Would you rather healers get more complex healing kits or more complex DPS kits?

[Sebazy]

To get the thread back on track with a new page:

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...e-with-a-twist

• First off, we apply a flat DPS reduction of healers via the MND to potency calculation by 30%.
  
  
• Then we add the Cleric Stance toggle back in, instead of flipping MND/INT as before, it simply increases damage done by 30%.
  
  
• Instead of nerfing your healing potency into the floor, it causes your next healing GCD to 'fizzle' (Yes I am digging up an Everquest term for this). Fizzling a heal this way removes the Cleric Stance effect in the process and starts a 10 second cooldown before you can recast Cleric Stance.
  
  
• Fizzling a spell causes a 1 second GCD reset and causes the spell to consume no resources or gauge.
  
  
• It's important to note that unless you fizzle, Cleric Stance has no recast time, you can drop it, cast a Medica II or Lily, then recast straight back into Cleric akin to how it used to be.

TLDR, Cleric Stance returns, but the penalty for ‘failing’ is a ~1 sec delay on your next GCD heal and you’re locked out of putting Cleric back up for 10 seconds. Ignoring it entirely = 30% damage hit as opposed to a 90% or more reduction as before. Importantly, healing oGCDS can still be used at full potency whilst in cleric. Effectively encouraging and rewarding the use of oGCD healing even in content where it’s not close to being needed.

Thoughts and why?

[fulminating]

How do you foresee this and burning lilies interacting? In casual content and especially stq I find I end up burning lilies to not overcap and get that bonus damage in raid buffs. Would this just require half a second more awareness to dismiss the stance and not fizzle? Sage doesn’t have a similar issue as its mp renewal is from oGCDs and wouldn’t be subject to the same penalty.
Then again this would help the jobs feel more differentiated if they all interact with the same mechanic in different ways.

[Volgia]

So correct me if I'm wrong here, but it often feels that the Devs saw min-maxers and the community chasing optimization and then said, what players like are to do more DPS. And so they leaned into that to the point that I've heard "Good healers never cast a heal GCD if they can help it". So to me to make healers more interesting they would have to revise their encounter design. more than just give them more damage options. I don't mean to say that the bosses should hit for more damage or give you a nasty DOT every AoE, that's the equivalent of "It's difficult because the boss has more HP and hits twice as hard". There should be more mechanics that are healer oriented. The only thing that comes to mind is that phase in Shinryu where you have to heal some dragon heads.... some more stuff like that where the healers interact with the encounter differently.

[fulminating]

The only thing that comes to mind is that phase in Shinryu where you have to heal some dragon heads.... some more stuff like that where the healers interact with the encounter differently.

Since they just recently removed the Epstein heal check from the aery, I can’t see them having that idea anytime soon.

[Renathras]

That wasn't the case in HW, though. We had 3 DoTs, one being Aero from crossclass. This really started being a thing in Stormblood.

Yes...AST was the first healer Job to do this as WHM still had a second DoT (Aero 3) in SB.

Sorry for the confusion since I did mention HW right there, but yeah, AST was the first healer that went for spamnuke + DoT (in SB). AST also was the first healer to have a 1.5 sec cast spamnuke for weaving (SCH had to use Ruin 2 or Miasma 2, depending on MP, to weave without clipping, and WHM had to use Aero 1 [Aero 2 in SB] or Regen [or Cure 1, I guess...] to avoid clipping).

Lustrate's % healing working in Cleric Stance? Whispering Dawn (double buffed or not) being completely busted until like Shadowbringers? This used to be the main way to heal allies during raidwide due to how often and how bombastically strong it was comapred to what it is today.

...for SCHOLAR.

Not for WHITE MAGE.

WHITE MAGE did not have Lustrate. WHITE MAGE did not have Whispering Dawn. WHITE MAGE had one oGCD heal in ARR - Benediction on a 5 min CD.

This is the point I'm making: In ARR, healing was not "always this way". It was FOR SCHOLAR, yes. I've said that over and over again. I've pointed out that SCH and WHM have been two sides of the healing coin from the start. My point is that, in ARR, it worked with one part of your healing pair being a GCD healer and one part of your healing pair being a DPS focused Job with oGCD weaving.

What part of that statement is wrong?

Please, don't belittle someone just because you disagree with them. At least make sure they're saying what you think they are first. Healing in ARR could NOT have *always* been this way, because WHM didn't have the tools FOR oGCD healing in ARR. It was on SCH. It was NOT on WHM. Yet both existed in this same shared space.

EDIT:

[*]Then we add the Cleric Stance toggle back in, instead of flipping MND/INT as before, it simply increases damage done by 30%.

Oof, hard disagree.

Cleric stance was not fun. Yes yes, it was fun for some people. Give it to SCH. Cleric Stance as a role-wide action is bad design and should stay in the dustbin of history where it belongs. They removed it for a very good reason.

I do think part of the solution is to make healing less on demand and potent, while also lowering how much damage encounters do in single hits, instead spacing that damage out across more frequent, but smaller, hits.

