Next new job better be heals

Apothecary instead of Chemist?

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

Chemist: Mix function similar to Mudras.

1 button: Basic upgraded heal

2 buttons combo: High powered ST heal or aoe heal

3 buttons combo: heal over time circle, A boss debuff, or raid wide buff

Just spitballing the 3 button thing.

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To be honest chemist is one of the few cases I see put out there that doesn’t just step all over the toes of healing classes already implemented. It’s like the people who want Geomancer healer or Time Mage. Both of those classes would be great in the game, but I think thematically are too similar to sit in the healer roster.

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Originally Posted by BasicBlake

To be honest chemist is one of the few cases I see put out there that doesn’t just step all over the toes of healing classes already implemented. It’s like the people who want Geomancer healer or Time Mage. Both of those classes would be great in the game, but I think thematically are too similar to sit in the healer roster.

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Which might be why some of Healers either had their abilities changed (aero, stone) or removed outright (time dilation)

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Originally Posted by Morningstar1337

Which might be why some of Healers either had their abilities changed (aero, stone) or removed outright (time dilation)

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Fingers crossed for that! (But for a dps role)

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Originally Posted by Morningstar1337

Which might be why some of Healers either had their abilities changed (aero, stone) or removed outright (time dilation)

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There comes a point where I will have to grab the pitchforks and torches if they remove even more stuff from WHM just to give it to other healers. I have had quite enough of that.

Why not Green Mage, who specializes in buffs and debuffs with small heals as a secondary effect?

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Originally Posted by Wolfsbane706

Why not Green Mage, who specializes in buffs and debuffs with small heals as a secondary effect?

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If they could implement Green Mage in a cool way I would 100% be behind that. Since it doesnt really fit anywhere else.

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Originally Posted by Morningstar1337

Which might be why some of Healers either had their abilities changed (aero, stone) or removed outright (time dilation)

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Even so, I see no reason to leave the 3 original classes gutted and simplified just to create a "new" (read: reused) spin on... yet another homogeneous toolkit.

There is plenty of room for both Time Mage and Oracle elements on the purportedly 'time-space diviner'. There is room enough for both interesting pet uses and shields on SCH. There is room enough for both druidic and white magics on White Mage. They just have to stop "streamlining" healers down to only the barest of thematic components.

Watch as they finally release Chemist ... as a ranged dps.

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Originally Posted by althenawhm

There comes a point where I will have to grab the pitchforks and torches if they remove even more stuff from WHM just to give it to other healers. I have had quite enough of that.

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I can practically guarantee Thin Air will become a role action come 6.0

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Originally Posted by BasicBlake

If they could implement Green Mage in a cool way I would 100% be behind that. Since it doesnt really fit anywhere else.

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I agree with it being a great healer and if they could do it in a good way would love to see it. However, it would easily make a tank. They use hammers so give them a 1-2-3 combo to spam and then easily slap on "spells" (read: Abilities) like Protect for tank CDs with Bubble or something for the big CD

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Originally Posted by Jade3173

I agree with it being a great healer and if they could do it in a good way would love to see it. However, it would easily make a tank. They use hammers so give them a 1-2-3 combo to spam and then easily slap on "spells" (read: Abilities) like Protect for tank CDs with Bubble or something for the big CD

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I really like the idea of Protect as a personal cooldown and the other such abilities.

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Originally Posted by Allegor

I can practically guarantee Thin Air will become a role action come 6.0

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The best part, is that they'll do it because they believe healers have too difficult of a time keeping up with the demands of healing and assume it fixes all of the problems we have as a community.

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Originally Posted by Allegor

I can practically guarantee Thin Air will become a role action come 6.0

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God no, if it's MP issues they're worried about, WHM virtually has none, SCH doesn't really either unless you're not using Aetherflow or Energy Drain enough.

AST is would be the only that would benefit from this. And even that, I'd rather them bake MP recovery into placing cards on the right target to encourage learning the cards. Or simply make Lightspeed have no MP cost than zero if they're feeling lazy.

WHM has had so much of its kit ripped from it, I'd rather have imperfect balance and unique jobs at this point than all of the healers have 1-1 copies of their healing kits.

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

Watch as they finally release Chemist ... as a ranged dps.

