#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[Azurarok]

With current potencies and cast times, if the fairy has to be resummoned after using dissipation, costing a GCD, that would make dissipation a dps loss at levels you have Broil IV unless you resummon during downtime, right? Would that be a good or bad thing? I do think that'd discourage players from using it entirely for energy drain at least

[dwodmots]

So what changed to get all of you back into healing? It's always instant tank queue now.

[WaxSw]

Damn, give me those queue then. When leveling my War I always have to wait at least 3-5m even if we have almost a light party formed before queueing

[Striker44]

So what changed to get all of you back into healing? It's always instant tank queue now.

If you're talking roulettes or the Arcadion series on Normal, I've been seeing instant tank queues the entire expansion so far compared to brief queues on healers. I doubt the people "on strike" went back to healing; they've just been insignificant in # from the start to actually have any effect on things.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

So what changed to get all of you back into healing? It's always instant tank queue now.

Idk mate. Mine tank queues are always at least 3m wait whereas healer queues are instants.

Sometimes I even bring my dps friendo with me to roulo with my tank and we still wait. Even worse look at all those blue icons in need but we still get the wait time...

How mysterious indeed What could this be?!

[ForsakenRoe]

Remembered I still haven't capped tomes, logged in to do an EX Roulette, saw the AIN bonus for it was DPS of all things

Very strange

With current potencies and cast times, if the fairy has to be resummoned after using dissipation, costing a GCD, that would make dissipation a dps loss at levels you have Broil IV unless you resummon during downtime, right? Would that be a good or bad thing? I do think that'd discourage players from using it entirely for energy drain at least

For a long time upon release, that is exactly how it functioned. It got changed because people would sometimes not notice that Dissipation's lockout had expired, and just forget to resummon the faerie, leading to a big loss of healing potential, because back then we had less non-faerie tools, plus we had the ability to boost the faerie's power with Rouse

However, I'd like to also see a design element in battle content that I'll call 'Barrier Checks' for lack of a better name. That is, a mechanic wherein something about the mechanic is lessened or negated, if you block the damage with a Barrier. The simplest example (which exists ingame, ironically) would be Vulcan Burst from Ifrit (it's also in UWU). It is a raidwide that does very little damage, but also deals a knockback. But, by having a Barrier active and blocking 100% of this raidwide, you also negate the Knockback effect.

I'd like to see more uses of that, alongside giving all healers access to Barriers in some way (eg WHM gets a Lily Spender that applies Barriers, cough Stoneskin). It sounds like 'homogenization' on the surface (giving all 4 healers a way to apply a Barrier), but I think that the extra creative potential it'd open up would outweigh that. For example, say a raidwide deals 2 instances of damage, one hits for a very small amount (but applies a bleed), and the other hits a single frame later for 'the actual damage of the raidwide'. Do you, as the healer, heal through the Bleed? Do you apply Barriers and negate the Bleed entirely? Or, do you Esuna the Bleed to remove it (eg if a healer has an AOE Esuna, maybe this is the better option)?

Just did the last boss of Strayborough, turns out that it does exactly what I said in this 'example'. I blocked his bleed raidwide, because of a combo of mitigation, Shake it Off, and Bloodwhetting's initial barrier. But only I had the mitigation and barriers to block it, the rest of the party got the bleed. Nevertheless, it shows that it's definitely possible to use such a concept as a design element so, thumbs up SE do it more often please and thank

[Tigore]

@ Azurarok

Dissipation used to have the risk of needing to resummon the fairy and sacrifice a GCD or 2 to do so. Nowadays, the debuff expiry script resummons the fairy instantly for us. The risk / reward is more so talking about other skills getting locked out for those 30 seconds instead. Seraphism (100), Summon Seraph, Whispering Dawn, Fey Illumination, Aetherpact and Fey Blessing are the locked out spells.

With the spell lockouts in mind, I pretty much devised a rotation of 2 sets of cooldowns I use for wall to wall pulls. One will rely on my own SCH spells and the second one relies on the fairy-based cooldowns. The self based one is Dissipation, Expedient and Recitation with the extra 3 Aether possibly going into Lustrate or Energy Drain. The fairy based one leaves Fey Illumination, Whispering Dawn and Summon Seraph / Consolation AoE shields. Both strategies will use Sacred Soil and Excogitation. Even Excog is mostly not needed and I saw the 45s buff expiry auto heal proc maybe 50 - 70% of the time.

