Has anyone quit healing?

I leave the forums for two months, come back, and you guys are still taking the bait.

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Originally Posted by SargeTheSeagull

I leave the forums for two months, come back, and you guys are still taking the bait.

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It's either this, touch grass or go back and play on our Green DPS.
This is more fun.

Quit nah, just quit ast when it's identity and core of what made it enjoyable was stripped from it, cards are boring as all hell these days, never enjoyed sch and sge gives me a headache healing idiotic pugs. So I've defaulted to whm if and when I get the healer urge

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Originally Posted by Silver-Strider

It's either this, touch grass or go back and play on our Green DPS.
This is more fun.

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I see no fun in arguing with the nonsense here. It's just the same back and forth, over and over and over while the devs have made it clear nothing will change and even if they did listen, they have the worlds most understaffed job design team and can't do anything.

99% of the time I check the healer forums lately I just nope out and tab to something else. The sensible posters here are talking to brick walls and feeding people who clearly have mental health issues. Pure waste of time sadly.

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

The sensible posters here are talking to brick walls and feeding people who clearly have mental health issues. Pure waste of time sadly.

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Good to know I'm not the only one who suspected that.

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

I see no fun in arguing with the nonsense here. It's just the same back and forth, over and over and over while the devs have made it clear nothing will change and even if they did listen, they have the worlds most understaffed job design team and can't do anything.

99% of the time I check the healer forums lately I just nope out and tab to something else. The sensible posters here are talking to brick walls and feeding people who clearly have mental health issues. Pure waste of time sadly.

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I had unsubbed after 6.1 because I felt EW was a terrible expansion in pretty much every regard. The only reason I resubbed at all was because I wanted to try out the PLD rework and see if the story got any better (no, it didn't) so now, I'm just waiting on my sub to relapse and waiting until 7.0 to see if anything changes, doubtful though I am. The whole game at this point is purely a waste of time and I have more fun on the forums, just because it's more stimulating than hitting 1 all day in game.

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

99% of the time I check the healer forums lately I just nope out and tab to something else. The sensible posters here are talking to brick walls and feeding people who clearly have mental health issues. Pure waste of time sadly.

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Look man, I need to weave something between my million Glare casts, it's either this (which I would like to think, along with everyone else echoing the sentiment, stirs up enough noise that the devs are, at the very least, unable to say 'see everyone loves current healer design' without a big western-public backlash), or more recently, clicking to do something in OSRS like cut tree or fish. That's pretty damning for 'how engaging is healer' really isn't it, that there's people (not just me) who alt tab mid-GCD or watch netflix on 2nd monitor? It's not like EX roulette hits hard enough to require our full attention, or even 'any' of our attention.

Maybe I should weave something more productive between Glares, maybe learning a language or something. Imagine if I were to learn fluent Japanese, specifically to ask Yoshi-P, 'yo when are you fixing healer engagement, and no weaseling out of answering with some BS about "oh but tanks too..." we don't need to hear it. Healers, fix, when', no 'lost in translation', no 'cut 2/3 of Recon's question off and miss ALL of the context'

As for that last bit, I don't think 'mental health issues' is a reason for holding opinions that would be fairly obviously detrimental to the game's design. Heck I've probably got mental health issues of some kind, but I suggested a couple ideas that, by and large, seemed to be received positively here. Well, positively by people who partake in even trace amounts of optimization on the healers. To be fair, I did go to uni to study this kind of thing, and how to make games, so I have a little bit of background. Not much, but it's something, and might slightly explain why 'Samantha idea actually not complete trash whoa'.

Yo SE, I'm still down to do all the potency balancing on the WHM/SGE ideas, you'll have to come up with a good AST one yourself though cos I don't play it much now, I got boomer hands and the APM gives me joint pain if I do too much prog on it

I understand you all and i was also of the opinion of making healers more interesting but its will never work sadly i have come to this realisation when i pf'd this tier it HAS to be easy and simple even how easy it is right now you will still get griefed by pf healers not pressing even their free buttons they have especially scholars which no offense are quite bad the majority of the time in pf that is. Sage is a good example of very good design because YOU HAVE to press your buttons otherwise you run out of mana.
Overly complicating healers will ruin pf.

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

Yo SE, I'm still down to do all the potency balancing on the WHM/SGE ideas, you'll have to come up with a good AST one yourself though cos I don't play it much now, I got boomer hands and the APM gives me joint pain if I do too much prog on it

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Lol I'm 22 and even I feel like I'm about to break my wrists whenever I play AST in this current expansion. The crown card changes are so clunky which is baffling because they were implemented nigh perfectly in Shb along with Sleeve Draw (which we lost for Arse-trodyne).

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Originally Posted by SenzorialBoundries

I understand you all and i was also of the opinion of making healers more interesting but its will never work sadly i have come to this realisation when i pf'd this tier it HAS to be easy and simple even how easy it is right now you will still get griefed by pf healers not pressing even their free buttons they have especially scholars which no offense are quite bad the majority of the time in pf that is. Sage is a good example of very good design because YOU HAVE to press your buttons otherwise you run out of mana.
Overly complicating healers will ruin pf.

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I'm sorry but this is a bit difficult to sort out. You're making a statement that you've been griefed by scholars in particular by not hitting their "free buttons"? Could you provide an example, again this is just for me, I don't follow.

