid before you. This solution is (nearly) always some combination of movement and positioning. That's it. An encounter with gaze attacks where a support could cleverly blind their allies to hamper their view of the battlefield but immunize them from a nasty attack? Unthinkable. A boss that summons an add that needs to be put to sleep to keep it from killing the off tank with its strong attacks? No way. A hard CC that works on anything, but also puts a huge regen on its victim so you have to be selective when you use it? Heresy. You could Reflect enemy spells. Use Float to make your party immune to ground effects. Using Raise to instakill undead would be entirely within the Final Fantasy standard. Teleport weaker enemies out of combat in exchange for no reward. Zombify tanks to make them take damage from heals but immune to killing spells. Provide luck buffs. Enthrall weaker enemies into attacking each other.

None of the above works in FF14 because those things fly in the face of solving mechanics via moving and standing in the safe spot. Stacking and spreading. Light parties. Moving to the safe spot. Finding the uptime safe spot. In or out. An AOE that hits one half of the room, then the other. Clock positions. People make megathreads bitching about Rescue one of the tamest, least fight-intrusive abilities that can assist allies within the approved "positioning only" paradigm, so it's not like Square doesn't get feedback that the current flavorless gruel is A Good Thing, Actually. Fluid Aura was ground to dust under the heel of this design direction.

Heals, shields, and DPS+ abilities are what we're down to because that's all you get when fights -must- be solved via burning a boss down while moving and positioning, no further interaction allowed.

But why did they settle on this? Why do the devs slavishly stick to this? MMO is a living breathing ongoing thing and should be able to grow and change... right? Why won't they grown and change and add different types of encounters?