FFXIV Healer Strike and the 'How would you fix it?' line

[ForsakenRoe]

Terrific ideas, logged into the forums just to write a reply. I like that the optimizations are minor but something to work towards if you're stuck while progging or re-clearing. Not being able to play on hand somewhat makes it hard to imagine how it will flow so I will only focus on WHM and Aetherblight for now.
Aetherblight is a nice concept and would make a pure healing check possible without making Macrocosmos too strong. I don’t it should be a regular mechanic but throwing it to boss during any content would be cool.

I would be approaching as your ideas has made it into the game 1:1 and I’m asked “Would you change something? If so what?”

I like jobs/classes/characters/bosses etc that have multiple abilities that interact with the same system. (This is why I like EX4 so much) Ways to increase or decrease that, or different ways to use the same thing. I think vigilance idea can work but I think it would be better if it was also tied to the Lily gauge. (Again this is just a me thing) BOTE would be a Lily spell as well. The way I would have it is that ST lily spenders would generate petals and AoE lily spenders would generate Blood Lily, if you have Blood Lily AoE spenders would generate petals and vice versa. And I would make it so that using your damaging spells would make the lilies bloom faster.

In order to reduce the button bloat to maximum. I would keep Medica I but Afflatus Solace, Rupture, and BOTE would replace Cure II, Medica I, and Cure III respectively. You would be forced to spend your lilies first if you want immediate heal and you will probably overcap if you’re using them too much.

For levelling I think introducing Holy/Gravity/AoW/Dyskresia earlier would be better. Having it in the first dungeon would be ideal but I would be fine as long as it isn’t as late as it is now. I think it is important to show “You should AoE in a dungeon” by giving the AoE abilities earlier.

Again, terrific ideas. It might be also nice to write the lvl 100 kit without any previous versions so that people can see the lvl100 kit easier.

Thank you for reading, glad you enjoyed

It's definitely possible to design the idea in such a way that it doesn't require the addition of the second gauge, but I think the design would suffer for it. WHM is known for being the 'easy to approach, simple' Healer. And there's merits in both approaches, I think, of 'WHM has one gauge that handles everything, so it's simple' versus 'WHM has two gauges that work in tandem, but the amount of things each gauge does is lessened, so it's simple'. Looking at something like SCH, the aspects that are controlled by its two gauges (Aetherflow and Fey) are quite simple and intuitive, despite there being two different Gauges, IMO. In fact, Fey Union being the only use for the Fey Gauge (currently, who knows what 8.0 has in store) is a great comparison/example to how BOTE is the only spender (in this design) for the Vigilance Gauge, or how Fell Cleave/Bloodspiller (and their AOE versions) is the only thing that the WAR/DRK spends their gauge on now

Without increasing the cap of how many Lilies we can store, we'd be unable to take advantage of another strength that the two gauges would provide: having the ability to pool more damage-neutral healing at once. Where we currently can store up to 3 Lilies, the design would allow for '3 Lilies plus 2 BOTE casts', and I'd make the argument that having that versatility is not only a good thing for optimization usecases, but also gives the more casual player access to more easy-access healing tools when they need them. We'd need to have the Lily gauge extended to, at minimum, 5 Lilies, to have the same 'pool' of resources to pull from. I've also never really subscribed to the idea of 'Solace replaces Cure2 when you have a Lily' etc. as IMO it removes player agency. Few as they may be, there are times where you might want to choose to press a Cure2 instead of a Solace, to keep the Lily for a later point in the fight. And so it's for these reasons that I believe that a second gauge element would serve the design more effectively

I personally don't really notice the lack of AOE in early dungeons. I know it's a pain point for other players though. The way I see it is, stuff dies super-fast as it is, even with single targetting, as the dungeons were designed without Healer AOE in mind (and arguably, Healer damage at all). After all, we have to remember that in those dungeons, there's potential new players. Getting them to press any damage buttons at all, let alone AOE ones, is already asking a lot of them when they're just starting out. For WHM specifically, Holy is THE White Magic spell (even referred to as 'the ultimate White Magic' in some older games), so at the minimum, you'd have to be a WHM to have access to it IMO. That'd mean a minimum learn level of 30. I'll look at it and see what can be done. SCH and SGE do get access to some (limited) AOE as early as 26 with Shadowflare and Phlegma in their designs, at least, so I guess it'd make sense if WHM/AST sort of matched that (edit: Holy/Gravity moved down from 45 to 35)

Maybe at some point I'll edit the posts to include 'this is what you would have at level 100', that sounds like a good idea

[VeyaAkemi]

SCH and SGE do get access to some (limited) AOE as early as 26 with Shadowflare and Phlegma

Shadow Flare haven't been in the game since Shadowbringers, by the end of the year, we will be longer without than with it, currently, SCH is without AoE until 46, where as WHM gets Holy at 45.

[ForsakenRoe]

Shadow Flare haven't been in the game since Shadowbringers, by the end of the year, we will be longer without than with it, currently, SCH is without AoE until 46, where as WHM gets Holy at 45.

What I meant is, if these designs were added to the game 1:1, SCH would regain Shadowflare at level 26, which it could spam-cast for the instant 100p of on-cast damage in low-level AOE situations (or as an optimization in higher level situations, like 'you are in the Jabberwock bind in M6S and cannot use Art of War on the pack of enemies). So the other user's request was 'Can WHM get access to AOE sooner too, to match how early this SCH would have AOE access'