Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood

[threads]

Nothing really new coming... Its the same stuff we have had since Realm Reborn, with new skins.

I had hoped healing would become more fun after having played white mage since release and I'm kinda bumped to see no fundamental changes to any of the healing classes, or just a class that isnt DPS.

Ill stay on my WHM I guess.

what are you talking about? they've been saying for the last 6 months that healing and tanking classes are being changed in stormblood.

[Wrecktangle]

Someone actually did say that, and I was responding to that person.

I skimmed some of the posts. You're presenting a list of subjective opinions as though they are objective facts. I can understand why you guys don't like it. I'm just saying there is risk/reward gameplay around it and the developers (and some players) are probably okay with that. Not every ability is about fun. There are lots of not fun abilities that I push to use abilities that are fun. Fun is ultimately subjective. I promise you out of all the people playing this game there are absolutely people who do think it is fun to push cleric stance.

See here's the thing though. I can say that getting an arm amputated isn't fun. That's not subjective IMO. That's universally accepted. I can say that getting a root canal isn't fun, that's also universally accepted. I pose the question that CS isn't fun because of its implementation and gameplay, not because of its potential for skill/purpose etc. I fail to see or find a single player in the game who enjoys PRESSING the CS button. That's my point. Ask any DRG if they enjoy pushing their Gierskogul hotkey. That's the difference. Even aside from that if but a single person says it is fun, that doesn't invalidate my argument in any capacity. When something like that exists, and its only existence is to fulfill a mechanical purpose devoid entirely of fun it should be reworked.

This is a game people play for entertainment. Yes every ability should be about fun.

Agreed.

The obvious "fix" for this is to have damage be higher relative to tank health, so healers are required to be constantly healing. That's fine, I guess, but realistically it leaves any healers without significant up-front healing at a severe disadvantage. It also completely marginalises what little self-healing tanks do have too. I don't really think that's the way to go, it leaves your healers stuck playing whack-a-mole and leads to an environment where success and failure is based more around raw numbers than using your abilities well.

Ideally if we had this type of paradigm you'd have personal defensives, and you'd have healer cooldowns that allow them to catch up. Without those mechanics that healing style would likely never work. In WoW managing outgoing raid damage in hard content is 100% contingent on players using personals optimally and healers coordinating all of their available cooldowns based on cooldowns and strength.

I would keep having your damaging spells give you a small buff to your healing, but I'd have casting a heal give you a significantly larger buff to your damage. You will rarely cast heals while solo, so I'd tune the numbers around that assumption. It wouldn't really affect solo play much, although you would be losing the 10% bonus damage from Cleric Stance, you would gain at least that much, and possiably even more, from having a single stack of the +damage buff.

It would work just fine for group play since casting damaging spells improves your healing, albeit at a much lower percentage. Managing it properly might be a little bit tricky at first, especially getting it stacked, however to maintain it all you'd need to do is cast one DoT every 60 seconds.

The huge downside to this however is you'd have to balance all future encounters around the assumption that every healer is going to be at max stacks at almost all times. You've gone from being able to DPS feeling like a reward for clever play towards being forced to DPS to avoid the punishment of losing your Healing Stacks. I'm not so sure I'd be on board with that kind of idea, since negative incentives tend to be far less effective than positive ones.

I don't like the idea of just maintaining a single DoT every 60s. That basically defeats the entire purpose of what I was saying. I also don't like the idea of balancing encounters on the assumption that both healers would be max stacks > 90% uptime. That also defeats the entire purpose of my proposal. It needs to be more organic. It needs to flow smoothly.

That's not remotely how game design works. Throwing everything in "because it'll be fun" can ultimately tank your design.

Eh - I disagree. You should in theory be developing your game to have each ability be impactful and fun in some manner.

