#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[AmiableApkallu]

On first glance, Medica II seems the way to go. As Alice Rivers pointed out, it seems a no-brainer Medica II and III should be kept up 100% of the time.

Yet, it is clear that it isn't always the case. I've been caught in a trap and I didn't even realize it.

I wouldn't even call it a trap, necessarily.

My background prior to FFXIV was a smattering of the single-player Final Fantasy games, where damage is distributed more randomly, with crits, and the mobs and bosses might get in quite a few hits before the healer's turn comes up again.

The habits and practices I picked up there have no useful place in FFXIV's far more scripted damage model. It was an adjustment I had to make, though it's been long enough that I can't remember whether I learned to from "The Internet" or figured it out for myself. (It's probably the former. )

[Kacho_Nacho]

*snip*The habits and practices I picked up there have no useful place in FFXIV's far more scripted damage model. It was an adjustment I had to make, though it's been long enough that I can't remember whether I learned to from "The Internet" or figured it out for myself. (It's probably the former. )

Same. I was a healer in WoW, Dofus, and Wakfu. So, I came into FFXIV with a lot of knowledge about how to heal in those games and winged it from there.

[Tigore]

It's no problem. I had also been caught up in the trap too when I was transitioning from Heavensward to Stormblood and Shadowbringers. For some reason, I did not see Afflatus Solace when it first released. I did notice Afflatus Rapture, though. I kept looking over time since it didn't make sense to have lilies if there was really no spell using it for the lvl 52 ish gap >.>

My previous experience also came from solo FF games and Warcraft. The Druid spell Wild Growth as the equivalent to Medica 2 was used on cooldown a lot more often since there was enough damage thrown at the party to justify it. I still overhealed a bit since it was their mechanic to throw out a lot of HoTs to heal.

[Aravell]

I think it's not right to spread that Medica II/III is a trap. Its actual purpose is a safety net.

If you're about to be hit by a multi-hit stack and want a safety net of a constant heal on everyone, you pop a Medica II/III. If you're comfortable enough to drop everyone low then burst with a Plenary-buffed Rapture, then you can do so.

I think we should stop teaching newer players that things that lose you damage are traps, that just breeds terrible healers who refuse to hardcast a raise or cast a GCD heal on a DPS that made a mistake because it would lose them personal damage. Everything in the kit can have a use, whether as a safety net, a prog tool or a niche recovery tool like Rescue, it just depends on your own mindset and how much safety you like in your gameplay.

[Tigore]

I'm a bit confused about your bottom paragraph, Aravell. For the safety net reasoning, I won't yell at the player for using it just in case of uncertainty of unfamiliar mechanics and / or party gear strength towards the dungeon at hand.

I was discussing what healing tools end up being most efficient to use. When it comes down to it, Medica 2 / 3 and Regen along with the equivalents for AST usually end up being middle of the road. Not just because it uses GCDs that DPS tools use, but also because of the mana usage. Apologies if the mana usage intent reason wasn't clear enough from me. There was even a time on SGE I used Haima on the tank for extra safety on a final boss so I could hard cast a raise (Egeiro?) on the dead DPS with no worries. I believe the boss wasn't doing any AoE damage at the time, so the Eukrasian Prognosis wasn't needed yet. We gotta remember that raising players is thirsty on mana, so teaching the new players to be mana efficient can also help with this. I understand WHM may have a little less issue with this due to Thin Air again, but we don't always have one with us.

[Aravell]

I'm a bit confused about your bottom paragraph, Aravell. For the safety net reasoning, I won't yell at the player for using it just in case of uncertainty of unfamiliar mechanics and / or party gear strength towards the dungeon at hand.

I was discussing what healing tools end up being most efficient to use. When it comes down to it, Medica 2 / 3 and Regen along with the equivalents for AST usually end up being middle of the road. Not just because it uses GCDs that DPS tools use, but also because of the mana usage. Apologies if the mana usage intent reason wasn't clear enough from me. There was even a time on SGE I used Haima on the tank for extra safety on a final boss so I could hard cast a raise (Egeiro?) on the dead DPS with no worries. I believe the boss wasn't doing any AoE damage at the time, so the Eukrasian Prognosis wasn't needed yet. We gotta remember that raising players is thirsty on mana, so teaching the new players to be mana efficient can also help with this. I understand WHM may have a little less issue with this due to Thin Air again, but we don't always have one with us.

I have no issue with teaching a new player about MP/GCD efficiency, that's fine and it's a good habit to have.

What I'm against is calling things "a trap", because that kind of wording would encourage people to fully avoid something, which could lead to bad habits forming. Especially with so many people holding damage output in a disproportionately high level of importance.

Call Medica II inefficient in most cases. It is.
Call Medica II an MP hog. It is
But a trap it is not. It has general uses.

[Tigore]

If we do get a healer who does let a DPS die because they queued as another DPS, I'll try to let them know they made a mistake with their MP if they ask. The 2400 mana cost and the 15% stat debuff inflicted on the other player should be sufficient reasons to explain why the fight is taking longer instead of clearing faster. Although I think the trap wording was just used to describe how the Medica 2/3 was used. Admittedly, it may be the wrong word to use with inefficient being better. There's probably many different things a new player thinks about that would be logical to understand for us.

Rein pointed out some of them do not usually notice the HoT buff they place, so they might spam cast it. The reasoning they may give may be "easier range" and less mana usage than Cure 3 with the notion that Medica 2 ought to replace Medica 1 completely. Since they don't know what a HoT is, it may be construed as too slow or ineffective to them without seeing immediate results. It may even be possible that oGCD vs. GCD usage is not known to them either, so they just use what was familiar at the start of their experience. Since most single player RPG games usually do not have anything that compares to an oGCD other than just raw Speed / Agility.

