Live letter expectations.

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Originally Posted by SpiralMask

eh, whatever changes they announce will have been set in stone for at least a few months if the team is confident enough in their progress to bring them into the LL. if they do kneecap us even further it's not like KDSilver jinxed anyone.

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Well, maybe not KDSilver, but it could, in fact, be aliens.

I would say that my only expectation is that they explain themselves about the Healer changes coming up in the next expansion, if only because they put out the excuse of needing to fix healing this expansion in the first place (and also because of the disdain they ended up getting because of their changes this expansion, from all regions), but I fear even that much is just begging for disappointment.

What they need to do is rebrand the healer role as support and roll buffs/debuffs into the four upcoming classes, as well as broaden their DPS kits. But they aren't going to do that, and my expectations are already ten thousand leagues under.

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Originally Posted by SweetPete

Sheesh so many negative Nancy’s. I understand the frustrations but let’s have a little hope. Whatever happened to have a little hope and have a little faith?

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3 expansions of getting beaten down tends to do that to a role.

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Originally Posted by Allegor

Personally, I want Aero III back, and/or some other form of dps spell or ability, maybe like Assize that deals damage and/or heal? and I'm really hoping that "Fluid Aura II" we saw in the benchmark isn't actually a shield, or else what'd even be the point of separating healers into regen/barrier if we're getting one either way

That said, my expectations are:
WHM: no changes whatsoever, gets Fluid Aura II
AST: still WHM 2.0 but maybe cards get a minor overhaul again
SCH: ....honestly, I have no idea, the job is just a mess all over the place
Sage (SGE?): Noct 2.0

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thats not a shield targeted defensive cooldown

Crazy how much negativity there is towards healers! I think both WHM and AST are a lot of fun to play. SCH is kinda borked at the moment but I have hope that they'll fix it in the coming expansion.
AST was pretty bad when ShB first came out, but they listened to feedback (to the extent they could without completely redesigning the card system again) and buffed it to what it is today. WHM was kinda bad in StB but they fixed it in ShB and it's just fine if you ask me. SCH... well at least it's better than what it was at the start of ShB.

I don't care if people don't agree with me, I just want to throw my two cents in for whatever it's worth.

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Originally Posted by Wilford111

Crazy how much negativity there is towards healers! I think both WHM and AST are a lot of fun to play. SCH is kinda borked at the moment but I have hope that they'll fix it in the coming expansion.
AST was pretty bad when ShB first came out, but they listened to feedback (to the extent they could without completely redesigning the card system again) and buffed it to what it is today. WHM was kinda bad in StB but they fixed it in ShB and it's just fine if you ask me. SCH... well at least it's better than what it was at the start of ShB.

I don't care if people don't agree with me, I just want to throw my two cents in for whatever it's worth.

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Your pretty positive opinions cuts through all the negative ones. I appreciate it.

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Originally Posted by FoxCh40s

It's just exhausting to see how further they've devolved your class based on feedback no one gave, and responses that make no sense based on how the job is played by the community.

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In all honestly, several jobs suffered from this same issue. Who the hell asked for Bard to be a neutered Archer that occasionally sings? Who asked for... well, Monk's iteration period? They seemingly listen to people with less interest in the jobs in the hopes of convincing them to play than those who are already fans to begin with. That has been my biggest complaint towards ShB. They prioritize players not playing the jobs over improving the experience for those who already enjoy them. And then they wonder why the population doesn't increase. The aforementioned Bard is a shining example of that; going from the most popular DPS to fighting with Monk for the least.

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Originally Posted by SweetPete

Sheesh so many negative Nancy’s. I understand the frustrations but let’s have a little hope. Whatever happened to have a little hope and have a little faith?

I know most of you healer mains have made up your minds considering the devs track record when it comes to healers. I’ll probably be the only one here with a little hope and faith. I give you guys permission to bash me with “I told you so” After September 18th. Please don’t come for me to harshly I beg you all lol.

