#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[ForteNightshade]

So on WHM, what spells do you want removed and how would you replace them to add DPS?

Since you brought up, White Mage, a job that really doesn't have any hotbar space issues whatsoever, I'll still make suggestions on how to clean it up.

- Merge Medica and Rapture. You scarily ever need the former nowadays, and the Lilies system on the whole should be introduced much faster in the leveling process than it is. Alternatively, you could have Rapture replace Media on your hotbar should you have a Lily charge. Which would be my suggestion for Solace and Cure II.
- Plenary could be removed entirely given how minimal it's impact is. I'd argue Aqua Veil and Benison could be compared in some fashion with a third charge added

That right there takes off potentially four buttons. Regardless, this myth that controller users are struggling with hotbar space really needs to die. They aren't. In fact, they have more convenient options through the cross/w hotbar than keyboard users do. People need to stop shoving 10 mounts and 50 minions on their bars then complain about space.

[ZephyrMenodora]

Since you brought up, White Mage, a job that really doesn't have any hotbar space issues whatsoever, I'll still make suggestions on how to clean it up.

- Merge Medica and Rapture. You scarily ever need the former nowadays, and the Lilies system on the whole should be introduced much faster in the leveling process than it is. Alternatively, you could have Rapture replace Media on your hotbar should you have a Lily charge. Which would be my suggestion for Solace and Cure II.
- Plenary could be removed entirely given how minimal it's impact is. I'd argue Aqua Veil and Benison could be compared in some fashion with a third charge added

That right there takes off potentially four buttons. Regardless, this myth that controller users are struggling with hotbar space really needs to die. They aren't. In fact, they have more convenient options through the cross/w hotbar than keyboard users do. People need to stop shoving 10 mounts and 50 minions on their bars then complain about space.

No thanks. I have situations where both of these are useful.

Adding to explain - I like being able to decide if I want to use a Lily immediately. If I'm under no pressure I'd rather save a Lily and Medica, especially if I'm mostly using Lilies on the MT. It's a micro-decision that sometimes does not mean much, but having an insta-cast lily and saving it for moving vs. hard-casting is a decision I want to be able to make for myself.

I am fine like many if they just upgraded Cure1 into Cure2. I can't think of any situations lately where Cure1 is worth the time to cast over doing anything else at all.

[ForteNightshade]

No thanks. I have situations where both of these are useful.

Adding to explain - I like being able to decide if I want to use a Lily immediately. If I'm under no pressure I'd rather save a Lily and Medica, especially if I'm mostly using Lilies on the MT. It's a micro-decision that sometimes does not mean much, but having an insta-cast lily and saving it for moving vs. hard-casting is a decision I want to be able to make for myself.

I am fine like many if they just upgraded Cure1 into Cure2. I can't think of any situations lately where Cure1 is worth the time to cast over doing anything else at all.

... where? Medica II is a 250 base potency heal with a 150 regen tick over the span of 15 seconds. A single tick puts the total potency between the two at equal value; with Media being 400. All with only 100 MP difference. In the event you need a non-Lily GCD heal, Medica II is the far superior choice in 99.9% of scenarios. With the upgrade to Medica III, Medica is pretty much the AoE equivalent of Cure I.

[ZephyrMenodora]

... where? Medica II is a 250 base potency heal with a 150 regen tick over the span of 15 seconds. A single tick puts the total potency between the two at equal value; with Media being 400. All with only 100 MP difference. In the event you need a non-Lily GCD heal, Medica II is the far superior choice in 99.9% of scenarios. With the upgrade to Medica III, Medica is pretty much the AoE equivalent of Cure I.

In situations where I have Medica 2 already running, and the party is taking a lot of damage and I am either out lilies or want them for something else that may happen in the near future.

Whether I need to move or not matters too.

Or if I have Misery up, and I can't take the time to use it yet because I need to heal, and would rather use my lily after I can cast it.

[ForsakenRoe]

The problem is none of you are offering no solutions, just complaints.
You need to be able to access any DPS added on the main controller cross hotabar and the upper one. Every slot is already used.

So on WHM, what spells do you want removed and how would you replace them to add DPS?

Objection: Asked and Answered!

