Any support utility ideas other than heal & shields?

[AnotherPerson]

There has been talk that we don't want to see just another heal and shield skill because we have so many of those already. Personally, another ability with only a combination of healing, shielding, and mitigation is getting not particularly exciting or fun when we have plenty of those already. Assuming we can disregard balance, what kind of support utility ideas that you want a healer to have instead?

[fulminating]

redistribution - like pain split in pokemon. Take the healthy health from someone who's mostly fine and give it to someone who's critically injured

[ForsakenRoe]

just having different SHAPES of AOE heal would be the most basic step for this game, and we can't even get that. Pneuma could have been a line aoe like it's damage half is, but nope, everything has to be a circle around player, 15y. no cone aoe heal, no line aoe heal, no 'target this point on the floor' outside of persistent ground aoes like Soil and Asylum.

Aside from that, the 'mechanic' i'd want to see is a healer that restores it's job gauge by doing damage, then spends it on healing skills, to force people to do damage as the healer and stop their ridiculous 'healers should only heal' rubbish. necromancer could have been the healer that used that (steal life-energy from enemy, redirect it to ally) but we got RPR instead. Alternatively, rework Sage to have more focus on 'heal by doing damage' instead of 'heal by pressing reskins of SCH skills'

[ty_taurus]

Reactive Healing - Healing that restores a portion of all damage taken.

Delayed Healing - Healing that is delivered after a set duration or gets stronger the longer you wait to activate it.

Drain Healing - Healing based on a percentage of damage dealt to enemies.

Field Effect Healing - Healing effects that trigger when standing within specific player-generated AoE fields.

We have individual examples of these, but they could very well be the staple way that a new healer provides recovery, rather than falling back on regen and barrier healing.

[Semirhage]

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.

[FireMage]

just having different SHAPES of AOE heal would be the most basic step for this game, and we can't even get that. Pneuma could have been a line aoe like it's damage half is, but nope, everything has to be a circle around player, 15y. no cone aoe heal, no line aoe heal, no 'target this point on the floor' outside of persistent ground aoes like Soil and Asylum.

This would be a terrible idea

[Absurdity]

This would be a terrible idea

And why would that be? If the fight design supports it I see no reason why some healing couldn't have more restrictive conditions in exchange for higher output. Claiming that everything needs to be a circle with X radius is just creatively bankrupt.

[FireMage]

And why would that be? If the fight design supports it I see no reason why some healing couldn't have more restrictive conditions in exchange for higher output. Claiming that everything needs to be a circle with X radius is just creatively bankrupt.

If you can't immediately see the problems with a certain type of AOE heal range beyond proximity that's on you, not ne

[Hazama999]

As stated above, there's very little they could do to make healing interesting that wouldn't involve altering encounter design.
Honestly the easiest thing they could do is make the damage rotation more engaging..... But that ain't healing.

[flowerfairy]

As stated above, there's very little they could do to make healing interesting that wouldn't involve altering encounter design.
Honestly the easiest thing they could do is make the damage rotation more engaging..... But that ain't healing.

Yep. The best I can think of aside from changing fight design for unique utility tools is job interplay, which already existed through resource buffs but SE decided to nuke that stuff instead of revamping it.
The most interesting utility tool we have that isn't a heal or a damage buff is Expedient. Unless we get something that teleports people, I think that's about the best we're getting with current fight and job design.