#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[OliviaLugria]

I always found what made healer fun in the past was juggling all the small things. No mechanic, rotation, or healing upkeep was super demanding, but making sure they all got done at the same time was what made it fun.

They've continously removed these different things to juggle. There isn't mp management, aggro control, a dps rotation, keeping the tank alive, cards to manage, or pet to control.

While previously we had 6 or 7 balls to juggle, we're now closer to 3.

[Tigore]

There's probably multiple approaches I could see being possible for different ways to heal. Warcraft, ironically, can be borrowed again for some concepts to explore.

Traditional Poison / Disease: This one will probably be still classed as "boring" by Hazama999. It's literally just an Esuna and forget debuff. ForsakenRoe did suggest a Healing Absorb type debuff that can fit under this category, but you can out heal the variable assigned to it if there are too many. Out healing it would be the solution for a weaker heal absorb plastered on a full party / raid.

Unstable Affliction: This is a Warlock Affliction DoT that will punish the healer dispelling it with high burst damage and a fear affect. It was originally done so Warlocks wouldn't be worthless in PvP. This approach can be further refined by asking the target to have a certain HP threshold before dispelling. If the wrong threshold is done, KABOOM. So if it needs the target to be less than 50% HP, let the DoT take the target to that point, then use Esuna. The consequence of getting it wrong could be a silence with damage on the healer, a group AoE worth 3 quarter HP or maybe the poor afflicted ally gets it with maybe a near 5% HP left. Another affliction for the consequence could be healing down on the targets hit with the dispel damage.

Multi Gravity Attacks: This is an alternative towards the typical multi attacks that happen. The goal here is to not heal as much until the big burst strike happens at the end since the gravity will always cut off half to 3 quarter health per strike. Although this also means the gravity will not kill you if it is programmed to always leave 1 HP. Basically, the healers should prep regen effects during this time, then fire off the burst heals just before the end non-gravity strike. The SCH spreadlo might have to be saved for the end strike.

Doom: We already have these present on some fights. It's just the traditional method of healing someone to 100% health to dispel the affliction with Esuna not working on it. I suppose this could take a similar approach to what I said for the Unstable Affliction DoT. What if this type of debuff needs the person to be less than 50% HP to avoid something? If Square can make the tells transparent enough, it could very well be debuffs that changes from 100% HP needed to less than 50% as it progresses for a mech. Of course, when the debuff is applied, it cuts everyone's HP by 50% current health with a weak DoT damage portion on it. Such a mech would probably only work for Savage or with lower consequences on normal mechanics since it would discourage regen usage during this time.

[Alice_Rivers]

Doom: We already have these present on some fights. It's just the traditional method of healing someone to 100% health to dispel the affliction with Esuna not working on it. I suppose this could take a similar approach to what I said for the Unstable Affliction DoT. What if this type of debuff needs the person to be less than 50% HP to avoid something? If Square can make the tells transparent enough, it could very well be debuffs that changes from 100% HP needed to less than 50% as it progresses for a mech. Of course, when the debuff is applied, it cuts everyone's HP by 50% current health with a weak DoT damage portion on it. Such a mech would probably only work for Savage or with lower consequences on normal mechanics since it would discourage regen usage during this time.

Big if - They don't even have different tells for full heal doom, mechanic doom and just death doom. I dread to think about the possibility of adding another doom.

[Tigore]

Yeah. Some healer cooldowns may need to be modified for the Doom to be adjusted to what I said. I think for WHM, the only thing they could do is use Afflatus Rapture or Cure 3 unless the boss can somehow dispel the Regens for each transition.

Are the rest looking fine? The unstable affliction tell would probably be a bomb icon on the targets. Best I could say for the Doom one is red light and green light on the targets. It could possibly be those colors for Unstable Affliction too.

[Hazama999]

I'd say that your comparison, while interesting, is setting the bar a bit too high it's really stretching the comparison.