To the first point, of cross hotbar slots: You have far more access to hotbar slots via controller, compared to trying to bind the same amount of keys on PC. To reach the controller's easy-to-access 64 hotbar spots, KB/M would need a total of 5 and a bit hotbars. So, no modifier, CTRL, SHIFT, ALT, and then two more bars with some combination of those modifiers. You might want to look at your setup again if you're struggling to access some of your hotbar space. Additionally, while WHM might fill your hotbars (it doesn't, you have far more space, you just might not be aware of it), what do you do for something like SCH, which has more buttons than WHM? Do you just leave stuff off? What stuff did you leave off, useless crap like Repose, or actually useful things like Fey Blessing/Illumination?

To the second point, of 'you're not offering any solutions, just complaints', it's all well and good trying to hit people with the 'what's your solution' gotcha when you expect they have no background in game design and have to respond with 'well idk, I'm not a game developer', but unfortunately, some of us DO have backgrounds in game development. So, once again for the god-knows-how-many-times time: 'How I would change WHM so it is fun to play in all content and not just the hardest 5 fights per 8 months'.

Or, if you don't want to actually click a link because you were hoping to instantly win the argument, here's the cheatsheet. Bear in mind this was written before DT details were out (Hence Glare being assumed to be 310p):

* Dia reduced to 12s, potency reduced to compensate (I have it at 150p, plus 70p per tick, for a total of 430p)

* New action, Water, learned at level 15. This is an instantcast GCD with a 15s CD, and scales in level alongside Stone. Upon learning Glare, this upgrades to Banish. It is always 40p stronger than your current Stone/Glare potency.

* A 0-100 gauge is added, the Nature's Vigilance gauge. Casting any spell that doesn't consume Lilies fills the gauge (healing spells fill it far faster). Upon reaching 50 or more gauge, you can cast...

* New action, Blessing of the Elementals, learned at level 50. This is a GCD which heals the party for 500p of healing (more than Rapture/Medica, less than Cure3), and restores 500MP.
It also grants a Petal of each Natural Element, allowing...

* New action, Quake. Consumes a Petal of Earthen Ire, and replaces Stone/Glare on the hotbar while a Petal is active (like WAR's Inner Chaos/FellCleave). Deals 100p more than your Stone/Glare.

* New action, Tornado. Consumes a Petal of Wrathful Winds, and replaces Aero/Dia on the hotbar while a Petal is active (like WAR's Inner Chaos/FellCleave).
Deals 30p more than your Aero/Dia, and 20p more DOT potency per tick (total 110p higher)

* New action, Flood. Consumes a Petal of Raging Rivers, and replaces Water/Banish on the hotbar while a Petal is active (like WAR's Inner Chaos/FellCleave). Deals 100p more than your Water/Banish.

* Quake, Tornado and Flood's potency totals up to be 4 Glares worth of potency, in 3 GCDs. This causes the three spells to function as a 'refund' for the lost GCD due to casting Blessing of the Elementals.


In total, due to the hotbar-swap effect of the Petals consolidating Quake/Tornado/Flood, this would take only two hotbar slots. And by having Cure upgrade to Cure 2 (MP cost 500), and Medica upgrade to Medica 2 (MP cost 1000), that two hotbar slots becomes zero. Any extra hotbar space allowed (eg, since SCH has as many buttons as it does, WHM being allowed to go up to that many but not over) would in fact not be dedicated to more damage buttons with my design, but more healing, ironically. I would add a Lily spender, ST and AOE versions (2 hotbar slots used) that apply a Barrier to the target/Party. Introduced at lower levels so that the Lily Gauge can be introduced at level 30 instead of 52, I would bring back Stoneskin, and Stoneskin2 (now named Graniteskin). In the 70s, I'd then have them upgrade to Afflatus Bastion, and Afflatus Sanctuary, to keep with the Afflatus naming. These barrier Lily spenders would additionally allow for the WHM to have something 'useful' to dump Lilies on when preparing a Misery, rather than 'wasting' them on pure overhealing. I would introduce many MANY 'lower level' versions of things, such as Protect (raidwide mitigation on a 60s CD, upgrades to Plenary which inherits the Protect effect in addition to its current effect), Divine Seal (Temperance's healing magic boost without the mit, upgrades to Temperance), or Afflatus Tragedy (lower level version of Afflatus Misery, teaching players about how Afflatus spells are damage neutral to use).

