Evolved White Mage: Fixed

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

[...]I fully expect every healer to no longer have cast times.

Kinda ironic that a role where they're supposed to find opportunities to cast something got their spellcast removed, whereas roles where their mobility should be free are given cast time.

Sure this is mostly from the guy who gets a lot of good reception out of PvP job designs... but still...

[Carighan]

It's just a rethinking I suppose.

If you look historically, it's not clear that casters have cast times.

Yes, they sometimes did. Some books had spellweavers needing to focus for a while and not be distracted/interrupted to weave their magic. OTOH, plenty early pen&paper RPGs ultimately allow you to move/act while preparing spells, or even just use spells outright (Earthdawn for example is very lenient in this regard, but then in that, everyone is a magic-user in a way). Even just focusing on video games and even just in Final Fantasy, most do not have a cast bar system for magic. You just select it from your menu, the character uses it, much like any other attack, item or whatever you select. Done.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

We don’t have little things like resistance, reflecting, and dynamic encounter interplays though, & they clearly were casting way more in the past expacs, a sign that they were intended to require these different kind of mental load to be played. Moreover, comparing single player games like other FF title where you’re actually controlling an entire party of differing job archetype vs here in MMO where you pick one & stick to it till the end of encounter is just ain’t it. Take all of that out, what do we have remains here? The sword/staff icon on damage numbers?

To me all these recent decisions to reduce spellcasting since late ShB/EW up till this demo felt more looking like the designer playing Sekiro or some form of Hack & Slash genre game, then suddenly had an epiphany “Oh I know! Let’s make the casters cast less spells because these melee mechanics are cooler!”, nothing more.

Glare? That’s Holy Arrow. Bio? That’s Poison Arrow. You get the drill.

[Carighan]

We don’t have little things like resistance, reflecting, and dynamic encounter interplays though, & they clearly were casting way more in the past expacs, a sign that they were intended to require these different kind of mental load to be played. Moreover, comparing single player games like other FF title where you’re actually controlling an entire party of differing job archetype vs here in MMO where you pick one & stick to it till the end of encounter is just ain’t it. Take all of that out, what do we have remains here? The sword/staff icon on damage numbers?

I didn't say I agree with the shift in particular, more that it's not easy to say "but casting should always be a thing". I'd say historically the majority of comparative material will disagree with you there.

Now, why do older MMORPGs in particular use a lot of slow castbars? Three reasons, actually:

• Fragility. Spellslingersare near-universally frail in return for their powerful magic. One way to express this is to flat out make them unable to act if successfully attacked, and one easy mechanical way of doing this is to give them a slow castbar and make damage intake interrupt this. (note that FFXIV does not use this mechanic, despite how crucial it once was to the ideas of castbars in MMORPGs)
• Delayed response. An easy way to make space for strong abilities is to have them happen... later. So add a 4s-10s castbar (we're talking old MMORPGs here, Complete Heal in EQ1 is a 10s cast!) and it's fine if the effect at the end is super strong, it happens a long time after whatever game effect prompted you to want to use it (i.e. tank taking damage for the CH example) happened. Note that FFXIV also doesn't use this context, as we know ahead of time what'll happen precisely, and when.
• Technical reasons. EQ1 used a 6s server-tick close. This meant that they had to slow you down to ideally 1 or fewer abilities in each 6 second window, lest the server cannot actually tell the order of things any more (it just gathers it all up and synchronizes HP values etc on the next 6s clock cycle). FFXIV is also rather slow with it's 2.5s GCD which means the server doesn't have to react tooooooo quickly to stuff, we can't act super-quick anyways. Slow castbars help mask very low server tick frequencies as they naturally disallow you from adding multiple complex mechanics (old MMO spells are often the more complex stuff, physical classes usually relied on autoattacks primarily), and this way the server has only one of those scripts to process each tick.

That's not at all to say that I don't want slow spell casts in my MMORPGs. But there's a reason they once were everywhere (and far far slower than what even FF14 started with) and nowadays are quickly becoming more and more rare even in other MMORPGs. Look at GW2 where virtually all casted mechanics allow full movement during it. Look at WoW that also steadily increased speed and reduces hard casts. Look at FF14 itself. There's a reason for this:
Nowadays, PvE encounter mechanics are horribly involved compared to back when 10s castbars were thing in EQ1. Class mechanics themselves are insanely complicated, even in a game as static-rotation-only and 0-decision-space-0-adaptation in its class design as FF14, compared to say a Warrior in EQ1 that basically had two buttons an its autoattack. This all removes the need for what castbars once provided. We no longer need them to provide tension.

I guess if I had free choice, I'd prefer slow-caster-type characters to focus on just few individual but very slow spells, if for no other reason than to highlight just how powerful those attacks are. Say on a Sage, Pneuma should maybe be a much slower cast, 4s++, and also be much stronger. Even just as a damage thing, NEEEEEM the target for super big numbers, but also basically a complete heal on the whole group. LBs should probably cast much longer than they do now even if the effect is already ongoing while the castbar fills. Black Mages should maybe only really have a castbar for Flare Star, but it could be 5s-7s, and hit for obscene amounts. Both the values and the casttime be so long, and contrasting so harshly with all the other abilities, you know the big stuff is coming. (granted with Black Mage I'd also like if they had to "feed" a genkidama style attack slowls over 20-30s and then an instant sends it off, same general conceptual idea though, but of a bad fit as that's how some FF games made summons work)

But back to the topic of evolved-WHM, I guess I kinda would only want to see cast bars on the big heals and the single biggest nuke or so. Kinda how they're doing it. Of course, from my perspective those cast bars are too quick, and everything else (despite being instant) is too slow, but I suspect lowering the GCD clock is a bigger ask on a technical level. Something I suspect will happen. It has to, eventually. Much like the ability removal now had to happen, and honestly like 4+ xpacks ago.