First point- to various degrees- for all healers- you do need to use skills to recover mana. Scholars will use aetherflow that is typically used for core healing and damage skills. I realize this is isn't the same as the sage model.

Second point- while "complex" is relative, currently healers spend a great deal of time hitting a couple (literally) of skills even in difficult content. The changes that a number of people are proposing who provide more options or potentially greater interaction between healing and DPS (for example).

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Originally Posted by SenzorialBoundries

I understand you all and i was also of the opinion of making healers more interesting but its will never work sadly i have come to this realisation when i pf'd this tier it HAS to be easy and simple even how easy it is right now you will still get griefed by pf healers not pressing even their free buttons they have especially scholars which no offense are quite bad the majority of the time in pf that is. Sage is a good example of very good design because YOU HAVE to press your buttons otherwise you run out of mana.
Overly complicating healers will ruin pf.

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Why just healers specifically?

Now, please apply this same logic to tanks & dpses.

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Originally Posted by SenzorialBoundries

I understand you all and i was also of the opinion of making healers more interesting but its will never work sadly i have come to this realisation when i pf'd this tier it HAS to be easy and simple even how easy it is right now you will still get griefed by pf healers not pressing even their free buttons they have especially scholars which no offense are quite bad the majority of the time in pf that is. Sage is a good example of very good design because YOU HAVE to press your buttons otherwise you run out of mana.
Overly complicating healers will ruin pf.

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You don't know how many DPS and Tanks I've seen grief in P8S parties by messing up Snakes 1, despite me joining Dominion/Enrage to clear parties to help people clear when I'm bored.
It would seem that no matter how easy they make jobs, players will still find a way to be stupid. We shouldn't design jobs around being for stupid people though, or else it makes things boring for EVERYONE.
SGE is also a horrible design that encourages pointless overhealing or burning resources when they are not needed for MP.
If PF wasn't ruined back in Heavensward or Stormblood, I can assure you it will not be ruined by "over complicating healers"; besides, perhaps one of the reasons that PF healers are so bad is because healing is so boring that nobody wants to do it?

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Originally Posted by Nizzi

I can assure you it will not be ruined by "over complicating healers"; besides, perhaps one of the reasons that PF healers are so bad is because healing is so boring that nobody wants to do it?

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Nobody wants to do it AND the difficulty gap between healing normal content and savage is much wider for healers than tanks or dps. I mean healers are literally optional in dungeons and normal trials whereas they're nearly the most important players in savage.

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Originally Posted by SenzorialBoundries

I understand you all and i was also of the opinion of making healers more interesting but its will never work sadly i have come to this realisation when i pf'd this tier it HAS to be easy and simple even how easy it is right now you will still get griefed by pf healers not pressing even their free buttons they have especially scholars which no offense are quite bad the majority of the time in pf that is. Sage is a good example of very good design because YOU HAVE to press your buttons otherwise you run out of mana.
Overly complicating healers will ruin pf.

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And yet we managed just fine in ARR and early HW when healing was much less forgiving. Why is it a problem now?

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

And yet we managed just fine in ARR and early HW when healing was much less forgiving. Why is it a problem now?

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it is not a problem. Maybe i phrased it incorectly, my point is that to keep content accessible to a wider range of people doing all content you cannot overcomplicate classes. The harder and more complicated a role becomes the harder puging becomes and a vast majority of people cannot afford to just "lul get a static" that work shifts and have a wild schedule. The current design of tanks and healers makes perfect sense and i doubt it will change. Again they could and it would be great but than it will go against the core ideal of ff14 and yoshi p of keeping the game casual friendly. This is the reality i came to after pugging this tier. Also the expectation was different from ARR to Now. You werent excepted to do 1/3rd of the parties dps as supports. For healer design is justa sympton to how encounters have been designed.

Nonsense. Making jobs accessible to all/completely interchangeable has lead to this absurd 2 minute obsession and surgically removed the fun from nearly all of them. Where is the enjoyment in doing something right if it can't be done wrong?
edit: I'll go further and say that it's only lead to tighter dps checks and more required from the support roles both in terms of damage and general competence.

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Originally Posted by Silver-Strider

The SCH drop can be explained as a result of SE starting their lobotomy of healers in SB. ... In comparison, SCH just flat out lost several of its previous tools such as Shadowflare, Bane, Energy Drain, and Miasma 2 while Bio 1+2 were merged into a single skill. Couple this with Succor/Addlo getting cost increases that made it next to impossible to sustain with, even in casual content, that of course it's going to drop like a stone in the Ruby Sea. It was an effort in futility to play SCH before SE "fixed" it in subsequent patches by returning Energy Drain and Miasma 2 but the damage was done at that point and no amount of making Dissipation playable was going to magically bring back all those players that dropped the job.

There's nothing really curious about that at all.

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Uh...just so we're clear:

The drop happened in StormBlood (SB), not S(h)adoBbringers (ShB). That is, when SCH still had all those tools. SCH lost them in ShB, after the drop had already begun. So what's the explanation for the drop happening while they still had all those tools? (9 likes for saying something completely wrong...you people... <_< )

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

The sensible posters here are talking to brick walls and feeding people who clearly have mental health issues. Pure waste of time sadly.

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Hey, I'm not one to give up on brick walls, nor declare they have mental health issues, and it's extremely rare that I decide it's a waste of time to talk to someone. But I'm glad you notice and appreciate my efforts, friend. :)

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Originally Posted by SargeTheSeagull

Good to know I'm not the only one who suspected that.

