Healers Exist for DPS fun only?

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

If this doesn't clearly show that SE have taken healing in entirely the wrong direction, I'm not sure what else I can say.

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Healing while DPSing is the direction they have taken for healer jobs.

HS AST A10S #1 DPS with nonexistant HPS output

CPM - 27.4
Malefic - 51.89%
DoT I & II + DoT WHM - 31,35%

Their co-healer: https://www.fflogs.com/reports/a:qMF...casts&source=9

CPM - 28.6
Malefic - 16.06%
DoTs - 20.73%
We have Aspected Benefic competing with one of the DoTs for cpm. It must have been hard carrying a deadweight co-healer.

SB O12S Part 2 World #1 AST in DPS with negligible HPS

CPM - 38.2
Malefic - 56.69%
Combust - 5.41%

SHB E9S World #1 AST in DPS with huge HPS output that puts them in the 99 percentile

CPM - 42.9
Malefic - 55.60%
Combust - 4.63%


AST has been receiving a steady increase in casts per minute with each expansion. They have been given more buttons to press within one minute. The end result that we can observe today speaks for itself. AST is the only healer that can optimize their DPS output while optimizing their HPS.

WHM undoubtedly is the best version of itself today. Yes, they did lose Aero III but they got Afflatus Misery instead. Players are no longer forced into GCD healing in order to obtain access to an oGCD. The whole point of an oGCD is to use that instead of GCD. SB WHM must have been detested.

SCH is the only healer whose gameplay actually degraded with Shb launch when it comes to raiding. It is the aftermath of half-baked changes that were most probably rushed. It is obvious that AST got the highest amount of attention for Shb changes.

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

Gravity was fine, I'm honestly not sure why you're hating on it so much?

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The reason why I dislike 3s cast time Gravity so much is that you can't literally play the job with 3s cast times. In between casts you can't draw cards, you can't apply them, you can't activate divination, you can't use any healing oGCD which means that if the regen is not cutting it, you would have to stop casting Gravity and I don't want to stop AoEing just to heal with a GCD other than regen especially at level cap. I associate it with terrible play. I have access to so many healing oGCDs in order to avoid using any GCDs for healing.

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Originally Posted by Roeshel

Healing while DPSing is the direction they have taken for healer jobs.

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if their vision for healing was ACTUALLY "healing while doing damage", then why exactly did they make scholar no longer able to command the fairy while casting dps spells? scholar was the only healer that was able that get orange parse in both healing and dps. now scholar takes a heavy damage penalty from doing any healing whatsoever. if they had buffed ruin ii so that healing wasnt so much of a dps loss, it wouldve made sense; but instead they buffed BROIL and made healing a bigger dps loss than before. AST is the odd one out in shadowbringers. They are the only healer that can actually heal without losing dps, AND they have the most ogcd heal potency per minute with about 2100 hppm, which basically leaves them solo healing almost every encounter. If an ast in shb DOESNT have sky high hps compared to their cohealer then something is wrong.

Im not really sure why you're bringing up CPM. Sebazy was pointing out how healers went from using a variety of spells throughout the encounter, compared to now where a single ability can be up to over 60% of the entire abilities, let alone actual gcds, they use throughout a fight. AST is probably the only healer where its kind of justified to have such a barebones damage rotation since it has to manage cards and a plethora of ogcd heals. Your argument falls apart when you look at any other healer. WHM and SCH's cpm barely changed between expansions. healer CPM is also highly affected by the encounter, spell speed and gcd uptime so its not that meaningful of a measure.

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Originally Posted by Roeshel

HS AST A10S #1 DPS with nonexistant HPS output

CPM - 27.4
Malefic - 51.89%
DoT I & II + DoT WHM - 31,35%

Their co-healer: https://www.fflogs.com/reports/a:qMF...casts&source=9

CPM - 28.6
Malefic - 16.06%
DoTs - 20.73%
We have Aspected Benefic competing with one of the DoTs for cpm. It must have been hard carrying a deadweight co-healer.

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i fail to see what youre trying to prove with this log. That ast was clearly padded and had about 75% uptime on the balance. If you want actually meaningul logs for high dps healers, pick a speedkill. Padding a player so they had a better parse was a common thing across all roles and isnt representative of how actual gameplay looked like.

Heres a log from one of my own e10s clears where the healing and damage disparity isnt like the obviously cherrypicked parse you chose.
https://www.fflogs.com/reports/compa...7,3&type=casts
AST: 26.8 CPM, Malefic is 32% of all casts
SCH: 23.8 CPM, Broil is 22% of all casts

And also look at this log of a10s from a speedkill. both healers had 99 percentile damage, and the scholar did the bulk of the healing through the fairy actions.
Notice how the astro got a lower healing parse despite actually using more healing actions than the scholar.
https://www.fflogs.com/reports/compa...7,2&type=casts
AST: 31.6 CPM, Malefic is 43% of all casts
SCH: 33.2 CPM, Broil is 34% of all casts

Now compare it to a log from shadowbringers. This is one of my e10s kills
https://www.fflogs.com/reports/compa...3,8&type=casts
AST: 38.9 CPM, malefic is 59% of all casts
SCH: 33.9 CPM, broil is 53% of all casts

So by your logic, ast has sooo many more buttons to press than in previous, and yet, even with a higher cpm malefic is STILL more proportion of the skills used in a fight, let alone gcds.

It's more that tanking and healing have been watered down in an attempt to make it more accessible to the average player, but people still don't want to do it because DPSing is less responsibility and has bigger numbers

Most people are fine with sitting back and letting others do the important work while they just help with the easy part.

Healers (and tanks) don't exist to make the job more fun for DPS, it's just that someone has to shoulder the responsibility, and the reason DPS is such a popular role is because there is no responsibility except to do damage, which tanks and healers have to do anyways

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Originally Posted by Dogempire

It's more that tanking and healing have been watered down in an attempt to make it more accessible to the average player, but people still don't want to do it because DPSing is less responsibility and has bigger numbers

Most people are fine with sitting back and letting others do the important work while they just help with the easy part.

Healers (and tanks) don't exist to make the job more fun for DPS, it's just that someone has to shoulder the responsibility, and the reason DPS is such a popular role is because there is no responsibility except to do damage, which tanks and healers have to do anyways

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Then watering it down does nothing except to worsen the issue, as people who are just once in a whole terrible healing or tanking overall make the experience worse for everyone. You'd think they'd double down on making dps more fun, and making Healers and Tanks more complex to facilitate only people whom are serious about the roles making the experience smoother overall.

And this is the reason why i got to 80 and never played with my healer again. Its just NOT FUN and very stressful. You are basically babysitting everyone and for what? you get nothing out of it. I can imagine the tanks feel the same way. This game does Healers and tanks horribly!

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Originally Posted by QooEr

They are the only healer that can actually heal without losing dps, AND they have the most ogcd heal potency per minute with about 2100 hppm,

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The underlined is entirely incorrect.

SCH wins against everybody when it comes to oGCD healing potency per minute both in terms of ST and raid-wide.

Whispering Dawn - 531
Fey Blessing - 221
Indominability - 400
Sacred Soil - 600
That's approximately 1750 cure potency they and still have:
1 Aetherstack that can be used on Sacred Soil again which increases your party-wide oGCD healing potency to 2350 per minute

Recitation on 90s cd for an additional 600 potency(crit Indom) raid-wide heal or 1200 ST potency (crit Excog)
Seraph on 120s cd for a total of 800 potency party-wide, 400 as heal, 400 as a shield.
Dissipation on 180s cd

For ST they have Embrace with 2000 actual cure potency per minute. Not great for tankbusters but it is awesome for MT sustain. Fey Union increases the ticking heal by more than twice its value. Seraph does the same while summoned for up to 6-7 casts.

