Adapting healers in other games into FFXIV for fun: Taion/Tactician

[ty_taurus]

I don't play Xenoblade so all I can go off of is this link. And what it seems to say is that this class is entirely healing skills.

To give you a very simple rundown... In XC3, each class has 5 skills, and you pick 3 of them to use in battle; you do not get all 5 at once. Once you master a class, 2 of those skills can then be equipped onto any other class in the game similar to the old cross class system, and you can equip up to 3 skills from other classes to use on the one you're currently using for a total of 6 actions in battle. Then you also have a Talent Art which is effectively a limit break that charges different based on which role your class is. Attackers charge off performing positionals, Defenders charge off using aggro generating actions, and Healers charge off placing field effects.

War Medic is the healing-focused healer. Its skills, simply put are the following:
Multi-Blast is an AoE attack that heals in an AoE around you if it hits.
Heal Bullet is just an AoE heal.
Advanced Cooldown is a field effect that increases defense while standing in it.
Cure Bullet is an AoE status removal.
Vital Bullet is an AoE delayed healing buff.

Technical Heal is their talent art and it's a bigger AoE heal basically.

War Medic's a good early-mid game healer, but it's outclassed by the mid-late game healers.

As for the concept, I don't recommend looking at that as a complete entity. As I said, I was really just trying to think of ways to adapt the tools apparent on the Tactician class and on Taion, not trying to create a completed idea. As for what has MP costs or what is instant cast, I just wanted to specify those when I felt it was important for the idea. If something doesn't list an MP cost or cast time, I don't really know if I'd make that free or instant cast at this time. It's fine to discuss what they should be, though. But I also mentioned that the kit is incomplete. If anything, it at least needs a Raise spell.

Everything else looks to me like 'it would work in FFXIV'. At least, from a technical perspective. GCD ground-zone placing spell? HW Shadowflare. Spells with combos? Leverage 'X skill Ready' buff statuses, and if needed, make them fall off when you don't 'complete the combo', like how you can break the Ifrit 1-2 by casting something in between. Potencies too big/small or MP costs too big/small etc, just adjust them as needed for balance.

This is the kind of mentality I have going into a design. The thing is, I do not have access to a prototyping build. I cannot test these things. That is an essential step to actually shipping a new job or a job rework or anything of the like. That's why I don't try to get wrapped into the balance of those numbers that harshly. That's also how building a new job or a job rework actually goes as well. You often start by shooting for the moon and seeing how that looks, then reeling back in different aspects to maintain balance. I promise you there have been iterations of every job at some point that were incredibly broken that we've just never seen because that idea was brought into a testing build and ironed out. If something like potencies, cast times, or MP costs are odd, then that's absolutely something we can talk about, but the most important thing is the design--how something plays.

[ty_taurus]

I revamped the concept and adjusted the original post with a link to a much more visually pleasing breakdown of the different actions. I went in and filled the holes needed to make this a fully functional healer, as well as reworked a few things, so hope that helps clear up any missing details.

I'll also include that new action breakdown here for accessibility.

[Renathras]

...

Haven't played it? It's actually a good game (if you have a Switch...but the Switch is a good console, so...)

You control a party of 6 (which is pretty awesome, actually), but only one character at a time. While you can swap around, you are only controlling one at a given moment. War Medic is a gunner that heals. It has some attacks that generate AOE healing and it has AOE healing and buffs like defense up or something (mitigation) as well. It's arguably the most powerful healer in the game (or close to) since the game is designed with Healers more as Support-DPS for the most part, making its raw healing easily able to meet most healing needs that otherwise might take you two Healers to do. Some of the Healing classes in that game are so DPS/debuff focused that they can barely even be called Healers, and it takes two (or even three) of them to heal the party. Tactician only has something like 1/3rd the healing power of a War Medic.

But in a general sense - you typically control only one character unless you enjoy micromanaging, so no, it's not different in that way you suggest, really.

Note you also can select three abilities from a second class (from the opposing nation, but just roll with it), meaning you could do something like War Medic picking up Tactician's heals if you wanted to do so.

War Medic is arguably what some people have pitched Chemist to be in FFXIV. Sorta. If you crossed it with SGE. A gun wielding healer that has direct heals, heals on attack, and party buffs; but it's probably the most FFXIV Job-like of the SC3 Healing classes.

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1) Yeah, I assumed that as well. But that's not quite the point. A lot of FFXIV damage (particularly on tankbusters) is "spike" damage where you need to heal a single target for ~800 potency of healing (Cure 2, Tetra, Excog, etc) and this Job doesn't have that, meaning it'd need to use 2x AOE heals to get the same result on a single target. It's less than half the potency of Solace, so there's no comparison there. It's like what I said - Medica.

2) In theory the debuff would be, but I'm not sure a spamable Dismantle works in FFXIV's game. Sleep, likewise, doesn't work well in FFXIV since it breaks on damage, meaning unlike Holy stun, it's not even useful in AOE situations since the rest of the party is blasting out AOE damage and will break it instantly, if it even goes into effect at all. I do like the trying to think outside the box to make a different take on Holy, though.

3) No, it's not.

4) It's odd in that it has exactly 3 versions of Medica AND NOTHING ELSE. Note that every other Healer in the game has a basic core set of abilities - a Cure 1, a Cure 2 equivalent, a Medica equivalent, and a Raise. Their other abilities tend to be variations on these themes, plus Regen or (more often) Medica 2, using either CDs, resources/Job gauges, or both, some on the oGCD and some on the GCD. WHM is the worst offender, but many of the others aren't dissimilar. Fey Blessing is an oGCD weaker Medica, for example. Celestial opposition is the same thing for Medica 2. Lustrate and Tetra and Essential Dignity are oGCD Cure 2s, and Solace is a GCD version of that that uses a Job resource rather than Cure 2's MP or Tetra's CD. SCH is arguably the most different and it still has this pattern, and SGE slotted right into it, even filling in for the direct healing Medica that SCH only has when using Emergency Tactics on Succor. There's no other Healer that just has three versions of Medica + Expedient on a 30 sec CD. So yes, that makes it odd. And this is, again, assuming it has a Raise spell. If it doesn't, it's not a Healer in the FFXIV sense at all, as that's the one thing they all MUST have.