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Hard to be positive when feedback is routinely ignored for what will be three expansions now. How long did it take them to acknowledge White Mage's problems, which, ironically, weren't entirely fixed by them but FFlogs changing its ranking system? For all the praise WHM gets, it would be instantly shunned were it not for the shift to rDPS. That alone speaks volumes when a third party website they actively dislike puts greater emphasis on player feedback.

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Originally Posted by Wilford111

Crazy how much negativity there is towards healers! I think both WHM and AST are a lot of fun to play. SCH is kinda borked at the moment but I have hope that they'll fix it in the coming expansion.
AST was pretty bad when ShB first came out, but they listened to feedback (to the extent they could without completely redesigning the card system again) and buffed it to what it is today. WHM was kinda bad in StB but they fixed it in ShB and it's just fine if you ask me. SCH... well at least it's better than what it was at the start of ShB.

I don't care if people don't agree with me, I just want to throw my two cents in for whatever it's worth.

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This is where I’m at as well. I think all three healers have a generally good ability set, and each just needs some QoL tinkering. For WHM, I’d like to see Lily actions be OGCDs, with an additional damage Lily spender to build up to the Blood Lily. Also, add traits to provide damage support. For example, add a DoT to Asylum to make it similar to Kuribu’s Regen skill, harming enemies inside it while healing allies.

For SCH, give me ghostless fairy skills or give me death! We need to be able to reliably utilize our skills, and timing is important. Next, an offensive fairy skill would be sweet - perhaps with Seraph we can use our two stacks for either Consolation or “Desolation”, healing allies or damaging enemies as needed.

AST is the big mystery, as it’s likely removal of Nocturnal Sect will drastically alter its gameplay and identity. I see a major overhaul of this job. I’d rather AST not be a WHM copy with regen-style heals, rather a Time Magic healer with heals occurring when conditions are met (damage taken, timer, etc.) Cards and Divination should feel impactful, but should come at a cost; maybe lower heal/damage potencies. Right now AST does everything a bit too well (and that’s coming from an AST main). Also give us back our time magic. The concept: AST doesn’t bring raw power, but can affect the durational parameters of its buffs to help speed up the battle.

I'm fascinated by all the people having fun with WHM. In my view, it needs an entire core redesign. Its core gameplay runs counter to how FFXIV's combat system works; its gauge system encourages goofy backward behavior to get the best results out of it. It has clunk all over the place. The casting flow is like mud compared to any other mage in this game. Even taking all of these core issues into account, its kit evolution is -still- an expansion behind the other two, and it has all these crappy problems on top of it all. I'm increasingly convinced that anyone who actually likes how the lilies work is comparing it to how F-tier the class was in Stormblood, instead of comparing it to a job that has actual good design behind it.

White Mage is a horribly designed job, change my mind.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

I'm fascinated by all the people having fun with WHM. In my view, it needs an entire core redesign. Its core gameplay runs counter to how FFXIV's combat system works; its gauge system encourages goofy backward behavior to get the best results out of it. It has clunk all over the place. The casting flow is like mud compared to any other mage in this game. Even taking all of these core issues into account, its kit evolution is -still- an expansion behind the other two, and it has all these crappy problems on top of it all. I'm increasingly convinced that anyone who actually likes how the lilies work is comparing it to how F-tier the class was in Stormblood, instead of comparing it to a job that has actual good design behind it.

White Mage is a horribly designed job, change my mind.

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I straight up don't get how people can say sch is terrible but say whm is actually good. Whm has just as many as problems sch.

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Originally Posted by Acece

I straight up don't get how people can say sch is terrible but say whm is actually good. Whm has just as many as problems sch.

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Because White Mage's flaws aren't nearly as noticeable outside higher end content. In the hands of a skilled player attempting to optimize, you'll notice the lack of oGCD healing, the lack of mobility and constant clipping issues. None of these stand out in more casual play where someone is far less likely to even care they clipped their GCD or aren't focusing on their Glare casts.

