[Megathread] Final Fantasy XIV

[Kyriani]

AST having higher potencies on top of their buffs is a bit idiotic, I agree.

The rest though, seems like typical raider "all WHM getting benched!!11" hyperbole.

It's really not though.

When you have two healing spots to fill and of the three healers available one has no group/raid utility and the other two do. Why would you bring the one with no utility? WHM needed to get some sort of utility to give them comparable worth to SCH and AST. Healing potency means very little so long as the healer can meet the healing threshold required to pass the content, and ALL healers need to be able to meet that threshold for balance reasons (and they do). But once you meet that threshold, more healing on top of that doesn't help but group utility does. When one of those three healers doesn't bring any group utility, they don't get asked to come along or get asked to swap to a healer job that DOES bring something useful to the table.

WHM's situation is only made worse by the fact that a) stoneskin removed, b) Plenary Indulgence (the new lvl 70 skill) does absolutely NOTHING if you haven't been spamming enough cures to proc confession at least once on everyone, and c) FIVE skills were stripped from CNJ/WHM and moved to shared role actions whereas the other two healers lost one or two.

WHM offers significantly less to its groups that SCH and AST.

[Granyala]

Yup. No idea if there was a change to the MP cost (hadn't checked if that info was available) but yeah it's only 50 potency now which basically isn't worth using unless buffed going into launch.

Feel like you could basically drop it off your bar.

Maybe they intend it as a leveling version and want AB to succeed it.

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WHM offers significantly less to its groups that SCH and AST.

That one is certainly true, but it's my experience from WoW that most guilds prefer skilled players over FOTM classes.

OFC with the ease of job changing in FF and the similarity between WHM and AST right now, I wouldn't be surprised if many were to coerce their healers to specc AST and be done with it.

[Kyriani]

Maybe they intend it as a leveling version and want AB to succeed it.

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That one is certainly true, but it's my experience from WoW that most guilds prefer skilled players over FOTM classes.

OFC with the ease of job changing in FF and the similarity between WHM and AST right now, I wouldn't be surprised if many were to coerce their healers to specc AST and be done with it.

Yea the pressure is already on in some groups and 4.0 isn't even live yet. We've got WHM's clamouring to get SCH/AST weapons to level in SB so they can be ready for healing as a "desirable" healing job. It's a real shame to see. If nothing changes between now and release, I'm expecting WHM to get a load of buffs in 4.1 similar to how AST was buffed in early HW.

[Wrecktangle]

AST having higher potencies on top of their buffs is a bit idiotic, I agree.

The rest though, seems like typical raider "all WHM getting benched!!11" hyperbole.

Not about that. It's about fun. What new tool/gameplay element did you get as a WHM that's fun?

Lillies? No. They're RNG to begin with, which could be good, except RNG to reduce the cooldown of abilities that don't always get used on CD isn't good gameplay. That's not even counting the fact that they're based on your least desirable button presses. I mean imagine if DRG got BotD stacks by casting Javelin Throw. Yeah that would suck.

Stone 4? No.

Confessions? Yeah, how often do you heal an entire party one by one with Cure/Cure2? That's what I thought lol.

Thin air? That's kinda cool. I'll give you that.

Divine Benison - it's basically stoneskin, but instant. Impactful sure, but not exactly terribly exciting.

Then look at what the other healers got:

AST:

Earthly Star is pretty sick.

Drawing 4 cards is pretty sick.

Having a new tool to convert bad cards to DPS/HPS is pretty sick.

Hyper Lightspeed is nothing special, but it's just barely better than WHM's Lillies so...

SCH:

They get the DPS buff which is cool.

The cool fairy tether link.

More aetherflow

and a proactive heal.

Certainly less fun than AST, but more than WHM.

[Bullettime]

Maybe they intend it as a leveling version and want AB to succeed it.

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That one is certainly true, but it's my experience from WoW that most guilds prefer skilled players over FOTM classes.