@dwodmots

I do notice that DPS queues are still decent on the time of 5 - 20 minutes, but the Levelling queue is definitely choosing Dzemael Darkhold more often. It used to have the level 95 dungeon quite often with the first few weeks of Dawntrail when I was on the 4 healers. Now, I got maybe one level 91 dungeon in a couple weeks with a notably lower level on average as DPS. That probably means the healers you are seeing are probably newcomers or veterans of tank / DPS trying out the role.

I mean, it makes sense for the other role players to try it out to see why we are raising such a big deal about the healing sucking. The best opinion to consider would be your own first, then compare with other people's experiences. Some other Warcraft players have considered me an odd case though, since I have adapted to all 3 roles. I may not use all the advanced tech like a dedicated Savage role player would, but I can still do the basics and most of the intermediate stuff for all the roles.

eg 1: Incorporating the DPS potion into the opener. Mostly not needed on casual content with 90% of the stuff not having enrage timers. When one player accidentally did it on a map trash group, I joked by hoping the 4K gil pop was worth it, lol.

eg 2: Melding Materia to the gear. This part, I do try my best to fulfill on gear that won't get replaced immediately. I don't have a plentiful supply of grade 12 materia, but I will still reuse the grade 10 stuff if I have to. I have a ton of grade 10 materia due to the Endwalker end of expansion runs. This would probably be considered one of the intermediate stuff to do.

@ForsakenRoe

It's probably been a few months to a year ago since I got to read some of your suggestions. I didn't mean to make some mistakes on what you suggested. Just raising awareness that we do have detailed suggestions for the healer class. I did read the links from the very first post on this thread, but they don't go into the details you have done for the 4 classes. For the most part, the suggestions there were mostly to bring back the old stuff we remember from Heavensward and Stormblood. I have made similar suggestions, but some also said that it didn't make the healers different enough from each other. Aero 3 could be viewed as just the WHM version of the SGE Eukrasian Dyskrasia. A bit of a consequence from thinking about quick changes that might be able to make it into a major patch rather than an expansion release. Maybe the quick changes will have a place to tide us over so Square can buy some time to do the major changes.

[ForsakenRoe]

It's probably been a few months to a year ago since I got to read some of your suggestions. I didn't mean to make some mistakes on what you suggested. Just raising awareness that we do have detailed suggestions for the healer class. I did read the links from the very first post on this thread, but they don't go into the details you have done for the 4 classes. For the most part, the suggestions there were mostly to bring back the old stuff we remember from Heavensward and Stormblood. I have made similar suggestions, but some also said that it didn't make the healers different enough from each other. Aero 3 could be viewed as just the WHM version of the SGE Eukrasian Dyskrasia. A bit of a consequence from thinking about quick changes that might be able to make it into a major patch rather than an expansion release. Maybe the quick changes will have a place to tide us over so Square can buy some time to do the major changes.

Yeh no worries, can't expect everyone to remember all of what I wrote with photographic memory after all. It'd be nice if my suggestions could be added to the OP of this thread, as a sort of 'see it IS possible to rework the healers, keep them relatively simple to get into while also expanding their skill ceiling potential', but it is what it is.

With what I wrote, I think that each of the healers could have their changes broken up into... 'phases', for lack of a better term. EG for WHM, it has the damage action changes (Dia to 12s, Banish added) as Phase 1. This could be done in a random patch, eg 7.2, if the devs wanted. Then, the addition of the new gauge, the healing action it is spent on, and Quake/Flood/Tornado as the 'refund mechanic' for the gauge, would be Phase 2. Finally, the addition of the 'extra, but not super necessary' stuff like the Stoneskin series of Lily spenders, and the addition of lower level versions of actions (eg Divine Seal>Temperance, Protect>PI, Afflatus Tragedy>Misery) to make the early game feel more active, that'd be Phase 3. Each 'Phase' would build off of what is added by the previous Phases, but the devs would be free to choose which Phase to stop at. For example, say they just really... REALLY, don't want WHM to have any Barrier capability. They could implement Phase 1 in one patch, Phase 2 in the next, and then only part of Phase 3 (ignoring the Stoneskin stuff, but adding the lower-level actions) in the next.