Scholar, on the other hand, is harder to play. That alone breeds criticism. Shields are also routinely unnecessary, especially in lower difficulty content. Which means a good portion of their kit is often useless. Ghosting abilities is equally noticeable because, well, what you intended to have happen just... doesn't. Perhaps the biggest damning aspect for Scholar's criticism though is it had stuff people actually miss. White Mage suffered for years as being the "prog healer" no one wanted afterwards due to its horrible MP management, lack of utility and low damage as a result. Shadowbringers is the first expansion people actually wanted White Mage and weren't asking them to switch to Astro later. Scholar only lost many of the aspect which made it great.

Simply put. People miss what was taken away more than what could be. White Mage could be better but Scholar was better.

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

Because White Mage's flaws aren't nearly as noticeable outside higher end content. In the hands of a skilled player attempting to optimize, you'll notice the lack of oGCD healing, the lack of mobility and constant clipping issues. None of these stand out in more casual play where someone is far less likely to even care they clipped their GCD or aren't focusing on their Glare casts.

Scholar, on the other hand, is harder to play. That alone breeds criticism. Shields are also routinely unnecessary, especially in lower difficulty content. Which means a good portion of their kit is often useless. Ghosting abilities is equally noticeable because, well, what you intended to have happen just... doesn't. Perhaps the biggest damning aspect for Scholar's criticism though is it had stuff people actually miss. White Mage suffered for years as being the "prog healer" no one wanted afterwards due to its horrible MP management, lack of utility and low damage as a result. Shadowbringers is the first expansion people actually wanted White Mage and weren't asking them to switch to Astro later. Scholar only lost many of the aspect which made it great.

Simply put. People miss what was taken away more than what could be. White Mage could be better but Scholar was better.

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So because whm was pretty much always bad people think it's fine now meanwhile sch was great but now it's bad because it's a bigger leap in quality. I guess I can see that. Still don't like it.

Also whm does have the most casual base out of all the healers so it make sense what you're saying.

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Originally Posted by Acece

So because whm was pretty much always bad people think it's fine now meanwhile sch was great but now it's bad about it's a bigger leap in quality. I guess I can see that. Still don't like it.

Also whm does have the most casual base out of all the healers so it make sense what you're saying.

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Scholar isn't even a mere shadow of what it once was. It would be lucky to be just a shadow of its shadow.

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Originally Posted by FoxCh40s

Scholar isn't even a mere shadow of what it once was. It would be lucky to be just a shadow of its shadow.

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Scholar was OP as all heck in ARR/HW/SB. You could dps and do literally very little to no actual healing, adlo, succor and leave it all to your fairy. When your fairy can solo heal dungeons it’s OP. Embrace was ridiculously OP. Not sure if you were on these forums back then but people complained that scholar needed to be nerfed badly and finally in Shb they were.

I think it was a bit much but I did see Yoshi P’s point. He said scholars would leave the bulk of the healing to their healing partners in raids and that wasn’t fair. He was right. Now I didn’t think they would go hard like they did on scholar and I agree that it is nothing like it use to be. But let’s be honest here. Scholar needed to be knocked down a peg.

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Originally Posted by FoxCh40s

Scholar isn't even a mere shadow of what it once was. It would be lucky to be just a shadow of its shadow.

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More like a shadowflare of its former self, amirite?

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Originally Posted by SweetPete

I think it was a bit much but I did see Yoshi P’s point. He said scholars would leave the bulk of the healing to their healing partners in raids and that wasn’t fair. He was right.

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He was completely off the mark actually. At the time he stated that, SCH's in raids were generally contributing more healing than the other two. They just weren't mindlessly spamming GCD heals or wasting Atherflow on overhealing. This was the same story when they nerfed ED recently to make SCH heal more. SCH's were healing plenty. It's still the same after the nerf. Even after they made Succor cheaper as a hint, good SCH's refused to play badly and overheal to please the devs misinformed notion on how healers "should" work.

It's actually tedious how stubborn they are. They just don't get it.