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Given how I don’t like any of the Ranger physicals right now, I wouldn’t be opposed to the idea. But that’s a me thing.

Still with how they’ve done Healers thus far do we trust them with a 4th?

Im not so sure they know how to make a 4th, because from where Im sitting, seems like its not healing that most want, but instead a 4th, 'better at DPSing than SCH' job, or in other words a true green DPS.

People want a true green DPS now that all of the current healers dps kits got gutted. The real killer for gameplay as there are several periods of time in all content where you are not healing but hitting 1 button over and over and over.

DPS for healer jobs needs to be examined and fixed, THEN they can start designing a concept for a 4th healer.

And in the course of examining DPS, the AST card system needs a major overhaul. Personally, I'd prefer for all the cards to become party buffs, so that target switching can be reduced... and Sleeve Draw needs to be converted into something that does not require switching targets in rapid succession. I'm not maining AST again until it can be played without stressing my wrists.

Maybe it’s just cynicism but does anyone else worry that they actually are just going to ignore all the healer feedback they’ve been given?
Then they’ll release a new healer next expansion with all the same problems as the ones we have now (1 DoT, one DPS filler, and a whole bunch of healing GCDs/spells that don’t see much use) and the cycle will just repeat?

Maybe it’s just their refusal to at least acknowledge the feedback that makes me find it hard to believe they’re taking it on board. I mean, regardless of what you want for healers, whether it’s green dps or pure healers, I don’t feel like they’ve really tried to think about what people are saying in regards to any kind of healing feedback, at least since Shadowbringers began.

I’d love to see a new healer with the next expansion of course; even if it was something I wasn’t interested in personally I like the idea of a new job bringing something new to the role, even if it’s just in terms of working with them rather than playing as one. But then it’s like, with all the problems healers have, and the fact that we’ve not really had any sort of acceptance of these problems, makes me worry for the future of the role both long-term and short-term

I am thrilled to see that I am not the only one utterly dissatisfied with the current state of our healer roles.

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Originally Posted by MerlinCross

Still with how they’ve done Healers thus far do we trust them with a 4th?

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GNB isn't bad to be fair.

They went with the whole "we didn't release a new tank so we can balance the other 3" excuse for Stormblood and DRK ended up in an absolute mess of a state, while War grew to be bonkers OP. This expansion tanks are boring to play, but balanced performance-wise and the new tank is decent.

It's clear they did NOT hold back a healer in order to put all their focus into healer design. That's nonsense, they simply didn't bother with healer at all.

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Originally Posted by Jadeconl

I am thrilled to see that I am not the only one utterly dissatisfied with the current state of our healer roles.

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Where have you been? people have been upset with healer design since 5.0 dropped.

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Originally Posted by Billythepancake

Where have you been? people have been upset with healer design since 5.0 dropped.

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And Tank design, apprently.

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Originally Posted by Connor

Maybe it’s just cynicism but does anyone else worry that they actually are just going to ignore all the healer feedback they’ve been given?
Then they’ll release a new healer next expansion with all the same problems as the ones we have now (1 DoT, one DPS filler, and a whole bunch of healing GCDs/spells that don’t see much use) and the cycle will just repeat?

Maybe it’s just their refusal to at least acknowledge the feedback that makes me find it hard to believe they’re taking it on board. I mean, regardless of what you want for healers, whether it’s green dps or pure healers, I don’t feel like they’ve really tried to think about what people are saying in regards to any kind of healing feedback, at least since Shadowbringers began.

I’d love to see a new healer with the next expansion of course; even if it was something I wasn’t interested in personally I like the idea of a new job bringing something new to the role, even if it’s just in terms of working with them rather than playing as one. But then it’s like, with all the problems healers have, and the fact that we’ve not really had any sort of acceptance of these problems, makes me worry for the future of the role both long-term and short-term

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I am very much concerned that this might happen, the lack of well, acknowledgement doesn’t help at all. Thing is they can satisfy more than 1 camp of people if different healers were better suited to appealing to different things people get out of the role, like we used to. Those who sre singing praises for the design could have the 4th healer cater to their needs, which is what they should have done in the first place. Because if they retroactively do it, there will be people who will complain their job got changed regardless of whether the design principles they liked are moved into a new job whilst the existing ones evolve from their older design principles.

