#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[Tigore]

@Kohashi

You seem way too focused on shooting down ideas rather than discussing what could make them work. As said before, was there a reason the toolkit had to be limited to the number 10 or are you willing to barter it up to 16 or 20? If Roe didn't hit the mark you were thinking of, were there other spell ideas you had for your top 10 you believed to be better? Also note that 24 - 30+ abilities does not always equal carpal tunnel syndrome. The actions per minute (APM) is more what really determines that from the high oGCD usage. The VPR has that higher oGCD usage as an example while also having a little less buttons on the bar.

We also have to remember that SCH, SGE and AST are also there, so we need to make sure their 10 - 20 buttons aren't 100% the same. Some other ideas to consider for countering mechs other than shields could be raised max HP, damage reduction and damage delay by converting some of the burst damage into a DoT or healing absorb (Roe's Aetherblight idea incidentally). The raised max HP can be paired with increasing the healing received so the target is not just a mana sponge. The damage delay mech could also be paired with a way to purify the DoT or healing absorb so it completes the cycle of reducing the damage taken. Warcraft showed from Brewmaster Monk tanks that purifying the DoT for damage delay can potentially be OP if you allow too much of the burst damage to be converted to that DoT. My character there survived 18 stacks of an Impale mech from a dinosaur boss when 3 was supposed to drop you like a fly beyond that. This method will need careful tuning.

[Kohashi]

snip

who? The p10s Spooder? Probably still stuck doing Bonds 3, because PF could never..LOL.



I never said you need Bell for HH (savage), but you do need your level 90 Kit to survive it. In the same way, you don't need Tank LB + Bell to help with the Phase 2 Multi-hit of M4s, but I doubt you can do it with a level 50 kit (for example).

Why specifically 10, because it's a challenge and because I wanted to see how you resolve a constraint and how outside of the box you can go.


As for being better than what SE already has in place, no, your build has no innovation and I doubt has any viability in the current content as well. You just moved a couple of things around and called it better while bringing essentially nothing new.

If you were to include let's say.. several modifiers then perhaps.

Let me give you an example of how I would solve the restrain while also tying it a little to a familiar system but giving it a little more purpose

Glare-> Cycles between 3 Colors -> white/Blue- Green- Red. Each color will interact with the other spells and transform their effects.

White/Light blue: heal, regens HOT - Revive
Green: shield, mits ->aoe/single target, some debuffs for the boss, small buffs for the party and yourself
Red: DPS - AOE, single target, DOT/s

In addition, there is a "talent" tree that can further change how spells function and control the stuff they provide allowing you to coordinate with your co-healer if you want or simply enjoy a certain play style.


PS: I don't give a F about how Lucretia cleared the fight because there was also some random party that cleared Golden Bahamut with full tanks too. Those are already outliers and I doubt 99.99% of the player base can achieve that, but kudos to them I guess..


@Tigore

Essentially all healers in every single game are filling the same role. That is to heal and protect their allies, enabling them to continue the fight and mend/mitigate/prevent when mistakes happen.

Also, I have explained already why the number 10 was picked.

It's easy to say you would do a better job until the jig is up and you actually have to come up with something that is at the intersection of fun, rewarding, unique/innovative, it can function at low but also end game that is easy to pick up but also hard to master.

[Maltothoris]

Well Se does care otherwise why put in the duplicate class restrictions on limit break? It's the same reqson why they made changes to ramuh ex back in the day when they saw it could be completed without tanks or them making aure you couldn't solo tank the final coils. They have a vision and they don't want anyone to screw with it.

[Tigore]

@Kohashi

They brought up the Lucretia clear with a CNJ present as evidence that all the class mitigation kits together are overkill for our current content. This includes the tank and DPS.

As for your ideas, I will ask some questions for clarity. How does the 3 Glare colors transform the other abilities? Does it work like the VPR oGCDs where you have to use it now or lose it? Or is it more akin to receiving charges on other abilities? Does the talent tree work like the Warcraft talents that used to have 3 choices (essentially long cooldown vs. short cooldown vs. passive effect) or the current ones now?

