#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[ForsakenRoe]

Materia/Substats

Chemist might be the perfect candidate for a 10 button design, all things considered. You might be onto something there. NIN turns 7 effects into 4 buttons (and later 9 effects into 5 buttons with the addition of Hyosho and Goka), so something like that on a Healer would be an incredibly hotbar-space-efficient design. You could have 6 buttons for the basic stuff (Cure, Medica, attack buttons for a simple rotation, etc), and then the 3 reagent and the button woudl allow you to have like, 7 different healing/mitigation effects to mirror what WHM does with Lilies, SGE does with Addersgall, etc. So 123 might be 'AOE heal', 321 might be 'AOE Mit tool', 21 might be 'AOE Shields', one of the combos could be the Raise button, etc.

The main issues for Healers in particular when it comes to substats are like, every stat has a problem of some kind. Crit is two stats in one (Crit Rate and Crit Multiplier strength), so it doubledips its scaling effect. Direct Hit is not on gear natively, and therefore increasing our Direct Hit from 'you can't do one' to 'you can' is a massively impactful jump in damage. Determination is probably the most 'acceptable' in terms of balance, because it doesn't really do anything wrong, on account of it not really trying to do anything at all, it's just 'numbers go up' as a stat. Piety doesn't affect our damage at all, and in a game design where A: the healers are designed to be able to function even with base levels of Piety, and B: there's so much focus on maximizing our damage, the Piety substat's window of effectiveness falls off almost immediately, and we never want any on our BIS gear. This could be addressed somewhat by making Piety scale our damage, similarly to how Tenacity scales our damage as a Tank. If it were up to me, I'd make PIE and TEN scale at the rate that DET does, and then delete DET. Then we'd have a Substat that is unique to each role: PIE for Healer, TEN for Tank, DHIT for DPS. And Crit would be split into Rate and Strength so it's not so all-encompassing and/or clearly stronger than the other stats

SpellSpeed's main issue for Healers, I believe, is not the 2min meta that causes problems for the DPS jobs, who have actual rotations to align. Instead, I think it's 'we cannot sustain the extra GCDs burdening our MP pool, and so it's more efficient to use a damage stat like Crit/DHIT, instead of using SpS and then having to supplement it with 'dead stat' Piety to sustain the extra MP cost'. SE accidentally stumbled onto the EW AST design, where ASTs had far too much MP coming in via Astrodyne's Refresh effect, and so AST's BIS actually wanted to use SpS in far larger amounts than other healers, because they couldn't spend the extra MP fast enough. So, I think SpS could be made better, without touching it at all (or much), instead buffing it by making Piety more attractive as a stat (eg by giving it damage scaling) due to the two stats' inherent synergy. Then you'd create a potential choice for the player: Piety/SpS as a more 'consistent output' build, or Crit/DHIT as a build with more variance, but a slightly higher maximum

I think SpS would get some especially interesting use cases if either A: basic spells didn't cost MP (eg, the SGE design I've gone on about before), or B: some aspect of the Job, affected by SpS, builds some kind of resource (eg, the SGE design). For example, if SpS were to scale the speed at which a resource like Lilies or Addersgall replenishes, it'd mean more uses of those spenders. But Addersgall spenders generate 700MP, and Lilies are effectively a 'this costs zero MP' GCD, so by doing so, the extra MP costs incurred from getting bonus GCDs (because you cast faster) are slightly offset by getting additional MP economy sources within the rotation. And if the basic spells don't cost any MP at all in a hypothetical healer design, then there's zero 'limitations' on how much SpS is safe to stack, and if I cobble together a PIE/SPS focused set in Etro, you could hypothetically end up with a GCD speed of like, 2.28 (or 1.82 under Presence of Mind)

[Tigore]

@ForsakenRoe

Sorry I couldn't get to what you said very quickly. I was discussing how Warcraft made Haste work there and the difficulties we face in comparison.

The suggestions I made for Spell Speed and Skill Speed had all of the other tanks and DPS in mind as well. Since discussing changes there will affect them too. It would definitely make it easier for TEN and PIE to be desirable by replacing and removing DET's function. Critical materia being split into a percentage chance and damage amount increase would probably both be favored for melds still. Since Skill Speed and Spell Speed doesn't seem to be very desirable still. Some classes currently only want just enough to reach a certain GCD breakpoint and the first one tends to be just a little if anything (SAM - 2.14 and MNK - 1.93 with 700 - 1000 ish). Some of the others either don't mention it or says it can prefer to stick to 2.5. I can see it working a bit better for some classes by increasing the gauge resource more or speeding up a gauge cooldown with stacks like the WHM lilies or BLM Polyglot. Although some classes don't really have any applicable things to that nature and / or more so use traditional cooldown timers that hate getting drifted (DRG and NIN). Looking at the NIN now, the auto attack idea might still fail due to multiple Ninjutsu casts that would probably benefit more from the multi-strike idea.