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Few causes are hopeless, save those given up.

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Originally Posted by SargeTheSeagull

Nobody wants to do it AND the difficulty gap between healing normal content and savage is much wider for healers than tanks or dps. I mean healers are literally optional in dungeons and normal trials whereas they're nearly the most important players in savage.

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This is...extremely accurate, honestly.

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

And yet we managed just fine in ARR and early HW when healing was much less forgiving. Why is it a problem now?

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Probably because the playerbase and focus was different. Healers were more focused on healing - and had to be, given the way GCDs worked and the dearth of oGCD heals - and the meta had not developed to the point of the DPS race, parses, and so on. It could be done again, but would require that same kind of paradigm shift taking us back to GCD healing an a non-DPS focus for Healers.

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Originally Posted by SenzorialBoundries

it is not a problem. Maybe i phrased it incorectly, my point is that to keep content accessible to a wider range of people doing all content you cannot overcomplicate classes. The harder and more complicated a role becomes the harder puging becomes and a vast majority of people cannot afford to just "lul get a static" that work shifts and have a wild schedule. The current design of tanks and healers makes perfect sense and i doubt it will change. Again they could and it would be great but than it will go against the core ideal of ff14 and yoshi p of keeping the game casual friendly. This is the reality i came to after pugging this tier. Also the expectation was different from ARR to Now. You werent excepted to do 1/3rd of the parties dps as supports. For healer design is justa sympton to how encounters have been designed.

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You hit the nail on the head. Exactly right.

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Originally Posted by fulminating

Nonsense. Making jobs accessible to all/completely interchangeable has lead to this absurd 2 minute obsession...

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The 2 minute meta doesn't do anything to improve accessibility. It actually reduces it because uncoordinated groups, it turns out, are very bad at coordinating CDs, even if it should be braindead to do so. Moreover, by packing so much damage output into those buff windows (something like as much as 45% of the party's damage), it means messing them up, or dying just before one, leads to a vastly decreased party damage output.

The 2 minute window is the opposite of making Jobs accessible.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

Uh...just so we're clear:

The drop happened in StormBlood (SB), not S(h)adoBbringers (ShB). That is, when SCH still had all those tools. SCH lost them in ShB, after the drop had already begun. So what's the explanation for the drop happening while they still had all those tools? (9 likes for saying something completely wrong...you people... <_< )

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The process started in SB though. They did in fact merge Bio 1+2 in SB and at the start of the expansion removed Miasma 2 and Energy Drain until 4.06 I believe. I could have sworn that Shadowflare and Bane but I may have misremembered. Still though, the job was a lot less enjoyable due to the combination of the skills being removed and the cost increase to Addlo/Succor making the job somewhat unbearable to sustain until Dissipation got reworked and that wasn't until a few months after UWU dropped.

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Originally Posted by Silver-Strider

The process started in SB though. They did in fact merge Bio 1+2 in SB and at the start of the expansion removed Miasma 2 and Energy Drain until 4.06 I believe. I could have sworn that Shadowflare and Bane but I may have misremembered. Still though, the job was a lot less enjoyable due to the combination of the skills being removed and the cost increase to Addlo/Succor making the job somewhat unbearable to sustain until Dissipation got reworked and that wasn't until a few months after UWU dropped.

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Hm...might have to look at the wayback machine (I think Mr Happy's doing a video series of the Jobs through the expansions, though I'm not sure how far he's done due to the Ultimate race; he has done SMN, though, I know that). I very much remember in ShB players complaining that SCH's kit was gutted then, which means (on the whole), the playerbase DIDN'T feel SCH had been gutted in SB.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2mk...ZAoyf7&index=6

SMN still had Shadowflare, Bio and Miasma, Bane, etc. I remember playing SCH in SB and having Bane. I feel like it still had it in 5.0, though, since I remember spreading my DoTs in some of the early dungeons, but it may have been in SMN. They seem to have made Bio 1 -> Bio 2 in SB (in HW they were separate), but otherwise, SB still had the full kit other than that. They changed Shadowflare from an MP cost, 2.5 sec cast GCD Spell into a 0 MP, instant cast, oGCD Ability with a 60 sec CD, and the duration was halved while the potency was doubled (so you got the damage quicker). Miasma 2 was removed at the start of SB for both SMN and SCH, but was readded to SCH (since it didn't have a spmable AOE like SMN, WHM, and AST did), meaning SCH had Miasma 2 during the decline phase.

So it seems, at least on first blush, that the big removals were ShB, not SB. The removes at the start of SB seem to have been quickly reversed (for SCH), and the Job still had access to most of those things for the expansion. Again, first blush.

I'm not sure how solid a basis we can blame all this on "Well, SCH lost one DoT going from 4 to 3..." is as an explanation for the decline... It's probably one of those "maybe that was a contributing factor, but it wasn't at all the whole story or even necessarily a dominant cause".

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Originally Posted by Renathras

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The decline started in sb as all healers started losing things as yoshida started with the "pure healer" mentality. Whm in particular got hit extremely badly by this flawed mentality. There were some valuable gains here and there such as earthly star for sch and ast making it a mixed bag but for whm it was a total train wreck.

