Minor Idea: White Mage eddition

[fulminating]

You write posts with character counts vastly exceeding the limit. If you want people to respond to what you mean, clear and concise is the way to go.

Honestly if it were up to me I’d delete sage for an expansion while the three normal healers were sorted out and then work out if it’s going to need more dark arts or something else. I don’t think anyone is asking for a dps rotation on par with the more involved dps jobs. Just more depth so it’s harder to fall asleep in basically all the content offered by the game.

[Renathras]

You write posts with character counts vastly exceeding the limit.

That'd be true of my average post, but you're talking about this post, which was well within the character limit:

No it's not.

People say this about Tanking and DPSing. And have several options that fit it - WAR for Tanks and SMN for DPSers. Before SMN, it was RDM, BRD, and/or DNC.

It's actually been true for most of the game's history that each Role had at least one simple one, and the simple ones were often the most played, but always had adamant fans of its playstyle who didn't want it changed.

EDIT: And as I've told you before, this isn't even limited to FFXIV but tends to be true across MMOs and even into other genres. Most games have an "easy one" if they have a diverse set of options. FFXIV is no different. BRD was the "easy one" for much of the game's history in terms of DPS Jobs. WHM for Healers. Tanks were arguably the Role that didn't have an easy one until WAR drifted into that position, and PLD has somewhat joined it. And if you go look at the Tank forum, you'll see there are some PLD die-hard-opposed-to-6.3 people, but also a lot of people touting it as generally good and/or a step in the right direction.

A very common question on Reddit for FFXIV is "I want to pick up X role - which Job is the easy/easiest one?"

This isn't new or unique to Healers in any way. The only thing that's relatively new is people insisting there shouldn't be one.

Honestly if it were up to me I’d delete sage for an expansion while the three normal healers were sorted out and then work out if it’s going to need more dark arts or something else. I don’t think anyone is asking for a dps rotation on par with the more involved dps jobs. Just more depth so it’s harder to fall asleep in basically all the content offered by the game.

Define "more involved". I've seen people propose things more involved than any of the Tanks or than several of the DPS, and I don't just mean SMN and DNC, but more like RDM or NIN. The average seems to be somewhere between DNC and RDM, which, if we rank DPSers on a scale from 1-5 would rank around a 2.5 or so.

[ForsakenRoe]

I am very sorry in advance

Sorry, missed this til now.

1) Plenary moved to 74 is fine, but I personally like the idea of it upgrading from Protect better.

2) Rapture at 70 would be nice as well.

3) Stoneskin being based on Lilies is kinda...meh. I would rather just see a castable one, though having a Lily spender for when everyone's at max health wouldn't go amiss, so I'm neutral on this one, but leaning towards okay with it.

4) Lower level Misery should be much lower. I would arguably put it at 30 or 35, and have WHM learn Solace at 30. This would cement the way Lilies/Misery work early and mix up the lower level rotation more. At highest, I'd swap it with Stoneskin.

5) Bastion is just an upgrade, so it's fine.

6) Sanctuary is a nice idea. In a reverse of how SCH and SGE have a 400p party heal with their AF/AG resource, WHM gets an AOE Succor/Eu Prognosis. Seems fair to me.

7) I've agreed with this idea for Divine Seal for a while.

8) Is Protect in this sense single target or AOE? Again, I think it should be AOE like Plenary.

9) I've never liked Fluid Aura so I don't care much for this. We already have Assize, just make Assize lower level or a lower CD, or have FA be a lower level Assize. We don't need another oGCD damage ability used on CD. And I already told you what I think Water should be.

10) Aero/Dia - hate this with a passion. The thing I hated most about Healers in ARR, the single thing I hated, was how short the DoT durations were. I already hate DoTs, so making them EVEN MORE annoying is a hard no from me and always will be. I'd rather have a 15 sec GCD like Plegma that stacks to 2 than a DoT in general, but especially an even SHORTER DoT that I have to fiddle with even MORE often.

11) Do we really need another gauge? People complain all the time about Faerie Gauge just existing in service to one ability, and this is just that again. Moreover, I generally hate the aesthetic of "nature" spells unless I'm playing a Druid type class, which WHM is not (really, it's not; CNJ is, Druid would be, Geomancer would be, but that's a separate issue). But even ignoring that, this screams Faerie Gauge. The second problem here is that this is basically SMN after Bahamut/Phoenix, and quite a few people cite that as one of the big problems with SMN right now, why missing burst is such a fail, and why death for them sucks so hard. Doing that with WHM seems ripe for all kinds of problems. And then...