My other concern is seeing a recent reddit poll where after tallying casual and hardcore players the biggest issue people feel they have with their job is...their position in relation to meta. I know balance has always been a big complaint and I hate to think that SE is putting balance on a pedestal and letting it ruin job design because of it.

Balance only needs to be “good enough” for the content. It makes me wonder how many people who answered the poll are pulling off numbers for meta to be important. Because as I’ve understood it, it’s a small percentage of people able to hit those margins. So I don’t get why people care about something that really isn’t going to affect them, at most they’ll have to be better at their job than the next guy to give an equivalent output...which is to be expected because classes and jobs in an MMORPG will vary in difficulty...which is a good thing. Because some people want something easier, some people want something more challenging.

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Originally Posted by Saefinn

I am very much concerned that this might happen, the lack of well, acknowledgement doesn’t help at all. Thing is they can satisfy more than 1 camp of people if different healers were better suited to appealing to different things people get out of the role, like we used to. Those who sre singing praises for the design could have the 4th healer cater to their needs, which is what they should have done in the first place. Because if they retroactively do it, there will be people who will complain their job got changed regardless of whether the design principles they liked are moved into a new job whilst the existing ones evolve from their older design principles.

My other concern is seeing a recent reddit poll where after tallying casual and hardcore players the biggest issue people feel they have with their job is...their position in relation to meta. I know balance has always been a big complaint and I hate to think that SE is putting balance on a pedestal and letting it ruin job design because of it.

Balance only needs to be “good enough” for the content. It makes me wonder how many people who answered the poll are pulling off numbers for meta to be important. Because as I’ve understood it, it’s a small percentage of people able to hit those margins. So I don’t get why people care about something that really isn’t going to affect them, at most they’ll have to be better at their job than the next guy to give an equivalent output...which is to be expected because classes and jobs in an MMORPG will vary in difficulty...which is a good thing. Because some people want something easier, some people want something more challenging.

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Until streamers and high profile individuals recognize, and sympathize, with our position they'll absolutely continue to ignore us. Why wouldn't they? I mean, this expansion is arguably more than 1/2 way over and they've done nothing.

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Originally Posted by Connor

Maybe it’s just cynicism but does anyone else worry that they actually are just going to ignore all the healer feedback they’ve been given?
Then they’ll release a new healer next expansion with all the same problems as the ones we have now (1 DoT, one DPS filler, and a whole bunch of healing GCDs/spells that don’t see much use) and the cycle will just repeat?

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Definitely.

They're fine making things easier, nerfing them or pruning them and their new mentality seems to be accessibility, but it's extremely rare they make something that already exists more difficult. It's like they tried it in HW with things like Alex Savage, EX or Crafting, lost some players from over-doing it and went full-on panic mode from that point onwards and are terrified of asking anything too challenging from us anymore. It's just been getting steadily easier and easier with every whine or complaint.

There's a good chance they'll take the drop in healer numbers to signify "it's still too difficult", reducing responsibility and complexity even further. We've already been refused Savage 4 mans because it'd be "too hard on the healer" when we're here begging for things to heal and they've been pouring Piety all over everything like they think we just can't spam heals enough. I'd love to be proven wrong though.

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Originally Posted by Billythepancake

Where have you been? people have been upset with healer design since 5.0 dropped.

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Actually, it's been since the numbers and potencies were released (officially, and unofficially)...

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Originally Posted by Saefinn

My other concern is seeing a recent reddit poll where after tallying casual and hardcore players the biggest issue people feel they have with their job is...their position in relation to meta. I know balance has always been a big complaint and I hate to think that SE is putting balance on a pedestal and letting it ruin job design because of it.

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Job design is ruined not because they want all jobs to be perfectly balanced. It's ruined because they want to make all jobs easy and accessible. Accessibility is why the healers' dps kit was simplified. Balance is easily achievable even with very diverse jobs and toolkits, you just have to tweak potencies and keep arbitrary synergies like the old disembowel and crit stacking to a minimum. There's no point arguing about balance, that's not the problem here. The devs simply lack imagination, they don't know how they can make healers more interesting given the current structure of the game, especially when it comes to end game content. They keep giving them more and more oGCD heals and obviously they had to nerf their potencies so that healing savage content isn't a total joke and removed some dps skills to limit button bloat.

