Has anyone quit healing?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by IDontPetLalas

Well, why do all games have to follow the same model? Now, if a game has a great idea, makes sense to use that as a starting point or copy it outright- however why play different games if they're all basically the same? I like healing in FFXIV precisely because I should be using my judgement to balance healing and DPS. If that means in some situations I'm doing much more DPS, throwing in buffs, and not much heals, I'm fine. Sometime , I need to heal more- also good.

---

They don't. That said, these days the normal model is to just not having healers or having healing as a secondary function - you'd be hard pressed to find modern MMOs where healers really focus on healing. So it's not like all games (or much of any of them) are following some traditional model. That out of the way...

If SE trims down the healing side of the kit and expands the DPS side of the kit, I expect that will be pretty popular - and I'm aware my view isn't the popular one. Well, more power to y'all and have fun with it. Sincerely. It's just not for me.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Aurelius2625

SCH lost it's "complexity"... you mean...borrowing dots from other jobs to have some artificial "complexity"? Miasma and Bio were the only dots exclusive to ACN/SMN/SCH... the fact that you could "cross class" things was absolutely stupid. Having some jury rigged b.s. doesn't make something "complex" or "fun".

"Blizzard II was an instant cast aoe"... YOU HAVE THAT IN THE FORM OF ART OF WAR MY DUDE. Like...for real.

They got rid of Bane and gave that to SMN only... okay? That's only for dungeons honestly, in raids I can't see many times where you'd be able to do that, in shiva it doesn't matter, Ramuh's add isn't targetable, and E7s' adds are too far apart.

The complexity in healing has NEVER been the damage side, it has ALWAYS been in the healing side, and figuring out which tools to use when, so that you do not HAVE to gcd heal. That's the fun, planning out resources and seeing just how little you can get away with.

---

I know this is an old comment but SCH went from tracking something like 13-14 timers to 7 or 8 in a single expansion patch, that's almost half (and that's while ignoring some constraints linked to those timers). It went from requiring melee uptime to being wholly detached from the boss. It went from having 4 or 5 higher-end optimization strategies to NONE (succor-deploy, Selene, manual embrace, single target bane refresh, etc.). Again, all in one patch. That was complexity and that has been vastly reduced.
You're also conflating execution complexity with planning complexity. Yes as far as planning goes the bar hasn't really changed, it's still the same old "plan your heals with co-healer". But 90% of the gameplay/execution has been reduced to a one button spam and that's what most people are complaining about.

And I'm skipping over a lot of what looks to me like a misunderstanding over old SCH gameplay. Bliz 2 is definitely not like Art of war. You can't compare them 1-1, you need to look at them as a whole in their respective rotations. Today's AoE rotation of [Art of war spam] VS Yesterday's [shafowflare + Miasma II + dot-bane + bliz 2] with all it's refreshes, weaves, and stack management.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

Hmm.

Well I've finally done it. I've "quit" healing. I'm raiding on my main on a DPS job, and all my gearing efforts are going towards said job - while my healers sit at i500 in last tier's gear.

---

RIP, Depending on the changes made next expansion I may also join. I'm part of the more complex DPS rotation gang but I also wouldn't mind more restrictive healer checks. I don't really have high hopes for either though so we'll see.

I can unsterstand Risvertasashi.

I thinking the same for healing. I am MR. Grey on the famous page I can not speak here. But I try to heal in the best way I can! (But my healing is perfectly)

But do the people kick out from statics or hate me. Yep they does but I try to heal in the perfect way in knowing that DPSing makes fight shorter.
I am done with this "YOU HAVE TO DPS" realtalk (after soon 6 Years). For a lot of player I am bad.Thats okay, but I hold my promise to bring every Player how is in my group to the enrage or kill.

But I am not cool of a lot of wishes that the community has atm. I am happy that SE make us healer strong.I don't want to feel like an emergency paramedic in a crisis area. But we should be ashamed of the community, because we use this strength ONLY "to drive more DPS". I now avoid people who force a healer to play Heal <DPS off.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by IDontPetLalas

Well, why do all games have to follow the same model? Now, if a game has a great idea, makes sense to use that as a starting point or copy it outright- however why play different games if they're all basically the same? I like healing in FFXIV precisely because I should be using my judgement to balance healing and DPS. If that means in some situations I'm doing much more DPS, throwing in buffs, and not much heals, I'm fine. Sometime , I need to heal more- also good.

---

They don't. In fact, I like the concept of a battle medic quite a bit. Unfortunately, SE's encounter design puts nearly all the emphasise on "battle" and very little on "medic". When I can do E12N and literally not press a single heal; no Regen, no Lilies, literally nothing but Assize for damage. There's something seriously wrong. And this isn't me "chadding" the other healer either. E12N simply does not have nearly enough outgoing damage to warrant two healers. Nearly every fight below the Savage level falls into this same problem. Even Savage itself suffers, albeit to a lesser extent.