Some players may have played a game where you could stack some things longer or with a stronger potency if you spam the same spell and figured the same would apply here (Disgaea buffs essentially). In which case, we should let them know they can stack HoTs , but through the usage of Regen and Asylum together with Medica 2/3.

Then we have the Warcraft healers like I was who were used to the constant stream of damage that happened. Even casting Holy stun confetti is scary to think of because tanks have sometimes died within 5 seconds if we clog up our GCDs with any DPS at all. The auto attacks from bosses were that high in the second classic expansion Wrath of the Lich King. This one may be hard to simply tell the player that we only have about a quarter to half the healing compared to that. That might still be too generous of an estimate, sometimes. Overtime, they should be able to notice the very high overhealing being done with the 100% HoT uptime and nobody ever reducing below 100% HP for more than 3 - 5 seconds.

[Shurrikhan]

I don't really see the point in punishing players for using a single, quick X potency heal without having first used the slower X+Y potency heal. That seems like that's just devalue ability to estimate incoming damage and C3's capacity to, say, heal a weak but short White Hole mechanic without needing oGCDs (so long as the team stacks). I don't want heal combos or arbitrary need to save something for after the very thing most likely to make it redundant.

If the problem is button count, then just allowing Medica (and perhaps M2) to center on others and deal double the initial (or an additional 400p) healing to the target and those within n yalms seems a plenty iconic capacity already, saving just as many keys without the loss of choice in timing.

Meanwhile, I'd go the opposite way for M2, reducing the initial potency and shuffling that into ticks, perhaps via some indirect benefit (say, overheal ticks increase maximum HP for the remainder of the original M2 cast's duration). That way there's still a measure of choice.

Else, if you really want a unique but button-dense approach, just extend off WHM's conjury theme and introduce some related traits that can spread and/or duplicate-over-time their overheating. Perhaps even allow them to convert the HoT to other things (say, by allowing Benison to absorb incoming periodic healing up to X% of target HP) and/or apply brief buffs to allies that would incentive bursting a heal off of one vs. another, etc. perhaps do so only off of crits, with some heals having higher crit chances than others or ramping their chance towards a guaranteed crit and giving a bonus to a(ny) other heal once they Crit, etc.

Heck, have healing potency done (perhaps taking the best recent per target cast) briefly increase your Offensive Magic Power so that you can seed a Regen or empowered Cure II just before a burst damage phase, while Wind spells in turn can increase access to early cast completions for healing spells or access to instant heals (say, by having each tick reduce Cure's cast time by .1 GCDs, etc, as not to need the Afflatus buttons and to be more distinct from SGE.

[ForsakenRoe]

I don't really see the point in punishing players for using a single, quick X potency heal without having first used the slower X+Y potency heal. That seems like that's just devalue ability to estimate incoming damage and C3's capacity to, say, heal a weak but short White Hole mechanic without needing oGCDs (so long as the team stacks). I don't want heal combos or arbitrary need to save something for after the very thing most likely to make it redundant.

What punishment? You'd still be able to cast Cure 3 without applying Medica 2 beforehand, and it'd cost the same MP cost that it currently does. It'd only be as 'punishing' as it currently is, that's the baseline, the 'half MP cost' effect can only be viewed as a bonus. And WHM is the healer that has Thin Air, so in those cases where 'you want to use Cure3, but not Medica2 beforehand (EG you need the healing right now)', that supposed 'punishment' of the MP cost being higher, can be easily avoided

The trait is intended to, among other things, give Medica2-Spammers an incentive to not spam Medica2, given that it'd have a boosted initial potency. If they're going to spam a spell that costs a lot of MP, I'd rather try and guide them to use one that costs 750 and heals for 50% more, rather than the one that costs 1000MP, if only to slow down how fast they run out of MP.

I'm failing to see how the trait I suggested can be interpreted as anything but a positive, when compared to the current forms of each of the involved spells

The idea of 'Medica 1 deals double potency to the main target' kills Cure2 as a button (they're both 800p healing for 1000MP), and 'Medica1/2 heal in an AOE around the target' encroaches on Cure3's territory (with added range). I don't agree with the idea of replacing the Cure spell line (something that has existed in FF since the start) with Medica (something invented for this game)

[Shurrikhan]

So long as MP is intended to some day have any meaning and the ability to do X is balanced around, any bonus for doing X is a punishment for not doing X.

If the bonus for comboing or punishment for not comboing is to be almost wholly irrelevant anyways, why bother? If they are to be relevant, why push their bundling, given that doing so will for most players just reduce skill expression (only very few noting in what few circumstances they could get away with just C3 without also being able to wait until they could M2→C3).

This would be like Dia or Regen granting further potency to each future attack or heal enough that, by the second follow-up action, it always eclipses the value of not using it. Such habituates routine action, detracting from the particular circumstance, all while adding an unnecessary bit of convolution. Yes, this is MP instead of potency so we don't know without the imagined context whether it will be important, but it ultimately either will be worth worrying about (in which case they mostly get bundled) or won't. Though not so badly, it still would follow a similar trend.

That's all. It's nothing glaringly bad. I just don't see the point for it compared to just having the direct heal be competitive baseline instead of only as a replacement for a second cast (forcing a bundle).

As for my own off the cuff counter suggestion...

"Double potency" to targets at the AoE's center was spitball; sorry for the rushed post. I meant only you could just have Cure 3 also heal with falloff beyond its normal range, forgoing the need for M1 and increasing available skill expression via target selection.

Doing so creates the same button reduction without removing any control between HoT and direct healing for AoE. Rather than reduced skill expression, one would be obliged to engage with more of it (since you'd always have targeting consideration in C3-replacing-M1).