By breaking up the changes to each healer thus, it reduces the strain on the devs to do 'all the changes all at once' at an expansion launch. It also gives us players a chance to say 'hey this is really cool'/'uhh this change is kinda weird I don't really vibe with the direction', and potentially give SE some direction/reinforcement that they're on the right/wrong track. EG, if they do Phase1 and give WHM a shorter Dia and the new Banish, we'd then be able to respond on the forums with threads like 'Thank you SE for these WHM changes', which gives the devs both feedback (that the changes are well received) and a morale boost (because the changes were well received)

As for Aero3 vs Eukrasian Dyskrasia, we already were comparing E.Dys to Miasma 2. If people want to say 'oh X is like Y', I say let them. We have Lance Charge/Riddle of Fire/No Mercy/Fight or Flight, all of them functionally identical (60s CD, raise own damage dealt by X% for 20s), we don't see anyone comparing those to one another (well, maybe NM gets a bit of comparison to FOF), but then we do also have eg Inner Release compared to Delirium, which are both similar in function to Requiescat, and now Bloodfest has joined the fray (with Lionheart combo), as all being 'press this button, then 'big hit' 3 times' (except Req, where you press the big hit 4 times, very unique)

[Tigore]

The 3 phase plan does look good. Possibly a similar plan could happen for slightly bumping up the healing encounters need too.

I can imagine some more simpler ones like the standard AoE pulses and that bleed you were talking being inserted on the first phase. The healing absorb (Aetherblight) could be the 2nd step. We'll probably have to keep the aetherblight pretty low to ease the other players in if they like it. The numbers we discussed for a full 1 -4 health bars worth of stopping the healing will probably end up being Savage mode testing. I am trying to predict how many would try to instinctively use Esuna on it, but I may or may not be underestimating what would happen. If it's like the other debuffs with that underline on it or so, it might be a good enough indicator they can dispel it. Phase 3 would probably be fine tuning some numbers for the encounter damage, aetherblight levels and the self heal levels of the tanks and DPS.

I can see your point for the abilities inevitably having some form of similarities no matter how we approach the spell / skill changes. With 21 classes, it's probably impossible to make everything 100% different without vastly breaking the balancing of the damage and healing dealt. The cooldowns you compared definitely cement the 2 minute meta to how it is with Critical Strike / Direct Hit usually being a top stat all the time. It does spark a question if a class meant to do just filler DPS could work. It would likely need multiple traits to fine tune the filler to be a higher average than others at end game and similar to others at 50.

[Gurgeh]

I've not got my ear to the ground with XIV social media and the community, so although I've not heard the following mentioned, I expect it has been.

I'm not a 'healer' so I can't say I have much of a stake in the #HEALERSTRIKE , but I was just in a dungeon where I the healer and the the 2 DPS all single hit KO'd together to the same mechanic... ('which I love!' More of that just occasionally please!) , but.... the boss still had 60% to go, yes the tank was a WAR (didn't say hi at the beginning, sprinted right from the start even when everyone else was not sprinting with them, one of those tanks.) You know whats coming, and yes they were determined to take the boss on for themselves, and have us just watch.
Now while this is not very sociable (they'd be better suited to running Duty support, they are clearly not interested in cooperating but just want to play the game uncompromisingly their way), they are entitled to do it. If the game lets you do it, its 100% legitimate, you certainly can't complain. (Can criticize though, or just have an opinion/preference)

• The problem of course is that the tanks HP without a healer or potions should be on an inevitable countdown to zero. If that were the case the tank certainly would not have continued from 60%. They'd have reset, and we could have got to play the game too.

It really is a bit broken this and it impacts more than healers.

I fear they are not going to fix is because of how stupidly tightly the high end game is tuned. They'd now have to adjust so many other things

(Luckily this happens very rarely, and it is as much about the tank, but like I say they can certainly do what they want as long as I'm allowed to as well.)

(It's my free time, I certainly didn't logon to watch someone else's gaming stream, as spectator, a tedious one at that as its just a dungeon, there is no tension as they can easily make it to the end, and its not a sprout so I've got no 'hero' to root for ['Expert' roulette]. Thankfully no one can force me to play so its not the end of the world. So I just powered off to do something better with my own free time. Healers can do what they want too not just WARs.)