Simply put, people who sign up to play healers want more emphasise put on the role they're playing. At the very least, I'd be perfectly fine if they embraced the DPS meta and built healers around that with a more involved rotation. They just need to pick a line because spamming Glare through 90% of content isn't good design. Sadly, I fear they'll take away our DoT, slap more oGCD heals on the jobs and then stare in bewilderment why healers are upset again.

Pretty much, only if I'm desperate for a quick 80 roulette queue, I almost never play healer for fun anymore unlike every other type of job in this game.

Overly potent oGCDs with not enough to do in between using them besides spam 1 GCD, SCH's Fae being lackluster, AST's cards being in the same boat, you all know the rest. It bloody sucks, if healers don't get a rework in 6.0 I might just end up cancelling my sub.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

They don't. In fact, I like the concept of a battle medic quite a bit. Unfortunately, SE's encounter design puts nearly all the emphasise on "battle" and very little on "medic". When I can do E12N and literally not press a single heal; no Regen, no Lilies, literally nothing but Assize for damage. There's something seriously wrong. And this isn't me "chadding" the other healer either. E12N simply does not have nearly enough outgoing damage to warrant two healers. Nearly every fight below the Savage level falls into this same problem. Even Savage itself suffers, albeit to a lesser extent.

Simply put, people who sign up to play healers want more emphasise put on the role they're playing. At the very least, I'd be perfectly fine if they embraced the DPS meta and built healers around that with a more involved rotation. They just need to pick a line because spamming Glare through 90% of content isn't good design. Sadly, I fear they'll take away our DoT, slap more oGCD heals on the jobs and then stare in bewilderment why healers are upset again.

---

My question was rhetorical, as I have encountered enough games to have experienced (and personally enjoyed) various designs, including the "everyone is a healer" model- which I found very refreshing. I do not believe that there is a single design or model that all games * must* follow- e.g. the "holy trinity" is often thrown out in various games as the pinnacle of game design and must be adhered to without deviation, etc., etc.

In addition, you fear in very likely baseless since I very much doubt that your fear of our very few DPS skills will be removed, since there are occasions when healers will be doing solo content. Although that healer may switch to another job, in other occasions they won't want to- so having virtually no DPS just won't work.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by IDontPetLalas

In addition, you fear in very likely baseless since I very much doubt that your fear of our very few DPS skills will be removed, since there are occasions when healers will be doing solo content. Although that healer may switch to another job, in other occasions they won't want to- so having virtually no DPS just won't work.

---

The issue is that the 2 single target dps skills and 1 aoe healers have are completely sufficient to complete solo content. If SE continues their "pure healer" design mentality then we will never get more than a DoT, 1 attack spell and an aoe because they're all you technically need to function. For the occasional solo content this would be bearable but all content is this game is 60-80% downtime which means 60-80% of a fight you spam your 1-2 filler spells, the most mindnumbingly boring thing imaginable.


I could even see them double down on that terrible design and get rid of the DoT as well since you technically only need 1 attack spell to kill things.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Absurdity

The issue is that the 2 single target dps skills and 1 aoe healers have are completely sufficient to complete solo content. If SE continues their "pure healer" design mentality then we will never get more than a DoT, 1 attack spell and an aoe because they're all you technically need to function. For the occasional solo content this would be bearable but all content is this game is 60-80% downtime which means 60-80% of a fight you spam your 1-2 filler spells, the most mindnumbingly boring thing imaginable.


I could even see them double down on that terrible design and get rid of the DoT as well since you technically only need 1 attack spell to kill things.

---

I have never played any game where a healer class has 1 only skill that is used in solo play for damage - before anyone pops up with an example (of course anything is possible) - the closest that I have ever seen was a class that had a skill tree system where theoretically you could place almost every skill point in heals- but even then the base class had a bare minimum in damage points.

While many things are technically possible, whether in game design or in other types of design - they aren't done since they are bad design. Sometimes- as in what you are foreseeing- they would be poor QOL (user experience). So no, I could not see them "double down" in fact removing all damage skills aside from 1 attack skill seems extremely far-fetched to me.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by IDontPetLalas

In addition, you fear in very likely baseless since I very much doubt that your fear of our very few DPS skills will be removed, since there are occasions when healers will be doing solo content. Although that healer may switch to another job, in other occasions they won't want to- so having virtually no DPS just won't work.

---

You can easily beat every solo fight with just Glare spam. In fact, most don't live long enough to even warrant putting Dia on them. Regardless, if they did get rid of the DoT, they'll simply up the potency of our nuke to compensate. I disagree it seems far-fetched when they've already neutered healers so much in terms of their DPS options. Keep in mind, Shadowbringers put considerable emphasis on making the game easier for baby players. They've since nerfed Aetherflow specifically because they want us to focus on healing with it, which screams how little they pay attention to how veteran players (raiders and non-raiders alike) play. Removing our DoT is just another way of trying to force a simplistic and "accessible" gameplay model.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Heilstos

I can unsterstand Risvertasashi.