What is hilarious however, is that this is 100% how WHM's play at endgame. The optimal way to play WHM is to dump the bulk of the healing on your co-heal, especially if they're an AST. Not just for selfish reasons, but for better group dps overall. The entire class is designed into a corner where it has to play that way to be optimal. Your GCD heals lose you more potency, holding Assize loses potency and moving hurts you far more, so if the group needs a hardcast heal it's better overall to dump it on your partner. However, the devs see nothing wrong here at all and stubbornly cling to the triple weakness WHM design of no mobility, no weave and no utility. But they're obsessed with SCH's spamming Succor more.

My guess is they'll continue forcing 1-button spam dps options on us and continue this boring, lame 5.0 healer design intent on homogenization above all else. I have no faith in their ability to create compelling and fun healers anymore.

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Originally Posted by Anhra

More like a shadowflare of its former self, amirite?

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HAHA BAZINGA

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Originally Posted by SweetPete

Scholar was OP as all heck in ARR/HW/SB. You could dps and do literally very little to no actual healing, adlo, succor and leave it all to your fairy. When your fairy can solo heal dungeons it’s OP. Embrace was ridiculously OP. Not sure if you were on these forums back then but people complained that scholar needed to be nerfed badly and finally in Shb they were.

I think it was a bit much but I did see Yoshi P’s point. He said scholars would leave the bulk of the healing to their healing partners in raids and that wasn’t fair. He was right. Now I didn’t think they would go hard like they did on scholar and I agree that it is nothing like it use to be. But let’s be honest here. Scholar needed to be knocked down a peg.

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none of the changes for scholar in shb were justified, except for decreasing the potency of embrace

good scholars back then would actually heal MORE than their cohealers because you could order your fairy to do stuff without dropping your damage gcds, not just things like whispering dawn but you could micromanage embraces to heal people who actually needed it. On top of that they had miasma ii to be able to weave aetherflow heals without the massive potency loss that was ruin ii. That was not a flaw and it was not "OP". Scholar was the only healer where you were actually rewarded for healing more smartly.

come shadowbringers and scholar suddenly has huge dps losses for using any heal, ever, and very little way to mitigate it. and on top of that a mindnumbingly moring damage rotation. thats less of a nerf and more like crippling every aspect of the job for mo reason

Scholar absolutely dominated the healer meta for six years. It was a jack and master of all trades. It suffocated healer design space. Squeenix nerfed the everloving crap out of it in Shadowbringers because they were sick of trying to take a careful scalpel to the beast only to see it still dictating party composition after poking around at it.

Shadowbringers changes made Scholar boring, and that sucks. But it absolutely needed the everloving crap nerfed out of it.

I see you guys point but to be honest the only things I miss from old scholar is being able to use fairy skills while healing and dps. I also miss Selene’s aoe cleanse and aoe haste skill. I miss being able to make dots aoe but that’s for all healers though. I actually don’t miss the 3-4 dots scholar had. Kinda glad their gone. I don’t miss cleric stance either.

I actually quite like the more healer oriented scholar that we currently have. Now don’t get me wrong I love to dps and help my team but if I want to truly go ham with dps and rotations and such, I play summoner. I never had a issue with broil spam since it’s always been like that.

I do hope they give scholar a bit more flare but overall I actually like scholar. Get rid of aetherflow and give lustrate and Indom charges like they have in pvp. Aetherpact needs more pop too. More stratagems will be nice as well.

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

He was completely off the mark actually.

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I think what gets me was that he wasn't wrong when that this happened. He was wrong about when it happened. The sch doing the dps happened in the first half of Heavensward. I still remember mrhappy's clear video of plus a few other instances with the other fights. It was around 3.4 that groups started to realized that both healers doing dps was actually a gain so they had to figure a healing priority which is I recall with Astro/Sch, was whispering dawn>collective>indom>aspected helios. Hell I remember going back through the logs and Sch were basically on par with their partners.