With Shb SCH became more complicated when it comes to optimizing HPS. The only reason SCHs are not using their healing kit to its fullest extent in raids is that it results in DPS loss. During week 1 when both healers are pressured to utilize their HPS prevents greater DPS loss by resorting to GCD the Shb graphs look like this:

Path 5.4 Week 1 E9 Savage
Both Healers are in the Hist% 99 percentile for DPS.
It should be noted that Auto Pilot Heals (Embrace) amounted for 3.5% of the combined healer HPS which is less than 7% of SCH's personal HPS

When you compare that with the HS log you linked, you'll see that the Scholar didn't actually do the bulk of the healing. It was the pet AI, spamming Embrace, making 40% of that SCH's HPS and was 22% of the Combined HPS.

Here is how HS Week 1-3 of A9S clears looked like for SCH:

Angered Static, Week 1 - Green DPS parse:

Embrace is over 32% of SCH's total HPS and less than 15% of the Combined HPS.

The same static, Week 2 - Pink DPS parse

Embrace HPS is 52% of that SCH's total HPS


The same static Week 3 - Yellow DPS parse

Embrace HPS is over 57% of SCH's total HPS and 26% of the Combined healer HPS. That's only week 3 when people are still not completely overgearing the content.

That's the state of healing everyone here adores. When people had a pet to do 1/2 of their job for them while they entertain themselves with SMN's spells.

SE BRING MY DOTS BACK,
Also, don't froget to buff pet so that I don't have to heal,
Also, don't forget to remove fairy commands changes so that I don't even have to weave

During HS SCH was no more than a SMN with a WHM curebot as a pet. Saying that SCH was OP is an understatement. More than 1/4 of what needs to be healed could be covered if you brought SCH to the party regardless of actual skills. I get why people would get frustrated when such an overtuned job receives balance changes. That job was so overpowered it is just unbelievable.

Healers during HS were so unbalanced. People seem to forget that OPness is not actually an identity.

When I said that SB SCH degraded upon Shb luanch, I said that only because weaving & healing is not completely DPS neutral and before it was. However, I am honestly not sure if not weaving commands was actually a balanced way of healing.


As a side note, during SB Embrace was still healing a considerate amount of HPS:
Patch 4.4 Week 1 O9 Savage
This is World first SCH in DPS Patch 4.3. Sounds strange to me since the release date of 4.4 was 18th September and the logs are from 24th of September, but it is what it is.
Here Embrace is over 10% of the combined HPS and 19% of SCH's personal HPS.

Shb week 1 clears had the most balanced version of SCH in terms of healing.

embrace did so much healing in speedkills and high end groups because you could micromanage every tick to heal who you want. emphasis on COULD. if you didn't the fairy would just heal whoever it pleased just like it does now, but if you wanted to become better you would be actually managing the healing thought the fight. scholar had a similar skill floor to nowadays but it had the highest skill ceiling by far, and at high skill play it was the most involved a healer had ever been in actively healing the party

thats not "leaving the curebot pet ai do all the work". thats being both the curebot and the dps


you keep bringing up logs from old expansions to try to prove a point but you clearly never played in them since you thought cleric stance somehow affected already ticking regens and dots

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Originally Posted by QooEr

embrace did so much healing in speedkills and high end groups because you could micromanage every tick to heal who you want. emphasis on COULD. if you didn't the fairy would just heal whoever it pleased just like it does now, but if you wanted to become better you would be actually managing the healing thought the fight. scholar had a similar skill floor to nowadays but it had the highest skill ceiling by far, and at high skill play it was the most involved a healer had ever been in actively healing the party

thats not "leaving the curebot pet ai do all the work". thats being both the curebot and the dps


you keep bringing up logs from old expansions to try to prove a point but you clearly never played in them since you thought cleric stance somehow affected already ticking regens and dots

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Stop arguing with him, he completely misses the point of any information you throw at him. It's pointless to argue with him, because he just doesn't get it.

I'd swear he was a 14 Dev if I didn't know any better, such is his dedication to pointing out completely irrelevant information.

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Originally Posted by Roeshel

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What point were you even trying to make? The discussion was about the statement "healing while DPSing is the direction they wanted jobs to take," and QooEr correctly pointed out ways in which they've done the literal opposite. You simultaneously say that Scholar using fairy abilities while DPSing is overpowered, but then also count every single oGCD being used on cooldown in order to compare SCH oGCD healing to AST oGCD healing. Well, guess what? SCH oGCD healing has an opportunity cost (now). There's a valid reason to not use many of the spells you listed. For AST, that is not the case. There is zero opportunity cost on anything. They are effectively already playing the "cast Whispering Dawn mid-Broil" game while nobody else is allowed to.

That would be fine if every healer was designed that way, but SCH and especially WHM completely contradict the idea that healers should be healing and DPSing at the same time. SCH has a limited amount of windows to use oGCD heals without losing damage potency, and WHM has literally one every 30 seconds. SCH mitigates the DPS loss with Energy Drain, but remember that SCH didn't even have Energy Drain earlier in ShB. It was given back because they probably realized the job doesn't function without it. The only ability that WHM has that heals and deals damage at the same time is Assize, and it can't even be timed with actual raid damage unlike Earthly Star. And Earthly Star has almost double the heal potency for good measure.

All in all, while I agree that SCH was the "I do everything all the time with no risk" healer and that was bad, it's silly to hold the current situation in high regard for the same reason. You can't grandstand and say "oh boy, I'm so glad we're past the point where one healer can do everything, do it better than everyone else, and not lose any DPS in the process" because we're still there. Astrologian still fits that bill. It has the highest rDPS, the best "free" oGCD heals, the best GCD heals, the lowest opportunity cost on both oGCD and GCD healing, and the best mobility. If you're against having an overpowered monster of a healer then maybe look away from the version of SCH that no longer exists and look to the version of AST that does still exist. And if you want healers to be DPSing and healing without sacrificing either one, don't scoff at the idea of other healers doing just that. Either they should all do it, or none of them should. Having one healer that does it all is the worst of both worlds.

Late to this thread but just wanted to give my two cents.Personally i’ve always enjoyed healing in mmo’s. By healing i mean actually healing, where there’s a constant threat of the party dying whether it be randomized mechanics or what have you. 14 unfortunately doesn’t really support this because everything is so pre-planned and there’s very little randomization in fights which, sure it’s fine. The problem i have with 14 healers is for example, ShB. They stated they wanted to focus on healers healing more and that the fights this expansion would be designed in a way to allow this, yet, i haven’t seen anything different from previous expansions. If they aren’t going to design fights in a way where healing is a priority, then i would at the very least like them to expand on the dps mechanics of healers. Give them some kind of a mini dps rotation or at least something that isn’t quite literally spam one button for 90% of the fight and occasionally use an ogcd or gcd heal. As far as the whole healers vs dps thing goes, it’s very apparent SE cares more about dps than healers or tanks. They even said they plan to have at least one dps job per expansion added lmao. Instead of maybe taking an expansion to address the problem with tanks and healers they continue to dumb them down more and more. Keep in mind btw, they said ShB is the expansion they spent the most time on healers….yeah. Remember the entire shitshow of healers at launch? Sch with no energy drain. Ast needing to be buffed numerous times etc. Yeah that was them spending the most time they ever have on them which is incredibly worrisome and scary. Idk wtf the balance team is doing but if nothing changes in 6.0, i’m jumping ship.

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Originally Posted by FoxCh40s

Stop arguing with him, he completely misses the point of any information you throw at him. It's pointless to argue with him, because he just doesn't get it.