I thinking the same for healing. I am MR. Grey on the famous page I can not speak here. But I try to heal in the best way I can! (But my healing is perfectly)

But do the people kick out from statics or hate me. Yep they does but I try to heal in the perfect way in knowing that DPSing makes fight shorter.
I am done with this "YOU HAVE TO DPS" realtalk (after soon 6 Years). For a lot of player I am bad.Thats okay, but I hold my promise to bring every Player how is in my group to the enrage or kill.

But I am not cool of a lot of wishes that the community has atm. I am happy that SE make us healer strong.I don't want to feel like an emergency paramedic in a crisis area. But we should be ashamed of the community, because we use this strength ONLY "to drive more DPS". I now avoid people who force a healer to play Heal <DPS off.

---

So just one thing I want to clarify - please don't take this as an attack on your preferences.

But I don't mind DPSing itself. I can typically pull out a purple personal rank, and orange on the "healer combined DPS" rank.

But that's not what I'm there for. DPS seems to overshadow all else, and I'm worried that - in combination with the community's desire and feedback - will be reflected in 6.0 design, and healing will become more and more of an afterthought. It's at this point where just playing a proper DPS seems to be more fun, at least to me.

I am particular worried because it will be a lot easier to go the "add more DPS buttons, trim back healing kits" route than to address the "only a few GCDs out of hundreds in a long fight are needed for healing" problem (even deleting every oGCD would not fix this) - the latter being much more fundamental and difficult.

Not sure if SE can pull something out of this that makes everyone happy. Well, we shall see what 6.0 brings.

Nope.
Still healing. <3

Considering quitting. Shadowbringers made it SO boring. Maybe I should give AST another go around with the change to the opener first, though. At least it feels a bit busier than SCH/WHM.

I don't care that they nerfed SCH DPS, it's just so boring in execution. They could make all healer DPS spells have 10 potency or 800 potency and it wouldn't change that fact.

I’ve been following this thread since it started. I always type a long post but never press submit. I’m always anxious of putting too much or too little into my words.

I’ve been considering quitting healing, although it’s the only role I truly enjoy. There are so many issues in the healing jobs’ designs as it pertains to the way we players actually play the game, and to the devs push for the “pure healing” aspect that just doesn’t fit the requirements of gameplay.

To be honest, I am finally realizing all my problems with healers always come down to something that was done to cater to casual or new players, and it’s made me resentful. It’s really disconcerting when new players come in and say how great the gameplay is and how I can only reminisce about how much better it was before we lost XXX for “balancing” and “ease.”

Spamming Glare isn’t fun. The loss of players driven out of the healing role makes healing a chore on duty finder and party finder.

And something that really grinds my gears but I rarely hear anyone complain about is the fact that, as WHM, mostly everything was taken off of oGCD. Regen used to be weavable, now it’s still instant cast but puts me on the GCD and it feels like such a flaw and waste compared to before. In fact. Nothing is actually “weavable” on WHM anymore because your cast time = recast time. Everything clips and I’m tired of it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by BlueMageQuina

Regen used to be weavable, now it’s still instant cast but puts me on the GCD and it feels like such a flaw and waste compared to before. In fact. Nothing is actually “weavable” on WHM anymore because your cast time = recast time. Everything clips and I’m tired of it.

---

While clipping has always been a WHM issue (least mobile job, yay), the bit about regen confuses me. The spell has always been a 0 cast time, GCD recast spell.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Irenia

While clipping has always been a WHM issue (least mobile job, yay), the bit about regen confuses me. The spell has always been a 0 cast time, GCD recast spell.

---

There are people out there who think BLM is the least mobile job in the game, which it's not, it's WHM bar none. Where mastering slidecasting is the bane of your existence.

Regen is basically kind of the "i have no lily, and I don't want to re-apply Dia kind of movement skill" all because of being an instant GCD with no dps refund that lily has.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

So just one thing I want to clarify - please don't take this as an attack on your preferences.

But I don't mind DPSing itself. I can typically pull out a purple personal rank, and orange on the "healer combined DPS" rank.

But that's not what I'm there for. DPS seems to overshadow all else, and I'm worried that - in combination with the community's desire and feedback - will be reflected in 6.0 design, and healing will become more and more of an afterthought. It's at this point where just playing a proper DPS seems to be more fun, at least to me.

I am particular worried because it will be a lot easier to go the "add more DPS buttons, trim back healing kits" route than to address the "only a few GCDs out of hundreds in a long fight are needed for healing" problem (even deleting every oGCD would not fix this) - the latter being much more fundamental and difficult.

Not sure if SE can pull something out of this that makes everyone happy. Well, we shall see what 6.0 brings.

---

Honestly, if SE would just give healers actually interesting dps and utility kits instead of assuming the average healer is too dumb to do a dps rotation more complicated than 2 buttons then it would go a long way towards solving the problem.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Heilstos

I can unsterstand Risvertasashi.

