[Megathread] Final Fantasy XIV

[Granyala]

I'd agree with this, but I don't really subscribe to the whole paradigm where "competitive" is everything. To me "viable" has more meaning. As @Granyala said, there will always be min/maxers who sim out and only accept the absolute highest output classes for content, and I'll agree that with FFXIV 8 man cap that will leave out many of the current classes based on whatever the meta currently is, but there's more to the game than the highest level content and more people than the min/max elitists who don't accept anything other than the meta.

Problem is: not only the elite does that. You have countless of the "wannabe hardcore" crowd that often employ these "rules" way more harshly than the actual elite that can judge whether sth is viable or not.

Seen it countless times in WoW, raid leaders making a fuss about crap they read on EJ despite it not mattering at all in the grand scheme.
While I don't think a gameDEVs design should be hamstrung by this behavior, they do have to take it into account somewhat.
@Wrecktangle: ideally I'd love for classes to achieve X through truly different means and concepts but it just doesn't work that way in practice.
All healers need castable AoE. All healers need strong Single target ability, all healers need some form of cooldown (I already feel it pretty badly that, as a WHM I do not have any way to actually MITIGATE damage taken by the group) to do their jobs because we only have 2 healing slots. There can't be a paladin that has no AoE to speak of, there can't be a druid that almost exclusively relies on HoTs. Such a design works well when you can take 5 or 6 healers into your raid but not two. If you only have two, they basically need to have the same tools available or encounter design is absurdly limited by "making all possible combos work".

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I picked up a consistent 220 dps having our WHM swap to AST. Roughly a 4.5% DPS increase for me. We picked up a 1250 rDPS as a team, a little over 3% overall.

Sounds about right to me.
Min maxing to that degree only really matters in savage raiding when you push for parses.
All healers are viable, groups killed God Kefka with WHMs on board plenty of times.

If you cannot hit an enrage, it is typically NOT because you do not have [combo], it is because you are either undergeared of failing somehow.

Not sure about Ultimate though. Can that even be done w/o the perfect Meta?

[Graeham]

Well, it seems like the servers died...

[Mordin Solus]

Well, it seems like the servers died...

nothing like trying to get last minute clears for the week and puff

[Katchii]

I picked up a consistent 220 dps having our WHM swap to AST. Roughly a 4.5% DPS increase for me. We picked up a 1250 rDPS as a team, a little over 3% overall.

Personally speaking (from a raiding standpoint) AST is king here. However, you noted dungeons above, WHM having Holy is more powerful than any card an AST can pull.

That's a fairly good impact, thanks for the information. Another question then, based discussion we've had/ that have been had on this forum; how profound of an impact does that 3% have on you being able to complete the content? We've said on this forum that being able to "do the dance," so to speak, is significantly more important than gearing and damage, except on cutting edge content where you're attempting it practically under geared to begin with. Meaning, would having an WHM and SCH there as opposed to having a AST outright prevent you from clearing?

I'm not denying the advantage, just calling into question how much of an advantage it is based on past discussions.

Problem is: not only the elite does that. You have countless of the "wannabe hardcore" crowd that often employ these "rules" way more harshly than the actual elite that can judge whether sth is viable or not.

Seen it countless times in WoW, raid leaders making a fuss about crap they read on EJ despite it not mattering at all in the grand scheme.
While I don't think a gameDEVs design should be hamstrung by this behavior, they do have to take it into account somewhat.
@Wrecktangle: ideally I'd love for classes to achieve X through truly different means and concepts but it just doesn't work that way in practice.
All healers need castable AoE. All healers need strong Single target ability, all healers need some form of cooldown (I already feel it pretty badly that, as a WHM I do not have any way to actually MITIGATE damage taken by the group) to do their jobs because we only have 2 healing slots. There can't be a paladin that has no AoE to speak of, there can't be a druid that almost exclusively relies on HoTs. Such a design works well when you can take 5 or 6 healers into your raid but not two. If you only have two, they basically need to have the same tools available or encounter design is absurdly limited by "making all possible combos work".

