The state of healers is affecting everyone

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Originally Posted by Shalan

If you consider being told that doing your rotation while dodging mechanics is abusive... that's kinda sad.
It is literally the lowest bar in the game, and if you're struggling to meet that bar you either have to get better or find some other class to play. I really don't know what else to say lol.

That's something they expect you to do/be proficient at within the first one or two of those adventurer's guild help tutorial things before Sastasha

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I never said that, I said abuse towards people that struggle is apart of the reason why a lot of people get anxiety towards playing roles they aren’t fully comfortable with.
And if all content was as easy as the Hall Of Novice I don’t think people would be, just because someone understands the Hall Of Novice doesn’t mean they can go through I dunno Mt Gulg for example and not make any mistakes, I struggle but I do learn, when I was struggling and learning as a new player in The Great Gubal library when I was a relatively new player someone told me to uninstall the game because I wasn’t any good at this one then left the dungeon. I can do that dungeon with one hand tied behind my back now and do all the mechanics, some people learn at a slower pace than others but that doesn’t justify abusive behavior.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

I'd actually say that is what the meta is designed for, not the game. We already know DPS checks don't factor their DPS. This isn't a Sims or puzzle game. I'm not saying you think it is, but damage is naturally part of a PvE encounter, the question is should healers be spending 90% of the encounter doing it. I am of the mind that's it's the encounters that need to change, not their DPS rotation. And I would think that the game's healers would desire the same, given their chosen role.

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You'd have to change not only encounters, but entire kits. WHM as is may be able to get by healing 90% of the time, and even that is a stretch, but the other two healers? They'd be running on empty halfway through a 5 minute encounter. You wouldn't need to just change encounters, you'd have to change kits to allow more constant healing rather than the big burst heals we have now, you would also have to make them all unique in their own way, otherwise why have 3 healers? You're talking a complete redesign here of both the game and the classes, and that would take much more time and resources than just adding more to do in the current design of the game, especially when the assets are already there. Would I mind said rework? Not at all, anything to do would be great, though I'm not sure I'd stay healer because I fell in love with SCH in the first place because it was a DPS/healer hybrid, but I could at least accept it was better design because it's more to do.

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Originally Posted by SerLuke

I never said that, I said abuse towards people that struggle is apart of the reason why a lot of people get anxiety towards playing roles they aren’t fully comfortable with.

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My apologizes for inferring the wrong idea of your message then. But quoting someone and then making what can be construed as an accusatory statement can imply something other than what you were conveying.

Though I still think that by the time you finish some of the earlier content you should no longer be struggling with something so basic as following your rotation while avoiding mechanics. That action is just the very base part of the game. Something you do even outside group content. We shouldn't balance classes around one's inability to do so.
I would certainly be more forgiving with a new player, but they've been here for nearly two years if their forum join date is anything to go by, that's quite a long time for having trouble w/ rotation, mechanics, and remember ability layout on their controller. Maybe healing just isn't for them.

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Originally Posted by SerLuke

I never said that, I said abuse towards people that struggle is apart of the reason why a lot of people get anxiety towards playing roles they aren’t fully comfortable with.
And if all content was as easy as the Hall Of Novice I don’t think people would be, just because someone understands the Hall Of Novice doesn’t mean they can go through I dunno Mt Gulg for example and not make any mistakes, I struggle but I do learn, when I was struggling and learning as a new player in The Great Gubal library when I was a relatively new player someone told me to uninstall the game because I wasn’t any good at this one then left the dungeon. I can do that dungeon with one hand tied behind my back now and do all the mechanics, some people learn at a slower pace than others but that doesn’t justify abusive behavior.

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I share this sentiment. When I was starting to learn sch, I had someone completely destroy me in the middle of one of the 8 man Alexander fights. No one had died in the fight but bc I didn't heal a certain way he just started putting me on blast. At the time I thought I healed just fine, but I wasn't healing optimally. This guy was a hardcore raider/jackass and the stuff he said were bannable offenses and honestly made me wanna quit at the time. But I grew a thicker skin and learned to play sch properly. I had other run-ins with this guy but because I had improved he didn't aim his salt at me and regrettably, on O2S he ended up in one of our parties as my co-healer. He announced he was just there to pad his parse ie only gonna dps. We did just fine but man did I wanna call him out. It was the most awkward situation in this game.

But jist of the story is, just because people are jerks on here and call you out doesn't mean people give up. But man did it cause me a lot of anxiety when I was starting out. There is also nothing bad about giving advice but putting someone on blast is not the way to go about it.

I still think it's incredible that the devs have barely talked about healers whatsoever since the expansion dropped (and for awhile before as well). In the recent interview with Yoshi P, it was hilarious that he shot down complaints about AST's cards in a single sentence, and then immediately went into a long paragraph about all the great changes they have in store for NIN.