I thinking the same for healing. I am MR. Grey on the famous page I can not speak here. But I try to heal in the best way I can! (But my healing is perfectly)

But do the people kick out from statics or hate me. Yep they does but I try to heal in the perfect way in knowing that DPSing makes fight shorter.
I am done with this "YOU HAVE TO DPS" realtalk (after soon 6 Years). For a lot of player I am bad.Thats okay, but I hold my promise to bring every Player how is in my group to the enrage or kill.

But I am not cool of a lot of wishes that the community has atm. I am happy that SE make us healer strong.I don't want to feel like an emergency paramedic in a crisis area. But we should be ashamed of the community, because we use this strength ONLY "to drive more DPS". I now avoid people who force a healer to play Heal <DPS off.

---

Not really interested in looking at your logs, but it's not that hard to prioritize healing and still dps as long as you play in a more conservative and calculating way. A lot of people cover up their overhealing by using "I focus on healing not dps" as an excuse instead of learning to pick and choose which tools to use at which points in the fight to heal just enough (With maybe a little extra if you're playing it safe) to get through the next mechanic

That being said, you do you, but healing and good dps aren't mutually exclusive, and you can have both if you simply play smartly instead of wastefully

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Irenia

Snip.

---

I may be misremembering. It happens.

Hey Okami,

I absolutely agree with you. Why I am writing this post are simple concerns that I have noticed recently. In my weekly kills I always see fewer healers who also heal but only cause increased damage. Now in the forum the idea is being expressed to make the Dps rotations more complete.

And for me this leads to three scenarios:

I) In the best case scenario, the DPS rotations are more demanding (here I see the WHM in focus) and people stay alive.
II) Due to the complexity of the DPS rotations, healers forget to heal and people die, true to the motto that ADpS is more important than the integrity of the other players.
III) Players are frightened by the high demands of the rotations and play the rotation "not DPS" optimized.

We have seen what happens when a healer becomes too complicated. The number of scholars dropped rapidly, and WHMs shot up.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Heilstos

We have seen what happens when a healer becomes too complicated. The number of scholars dropped rapidly, and WHMs shot up.

---

What is this crazy alternate reality you're living in? SCH is on the decline currently, when its dps mechanics are simpler than ever before. Moreover, both times that devs have removed Energy Drain in order to simplify the job's dps/healing dichotomy, it's been met with such a huge backlash they backpedaled on it almost immediately, which shows you that people don't want SCH to be simpler like WHM.

The whole "more dps tools will lead to less healing" idea also completely contradicts the evidence of past expansions. Shadowbringers is the simplest that healer dps has been and at the same time the gcd heal usage is at the all time low. The reason for that is the amount of overpowered healing and mitigation tools we've got, nothing to do with the dps rotations.

I've been thinking about how the devs separate the dps jobs from each other by changing the rhythm of the jobs. I've imagined in the past that every healer would need a complex dps rotation, but is this the case?

Imagine 4 healers:
1) easy heals and dps, but most dps power comes from buffing allies. Yeah, pretty much the AST identity.
2) easy dps, complicated heals. Has the most ogcd power, but access to these must be timed and planned, as they are not simple cooldowns you can press at any time when they are up.
3) complicated dps, easy heals. Big Deeps battle cleric which might be similar to putting a dps kit on current WHM or SCH.
4) intertwined heals and dps. The kit cannot be cleanly separated between healer tools and dps tools, since they bleed into each other.

These aren't exclusive; some buffing might be found in all of them, for example. I'd imagine this would be a ton of work, but it might be possible.

Or I might be going insane. Either or.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Heilstos

Hey Okami,

I absolutely agree with you. Why I am writing this post are simple concerns that I have noticed recently. In my weekly kills I always see fewer healers who also heal but only cause increased damage. Now in the forum the idea is being expressed to make the Dps rotations more complete.

And for me this leads to three scenarios:

I) In the best case scenario, the DPS rotations are more demanding (here I see the WHM in focus) and people stay alive.
II) Due to the complexity of the DPS rotations, healers forget to heal and people die, true to the motto that ADpS is more important than the integrity of the other players.
III) Players are frightened by the high demands of the rotations and play the rotation "not DPS" optimized.

We have seen what happens when a healer becomes too complicated. The number of scholars dropped rapidly, and WHMs shot up.

---

Sorry, but I read this and went "whut"?

2- are you saying that healers are basically incompetent and would not be able to use any judgement?
3- I'm not sure of whether here you're calling out both the healers and game designers at being incompetent, since this would imply job changes that would be so complex that the average healer would not be able to incorporate a DPS rotation into boss or trash mechanics along with heals and buffs. Sorry if "incompetent" sounds a bit strong, but really, "frightened"-- of what? I really don't see what there is to be frightened of.

Finally, the last statement about people dropping SCH because it became too complicated for WHM ??? No, not all. Personally I changed to AST because I found it became more rewarding than SCH with the changes in Shadowbringers while still retaining some complexity.