True, but I really only see this in the higher end content that's dominated by the "elitists" whether they be true elitists or the wannabe hardcore variety, and they can be seen a mile away (IMO), and therefore can be avoided fi you're not wanting to deal with that mentality. I don't do Savage or Ultimate, which is where I know this is the most prevalent, but based on discussions throughout MMO's, that level of content is only seen by a small minority of players.

I'm not discounting the impact some of these balancing issues will have at that level, I'm just highlighting that the disparity really only has an impact AT that level of play, in which case it's going to be impossible to ever rectify because there will always be a top performer based on sims and whatnot. For the vast majority of content and players I doubt you'd find anyone that really can notice or quantify the performance difference. And again, even if they COULD quantify it, based on how heavily this game relies on mechanics, does that difference in performance actually result in lower clear rates for the majority of players who aren't doing the content on the bleeding edge of progression?

Again, not saying there isn't a problem, just trying to bring the problem into perspective of a super casual player who doesn't play the content where that level of performance / min maxing is required. IMO, being able to balance within 3% of each other is pretty damned good.

Sounds about right to me.
Min maxing to that degree only really matters in savage raiding when you push for parses.
All healers are viable, groups killed God Kefka with WHMs on board plenty of times.

If you cannot hit an enrage, it is typically NOT because you do not have [combo], it is because you are either undergeared of failing somehow.

Not sure about Ultimate though. Can that even be done w/o the perfect Meta?

Just wanted to highlight this again, that the level in min maxing being discussed here isn't necessary except in that high end content that the majority of players won't ever see/ don't even participate in.

[Granyala]

I'm just highlighting that the disparity really only has an impact AT that level of play, in which case it's going to be impossible to ever rectify because there will always be a top performer based on sims and whatnot.

At least someone gets it.

I agree. The reason why you don't see any of that in the majority of the content is because said content is undertuned to a ridiculous degree, so that virtually everyone and their cat (pun intended) can clear it.

You really only see that kind of mindset emerge when the game actually starts pushing back. The harder it pushes, the more people will prefer FOTM and bitch at people that don't conform.

BUT. Yes there is a but. You cannot design and balance around freeloot content. You cannot breed playstyles that work in freeloot content but fall apart in the more challenging areas, because ultimately, why do I play WHM? Because I like the aesthetic and how it plays. Same would go for the playstyles you could make viable in easy content only.

It would be a shitty feeling, having to abandon a playstyle you love and adopt one that feels "meh" because you would severely hinder your raid group. Trust me... I've been there.
COP shadow *cough*...

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Another question then, based discussion we've had/ that have been had on this forum; how profound of an impact does that 3% have on you being able to complete the content?

It really depends. On paper, it isn't much. Completely irrelevant when you farm a boss and as I said: SE does not tune bosses around the perfect Meta. They see to it that all kinds of compositions stand a decent chance at succeeding.

However, when you are progressing on a new savage boss, you can have many a close call sub 5% wipes to the enrage. 3% free damage feel pretty huge at that point, when you're still struggling to get errors out of play. It can make the difference between 1-2 more mistakes being able to be made and still kill the boss before it plasters the arena with your guts.

[StrawberryZebra]

IMO, being able to balance within 3% of each other is pretty damned good.

To be clear, that's not balance off by 3%. The job brings 1250 DPS extra compared to it's alernatives, which just happens to be 3% more total raid DPS. After a quick skim through on FFlogs, most healers average around 2.2-2.3k personal DPS in Alphascape Savage, so that 1250 extra DPS is a total of 50% more DPS than the average healer. That's a significant perfomance jump compared to the competition.

On the higher end of the spectrum, healers are hitting 4k personal DPS, so that's a 25% improvement over the others. Still very significant gains.