@Lorika

I am also a bit wary about the talent system too. The example I used still had a vast majority that were picked no matter what. Although if it is balanced right, maybe it could still turn out good for some node choices. In a way, we used to have something to that nature in the early builds of FF14. The cross class action system that got changed to role actions. A BLM could actually take Cure and I was able to heal low level people through with the Umbral Ice Stance for those lvl 10 - 20 FATEs. In this case, it was only helpful at low levels and high levels proved to be a different story when WHMs started using Cure 2 and Regen. The system was revamped since cooldowns like Swiftcast from BLM and Blood for Blood from DRG were absolutely used first for the DPS (I think I got the name assignments right). It also meant you had to play those classes to at least lvl 34ish to get those required abilities.

[Kacho_Nacho]

@Forsaken Roe I don't know... maybe we're all overthinking it. Maybe, the best way forward would be for CS3 to adopt a system similar to the one currently used by Blue Mages. Each healer would get their own spell book, with their own unique spells; but, we would be limited on how many we could put on our action bars at one time. In addition, we'd get a selection of traits as we advance and get to choose which traits to use ahead of time.

I hope I'm making sense.

[ForsakenRoe]

@Forsaken Roe I don't know... maybe we're all overthinking it. Maybe, the best way forward would be for CS3 to adopt a system similar to the one currently used by Blue Mages. Each healer would get their own spell book, with their own unique spells; but, we would be limited on how many we could put on our action bars at one time. In addition, we'd get a selection of traits as we advance and get to choose which traits to use ahead of time.

I hope I'm making sense.

Sure, but then we can look at the BLU Savage raiding loadouts, and see that most everyone in a role (eg BLU Healer) has the same loadout of 24 spells. There's nobody taking half of the BLU spells in those raids, because said half of the BLU spellbook are all variations of 'does 220p damage'. A while back, I tried to come up with a way to make BLU 'viable in actual content', by giving it a base kit learned from levelling, and the abilities you go out and 'learn' are effectively Spell Glamours. Because outside of Carnivale where their bonus effects matter, that's effectively what they are. I mean, look at these pictures (written back before the SHB update to BLU, so no Apokalypsis, 'funny broom attack', etc:

There's a typo where I mention 'Garuda/Ifrit/Ravana skills' in the notes. Garuda/Ifrit are not in the same category as Ravana, they're 30s and Ravana is 40s/3charges along with Shiva/Titan/Suzaku (becuase they're all cone attacks).

For any abilities that don't seem like they match up, certain liberties could be taken to make them match up correctly. Taking the '60s guaranteed DH/Crit' line, line 11, Missle is a single hit. Triple Trident is a 3hit combo. Matra Magic is currently 8 small hits. To make this work, Missile's damage would be calculated, and then split evenly clientside into the required number of hits. For example, if Missile would be 600p, Triple Trident would display itself as 3 hits of 200p, and Matra Magic could 8 hits of 75p. They'd all do the same total damage behind the scenes, such that it's an entirely visual difference and has literally zero impact on gameplay.

Basic rotation between burst windows (other than using OGCDs as needed) would be to use Libra to discover the enemy's weakness (represented as you getting 4 or 5 stacks of a buff), and this buff would give a small bonus in potency to a certain attack pattern. So, if you got 'circle AOE around yourself is empowered', you'd want to use your circle AOE (Ram's voice, High Voltage etc) for the bonus damage. Then once you run out of stacks, you'd Libra again and get a new bonus assigned

The top 5 lines are the 220p spell categories. Just look at how many of the abilities in the BLU book could fit into just those 5 categories! The sheet is so topheavy, the total options for those 5 attacks alone might actually be equal to the other 19 categories of abilities combined

Back to healers though, it'd be great if we had some amount of player choice beyond 'what substat do you want more of', but if the old thread I mentioned above is any indication, you'd have people working out what gives 'the most DPS', even if it's by single digits, and rigidly insisting that THAT build is the only 'viable' build (god I hate how warped that word has become), even if the difference in damage output between choices is so low that the natural +/- 5% damage swing of each action eclipses the 'DPS difference between option A and option B'

Considering the only choice CS3 gives us players now is 'what Materia do you meld' and the answer is 'Crit every time, unless you can't fit more', I'm not entirely sure they can give us any amount of player choice without one option being the 'obviously correct one'. I'd love for them to prove me wrong though. Also, I would like to put forward the alternate explanation, that I'm not 'overthinking it', and instead it's more that CS3 has been 'underthinking it' for too long and shifted the perception of what the phrase 'overthinking it' means

[Lorika]

@Tigore
A build system is the worst thing that can happen to a MMO. While it promise versatibility and flexibility, in fact it was proven numerous time that, in the end, only a couple of meta Build would work for each class.
Thoses meta Build creating gate keeping in all kind of content.
Some game are heavily affected by this gate keeping.