However, your comment about "number go down, make it go up." does reflect what I would expect if someone was designing a healer from someone who doesn't main a healer, which I understand to be the case here. It come from a much different, and even more self-centered perspective i.e. the recipient of healing who is far more concerned that the healer is going to let them die, or who has one too many let them die.

My own perspective is that healing gets interesting when I have choices, and when I have decisions to make. I don't find that designing jobs for the lowest common denominator, and removing skills on the premise that people can't make decisions to be particularly motivating.

Ha! Figured.

Yeah I'm in full agreement here with your statement on choices.

[ForsakenRoe]

Traditional Poison / Disease: This one will probably be still classed as "boring" by Hazama999. It's literally just an Esuna and forget debuff. ForsakenRoe did suggest a Healing Absorb type debuff that can fit under this category, but you can out heal the variable assigned to it if there are too many. Out healing it would be the solution for a weaker heal absorb plastered on a full party / raid.

To clarify somewhat on this point since I brought up the concept of Heal Absorbs (or Aetherblight, as I'd call it here), it can be boring on its own, but it is also a very good design element to mix into a collection of simultaneous mechanics. Let me explain an example from a dungeon in the new WOW expansion (using Mythic 0's version of the mechanics):

- Every 20-25ish seconds, someone is marked with a hefty DOT (which also reduces movement speed, making it harder to dodge other mechanics). The DOT can be cleansed with the WOW version of Esuna, and has an infinite duration, it lasts until cleansed.

- Upon cleansing this DOT, everyone who didn't have the DOT will be given 1.2m (for context, my best geared healer has about 5m HP) of Heal Absorb. While any HA remains, the player also takes 100k damage per second. In M+, these numbers scale up as the key's difficulty scales.

- At 50% and 0.1%, the boss consumes the entire battlefield space (an airship deck) with shadow, instantly killing anyone who didn't mount up to fly away to dodge the blast. While mounted, you can't heal, and so if there's any HA left, the DOT might end up killing your team, meaning that fast cleansing of the HA is paramount

On its own, 'heal hard' is not necessarily 'interesting'. It's what it allows for (designwise), when combined with other mechanics, that makes it interesting. That, combined with the fact that in WOW, we have a LOT less access to AOE healing. We don't have Medica, or Succor, or Cure3. The healing combo I would use to handle something like the above mechanic, on the healer I main, requires 4 different buttons, with CDs of 10s, 10s, 20s and 30s respectively. If I don't have one of those buttons up (eg the 30s CD hasn't come back yet), then I am required to 'improvise' to fill that gap, something that we don't really have here in FFXIV because we always have Medica/Succor etc to fall back on as a 'last resort'. Our 'challenge' is derived from 'how do I heal this while losing the least amount of damage?', but over there, 'how do I heal this' can sometimes be the whole question

Also, on the subject of UA, 'when this debuff is dispelled, it does damage to the raid' is something I've seen in a fair few raids in WOW, and it'd be nice to see it here, but the devs tend to instead swap the 'dispel method' from casting Esuna (giving Healers full control over 'pop speed'), to 'everyone has to 'pop' their thing by doing some movement thing' (eg break thorn tethers in P4S Curtain Call, stand on fuses in M3S, etc).

Here's a random funny idea I just had while writing this: A mechanic in a raid fight that works like Allagan Rot. It hits 0, you all die. The way to pass the Rot though, is by casting Esuna on the player with it, at which point it jumps to the closest player in proximity. Throw a 'you cannot receive Rot again or you instantly die' debuff on someone for a bit once they're cleansed (so you don't just juggle it back and forth between two players, eg the tanks), there you go, new raid mechanic

You know, seeing real world medicine mentioned, I'd love to see a damage/healing system based on that. I don't know how it would work, I don't know if I'd enjoy it if it did exist, but I would still be interested to see it tried.

