Healer Suggestions Megathread

[vetch]

. a) why add more jobs when there's such a narrow range of holes for them to fit into?

Hot new job in the job trailer equals more sales of the expansion. Look at how many people gush over Sage for its pew pew laser audiovisuals even though it just copied Scholar and White Mage's homework. It can't even auto-attack from range, lmao.

. c) cutting away at the foundation of the job to add a new capstone skill causes issues with balancing in lower level content that potency bloat is being used to paper over.

And cutting away at old jobs to have enough ideas to fill out a new expansion's job.

. e) there is a lack of diversity in damage type/profile. Surely they could have just buffed atonement instead of killing paladin's playstyle etc.

"Let's have half the jobs be builder-spenders! Give them gauges!"
"Let's have burst-based combat!"
"Our builder-spenders can't do openers under the incredibly important buffs because they have to build before they can spend! Let's give them all a skill that instantly generates a huge chunk of gauge!"

Snoozefest.

4) synchronised swimming doesn't quite seem like the best thing to have the raids aspire to. Why should failing a mechanic result in an instant wipe - it removes agency from the healers and the potential to save the run.

Every 'solution' the devs put forward shrieks of how much they hate and fear player agency, so it's no surprise it shows in the combat design.

Remember when people were using wrong job accessories to bypass required ilevels in DF and so instead of allowing other players to kick or chastise people who did it, they 'solved' it by creating their very own glamour nightmare from StB onwards: splitting all accessories into fending/slaying/aiming/healing and completely locking out all DoH/DoL gear from being worn by non-DoH/DoL. That's three expacs worth of cool DoH/DoL outfits that can't be used in glam unless your aspiration is to stand in Ligma Lominsa all day.

I just don't think they have the manpower to deal with it, seems like they spend all their time running from one fire to another with no time to think or plan ahead with the ever-increasing workload.

Bingo. Everything begins to make more sense when you stop thinking of them as an adequately-staffed team of creatives and instead think of them as a skeleton crew tasked with keeping a massive billion-yen-a-month videogame profitable for as long as possible with as little expediture as possible. (Two games, actually. Hi FF16 fans!)

That sensible solution of letting other players refuse to group with ilevel cheesers? It requires more paid GMs to judge edge cases and make sure players aren't abusing it, so nope, no way, nohow are we doing that.

[Calysto]

I see a lot of debate about substats, but let's not forget that main stats are absolutly usless.
The only real main stats are vit and whatever stat your current job use.
Could as well be changed to just 2 stats atk & vit.
They're only there because "oh it's a rpg, need stats for that"

Why aren't stats more eveny distributed ?
Why no AGI for evasion ?
Why isn't MND tied to magic def ?
DEX or LUCK to crit% ?

A bit beside the point but just came back from a break and already kinda bored.

[Post]

That's because the game largely copied WoW's DNA when it was reworked in ARR, and at that point in time WoW reworked its major stats to streamline them so that newer and less-tryhardy players wouldn't be potentially misled into prioritizing stats that weren't the best for their current class.

RPGs in general usually have correct choices for classes ever since their tabletop inceptions, and often it only makes sense to choose other stats once the system forces you too with some manner of diminishing return or a hard cap.

FFXIV mostly just removes the choice entirely. There were more options earlier on as you had some free attributes to spend on main stats (which included piety) every few levels until StB, but the only times a knowledgeable player would ever pick anything other than the job's damage-increasing stat was if they needed more VIT for a raid encounter (pretty much limited to healers on final floors as their HP totals were always the lowest, "expected ilvls" were higher relatively, and crafted gear/vit on accessories didn't exist the same way) or if they were both a SMN/SCH player and simply couldn't be bothered to always have the seal-expensive stat-resetting item handy to play both at their maximum damage potential (usually made more sense to weaken SCH).

Mind you, I don't think this decision is a bad one. It was deliberate in WoW because gear and stats mattered hugely to one's performance in that game, and the system was pretty opaque for newcomers, especially to the genre, and probably would have remained so if players didn't get so good at investigating and spreading information about it. But all of that was done outside of the game, and FFXIV, even more than WoW, strives to be a game that anyone can pick up and play without any knowledge of the genre or the communities that exist outside of the game, not least of all because a large portion of its players are on consoles that aren't easily equipped with those other sites and softwares that improve the older MMO experience.

The reason its important that players can't be too wrong with grading in mandatory group content is that it holds others back, even reaching the point of 'rudeness' in that social situation, and you can't make changes to your gear once you've entered your random duty, so it's not something you can fix then if someone points it out, unlike gameplay choices or mechanics. This fits into the more modern concept of MMOs demanding ultimately less time from its players and providing more curated experiences in general, and it's also why the game hands you good gear every step of the way in the MSQ. It DOESN'T WANT gear to matter, other than to eat it's cake too at the very end to keep some people subscribed that like to collect every BiS set with the weekly lockouts.