I'd swear he was a 14 Dev if I didn't know any better, such is his dedication to pointing out completely irrelevant information.

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What information did you throw at me:

"We had DoTs"
"We had utility spells and we don't like that DPS and Tanks were given more responsibility in damage mitigation."
"We had, card system with 5 traps and 1 right answer that we consider more interesting because we don't like optimization"
"We could end up having more Asp Benefic casts than malefic because my co-healer is chasing world 1st"
"Look, I am not cherrypicking logs like you, I am only putting my logs and a speedrun from a time when AST had 0 raid-wide heals on oGCD. Also look, despite AST using more actions they had lower CPM than overpowered SCH, lower DPS and lower HPS. Ah, good times."
"We were constantly using GCD to heal, unless we are SCH, for that we use our WHMcurebot pet by micromanaging Embrace"
"Check me out I am so unique, I am SMN but with WHM DoT in my kit and WHMcurebot with free medica II-s as a healing pet"
"We no longer have to manage MP because we don't rely on GCD healing instead we have to manage cds of oGCDs. SE made healing boring."
"We lost WHM's DoT from our DPS kit. We lost our complexity."
"DoT I actually upgrades into DoT II and that into DoT III? SE ruined my job!"
"Before we had Nuke and DoT I + II + III. And we had a SMN with WHM light following them around and we called them healer. So much diversity. Now we have Nuke and DoT and 24 other spells. Everything is identical. We are tired of hearing otherwise"
"Shb made it so that I can have 100% offensive GCD uptime when I learn how to play but I think I exist for DPS players' fun only."
"Why is SE removing all of my DPS buttons. It was so much better when I couldn't even AoE in ARR. SE is disincentivizing healers to DPS with their class design. Return old healer gameplay now."
"We feel like second, no third-grade players because balance changes were finally brought. OPness was so much fun. How dare they."
"With Endwalker, they will remove our last two remaining spells, everybody, brace yourselves for what comes next. The great ruination is upon us."
"Why is nobody listening to our feedback?"

What did I miss?
Right, "I am trying to tell him SCH is identical to AST but he doesn't listen. Stop arguing with him."
"Comparison of Week 1 savage clears of each expansion is completely irrelevant information whatsoever. It doesn't indicate how healer jobs are actually played when optimized to perfection. No, it is more important how normal trials play like for healers when everyone is over-gearing them in duty finder."

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/i...uou_3rQqg&s=10

If you took the strawmen out of that comment, the remainder could fit on a postage stamp.

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Originally Posted by Roeshel

The underlined is entirely incorrect.

SCH wins against everybody when it comes to oGCD healing potency per minute both in terms of ST and raid-wide.

Whispering Dawn - 531
Fey Blessing - 221
Indominability - 400
Sacred Soil - 600
That's approximately 1750 cure potency they and still have:
1 Aetherstack that can be used on Sacred Soil again which increases your party-wide oGCD healing potency to 2350 per minute

Recitation on 90s cd for an additional 600 potency(crit Indom) raid-wide heal or 1200 ST potency (crit Excog)
Seraph on 120s cd for a total of 800 potency party-wide, 400 as heal, 400 as a shield.
Dissipation on 180s cd

For ST they have Embrace with 2000 actual cure potency per minute. Not great for tankbusters but it is awesome for MT sustain. Fey Union increases the ticking heal by more than twice its value. Seraph does the same while summoned for up to 6-7 casts.

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Wow, Scholar is the strongest healer in Single Target and AoE healing with oGCDs? That's not where I expected this thread to go at all lol. What an adorable train wreck...

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Originally Posted by Boizinho

What point were you even trying to make? The discussion was about the statement "healing while DPSing is the direction they wanted jobs to take," and QooEr correctly pointed out ways in which they've done the literal opposite. You simultaneously say that Scholar using fairy abilities while DPSing is overpowered, but then also count every single oGCD being used on cooldown in order to compare SCH oGCD healing to AST oGCD healing. Well, guess what? SCH oGCD healing has an opportunity cost (now). There's a valid reason to not use many of the spells you listed. For AST, that is not the case. There is zero opportunity cost on anything. They are effectively already playing the "cast Whispering Dawn mid-Broil" game while nobody else is allowed to.

That would be fine if every healer was designed that way, but SCH and especially WHM completely contradict the idea that healers should be healing and DPSing at the same time. SCH has a limited amount of windows to use oGCD heals without losing damage potency, and WHM has literally one every 30 seconds. SCH mitigates the DPS loss with Energy Drain, but remember that SCH didn't even have Energy Drain earlier in ShB. It was given back because they probably realized the job doesn't function without it. The only ability that WHM has that heals and deals damage at the same time is Assize, and it can't even be timed with actual raid damage unlike Earthly Star. And Earthly Star has almost double the heal potency for good measure.

All in all, while I agree that SCH was the "I do everything all the time with no risk" healer and that was bad, it's silly to hold the current situation in high regard for the same reason. You can't grandstand and say "oh boy, I'm so glad we're past the point where one healer can do everything, do it better than everyone else, and not lose any DPS in the process" because we're still there. Astrologian still fits that bill. It has the highest rDPS, the best "free" oGCD heals, the best GCD heals, the lowest opportunity cost on both oGCD and GCD healing, and the best mobility. If you're against having an overpowered monster of a healer then maybe look away from the version of SCH that no longer exists and look to the version of AST that does still exist. And if you want healers to be DPSing and healing without sacrificing either one, don't scoff at the idea of other healers doing just that. Either they should all do it, or none of them should. Having one healer that does it all is the worst of both worlds.

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Scholar is doing that when it comes to AoE-ing. Not that relevant for raiding since there are no longer trash mobs there but still. It is not like healing while dpsing is not an already woven part of their playstyle.

WHM's remedy is the blood lily. Not a perfect solution to the problem, but it is better than anything we had before. It is pointless to argue that healers were remotely in a better spot before overall.

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Originally Posted by Roeshel

Healing while DPSing is the direction they have taken for healer jobs.

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Correction: Slamming a 1 button GCD nuke whilst rotating healing OGCDs is the direction they have taken for healer jobs.

Not really wanting to bring freak world first runs into this as a yardstick for any kind of normality (I used Fretty's #2 run as the most extreme counter argument against my point to show how far things have shifted since HW). Nor is this the thread for healer balance discussion. Jobs don't have to be balanced to be enjoyable.

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Originally Posted by Roeshel

The reason why I dislike 3s cast time Gravity so much is that you can't literally play the job with 3s cast times. In between casts you can't draw cards, you can't apply them, you can't activate divination, you can't use any healing oGCD which means that if the regen is not cutting it, you would have to stop casting Gravity and I don't want to stop AoEing just to heal with a GCD other than regen especially at level cap. I associate it with terrible play. I have access to so many healing oGCDs in order to avoid using any GCDs for healing.

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..... what?

Ok first off, why are cards even a concern here? If you're mashing gravity, chances are you're in a dungeon. It typically takes around 30 seconds from the tank planting to the bulk of the mobs dieing in most trash pulls (unless the DPS is absolutely awful at least). So again I state. Why care about cards? Deal with them whilst running, dotting and regening the tank as applicable. Once the tank is planted, it's time to drop the star and start mashing gravity. In most cases, pre regen + star + ED is plentiful.

Secondly, you can't activate divination with 3 second gravity because the two didn't exist at the same time :rolleyes:

Thirdly, why do you have to stop casting Gravity? Just queue the ED and then carry on mashing Gravity. You'll clip sure. Welcome to a small taste of the horror that other healers have to deal with. Hope it's not too salty.