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Originally Posted by Lastelli

Job design is ruined not because they want all jobs to be perfectly balanced. It's ruined because they want to make all jobs easy and accessible. Accessibility is why the healers' dps kit was simplified. Balance is easily achievable even with very diverse jobs and toolkits, you just have to tweak potencies and keep arbitrary synergies like the old disembowel and crit stacking to a minimum. There's no point arguing about balance, that's not the problem here. The devs simply lack imagination, they don't know how they can make healers more interesting given the current structure of the game, especially when it comes to end game content. They keep giving them more and more oGCD heals and obviously they had to nerf their potencies so that healing savage content isn't a total joke and removed some dps skills to limit button bloat.

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The impression I've got is that it's not tied to one issue. The balance is involved still, given the huge emphasis on it, perhaps their way of addressing balance is not imaginative either, but homogenisation is not a symptom of trying to simplify a role, because they could still have a complicated healer role and still homogenise. Homogenisation is one of the easier methods for balance. Balance has been a good part of job feedback I've heard of the years and people are seemingly obsessed with how well their job performs versus the next.

Whilst balance is achievable in other ways, I do not agree that it is "easily" done, because it's not just adjusting potencies and synergies. If you're fighting against something like a striking dummy, that might be enough. But when you throw in game mechanics, how jobs are able to handle them and how jobs functionally work and so on that can throw balance out.

When it comes to accessibility, my argument has been that healers were already accessible, especially WHM, WHM IMO was always a great healer for beginners. The game has always loosely accommodated the idea of varied difficulty in jobs and DPS jobs still have it, but seemingly healers have lose it.

To summarise, homogenisation makes it easier to balance whilst simplification makes it more accessible. But I agree, maybe their handling of these issues hasn't been the most imaginative or the best way of handling them.Should we blame the idea of balance? Definitely not, but I feel it gets overemphasised as an issue when there's other things that make jobs great that're being diluted. While balance is achievable without diluting them, I'd rather sacrifice a level of balance if it means the devs find it easier/more achievable to give me fun and engaging jobs.


With regards to button bloat, also something they could have worked around:
WHM: More dual purpose spells, like how Assize has a dual purpose
SCH: More spells get enhanced by Emergency & Deployment Tactics to give them wider functionality, perhaps for DPS and utility, EG. Emergency Tactics + Biolysis = all of Biolysis' damage hits at once (like Thunder procs on BLM). Bring back Selene and give her more useful abilities. SMN already has a system where skills change depending on what pet you have.
AST: there's space for the old card system still. To fix the problems of the old card system, use the current Minor Arcana system. Because this is how we now deal with cards we don't want and it works.

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Originally Posted by Lastelli

Job design is ruined not because they want all jobs to be perfectly balanced. It's ruined because they want to make all jobs easy and accessible. Accessibility is why the healers' dps kit was simplified. Balance is easily achievable even with very diverse jobs and toolkits, you just have to tweak potencies and keep arbitrary synergies like the old disembowel and crit stacking to a minimum. There's no point arguing about balance, that's not the problem here. The devs simply lack imagination, they don't know how they can make healers more interesting given the current structure of the game, especially when it comes to end game content. They keep giving them more and more oGCD heals and obviously they had to nerf their potencies so that healing savage content isn't a total joke and removed some dps skills to limit button bloat.

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While it's true what you're saying about accessibility, I think you're underestimating how difficult it is to balance jobs. Just look at other games, balance is all over the place usually, especially if you compare it to FFXIV where balance seems really good comparibly to the point it looks like an obsession from the devs.

It likely takes a good amount of rescources (time) to make sure all classes are balanced (you have to consider different kind of content and group composition), this is why there are always job adjustments in later patches ( the case in every MMO).

Balance also doesn't seem like something you can just throw more developers at for it to increase. Can get in too many cooks in the kitchen situation there it seems to me, which is why balance always seems to be a difficulty in such games.

If you were to homogenize jobs, it would likely be much easier for them to balance the jobs without too much testing and tweaking so I think it does contribute to the "ruination" of the role.

edit: Imo adding a little more complexity to healer dps rotation seems like the easiest way to make the role more interesting while keeping the balance (and accessibility as well for content with soft or no dps checks).

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Originally Posted by Saefinn

finally give a decent water spell.