But ya, I can bring myself to trust their word on anything regarding the healers.. This was the team that legit thought that Stb lilies in their first form were a good idea. Then they did nothing to make it better after making cure 1 being 100 percent for getting one to try to make it better. They didn't at all touch the secret of the lilies 2 when it had that stupid proc gate of a 20 percent change that a crit cure 1 or cure 2 could reduce asylum or assize's cd by 5 seconds. They even admit farther defeat on it in 4.2 when bension didn't need the lily requirement anymore. Finally, there was the 4.5 changes. which being too little too late with the enmity changes, they just superbuffed Assize and just give PI its original duration which should of stay that way.

Not to mention the lack of healer questions they would answer or the fact that they just didn't talk about healers in general in everything leading up to shadowbringers. So my apologizes for not having too much optimism but they given their choices over the past, it's hard for to give them the benefit of the doubt.

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Originally Posted by SweetPete

I think it was a bit much but I did see Yoshi P’s point. He said scholars would leave the bulk of the healing to their healing partners in raids and that wasn’t fair. He was right. Now I didn’t think they would go hard like they did on scholar and I agree that it is nothing like it use to be. But let’s be honest here. Scholar needed to be knocked down a peg.

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No. . . he wasn't.

During that exact time where Yoshi made that statement this was the state of healers in difficult content:

https://i.imgur.com/Uj2J3TN.jpg

He couldn't have been more wrong. There are more than a few instances where Yoshi-P has no idea what's going on in his own game.

And the majority of those instances has been in job design. I don't know if he's assuming or getting bad info from his team but as the producer, he doesn't get the luxury of being wrong a whole lot.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

No. . . he wasn't.

During that exact time where Yoshi made that statement this was the state of healers in difficult content:

https://i.imgur.com/Uj2J3TN.jpg

He couldn't have been more wrong. There are more than a few instances where Yoshi-P has no idea what's going on in his own game.

And the majority of those instances has been in job design. I don't know if he's assuming or getting bad info from his team but as the producer, he doesn't get the luxury of being wrong a whole lot.

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I mean it isn’t that hard to ask top healer players for things you can too make healer better in general. Like when you have no clue you ask peps who have it.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

Scholar absolutely dominated the healer meta for six years. It was a jack and master of all trades. It suffocated healer design space. Squeenix nerfed the everloving crap out of it in Shadowbringers because they were sick of trying to take a careful scalpel to the beast only to see it still dictating party composition after poking around at it.

Shadowbringers changes made Scholar boring, and that sucks. But it absolutely needed the everloving crap nerfed out of it.

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People enjoyed the only good and powerful designed healer? Shocker.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

Scholar absolutely dominated the healer meta for six years. It was a jack and master of all trades. It suffocated healer design space. Squeenix nerfed the everloving crap out of it in Shadowbringers because they were sick of trying to take a careful scalpel to the beast only to see it still dictating party composition after poking around at it.

Shadowbringers changes made Scholar boring, and that sucks. But it absolutely needed the everloving crap nerfed out of it.

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I can't speak up for anything before Stormblood, but i think it would have been a way better design choice to further improve both WHM and AST back then, in a way that both have qualifying features which the other Healers do not have, instead of just going full easy street and just nerf the most powerful one

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Originally Posted by Mortex

I mean it isn’t that hard to ask top healer players for things you can too make healer better in general.

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It is, when you're trying your hardest to keep a reputation of not caring for or wanting to acknowledge the player-made meta.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

Scholar absolutely dominated the healer meta for six years. It was a jack and master of all trades. It suffocated healer design space. Squeenix nerfed the everloving crap out of it in Shadowbringers because they were sick of trying to take a careful scalpel to the beast only to see it still dictating party composition after poking around at it.

Shadowbringers changes made Scholar boring, and that sucks. But it absolutely needed the everloving crap nerfed out of it.

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And Scholars at that time who were giving legitimate feedback noticed how much WHM was struggling and AST to a certain extent as well.

They asked for the FFXIV devs to bring the other two jobs up instead of nerfing everything down to bare bones.

But lets talk about how much SCH's were "nerfed".