When you dumb down healers, you end up with less healers. The people who think having more complex DPS would reduce the amount of healing are the whole reason we have less healers now. The people who mained healers and love the challenge stopped playing or at least significantly reduced how much they play healing classes because healers were dumbed down. The classes went from being diverse and having different focus in mechanics to all feeling like a cheap copy of WHM. People don't want to play a class that does not have challenge and primarily feels like a pet class, which is exactly what healers became. I left for months, and I am back primarily playing DPS classes because at least there is some challenge and distinction between them. I miss the differences and the challenges of switching between the classes, but now the healers feel like they are two dimensional. I have given up hope of them ever being treated by the Dev's like a real class instead of a pet class, and when you read the way a portion of this population talks about them on the board, it is no wonder they are treated that way.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Heilstos

Hey Okami,

I absolutely agree with you. Why I am writing this post are simple concerns that I have noticed recently. In my weekly kills I always see fewer healers who also heal but only cause increased damage. Now in the forum the idea is being expressed to make the Dps rotations more complete.

And for me this leads to three scenarios:

I) In the best case scenario, the DPS rotations are more demanding (here I see the WHM in focus) and people stay alive.
II) Due to the complexity of the DPS rotations, healers forget to heal and people die, true to the motto that ADpS is more important than the integrity of the other players.
III) Players are frightened by the high demands of the rotations and play the rotation "not DPS" optimized.

We have seen what happens when a healer becomes too complicated. The number of scholars dropped rapidly, and WHMs shot up.

---

Honestly, I think that the lack of challenge players face nowadays not only in DF content, but also in the jobs they play isn't a good sign. Scholar was my first job I got to level 60 despite it being the hardest healer to play effectively, and you know what? It was hard, but I learned a lot of things and improved as a player because I dared to challenge myself to do more than play it safe and healbot while never touching cleric stance.

Scholar had one of the highest skill caps of any job in the game, and the best of the best scholars were basically gods at what they did. The current iteration of healers is frankly an insult to the people who pushed themselves out of their comfort zone to get to a skill level unreachable by most players, and devoted themselves to being effective at one of the hardest jobs to master.

Anyways, my point is that the people who were attracted to scholar were typically the type of people who want to challenge themselves to get better, to pick up something hard to master and play out of their comfort zone, taking risks with stance dancing and maybe accidentally tunnel visioning on dps rotations.

To me the 5.0 changes are an insult to anyone that mained Scholar pre-5.0, basically taking an expensive sketching kit and replacing it with crayon to draw with because the casual playerbase thinks that having more than 1 pencil to choose from is too hard and daddy SE says it's their turn to play with the scholar, but not the old scholar because that's too complicated, so dumb it down first so anyone with 2 braincells can basically hit skill cap within the first 2 weeks of playing it.

Impassioned rant aside, not all jobs should be accessible to the casual player, there needs to be a job or two for every role that a first time player can't pick up and immediately become good at unless they're willing to step out of their comfort zone to learn it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Dogempire

Scholar had one of the highest skill caps of any job in the game, and the best of the best scholars were basically gods...
...Impassioned rant aside, not all jobs should be accessible to the casual player, there needs to be a job or two for every role that a first time player can't pick up and immediately become good at unless they're willing to step out of their comfort zone to learn it.

---

Ladies and gentlemen, this is your flight attendant speaking. To your left you will see the Great Healer Circular Forum Argument funnel cloud in the beginning of its rotation. As we begin our descent you will see "More Complicated Jobs Deserve Higher Skill Ceilings" and as we touch down we'll catch "It's Only Fair If Higher Skill Ceilings Come With More Powerful Potential", and before the fasten seatbelt sign turns off you'll hear "But Just Because We've Defined Other Healers As Necessarily Both Duller And Weaker Than Scholar Doesn't Mean It Can't Be Balanced Somehow" at the terminal.

Thank you for flying FFXIV Forum airlines.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Dogempire

Impassioned rant aside, not all jobs should be accessible to the casual player, there needs to be a job or two for every role that a first time player can't pick up and immediately become good at unless they're willing to step out of their comfort zone to learn it.

---

Well...no actually. You don't need any of them dumbed down accessible to the casual player, because the casual player, by the time they get to level 80 should at least be competent enough to use sufficient pieces of their kit to keep the party alive through their daily dungeons.
80 levels is more than sufficient to learn how to play any job thats not smn or blm properly (the former is a mess, the latter changes constantly)

even back in the previous two expansions where we had higher fun, complexity and skill caps, by the time you hit level cap, you had more than enough time to learn not to stand in the bad and learn a basic priority for your ogcds. If you did the hall of the novice or even got bored with nothing to heal, even better as you learned to dps during the plentiful downtime


We should expect casual players to at least know what each button in their kit does and not stand in the bad. Its the bare minimum once they hit level cap
That said, I do fully agree that we should have jobs that take longer time to learn/master.
Design the jobs for those who play the jobs damn it ><

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Semirhage

Ladies and gentlemen, this is your flight attendant speaking. To your left you will see the Great Healer Circular Forum Argument funnel cloud in the beginning of its rotation. As we begin our descent you will see "More Complicated Jobs Deserve Higher Skill Ceilings" and as we touch down we'll catch "It's Only Fair If Higher Skill Ceilings Come With More Powerful Potential", and before the fasten seatbelt sign turns off you'll hear "But Just Because We've Defined Other Healers As Necessarily Both Duller And Weaker Than Scholar Doesn't Mean It Can't Be Balanced Somehow" at the terminal.