It's just strange that they don't go "all the way", hanging onto their gear and stats like their interesting, but even in its very pared down system uninformed players are still able to make the objectively wrong decisions. Fortunately these decisions matter less because of the relative weakness of secondary stats, but the stats most often simply get in the way of job swapping, like in the case of old accuracy, to the case of dh not buffing 4.2 - 6.1 WAR, to the present "some jobs want a very slight amount of speed and most abhor it but they both share the same unique pieces of gear with different ideal melds".

[Shurrikhan]

It's just strange that they don't go "all the way", hanging onto their gear and stats like their interesting, but even in its very pared down system uninformed players are still able to make the objectively wrong decisions. Fortunately these decisions matter less because of the relative weakness of secondary stats, but the stats most often simply get in the way of job swapping, like in the case of old accuracy, to the case of dh not buffing 4.2 - 6.1 WAR, to the present "some jobs want a very slight amount of speed and most abhor it but they both share the same unique pieces of gear with different ideal melds".

Part of which is because we gate the majority of our deliberate customization behind a needless, bloated gil-sink (for non-crafters) and retainer-incentive in the form of item-based materia.

Scrap the Materia system as a whole, replace it with, say, Junction, wherein one can choose exactly what effects they want to spend their secondary stats on (e.g., Speed, Will, Break) on a job-by-job basis, and then un-neuter the per-point impact of secondary stats and voila, you'd have actual customization instead.

Some spitball examples of how one could set particular actual effects, job-by-job, from a simple 3-stat system on gear.

The player would be able to lay out priorities (such as Haste 20% > Haste 12% > Deathward 15% > Deathward 10%, Precision=Might) such that any threshold that can be met would be met and skipped over if not, with the final stat priority (or pair) being one's dump stat.

In the example above, one would take Haste to 20% if able, else 12%, or skip all the way to Deathward (15% if able, else 10%), with any excess going to an equal allocation into Precision and Might. Like glamor plates, these could be swapped on the fly.

Speed

• Haste: Reduces the recast time incurred by weaponskills and spells.
• Stream: Increases the efficacy of periodic effects (HoTs, DoTs, auto-attacks, and pet attacks).
• Chain: Increases the efficacy of actions unlocked by combos or effects.
• Swift: Increases movement speed and decreases the recast time of Sprint and other movement actions.
• Evasion: Increases your chance to dodge attacks or reduce them to a glancing blow (-25% damage taken).

Will

• Vigor: Increases your damage and healing done, increasing with %HP.
• Tenacity: Decreases your damage taken. As your %HP decreases, this effect is increased and you also gain increased damage and healing done.
• Deathward: Prevents death if you'd have died by less than <[Modifier] x stat>, with an incurred cooldown based on nearness to Deathward's limit. Acts as Tenacity when not on cooldown.
• Deathblow: Instantly finishes off an enemy or a partition of their health if less than <[Modifier] x stat> of their HP remains, with an incurred cooldown based on nearness to Deathblow's limit. Acts as Vigor when not on cooldown.

Break

• Precision: Increases your chance to score a critical hit.
• Might: Increases the multiplier of your critical hits.
• Opening: Your critical hits cause the enemy to take additional damage or ally to take additional healing.

________

"Let's have half the jobs be builder-spenders! Give them gauges!"
"Let's have burst-based combat!"
"Our builder-spenders can't do openers under the incredibly important buffs because they have to build before they can spend! Let's give them all a skill that instantly generates a huge chunk of gauge!"

...Yup.

And it's not as if we didn't already know from ARR Monk, etc. that one needs decently long fight lengths to have jobs that start with their full damage potential and jobs that ramp up to it perform with rough parity even before adding all those raid buffs atop.



Now, that being said, I don't think it's awful that we have CD-based generators, provided there's something for them to conflict with. Stormblood Ikishoten was at least mildly interesting in that it only synced up with Senei/Guren (at equal cost to Ikishoten's generation) 1 in 3 times (60s vs. 90s) and made one more frequently mindful of gauge management.

Nor do I think their sole purpose was to fix/accelerate the opener. Were that the only intent, all they needed to do was to a resting/decay point above 0. If a MCH, for instance, would generate up to 50 Heat while out of combat, there'd be no need for Barrel Stabilizer... in the sense of allowing for a Hypercharge opener.