I get the logic behind that line of thought, but it isn't how any spec is designed. I can't think of any class in any mmo I play that doesn't use some boring/weak abilities to build up to more fun abilities. Looking at dragoon the first 2 abilities in each combo are pretty uninteresting. Heavy thrust is pretty dull as well. They all build up to more "fun" abilities. I don't really want those abilities removed or changed. They might be lame individually, but they contribute to a greater whole that is interesting. Maybe just to lessen the number of keybinds since dragoon is pretty ability heavy, but not because of them being fun or not fun.

Ultimately fun is subjective, so maybe you find those weaker "builder" abilities fun.

All 3 DRG examples you gave are what I consider to be perfect examples of needing rework LOL. They're all very boring that serve no fun purpose except to mechanically limit you.

I don't think the 1 -> 2-> 3 paradigm is honestly good. It's boring and rigid and nothing exciting comes from it. The most exciting thing about FT is ani-cancelling it into Jump because it looks and feels cool to do. Nothing else about it is fun.

In BNS, an Assassins Mist Slash would normally be a boring ability (FYI: it's just clicking left mouse button). Except it does these things:

Grants resource, can shorten the animation time of your harder hitting ability, can also proc the ability to poison on another ability. Alternatively, you can change it to increase the damage of your next harder hitting ability.

That is fun.

I'd like to see that with a mix of how ninja's mudras work.

You have 3 buttons that will change, but other buttons will combo as well.

So you'd have combos like
1 > 2 > 3
1 > 1 > 3
1 > 3 > 2
1 > 3 > 2
1 > 3 > 1
1 > 2 > 2
1 > 1 > 2
Heck, why even have 1 be the only opening? Some combos could trigger with 3 > 3 > 2 or 3 > 2 > 2 and so on and so forth.

With the combo changing the keybind to other abilities, you could make a lot of variations with just 3 buttons triggering other button skill changes, etc. Might be a coding nightmare, but the devs are smart, right?

Also, they need to find a way that dragoons are AoE immune when they cast jump. That was Kain's bread & butter avoidance in FF IV.

I'm actually much more open to this idea than I expected. You'd then have a 4th hotkey that contextually updates to whatever combo you input right? I think that sounds a lot more fun to do than following chains of useless abilities to get into abilities that actually do something.

RE: DRG's and Jump. I can solve your problem instantly, improve the fun of the ability, AND make it make them invincible without making it broken. Ready?

Remove the animation lock completely. This way they come down instantly. Thus the entire time they're in the air (aka.00000000000000001s) they're invincible . Then by making them not awkward people will enjoy using them more, and die less.

Boom.

[Kazgrel]

Nothing really new coming... Its the same stuff we have had since Realm Reborn, with new skins.

I had hoped healing would become more fun after having played white mage since release and I'm kinda bumped to see no fundamental changes to any of the healing classes, or just a class that isnt DPS.

Ill stay on my WHM I guess.

Because they haven't stated a single specific change that is coming (yet)...they are still just giving us the "battle system changes in 4.0" message. I believe they specifically pointed out PLD as one job that will be seeing changes, but they've made it clear they are not the only ones being changed.

WHM is my primary healer job as well so I'm looking forward to what they may do there.

[Faroth]

I'm actually much more open to this idea than I expected. You'd then have a 4th hotkey that contextually updates to whatever combo you input right? I think that sounds a lot more fun to do than following chains of useless abilities to get into abilities that actually do something.

RE: DRG's and Jump. I can solve your problem instantly, improve the fun of the ability, AND make it make them invincible without making it broken. Ready?

Remove the animation lock completely. This way they come down instantly. Thus the entire time they're in the air (aka.00000000000000001s) they're invincible . Then by making them not awkward people will enjoy using them more, and die less.

Boom.

I don't think you'd need a fourth as each chain can result in something already. The only reason mudra needs a fourth to trigger ninjutsu is that each mudra does nothing other than.

Think of NIN's actual moves. Their first attack opens two other abilities. You can apply a DoT or you can proceed to the next step of a 3 chain combo.

That could simply become

1 > 1 = DoT
1 > 2 = proceeding through rotation
1 > 2 > 2 = apply slashing debuff
1 > 2 > 3 = proceeding through damage combo

And you could vary it more with "how does it change if you open with ability 3" from there. You could probably make this more complicated/complex than most would want it to be using the concept. You could actually build 27 combos off 3 buttons with different orders. That's probably a bit much.