Thank you for flying FFXIV Forum airlines.

---

Thanks for the trip down memory lane >.>

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Recon1o6

Well...no actually. You don't need any of them dumbed down accessible to the casual player, because the casual player, by the time they get to level 80 should at least be competent enough to use sufficient pieces of their kit to keep the party alive through their daily dungeons.
80 levels is more than sufficient to learn how to play any job thats not smn or blm properly (the former is a mess, the latter changes constantly)

even back in the previous two expansions where we had higher fun, complexity and skill caps, by the time you hit level cap, you had more than enough time to learn not to stand in the bad and learn a basic priority for your ogcds. If you did the hall of the novice or even got bored with nothing to heal, even better as you learned to dps during the plentiful downtime


We should expect casual players to at least know what each button in their kit does and not stand in the bad. Its the bare minimum once they hit level cap
That said, I do fully agree that we should have jobs that take longer time to learn/master.
Design the jobs for those who play the jobs damn it ><

---

I mean you are right about that, you get a lot more time and get more gradual easing into your kit leveling 30-80 than you do 30-60, and by that point you know what everything does, but part of what I found fun initially with healing was the figurative taking off the training wheels and learning how to manage damage and healing, considering that if you mis-stepped with cleric stance and tried to heal the tank with it on, you could end up letting the tank die.

Current scholar compared to what it used to be is too easy, too safe, doing aoe damage isn't even fun because instead of spreading contagions and placing fire puddles we're just slapping the ground

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Semirhage

Ladies and gentlemen, this is your flight attendant speaking. To your left you will see the Great Healer Circular Forum Argument funnel cloud in the beginning of its rotation. As we begin our descent you will see "More Complicated Jobs Deserve Higher Skill Ceilings" and as we touch down we'll catch "It's Only Fair If Higher Skill Ceilings Come With More Powerful Potential", and before the fasten seatbelt sign turns off you'll hear "But Just Because We've Defined Other Healers As Necessarily Both Duller And Weaker Than Scholar Doesn't Mean It Can't Be Balanced Somehow" at the terminal.

Thank you for flying FFXIV Forum airlines.

---

Yes because SE has never taken a role like say tanks with various flavors of difficulty levels to play effectively, and balanced them so that they're more or less even with each other, give or take a few hundred dps.

Everyone also knows that in order to clear savage and ultimate you have to run specific comps and that taking a non-meta but enjoyable class like say a dancer means that you'll never clear the fight and you'll always hit enrage. It's about numbers and parses, and not about giving people a healthy selection of classes with varying difficulty levels to choose from that they can get comfortable with and eventually want to raid with

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Dogempire

Everyone also knows that in order to clear savage and ultimate you have to run specific comps and that taking a non-meta but enjoyable class like say a dancer means that you'll never clear the fight and you'll always hit enrage.

---

This is such a red herring.

It's never been about "this job is so bad it can't clear the fight." It's about what it brings to the table.

Take, for example, patch 4.4 (and really a lot of patches, but let's focus on the final tier of Omega just for simplicity's sake). White mages could clear it, but no one took a white mage by choice - only if they couldn't find the other healers - because SCH and AST were just better. More healing, more DPS, more utility, more mobility.

Patch 3.4 was the same. "But white mages were great for dungeons!". etc

So I say yet again: If the standard is only "can clear the fight", no job adjustments have ever been needed. For healers, tanks, and DPS. SE might as well have just left everything the same at the beginning of each expac.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

This is such a red herring.

It's never been about "this job is so bad it can't clear the fight." It's about what it brings to the table.

Take, for example, patch 4.4 (and really a lot of patches, but let's focus on the final tier of Omega just for simplicity's sake). White mages could clear it, but no one took a white mage by choice - only if they couldn't find the other healers - because SCH and AST were just better. More healing, more DPS, more utility, more mobility.

Patch 3.4 was the same. "But white mages were great for dungeons!". etc

So I say yet again: If the standard is only "can clear the fight", no job adjustments have ever been needed. For healers, tanks, and DPS. SE might as well have just left everything the same at the beginning of each expac.

---

I was thinking about that when I wrote the reply but it didn't relate to the point I was trying to get across so I didn't include it. Sure there are jobs that groups desire a lot more than others, heck I play physical ranged even though the melee and caster roles just objectively bring more to the table than physical ranged does. Despite that I don't think that SE should be homogenizing jobs just to appease raiders (I say homogenizing because at the moment this is how they're balancing things) because even with how much they've gutted both SCH and AST and how little WHM has lost, they've still completely failed to make it so that there isn't a meta healer comp.