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Originally Posted by Roeshel

Embrace stuff

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It's already been mentioned but I'll repeat for emphasis: Embrace is a shadow of it's former self because you can't control where it goes. Back when I was doing world prog in 2.0 both myself and the other SCHs in Solitude used all sorts of methods to funnel Embraces into the tank where it actually mattered. I've seen pedals, secondary keyboard banks, gamepad emulation ETC. Without that it's value is massively decreased.

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Originally Posted by Roeshel

WHM's remedy is the blood lily. Not a perfect solution to the problem, but it is better than anything we had before. It is pointless to argue that healers were remotely in a better spot before overall.

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Again, back to the topic of this thread.

People don't look back at Heavensward because they think that healers were balanced. They look back at Heavensward because healers were so much more rewarding to play.

I wasn't happy with the fact that I couldn't viably play WHM for Creator Savage because I flat ran out of MP playing in the way that I did back then. But I'll take the AST gameplay from then over anything we have now. It had depth, finesse and variety. Now it just boils down to how many nukes I can squeeze out in 10 minutes whilst minimising everything else.

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

Correction: Slamming a 1 button GCD nuke whilst rotating healing OGCDs is the direction they have taken for healer jobs.

Not really wanting to bring freak world first runs into this as a yardstick for any kind of normality (I used Fretty's #2 run as the most extreme counter argument against my point to show how far things have shifted since HW). Nor is this the thread for healer balance discussion. Jobs don't have to be balanced to be enjoyable.

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Back then you were lining up DoTs then nuking, stopping to heal with the classical GCD, nuking, line up the DoTs again.

Right now, it is technically a simplified version of what it used to - DoT-12xNuke-DoT because the method of healing actually became more diverse thanks to the abundance of oGCDs.

Jobs do need to be balanced to be enjoyable. OP jobs are naturally going to be more enjoyable which is going to cause similar jobs to be less enjoyable.

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

Correction: Slamming a 1 button GCD nuke whilst rotating healing OGCDs is the direction they have taken for healer jobs.

Not really wanting to bring freak world first runs into this as a yardstick for any kind of normality (I used Fretty's #2 run as the most extreme counter argument against my point to show how far things have shifted since HW). Nor is this the thread for healer balance discussion. Jobs don't have to be balanced to be enjoyable.



..... what?

Ok first off, why are cards even a concern here? If you're mashing gravity, chances are you're in a dungeon. It typically takes around 30 seconds from the tank planting to the bulk of the mobs dieing in most trash pulls (unless the DPS is absolutely awful at least). So again I state. Why care about cards? Deal with them whilst running, dotting and regening the tank as applicable. Once the tank is planted, it's time to drop the star and start mashing gravity. In most cases, pre regen + star + ED is plentiful.

Secondly, you can't activate divination with 3 second gravity because the two didn't exist at the same time :rolleyes:

Thirdly, why do you have to stop casting Gravity? Just queue the ED and then carry on mashing Gravity. You'll clip sure. Welcome to a small taste of the horror that other healers have to deal with. Hope it's not too salty.



It's already been mentioned but I'll repeat for emphasis: Embrace is a shadow of it's former self because you can't control where it goes. Back when I was doing world prog in 2.0 both myself and the other SCHs in Solitude used all sorts of methods to funnel Embraces into the tank where it actually mattered. I've seen pedals, secondary keyboard banks, gamepad emulation ETC. Without that it's value is massively decreased.



Again, back to the topic of this thread.

People don't look back at Heavensward because they think that healers were balanced. They look back at Heavensward because healers were so much more rewarding to play.

I wasn't happy with the fact that I couldn't viably play WHM for Creator Savage because I flat ran out of MP playing in the way that I did back then. But I'll take the AST gameplay from then over anything we have now. It had depth, finesse and variety. Now it just boils down to how many nukes I can squeeze out in 10 minutes whilst minimising everything else.

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He's going to miss the point again, no matter how fabulously eloquent you are Sebazy. :/

I really do miss the HW days, as the Healers were so deep, and no dungeon run was even remotely the same in terms of play. Now I can literally set timers on when to use abilities. Boring.

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Originally Posted by Roeshel

Back then you were lining up DoTs then nuking, stopping to heal with the classical GCD, nuking, line up the DoTs again.

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You're missing debuff management, MP management, agro management, SCH's second GCD and fairy swaps and ASTs significantly more involving card meta at the very least.

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Originally Posted by Roeshel

Right now, it is technically a simplified version of what it used to - DoT-12xNuke-DoT because the method of healing actually became more diverse thanks to the abundance of oGCDs.

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Look at what was needed to get a tank through a Coil T5 Death Sentence back in 2.0. You needed pre shields and Stoneskin timed to land close enough to the DS to not get wiped by an auto attack, you then needed to time a Cure II and Adlo to land between the DS and it's infirmity debuff so that the tank would have enough HP to not die to the auto attack following the DS. You needed a planned Virus chain. The tank would also need to be using a cool down. You could generally miss one thing and the tank would generally survive, if 2 were missed, the tank would usually die either to the DS or the auto attack straight after it.

Compare that to what you need for just about any savage tank buster now: A tank cooldown and an Excog, ED or Tetra.

Simplified is the understatement of the century sir.

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Originally Posted by Roeshel

Jobs do need to be balanced to be enjoyable. OP jobs are naturally going to be more enjoyable which is going to cause similar jobs to be less enjoyable.

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No they don't. If this was true, why did WHM see equal and sometimes even greater usage vs SCH and AST throughout patch 3.4? It wasn't until 3.5 and the whole Zurvan Skip Soar comedy that it flat out started getting excluded from content.

This isn't a balance problem. This a pressing the same button 180 times in a single fight problem.

I never realized how difficult it must be for people new to the game to extrapolate what the play experience must have been like before based on just logs and ability descriptions. Roeshel is trying their best to argue about why changes were made and necessary but it really falls flat when you talk to people who were there and used the kits and found the loopholes. Speaking for myself my enjoyment with healers has gone down since Heavensward. Even WHM with its new Lillies and Misery is less fun to me now than when I had Aero 3 on command. The visual was great and I didnt need to wait 90 seconds for Misery to be available. Fluid Aura could cancel aoes from mobs with its push and didnt build a stun immunity. The current Temperance buff was available much lower and made me "feel" powerful in earlier content becuase I could choose to use it when needed. I never cared for who was the top dps healer or had strongest healing tools. I cared about how many decisions I can make moment to moment and Shadowbringers has given healers the least in terms of meaningful decisions. Stormblood had a 30 second recast on Surecast which meant you could avoid a push or pull mechanic every time they happened. That is a meaningful choice we had access to quite often. Scholar had quickened aetherflow trait which means Aetherflow was 45 second cool down. It was basically just more Energy Drains for being aggressive but it was more choice and apm which got shattered completely when Energy Drain and the Quicked Trait got removed at ShB launch. The pace of the job went from blazing fast to a dead halt. The fact we heal and dps with more potency than ever before DOES NOT make these ridiculous kits enjoyable.

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Originally Posted by NobleWinter

I never realized how difficult it must be for people new to the game to extrapolate what the play experience must have been like before based on just logs and ability descriptions. Roeshel is trying their best to argue about why changes were made and necessary but it really falls flat when you talk to people who were there and used the kits and found the loopholes. Speaking for myself my enjoyment with healers has gone down since Heavensward. Even WHM with its new Lillies and Misery is less fun to me now than when I had Aero 3 on command. The visual was great and I didnt need to wait 90 seconds for Misery to be available. Fluid Aura could cancel aoes from mobs with its push and didnt build a stun immunity. The current Temperance buff was available much lower and made me "feel" powerful in earlier content becuase I could choose to use it when needed. I never cared for who was the top dps healer or had strongest healing tools. I cared about how many decisions I can make moment to moment and Shadowbringers has given healers the least in terms of meaningful decisions. Stormblood had a 30 second recast on Surecast which meant you could avoid a push or pull mechanic every time they happened. That is a meaningful choice we had access to quite often. Scholar had quickened aetherflow trait which means Aetherflow was 45 second cool down. It was basically just more Energy Drains for being aggressive but it was more choice and apm which got shattered completely when Energy Drain and the Quicked Trait got removed at ShB launch. The pace of the job went from blazing fast to a dead halt. The fact we heal and dps with more potency than ever before DOES NOT make these ridiculous kits enjoyable.