They had their damage gutted. The fairy had minor potency decreases. That was about it. Each of the healers turned into AST when it came to Damage, a change no serious AST would have wished on anyone.

Scholar was good because it had a complete kit, whereas WHM was specialized in pure, blunt healing.

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Originally Posted by SweetPete

Scholar was OP as all heck in ARR/HW/SB. You could dps and do literally very little to no actual healing, adlo, succor and leave it all to your fairy. When your fairy can solo heal dungeons it’s OP. Embrace was ridiculously OP. Not sure if you were on these forums back then but people complained that scholar needed to be nerfed badly and finally in Shb they were.

I think it was a bit much but I did see Yoshi P’s point. He said scholars would leave the bulk of the healing to their healing partners in raids and that wasn’t fair. He was right. Now I didn’t think they would go hard like they did on scholar and I agree that it is nothing like it use to be. But let’s be honest here. Scholar needed to be knocked down a peg.

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While in a fully optimized environment the sch was absolutely contributing to the heals and in some cases covering the majority of it. This tended to not always be the case in lower end content. The scenario Yoshi-P describes may not be accurate for 99th percentile sch players but it was definitely a thing in lower tiers, the SCH failing to properly utilize their faerie and tunnel visioning their significantly more convoluted dps rotation was something that was oft joked about. The whole 'SCH was a dps with a faerie pet thing' came from somewhere.

But even so the fact that SCH was so overwhelmingly dominant but also incredibly difficult to master meant that whether we like it or not the snipping was going to happen.

Dungeons are faceroll to begin with (and an absolute chore). That the fairy can solo heal them shows absolutely nothing. I wish they'd just redesign this part of the game entirely.

At this point it feels like healers (and tanks to an extent) are just there so that dps can enjoy their time in pretty much all forms of content.

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Originally Posted by Anhra

I can't speak up for anything before Stormblood, but i think it would have been a way better design choice to further improve both WHM and AST back then, in a way that both have qualifying features which the other Healers do not have, instead of just going full easy street and just nerf the most powerful one

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I was on the forums back then. I recall a lot of vague "yeah, improve WHM" sentiment.

Alongside a lot of "wellllll...but not buffs because that's Astro's thing. Or damage because that's Scholar's thing."

I'm wondering exactly what future Scholar mains envisioned when their competition should have been improved, but not like *improved* improved in any way that group content cares about. I still maintain that Scholar (well, Arcanist really) suffocated job design. It's the DoTs class. No wait the pets class. No wait the smart book wizard class. No also the damage king. No wait also king of tactics. It legitimately hogged a wide variety of identities to itself. Scholar's identity, as far as I can tell, was "good at everything this game's combat system asks a job to do". That's not a sustainable identity. It precludes any other job being brought up to its level, because then you'd be treading on its toes after all.

Scholar was annihilating both the damage and heal numbers on the Site That Shall Not Be Named, and Scholar mains were still on these forums and Reddit whining and moaning that Embrace "felt so weak". Skipping mechanics with deployed critlo. Enabling shenanigans the other two healers couldn't dream of. Healer design needs to be brought up from where it is now, definitely. But oldschool meta-warping bonkers OP Scholar I'd rather see never return.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

I was on the forums back then. I recall a lot of vague "yeah, improve WHM" sentiment.

Alongside a lot of "wellllll...but not buffs because that's Astro's thing. Or damage because that's Scholar's thing."

I'm wondering exactly what future Scholar mains envisioned when their competition should have been improved, but not like *improved* improved in any way that group content cares about. I still maintain that Scholar (well, Arcanist really) suffocated job design. It's the DoTs class. No wait the pets class. No wait the smart book wizard class. No also the damage king. No wait also king of tactics. It legitimately hogged a wide variety of identities to itself. Scholar's identity, as far as I can tell, was "good at everything this game's combat system asks a job to do". That's not a sustainable identity. It precludes any other job being brought up to its level, because then you'd be treading on its toes after all.