My favourite job was AST, and after the changes I can barely play it properly. The heals are fine; fast and strong. But the card system is so cruddy from a usability standpoint, especially for console players. FFXIV is a game where a large portion of the population plays using a controller, and although there are varying degrees of difficulty between controller and keyboard/mouse users when playing certain jobs, every job's optimal rotation can be performed on either with the exception of AST. This is due to how FFXIV handles targeting party members.

Using a mouse and keyboard, to target a party member the player needs only click the player in the party list using their mouse (or mouseover if preferred), and WHILE they're doing this they can Redraw and Minor Arcana their cards.

On a controller however, the act of selecting a party member and the act of using an ability like Redraw are MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE. You cannot Redraw and target a party member at the same time, you must choose to do one or the other, and to choose a party member you must physically press the D-Pad up or down the requisite number of times AND press confirm to hard target said player each time or the targeting will reset and cause you to need to press the D-pad multiple times again. To do all this within a GCD is just insane. Before ShB changes, in full party situations you would AOE your cards to cut down on this need to spam your D-pad... now spamming the D-pad IS the main mechanic, because the card you play doesn't matter due to how Sleeve Draw works and the pathetic %s on the cards. Mechanically and mathematically, it's all about dealing them as fast as possible.

This is not to say that I think it is impossible to optimally play AST on a controller, but I argue that maybe only about 1% of the playerbase can, and they do so with a much higher APM than m/kb users. It is this incredible disparity in difficulty between controller users and m/kb users that leads me to believe that AST's card mechanic was rushed and not play tested, and that it is a fundamental flaw that far exceeds any concerns on any other job at the moment as it is a physical bar on players that use controllers.

Healers are the most rushed and poorly developed jobs in the game and this is why so many have stopped playing them. Just look at WHM's level 80 ability Temperence, it's just Largesse with a dmg down buff and an animation from a Firework item. Look at SCH's Art of War, it's just the Aura Blast animation from PVP. Then look at new MCH, look at all the lovingly crafted brand new abilities and animations that span it's entire kit. Healers didn't really get anything new this expansion, they lost things, had things reskinned as their new abilities, and all play exactly the same now.

I believe the homogenization and poor development of healers is really hurting this game. There most definitely is a shortage of healers on some datacenters, and this is likely why they're trying to find a way to break down the walls between the datacenters; so that there will be a bigger pool of healers for every server. If only they would just give healers the love and attention they deserve for once...

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Originally Posted by Kye

Just look at WHM's level 80 ability Temperence, it's just Largesse with a dmg down buff and an animation from a Firework item.

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Oi, nothing against my pretty wings, mmhkay?!

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Originally Posted by Granyala

Oi, nothing against my pretty wings, mmhkay?!

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It's not wrong though. Get married in game and you get some prisms that'll give you the exact same effect, lul.

I only skimmed through the thread and might have missed something but can I assume that OP was lying/withholding information about it most likely being an EX trial he queued for to make a point?

I will say I have been waiting in roulettes longer lately as a tank than I have as a healer. Feels odd too when you remember for all of HW and SB it was always the tank role that needed to be filled/constantly in demand. Seeing how they gutted the healers and actually made them more boring than tanks this time around though I can’t really say it’s all that surprising.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

I'd actually say that is what the meta is designed for, not the game. We already know DPS checks don't factor their DPS. This isn't a Sims or puzzle game. I'm not saying you think it is, but damage is naturally part of a PvE encounter, the question is should healers be spending 90% of the encounter doing it. I am of the mind that's it's the encounters that need to change, not their DPS rotation. And I would think that the game's healers would desire the same, given their chosen role.

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this,
I would dev rather spend time turning boss fight or trash fight more than just DPS>DPS>DPS>DPS>drop a oGCD heal>DPS x infinity
I rather see more buff and debuff and even more healing in relate to Healer role, but i guess not gonna happen when powerful low CD oGCD heal become a trend and they remove most of the dmg debuff (slash/pierced...etc) this expansion
also many debuff cant be cleanse with Esuna and many healer forget this skill exist

Nothing wrong with the healing jobs and queues. Everything is fine for me.
No idea about all this topic.
I enjoy all the healing jobs.

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Originally Posted by Kye

Healers are the most rushed and poorly developed jobs in the game and this is why so many have stopped playing them. Just look at WHM's level 80 ability Temperence, it's just Largesse with a dmg down buff and an animation from a Firework item. Look at SCH's Art of War, it's just the Aura Blast animation from PVP. Then look at new MCH, look at all the lovingly crafted brand new abilities and animations that span it's entire kit. Healers didn't really get anything new this expansion, they lost things, had things reskinned as their new abilities, and all play exactly the same now.