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I think the lack of enjoyability pretty much boils down to lack of complexity and the absence of any meaningful decision making. Healing basically plays like a caster but with less mobility and you have to stare at health bars and hit an OGCD whenever you need to heal, oh and you only spam 1 button the rest of the time. Now instead of being the control center of the party you're just a health babysitter who's bored

Tanking also suffers to a degree because threat management is nonexistent since tank stance doesn't decrease your damage, and you also take the same amount of damage regardless of if stance is on or off, so there's less risk factor involved in turning off stance. The role has basically devolved into a blue DPS that pulls and presses buttons to take less damage.

SE really needs to do something about keeping each role's experience unique, tanking shouldn't feel the same as DPSing, and healing shouldn't be boring because you're doing nothing 90% of the time except spamming 1 button

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Originally Posted by Dogempire

I think the lack of enjoyability pretty much boils down to lack of complexity and the absence of any meaningful decision making. Healing basically plays like a caster but with less mobility and you have to stare at health bars and hit an OGCD whenever you need to heal, oh and you only spam 1 button the rest of the time. Now instead of being the control center of the party you're just a health babysitter who's bored

Tanking also suffers to a degree because threat management is nonexistent since tank stance doesn't decrease your damage, and you also take the same amount of damage regardless of if stance is on or off, so there's less risk factor involved in turning off stance. The role has basically devolved into a blue DPS that pulls and presses buttons to take less damage.

SE really needs to do something about keeping each role's experience unique, tanking shouldn't feel the same as DPSing, and healing shouldn't be boring because you're doing nothing 90% of the time except spamming 1 button

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What’s sad too is that, it most likely isn’t going to change. SE has shown they want to pander to the hyper casual people who don’t spend 5 mins to read their tool tips and instead go into level 80 dungeons spamming cure 1 and no aoe spells. They’ve shown they just want to simplify every little thing now to the point where there’s 0 complexity. It’s sad and you can literally see the downfall of a lot of jobs from previous expansions to now, and tanks/healers got the worst of it. I think SE just doesn’t care because they’re less played and popular than dps jobs which yknow, you’d think that would make them wonder if there’s a reason for that :^)

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Originally Posted by KizuyaKatogami

What’s sad too is that, it most likely isn’t going to change. SE has shown they want to pander to the hyper casual people who don’t spend 5 mins to read their tool tips and instead go into level 80 dungeons spamming cure 1 and no aoe spells. They’ve shown they just want to simplify every little thing now to the point where there’s 0 complexity. It’s sad and you can literally see the downfall of a lot of jobs from previous expansions to now, and tanks/healers got the worst of it. I think SE just doesn’t care because they’re less played and popular than dps jobs which yknow, you’d think that would make them wonder if there’s a reason for that :^)

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DPS will always be the most popular role in a game with party roles, it's just that tanks and healers don't really play much differently from DPS, there's no prestige to being a good tank or healer because it's all so easy to hit the skill ceiling now.

Sure. DPS will always be the most popular role, because it's less hassle and caters more to a single player experience where you can just jump into a group and do your thing. But that's why the tank/healer/DPS ratios are set up the way that they are.

You'll always a number of players who come into an MMO looking specifically to play a particular job aesthetic or role. Some people are 'career' healers or tanks. But put them aside for a minute, because those numbers will never change. Most people tend to be slightly more flexible in their thinking.

Maybe you tend to pick a healer because you like the feeling when you pull off a clutch save and keep your team alive when things go awry. Maybe you tend to pick a tank because you like intricate boss movement and positioning for your team, or because you like having a thorough knowledge of fight mechanics and when to defend against an attack or establish snap enmity on a mob. The problem is that we're seeing a movement of players who actually could potentially enjoy playing these roles say 'forget it, I'll just play DPS' simply because those gameplay elements aren't there and because you just have a much, much bigger impact while on DPS.

I don't think enmity has anything to do with this discussion, to be honest. Aggro systems exist because tanks generally do less damage than their DPS counterparts. That's it. DPS hate being capped by 'wait for three sunders before attacking' gameplay. The key place where aggro management systems challenge your tank are when adds spawn and you have to pick them up smoothly before they make a beeline for your healers. But that hasn't interesting since ARR, as the introduction of abilities like Equilibrium in Heavensward meant that you can just grab aggro wherever a mob is in a room, just like healers inadvertently do, without needing to know to where to go to pick it up. But that's a whole other tangent.

I think it's really important to think of design decisions in terms of how they provide value to you as a player. If you're a newer player wanting to invest time into this game, what role do you pick? Again, some players will always pick a role regardless of what the gameplay is like and either stick around or not depending on whether it meets their expectations, so let's set them aside. What about the player who's open to swapping around, but still prefers a particular gameplay style over the others? Personally, I absolutely love that positioning aspect of tanking where you have to safely move the boss around an arena while maximizing your teammates uptime. But the last time that really mattered was in Heavensward. Bosses increasingly position themselves. So there's actually no difference between what I get to do now and playing a melee DPS. And I'd be content to stay on the role in the hopes that there might be one fight in a blue moon that lets me do some interesting tank stuff, so long as the 'fake melee DPS' gameplay was good and I could provide a reasonable amount of value for my team in terms of raid dps contribution. But I've gotten progressively less value out of this, especially in over past two expansions. It's just an all around weaker version of existing melee DPS jobs, and there's no actual tank upsides to offset this. It actually doesn't make any sense to stay on the role, when I can get more value and get more interesting gameplay by swapping to an actual melee DPS. So while I'll keep my options open and will level a tank on the side, I'll likely swap my main role next expansion if things stay the way that they are. Especially since they seem to have finally created a melee job that tanks can make their exodus off to.

The reason why there's so much focus on increasing healer damage output and making more elaborate damage rotations is because there are plenty of healers who are willing to stick on the role if there was some way that they can provide additional value to their team by being good at their job. Look, we know your fight designers struggle with developing interesting healer mechanics. Healers aren't even hoping for opportunities to making those clutch saves because most damage consists of predictable raidwides or instant death/wipe mechanics. People are willing to play 'pretend caster DPS' on healer while waiting for you to get it right in content design as long as they can do reasonable damage and have reasonably interesting rotations. They definitely could be having more consistent enjoyment right now on caster, but they're hoping that the actual healing side of things can pick up. The problem is that the healing is consistently uninteresting, while the devs are doing everything in their power to make the damage side of healer gameplay decidedly inferior to that of playing a caster dps. So eventually, people just reach a point where they swap, because there's just so much more value they can get out of doing so.

We'll all reach a point where everyone is just playing DPS anyways, and the bosses just tank themselves while a trust NPC heals you. And that's fine, because everyone will actually get better value for time investment that way.