IMO it's better that they preserve job/role identity and focus on balancing second, instead of focusing on balancing and gutting jobs and roles of what made them fun in the first place just to make them balanced, and fail in the end.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Dogempire

I was thinking about that when I wrote the reply but it didn't relate to the point I was trying to get across so I didn't include it. Sure there are jobs that groups desire a lot more than others, heck I play physical ranged even though the melee and caster roles just objectively bring more to the table than physical ranged does. Despite that I don't think that SE should be homogenizing jobs just to appease raiders (I say homogenizing because at the moment this is how they're balancing things) because even with how much they've gutted both SCH and AST and how little WHM has lost, they've still completely failed to make it so that there isn't a meta healer comp.

IMO it's better that they preserve job/role identity and focus on balancing second, instead of focusing on balancing and gutting jobs and roles of what made them fun in the first place.

---

This is completely accurate, and damning. Homogenisation is not the way to balance, or make things fun

instead of destroying the healers, what they should be doing is giving each one a niche/playstyle, then balance the numbers. Its the numbers after all that make up the balance, not the abilities.
You could have the most fun kit in the world, but the potencies are 100 each, while another healer with a dull uninteresting playstyle consisting of 4 buttons (heal, aoe heal, raise, nuke) but does 1000 potency with everything. Assuming both could clear the content, which would raiders take? the latter almost every time.

Now if you had the two kits but with equal potency totals. which one would raiders take? they'd let the player decide, which one would the players take? the fun one every time

Thats why whm's are the most of the 3 healers atm (it has a second button to press every 93 seconds) and its why healers are in such short supply

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Dogempire

Current scholar compared to what it used to be is too easy, too safe, doing aoe damage isn't even fun

---

You mean current HEALERS are too easy, safe and unfun.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Dogempire

IMO it's better that they preserve job/role identity and focus on balancing second

---

That's a fair opinion to hold. All the same, "can clear fights" isn't any real standard of balance. You'd be hard pressed to find any class-based game out there where there's some class that literally cannot complete content.

But if you want to count games that have undesirable classes that have difficulty finding groups because of that undesirability, then you'll find many, many more.

-

But back to the subject at hand, if such is your opinion, mine is this:

SCH shouldn't be a god tier healer just because "more complex" or whatever. All healers should be as closely balanced as possible.

I've been through every healer meta in this game and I couldn't care less about how "unique" a job is if I effectively can't play it because the playerbase excludes it. Though each healer job still has pretty significant differences, what the old SCH enthusiasts are really crying about is the lowering of DPS buttons/options (which is fair) and no longer necessarily being the strongest healer (which um... yeah sorry not sorry, but no thank you).

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

SCH shouldn't be a god tier healer just because "more complex" or whatever. All healers should be as closely balanced as possible.

---

I guess I worded my post poorly since it's not just one person who thinks that's what I meant. I'm not looking to make scholar so much better than every other healer, I just want the job to have a lot more room for optimization, down to being able to tell your fairy who to heal while you maybe focus on another target. At the moment you can't even control Eos, Selene is no longer an option, and they just completely did away with the pet bar in favor of loading your hotbar with more skills. That is to say I don't think you shouldn't be able to assign pet bar skills to your hotbar, but I think that having a separate bar for your pet has its own charm that disappears the moment you're required to put the skills on your hotbar or just never use them at all.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Semirhage

Ladies and gentlemen, this is your flight attendant speaking. To your left you will see the Great Healer Circular Forum Argument funnel cloud in the beginning of its rotation. As we begin our descent you will see "More Complicated Jobs Deserve Higher Skill Ceilings" and as we touch down we'll catch "It's Only Fair If Higher Skill Ceilings Come With More Powerful Potential", and before the fasten seatbelt sign turns off you'll hear "But Just Because We've Defined Other Healers As Necessarily Both Duller And Weaker Than Scholar Doesn't Mean It Can't Be Balanced Somehow" at the terminal.

Thank you for flying FFXIV Forum airlines.

---

So...care to remind me where it says anything about WHM? I assume that's what this is about...because it always is, even thought it didn't so much as mention that WHM is supposed to be the "easy healer for new players".

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

what the old SCH enthusiasts are really crying about is the lowering of DPS buttons/options (which is fair) and no longer necessarily being the strongest healer (which um... yeah sorry not sorry, but no thank you).

---

I've yet to see someone actually complain about SCH not being OP enough, that sounds more like a strawman to me.
The issue is that SCH simply feels inferior to any of it's previous iterations, not from a performance perspective (because it seems to be doing fine in that regard) but from a gameplay perspective.
I would take SB SCH over ShB SCH any day, even if it dealt the least dps out of all 3 healers and they took Recitation (the only really good new ability) away.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

This is such a red herring.

It's never been about "this job is so bad it can't clear the fight." It's about what it brings to the table.

Take, for example, patch 4.4 (and really a lot of patches, but let's focus on the final tier of Omega just for simplicity's sake). White mages could clear it, but no one took a white mage by choice - only if they couldn't find the other healers - because SCH and AST were just better. More healing, more DPS, more utility, more mobility.