5) It's arguably (4), I suppose, but more just explaining it.

Vermedica - Thematically, it would just be neat. And it would make RDM capable of healing 4 man stuff in a more practical sense. Especially fun in Deep Dungeons without a Healer (random ques). Not every ability in the game needs to be "Savage raiders will use this without biting your head off". The use case is extremely obvious, it just isn't to the perspective of "Would this be used in Savage raids?" Moreover, even THAT isn't accurate - I bet world first raiders could find a use for it, and Ultimate raiders definitely could. 2x Medica is the equivalent of (actually more powerful than) a Cure 3. 2,000 MP for 800 potency of AOE healing within 20y vs 1,500 MP for 600 potency of AOE healing within 10y that can potentially be cast on a target 30y away, and the cast time is approximately equal since the Dualcast can hit right after the GCD refreshes. It's roughly equivalent to using a Cure 3 followed immediately by a Rapture, though with a more limited range on the Cure 3 (1 Lily is roughly equivalent to 400 MP in the cost of a foregone Glare)

Indeed, Vermedica probably never will be added to the game BECAUSE it would make Healers obsolete (abjectly so, even moreso than now) in 4 mans and would make a LOT of things solo-healable as long as you have a RDM in the party. It'd be fantastic for RDM to make up for its lower damage than SMN and BLM, but would be bad for game balance in the current sense, even if it would thematically make a lot of sense for RDM based on lore and franchise history.

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Anyway, I don't think the Tactician idea is bad - as I said, I think it would work really well as a Caster or Ranged DPS.

It doesn't at all fit the current "must haves" of FFXIV Healers.

You can argue the "must halves" are annoying and why we have so much homogenization - among Healers and Tanks both this is true, and it's largely true of DPS via the 2 min meta - that's absolutely a discussion worth having. But the point is, absent completely changing encounter design, something you guys oppose every time I mention it, those "must halves" are required. Otherwise you end up with HW/SB WHM again.

[ty_taurus]

You can argue the "must halves" are annoying and why we have so much homogenization - among Healers and Tanks both this is true, and it's largely true of DPS via the 2 min meta - that's absolutely a discussion worth having. But the point is, absent completely changing encounter design, something you guys oppose every time I mention it, those "must halves" are required. Otherwise you end up with HW/SB WHM again.

Regardless of encounter design, the healers don't actually "need" all that much in regards to their design in order to function successfully in this game. This is the list of actual necessities:

• At least one spammable single target heal
• At least one spammable AoE heal
• At least one spammable single target DPS button
• At least one spammable AoE DPS button
• A resurrection spell
• At least one 'emergency' heal option

And in addition to that, you can maybe argue that the following examples aren't 'necessary' in order for the healer to function, which is to say that a healer could potentially be balanced and capable of clearing without these, but they are still probably things you'd want on every healer regardless.

• At least one source of AoE barrier/mitigation/Max HP extension
• At least one regen or other healing tool that can provide healing after the party must split apart.
• At least one DPS neutral or OGCD single target heal
• At least one DPS neutral or OGCD AoE heal
• Some form of additional MP management beyond Lucid Dreaming

As long as a healer has at least the necessary components and probably those debatable components, the rest of what you give to the healer is free real estate. All else that matters beyond that is ensuring that their DPS output is within the range of the other healers (i.e. the potencies need to add up, but also not be too strong), and their healing output likewise needs to hit the same ballpark (potencies and cooldowns considered).

You can have less healing actions than we have now if you make the ones the healer does have available more easily and/or more frequently.

[Renathras]

...

I largely agree with this. But that's kind of what I'm pointing out, your idea has the following:

- One spamable AOE heal.
- Several single target DPS
- Several AOE DPS
(assuming) - A Raise

- One AOE barrier/mitigation
(through an oGCD) - One DPS neutral AOE heal

It's missing several of the necessary components and some of the additional ones.

That said, It has, what 17 or so abilities? So you could probably add in the standard Cure 1/2 and some kind of gauge spender single target heals that would shore up the rest, though it might be tight since this Job would have less mitigation than even WHM has. Was your goal here a Pure Healer?

[ty_taurus]

I largely agree with this. But that's kind of what I'm pointing out, your idea has the following:

- One spamable AOE heal.
- Several single target DPS
- Several AOE DPS
(assuming) - A Raise

- One AOE barrier/mitigation
(through an oGCD) - One DPS neutral AOE heal

It's missing several of the necessary components and some of the additional ones.

That said, It has, what 17 or so abilities? So you could probably add in the standard Cure 1/2 and some kind of gauge spender single target heals that would shore up the rest, though it might be tight since this Job would have less mitigation than even WHM has. Was your goal here a Pure Healer?

Right, because like I said a bunch of times, it wasn't a complete kit. In the original post, I mentioned twice that this wasn't fully developed and would need new things added to be a complete kit. It didn't even have a raise spell. I was just thinking up a possible loop just using the concept of the abilities from XC3 and not adding anything else. That said, I went back and did some adjustments to make it more complete. The idea on the healing side is to make the heals that you do have all feel usable more regularly, though it would definitely need testing to see if it actually is healing at the frequency of other healers or not. But it's also only 20 actions before role actions, so there's room to add as needed.