Even then, there'd still be some point in that resource CD as, well, just yet another CD to hit on CD, though. Which isn't great, but is also all that the majority of damage CDs do anyways, so while I'd like better, I don't think they're necessarily errant.

[Renathras]

Some quick notes...

Largely (I think...) agreed.

I think the Tenacity issue is that it does so little defense increase that it's not noticeable. For example, you could fully stack Tenacity, and a single Shellwhetnight of Corundum already increases your defense so much more that you don't even notice the additional Tenacity. They need to make Tenacity allow you to actually skip out on CDs or layer them more thinly, or they need it to do something else. And the only "something else" relevant is healing or damage, and Tanks already do a lot of healing. I think that's why people think it needs to be tied to more damage.

Piety is a weird stat because you either have enough or you have too little, there's not really an in-between. Moreover, some Healer Jobs (particularly AST) don't need it at all given their other MP regen tools. It works best when paired with Spell Speed.

The issue with Spell/Skill Speed is that many Jobs are relying on lining up with their burst combo. For example, GNB's speed can shorten its Double Down...but you're waiting for 1 min anyway before using it, especially in the 2 min burst window. Using it early is generally not an option, or not a good one outside of very niche fight timings. And besides that, you get the PLD/DRK/RDM weirdness (less so RDM, but it's still there) of Skill/Spell Speed not affecting the other of the two.

EDIT:

I see a lot of debate about substats, but let's not forget that main stats are absolutly usless.

It also affects SMN's Physic.

Still.

For who knows what reason.

.

In ARR and HW, there could be an argument for it - not a great argument, but AN argument - since Physic and Cure 1 were both cross-class, meaning someone in a non-healer Job could stack Mind to make more powerful heals.

Also, Healer damage spells (Stone, Aero, Ruin, Bio, Miasma) worked off of Int for damage, which is why Cleric Stance swapped Mind and Int stats. I suppose this could also work for ACN/SMN (don't remember if it could pick up Cleric or not...whatever could use CNJ abilities could, so maybe PLD? Though PLD didn't use Int OR Mind...) if they wanted to do some (minor) healing. So those two stats being distinct was relevant at the time.

Now, it's irrelevant since every Job other than SMN with Physic (Everlasting Flight and Rekindle don't use Mind) use the Job's base stat for their potency. While the potency is still less than for a pure Healer since the Healers have the Maim & Mend Traits that increase them further, the potencies on other Jobs scale from their main stat. Like Everlasting Flight scales from Int (SMN's main stat) and Healing Waltz from Dex (DNC's main stat), and so on.

Physic on SMN may be the single spell in the game that doesn't do this. And there's not even a reason for that since it's no longer a shared spell with SCH (SCH only inherits Res from ACN, everything else it has its own version of; you can see this by looking in the Actions & Traits spells and abilities tab, or if you have an old SCH that has the ACN Physic on its bars still, the Physic is grayed out and says affinity for ACN/SMN only). And Vercure on RDM already sales off Int and SMN has Rekindle and Everlasting Flight as it is, not to mention SMN chaincasting Physic would be one of the most ineffective forms of party healing imaginable. So there's legitimately no good reason for this to still be a thing.

[Shurrikhan]

Largely (I think...) agreed.

I think the Tenacity issue is that it does so little defense increase that it's not noticeable. For example, you could fully stack Tenacity, and a single Shellwhetnight of Corundum already increases your defense so much more that you don't even notice the additional Tenacity. They need to make Tenacity allow you to actually skip out on CDs or layer them more thinly, or they need it to do something else. And the only "something else" relevant is healing or damage, and Tanks already do a lot of healing. I think that's why people think it needs to be tied to more damage.

I'd normally suggest a WoW style Guard mechanic wherein the more %HP the attack would otherwise reduce you by, or lower %HP the hit would bring you to, the more it's mitigated, since that would allow for more noticeable density of effect without being absurdly powerful... but that has its own problems (not the least of which is that I doubt the devs here can code something like that -- despite its frequency across other MMOs).

The issue with Spell/Skill Speed is that many Jobs are relying on lining up with their burst combo.

Which... to be honest... could have been left a non-issue if we had just revised Stamina instead of removing it. In that way, players would have a theoretical maximum GCD speed (say, a 2.25s GCD baseline), but their average GCD interval would be less than that (2.5s), with a GCD or two of time that can be spent idle per minute before costs kick in (outside of AAs lost, if out of range).

:: You'd tend to pause very slightly outside of your buff bursts, with combos' flat bonus potency contribution to the next attack decaying over time (probably back towards the old 10s combo timer, in effect, though softer, rather than the ridiculous 30s? timers we have now), but more importantly, one could overclock or underclock slightly with a decent bit of margin that could take up the slack, rather than their GCD necessarily becoming desynced at all but perfectly or near-perfectly integer values of GCDs per 2 minutes.