Ast lost its second dot, utility in disable, stella was removed instead of being made into a proc or combo like people asked for and its own mp regen skill luminiferous aether forcing it to rely purely on the ewer (a card useful for royal road and rdm) Noct also got hit hard with the nerf bat making it inferior to diurnal by a wide margin

Sch has already been covered

Whm lost so many skills it had to use 7 cross class slots just to regain its basic functions. It had no reliable mitigation any longer (stoneskin and protect/shell removal) its healing was shafted to pieces (thanks to the useless confession and lily procs) and its self buffs were outright removed. It got aero 3 at least but then that got removed in shb. Even an emergency patch to make the lilies less rng didnt make a dent in how many people shunned whm in stormblood for being boring and unrewarding to play.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

I'm not sure how solid a basis we can blame all this on "Well, SCH lost one DoT going from 4 to 3..." is as an explanation for the decline... It's probably one of those "maybe that was a contributing factor, but it wasn't at all the whole story or even necessarily a dominant cause".

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There were more factors to consider as well. Aero not being a cross class ability, the homogenizing of Esuna, the removal of Cleric Stance (at least as a toggle), Virus, Protect and Stoneskin, the fairy being weaker and more jank than ever, Excog being laughably weak at the onset, Aetherpact being yet another lackluster capstone skill after the dumpster fire that was Dissipation, that again wasn't addressed until after 2 Ultimates had been released and cleared.

SCH just played differently than before and people weren't crazy about it. Sure, you could say the same for all Healers since they all kind of lost skills going into SB, but SCH felt really rough around the edges.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

Hm...might have to look at the wayback machine (I think Mr Happy's doing a video series of the Jobs through the expansions, though I'm not sure how far he's done due to the Ultimate race; he has done SMN, though, I know that). I very much remember in ShB players complaining that SCH's kit was gutted then, which means (on the whole), the playerbase DIDN'T feel SCH had been gutted in SB.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2mk...ZAoyf7&index=6

SMN still had Shadowflare, Bio and Miasma, Bane, etc. I remember playing SCH in SB and having Bane. I feel like it still had it in 5.0, though, since I remember spreading my DoTs in some of the early dungeons, but it may have been in SMN. They seem to have made Bio 1 -> Bio 2 in SB (in HW they were separate), but otherwise, SB still had the full kit other than that. They changed Shadowflare from an MP cost, 2.5 sec cast GCD Spell into a 0 MP, instant cast, oGCD Ability with a 60 sec CD, and the duration was halved while the potency was doubled (so you got the damage quicker). Miasma 2 was removed at the start of SB for both SMN and SCH, but was readded to SCH (since it didn't have a spmable AOE like SMN, WHM, and AST did), meaning SCH had Miasma 2 during the decline phase.

So it seems, at least on first blush, that the big removals were ShB, not SB. The removes at the start of SB seem to have been quickly reversed (for SCH), and the Job still had access to most of those things for the expansion. Again, first blush.

I'm not sure how solid a basis we can blame all this on "Well, SCH lost one DoT going from 4 to 3..." is as an explanation for the decline... It's probably one of those "maybe that was a contributing factor, but it wasn't at all the whole story or even necessarily a dominant cause".

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Just to clarify, SCH lost a significant amount with the release of SB, including Bane. The main thing they got back was across the board potency buffs to get them competitive vs a heavily buffed Noct AST and the MP heavy and short ranged but high damage Miasma II AoE to make up for them having literally no spammable AoE for 4.0. It's also important to note that Bane was never returned. You didn't use it on SCH in 5.0.

And Mr Happy is too toothless to point out these sort of things. Daddy Yoshida might cut off his early access after all.

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

And Mr Happy is too toothless to point out these sort of things. Daddy Yoshida might cut off his early access after all.

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Really sucks how 14 content creators are so scared of losing their media tour spots that they refuse to point out how bad EW's job design is.

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Originally Posted by SargeTheSeagull

Really sucks how 14 content creators are so scared of losing their media tour spots that they refuse to point out how bad EW's job design is.

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I know Zepla has discussed game issues more critically at times. She doesn't really dig into it the way others have like Xenosys or Chair do of course. She approaches things politely for the most part, but she has discussed not liking AST and missing SB AST which was her former main job. I believe she's said in video that she wants the old card system back even if she knows it doesn't work all that well in this game, just because it was fun. I don't really believe she's played much of the other healers really to have any real stance on them (other than PVP WHM) and hasn't really discussed them from anything I've seen.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

I know Zepla has discussed game issues more critically at times. She doesn't really dig into it the way others have like Xenosys or Chair do of course. She approaches things politely for the most part, but she has discussed not liking AST and missing SB AST which was her former main job. I believe she's said in video that she wants the old card system back even if she knows it doesn't work all that well in this game, just because it was fun. I don't really believe she's played much of the other healers really to have any real stance on them (other than PVP WHM) and hasn't really discussed them from anything I've seen.

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Yep, Zepla ended up being the only creator that actually pushed Yoshida on healer design/content issues during the EW media tour. She should have gotten more credit for it as she was the only one that went against the pre approved scripts on that one.

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

Yep, Zepla ended up being the only creator that actually pushed Yoshida on healer design/content issues during the EW media tour. She should have gotten more credit for it as she was the only one that went against the pre approved scripts on that one.