OFC with the ease of job changing in FF and the similarity between WHM and AST right now, I wouldn't be surprised if many were to coerce their healers to specc AST and be done with it.

Your last point is the main issue in a game like FF. If all three jobs can handle healing the content and one has big dick overheals and the other two get actual utility, and the only thing stopping you from switching is a weapon, then yeah it sucks for the job getting left out. WHM is looking like being in a healer version of the tank dilemma from early HW.

[MrTharne]

About WHM & the Cure/Cure2 RNG. Would it be possible, with the right comp/setup (Caster using the MP transfer skill for example) to allow WHM to solo heal content with the use of 5 dps by shifting their healing on a intensive Cure/Cure2 usage ?

Just asking.

[Granyala]

Confessions? Yeah, how often do you heal an entire party one by one with Cure/Cure2? That's what I thought lol.

Quite often, actually.
I put up Medica II (In 4mans Regen too if needed) and unless damage is severe enough to warrant the additional use of Assize/Medica 1, I use exactly these 2 buttons to offset HP discrepancies or top people off. It depends on the incoming damage.

I don't raid savage though, so no clue about high end healing.

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About WHM & the Cure/Cure2 RNG. Would it be possible, with the right comp/setup (Caster using the MP transfer skill for example) to allow WHM to solo heal content with the use of 5 dps by shifting their healing on a intensive Cure/Cure2 usage ?

Doubtful, because the group would be vulnerable to heavy AoE damage that exceeds the limits of one healer.
EG: Niddhogg ex pulse AoE.
Even with AoE spells, there is only so much I can do within the timeframe of one GCD.

[Kazgrel]

A lot of people thinking DRK is dead also didn't notice the whole Darkside not draining MP bit. A small change like that has a drastic impact on the spec and the changes are fantastic with that in mind, aside from the Unleash nerf where you can almost drop it off your bar now after you get AD.

The Unleash nerf and loss of Scourge are really the only things I'm disappointed with on DRK. Scourge being gone is one less thing to manage, I suppose (WAR lost fracture as well).

Edit: Maybe the threat modifier for unleash got bumped up to compensate? Not that low level DRK struggled with AoE threat generation.

The Darkside change alone makes the job a shitload better. I'm just wondering how often we'll be weaving in Dark Arts for Syphon as well as Souleater. At face value, I figure that will only happen with Blood Weapon/Price up.

[Kyriani]

For the confession mechanic to not suck, they need to make it apply to the WHM not the person he's using cure on, and the stacks of confession need to have no duration (much like Aetherflow stacks).

[Bullettime]

The Unleash nerf and loss of Scourge are really the only things I'm disappointed with on DRK. Scourge being gone is one less thing to manage, I suppose (WAR lost fracture as well).

I don't mind the loss of either tbh. Just more confused with Unleash but I guess they want AD to replace it but don't want to cut Unleash because of its PvP usage maybe?

As for Scourge, hardly surprised when they killed all of the super boring dots for basically all melee. The blood gauge appears to fill quickly which should give us something else active to manage.

[Granyala]

The Unleash nerf and loss of Scourge are really the only things I'm disappointed with on DRK. Scourge being gone is one less thing to manage, I suppose (WAR lost fracture as well).

Scourge was the DoT, right? (Terrible at names)
If so: good riddance. Esp that it interrupts combos always annoyed me to no end.

[Kazgrel]

So I'm finally getting around to seeing what all the QQ is about on WHM. I think it's a bit overblown, but I do see a few "huh?" things.