Scholar was annihilating both the damage and heal numbers on the Site That Shall Not Be Named, and Scholar mains were still on these forums and Reddit whining and moaning that Embrace "felt so weak". Skipping mechanics with deployed critlo. Enabling shenanigans the other two healers couldn't dream of. Healer design needs to be brought up from where it is now, definitely. But oldschool meta-warping bonkers OP Scholar I'd rather see never return.

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It truly left you scarred. When someone mentions WHM and SCH I'm always wondering when is Sermihage going to barge into the conversation.

But, jokes aside, I agree. Having imbalanced classes is not good for the healing community as a whole. Still, I do think it is possible to have mechanics exclusive to one Healer Job and have every healer viable. There is enough design space for everyone granted numbers are tweaked for it.

Again, I am not saying WHM should be the "simple" and "boring" healer. I like playing all three healers and a Glare Mage with clipping issues isn't what I'd call engaging or fun. I would rather have WHM have a proper BLM style rotation with mantaining self buffs and proper weave-space.

That being said I would also keep the Buffer/Debuffer mechanics to Ast and Sch respectively.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

I was on the forums back then. I recall a lot of vague "yeah, improve WHM" sentiment.

Alongside a lot of "wellllll...but not buffs because that's Astro's thing. Or damage because that's Scholar's thing."

I'm wondering exactly what future Scholar mains envisioned when their competition should have been improved, but not like *improved* improved in any way that group content cares about. I still maintain that Scholar (well, Arcanist really) suffocated job design. It's the DoTs class. No wait the pets class. No wait the smart book wizard class. No also the damage king. No wait also king of tactics. It legitimately hogged a wide variety of identities to itself. Scholar's identity, as far as I can tell, was "good at everything this game's combat system asks a job to do". That's not a sustainable identity. It precludes any other job being brought up to its level, because then you'd be treading on its toes after all.
.

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Then you would also remember in ARR when SCH SUCKED at AoE healing, that was WHM's thing.

Problem is and always was that SCH was the job if you mastered it, you had a REALLY strong job, it could do everything. But if you didn't, it was a pretty bare bones healer. It was similar to Warrior. Insanely strong when mastered.

Whereas WHM was the healer for people who didn't want to optimize. The casual healer

Lower than the coils

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

I was on the forums back then. I recall a lot of vague "yeah, improve WHM" sentiment.

Alongside a lot of "wellllll...but not buffs because that's Astro's thing. Or damage because that's Scholar's thing."

I'm wondering exactly what future Scholar mains envisioned when their competition should have been improved, but not like *improved* improved in any way that group content cares about. I still maintain that Scholar (well, Arcanist really) suffocated job design. It's the DoTs class. No wait the pets class. No wait the smart book wizard class. No also the damage king. No wait also king of tactics. It legitimately hogged a wide variety of identities to itself. Scholar's identity, as far as I can tell, was "good at everything this game's combat system asks a job to do". That's not a sustainable identity. It precludes any other job being brought up to its level, because then you'd be treading on its toes after all.

Scholar was annihilating both the damage and heal numbers on the Site That Shall Not Be Named, and Scholar mains were still on these forums and Reddit whining and moaning that Embrace "felt so weak". Skipping mechanics with deployed critlo. Enabling shenanigans the other two healers couldn't dream of. Healer design needs to be brought up from where it is now, definitely. But oldschool meta-warping bonkers OP Scholar I'd rather see never return.

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This is why I don't want to return to Heavensward era SCH despite the fact I did love playing it. I would rather see the FFXIV devs try to use this opportunity to flesh out a new identity for SCH instead of simply reverting it back to what everyone misses. They have the building blocks for identity now, the "resource management" and "pet" healer, they just need to add a drop more color to the dps rotation (I'm fine with them simply bringing back Miasma and Bane and keeping AoW as the AoE filler myself.) and make the heal mechanics more cohesive with one another.

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

It truly left you scarred. When someone mentions WHM and SCH I'm always wondering when is Sermihage going to barge into the conversation.