The first paragraph directed to me saying all the healers do similar things is a bit unclear. Does that mean we would be better with just 1 class for the healer role with a talent system containing the current 4 class stuff to customize it?

As for ideas on my end, so far I am deferring to what ForsakenRoe said for her list. It may still borrow some of Square's current spells, but it does have a half and half mix for healing and damage dealt to enemies with some buttons temporarily transforming. Although, I frankly think we would need more than 10 slots. We may need to strive to consolidate some stuff now, but this number starts to constrain multiple functions into one with little freedom to do it separately.

[ForsakenRoe]

I never said you need Bell for HH (savage), but you do need your level 90 Kit to survive it.

Why specifically 10, because it's a challenge and because I wanted to see how you resolve a constraint and how outside of the box you can go.

As for being better than what SE already has in place, no, your build has no innovation and I doubt has any viability in the current content as well. You just moved a couple of things around and called it better while bringing essentially nothing new.

If you were to include let's say.. several modifiers then perhaps.
Let me give you an example of how I would solve the restrain while also tying it a little to a familiar system but giving it a little more purpose
Glare-> Cycles between 3 Colors -> white/Blue- Green- Red. Each color will interact with the other spells and transform their effects.
White/Light blue: heal, regens HOT - Revive
Green: shield, mits ->aoe/single target, some debuffs for the boss, small buffs for the party and yourself
Red: DPS - AOE, single target, DOT/s

In addition, there is a "talent" tree that can further change how spells function and control the stuff they provide allowing you to coordinate with your co-healer if you want or simply enjoy a certain play style.

PS: I don't give a F about how Lucretia cleared the fight because there was also some random party that cleared Golden Bahamut with full tanks too. Those are already outliers and I doubt 99.99% of the player base can achieve that, but kudos to them I guess..


It's easy to say you would do a better job until the jig is up and you actually have to come up with something that is at the intersection of fun, rewarding, unique/innovative, it can function at low but also end game that is easy to pick up but also hard to master.

Well, no, you don't need your 90 kit to survive it, that's my point. You need level 90 stats, sure, but you can (assuming mitigation is handled by everyone correctly, and a Tank LB isn't used) simply spam Cure3 to get through it. Cure3 is learned at level 40. If a Tank LB IS used there, you have even less need for your 'level 90 kit' than you already did

Okay, sure. I'd say I went quite far out of the box, but the judgement of how good a job was done is entirely subjective (as shown by some others saying 'Roe did a pretty good job considering the restriction').

No innovation? Again, seems like a subjective judgement, but I'd argue that it is quite innovative, off of the sheer fact that it fits almost all of the 'required' healing tools/effects into 10 buttons, while still giving more complexity to the damage rotation (to make solo instances more interesting than 'press Glare for 7 minutes').

So... A 123, but other spells change their effect depending on what 123 was last executed? Or is it the other way round, where Glare changes based on the last action used? Either way, you're either describing something akin to VPR's 123 combos for the former, or GNB Continuation for the latter. Or is it MNK's 123 combo stances? Whatever it is meant to be, it's very likely there's a parallel in some other Job's gameplay in the game already. So, maybe not as 'innovative' as first imagined, unless we shift the definition of 'innovative' a little to 'it's not been seen before on the Healer role'. In which case, I'd argue mine was equally innovative because we've not seen an Inner Chaos style empowerment for a Healer's attacks before. And you didn't even bother to actually do the whole thing. You just said 'Glare has 3 forms and it interacts with other actions' and left it at that, what other actions? If the roles were reversed, I'm sure I wouldn't be allowed to just say 'yeh so SCH has Aetherflow as a button, and it gives you stacks to spend on other actions' and get away with such a halfbaked answer

'Talent tree' wasn't even mentioned in the original challenge. All I got given was 'make it work, with only 10 buttons'. You're adding whole systems behind the scenes to prop up the functionality of your pitch, and it's not even a pitch, it's a single action with 'oh and it interacts with the other buttons' hastily scribbled at the bottom of the paper