I think one of the simplest metrics for player value is in looking at where the gear goes to. I know that the obvious counterargument to this is that everyone does day one world prog clears of harder content with a uniformly skilled group and a crafting team backing them, so gear is irrelevant and everyone rolls on everything and is deliriously happy with this. But let's say, for the sake of the argument, a healer piece drops during your series of first pull 1-shot clears. Does your team feel like their clear potential is bolstered, or is it more of a 'meh' response? Do you want your first weapon drop to go to a healer? Probably not (although you did preferentially gear them in older MMOs where tanking and healing were considered relatively high-value roles). And while you're never going to see players say 'oh, we need to gear up our tanks and healers first so that we can survive the next encounter more effectively' in this game given its massive dps focus, when tank and healers had a more 'equitable' share of the raid dps pie, you were definitely higher priority than you are now.

I think what you're seeing across Stormblood and Shadowbringers is an increasing awareness that healers and tanks are just not valuable roles to play, and players who have some degree of willingness to swap are moving off to greener pastures. That's why the ratios are becoming increasingly skewed. They'll come back if you can either provide the baseline gameplay that they're looking for, or 'faux' dps gameplay that allows them to function like a hybrid of both. But if the dev team consistently fails at both these things, well, it's not like we're without options. We can all wait in queue together.

Sad thing too is this seems to be a common thing in mmo’s nowadays. Healers becoming obsolete. Eso for example, healers aren’t really that necessary outside of raids. Since everyone can dodge around and self heal. The difference though, between Eso healers and 14 healers, is that Eso healers have farrrr more unique forms of healing and dpsing, and many more dps options to choose from than in 14. It’s where 14 really falls flat imo. Because they design raids in such a similar and boring way, you can just learn the pattern of every fight and you’re done. It would be nice if they’d have some raids have actual unpredictability, but i guess that would require more effort on their part which they don’t seem to be able to give. I have low hopes for 6.0 healers, as they’ve said they want to streamline dungeons even further, which i don’t even know how that’s possible given how easy the latest dungeons have been, but if that’s true the jobs are most likely going to be streamlined further as well. In which case i probably won’t be interested in any jobs, including dps.

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Originally Posted by KizuyaKatogami

Sad thing too is this seems to be a common thing in mmo’s nowadays. Healers becoming obsolete. Eso for example, healers aren’t really that necessary outside of raids. Since everyone can dodge around and self heal. The difference though, between Eso healers and 14 healers, is that Eso healers have farrrr more unique forms of healing and dpsing, and many more dps options to choose from than in 14. It’s where 14 really falls flat imo. Because they design raids in such a similar and boring way, you can just learn the pattern of every fight and you’re done. It would be nice if they’d have some raids have actual unpredictability, but i guess that would require more effort on their part which they don’t seem to be able to give. I have low hopes for 6.0 healers, as they’ve said they want to streamline dungeons even further, which i don’t even know how that’s possible given how easy the latest dungeons have been, but if that’s true the jobs are most likely going to be streamlined further as well. In which case i probably won’t be interested in any jobs, including dps.

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It’s ironic that the so called expert dungeons are way more easy then all of the lvl dungeon you do from 71 too 80. Also mount gulg having the 2 big wall too wall pulls were it really gets the difficulty going.

It's definitely more common in MMO's nowadays. Big clutch saves used to be the moments you lived for as a healer or tank in MMO gaming and the driving motivation to really master your class. Just the vision alone of saving an entire raid with your skill and your group cheering you on would push you forward. But game designers are more and more often designing for the lowest factor. The players who can't be bothered to put in the effort, but will get jealous of the ones who did and achieved anything impressive. The guy doing half of his potential in bad gear saying "what's the point of dps if tank/healers can do more than me or solo the boss?" because of that one time out of a thousand that an exceptional player pulled off a save.

FF14 in particular has carefully designed a game around no one feeling bad. There's very little visual impact from being a great player compared to a mediocre one. Raidwides are predictable, tanks aren't that self-sufficient and many mechanics are instant death or wipe-if-enough-people-aren't-alive so you don't get as much opportunity to save the run. Heal lb3 is designed so any sprout healer who got lucky by not being hit can get that feeling of having saved a run effortless with one button.

What I really miss from tank/healing was the times when if I died as a tank, or my group died when I was healer, I had such an in-depth toolkit I could nearly always look back at that situation and see something I could have done better that would have changed the outcome. I enjoyed that. There was always room to improve and learn. So often nowadays I die as a tank or the party wipes when I'm healing and it was completely unavoidable. Someone else messed up and it wasn't a mechanic you could recover from, so I just had to accept fate. Which really isn't as fun. For healer, it so quickly becomes things like "maybe I could push 3% more uptime" or "I forget to Play one card over a fight, maybe I could focus on that" or "maybe if I redo my entire mapping I can get 3-4 noodle-Broils in" and that's it. It makes very little noticeable different and it's all you have to work on.

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Originally Posted by KizuyaKatogami

I think SE just doesn’t care because they’re less played and popular than dps jobs which yknow, you’d think that would make them wonder if there’s a reason for that :^)

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Actually, I suspect it's the exact opposite. The dev team assumed the lack of interest in tanks and healers was due to players being intimated. So they've reduced every ounce of complexity or player expression possible all in the name of accessibility! We won't really know until the LL or possibly EW itself if that decision backfired. There certainly have been no small amount of complaints online but does it outweigh the new players trying these roles?

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

Actually, I suspect it's the exact opposite. The dev team assumed the lack of interest in tanks and healers was due to players being intimated. So they've reduced every ounce of complexity or player expression possible all in the name of accessibility! We won't really know until the LL or possibly EW itself if that decision backfired. There certainly have been no small amount of complaints online but does it outweigh the new players trying these roles?

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The sad thing is, I doubt it. All over Facebook and Reddit people say that healing and tanking is fine while maining a DPS. People who have recently just come in and it's their first mmo think it's fine. I feel like the original player base is the minority at this point. We've either moved on to another game, or just quit the role entirely. I've checked several original posters whom I know to be previous Healer mains, and they are just that now. They are DPS; at this point, the game will merely continue to become brain dead until it hits a bursting point.

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

Actually, I suspect it's the exact opposite. The dev team assumed the lack of interest in tanks and healers was due to players being intimated. So they've reduced every ounce of complexity or player expression possible all in the name of accessibility! We won't really know until the LL or possibly EW itself if that decision backfired. There certainly have been no small amount of complaints online but does it outweigh the new players trying these roles?

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This is true probably tbh. I think that’s how out of touch they are with the playerbase though. Idk of anyone that hated the enmity in SB, or at least anyone that wanted to dumb it down. Yeah that’s my big problem with 14. No complexity or choice in jobs. No uniqueness. As for the complaints, at this point idk. Unfortunately SE uses twitter and reddit for feedback, and those are the social media sites that have the loudest portion of the playerbase that is fine with whatever SE does.

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Originally Posted by NobleWinter

...Scholar had quickened aetherflow trait which means Aetherflow was 45 second cool down. It was basically just more Energy Drains for being aggressive but it was more choice and apm which got shattered completely when Energy Drain and the Quicked Trait got removed at ShB launch. The pace of the job went from blazing fast to a dead halt. The fact we heal and dps with more potency than ever before DOES NOT make these ridiculous kits enjoyable.

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While your take is generally true to a point Noble, I disagree on Quickened Aetherflow specifically because it removed tension from Scholar's oGCD kit. Even if you used every heal (apart from Lustrate) we have now on CD, QA + Dissipation would still give you excess Aetherflow stacks for Energy Drain/Lustrate. I didn't find it any more engaging for it. It just felt overloaded on top of the already overwhelming capabilities Scholar had at that point. I'm glad we got Recitation over it, personally. Resource Management matters way more than speed to me on a healer. That said, eroding much of all three healer's DPS kits in the Shadowbringers transition overwhelmingly did more harm than good. Particularly with the hardclipping meta SCH and WHM are stuck with. I'd rather have smooth gameplay than degenerate options, so while Scholar's changes hurt, I'd rather keep most of the ones they got on the healing side (though I'm predicting Whispering Dawn/Fey Illumination being merged into an AoE Fey Union given SE's track record, and I'm not sure how to feel about THAT yet), and fix Ruin II while giving WHM more instant-cast DPS actions, and ideally something for them that compliments lily heals as well. I dislike the idea of making Assize a GCD as it'll erode WHM's DPS over time without extra tuning, but maybe that's part of the way forward.