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It definitely did. I've been on here since Heavensward, and have become -very- sick and jaded of Astro and Scholar mains vaguely waving in the direction of improving White Mage, while also demanding that it never actually gains anything useful or interesting (that's Scholar's identity!). I blame those players for the Shadowbringers design corner almost as much as I blame the job design team. How is one supposed to improve White Mage if it's barred from utility, damage, etc? Easy, you nerf everything down to that pit. Few things on these forums make me roll my eyes harder than Shadowbringers healer design complaints leading to "well why don't we just return to what we had before! That was working right? The healers weren't *that* unbalanced"

Haaaaaha. Ha. Yes. Yes they were. Shadowbringers was a (clumsy) attempt to fix how grossly imbalanced they were. Simply reverting these changes just brings back Scholar's overwhelming dominance again. The other two healers can't compete with Scholar in that design landscape without becoming busted OP too, and I'd bet money that many a Scholar main would riot if the other two healers became anywhere close to as bonkers as Scholar was in Heavensward. You were basically trolling your party if you didn't bring a Scholar into all content more difficult than dungeons.

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Then you would also remember in ARR when SCH SUCKED at AoE healing, that was WHM's thing.

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Then came Indomitability, and the final semblance of Scholar having weaknesses went straight out the window.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

Then came Indomitability, and the final semblance of Scholar having weaknesses went straight out the window.

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For the life of me, I never understood why they gave us it. It thematically and kit wise never made sense. It was something that never should have been given to Scholar; this is coming from an original 2.0 to 2.3 White Mage Main, to 2.3 to 5.2 Scholar Main.

I never understood why they kept nerfing Holy into the ground, why they removed Aero 3, and especially why they kept removing abilities from lower levels and giving them back at higher levels. I had always said that White Mage damage wise should have been the definitive king of big damage for healers. Afflatus Misery is a long time coming, and really should have been a Stormblood ability. Holy has long since needed an upgrade to 2, and Aero 3 should have been Diaga. Fluid Aura should have changed to an actual spell, and become Flood in Stormblood, being a 30 second cooldown that triggered faster cooldowns on Lily Procs, and should have been upgraded into Light Wave in Shadowbringers. The whole job should have revolved around Lily's, with each giving you a stack increase to damage and spell speed, synergizing with Presence of Mind. White Mage should have a channel damage spell like Astro's Dome either Wind based or Water based. It should have all tied into its conjurer roots with the only job having an AoE Esuna, but instead they keep removing abilities or just ignoring then outright.

I have LONG since been an advocate for White Mage even after I stopped playing it, but with the devs, it doesn't do much, because they really just don't care about the role.

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Originally Posted by FoxCh40s

For the life of me, I never understood why they gave us it. It thematically and kit wise never made sense. It was something that never should have been given to Scholar; this is coming from an original 2.0 to 2.3 White Mage Main, to 2.3 to 5.2 Scholar Main.

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My thoughts also. I was very disappointed the first time I saw scholar's heavensward job actions, namely indomitability and the weird dissipate. I wish they'd kept focusing on our shields and buffs instead of streamlining our kit and stacking it with oGCDs. Deployment Tactics was very fun for example.

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Originally Posted by FoxCh40s

For the life of me, I never understood why they gave us it. It thematically and kit wise never made sense. It was something that never should have been given to Scholar; this is coming from an original 2.0 to 2.3 White Mage Main, to 2.3 to 5.2 Scholar Main.
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Because if you were in 8/24 man content it was possible to get 2 scholars and that made for a really bad time with AoE invovled.

WHM regens stack, Shields don't.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

Because if you were in 8/24 man content it was possible to get 2 scholars and that made for a really bad time with AoE invovled.

WHM regens stack, Shields don't.

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Oh, I'm totally aware of that fact, but that was initially what Emergency Tactics was for. To alleviate this issue and give Scholars more options.

However based on Scholars previous kit and design, the choice to give Indom made no sense, it was an ability that came completely out of left field, much like Dissipation.