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A year and a half ago this snippet from a different thead...

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Originally Posted by tinythinker

I'm in favor of having them upgrade over leveling like other skills. As per a different thread in this forum --

Fluid Aura 2: The ability loses the knockback and gains the AoE effects Bind and targets have increased vulnerability to wind and water-aspected damage

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I think they already removed the knockback? But the AoE bind still isn't a thing.

If we don't count Blue Mage since it's a limited job, to get every combat category to four they could do a Magic Ranged DPS and a Physical Ranged DPS next. Plenty of options for them to consider. So it might be 7.0 for a new healer. Although I thought I read Yoshi P said they wanted to do a reset on healers (5.0) so they could go forward and build on that. So, I don't see 6.0 or 7.0 as more or less likely for a fourth healer job.

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

GNB isn't bad to be fair.

They went with the whole "we didn't release a new tank so we can balance the other 3" excuse for Stormblood and DRK ended up in an absolute mess of a state, while War grew to be bonkers OP. This expansion tanks are boring to play, but balanced performance-wise and the new tank is decent.

It's clear they did NOT hold back a healer in order to put all their focus into healer design. That's nonsense, they simply didn't bother with healer at all.

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I never said that GNB was bad though if people have seen my posts over on the tank board, I think Tank gameplay/design is crippled anyway.

That said, to this day I'm seeing people dunk on WHM and how SCH and AST are still valued over it. Not to mention the gameplay design around the 3 healers right now.

Simply throwing in a 4th healer into this mix isn't something I would have much confidence in. Oh, good. A 4th flavor of boring to play as. Do agree with you on the last part, they didn't withhold a healer for balance, they just did not give a care for healers period this expansion.

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Originally Posted by tinythinker

If we don't count Blue Mage since it's a limited job, to get every combat category to four they could do a Magic Ranged DPS and a Physical Ranged DPS next. Plenty of options for them to consider. So it might be 7.0 for a new healer. Although I thought I read Yoshi P said they wanted to do a reset on healers (5.0) so they could go forward and build on that. So, I don't see 6.0 or 7.0 as more or less likely for a fourth healer job.

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What..

Why would they put off healer for another ranged physical?? Players would light the headquarters on fire. 7.0 for another healer. Ma'am.

They just put out a ranged physical. I would say the scales are tipped towards caster dps and a healer to round things out.

(This was in no way meant to be rude or anything I am just very baffled)

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Originally Posted by BasicBlake

What..

Why would they put off healer for another ranged physical?? Players would light the headquarters on fire. 7.0 for another healer. Ma'am.

They just put out a ranged physical. I would say the scales are tipped towards caster dps and a healer to round things out.

(This was in no way meant to be rude or anything I am just very baffled)

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I wouldn't be shocked if they did skip healer next expac, and honestly, if this is how they treat healers, I want them to. I was, like many, disappointed when I first heard about DNC being a DPS instead of a healer, but after seeing the changes they did to healers, I'm glad DNC is a DPS. SE actually cares about DPS and is willing to at least make them feel good, even if their numbers aren't always where they should be. They don't even bother playtesting healers to make sure they can do their job (looking at you 5.0 AST) or if their main mechanic is actually worth using (remember energy drain? I do.) Hell, fairy is still a broken mess on SCH. You have to weave in her abilities just to have them delayed by up to 10 seconds, and this was never a problem until ShB dropped. If this is the direction they want to take healers,no thanks. I'd rather just have 3 classes that suck over 4 classes that suck.

Most likely is going to be a healer and a melee.

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Originally Posted by Renkei

Most likely is going to be a healer and a melee.

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And whatever melee that is will be the face of the expansion

Because, y'know, casters aren't "cool" and don't sell product.

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Originally Posted by Renkei

Most likely is going to be a healer and a melee.

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FIVE melee? Don't they complain enough about competing for spots. Five melee to the three casters and three ranged physical. I don't think they will do 2 physical ranged in a row.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

And whatever melee that is will be the face of the expansion

Because, y'know, casters aren't "cool" and don't sell product.

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So far derplander hasnt ever been one of the new classes released with the expansions. Fingers crossed for a DoM for cutscenes this time around.

I'm not saying there won't be a healer in 6.0, just that I won't be surprised if there isn't.