By doing the 'main' changes listed here (just Water, BOTE and the associated Gauge), our gameplay loop per 2 minutes goes from:

36 Glares (now 33 thanks to Glare4)
4 Dias
6 Solace/Rapture
2 Miseries

TO:

18 Glares (now 15 thanks to Glare4)
8 Dias
6 Banishes
6 Solace/Rapture/Bastion/Sanctuaries
2 Miseries
2 Blessing of the Elementals
2 Quakes
2 Tornados
2 Floods

How about a diagram? They say 'a picture is worth a thousand words', so, here's a pie chart showing what we used per 2 minutes at the time (Endwalker), and how that changes with this design. To convert these diagrams to Dawntrail-mode, subtract 3 uses from Glare on each pie chart and allocate them to a new slice called Glare 4



See how much healthier the ''Abilities You Cast Per 2 Minutes' Distribution' looks in the second picture? It looks like an actual MMO class' CPM breakdown! Additionally, since Dia, Banish, Tornado, Flood, Blessing of the Elementals, all Lily spenders AND Misery are instantcasts, this means that WHM would have completely free mobility for over half of its damage rotation, which makes the design incredibly casual/newplayer friendly. By giving Quake/Flood/Tornado 50% damage falloff in AOE, and having Holy generate Vigilance gauge, this also allows AOE gameplay (eg. Dungeons) to go from one button (Holy) to FIVE (Holy, Blessing of the Elementals, Quake, Flood, Tornado). This would make even the lowest level gameplay, of doing roulettes for tomes, feel much more satisfying.

Optimization players would enjoy finding ways to rig their healing cooldown timings, such that they can use Blessing of the Elementals as the last two GCDs before going into the Raidbuff Window, thus allowing them to get the 'refund' via Quake Flood and Tornado inside raidbuffs (as we do with Misery currently). Said Raidbuff window might look something like: POM > Flood > Tornado > Quake > Quake > Misery > Flood > Tornado.

Casual players would enjoy this design equally, I believe, as they would not only have less 'punishment' from playing 'incorrectly' from certain changes (eg spamming Dia for movement is less DPS loss in this than it is ingame), I believe they would enjoy the VFX and 'power' feeling of the new actions, such as using Quake/Tornado/Flood to decimate dungeon packs. Even a 'I heal only, no damage' player would enjoy the majority of this design, as it adds ONE damage button bind (Water/Banish), and THREE healing binds (BOTE, Afflatus Bastion, Afflatus Sanctuary). It also makes the levelling process feel a lot more 'filled out' with more actions available at lower levels, which also helps veteran players who are doing their 1000th roulette and get Aurum Vale again

All of this, and it all stems from just two hotbar slots (Water, and Blessing of the Elementals). So if anyone wants to try the tired 'well I don't see you coming up with a solution', I did and I have. I could write as much as is in this post, twice over, for each of the four healers, because I want to see their gameplay improve from where it is currently. I've written designs for all four of the healer jobs, given them a 'rework' that emphasises their identity more via their gameplay, each of the healers in said designs is differentiated from one another in how they heal AND how their damage rotations function. I could talk for DAYS about how Healer design could be improved. And I'm some unpaid goob on the forums, not SE's job design team, so...

[LuciferMournstar]

What concerns me is that healers who complain they have nothing to do are asking for issues. Either they will get it so they are bombarded with healing so that's all they get to do. Or the one I fear, I've had plenty and more healers who decided "Eh, I want to DPS" more than anything. Back in Celric Stance days, it was a nightmare. I had no issue with WHM's who wanted to use their staff as a bonking stick, but holy crap did a LOT of them go "MUH DPS!", and totally ignore healing anyone but the tank.

[currentlemon]

The problem is none of you are offering no solutions, just complaints.
You need to be able to access any DPS added on the main controller cross hotabar and the upper one. Every slot is already used.

So on WHM, what spells do you want removed and how would you replace them to add DPS?

Why is it that everybody on this board comes off as angry? Why is it that everyone outside of this board disagrees with the takes on this board.
You all might have put yourself in an unhealthy echo chamber.