I didn't like it at first either, but it had been presented that I wasn't thinking beyong "press 1, it changes to 2 and you press 1 again so it changes to 3 so you press 1 again."

[Wrecktangle]

I don't think you'd need a fourth as each chain can result in something already. The only reason mudra needs a fourth to trigger ninjutsu is that each mudra does nothing other than.

Maybe I am misunderstanding. So you press 1 > 3 > 2 then what happens? Or is the entire exercise just to delete the rigidity? I'm 100% ok if that was it. This way you could bake effects into "lesser" abilities thus making them more fun to use. That's just not where my brain initially went. I was under the impression it would be like certain combos of abilities would activate a combo ability that would contextually update depending on the preceding buttons, be it 1, 2, or 3 presses what have you. A la identical to mudras, but based of abilities.

[StrawberryZebra]

Ideally if we had this type of paradigm you'd have personal defensives, and you'd have healer cooldowns that allow them to catch up. Without those mechanics that healing style would likely never work. In WoW managing outgoing raid damage in hard content is 100% contingent on players using personals optimally and healers coordinating all of their available cooldowns based on cooldowns and strength.

The healing requirement doesn't need to be massively increased, but increasing it to the point where a Scholar pet alone can't do 80% of the required healing alone would be a good start to move towards this kind of model. Going with the assumption that a tank will need at least a 400 Potency heal every GCD while in combat and adjusting the damage from there would be a good move too. It would mean that, unless you overgear the content, your healer will be required mostly just to chain cast heals onto the tank. It's not a great solution by any means, but it does simplify a lot for your average healer by removing their damage from the equation entirely.

To be blunt, for those people who adamantly refuse to DPS while playing a healer, a change like this would take them from barely contributing to being a skilled healer instantly, and they're who I was aiming it at. It's a quick and dirty solution to the "problem" however, and not one I would support.

I don't like the idea of just maintaining a single DoT every 60s. That basically defeats the entire purpose of what I was saying. I also don't like the idea of balancing encounters on the assumption that both healers would be max stacks > 90% uptime. That also defeats the entire purpose of my proposal. It needs to be more organic. It needs to flow smoothly.

I was aiming more at smoothing out your suggestion for solo play. In that respect, having to cast a heal every 60 seconds or so for a signifcant damage buff isn't a terrible trade off when you consider that you'll likely be healing yourself every now and then anyway.

Truth be told though, I've always considered any stacking system to be rather unwieldy. Systems where you alternate from one button to the next, as would be the case should the buff only affect the next spell, are also pretty awkward to play with too especially when you'd have to throw in target swaps from your tank to the boss every button press. Macros can help out here, but FF14's macros do seem to be far more limited than in other MMOs.

As for actual solutions, there's a couple that spring to mind, (other than a retread of the Cleric Stance discussion, of course). The core of the issue is that healers need some way to level up while playing solo. Most MMO's get around this by allowing you to change your spec from being a healer to a DPS class, so perhaps there could be a good starting point. Offering the Conjourer the option to branch off into a DPS job too would allow them to do solo content competantly, call it the Elementalist or something, without affecting their healing at all. The Astrologian, and any future healers, will be more difficult to fit into this kind of model, but it wouldn't be impossible by any means.

With this kind of design you could crank up the potency on healer-only DPS spells to the point of absurdity without breaking them since they'd still scale with Int. It would flow nicely since you could DPS when you had the option without any additional button presses or strings attached. The downside is that your DPS wouldn't really scale at all other than with your weapon. It would feel very unsatisfying to be iLevel 280 and doing barely more DPS than a guy who just hit level 60.