Sure, an AST can add some DPS to the group, but a well played WHM adds great utility and is flat out just better at healing with it's kit, not to mention can help melt groups of adds with Holy.

That extra healing is, largely, irrelevent though. It's never about how much healing you can do, only about how much you need to do. Unlike DPS, healing is limited by how much raid damage you have coming in, if it's greater than your theoretical max HPS then you're heading for a wipe, if not you're capable of doing the content. It's a very binary stat check in that regard.

These two points together are why people prefer AST for raiding. They bring a lot of extra DPS, the exact amount of which will only scale upwards with gear, while also having enough healing throughput not to cause wipes.

Obviously this changes dramatically outside of organised raiding, but I hope it helps answer your original question. Yes, AST buffs are indeed that powerful. Do you require an AST for raiding? No, of course not, but if you have the option of an AST or any other healer the AST wins every single time.

Which is why I've been advocating spreading some buffs around to the other healers, let them bring as much to your group as an AST does. It doesn't have to be direct damage buffs either, none standard Utility like being able to invulnrable to the next hit on your raid could be a game changer. Being able to res without the Weakness debuff would be a godsend for progression, if weaker on farm content. There's lots of creative ways to add indirect power to underperformers.

There can't be a paladin that has no AoE to speak of, there can't be a druid that almost exclusively relies on HoTs. Such a design works well when you can take 5 or 6 healers into your raid but not two.

There's no reason such a design can't work. You can have all of the tools you listed while healing primarilly through HoT's, there's nothing that goes fundamentally against them from a design perspective. Exclusive single target healers would struggle in 4 man content, but would most likely be very in demand should needing a full time tank healer ever be a thing.

My WoW guild did 10 man raids with a Holy Paladin and a Druid healer because both covered each others major weaknesses, we had very little issue completely smashing our way through everything from Kara right to ICC with it. Two highly specialised healers worked out better for us than having three more generalised ones. Anecdotal to be sure, but we were certainly successful with it - We were the first guild on our server to clear Kara, as well as the first to get the 10 man mount from Ulduar and the first to get the Tribute to Dedicated Insanity achivement.

Disc Priest and Resto Druid would have worked too, as would Paladin and Holy Priest, or Shaman. Healing is a team effort, healers that compliment each other well allows more diverse healing classes and styles to be added without changing the core experience.

[Granyala]

There's no reason such a design can't work. You can have all of the tools you listed while healing primarilly through HoT's, there's nothing that goes fundamentally against them from a design perspective.

Uhuh, I do want to see you doing Archangel on Kefka with a HoT and a single target healer.
No.. scrap that... I don't, because such a mechanic would simply not work. Your two specialized healers would need too much time to top people up.
Just one example of a mechanic that SE would have to get rid of.

Would it be a better game if encounter design was more limited but healers more unique? I honestly do not know.
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That extra healing is, largely, irrelevent though.

It's not as clear cut as that though.
Barring instagibs, a healer capable of a higher output can negate more mistakes. That's why WHM is still liked on progression. It's only when the farm phase hits that our ability to push more healing is no longer needed and most WHMs just switch over to AST because now people are pushing for speedkills and E-Peen logs.

Also, on progression fights, there is no way I can push 2 - 2.5K. There is far too much healing required by my group and my mana is constrained (no bard ._.).
1.2 - 1.5K is a more realistic figure.

So in that case, an AST would basically double my p+r DPS, provided I was able to achieve the same values in personal DPS.

[Wrecktangle]

Not sure about Ultimate though. Can that even be done w/o the perfect Meta?

Yes. UCoB was a little less friendly than UwU, but still possible, just harder.

That's a fairly good impact, thanks for the information. Another question then, based discussion we've had/ that have been had on this forum; how profound of an impact does that 3% have on you being able to complete the content? We've said on this forum that being able to "do the dance," so to speak, is significantly more important than gearing and damage, except on cutting edge content where you're attempting it practically under geared to begin with. Meaning, would having an WHM and SCH there as opposed to having a AST outright prevent you from clearing?