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

..... what?

Ok first off, why are cards even a concern here? If you're mashing gravity, chances are you're in a dungeon. It typically takes around 30 seconds from the tank planting to the bulk of the mobs dieing in most trash pulls (unless the DPS is absolutely awful at least). So again I state. Why care about cards? Deal with them whilst running, dotting and regening the tank as applicable. Once the tank is planted, it's time to drop the star and start mashing gravity. In most cases, pre regen + star + ED is plentiful.

Thirdly, why do you have to stop casting Gravity? Just queue the ED and then carry on mashing Gravity. You'll clip sure. Welcome to a small taste of the horror that other healers have to deal with. Hope it's not too salty.

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Why wouldn't I care about cards and divination in dungeon pulls? It is the only reason I would take ast over whm or sch since their AoE is superior and their sustain is better.
FYI, in level 70+ dungeons in most of the cases of the first gate to gate pull, you can have divination activated with the 4th gravity cast without any clipping and that's assuming you started playing your cards after the tank's planting for maximum efficiency. Trash pulls taking 30s to kill doesn't excuse you from not using your buttons. The only thing that's stopping ppl from having buffed 3/4 of the party with 12% dmg buff is laziness, lack of skills, or unlucky RNG.

Also, the SFX of that ability are gorgeous. Why won't you use it on cd? I play ast to see its effects.

Scholar has no clip issues. It is only WHM and the only abilities you would want to clip for while smashing Holy are Assize and Benediction. Both of them are relatively impactful oGCDs unlike cards for which you don't want to clip since you are losing more than gaining.

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

People don't look back at Heavensward because they think that healers were balanced. They look back at Heavensward because healers were so much more rewarding to play.I wasn't happy with the fact that I couldn't viably play WHM for Creator Savage because I flat ran out of MP playing in the way that I did back then. But I'll take the AST gameplay from then over anything we have now. It had depth, finesse and variety. Now it just boils down to how many nukes I can squeeze out in 10 minutes whilst minimising everything else.

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As far as raiding is concerned, the AST card system was incredibly simple:
Royal road: 1 variable, 3 types: 1 correct answer: Spread
Draw - 1 variable, 6 types, 1 correct answer: Balance
It was a no-brainer when it came to optimization. It had a great variety of mistakes that you can make whose damage loss was masked by "restores MP" "restores TP" "20% Damage taken reduction" which were the most punishing cards that you can play. The less punishing mistakes were "10% crit increase" and "10% skill&spellspeed increase".
There is nothing wrong with having utility, but locking useful utility behind another not so useful utility is a bad design. Damage reduction is valuable on-demand. The Bole was unreliable. You have access to it but you can't rely on it when you actually need it.

Because Spread and Balance was the primary thing that was used, now you have both of them secured. but at least now you are required to think a little bit before spreading party-wide damage buff:
Draw - 2 variables - each of them affecting different aspects of your kit:
The first variable affects the Type of Target and has 2 types.
The second variable affects Divination and has 3 types.

Divination - 27 different alignments, 3 right answers, 24 wrong. This boils down to 1:8.
Right - 6% damage buff
Wrong - 3% damage buff
That is how it was when Shb launched. They later changed the 2 different arcanum seal alignments to give a 5% damage buff and they buffed the wrong option to a 4% dmg increase. So the ratio between, right/not so right/wrong became 1:7:1
Like it or not, Draw is more complex than it was in HS from a mathematical point of view which is the logical way of seeing things. The depth of gameplay actually increased for those concerned about optimal gameplay.

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Originally Posted by Roeshel

Why wouldn't I care about cards and divination in dungeon pulls? It is the only reason I would take ast over whm or sch since their AoE is superior and their sustain is better.

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Again I ask...

Why are you writing paragraphs complaining about clipping with the old 3 second cast gravity when anyone with any sense just did their cards before the tank planted the pack and the gravity spam commenced.

Why are you talking about Divinity and clipping issues with Gravity? Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong here but Divinity was introduced with patch 5.0, Gravity's cast time was reduced to 2.5 for patch 5.0 and then 1.5 in patch 5.05.

At the risk of being supremely harsh, our opinions on whether the new or old card systems were better have less than no bearing on the topic that's trying to be discussed. What matters here is the simple fact that the old cards gave the illusion of choice. It was a more interesting system for a wider range of players and situations. I refuse to believe that you can seriously think that the average healer in this game gives two hoots about 1:8 vs 1:7:1 ratios on cards? It's about as exciting as the medals podium in today's school sports day, everyone's a winner now, the only difference is how quickly you get given your medal. :rolleyes:

And again, I'm failing to see which one of your points tackles the core issue where it's not out of the ordinary to see a healer spend 180 GCDs pressing the same button in a 10 minute Savage encounter.

Heavenswards healer GCDs were like playing a piano, Shadowbringers GCDs are like playing a cowbell.

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

And again, I'm failing to see which one of your points tackles the core issue where it's not out of the ordinary to see a healer spend 180 GCDs pressing the same button in a 10 minute Savage encounter.

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It's because offensive GCD uptme was brought to 100% for all healers, not only SCH.

Being able to achieve 100% offensive uptime while also healing is a core requirement before getting a decent rotation.

We already saw that we are not getting nuke upgrades in the benchmark of Endwalker. We are most likely getting a rotation in November.

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Originally Posted by Roeshel

It's because offensive GCD uptme was brought to 100% for all healers, not only SCH.

Being able to achieve 100% offensive uptime while also healing is a core requirement before getting a decent rotation.

We already saw that we are not getting nuke upgrades in the benchmark of Endwalker. We are most likely getting a rotation in November.

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Based off of what evidence?

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Originally Posted by Roeshel

It's because offensive GCD uptme was brought to 100% for all healers, not only SCH.

Being able to achieve 100% offensive uptime while also healing is a core requirement before getting a decent rotation.

We already saw that we are not getting nuke upgrades in the benchmark of Endwalker. We are most likely getting a rotation in November.

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Eeeh, I'll accept being called jaded at this point, but I'm not convinced that the current situation is down to any kind of a long term direction in place by SE. I'm firmly of the opinion that we've ended up here because they just don't know what to do with healers and have been throwing half baked and highly rushed ideas at the wall to see what sticks and what causes a riot.

As for what Endwalker holds. My guesses in order of most likely to least likely are as such: Little to nothing changes, Sage is more copy pasta >>>>> We get a 1 button auto rotation akin to NPC quests > The 1 button dps stays but we get some utility back >>>>> We get a legitimate multi button dps rotation >>>>> We get a branching multi button dps rotation.

Whilst it's always a possibility, I just can't see SE going down the proper rotation route without pruning some of our healing kit to keep the hotkey count somewhat stable.

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Originally Posted by FoxCh40s

The sad thing is, I doubt it. All over Facebook and Reddit people say that healing and tanking is fine while maining a DPS. People who have recently just come in and it's their first mmo think it's fine. I feel like the original player base is the minority at this point. We've either moved on to another game, or just quit the role entirely. I've checked several original posters whom I know to be previous Healer mains, and they are just that now. They are DPS; at this point, the game will merely continue to become brain dead until it hits a bursting point.

