Party Mitigation: The Elephant in the Healers' Room

[Aliatus]

8 and 10. 8 is the MINIMUM number of party mits that you'll bring between 6 non-healer players in a standard full party. 10 is the MAXIMUM number of party mits you can bring between 2 healers. For reference, here's said party comp so you can count it yourself.

WAR/GNB/SAM/DRG/BRD/BLM
WAR - Reprisal + Shake - 2
GNB - Reprisal + HoL - 2
SAM - Feint - 1
DRG - Feint - 1
BRD - Troub - 1
BLM - Addle - 1
= 8

SGE/SCH
SGE - Kera + ZoeEuProg + Holos + Panhaima - 4
SCH - SS + Deploy + Fey Illum + Expedient + Seraph - 5
+ 1 for on demand shields
= 10

We can debate the value of individual buttons, but that's beside the point. This is where the core of the healer problem lies. No matter how much you increase heal checks by, every healing check is a mitigation check, and half the responsibility for that lies with everyone but the healers, unless you want every heal check to be fixed damage that ignores shields, but then things get boring quickly for different reasons.

Understandably, tanks and DPS don't want to be completely beholden to healers for their own survival, so I propose the following. Change the DPS and tank generic party mitigation tools to personals, then spread the lost party mitigation among the healers. It leaves DPS and tanks with some agency while not stripping healers of their's. This will return the role of keeping the party alive to the healers, giving them back their much needed identity. The following abilities should be changed to personal mitigations on tanks and DPS, the specifics of them is irrelevant to this post.

Reprisal, Shake It Off, Divine Veil, Heart of Light, Dark Missionary, Feint, Addle, Troubadour, Shield Samba, Tactician

This leaves flavor abilities like Passage of Arms, Dismantle and Magick Barrier, as the devs already don't balance mit checks with these in mind. It keeps the flavor on the respective jobs and arguably enhances it by limiting the number of non-healers that have party support.

Next for how to re-implement the lost mitigation on healers, I'd say it's best to keep things simple and avoid any complete reworks while minimising new buttons. I'll outline that in the next post as I'm at the character limit.

[Aliatus]

New Healer Role Action: Virus. Functionally identical to Reprisal, debuffs nearby enemies, we'll take the new 15s duration and apply that to Virus, as well as simply increase the base damage reduction to 15%. This rolls reprisal and feint into a single button that both healers in a party are guaranteed to have, so half our job is already done.

I won't include numbers for any of the following since it's not relevant to the conversation and can be adjusted as seen fit, depending on what's added and what's not. Of particular note though, WHM and AST are a bit more desperate for the lost mitigations than SCH and SGE are, and should get priority accordingly.

WHM
Confession additionally reduces damage taken.
Asylum additionally reduces damage taken.
Increase Temperance's damage reduction.
Simple, new functionality for existing abilities that covers for lost mitigations. Optionally, if you want to get fancy, add a new AoE lily GCD that gives a shield.

AST
Bite the bullet and make Collective Unconscious a buff instead of a bubble. I hate to kill identity but it's the simplest way without introducing new buttons on an already button heavy job.
Horoscope would be another good option, when you proc Horoscope Helios, it also applies a shield. Provides that bit of extra incentive to actually bother procing Horoscope Helios instead of just letting it sit and take the weaker heal so you don't lose a damaging GCD.
You could also change the new Bole and Spire cards to be party instead of single target.

SCH & SGE Generally
They already have a sufficient number of mitigation buttons to the point that you can just increase the damage reduction of existing ones, though I'll suggest more specific ones that I think would be good.

SCH
Increase Fey Illumination's Magic Damage Reduction. Currently it's used more as a tool to buff Adlo>Deploy, with the damage reduction being incidental.
Reintroduce fairy gauge cost for Fey Blessing, reduce its cooldown to 15s. Appropriate fairy gauge cost would likely be 20-30, then along side this, introduce a new ability: Fey Protection. Similar to Fey Blessing with a 15s cooldown and 20-30 gauge cost, lower potency but applies a shield instead. This provides a use for the fairy gauge that includes some decision making in addition to covering the issue of lost mits.

SGE
Eukrasian Pneuma. Lower potency but applies a shield instead of a heal.
Decrease the cooldown of Zoe to 60s. Allows comboing with Pneuma while still being able to use Zoe>EuPrognosis for bigger shields when needed.

While this doesn't fix every healer complaint, I believe this to be the best immediate compromise that can be made that could be implemented in a timely manner while maintaining the balance of the game.

[Pandurah]

I really like these ideas! Most of them could be implemented without much change to the current build, it feels.

[wildvenonat]

I love party mitigation though.

[KageTokage]

As a QoL, I really feel like they need to start displaying the mitigation percentage on all hits in general rather then just parry/block given how janky snapshots can be.

[NegativeS]

(Psst... Are we supposed to be casting Addle? I don't even have it on my bars... )

[Silver-Strider]

For WHM, I would like to see Protect make a return as an AoE mitigation skill on the Lily system. Give the ability itself a CD on 60s or something and it would be a perfect inclusion into the kit without being intrusive.

For SCH, I want them to return Selene and make her into an inverse of Eos to mimic the Dawn/Dusk theme they have.
Whispering Dawn can remain a regen on both but make them functionally different, with Eos being more upfront potency but at a lower duration vs Selene with a long duration but weak potency.
Fey Blessing is unchanged on Eos but for Selene instead of a heal is a shield.
Fey Illumination can stay unchanged for Eos and just have the values reversed for Selene to provide more mitigation and a smaller heal buff.

Not really sure what to do about AST and SGE though.

[Calysto]

I agree on the concept.
However based on some feedback I saw on the strike thread, some people fears bad healers become the "weak link" ; heir death more likely to cause a wipe.

So since you kinda touched the topic, I'd like to suggest 2 additional role actions

-Reraise (auto raise self) spell ; recast 5mn ; require <whatever buff> that would be granted either along the echo or from certain chests (dungeons pre/boss chests ?)

-Stoneskin (personal 30% mitigation) ability ; 60s recast

(bonus as I'm on role actions : add an interrupt component to repose as another mitigation option)

[Nero-Voidstails]

I agree on the concept.
However based on some feedback I saw on the strike thread, some people fears bad healers become the "weak link" ; heir death more likely to cause a wipe.

So since you kinda touched the topic, I'd like to suggest 2 additional role actions

-Reraise (auto raise self) spell ; recast 5mn ; require <whatever buff> that would be granted either along the echo or from certain chests (dungeons pre/boss chests ?)

-Stoneskin (personal 30% mitigation) ability ; 60s recast

(bonus as I'm on role actions : add an interrupt component to repose as another mitigation option)

I do like those to be honest but I don't think "bad healer" are a thing just tell yourself this. they have no reason to become better due to tanks having such healing power so why getting better? yes it would cause wipe but I do say it will make the player base more aware

[velswen]

(Psst... Are we supposed to be casting Addle? I don't even have it on my bars... )

For dungeons and other casual content it can help if things go south but otherwise not necessary. It's a LOT more helpful in extremes, and it is MANDATORY in Savage. Savage raid-wides will frequently literally one shot players at full health if you arent overgearing them.

But Addle/Feint make a huge difference in extreme trials and especially savage raids, so if you're taking on that kind of content I'd start working towards incorporating them into your gameplay