But, that's long since done and gone; fights have long since increasingly been designed around too much uptime for such a flexible system to fit now... despite the good that could also do for making heals, buffs, and tanking more interesting through Stamina-adjacent mechanics. /shrug

And besides that, you get the PLD/DRK/RDM weirdness (less so RDM, but it's still there) of Skill/Spell Speed not affecting the other of the two.

A small addition: RDM's issue is also similar to MCH's and NIN's, iirc, in that its reduced-GCD GCD-actions use a fixed recast time, instead of having anything to do with one's GCD speed. Heat Blast, Auto-Ballista, Meditation, Mudras, Ninjutsu, Enchanted Riposte, Enchanted Zwerchau, and Enchanted Redoublement... all fixed timers, unrelated to Attack Speed / GCD length. Sigh.

Even were that not the case, it'd still have that same issue as PLD and DRK, but it just goes to show how many issues have each taken a poo atop this game's Haste customization.

[Semirhage]

A small addition: RDM's issue is also similar to MCH's and NIN's, iirc, in that its reduced-GCD GCD-actions use a fixed recast time, instead of having anything to do with one's GCD speed.

Wildly off-topic tangent, but you can use this to your advantage in incredibly niche situations like soloing Deep Dungeons. Because, for example, Heat Blast has a fixed recast time, it renders it unaffected by Slow, so you can pop into your burst to ride out a nasty Slow debuff that otherwise might inconvenience or kill you.

[ForsakenRoe]

Even were that not the case, it'd still have that same issue as PLD and DRK, but it just goes to show how many issues have each taken a poo atop this game's Haste customization.

I think one of the most egregious issues for Speed is that it doesn't affect HOT/DOT tick rates, just damage dealt by them. I suppose you could argue that 'oh instead of getting a 11th tick at the end cos of your haste, you get that same 11th tick's damage, but equally spread across the duration', but it doesn't feel as good/noticeable. Also, a 3s tick rate on HOT/DOT ticks is just annoyingly slow. There's been times where I think 'oh that guy needs to be 100% for the doom, he's got a HOT he'll get there in time' and he does not get there in time, because the HOT ticks are so far apart. Halve the potency of every DOT and HOT tick, and make them tick every 1.5s, and it'd feel so much better to use them. Instead of 5 ticks of 130p from your Physis 2, it'd become 10 ticks of 65p. Biolysis would go from being 10 ticks of 70, to 20 ticks of 35, etc.

[Aravell]

I think one of the most egregious issues for Speed is that it doesn't affect HOT/DOT tick rates, just damage dealt by them. I suppose you could argue that 'oh instead of getting a 11th tick at the end cos of your haste, you get that same 11th tick's damage, but equally spread across the duration', but it doesn't feel as good/noticeable. Also, a 3s tick rate on HOT/DOT ticks is just annoyingly slow. There's been times where I think 'oh that guy needs to be 100% for the doom, he's got a HOT he'll get there in time' and he does not get there in time, because the HOT ticks are so far apart. Halve the potency of every DOT and HOT tick, and make them tick every 1.5s, and it'd feel so much better to use them. Instead of 5 ticks of 130p from your Physis 2, it'd become 10 ticks of 65p. Biolysis would go from being 10 ticks of 70, to 20 ticks of 35, etc.

The very funny thing about tick rates is that they show that they don't have to make everything tick at the server tick rate of 3 seconds, Flamethrower on MCH ticks every 1 second. I don't know why they can't make HoTs tick faster so it works better.

[Shurrikhan]

I think one of the most egregious issues for Speed is that it doesn't affect HOT/DOT tick rates, just damage dealt by them. I suppose you could argue that 'oh instead of getting a 11th tick at the end cos of your haste, you get that same 11th tick's damage, but equally spread across the duration', but it doesn't feel as good/noticeable.

I get what you're saying, but if Speed could affect tick and AA rate, not only would each player need an individualized tick interval instead of the server handling all together (and we don't know just how much ARR spaghetti code that'd require us to remake), but it'd also be an outright better Critical Hit Chance stat for DoT-crit-dependent jobs, since it has a lower chance of waste.

Admittedly, I'd much rather have DoTs, HoTs, and MP each tick at twice-per-GCD rate or so (or per 1s, reduced as GCD speed is reduced), individualized to each player... but the benefits probably aren't worth the development costs. ???

Halve the potency of every DOT and HOT tick, and make them tick every 1.5s, and it'd feel so much better to use them.

This, or even having one third the potency ticking three times as often (per 1s), seems the much more practical solution. /nod