12) An AOE Glare (but we already have Holy for that), an AOE Assize (but we already have...Assize...for that), and an AOE Dia (well, at least that's one we don't already have, I guess...); two out of three we already have, so these are kind of just redundant, and WHM already has so much redundant abilities. The last one is especially irksome because...well...DOTS. Seriously; hate DoTs...especially ones that don't interact with the kit, and this one doesn't. Though I do commend you for thinking of a way to make Dia DoT ticks at least mildly interact with the kit.

1: Thanks to editing, it may have been missed but yes, the original idea was that Protect would upgrade to Proshell at 66 (becoming 10% mit instead of 5), then Aquaveil at 86 (becoming 15% mit). Since we came to the agreement I've changed it to be Protect upgrading to PI. I'll re-edit that part to include the change to PI that this would cause after this post

2: cool

3: Stoneskin/Bastion/Sanc are gated by lilies as a mirror to how SCH's burst healing tool (Indom) is gated by Aetherflow. Having it as a standalone cast as it was in the past will likely feel clunky, especially with these lilyspender versions being instantcast. Imagine you just finished a cast of something, and the boss starts winding up a raidwide. Now you have to wait the full GCD, then the whole cast time of the Sanctuary cast, then the animation delay, chances are you're not getting the cast off in time. Having them like this makes it more responsive, at least that's the intention

4: it's at 66 because there's a gap there, it could be lower and have it's potency adjusted if needed

5/6/7: cool

8: Protect would be AOE like PI, as it would become PI at 74/76 whenever it was

9: Now comes the part where you misunderstood things. Fluid Aura was a OGCD. This suggested Water skill is a GCD with a unique CD, similar to something like Goring Blade or Sonic Break. It cannot be compared to Assize because they're very different in function.

10: I'm also not a fan of DOTs, but WHM's always had em so I figure it has to stay. If the devs made it 12s CD GCD, I wouldn't lose any sleep over it. However, I would have concerns that people would start going 'we have a 12s GCD and a 15s GCD why not just combine them into one button' and then we'd be back to where we are now, keeping one as a DOT avoids that (and you can multidot with it, you can't with Banish because of it's CD)

11: Then add it as an aspect of the current Lily Gauge, I'm not fussed. And there's plenty of other examples of gauges that service 'one ability', or 'one ability, or it's AOE variant'. PLD might as well be the Sheltron Gauge. WAR is the FC gauge. DRK is the Bloodspiller Gauge. MNK is the TFC Gauge. DRG's doesn't even need to be a gauge, it could have been a regular 30s buff. SAM's kenki gauge is now the Shinten Gauge, given that Iki lines up with Senei and gives enough gauge to use it instantly. MCH has TWO gauges that are dedicated to one ability each, Hypercharge and Queen respectively. Yeh it'd be nice if FairyGauge was useful on more than one skill sure. But I look at it less as Fairy Gauge and more like WAR's, you get it to 50, you press the one button it's useful for, it has big impact and you feel good about it.

12: Yes, the point of them being AOE is so you can use them in AOE and not feel like you're losing damage by singletargeting. And what do you mean, 'DOTs that don't interact with the kit', I guess I have to edit in that these would also build the gauge at the same rate as their non-empowered counterparts? I figured that'd be obvious but maybe not. And there is no redundancy because as previously mentioned elsewhere (and maybe I'll even edit it in because it's apparently not obvious enough), the Quake skill would replace Glare on your bar while you have the buff. Like how Inner Chaos replaces Fell Cleave on the bar when you have Nascent Chaos. Same for Tornado replacing Dia, Flood replacing Banish. There would be only one new DPS skill keybind, and that's Banish, everything else damagewise makes use of the current keybinds. If anything is causing button bloat here it's going to be the healing side of things.

Actually that reminds me, I need to add a note about re-adding Cleric Stance, let me get on that

The sad thing is, I'd LIKE this DPS rotation...on a DPS Job. And I don't mean that sarcastically. A DPS Job which had a basic nuke, a basic upkeep DoT with a short duration (every 4th GCD in single target), an oGCD 4x per minute, builds a gauge by taking any of those actions, spends 50 gauge probably at the 1 min mini-burst mark and 100 gauge (2x cycles of the big damage) during 2 min big burst phases. The burst consisting of one big hit, one big oGCD, and one big DoT spread, which each stacking twice. In the burst you'd lead in with Blessing, (having used one some time before getting to your 100 cap again for burst), then with the DoT (Tornado), weave Flood into Quake, Flood and Quake again, (now you have 0 Flood, 0 Quake, 1 Tornado remaining), Blessing again, weave Flood into Quake, Tornado again to snapshot under the burst, then get back to your normal Stone/Aero rotation until Tornado wears off, and then cast it again to refresh that DoT as well.