Patch 3.4 was the same. "But white mages were great for dungeons!". etc

So I say yet again: If the standard is only "can clear the fight", no job adjustments have ever been needed. For healers, tanks, and DPS. SE might as well have just left everything the same at the beginning of each expac.

---

To be fair, a significantly contributor to that stigma was how that site we all know ranked parses. Bringing a White Mage straight up hurt your overall percentages in the same way Black Mage, Samurai and Monk did. Hence why no one wanted any of them. Granted, it wasn't the only reason as some jobs were simply balanced poorly but it certainly played a role. That isn't the case anymore as now rDPS and/or aDPS is used. Therefore, bringing a White Mage won't hurt your logs.

With all that said, there are ways SE could balance jobs without resulting to homogenization. They're simply too stubborn and opted for an easier solution. White Mage, for instance, suffered because of their insistence of it being a "raw healer" in a game that not only doesn't demand significantly healing but also where they don't want any one healer to be better than the others in that aspect. Monk saw a similar problem despite the melee not being nearly as homogenized. Nevertheless, I would actually prefer some imbalance if it meant jobs returned to having more identity. Shadowbringers just... isn't interesting in terms of overall job design. Far too many "safe" choices. That isn't to say I don't find several jobs fun. I do. But I'm not going to praise things like Machinist when it more or less amounts to "spam this one button five times. Which is what all the tanks do."

Healers and tanks suffered the most, but SE's overall direction focused too much on balance. Or more specifically, simplistic instead of creative balance.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Absurdity

I've yet to see someone actually complain about SCH not being OP enough, that sounds more like a strawman to me.

---

No one literally says it should be OP. The parlance is "It should have a higher skill ceiling than other healers" and similar. Sometimes they'll leave it implied, other times they'll come out and say "well of course more effort should be rewarded, and a higher ceiling means more effort."

frequently it's accompanied with "Well the lesser jobs can clear content so I don't see what's wrong with intentionally making some jobs stronger."

It's what Semirhage was referring to on the previous page, and it was a genuine argument seen on these forums before ShB, and it's occasionally come up since.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Absurdity

So...care to remind me where it says anything about WHM? I assume that's what this is about...because it always is, even thought it didn't so much as mention that WHM is supposed to be the "easy healer for new players".

---

This was another argument used to justify WHM's weakness here on the forums in Heavensward and Stormblood.

SE has never taken this position, at least that I'm aware of.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Dogempire

Despite that I don't think that SE should be homogenizing jobs just to appease raiders (I say homogenizing because at the moment this is how they're balancing things) because even with how much they've gutted both SCH and AST and how little WHM has lost, they've still completely failed to make it so that there isn't a meta healer comp.

IMO it's better that they preserve job/role identity and focus on balancing second, instead of focusing on balancing and gutting jobs and roles of what made them fun in the first place just to make them balanced, and fail in the end.

---

The biggest causes of meta healer comps are the fact AST doesn't pay any dps tax on oGCD's (and loses the least for GCD heals) and to a lesser extent that WHM doesn't have any shields. You can't place taxes on 2 out of 3 healers and not expect the 3rd to be top. WHM/SCH means someone has to bite the bullet and pay to heal, so naturally AST + Other becomes meta. AST's Noct almost exists just to compensate for WHM's shortcomings.

I do agree on preserving job identity. Classes should be designed to appeal to the players who like that playstyle. But I'd also mention that I'm against Enix's current policy of having gaping holes in the toolkit and flaws as class identity. Excessive tax, immobility, clipping, ghosting and lack of core abilities required in Savage should never be what defines a class. BLM is a case of turret fantasy done right, for example. WHM is not.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

The biggest causes of meta healer comps are the fact AST doesn't pay any dps tax on oGCD's (and loses the least for GCD heals) and to a lesser extent that WHM doesn't have any shields. You can't place taxes on 2 out of 3 healers and not expect the 3rd to be top. WHM/SCH means someone has to bite the bullet and pay to heal, so naturally AST + Other becomes meta. AST's Noct almost exists just to compensate for WHM's shortcomings.

I do agree on preserving job identity. Classes should be designed to appeal to the players who like that playstyle. But I'd also mention that I'm against Enix's current policy of having gaping holes in the toolkit and flaws as class identity. Excessive tax, immobility, clipping, ghosting and lack of core abilities required in Savage should never be what defines a class. BLM is a case of turret fantasy done right, for example. WHM is not.

---

Funny enough in this speed kill meta astro diu is being played together with whm. So whm doesn’t need to heal at all and can go full damage.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Mortex

Funny enough in this speed kill meta astro diu is being played together with whm. So whm doesn’t need to heal at all and can go full damage.

---

I would've said "AST's Noct was made just to compensate for WHM's shortcomings", past tense, because shields are a joke nowadays and if you really absolutely need shields at some point you always have neutral sect.