Purely from my anecdotal experience it doesn't matter for first 2 bosses of a tier, but extremely useful on last 2, where first clears are literally within milliseconds of enrage and because of how powerful the gear is from those fights it's makes the early clear much more valuable not to mention obvious morale boost.

[StrawberryZebra]

Barring instagibs, a healer capable of a higher output can negate more mistakes.

Hence the second sentence in the paragraph you quoted; "It's never about how much healing you can do, only about how much you need to do". If you absolutely require that extra Potency that the WHM has, then you do you. Most of the time I find it ends up as overhealing *shrug*.

In my time spent playing FF14, I've seen maybe 3-4 wipes that have happened because the healer couldn't crank out enough healing to keep everyone alive. That's not because the content was hard per se, more because those healers were bad and/or people kept failing the mechanics.

Wipes usually happen because people mess up on the mechanics so often that they reach a point they get one shot.

Uhuh, I do want to see you doing Archangel on Kefka with a HoT and a single target healer.
No.. scrap that... I don't, because such a mechanic would simply not work. Your two specialized healers would need too much time to top people up.

Being specialised means you're stronger in some areas, but weaker in others. It's been a core part of RPG design for most of the genre's history. While it may limit an individual character, it tends to give them clearly defined group roles and allows them to excel as part of a team. It's not a bad design choice in general, it does have a proven track record of working afterall. It may be the wrong design choice for FF14, but that's a different discussion alltogether.

HoT based healers on the other hand would be a change in playstyle rather than a specialisation. There's no reason at all why it can't work. Much in the same way a shielding based healer is a playstyle change and can work, healing through dealing damage is a playstyle change that can work etc.

Also, on progression fights, there is no way I can push 2 - 2.5K. There is far too much healing required by my group and my mana is constrained (no bard ._.).
1.2 - 1.5K is a more realistic figure.

Honestly, I picked 20 logs at random and averaged the healer DPS. Figured it was the best way to get an unbiased sample of data. It includes some farm bosses, a couple of progress runs and a wipefest or two. It may not be representative of your DPS, but it is a rough performance indicator across the entire spectrum of raiders.

[Katchii]

Hence the second sentence in the paragraph you quoted; "It's never about how much healing you can do, only about how much you need to do". If you absolutely require that extra Potency that the WHM has, then you do you. Most of the time I find it ends up as overhealing *shrug*.

In my time spent playing FF14, I've seen maybe 3-4 wipes that have happened because the healer couldn't crank out enough healing to keep everyone alive. That's not because the content was hard per se, more because those healers were bad and/or people kept failing the mechanics.

Wipes usually happen because people mess up on the mechanics so often that they reach a point they get one shot.



Being specialised means you're stronger in some areas, but weaker in others. It's been a core part of RPG design for most of the genre's history. While it may limit an individual character, it tends to give them clearly defined group roles and allows them to excel as part of a team. It's not a bad design choice in general, it does have a proven track record of working afterall. It may be the wrong design choice for FF14, but that's a different discussion alltogether.

HoT based healers on the other hand would be a change in playstyle rather than a specialisation. There's no reason at all why it can't work. Much in the same way a shielding based healer is a playstyle change and can work, healing through dealing damage is a playstyle change that can work etc.



Honestly, I picked 20 logs at random and averaged the healer DPS. Figured it was the best way to get an unbiased sample of data. It includes some farm bosses, a couple of progress runs and a wipefest or two. It may not be representative of your DPS, but it is a rough performance indicator across the entire spectrum of raiders.

In the current game design, with the huge hard hitting mechanics closely followed by other AoE damage, a heavy HoT based healing class just won't work well. In raid content with more than one healer, it might do alright, but in dungeons or 4 man content it just won't fly since they won't be able to get the group up fast enough unless the HoT's are seriously OP.