IF it does come back, it won't be as a role action but would be limited to a single Job like SCH or SGE which would probably be designed around it. For example, if SGE's Eukrasia wasn't a single ability but a stance that turned its heals into attacks (and got Kardia ticks), and deactivating it defaulted you to your base heals. In such a case, it wouldn't have attack and heal GCDs at the same time. It would have Cure 1, Adlo, Regen, Medica 1, and Succor (for simplicity of names), and when turning on "Eukrasia Stance", these would be replaced with Dosis, Bigger Dosis (maybe a dualcast mechanic like RDM), DoT, AOE attack, AOE DoT attack. While in this stance you can oGCD heal and you can hot-swap Kardia (no CD or a 1 sec CD on use to allow for swapping), and probably have some kind of AOE Kardia on a 1 or 2 min CD for party healing. Slap on an Energy Drain (Toxicon?) to compete with the AG heals and you've got a "damage dealer focused healer" Job. If damage is too great, you drop out of Eukrasia to do your GCD healing to get the situation back under control before going back into Eurkasia Stance.

If we ever see a Cleric Stance as a toggle type ability again, something like that is probably how it would work. Some continuous passive healing while it's active, oGCD healing options while it's active, but which compete with an extra damage oGCD to force an opportunity cost on use.

So correct me if I'm wrong here, but it often feels that the Devs saw min-maxers and the community chasing optimization and then said, what players like are to do more DPS. And so they leaned into that to the point that I've heard "Good healers never cast a heal GCD if they can help it". So to me to make healers more interesting they would have to revise their encounter design. more than just give them more damage options. I don't mean to say that the bosses should hit for more damage or give you a nasty DOT every AoE, that's the equivalent of "It's difficult because the boss has more HP and hits twice as hard". There should be more mechanics that are healer oriented. The only thing that comes to mind is that phase in Shinryu where you have to heal some dragon heads.... some more stuff like that where the healers interact with the encounter differently.

Yes please.

We need more healing things to do, and that really requires encounter design as well as kit design.

[Sebazy]

Ren:

Cleric stance was not fun.

Also Ren in the very next paragraph sentence:

Yes yes, it was fun for some people.

I expected no less from you tbh.

[Renathras]

Let's stick to the topic, not your attempt at a bad faith gotcha. You want me to lie?

Cleric stance was NOT fun. It was clunky and obnoxious. But worse, it divided the community and generated a lot of toxicity, while also being a trap that actively harmed newer players trying to learn it. It was often used less as a toggle and more a "set and forget" or turned on and off at set points in fights. When soloing, it was mostly turned on and left on. In ARR, with SCH, it was also mostly turned on and left on, and for WHM, either ignored or turned on for DoT refreshes and then turned off again. It was like a much worse Eukrasia.

However, some people do enjoy clunky, badly designed, obnoxious things. You would like me to ignore that or not say that? Then let me change the wording to suit your grammar nazi-like precision:

Cleric stance was not fun to most people.
Yes yes, it was fun for some very few people.
But everyone else hated it, it divided the community, it actively harmed newer players, it generated massive toxicity, it made the game more difficult for the devs to balance, and Yoshi P is on record saying that the change was beneficial and what they're going with moving forward.

Better?

It changes literally nothing about what I said, so of course you grab onto it and ignore everything else - you know, the actual arguments. Because that's how ad hominem fallacies work.

I expected better from you, tbh.

[Higashikata]

Just bring back cleric stance and give healers another 2 to 4 dps buttons

[Doragan]

...for SCHOLAR.

Not for WHITE MAGE.

So, please. Remind me, which healing job was mandatory in EX trials and savage in ARR (where healing started being important), and to a lesser extent, HW?
Most of the damage comes from raidwides. And the strongest, most spammable tool used to heal those was double buffed Whispering Dawn.

Therefore,

FFXIV was GCD healing focused, not oGCD healing focused. Not only that, our kits were weaker vs the damage we had to deal with back then.

Is a wrong statement. oGCD healing has always been the most important, our strongest tools, and what raiders focused their uses on. Where healing matters, not a WHM using Medica II on a 80% hp group on Amdapor Keep or whatever. That's whats wrong, Ren.

Besides, Stoneskin, benediction and Lustrate were all used in Cleric Stance as well. Lustrate in particular was really strong for TBs.

[Renathras]

Is a wrong statement.

No, it isn't.

You could both two WHM and two SCH heal in ARR, but having one of each was generally better. In HW, SCH could do stupid amounts of damage while also healing, which somewhat broke the system (and started the tend of SCH being meta for every single expansion in the game).

Moreover, the game is not just raids. Never has been. And in every expansion aside from possibly SB (though probably then, too), WHM was the single most played healer Job.

.

Anyway, this is a tangent to a tangent.

People need to stop saying "herp derp always been this way" when people are saying (a) it hasn't (universally) always been this way and (b) that people don't WANT IT to be this way. Saying it's always been this way is rarely a good argument at the best of times, and then getting into fights over it when pointed out that isn't even strictly true doesn't help matters.

The fact is, people don't want it, and there is game history supporting it not being forced on everyone in the past and the game working just fine - arguably better than it does today. You can have whatever last word you want, but the fact remains that GCD healing was the ONLY way WHM healed in ARR because it didn't have oGCD heals. I'll note you have not disputed that fact thus far. Therefore, you can't say it was wrong.

Simple question: Did WHM GCD heal or oGCD heal in ARR?

GCD heal.

And WHMs were prevalent across all kinds of content - including raids but also outside of them - as GCD healers because of this. So it is not "a wrong statement" to point this out.

WHM did not have Lustrate, and had 1 Benediction every 5 minutes. And you weren't going to do all the healing you needed with Stoneskin...partly on account of the fact Stoneskin didn't have any heal component.

If you're asking for SCH to be an oGCD focused healer and WHM to be a GCD focused one, that is what the history of the game supports.

.

EDIT:

Anyway, for my part - I think it's fine to have some of both. That's the point of my argument.