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I keep saying this, but I really am just anxious for the 7.0 reveal and media tour despite how early it still is. EW has just felt very lethargic for me, and all I want to do is skip ahead and see how the team will respond to a lot of the criticism of not just the healers, but of the burst meta, job design as a whole, etc.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

I keep saying this, but I really am just anxious for the 7.0 reveal and media tour despite how early it still is. EW has just felt very lethargic for me, and all I want to do is skip ahead and see how the team will respond to a lot of the criticism of not just the healers, but of the burst meta, job design as a whole, etc.

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Honestly, I somewhat agree with this. Not the lethargic bit (though I can KIND of see that, I more felt like it was a "eye of the storm" kind of a break/done intentionally, I guess?), I do kind of agree that I want to see how the team plans things/sees things going forward, if they want to shift a little more back towards ShB or SB in terms of buffs and Job design, etc. Same page on that.

EDIT:

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

Just to clarify, SCH lost a significant amount with the release of SB, including Bane.

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Yeah, but I meant that they got a good chunk of it back. Part of the problem with the data is it's too spread out. The Census happened too infrequently to see exactly WHEN the declines happened (e.g. was it in late HW or early SB? Did it reverse part way into SB or not?), but I think we can at least conclude "complex = better" wasn't the position of the whole playerbase and has never been what determines which Jobs are more popular, as the most played are often on the simpler end of the spectrum. This doesn't mean complex Jobs should be removed (my own position, as always, is for some more complexity with some Jobs), but it does mean that simple ones shouldn't be, and that complexity does drive off a not insubstantial amount of players and is not universally popular.

Also: I did say I might be thinking of SMN, did I not?

Happy's fine. The video is about old abilities, not commentary on the state of the game, so how he feels about "Daddy Yoshida" is irrelevant.

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Originally Posted by Silver-Strider

There were more factors to consider as well.

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Oh, completely agree. 100% agree there was more going on. I'm more saying "Well, Healers were getting simpler, that's why less people played them" is probably...inaccurate. At the very least, that's only one factor of many going on.

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Originally Posted by Recon1o6

The decline started in sb as all healers started losing things as yoshida started with the "pure healer" mentality.

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That's what I'm saying though: We actually can't tell that from the data. Nor does that explanation make sense for why Healers grew again later, since the Healer Jobs have only continued in that direction since then. The decline might be from late HW as well. All that we know is that Healers went down, and have somewhat rebounded since ShB. SB was hardly the "pure healer" mentality as well. Though I still miss Stoneskin and Protect...

And interesting you say WHM was shunned when...it was still the most played... <_<

The fact stands that he still won’t call a spade a spade regardless.

And sorry if I sounded harsh, not trying to pick holes. Just clarifying. Early SB was kind of amusing for me as the general consensus on the forums was that WHM was DOA with how awful Lilys and PI looked, whilst people were generally of the mindset that SCH would continue to be dominant. That didn’t pan out on release at all. Thin Air single handedly solved WHMs issues from HW whilst SCH was a gutted mess. Again to be clear, it didn’t get most of its kit back. It got 1 ‘new’ ability which was actually pretty interesting and a bunch of potency buffs. It still wasn’t the old HW SCH for better or worse tho

The media tour questions are always the same softballs, we get a total of like 150 questions asked and like 10 are about healing or healers or whatever. The issue is, the 'influencers' who go to the tours are mostly not-healer players, or if they are, they play it as an 'off spec', rather than a main. SE needs to look into inviting more healer mains to balance things out better, else we'll have to just deal with the 'healer representation' at next tour being Mr Happy asking 'yeh uhh is stuff going to hit harder' and Yoshi once again saying 'we think the dungeons will be challenging please look forward to it'. And then it turns out the dungeons are not challenging in the slightest, because they gave us 2 more healing tools we don't need

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

And sorry if I sounded harsh, not trying to pick holes. Just clarifying. Early SB was kind of amusing for me as the general consensus on the forums was that WHM was DOA with how awful Lilys and PI looked, whilst people were generally of the mindset that SCH would continue to be dominant. That didn’t pan out on release at all. Thin Air single handedly solved WHMs issues from HW whilst SCH was a gutted mess. Again to be clear, it didn’t get most of its kit back. It got 1 ‘new’ ability which was actually pretty interesting and a bunch of potency buffs. It still wasn’t the old HW SCH for better or worse tho

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This is the issue, I think. In the end of HW (3.4 onward), we had 'SCH is busted good everyone loves it, AST is busted good everyone loves it, WHM is not good it's MP costs are too high and it doesn't provide anywhere near as much damage to the raid as AST can'. Presumably everyone was hoping for 'SCH AST are relatively the same power level, WHM buffed to catch up to them, everyone is happy', that didn't happen, we got the original lily system.

At the end of SB, the same sort of feeling was in play, 'SCH good, AST good, WHM needs buffs'. But instead of SE buffing WHM to catch up, they also dragged SCH and AST down. In numerical rating terms, SCH was a 9/10, AST was a 8 or 9/10, WHM was a 3/10. Going into SHB, the community hoped that WHM would be buffed to be an 8/10 too. Instead, it was buffed to be a 7/10, with the cost being that SCH and AST were brought down to being a 6/10. Well, on original release of SHB, AST was a 3/10 because it's healing potencies were super bad, and SCH was a -4/10 because they removed energy drain again

All they had to do was put the SHB lilies, onto SB WHM, reduce the MP cost of Stone/Glare slightly, and buff the damage to compare to 'average AST output'. Instead, they didn't just throw out the baby with the bathwater, they threw the bathtub out too

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

I keep saying this, but I really am just anxious for the 7.0 reveal and media tour despite how early it still is. EW has just felt very lethargic for me, and all I want to do is skip ahead and see how the team will respond to a lot of the criticism of not just the healers, but of the burst meta, job design as a whole, etc.