[Faroth]

Maybe I am misunderstanding. So you press 1 > 3 > 2 then what happens? Or is the entire exercise just to delete the rigidity? I'm 100% ok if that was it. This way you could bake effects into "lesser" abilities thus making them more fun to use. That's just not where my brain initially went. I was under the impression it would be like certain combos of abilities would activate a combo ability that would contextually update depending on the preceding buttons, be it 1, 2, or 3 presses what have you. A la identical to mudras, but based of abilities.

Honestly, I could see it like mudras too, just don't see it as an absolute necessity.

To answer your question, you press 1 > 3 > 2 and then... you press another combination just the same as you do now. Whether that's your "reapply debuff" combo, "reapply dot" combo, or "direct damage combo" as needed.

It's more a concept I've seen suggested as a way to reduce button bloat without overhauling rotations entirely and I now think it could work.

Right now you've got Spinning edge and Shadow fang as two separate buttons. They could become a single button with Spinning edge becoming shadow fang after it's pressed. Then you press the same button to use Shadow Fang or you press another button for Gust Slash. Same rotation, same abilities, but you've just trimmed a button off the hot bars.

Same thing applies if you press Spinning Edge > Gust Slash then Gust Slash could become Dancing Edge and you either press it again for that or press the third button for Aeolian Edge.

Now you've trimmed two buttons off the hot bar without changing anything about the abilities or rotation.

[Wrecktangle]

The healing requirement doesn't need to be massively increased, but increasing it to the point where a Scholar pet alone can't do 80% of the required healing alone would be a good start to move towards this kind of model. Going with the assumption that a tank will need at least a 400 Potency heal every GCD while in combat and adjusting the damage from there would be a good move too. It would mean that, unless you overgear the content, your healer will be required mostly just to chain cast heals onto the tank. It's not a great solution by any means, but it does simplify a lot for your average healer by removing their damage from the equation entirely.

Ok fair enough. One thing I want to draw attention to is the premise that a heal every gcd on tank isn't what I want either as I don't think that's very fun. Damage should be going out to everyone, sometimes more than one player at the same time and frequently under this paradigm. I always imagined it should be hard to keep people topped off. I mean like best of the best difficulty to consistently have every single player topped off.

To be blunt, for those people who adamantly refuse to DPS while playing a healer, a change like this would take them from barely contributing to being a skilled healer instantly, and they're who I was aiming it at. It's a quick and dirty solution to the "problem" however, and not one I would support.

So you're against the idea of a 0 dps healer paradigm? or just your proposed solution to it?

I was aiming more at smoothing out your suggestion for solo play. In that respect, having to cast a heal every 60 seconds or so for a signifcant damage buff isn't a terrible trade off when you consider that you'll likely be healing yourself every now and then anyway.

Truth be told though, I've always considered any stacking system to be rather unwieldy. Systems where you alternate from one button to the next, as would be the case should the buff only affect the next spell, are also pretty awkward to play with too especially when you'd have to throw in target swaps from your tank to the boss every button press. Macros can help out here, but FF14's macros do seem to be far more limited than in other MMOs.

To clarify the buff would effect the next spell cast. So If you cast 3x healing spells all within say 10s, your next DPS would be increased by say 30% (10% per stack) if cast before 10s ran out and vice versa. At this point you'd be back to 0 stacks. You might continue DPS'ing at this point, or turn back to healing depending on situation. Either way stacking the buff again in whichever direction you went.

Ideally, mouseover macros and focus frames would cover that, but I get where you are going there.

As for actual solutions, there's a couple that spring to mind, (other than a retread of the Cleric Stance discussion, of course). The core of the issue is that healers need some way to level up while playing solo. Most MMO's get around this by allowing you to change your spec from being a healer to a DPS class, so perhaps there could be a good starting point. Offering the Conjourer the option to branch off into a DPS job too would allow them to do solo content competantly, call it the Elementalist or something, without affecting their healing at all. The Astrologian, and any future healers, will be more difficult to fit into this kind of model, but it wouldn't be impossible by any means.

That solution is overly complicated. You could just make their DPS spells useful and powerful and accomplish the same thing without adding new jobs that would confuse people (which FWIW I have basically likened too).