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Which is my concern as well. We saw a massive healer exodus at the beginning of Shadowbringers, and I do believe the devs being so quiet on the topic is at least partially because of the poor reception. Even JP is upset at the oversimplification and boring gameplay. JP being vocal on public forums is exceedingly rare. So there is definitely a sizable amount of players upset. On the other hand, I could very easily see the devs chalking a lot of this up to their not being a new healer in Shadowbringers. And thus hoping Sage shuts everyone up.

It's definitely going to be interest since Endwalker will really set the tone for the game going forward.

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Originally Posted by KizuyaKatogami

This is true probably tbh. I think that’s how out of touch they are with the playerbase though. Idk of anyone that hated the enmity in SB, or at least anyone that wanted to dumb it down. Yeah that’s my big problem with 14. No complexity or choice in jobs. No uniqueness. As for the complaints, at this point idk. Unfortunately SE uses twitter and reddit for feedback, and those are the social media sites that have the loudest portion of the playerbase that is fine with whatever SE does.

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Ehh. I honestly don't mind the enmity. There was never much thought to aggro generation in the first place. You either forced your comp to run Ninja or occasionally let DPS take autos. In pugs, I cannot tell you the number of times DPS would rip of the tanks and eat a buster. It was a foregone conclusion they were going to change enmity once that started to happen since there was nothing they could do to keep tanks in tank stance.

That all side, it's more they're prioritizing new and casual minded players over everyone else. They don't necessarily care if you or I enjoy Astro or White Mage but rather if little Timmy and Sarah who spam Cure I for the freecure proc isn't getting overwhelmed by too many buttons. Not to say accessibility isn't good. It definitely is. But too much accessibility is no better than too much complexity. Neither make for pleasant gameplay long term.

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Originally Posted by Grimoire-M

While your take is generally true to a point Noble, I disagree on Quickened Aetherflow specifically because it removed tension from Scholar's oGCD kit. Even if you used every heal (apart from Lustrate) we have now on CD, QA + Dissipation would still give you excess Aetherflow stacks for Energy Drain/Lustrate. I didn't find it any more engaging for it. It just felt overloaded on top of the already overwhelming capabilities Scholar had at that point. I'm glad we got Recitation over it, personally. Resource Management matters way more than speed to me on a healer. That said, eroding much of all three healer's DPS kits in the Shadowbringers transition overwhelmingly did more harm than good. Particularly with the hardclipping meta SCH and WHM are stuck with. I'd rather have smooth gameplay than degenerate options, so while Scholar's changes hurt, I'd rather keep most of the ones they got on the healing side (though I'm predicting Whispering Dawn/Fey Illumination being merged into an AoE Fey Union given SE's track record, and I'm not sure how to feel about THAT yet), and fix Ruin II while giving WHM more instant-cast DPS actions, and ideally something for them that compliments lily heals as well. I dislike the idea of making Assize a GCD as it'll erode WHM's DPS over time without extra tuning, but maybe that's part of the way forward.

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I enjoy Ninja for the pace of the burst phase and that's what made Stormblood Scholar my favorite. Miasma 2 and Energy Drain where spicy; keeping me in melee range with great damage and no worries about Aetherflow stacks for healing. Resource management is definitely fun too but I need way more tension than anything Scholar ever had to call it compelling. We have always had more Aetherflow than we need for healing. It's a safety net. Giving us even more was clearly a push to dps which had the added benefit of more mobility since we were using Ruin 2 and Miasma 2 to weave. I miss the guiltless movement so much.

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

It's definitely more common in MMO's nowadays. Big clutch saves used to be the moments you lived for as a healer or tank in MMO gaming and the driving motivation to really master your class. Just the vision alone of saving an entire raid with your skill and your group cheering you on would push you forward. But game designers are more and more often designing for the lowest factor. The players who can't be bothered to put in the effort, but will get jealous of the ones who did and achieved anything impressive. The guy doing half of his potential in bad gear saying "what's the point of dps if tank/healers can do more than me or solo the boss?" because of that one time out of a thousand that an exceptional player pulled off a save.

FF14 in particular has carefully designed a game around no one feeling bad. There's very little visual impact from being a great player compared to a mediocre one. Raidwides are predictable, tanks aren't that self-sufficient and many mechanics are instant death or wipe-if-enough-people-aren't-alive so you don't get as much opportunity to save the run. Heal lb3 is designed so any sprout healer who got lucky by not being hit can get that feeling of having saved a run effortless with one button.

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It's worth remembering too, that outside of fights which are trivial for your current gear level, early progression, and the odd gimmick mechanic, you generally don't want to be using Healer LB3. The cost of using it is the loss of a DPS LB3, which has much more value.

One reason for this is that the standard raid encounter formula has every fight jump straight into a hard enrage when you get to a certain timestamp. So the bottom line comes down to a fixed dps value that your group needs to meet while doing the mechanics correctly. It's a necessary evil because otherwise fights can drag on endlessly. But what if you placed a soft enrage first? T1 had a really well designed soft enrage at the time, simply because you could relax the dps requirements of the fight by doing the mechanics properly (reducing the rate at which the boss gained stacks) and by having really good tanks and healers who could increase your survival time as you headed towards 10 stacks. I think you still need to tack on a hard enrage at the very end of this sort of fight design, otherwise a sufficiently geared tank/healer combination can trivialize the check and drag the fight on endlessly. But it creates a scenario where efficient use of your resources and cooldowns might extend the fight duration up to a certain preset value, allowing for some cross-compensation on the overall dps check. It also creates another incentive to doing mechanics properly.

It's always strange to go back and do really early content (ARR, Heavensward) because it feels so experimental in compared to the very formula driven encounters that we get now. Even for it's rough edges, it feels like it was designed by an actual person and not an AI with a raid mechanic library. There's a certain charm to it. I wish they would just break their own rules more often even for the sake of trying things out.

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Originally Posted by Dogempire

I think the lack of enjoyability pretty much boils down to lack of complexity and the absence of any meaningful decision making. Healing basically plays like a caster but with less mobility and you have to stare at health bars and hit an OGCD whenever you need to heal, oh and you only spam 1 button the rest of the time. Now instead of being the control center of the party you're just a health babysitter who's bored

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Which is more because of how much healing is now covered by ogcds. Benediction has gone from being WHM's only ogcd with a 300s cd to one of 4 ogcd heals/shields and a 180s cd with the rest having 30s, 45s and 60s cds. Why hard cast a heal every 30s when you can cover it with a cd or instant cast.

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Tanking also suffers to a degree because threat management is nonexistent since tank stance doesn't decrease your damage, and you also take the same amount of damage regardless of if stance is on or off, so there's less risk factor involved in turning off stance. The role has basically devolved into a blue DPS that pulls and presses buttons to take less damage.

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Threat management was pretty much never an actual problem. Many a high end fight in HW and StB could be done with less than 30s worth of tank stance uptime and healers had little trouble keeping tanks up in dps stance.

Your enmity rotation in tank stance and your dps rotation in dps stance were pretty much identical. The major difference when toggling stances was how much damage you dealt and how much you received.

What has changed is that most ShB fights do not have or require tank controlled positioning/facing, fewer tank busters/tank soaks and fewer add spawns so tanks tend to be doing the exact same tasks as melee dps.

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SE really needs to do something about keeping each role's experience unique, tanking shouldn't feel the same as DPSing, and healing shouldn't be boring because you're doing nothing 90% of the time except spamming 1 button

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Both factors are the fault of fight design not class design. Healer healing output has increased by a massive amount but healing requirements have not increased in parallel but stayed stagnant. Tank mitigation has increased by massive amounts but the relative amounts of incoming damage has actually decreased. Both the Tanks and Healers are designed to handle much more damage intensive fights but those fights do not exist at ilevel in ShB content.