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It's probably going to be the make or break expansion for me, if the job and combat design stay as incredibly bland and stagnant as they have been since arguably Shadowbringers then I'm probably going to finally call it quits, 4 years of "maybe they'll turn it around next time" is enough imo. If 7.0 is just more of the same then I doubt that design direction will ever change.

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

The fact stands that he still won’t call a spade a spade regardless.

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It's probably more that he's not calling a spoon a spade (a subjective difference; it's not a spade, as you can tell by the fact even we don't agree) because he doesn't think it's a spoon and never goes in the kitchen (doesn't play Healers a lot) anyway.

Honestly, WHM will always be the worst SB Job in the game to me, and that's already a low bar. SCH lost some of its kit, but still had quite a bit of it. But the fact is...we aren't ever getting HW back. So if what you're telling me is people don't like middling complexity - they either want high complexity or total simplicity, but hate only having moderate complexity (all or nothing, basically) - then we're going to be in simplicity from now on, most likely. SCH was still dominant in SB (despite being the least played) is the most ironic part.

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

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The problem is who actually represents all sides of the Healer community? If we replace "let's just not talk about Healers" with "let's bring on someone that hates current Healing in the game", that's no better since there's clearly a large portion of the playerbase that do enjoy current Healing in the game, or at least don't find it unpalatable to the point they've quit healing. We honestly need to represent both sides of that coin, as representing either side alone would probably make things much worse rather than better.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

So if what you're telling me is people don't like middling complexity - they either want high complexity or total simplicity, but hate only having moderate complexity (all or nothing, basically)

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I really don't think that's true that people want all or nothing. People talk about the positives of HW, but I think the majority of those that frequent these forums understand and agree that going back to HW specifically not only won't happen, but also isn't really the answer. The tanks are frequently brought up, and I think it's a logical comparison because it showcases the kind of spectrum I think this community wants to see: Modest complexity with one tank that leans toward simple, yet not flat in WAR and another that leans toward complex, but not overwhelming in GNB.

Here's I think a great analogy for what many here are looking for. You walk into an Indian restaurant, and the healers are curry. How will you order your curry?

No Spice - N/A
Mild - WHM
Medium - SCH, AST
Hot - SGE
Indian Hot - N/A
Extra Indian Hot - N/A

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

I really don't think that's true that people want all or nothing. People talk about the positives of HW, but I think the majority of those that frequent these forums understand and agree that going back to HW specifically not only won't happen, but also isn't really the answer. The tanks are frequently brought up, and I think it's a logical comparison because it showcases the kind of spectrum I think this community wants to see: Modest complexity with one tank that leans toward simple, yet not flat in WAR and another that leans toward complex, but not overwhelming in GNB.

Here's I think a great analogy for what many here are looking for. You walk into an Indian restaurant, and the healers are curry. How will you order your curry?

No Spice - N/A
Mild - WHM
Medium - SCH, AST
Hot - SGE
Indian Hot - N/A
Extra Indian Hot - N/A

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I could definitely digest that

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

I really don't think that's true that people want all or nothing.

...

No Spice - N/A
Mild - WHM
Medium - SCH, AST
Hot - SGE
Indian Hot - N/A
Extra Indian Hot - N/A

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Agreed. It's the very reason I have an "all of the above" approach. Me personally, I don't like spicy stuff except Tex-Mex, and even then, more on the mild side.

No Spice - WHM
Mild - SGE
Medium - SCH
Hot - dAST
Indian Hot - nAST
Extra Indian Hot - ???

I think this is more what we should shoot for. That way, everyone gets the flavoring they want. (And let's be fair, SGE isn't harder than SCH and AST. :)

Sounds like we need to add Diurnal and Nocturnal back and then add in one more Healer and we'll be set for life. Of course, we could always move all these down a notch and make the new Healer the no spice one, either/or.

Personally, I don't know if a curry with 'no spice' even counts as a curry, even korma has SOME spice to it, isn't a curry with 'no spice' just a stew?

Also I'd have several categories for this stuff

Access to Healing when everything goes wrong (so, 'Medica Spam to stabilize' situations)
'No Spice' - WHM
Mild - AST, SCH, SGE
Med - N/A
Hot - N/A
Regret - N/A

Access to Damage (including raidbuffing like cards)
No Spice - N/A
Mild - WHM/SGE
Med - SCH/AST
Hot - N/A
Regret - N/A

Overall difficulty to optimize (IE how hard is it to 'play perfectly', combining both 'optimal healing' and 'optimal damage')

No Spice - N/A
Mild - N/A
Med - WHM/SCH
Hot - SGE/AST
Regret - N/A

WHM is the bottom end of Med, bordering on Mild, due to optimization tricks that can be taken advantage of. 'Difficulty to use for a first clear' is firmly in the center of 'Mild', but 'difficulty to get an orange' should be closer to, say, 25% of the way into Med?
SCH is at the top end of Med, approaching 'Hot', because it'd presumably have multiple DOTs again
AST is around halfway through Hot. Knowing which card does what (yes I'd want different effects), how classes interact with those effects (better to put Crit buff on Monk vs the more geared BLM?), etc
SGE is also around 50% of the way into Hot, due to 'damage to heal' being the way to optimize and remove needless healing GCDs from your gameplay.