With this kind of design you could crank up the potency on healer-only DPS spells to the point of absurdity without breaking them since they'd still scale with Int. It would flow nicely since you could DPS when you had the option without any additional button presses or strings attached. The downside is that your DPS wouldn't really scale at all other than with your weapon. It would feel very unsatisfying to be iLevel 280 and doing barely more DPS than a guy who just hit level 60.

You could also just crank up their spells to the point of absurdity, but make it an actual drain on MP (my mechanic could offset this by stacking mana reduction or mana regeneration per spell in group content). This would be balanced in group content because at best a healer can do DPS level damage for like 20s before they run OOM, but they'd be not healing, so you'd be dying/wiping. You could even tune the MP costs tighter so that they OOM even faster raw DPS'ing but have it provide enough damage to level efficiently and would require at a minimum some participating in the mechanic to ensure adequate MP restoration.

Honestly, I could see it like mudras too, just don't see it as an absolute necessity.

To answer your question, you press 1 > 3 > 2 and then... you press another combination just the same as you do now. Whether that's your "reapply debuff" combo, "reapply dot" combo, or "direct damage combo" as needed.

It's more a concept I've seen suggested as a way to reduce button bloat without overhauling rotations entirely and I now think it could work.

Right now you've got Spinning edge and Shadow fang as two separate buttons. They could become a single button with Spinning edge becoming shadow fang after it's pressed. Then you press the same button to use Shadow Fang or you press another button for Gust Slash. Same rotation, same abilities, but you've just trimmed a button off the hot bars.

Same thing applies if you press Spinning Edge > Gust Slash then Gust Slash could become Dancing Edge and you either press it again for that or press the third button for Aeolian Edge.

Now you've trimmed two buttons off the hot bar without changing anything about the abilities or rotation.

Understood. I think a lot of people agree that branching paths could be good.

One other idea that I really like would be using say 2 base DPS abilities (using DRG as an example) and using TP as a resource that goes up and down much more rapidly. Basically very weak attacks generate more TP + maybe bonus effects, and very strong attacks cost a lot of TP and have more powerful effects.

One other piece to this idea I like that I think some people could maybe get on board with. What if going in combo (so 1 > 1, or 1 > 2 > 1, etc.) had a much shorter GCD, then out of combo served to slow to the GCD back to reset/planning stage for which you wanted to do next? This way it felt like you were actually doing a fast combo and you'd keep a lot of the tactical pacing, but speed up a few GCD's for those that think its too slow? Mechanically it'd look like this Pressing 1 would incur a 1.5s GCD (reduced by skill speed) pressing 1 again would then incur the full 2.5s GCD as it "ended" the combo. Pressing 2, would be 1.5s, then pressing 1 would again be 1.5s and pressing 1 again would lead to a 2.5s "ending" GCD. I think that'd do a lot to spice up the combat. I'd also strongly suggest changes to oGCD's at this point though. Maybe make them stronger, or more situational or less often used off rotation abilities so that you'd use them outside of combos somewhat frequently (say 20-30s cooldowns, up to a minute).

Combat table would look something like this (see below): 1>1 being a TP regenerator, low DPS. 1>2>1 could be a combo that lets you deal bonus damage or shorten the cd on a key oGCD or proc it, say Jump for DRGs? 1>2>2 would be a DoT maybe, but still a smaller TP gain. 2>2 would be a quick and dirty high DPS high TP drain for burst. 2>1>1 could be a high dps, but lower TP drain. 2>1>2 could be a a damage booster. I.e. next combo used deals x% more damage some other special effect. So you'd want to manage TP enough to be able to do 2 back to back high TP drain combos, then maybe resort to small TP gain combos from the 1 tree

1 > 1
1 > 2 > 1
1 > 2 > 2
2 > 2
2 > 1 > 2
2 > 1 > 1

[StrawberryZebra]

So you're against the idea of a 0 dps healer paradigm? or just your proposed solution to it?