Here's the issue, people, on average, don't like current SMN for being too on-rails, too simple, nothing to optimize outside of 'where do I put Ifrit'. This would be the same if it were a DPS. I have tried to make it as simple, as forgiving, as welcoming to new players as possible. I cannot make it any more acceptable to you as a healer design without gutting the main thing that makes it 'an improvement over what we have' in my eyes, that being the shortening of Dia and addition of Banish. Removing those makes the whole thing fall apart. And it should be noted that this is still miles behind the 'complexity' that any of the healers in this game's closest competitor have.

Maybe I could go over to the DPS subforum and tell all the Samurai mains that it neeeeeeeds to be the Boring One That Sucks because otherwise the seas will boil, the casuals will rend their garments, and Armageddon will kick off if any slight whisper of a skill ceiling makes its way onto the job that MUST be there for casuals who hate complexity.

Isn't that what 'I'm glad Kaiten is gone' does to them?

No, that'd be STUPID. In fact, most of the Tanks are complaining when they think that the Tanks ARE moving towards each other. The biggest complaint about the PLD rework is "It makes PLD more like GNB". Yet you're insisting that all the Healers should be the same, when that's the very thing the Tanks are complaining about.

I'm pretty sure when anyone reads what Skel posted, they'd interpret it as 'all four healers should have some skill ceiling to strive for, each in a unique and flavorful way as befitting their identities', not 'all four healers should have increased complexity, and that should be achieved by adding the same skills to them so they still all play the same, but now harder'. WHM and SGE can both have complexity to strive for, without their damage rotations being carbon copies of each other. Look at the melee, they all have a 123 combo of some kind, but the rest of the kit allows them to play very differently from one another.

It's almost like people aren't reading things before replying to them.

I think _I_ have proposed more SGE damage rotation suggestions than you guys have.

Pot, kettle. If you had scrolled down a little from my WHM idea you'd have seen three different ideas for SGE, with varying amounts of complexity. The third in particular is so long I HB'd it so it wouldn't take so much room. Ty's also done one of similar length, though they may have only posted it in a different thread, rather than a thread of it's own. I don't remember seeing so many of your ideas for SGE, you'll have to dig them up and remind me.

You write posts with character counts vastly exceeding the limit. If you want people to respond to what you mean, clear and concise is the way to go.

Sorry in advance

Define "more involved". I've seen people propose things more involved than any of the Tanks or than several of the DPS, and I don't just mean SMN and DNC, but more like RDM or NIN. The average seems to be somewhere between DNC and RDM, which, if we rank DPSers on a scale from 1-5 would rank around a 2.5 or so.

What would you rank my WHM idea on this scale, given that it only adds one (two if we actually got Cleric Stance as described in the newly edited post) button for damage, and rescales one DOT's duration? Does your hatred of DOTs bump it up to a 3? Is WAR more complex or less than this reworked WHM?

[ASkellington]

No, it's not.

The question wasn't "how similar are the Tanks", nor was it "how many abilities can a thing have and still be simple"; it was "no other Role has people asking that there be a simple one. The other Roles ABSOLUTELY have people wanting a simple one and that is a thing people want.

At least read things before replying to them.

And for reference, they all ARE different:

If you're going to argue, READ WHAT I SAID.

ALL 4 have a 1-2-3 combo.

ALL 4 have the same Defensive CDs just renamed

AND ALL FOUR HAVE A BURST ROTATION.

Do go back and read with glasses this time WHERE exactly I said that WAR's burst rotation WAS THE SAME AS GNB's?

That's the thing. I didn't. YOU DID. Stop putting words in my mouth to fit your narrative that isn't there.

I compared DRK and WAR. Not WAR and GNB.

The point is, people keep saying that "oh healers can't have this because they need to focus on healing". I DON'T SEE TANKS HAVING ANY PROBLEM WITH A 3 STEP BASE COMBO ROTATION ON TOP OF A BURST ROTATION WHILE MITIGATING. So why there for are people so insistent on having healers that way is why I even made the comparison between them in the first place.

[Renathras]

If you're going to argue, READ WHAT I SAID.

Follow the conversation:

I will point out for the hundredth time: the healer role is the -only one- that people regularly argue that we neeeeeeeeed a Boring One That Sucks, because if we don't it's too "pressuring" and "scary" and "the queues would collapse

No it's not.

People say this about Tanking and DPSing. And have several options that fit it - WAR for Tanks and SMN for DPSers. Before SMN, it was RDM, BRD, and/or DNC.

It's actually been true for most of the game's history that each Role had at least one simple one, and the simple ones were often the most played, but always had adamant fans of its playstyle who didn't want it changed.

Yeah it is. WAR still has the exact same template as the other 3 tanks - 1-2-3 combo ~6ish defensive options and a burst rotation - Fell Cleaves.