The game seems to be designed around the current healing paradigm, for there to be more specialized or differing healing styles the encounter design would need to be updated to allow it.

You're right, it COULD work, but not in the current game with encounters designed as they currently are. Remember WoW's healing re-design? They had to completely overhaul tank mechanics, healing spells and encounter mechanics/ outgoing damage to allow for "slower" changes in HP through damage and healing, so that damage wasn't so high and healing spells weren't so strong.

[Granyala]

It may be the wrong design choice for FF14, but that's a different discussion alltogether.

And that's the part of my arguments you didn't understand all the time. I evaluated all concepts within the constrains offered by the current game. Maybe now you understand why I am not exactly eager for more specialization. I do not trust SE to adjust the design accordingly and we end up with a mess in balancing.

It's like Blizzard who puts a CD on dispel, yet still spams us with debuffs like back in the day.

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Honestly, I picked 20 logs at random and averaged the healer DPS. Figured it was the best way to get an unbiased sample of data. It includes some farm bosses, a couple of progress runs and a wipefest or two. It may not be representative of your DPS, but it is a rough performance indicator across the entire spectrum of raiders.

Far easier to do than that but WoLs statistics are pretty skewed by hardcore speedruns, so I would not use that data to describe the "average performance", because I do not believe that your average raider managed to do 2K DPS on a savage fight.
https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statisti...&class=Healers

If you want data that represents the average player and not the average hardcore, you should check the normal modes, where speedruns and E-Peen parsing runs do not exist:
https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statisti...gregate=amount

Personally I do not understand how players manage to do 2K DPS. I can barely touch 3K and that's when there is virtually no healing required and I can freely blast away every GCD. In a savage fight with people dying and people eating avoidable damage?

No way in hell, so don't give me the "that's the average!11" speech, because I doubt that I (or my group) are THAT incompetent. Oo

[Kazgrel]

FWIW, World first UCoB clear featured tank pairing of PLD and DRK, at a time when DRK was ridiculed for being the weakest tank at the time.

Metagaming and meta group comp makes sense, but it isn’t some holy gospel that absolutely must be adhered to.

[lawow74]

Poor lil Odder Otter. Got one doing my weekly HoH clears for Tomestones and it's only worth 350G on the XCal MB.

[dope_danny]

FWIW, World first UCoB clear featured tank pairing of PLD and DRK, at a time when DRK was ridiculed for being the weakest tank at the time.

Metagaming and meta group comp makes sense, but it isn’t some holy gospel that absolutely must be adhered to.

DRK is one of those classes that no matter where it stands it always seems to be treated as the most desired tank or the least desired. Its never 'good enough like WAR pretty much always was in the past. Personally though i've always gone with DRK just because its the most fun to play.

[Graeham]

Purely anecdotal, but in WoW the drama I rarely saw was consistent and logical. Guild people dating, bf/gf gets sat, other rages, ninja loot (back in day), loot council favorites, arguing in guild chat over who's right/wrong, etc. etc. Really boring dry stuff.

In FF14, you gets some fucking WEIRD drama. Just people on this game are absolutely nuts some times. Like, should be institutionalized nuts and they're by far the softest community I've ever played in. I used to roast my buddy's little brother because he played club penguin, but man, that place seems like seasoned criminals compared to FF14. It's just crazy to me.

I'd put a lot of it down to simply being an unfortunate consequence of modern society rather than something specifically to do with FFXIV. As MMO's have become more mainstream there's been a rise in the number of gamers who use MMO's as a means of escapism. They become trapped in echo chambers and any stance contrary to their belief system is not tolerated at all. There's definitely a lot of players who fit that bill here on Balmung...and if it wasn't for the hidden gems here and there combined with us mostly doing our own thing I'd be long gone from the server.

[StrawberryZebra]

In raid content with more than one healer, it might do alright, but in dungeons or 4 man content it just won't fly since they won't be able to get the group up fast enough unless the HoT's are seriously OP.