[Shurrikhan]

I made a small edit based on the conversation for the lack of Surecast. I gave Aethereal Shift 2 charges and made it a knockback immunity while standing still and a dash in the current direction, similar to how Bard was displayed, while moving. Thoughts on that?

Better than dependence on Role Actions, for sure.

[BlueMageQuina]

Snip

I like: that you've kept Cure and Medica upgrading to Solace and Rapture for regen. I like working with role skills like Esuna for additional effects so long that each job gets their own additional effect, be that each on the same role action or each on a different one. Divine Caress no longer being a shield but instead increasing HP by its overheal is interesting. I do think that some would say its feels SCH (Protraction), but since its by overheal, its definitely very pure healer in design to me. Keeping with the theme that there are no dots, so you instead divided Dia and Glare by instacast and cast time, that's a nice touch. Aetherial Shift. The idea of Surecast being on your movement button and the conditional difference is "Am I moving or not?" sounds like it could be bad, but also sounds like the tiniest piece of player skill expression. And I like player skill expression.

I'm indifferent to: Stuns on the combo attacks of Dia and Glare seem oddly placed. It makes it so you can't really control your stuns on a single target who you may actually want to stun for a particular cast. It also could be a little annoying seeing "Can't be stunned" far more often than we do currently--Don't hate it, but not in love with it. Float is cute and fun, a good reference to other FFs. However, it doesn't fit 14 unless more pitfalls, hazardous floors, or puddles are available in content AND other jobs had some way of handling it. This isn't your intent but: imagine requiring a WHM for the dungeon Drowned City of Skalla because it is the only job at all who can make you walk over the pits between the 2nd and final boss. Now devs would never let that happen, making Floats other uses more reliable. Float over damage puddles and reduce damage to 0 to mitigate more damage than shield healers? I just don't think they would add this. If they did, it would be a role action instead, and classes like Ninja and Bard would also probably get some sort of "trap damage" mechanics.

I don't like: Assize's 40s cooldown if the healing gauge doesn't automatically generate lilies every 20s as it does now (you didn't say this, it's just not clear). It indicates that I have to expend Assize on cooldown just to ensure I get half the healing that is currently generated by the Healing Gauge. However, if Holy III grants Sanctity for lilies on a 20s cooldown, I guess I have to upkeep both Assize and Holy to get more Lilies than I have now. That's not so bad, just moves DOT maintenance to Lily maintenance. I understand that you got rid of Tetra, but Bene being both 2 stacks AND a 60s charge time, down from 180s, is a bit egregious. You could seriously do too much content with only Bene like this.

[ty_taurus]

Snip for length

I don't think I updated this, but I mentioned earlier that I could move the stun to just High Dia. Which if you did want to hold it for a specific cast, what you could do is precast Dia, then go back to Glare > High Glare while sitting on High Dia and then cast it when you need to stun.

Assize doesn't make up half your lilies in the build. I added the lily bloom basically as a way to guarantee you have a blood lily nourish on Afflatus Solace/Rapture/Esuna III, but I understand the concern of having aspects of your healing tied to the Assize cast. I wanted to have one more aspect of damage first because it helps take pressure off your GCDs to be so high in potency for balance, which the numbers I listed could very well need adjustment. I just chose nice round numbers for communicating the idea. Also, it adds a little more variance to your DPS gameplay. And thing is, if the extra healing it provides through a lily and Solace/Rapture aren't things you feel like you can fully utilize, then you're not really losing anything just reaping the benefits of the damage anyway. But I do understand not wanting to waste resources even if they aren't needed. I feel similarly about Kardia procs. That said, you do always have Aquaveil as a more neutral option for lily usage if you don't have a lot of reasons to heal. It's also helpful for MP management. In hindsight I don't love the regen I added to it though. I did it so that it would feel like a job always benefits from a secondary effect even if you cast Aquaveil on a job that doesn't care about MP or can't generate more for balance reasons (like Black Mage or Dark Knight), but in retrospect I think it'd be better without. EDIT: I made a clarification that MP goes to magic jobs and HP to physical jobs. I think that could work nicely.

Personally, I just don't think single target healing is that important when push comes to shove for Benediction. In content that really pushes healing, you still need to heal the party anyway. If it still feels too powerful, though, what I could do instead is something similar to what I did with Holy III. Like, I could give Benediction a 120 second cooldown instead of a 60 second cooldown with two charges. Instead, you can use it off cooldown as much as you want, but each use decreases the effectiveness by half until the cooldown resets. So you use it and its a 100% heal, then a 50% heal, then a 25% heal, then a 12.5% heal etc. It gives you a few opportunities to use it like Tetra but the power of a raw 100% heal is still more limited. Thoughts?