Lastly, I think you should be caring about teams clearing current content with a Class, or just one healer. Because it disproves what you've insinuated previously (that fights are 'measured and balanced down to the spell'). Evidently, they are not, and the excuse that might work for UCOB (it was heavily outdated, potencies have gone up across the board since then etc) doesn't fly because FRU was released in this patch, the one we're currently still playing. We don't even have the +5 ILVL that the 7.3 dungeon gear will bring, that allows for a little bit more wiggle room. Many people before you have tried the 'it doesn't count because they're the best of the best' line, but the problem is that this game is so heavily scripted in its combat, that you don't necessarily have to be the 'best of the best' to pull it off, you just have to have enough persistence to keep trying until it works (though a certain amount of skill is involved, the persistence is more integral, as your skill would naturally increase as you made the attempts)

You can say all this stuff about 'it should be fun, rewarding, unique/innovative, functions at low end and highend alike, easy to learn hard to master', I'd say doubling down on WHM being the 'use GCDs to heal, get refunds on those GCDs to make them damage neutral, put refunds in 2min window to optimize damage (or don't, player's choice)', that's 'unique/innovative' in itself, because no other Healer does that, and no other non-Healer Job needs to do that. It'd at least give WHM an identity, which is something it's struggled with for many years now. But the example that you gave us, which presumably should meet the criteria you listed above, was 'Glare but it comes in 3 flavours', then you claimed it'd interact with 'other spells and transform their effects' (while wording it in a way that makes it ambiguous to me if 'their effects' refers to 'the effects of the spells', or 'the effects of the Glare'), and left it at that. Oh, and said 'also there's a talent tree' and gave no examples of what these talents might do when a player chooses them, beyond 'it also changes what the spells provide/how the spells function'. Sure, maybe I wasn't 'cooking' with the idea I came up with, in your opinion, but that's up to each person to decide for themselves. I think I did an alright job at it, considering the restriction. But I'd argue that not only did you not 'cook' with your example, you didn't even turn the oven on

[ForsakenRoe]

As for your ideas, I will ask some questions for clarity. How does the 3 Glare colors transform the other abilities? Does it work like the VPR oGCDs where you have to use it now or lose it? Or is it more akin to receiving charges on other abilities? Does the talent tree work like the Warcraft talents that used to have 3 choices (essentially long cooldown vs. short cooldown vs. passive effect) or the current ones now?

As for ideas on my end, so far I am deferring to what ForsakenRoe said for her list. It may still borrow some of Square's current spells, but it does have a half and half mix for healing and damage dealt to enemies with some buttons temporarily transforming. Although, I frankly think we would need more than 10 slots. We may need to strive to consolidate some stuff now, but this number starts to constrain multiple functions into one with little freedom to do it separately.

Talent 'tree' implies (to me at least) the existence of 'branches'. So it'd, unless we stretch the definition of the word 'tree' somewhat, require it to be like Dragonflight/TWW trees. Or at the very least, like Hero Talent trees, or Legion Artifact trees, but with those, the 'choice' was which talent to take first, not which to take full stop, as you'd eventually have all of the talents taken (from grinding enough with Artifacts, or from hitting max level in TWW). The 'choice' in TWW is instead 'which tree do I use', and the occasional node that says 'do I want thing A or thing B' and more often than not, one of the two is simply superior as a choice and you'd never pick the other. I would expect, with FFXIV's playerbase being the way that it is, there would be 'the right way' as mandated by the Balance, IcyVeins etc, and then 'every other way that is wrong' and no inbetween. No nuance of 'if I take this, I can't take the talent that boosts my damage by an average of 1%, but I can put up shields that are 30% stronger when they're needed, which means more safety'. Talent comes with a damage loss? Instantly dead talent node.