Honestly, having to manage multiple weak HoT's to get good healing isn't a huge ask. Having an AoE heal that starts off with low ticks but increases to higher ones towards the end is one way to deal with raid damage while keeping the design's flavour, so is patching up those kinds of weaknesses with cooldowns.

What would really be the sticking point for a HoT based class in FF14 would be the server tick rate. It already causes problems for enough abilities without adding a Job that uses it for healing almost exclusively into the mix.

No way in hell, so don't give me the "that's the average!11" speech, because I doubt that I (or my group) are THAT incompetent. Oo

I was using the numbers that @Wrecktangle posted which were, I believe, his groups DPS delta with an AST. Based on what he's said on these forums, I gather that he's doing savage content regularly, hence why I looked at that specifically. To compare with similarly geared groups doing the same kind of content. I was also looking at Alphascape, not Sigmascape.

Even assuming that an AST brings 3% extra total raid DPS though, it's still going to be a pretty significant improvement over the personal DPS that another healer brings. Which was the point I was getting at, it's a much bigger improvement than "3% DPS". Even in those top performers, it's 25% more DPS than their peers - That's a huge gain.

And that's the part of my arguments you didn't understand all the time. I evaluated all concepts within the constrains offered by the current game. Maybe now you understand why I am not exactly eager for more specialization. I do not trust SE to adjust the design accordingly and we end up with a mess in balancing.

It's a different discussion because FF14 already has established healing classes. To uproot them and change their mechanics in order to fit a new healing paradigm would be doing their players a disservice. Adding new Jobs that have a more specialised usage would leads to the situation you described where players are forced to use it for specific encounters only, unless you have another Job that compliments it well. So already we'd need at least 2 new healing Jobs that would only function properly when played together, but would out perform any other combination of healers.

Which then leads to the existing healers needing buffs to compete, which in turn leads to the new healers being buffed and so on.

Even with in the constrains of the current game, the idea would fundamentally work without serious changes made to content. Specialising is more about numbers and abilities rather than design which is where the issues would lie - You'd need to redesign your Jobs around it more than your content.

Going forwards, having new healers that are just another carbon copy of the WHM is going to get stale soon, so sooner or later having one that's more specialised towards a certain role is going to happen if they want to break the mould. It's not just healers, tanks are in the same boat too. Adding yet another tank that plays the same is going to get repetative.

Is that something that FF14 should strive for? Well, that's the question isn't it. Do you want more of the same with some gimicks, like the AST, or do you want new Jobs that feel, well... New. I'm sure you can find people who come down on both sides of the argument. It's a far more nuanced issue than just the current constraints.

[lawow74]

I'd put a lot of it down to simply being an unfortunate consequence of modern society rather than something specifically to do with FFXIV. As MMO's have become more mainstream there's been a rise in the number of gamers who use MMO's as a means of escapism. They become trapped in echo chambers and any stance contrary to their belief system is not tolerated at all. There's definitely a lot of players who fit that bill here on Balmung...and if it wasn't for the hidden gems here and there combined with us mostly doing our own thing I'd be long gone from the server.

I suppose there's a bit of the double-edged sword phenomenon there too, with how FF14 actually bans players for offensive behavior in chat channels, and black marks on a person's record never vanish, which will lead to a permaban if you keep it up.

[Katchii]

Honestly, having to manage multiple weak HoT's to get good healing isn't a huge ask. Having an AoE heal that starts off with low ticks but increases to higher ones towards the end is one way to deal with raid damage while keeping the design's flavour, so is patching up those kinds of weaknesses with cooldowns.

What would really be the sticking point for a HoT based class in FF14 would be the server tick rate. It already causes problems for enough abilities without adding a Job that uses it for healing almost exclusively into the mix.

Right, but having a purely HoT based healer that can do the same job as a direct heal, in the same amount of time would be seriously OP because the HoT's would have to continue ticking, or the "HoT" would have to be so short but potent as to essentially make it a direct heal anyway which doesn't really change the flavor of the class.