- Lilies: They should have a chance to proc from Stone use, at the very least; maybe also let Aero ticks add to it as well. Not a fan of the idea that they are encouraging heal spamming. For farm content where you could spam the shit out of Stone and put those reduced-cd Assizes to great use (Assize stands to benefit immensely from the Cleric Stance change).
- Divine Benison: This would be a cool ability if it were an effect on your entire party and not just one target. Either that, or reduce the CD (60 seconds for essentially a Stoneskin, lol)
- Plenary Indulgence: This thing is worded weird as fuck. The way I'm interpeting it, the confession stacks apply to other people, and only those other people get the heal from this ability? If it works like that...it's stupid. @Kyriani just touched on the way it should work for it to be an effective ability. Could still retain the stack duration limit for all I care, but make the confession stacks work akin to how MNKs now obtain chakra from other players, only in this case, it's simply from healing them...seeing that this ability is specifically a heal, I don't see it as being a big an issue for it to only obtain charges from healing.

That being said, I do agree with the idea that the last thing WHM needs is "moar healing". The heal output is through the roof. Divine Benison is an idea in the right direction (although I would've simply had Stoneskin 2 be usable in combat but retain that ungodly long cast time so that in combat use would essentially require swiftcast or PoM).

Not a complete trainwreck. It can be adjusted, assuming that is needed. Who knows, maybe the new meta in Stormblood is "every fucking body is taking damage from all the things in here" because SE decides to ramp up AoE damage and all sort of other shit in order to discourage healer dpsing in pve content (for the record, I highly doubt this becomes the case...but we'll see soon enough).

Edit: For some dumbass reason, I got the idea that I'd love to see WoW's Penance (or some variant of that spell) be a WHM ability, since that loosely goes with the whole "dual use" power like Assize has. Boring copy/paste ripoff of an idea, but I'd take it.

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I don't mind the loss of either tbh. Just more confused with Unleash but I guess they want AD to replace it but don't want to cut Unleash because of its PvP usage maybe?

As for Scourge, hardly surprised when they killed all of the super boring dots for basically all melee. The blood gauge appears to fill quickly which should give us something else active to manage.

Yup, I forgot they gutted a bunch of those from other melee also (MNK still retained Demolish, and that's ok, because that one hits hard).

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Scourge was the DoT, right? (Terrible at names)
If so: good riddance. Esp that it interrupts combos always annoyed me to no end.

Yup, Scourge is (soon to be was) the DoT.

[Kyriani]

stuff about confession/PI.

The way Plenary Indulgence works is as follows:

You cast Cure or Cure II on yourself or another player... there's a 20% chance that the person you healed with Cure/CureII gains a stack of Confession (has a 30 sec duration)

When you cast Plenary Indulgence, if you or any nearby allies have stacks of confession on them you/they get healed based on how many stacks they have. Zero stacks = zero healing. Anyone who has 1 stack gets a 400 potency heal, anyone with 2 stacks gets 500 potency and 3 stacks is 600 potency.

Can you imagine how many cures you'll have to spam to proc even one confession on everyone in an 8 man group, never mind 2 or 3? How many stacks do you think will fall off by the time you actually need to hit PI? The whole mechanic will be very very difficult to take advantage of in any meaningful way and spamming all those cures means not dpsing.

If the confessions just stacked on the caster like aetherflow, you could bank them up throughout a fight while casting cure and blow your load with PI. If it worked like that then PI would be a pretty nice skill, but as it stands, not so much.

[Kazgrel]

The way Plenary Indulgence works is as follows:

You cast Cure or Cure II on yourself or another player... there's a 20% chance that the person you healed with Cure/CureII gains a stack of Confession (has a 30 sec duration)

When you cast Plenary Indulgence, if you or any nearby allies have stacks of confession on them you/they get healed based on how many stacks they have. Zero stacks = zero healing. Anyone who has 1 stack gets a 400 potency heal, anyone with 2 stacks gets 500 potency and 3 stacks is 600 potency.

Can you imagine how many cures you'll have to spam to proc even one confession on everyone in an 8 man group, never mind 2 or 3? How many stacks do you think will fall off by the time you actually need to hit PI? The whole mechanic will be very very difficult to take advantage of in any meaningful way and spamming all those cures means not dpsing.

If the confessions just stacked on the caster like aetherflow, you could bank them up throughout a fight while casting cure and blow your load with PI. If it worked like that then PI would be a pretty nice skill, but as it stands, not so much.