A lot of us have provided suggestions and solutions to each healer Job in this thread. Myself included.

As a former WHM player, the job doesn’t need extra DPS buttons. We got a new DPS action in DT, but it’s locked behind an ability on a 120sec cooldown and you have to wait 90 levels to get it.

WHM’s DPS actions are fine, but we don’t use half of those actions most of the fight. It’s just all Glare spam.

To add variety to the rotation, have Aero / Dia’s DoT timer reduced to 15 seconds. Adjust the potency, yes, but make us press it more.

Separate Glare IV away from Pressence of Mind. You still have the 3 free Glare IV’s after PoM is used, but make Glare IV usable outside of that ability. Make it proc off Dia or let it be a GCD on a 20sec CD.

While we are at it, reduce PoM’s CD to 60 seconds.

Make Holy, a Final Fantasy staple, usable in a single target rotation. Maybe an AoE DoT after PoM is used.

The only healing action that needs to be removed from WHM is Cure I, which needs to naturally upgrade to Cure II.

[Wildheaven182]

Yeah there have been tons and tons of proposals, they'll just always get buried in a forum. I don't have all the answers but I've got plenty.

-Add higher damage in many places, more frequent instances of damage. Rework or remove vulnerability mechanics if you must. Things can be too punishing for healers to be able to actually interact with damage when it's just, 3 strikes you're out after two vuln stacks. It sounds contradictory, but it's the other end of the extreme where instant death mechanics or stacked aoes that hit you all at once if you fail it kill you because of vulnerability. Healers can't interact with that besides raising.
-On that note, if they want the game to be more accessible for casuals and new players, reduce the time of the death debuff. As a casual trash player who does duty roulette, I'd like that.
-Add more (any, since there are none anywhere past lvl 60) cleanseable statuses. They dont have to be life or death, just worthwhile to bother cleansing.
-Honestly, nerf healing all over, reduce potencies. This is in line with increasing damage output in the game but increasing damage is more important.
-We can definitely remove some of the ogcd healing bloat, and this will leave room for a couple abilities for more interesting dps gameplay.
-The game needs aggro management, which should be the primary part of tank gameplay, not blue dpsing. Healers and dps can also have abilities that help juggle aggro, like a ninja smokescreen, dragoon jumping, some fancy red mage thing, maybe monk can have a deflect blows thing that lets them handle having aggro for like 5-10 seconds long enough for the tank to get it back. Be creative.
-The game also needs mana management back, at least on healers.
-Bosses need to be more than choreographed dancing into the right place to stand. FFXIV is a puzzle game where the only difficulty is how unclear it is to determine where the safe areas are fast enough without studying beforehand. Bosses are striking dummies at worst and choreographed dance routines at best.

[HealerGuy]

A lot of us have provided suggestions and solutions to each healer Job in this thread. Myself included.

As a former WHM player, the job doesn’t need extra DPS buttons. We got a new DPS action in DT, but it’s locked behind an ability on a 120sec cooldown and you have to wait 90 levels to get it.

WHM’s DPS actions are fine, but we don’t use half of those actions most of the fight. It’s just all Glare spam.

To add variety to the rotation, have Aero / Dia’s DoT timer reduced to 15 seconds. Adjust the potency, yes, but make us press it more.

Separate Glare IV away from Pressence of Mind. You still have the 3 free Glare IV’s after PoM is used, but make Glare IV usable outside of that ability. Make it proc off Dia or let it be a GCD on a 20sec CD.

While we are at it, reduce PoM’s CD to 60 seconds.

Make Holy, a Final Fantasy staple, usable in a single target rotation. Maybe an AoE DoT after PoM is used.

The only healing action that needs to be removed from WHM is Cure I, which needs to naturally upgrade to Cure II.

These are actually good insights, I appreciate you. But is this really worth throwing a hissy fit over? Nothing will ever be perfect, ever.
The changes you're talking about seem pretty trivial for all the fuss.

[kcj]

I'm also going to sign this. While I enjoy Scholar, I find healing content past ARR to be taxing; not because of the mechanics, but because of all the DPS who are busy telling me "How to do my Job".