I don't think we can just rank the healer complexity we'd want as an 'overall' thing, because then we end up painting a picture of 'Yeh I think AST should have to get a degree in aerospace engineering in order to cast Helios'. Healing and Damage should be two different charts, as I think 'healing' accessibility, as in, when everything goes tits up and you need to recover, should be VERY accessible for all healers. Damage at that point is not a consideration, because people are getting slapped around by the enemy. Damage rotations should have some 'spice' to them, yes even for WHM, as we need to keep the gameplay interesting even when we have finished learning how the 'healing' half of the fight puzzle is over.

Lastly, there is the 'Optimization' part. This is what I'd like to see for 'it is week 14, how interesting are the classes to play in a reclear of P5S, when I have BIS and I know the fight forwards, backwards, over the Irish Sea?'

For example, the reason SGE is all over the place with it's spice levels, 'Mild' for damage, 'Mild' for healing, and 'Hot' levels for optimization, is that I want the spammable heals to be accessible (Prognosis etc), but 'optimizing' would be quite technical for the class, with the whole 'do damage to heal' thing. Like Disc from WOW, it'd have a high skill ceiling. Unlike Disc from WOW, you wouldn't have a panic attack from one person eating something they shouldn't have, as you'd have tools to fix unexpected stuff.

You could rename these charts to 'how well does the class deal with everything going wrong?', 'how tough is it to get your first clear of a fight on this class?', and 'how tough is it to push the class to it's absolute limits?'

Alternatively, move everything up by one (so Hot becomes Med, etc) and add a new healer that is MildMed for healing, Med-Hot for damage rotation, and 'Regret' tier for optimization. A third/fourth/(whatever they're at now) attempt at adding Chemist?


Edit: they say a picture is worth a thousand words, so I made one:
https://i.gyazo.com/4054c58f76fe183f...95904cb75a.png

I think the problem with that is you have a lot of:

Flavor: X/Y

Instead of:

Flavor 1: X
Flavor 2: Y

That is, instead of spreading Healing Jobs out to cover more options, you're clumping them together. Imagine a store that, instead of having Small/Medium/Large/XL only sold Medium, Medium, Large, and Large. This means Small people are only able to buy stuff that's kinda big and baggy on them, or REALLY big and baggy, and XL people are ripping out of the clothes every time they bend over or anything.

I'm going with the working assumption we all agree that AST should have dAST and nAST again. So I'm treating them as two options, mainly because dAST having near-WHM direct healing vs nAST's preparatory actions like SCH or SGE, making it a bit higher on the spectrum. dAST has things like Earthly Star and Horoscope, of course, but also more raw healing.

Granted, five flavors from "no sauce" through "mild", "medium", "hot", and to "very hot" is probably sufficient to meet everyone's needs. Provided we DO have something in EACH of those slots... I'm also not sure the point of mixing types. Like saying to a person "You want extra hot? Alrighty, so I'm going to give you some extra hot...and also some mild. You know, because making it extra hot across the boa- What's that? You JUST want extra hot? Come now, surely you jest!"

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Originally Posted by Renathras

I think the problem with that is you have a lot of:

Flavor: X/Y

Instead of:

Flavor 1: X
Flavor 2: Y

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I'm not really sure what you mean by this part.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

Granted, five flavors from "no sauce" through "mild", "medium", "hot", and to "very hot" is probably sufficient to meet everyone's needs. Provided we DO have something in EACH of those slots... I'm also not sure the point of mixing types. Like saying to a person "You want extra hot? Alrighty, so I'm going to give you some extra hot...and also some mild. You know, because making it extra hot across the boa- What's that? You JUST want extra hot? Come now, surely you jest!"

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What about the option to have the sauce on the side? Every job has sauce, but you can choose not to add the sauce to the dish?

The reason I put stuff in the same category, instead of spreading it so one healer goes per category, is because I'm trying to illustrate more accurately where each should fall in my opinion. If we look at it another way, we could see it like this:

No Spice - 0%
Mild - 20%
Med - 40%
Hot - 60%
Indian hot - 80%
Extra - 100%

Then if I were to, for example for Damage (first clear, red bar), say WHM is Mild and SGE is Med, that implies WHM is 20% and SGE is 40%. But I'm aiming for more like, WHM 25% and SGE 30-35%. So they both are in the 'Mild' category (20%-40%). But just saying 'both are Mild' implies they're both at 20%, so I explained a little more with the extra detail, and the graph.

And the point of having multiple levels of spice for each healer is for the multiple levels of skill across the player base. You're a player who does EX roulette only? Look at the green bar, that's the kind of spice level you'd be working with. Want a bit more punishment, via Savage? You can engage more with the class, and experience the 'spice level' shown by the red bar. If you're a real spice-head, you can push to the limit and that's shown by the orange bar. But, as explained above, when everything is going to hell, you can fall back on your 'easy to access healing' at the cost of some damage, and the 'ease of access' is the green bar. Yes it'll probably cost you damage, but you're already losing damage if stuff is going wrong anyway.