I'm against the idea, it was a proposed solution to this problem;

I think you get a lot of healers who just can't be bothered. They want to heal, not dps. You get a lot of others who just don't even know they are expected to dps. Cleric stance, and its "issues", is probably not a huge factor for most people who pick healer and don't dps while doing so.

"Solving" it by forcing the healer to be a healer almost full time is the most effective, and least interesting, way to fix it. It's at least simple enough for those that want it to wrap their heads around, and gives what seems like a majority of the healer population the kind of experience they want out of playing a healer in an MMO. I realise that not everyone would be thrilled about it, but it's a quick and easy fix to do going into a new expansion.

I like being able to DPS as a healer, it offers me more ways that I can contribute to my groups success. Being a full time healer just isn't required at the moment, so theres no reason at all for me not to throw in what DPS I can when I get the chance. FF14 is a refreshing change from the countless other MMO's where being a healer condemns you to doing nothing but filling up green bars. I'd understand if they felt the need to change that model, but for now I'm enjoying being more than just the healing bitch.

To clarify the buff would effect the next spell cast. So If you cast 3x healing spells all within say 10s, your next DPS would be increased by say 30% (10% per stack) if cast before 10s ran out and vice versa. At this point you'd be back to 0 stacks. You might continue DPS'ing at this point, or turn back to healing depending on situation. Either way stacking the buff again in whichever direction you went.

Which takes us back to square one. It's fantastic for group content, encouraging healers to DPS while helping to mitigate some of the risk while doing so, but at the same time is very unwieldy outside of a group. For it to work out in solo content you'd either need the buff to last for significantly longer, 30-60 seconds, or for damaging spells to improve further damaging spells.

Naturally any solution like this would also require DPS spells to scale with your Mind stat rather than Int, which could have some unintended consequences later on down the line. I realise that an on/off DPS mode toggle isn't the most elegant solution, but it does work for all PvE content without adding any unintended consequences.

Ideally, mouseover macros and focus frames would cover that, but I get where you are going there.

Are these even availible in FF14? I've found focus frames, but I'd absolutely love to get some mouseover macros and/or some to cast on your target's target. Good macros and a solid UI can go a long way to smoothing out otherwise awkward gameplay.

That solution is overly complicated. You could just make their DPS spells useful and powerful and accomplish the same thing without adding new jobs that would confuse people (which FWIW I have basically likened too).

No question there, it's a solution that effectively requires making 2 more DPS classes. I can't see Squenix doing that anytime soon, as much as I would like them to.

You could also just crank up their spells to the point of absurdity, but make it an actual drain on MP (my mechanic could offset this by stacking mana reduction or mana regeneration per spell in group content). This would be balanced in group content because at best a healer can do DPS level damage for like 20s before they run OOM, but they'd be not healing, so you'd be dying/wiping. You could even tune the MP costs tighter so that they OOM even faster raw DPS'ing but have it provide enough damage to level efficiently and would require at a minimum some participating in the mechanic to ensure adequate MP restoration.

Extra MP costs would be a poor way to go about achiving parity with DPS classes. There are plenty of times when, even in solo play, you'd end up wanting to cast for more than 20 seconds at a time. FATE bosses for example, most of those take a couple of minutes even with plenty of people involved, and quite a few of the MSQ duties have you doing 5+ minutes of constant combat. Being stuck auto attacking for most of that because you ran out of MP in 20 seconds would be awful.

Flipping it on it's head and having Healing spells cost more MP, while damage spells are cheaper, would be just as bad too. You'd run into the situation where healers want to conserve their MP for their heals rather than "waste" it on DPS even when the chance came up. I do think having to manage MP properly can be an interesting design for healers, it leads to difficult choices being made regarding who and what to spend your MP on which in turn creates some compelling gameplay moments. Unfortunately it works better when you're in a zero healer DPS design paradigm, otherwise damage will always take a back seat to saving your MP.

As for a mechanic to convert damage to MP, I think it would be better suited to being put on another Job as one of their core mechanics. The idea itself is interesting and unique enough that putting it on Jobs that already have a lot going on would be a waste.