To your point about server ticks, everything ticks at the same rate so for an HoT based class to work they'd have to fix that because there's no way that a class based on HoT would be able to work with heals only coming every 3 seconds.

It could be done, yes, but a LOT of things would have to change to make it work and still end up with a class that felt different than the current healers.

It's a different discussion because FF14 already has established healing classes. To uproot them and change their mechanics in order to fit a new healing paradigm would be doing their players a disservice. Adding new Jobs that have a more specialised usage would leads to the situation you described where players are forced to use it for specific encounters only, unless you have another Job that compliments it well. So already we'd need at least 2 new healing Jobs that would only function properly when played together, but would out perform any other combination of healers.

Which then leads to the existing healers needing buffs to compete, which in turn leads to the new healers being buffed and so on.

Even with in the constrains of the current game, the idea would fundamentally work without serious changes made to content. Specialising is more about numbers and abilities rather than design which is where the issues would lie - You'd need to redesign your Jobs around it more than your content.

Going forwards, having new healers that are just another carbon copy of the WHM is going to get stale soon, so sooner or later having one that's more specialised towards a certain role is going to happen if they want to break the mould. It's not just healers, tanks are in the same boat too. Adding yet another tank that plays the same is going to get repetative.

Is that something that FF14 should strive for? Well, that's the question isn't it. Do you want more of the same with some gimicks, like the AST, or do you want new Jobs that feel, well... New. I'm sure you can find people who come down on both sides of the argument. It's a far more nuanced issue than just the current constraints.

Based on the bolded part here, I feel like you're contradicting yourself. Will it work in FFXIV or not? Or will it just result in endless nerfs buffs etc because of what you're describing.

And again, in the current game where there are only 1-2 healers in the content where tuning and performance matter that much (not counting 24 man stuff), there'd be no way for any "specialized" healer to function if it couldn't do the same job just as effectively as the current ones in the current content. UNLESS, the content was changed to accommodate the new healing styles.

[Advent]

I downloaded ACT a couple months ago, and I have to say......I'm not sure that people really suck as much as some of you say. Or maybe it's me that sucks, because seeing my own dps in 4mans is damn embarrassing. Probably won't use it again, LOL!

[StrawberryZebra]

Right, but having a purely HoT based healer that can do the same job as a direct heal, in the same amount of time would be seriously OP because the HoT's would have to continue ticking, or the "HoT" would have to be so short but potent as to essentially make it a direct heal anyway which doesn't really change the flavor of the class.

They don't need to use HoT's exclusively. Hell, I don't recall seeing a single healer ever use HoT's exclusively. Using HoT's to support their weaker than average direct heals is more than enough for a functional healer. Their skillset would obviously have to be greater than the sum of it's parts, but that's where the appeal of the playstyle lies anyway.

The idea has been done multiple times across the MMO space, it's not as if you've got to reinvent the wheel to make it work out.

Will it work in FFXIV or not? Or will it just result in endless nerfs buffs etc because of what you're describing.

You'd either need to change existing Jobs to specialise in a single area, which would upset those who play them currently, or you need to add multiple healers in a single expansion, upsetting everyone else.

The point of having a specialised healer is they'd excel in the areas they're strong in, while struggling in areas they're weak in. They'd be more effective in some situations than current healers, but also weaker in some situations too. Like having a Job that has obscene AoE healing but far weaker single target heals. They're great when you've got a lot of incoming raid damage, but suck when you've got a lot of tank damage to deal with. They'd obviously push the existing healers out of their raid healing spots because they're so much better at it.

In a game where both types existed, you'd end up with very tenuous balance. You'd end up with the situation where you'd either have your specialised healers and use those when they're the best performers, or you'd use one of the current healers that just have general all round strengths when they're in a stronger state. You've got to go all in on the idea, or just accept that every healer will be pretty much the same thing for the games entire lifespan.