Yeah, figured my interpetation was correct; I simply didn't want to believe just because how underwhelming that means this skill (a level 70 ability, no less) is.

I suppose one way to describe it would be for cure/cure 2 granting what would essentially be Holy Power from WoW's paladin, then you use those charges for the heal. I mean, that's essentially what you and I are pining for (which would make this ability a hell of a lot more useful, even though it's redundant in the WHM toolkit). I suppose Aetherflow is a more FF14 way of putting it.

[Aurimas]

Unlike professional arguers, I'm not gonna say too much about classes I don't know super well.

I don't think the WHM stuff was so terrible though. A bit of "meh". A bit of situational. A bit of probabaly never get used.

I didn't know that confession had a duration though. I actually thought it sounded very good until you said that. If it didn't have a duration, eventually everyone would have a little, and it would just be another big AoE heal. Usefulness dependant on how fast you needed it in a given fight.

Lillys seem silly. Seem shoehorned into giving WHM a resource. The effect is fine, recuded CDs... it just seems a little pointless. Depends on if or how fast they decay I guess. If they decay, it is pointless. Should have just lowered the CD on the skills. If they don't decay, it's just silly that it take a couple min before your CDs become reduced. The spender seems kind of useless, so it seems to be all about the CDs.

Ultimately there's just not much change. They were fine healers before. They're fine healers now. Just not much new.

It's pretty much how I feel about SCH. With the exception of that damage CD... which I smell as being OP and getting a fast nerf. Everything else is kinda "meh" or situational or useless.

I'm not complaining though. I was a fine healer before, I'm a fine healer now. Just with one big button that's about to get the nerf bat.

I'd comment on the skills more, but I'm still considering that op-ed about the changes, and don't want to repeat myself.

[Kyriani]

Yeah, figured my interpetation was correct; I simply didn't want to believe just because how underwhelming that means this skill (a level 70 ability, no less) is.

I suppose one way to describe it would be for cure/cure 2 granting what would essentially be Holy Power from WoW's paladin, then you use those charges for the heal. I mean, that's essentially what you and I are pining for (which would make this ability a hell of a lot more useful, even though it's redundant in the WHM toolkit). I suppose Aetherflow is a more FF14 way of putting it.

Yea exactly! If confession stacked on the WHM like Aetherflow, then PI is a much better tool that can be used strategically. Stacks could be banked for an incoming big boss aoe. PI, even with only 1 stack, would have a higher potency than Assize, and with 3 stacks its double Assize's heal, making it a powerful tool to recover from raid-wide damage quickly.

[Kazgrel]

Yea exactly! If confession stacked on the WHM like Aetherflow, then PI is a much better tool that can be used strategically. Stacks could be banked for an incoming big boss aoe. PI even with only 1 stack would have a higher potency than Assize, and with 3 stacks its double Assize's heal, making it a powerful tool to recover from raid-wide damage quickly.

I'm also wondering why Regen ticks can't be part of that (even if at a much lower percentage chance). Granted, they will get use due to efficiency, but still...not a huge fan of the "hurr durr spam Cure/Cure 2 so you can do all the cool stuff" they seemed to double down on. WHM was already the "boring" choice of healer among the 3. That stigma isn't exactly a compliment.

[Remilia]

Any idea how Bio is working for SCH? SMN's Bio gets replaced each rank but SCH's said it jumps Bio 1 to Bio 3. So Bio 2 still being kept?

[Aurimas]

Any idea how Bio is working for SCH? SMN's Bio gets replaced each rank but SCH's said it jumps Bio 1 to Bio 3. So Bio 2 still being kept?

Edit: Upon re-review I can't find the skill I was talking about. Let me keep checking. You might be right

[Remilia]

Edit: Upon re-review I can't find the skill I was talking about. Let me keep checking. You might be right

SMN indeed have the Bio 2 to 3 but SCH doesn't, which is what confuses me.