@ForasakenRoe
The actual Materia system "doesn't work".
Because the substat need a complete rework.

[Shurrikhan]

Build diversity "doesn't work" only if (A) there is a set best composition for a different encounter, (B) you ignore all play outside of the best comp, (C) acknowledge only the build diversity per comp per encounter (e.g., even if another could is best in any other context, you still count that as only one build "seeing use"), and (D) the imbalance between the best comp and others are great enough to devalue other forms of customization-based optimization.

To be clear, I'm no advocate of expensive customization systems and would be hesitant to recommend XIV add any beyond the jobs themselves, but you're making a fundamental conclusion out of a singular circumstance, whatever its frequency, all while ignoring the main reason customization of any sort (be it job choice or talent choice) exists.

Those who would simply look up a general purpose build aren't those such customization is for, but to call customization a waste for that reason makes no more sense than to call the existence of any other job a waste because some people play only one or having more than a single two jobs each for Tanks, Healers, Melee, and Ranged a waste because only a limited number each would be optimal (or any more than 1 each a waste if not for Limit Gauge debuffs). And those who simply look up the "meta" build to be used acontextually are not only similarly opting out of engaging with the given options but usually fair worse than those who pick something less "meta" but makes sense for the actual level and stage of play among them and their party.

[Lorika]

Ok i will be more clear.
Build system doesn't work in MMO because : all the MMO, without exception, using the build system have heavy unbalance problem... Thus, creating only a couple of optimized and viable Build per class, thus leading to gate keeping.

In the end, the vast majority of people are playing the same few meta build.... Which just render the build system useless.

[Shurrikhan]

Let's take WoW as the obvious example here. And will take that single class example to start. Despite the ability to nigh-instantly import meta builds, going by the likes of archon, u.gg, etc., Warriors see more than 30 builds played across raid, and about as many again played each across M+ and PvP. The degree of difference and the slope of spread in popularity vary, of course, but let's not forget that these are solely among logged ("parsehead") runs even then. They're far from doing this for the kicks or "uniqueness" points.

You can call it an annoyance that different fights reward certain extra capabilities above progress, causing shifts in a spec's "most optimal" build. Similarly, you could be annoyed that, for a particular favorite spec, your favorite playstyle's build would fall 1.3% behind another you find less engaging. But it's far from one build per spec or even per content type.

Now, is all that worth the cost to implement and balance those choices, imo? No, generally not. But failure isn't an inevitability.

[Tigore]

If we do look at the competitor Warcraft, Haste functions better there. They even have an OP 30% Haste buff window provided from Bloodlust / Heroism / Time Warp. Although they handle party DPS buffs differently to make it possible. If there are some additional changes in the latest two expansions that change this a bit, apologies for missing them.

The main difference is the buffs are essentially apply and forget for 30 minutes to an hour. They are weaker versions of our FF14 buffs that are persistent for every moment. Two classes that provide the same type of buff do not stack either and just overwrite each other. In a way, they function like our buffs that are provided by having a certain role in the party (Eg. 1% all stats if a Physical Range is present = Blessing of Kings for WoW Paladin). The only other buff window I remember would be DPS potions and those can be independent for everyone too. As a result, you can drift away from other people's burst all you want and it would be okay in most cases. As long as everyone at least capitalizes on the 30% Haste window first. The debuff cooldown is so long that you usually expect just one per encounter.

If we translate this to FF14, we would either have to remove the burst party buffs like Battle Litany or Trick Attack or purposely desync their cooldown timers. The former would be way easier to do since a 1 minute timer still meshes well with 2 minutes. Other than that, reducing cooldown timers from Haste would be bad with what we got here.

[Kohashi]

snip

One major reason why I played every single MMO under the sun before committing to FF14 was because it was the casual WoW copy. A game that I tried and fell asleep playing, bored out of my mind despite being a huge WoW lore nerd and lover.


Let's leave WoW alone, not like it doesn't have its own set of issues. Also, I was watching Todd's stream today and he mentioned that he finds WoW refreshing after a big FF14 burnout while his friend that he was leveling with said the other thing around.

So I think some just suffer from burnout and think the grass is greener on the other side.