I've even previously tried to come up with a way to make some choice exist in the game, and specifically stated in the first post that 'the system would not grant you damage. Any damage you do gain, is via creating opportunities using these non-damage effects, and taking advantage of them with your own player skill'. For example, there wouldn't be an effect that says 'Your Glare is now 10p stronger'. But there might be an effect that says 'Divine Benison now leaves Regen on the target for 9s when it breaks or expires', and that effect might mean that you don't need to spend a GCD on a heal (because the Regen does the job instead), which gets you a GCD of damage you wouldn't otherwise have had. But the main feedback was 'wouldn't work, people would just take the one that gives the most damage', despite A: me saying that the system is designed specifically to try to avoid that result, and B: nobody being able to say which of the example effects would actually be 'the one that gives the most damage'

Something that gets overlooked sometimes, is that reusing the currently existing spell structure SE has made in the game, allows for us to reduce the amount of devtime a suggestion would take. I tend to prefer to err on the side of 'make it a bit easier for the devs to implement', rather than asking for solutions that demand external systems like a talent tree, or I try to come up with ways to reuse old animations that still exist in the gamefiles (eg implementing Water1/2/3/4, Banish, Banish3 and Flood would be not so much effort for the art team, as many enemies throughout the game use Water attacks that can be reused, Y'shtola uses Flood in SHB trusts, and Banish can reuse Lost Banish from Bozja). I do notice that I don't have a way to remove debuffs listed on the 10 buttons (Esuna), though I suppose it could be hamfistedly stapled onto Cure2 to make that button have more reason to exist. Perhaps Freecure could also be adjusted in this, such that the proc from it can be triggered by Cure2 or Medica3, and consumed by either too? Maybe then the trait would actually see use

[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

[Tigore]

@ ForsakenRoe

I suppose I was granting Kohashi the benefit of the doubt just in case he does have an interesting idea. The Glare spell being changed to borrow the pseudo combos of PCT and VPR might be something, but I would have to have more context for where it is leading to. If I had to guess, it would probably have to be a new class like a Chemist or so.

Most of first talent tree versions from Warcraft have usually been an illusion of choice from my experience. It looks like 30 - 61 on paper or so, but the damage increasing and consistent defence nodes definitely reduce the amount of calculated choices. There were even certain expansion times where some class specs had only 1 cookie cutter template that was correct (cough Enhancement Shaman cough). When those trees did have some choice, it was usually just a few points to put into a node or 2. I found the talent systems that had something like 5 - 6 sets of 3 choices to have a bit more choice. Although it wasn't by much because it generally came down to passives for soloing vs. cooldowns for dungeons and raids.

An example from what I could remember would be for a Brewmaster Tank Monk to choose between self heals from using their Brew Skills (Gai Plin's Imperial Brew) or another effect that increases haste even further when their delay stagger DoT is yellow to red (High Tolerance). The first one was obviously for soloing with the other one for dungeons with a healer present. Solo mobs could usually only get me to low green levels for the stagger DoT, so ... The current talent tree allows you to have both now, but I see recommendations of only 1 point in High Tolerance if you need to be more defensive in dungeons. The solo one says not to go into High Tolerance or Ox Stance at all likely due to green stagger DoTs again.

Your ideas do remind me of when Warcraft made the Glyph system during the earlier expansion times. The effects do look nice from what you were brainstorming. Not sure why some were still of the mindset of the highest DPS glyphs, but the others saying the increased defensive benefits are not needed yet are probably right. We would likely need a touch more average encounter damage to make them more worth it. Which I understand you are working on that for suggestions already.

It would also be nice if there is more materia choice for what we would want. Probably the main thing they may have to do is to slightly nerf the Critical Chance one and slightly buff DH and Det since we already have good clear times for the dungeons from my impressions. Tenacity I have heard from my Savage friend that it's at least not so terrible now. Piety is still garbage though and would likely need a substantial healing boost effect on it paired with higher encounter damage again >.> Skill Speed and Spell Speed would be ... hard to come up with a proper idea for. DoTs have been gutted from DPS so much for that portion to not really be worth it. Cooldown reductions would introduce drifting rotations away from the 2 min meta burst ... All I got for an idea is to madly increase auto attack speeds for Skill Speed, slightly reduce spell casting time and potentially mana cost more for Spell Speed and reduce a little on GCD recasts and skill animation time for both.

[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)