[Kazgrel]

Some not-quite-as-bad questions asked through a couple of interviews with Yoshida:

Reddit interview

Mogtalk interview

Kinda disappointed they want to keep the specialist requirements/system in place for crafters, but I understand why they are doing that. I'd simply love to be able to have a fourth specialist, but I doubt they will allow it to expand that far (given the soulstone part of the inventory has to expand for RDM and SAM). That way one player can cover half of the crafting jobs while another covers the rest, so FCs/statics would only "need" 2 crafters (or someone with a crafting alt, heh).

Curious to see if they can capitalize on that "hardcore raid achievement" idea being tossed out there in the Mogtalk interview. Even if they start off with it being as simple as "clear this fight at minimum ilvl", if the rewards are there, people will definitely go.

[TirielWoW]

Are these even availible in FF14? I've found focus frames, but I'd absolutely love to get some mouseover macros and/or some to cast on your target's target. Good macros and a solid UI can go a long way to smoothing out otherwise awkward gameplay.

Mouseover Macros are definitely available.

/ac spellname <mo>

So, /ac Cure <mo>

As an example.

[The Casualty]

Mouseover Macros are definitely available.

/ac spellname <mo>

So, /ac Cure <mo>

As an example.

That is the only way I survive playing Ninja. No way I'm going to lose target to cast Goad, Shadewalker, or Smoke Screen.

[Binaris]

1st. Why is it that these threads always turn into a who can post the "longest reply with the most quotes contest". As if sheer length means you have a good argument?

2nd. How can someone be so opinionated about a game yet just now be learning about mouseover macros? Even the slightest amount of research into playing a healer would have brought this up.

[Wrecktangle]

IWhich takes us back to square one. It's fantastic for group content, encouraging healers to DPS while helping to mitigate some of the risk while doing so, but at the same time is very unwieldy outside of a group. For it to work out in solo content you'd either need the buff to last for significantly longer, 30-60 seconds, or for damaging spells to improve further damaging spells.

Naturally any solution like this would also require DPS spells to scale with your Mind stat rather than Int, which could have some unintended consequences later on down the line. I realise that an on/off DPS mode toggle isn't the most elegant solution, but it does work for all PvE content without adding any unintended consequences.

I don't mention the scaling piece because to me, and this could be my error, it's obvious. Sure there could be potential issues down the line, but that could be said for anything, so again it felt a little too obvious to me to mention. Unless of course you had specific examples of issues.

It's not unwieldy in solo play. You wouldn't use it. You'd go about business as usual, killin and plunderin. Your base DPS would be tuned to solo just fine. Again, not implying it is perfect.

1st. Why is it that these threads always turn into a who can post the "longest reply with the most quotes contest". As if sheer length means you have a good argument?

2nd. How can someone be so opinionated about a game yet just now be learning about mouseover macros? Even the slightest amount of research into playing a healer would have brought this up.

Not sure where you get the idea of this is some kind of contest. Also not sure how you arrived at the conclusion that any specific poster believes that length = quality (that would be ridiculous). Length is merely a result of the desire to respond to multiple ongoing discussions... Do you have anything to actually contribute?

[StrawberryZebra]

Mouseover Macros are definitely available.

Many thanks. I owe you several internet hugs .

2nd. How can someone be so opinionated about a game yet just now be learning about mouseover macros? Even the slightest amount of research into playing a healer would have brought this up.

Because I generally play the game with a controller? Because the in-game information on macros is severely limited? The out of game information is almost exclusively contained on third party sites like Reddit. Not to mention the game really isn't paced fast enough for them to be a requirement - You've got all the time you need to even click your way through most content without keybinds.

It's not unwieldy in solo play. You wouldn't use it. You'd go about business as usual, killin and plunderin. Your base DPS would be tuned to solo just fine. Again, not implying it is perfect.

I'm not sure I agree with it being functionally turned off for solo play. You end up with the situation where a healer would play totally differently in a group than they would solo, almost like having two different specs in one. While a design that works well for other MMOs, I don't think thats what Squenix are aiming at with FF 14. You'd want players to at least be comfortable with the mechanic before they were asked to use it in a group and just ignoring it for solo play prevents that from happening.