DRK also has discount Fell Cleave with dark arts spam. It literally is no different.

If all four tanks can have a 1-2-3 combo shared between them, there is 0 reason for 3 healers to get extra dps options and leave 1 behind.

[I added just the underlines "as the other 3 tanks" and "all four tanks", the rest are original.]

Ahem:

The question wasn't "how similar are the Tanks", nor was it "how many abilities can a thing have and still be simple"; it was "no other Role has people asking that there be a simple one. The other Roles ABSOLUTELY have people wanting a simple one and that is a thing people want.

...

"No it's not." was correct.

.

The one thing hilariously annoying to me about this subforum is that whenever one of you guys does something wrong and gets caught in it, not only will the person not admit to it, not only will they not apologize, not only will the weaponize it as yet another attack, but then for the next week or two, everyone else will attempt to "I know you are but what am I?" push it onto me even when it doesn't apply.

I read your post. You compared DRK and WAR while insisting that you were referring to ALL FOUR Tanks. You said all four, and were giving an example using the two most similar to prove it. Then when called out, you backed off on the point and tried to use it as a "You don't read people's posts!!!" attack when I very clearly read your post; the issue was you neither read mine nor were keeping up with the conversation when you decided to interject without even being right about the thing you chose to interject about. We both know what you meant to say, but by all means, pretend in saying "the tanks are all the same" you DIDN'T mean "the tanks are all the same":

WAR still has the exact same template as the other 3 tanks - 1-2-3 combo ~6ish defensive options and a burst rotation

"I said they all have the exact same template, but I didn't MEAN they were the same! Stop putting my own words into my mouth!"

EVERY Job looks the same from a far enough zoom. Every Job in the game dodges mechanics and pushes buttons on their keyboard. That isn't what makes things the same. That's what makes it a videogame.

EDIT:

e: as indicated by the tank forum thread and the ffxivdiscussion thread, the orange and red boxes are really rather similar in practice

The Reddit thread is largely people saying "they're the same if you don't look closely, but they're not at all the same". There are several concurrent discussions, but that seems to be the gist of it, including some people saying "But if we get into the nuance of each tank and applied even a single braincell, then that person either has no idea what they’re talking about, or they were being extremely hyperbolic for the sake of their argument."

[fulminating]

"I said they all have the exact same template, but I didn't MEAN they were the same! Stop putting my own words into my mouth!"

EVERY Job looks the same from a far enough zoom. Every Job in the game dodges mechanics and pushes buttons on their keyboard. That isn't what makes things the same. That's what makes it a videogame.

I think this explains it



e: as indicated by the tank forum thread and the ffxivdiscussion thread, the orange and red boxes are really rather similar in practice

[ASkellington]

"I said they all have the exact same template, but I didn't MEAN they were the same! Stop putting my own words into my mouth!"

I can't tell if you're being obtuse or just failing to understand.

I'll make it easy for you even though its a lost cause with you because you don't even want to try.

The BURST ROTATION is what SEPARATES the tanks hence why I only mentioned it (and why I compared WAR and DRK in the first place).

I compared the BASIC ROTATION between the four of them BECAUSE they're exactly the same to prove a point.

So YES you were putting words in my mouth when you said:

GNB isn't at all like WAR. It doesn't have a 1-2-3/-4 upkeep buff with a burst rotation of "press one button then press another button 5 times". You can try to oversimplify it, but go into the Tank forum or FFXIV Discussion and say "WAR plays just like GNB" and you're likely to get laughed at, if not outright destroyed with a bunch of "well ackshually" people setting you straight.

I NEVER SAID GNB was akin to WAR outside of the 1-2-3 combo, WHICH WAR STILL HAS. I didn't add the extra 4 because it doesn't add much to get my point across, I don't expect people to be that nitpicky, and I'm trying to keep my posts CONCISE. Which, it does.

And even YOU said WAR and DRK were pretty much the same, WHICH I ALSO SAID.

And no my argument does NOT boil down to giving every healer the same thing. YOU THINK DOES, but I've NEVER EXPLICITLY SAID SO. If you want my thoughts how about you ASK instead of ASSUMING.

I've purposefully not given my thoughts on how to diversify the healers IN DETAIL because I quite frankly find 0 interest in fleshing out abilities with numbers instead of giving a basic summary and what I would like to see out of this game, the game ISN'T going to do and I'm in the minority when it comes to adding in these things.

And believe you me, no one wants my idea of WHM.

[ForsakenRoe]

And believe you me, no one wants my idea of WHM.

Bet, post it I'm always down to read a healer rework idea. Whether I agree with it is a completely different story

[Renathras]

Also giving this one a bump since some people have indicated liking the idea and wanting to discuss it as well.