Put another way, the bars could be interpreted as 'What is your main content you engage with?' Green is what is expected from you in EX roulette, Red is early Savage floors/'final savage floor in week 12 or so', Orange is 'pushing for week 1 clear of Savage tier'. The people who can utilize the Orange level can still make use of it in lower content like EX roulette, it's just not expected of them from a game-design perspective. The graph/tables aren't to say 'you get Hot gameplay AND Mild gameplay as SGE'. The Mild is your DPS rotation in a vacuum (ie vs a dummy), and the ease of accessing your Healing skills if things go south. IE, how easy it is to spam Prognosis, how easy it is to burst heal with Pneuma and Ixochole, etc. The Orange bar shows what the class is able to do, if you push it to the maximum. 'How complex is the class if you're trying to reach the mythical 'Zero damage-negative GCDS used' yardstick?'.

In SGEs case, this would be way more complexity involved the whole 'deal damage to cause healing' thing. The reason it's a massive difference in bar size, is because you'd be going from 'oh look raidwide, I guess I'll just Prognosis it' to 'I will not use Prognosis a single time, I will cover this healing required using my damage>heal conversion mechanics'. Which is a lot more complicated than 'Press [Prognosis Hotkey]'. If you are able to leverage that potential, because you're skilled enough to, the Red and Green bars are irrelevant to you. It won't matter if you're in EX roulette or TOP, you'd be playing at the Orange-Bar level regardless. Just that only one of those two pieces of content is demanding you play at that level, due to enrage timers.

Just as we get more and more used to spicy things by eating them, the idea is that healers are simple to get into, but have a long, rewarding path of learning to master them. Some people like milder curry, that's fine. Heck, one of my favourites is Kofta, and that's pretty mild. But sometimes I feel like a Jalfrezi or something.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

I'm not really sure what you mean by this part.

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I think Ren's come to the conclusion that we cannot have more than one healer per spice level, despite there being multiple curries per spice level. Like, you've got madras, jalfrezi, dopiaza, rogan josh, and they're all around a 3/5 spice level from most places

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

What about the option to have the sauce on the side? Every job has sauce, but you can choose not to add the sauce to the dish?

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This. Also, I'm like 80% sure that if I rang up my local curry takeaway and said 'yeh can I get a Jalfrezi (3/5) but can you make it spicier?' they'd do it for me. Option to have more spice (complexity), but the base level is still accessible for people as the 'default' state. They don't provide the 'extra fatal super firebreath level of spicy' variant of Madras as the default, but if I asked for it, they'd provide that option. Just like how I think we should have a base level of 'spice' for the healers re: ease of access for healing tools, and then a 'optional extra spice' if you feel up for it.

We gotta stop talking about curry though it's making me hungry

I’d like a rogan josh with some onion bajis please.

I’m a bit curious about whether or not all dishes should be a lamb biriani to start with, but those with more advanced tastes can produce a vindaloo from it.

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

I think Ren's come to the conclusion that we cannot have more than one healer per spice level, despite there being multiple curries per spice level. Like, you've got madras, jalfrezi, dopiaza, rogan josh, and they're all around a 3/5 spice level from most places

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I don't really see a reason to fight for the "Indian hot" or "extra Indian hot" categories because, in my head, I'm looking at that as HW level complexity (which it isn't really in contrast to some other MMOs, but as far as FFXIV is concerned, it may as well be. FFXIV is the Indian takeout in suburban America levels, shall we say, where the spice levels are skewed toward more gentle). And that's not to say that those levels of challenge aren't wanted or worth investing in, but rather, SE has already state they have no intention of returning to that. Now, opinions are allowed to change of course, but we still need to get through the first threshold of allowing healers to have more offensive tools and complexity at all.

All that said though, it's not illogical to advocate for a healer of each difficulty threshold, not because two medium difficulty healers is a bad thing, but just because we only have 4, and the more varied their playstyles are, the better theoretically. Who knows when or if we'll get a 5th healer, so covering as much ground with the 4 we have does make sense, but since we don't really need to reach beyond the higher end of the threshold, having a mild, a hot, and a couple mediums seems perfectly reasonable to me. And these are all general difficulty overviews.

Breaking it down into ease of gameplay in different categories is a valid way to further identify expectations with each healer. You could take it even further. How mild or how hot is each healer's capability in categories like:
- Burst Healing
- Sustained Healing
- Mitigation
- Utility (non-DPS)
- Buff Management
- MP Management
- Direct DPS

The list goes on. If I were a combat designer, that's probably something I'd outline in great detail to discuss with the other team members on how to approach a healer role rework. My dream reality is just to see the landscape for healers look like:
- The forgiving healer, simple at face value but allowed room to improve and has niche value (WHM)
- The balanced healer that has subtle complexity while still being fairly forgiving (SCH)
- The healer that feels like a DPS and is more challenging to perform (SGE)
- The healer that appeals to the audience of players that doesn't like healer DPS, and disguises their DPS as support to stay competitive (AST)

To compare them to other jobs in other roles:
- WHM is like WAR or BLM - Relatively straightforward, but perhaps offers room for development in terms of things like timing or mobility like with BLM.
- SCH is like PLD or RDM - Easy to comprehend, but a little more technical and a bit methodical or rhythmic.
- AST is like DRK or perhaps DRG - Seems more complex than it is, but isn't difficult to learn.
- SGE is like GNB or BRD - Modestly complex and feels more fast-paced.