One interesting solution to this problem I did come across from someone in game was to make Cleric Stance a passive that triggered when you cast a damaging spell and lasted around 4 seconds, with subsequent casts refreshing the duration. The idea being that you could quickly swap to chain-casting damaging spells easy, but would have a short window of reduced healing effectiveness after each one. With skilled play however one could get around the short duration by having a heal cast finish as the buff was about to expire.

Making the Cleric Stance toggle automatic is one solution I hadn't considered, one that keeps the same basic design as the current one, but removes the clunky button pressing from the process. It also keeps many of the same drawbacks, the same risk vs reward design, the same potential for really skilled healers to shine and improves on the usability aspect for most players. I'm not sure it would be an ideal change, but it's certainly one worth discussing I feel.

[Wrecktangle]

Making the Cleric Stance toggle automatic is one solution I hadn't considered, one that keeps the same basic design as the current one, but removes the clunky button pressing from the process. It also keeps many of the same drawbacks, the same risk vs reward design, the same potential for really skilled healers to shine and improves on the usability aspect for most players. I'm not sure it would be an ideal change, but it's certainly one worth discussing I feel.

I hadn't actually considered it either ha. I like it infinitely more than the existing one and it is definitely worth discussing.

Make all healer DPS and heal spells scale off one stat, update name (I don't think cleric stance fits at this point) and call it a day. This way you could even shift the idea of my mechanic to an actual mechanic on a specific healer, rather than tool it for all of them.

[Faroth]

Might post it on the official forums. Yoshida said at PAX he hates cleric stance, but doesn't see them removing it and he reminded healers that their job was to heal, not do damage.

So if it keeps cleric stance conceptually but removes some clunkiness, it might get attention on the official forums.

[StrawberryZebra]

Might post it on the official forums. Yoshida said at PAX he hates cleric stance, but doesn't see them removing it and he reminded healers that their job was to heal, not do damage.

So if it keeps cleric stance conceptually but removes some clunkiness, it might get attention on the official forums.

You're more than welcome to post any and everything I've suggested wherever. More discussion is always good, especially if it's in a place it might garner developer attention. Though the reason he's reluctant to remove it is because at the end of the day Healers still need a way to level that isn't painfully slow.

While you're at it, suggest a better name for it too. Cleric stance sounds more like something you'd want to be in for healing rather than damage. "Wizard Stance" perhaps? I'd also get behind "Super Mega Ultra Amazing Butt Kicking Stance" too, FYI .

[blackblade]

Unpopular thought: Healers should do decent DPS without cleric stance (obviously lower than a pure damage dealer) and cleric stance should just not be a thing.

They're already trading time spent otherwise healing for damage. if it means that healer damage is somewhat nerfed to account for being able to juggle damage and healing seamlessly, I don't think that's a major issue. It doesn't impact the skill ceiling much, and does a lot to raise the skill floor (and remove a manditory cross-class skill for sch and ast)

[Binaris]

An automatic toggle would be pointless. It is asking the game to play itself for you. The only way it would feasibly work with the same mechanics as today would be after entering cleric stance by casting a damaging ability, you will be debuffed for 5 seconds with a heal reduction debuff. Aside from that, spells like assize serve 2 purposes, dps and healing. Which would that toggle to?

Cleric stance is an active choice and used skillfully can be a major asset to the group. The only change I would ask for is on top of the 5 second cooldown when ENTERING cleric stance, there should be a 5 second cool-down upon exiting it to prevent the toggle off and back on scenario every healer has seen at least once in their career. Lag can be a bitch.

Hell 2 stances might be nice as well. Cleric Stance and Healer stance. So you can macro swap them like warrior and actually change the buttons on the bar like below.

/micon "Defiance"
/ac "Defiance" <me>
/hotbar action "Inner Beast" 2 3
/hotbar action "Steel Cyclone" 2 9