SGE's ability names are based on the Four Humours theory of medicine, but A: it's names only, and B: they prioritized 'sounds cool' over 'has thematic sense'. Which is why we have Addersgall gauge (named after Gall Bladder Bile) that is spent on several moves (-Chole, the other bile (I forget which is black and which is yellow)), Haima (blood) as an OGCD that applies a load of layers of shields, and Phlegma (wonder what this one refers to) as 'it does damage'. If we were prioritizing theming, maybe we'd have some system wherein we have 4 gauges, referring to the four humours, and each is spent on their own spender (eg the Blood Humour gauge is spent on Haima/Panhaima, rather than them being 2min CDs). But hey, SGE is such a blank canvas (due to being such a clear copy of SCH for the majority of its actions) that I'm sure we all have our own ideas on what could be added to SGE to give it a design direction of its own (personally, I'd heavily expand Kardia's role in the gameplay)

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

[...]But hey, SGE is such a blank canvas (due to being such a clear copy of SCH for the majority of its actions) that I'm sure we all have our own ideas on what could be added to SGE to give it a design direction of its own (personally, I'd heavily expand Kardia's role in the gameplay)

Quoting this part specifically, I find it most hilarious that they claimed they spent a lot of time trying to come up with a 4th healer (something along the line of "we have to start from scratch for months etc (paraphrase))" in 5.4 teaser. Look at what they've cooked up: a carbon copy of an existing barrier healer with few "how do we make this SCH but also not SCH???"-buttons sprinkled over some levels

[Tigore]

I also remember the Warcraft classes can have their own limitations on certain heals depending on which one you picked. Like for the Druid, they have Wild Growth (6s ish cooldown) and Efflorescence mushrooms. Pretty much their fall back is spamming Rejuvenation single target Hots, right? It gets very thirsty on mana if they use Rejuv too much beyond just the tank.

Some of the ideas I threw in were some mechs needing different solutions than just simply increasing the HP of the party up. I didn't mean to downplay the healing absorb too much. I mentioned before that it could be paired with our current Doom mechanics to make healing it more intensive. It could also become a discussion how the tank will be handled with 1HP and a heal absorb. We can't just taunt / provoke swap because the off tank is also afflicted with the same thing. Do they invuln? Do we assign one healer to use Esuna immediately? Do we have a BRD who can give Warden's Paean?

The ping pong debuff losing stacks from each dispel I could have sworn was also in Warcraft at some point. Can't remember which boss. It reminds me of the Lich King fight, but that one might also be more so another strong DoT that drops when the ally is at 100% HP. I remember wipes from the DoT requiring 100% HP if the healers were caught with no initial HoT blanket on anyone. Once that plague DoT set in, the player target was just as good as dead with the ticks getting worse over time very fast.

[Colt47]

I'd say that your comparison, while interesting, is setting the bar a bit too high it's really stretching the comparison.

However, your comment about "number go down, make it go up." does reflect what I would expect if someone was designing a healer from someone who doesn't main a healer, which I understand to be the case here. It come from a much different, and even more self-centered perspective i.e. the recipient of healing who is far more concerned that the healer is going to let them die, or who has one too many let them die.

My own perspective is that healing gets interesting when I have choices, and when I have decisions to make. I don't find that designing jobs for the lowest common denominator, and removing skills on the premise that people can't make decisions to be particularly motivating.

I'm mostly fine with how it is right now. All the stuff I had posted about healing problems are sort of a global thing that impacts both single player and multiplayer, because the reality is few people really like playing the healer archetype even in SINGLE PLAYER games.

[Tigore]

Yeah. You pretty much touched on the points the healers here have. The role is more looked at like it is Magical Support instead of Healer. But since this direction is not changing, some are asking for at least 2 - 3 more filler DPS buttons to fit the Magical Support description better. Some others are concerned that this hammers the nail in the coffin for us to be true healers and wishes for the priority to be in healing first.