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This really struck me. Because I don't think anyone at the dev team is malicious against healers, they just made them balanced for one thing and that was probably the order they got. Seeing Scholar go from 3.0 to 5.0 has gotten me more passionate than I thought possible for a mmo job.

More than ever I wish for them to go back redesign Scholar, all jobs preferably, completely in a vacuum just thinking what would fit it's lore, theme and asthetic. Just go away with Roles and labels. Don't wanna play a "Healer", want to play a Scholar. The battlefield tactician with wide and cool arsenal that also happens to have shields, buffs and a healing fairy that one can just naturally assume can handle the healing role. Unlike what we got where Scholar (and maybe all healers) was forced into a Healer shaped hole. Want the job to have so many skills that you can't possibly use them all in one fight so the joy is trying to. Hell, let warriors heal the party with angry shouting, monk tank with abs of steel and samurai tank an active parry minigame in it's skills. Don't think it's easy but they did it once, and I believe they can do it again.

Filibuster was the first gear set I ever farmed for in this game. To this day I can remember every pack, boss and corner of Sohm Al HM and Baelsar's Wall, and never did I grow bored. I chalk this up to whoever genius designed Scholar back then, it's potential was greater than anything regular fights could offer so I started squeezing more and more out of the runs. What point during pulls I could put which dots, when to shield, put on Virus, where and when to use Eos and Selene back to back for healing, silence, aoe esuna, fey wind, where to stand to stoneskin the tank while running to next pack, Shadowflare casting placement, when it was safe to run in for a Miasma 2 twirl, Emergency Tactics if I spent all AF stacks, Deployment Tactics when I saw a critlo go off, contemplate Dissipation if I overreached, when I could deem it safe enough to use Cleric stance safely long enough to get all dots up then see Bane go off succesfully. It all created this very enjoyable loop of managing dots, looking for oppertunities for all these various spells all the while keeping the party healthy both after and before damage went out. All this without any parser or numerical evaluation of any kind, the pure base enjoyment and satisfaction of getting a bit more out of the job is what made it. Both dungeons and regular open world fights were great after I started to really use Scholar. Compared, I try to get as much as I can out of Expert dungeons today but after I've used Excog and shield, dotted the mobs one by one there is nothing left but to spam Art of War until the pack is dead or the tank needs healing.

Game has changed and I probably haven't changed with it. Still carry a massive nostalgia for 3.0 Scholar as few things have clicked as well for me in this game's history and also feel bad because I don't greatly anticipate logging in to play as much as I used to. Just to confirm dinosaur status Im having had a lot of fun with WoW classic. There's this class there, Warrior, who's resource is rage that starts at 0 and is gained by hitting and getting hit. They can use this to increase auto-attack power, inflict slow movement, shouts that increase party attack, reduce enemy attack, fear, aoe taunt, can disarm, have a shield block + followup combo, revenge attack if someone dodges your attack, one charge only usable out of combat giving rage another only usable in combat costing rage, ways to gain more rage in return for taking more damage, stances with skills limited to each encourage swapping, spell casting interrupt, cleaves, aoe slow, dot(s), stacking armor reduction debuff, special attack if enemy is on low health, even a casted melee attack and more in the talent trees. You always want more rage, but fighting more than two mobs can be a risk when also there's roaming and respawning mobs and opposing faction out in the world. These skills aren't useful 100% of the time, but they are there making the class feel complete and probably because a designer thought it'd just be cool if they all this stuff. They are different games and classes from different eras to be sure, but it was oddly familiar as I find the class who's defining identity is getting angry and smashing things have more versatility and tools than the current FFXIV tactician job.

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Originally Posted by Misutoraru

this,
I would dev rather spend time turning boss fight or trash fight more than just DPS>DPS>DPS>DPS>drop a oGCD heal>DPS x infinity
I rather see more buff and debuff and even more healing in relate to Healer role, but i guess not gonna happen when powerful low CD oGCD heal become a trend and they remove most of the dmg debuff (slash/pierced...etc) this expansion
also many debuff cant be cleanse with Esuna and many healer forget this skill exist

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Quite a few healers would. Unfortunately, the devs seem terrified of the prospect this might make healing too hard for baby players. It's this mentality that causes the healer role to exist in a sort of perpetual limbo. They want healers to heal more yet also don't want content to be hard enough to demand said healing. Which, in turn, causes the community to insist on DPS because the alternative is standing around doing nothing. I really think the latter is what the devs want.

Remember how Crystal Chronicles had one out of four players carry the "bucket" so that the team could progress through the dungeons?

Healers in XIV are the bucket carriers. They get stuck with the legwork and are generally under-thanked. And then there are times you get one that's up his or her own ass with too much pride. Just in general, it's really hard to find that 'happy medium' as players, and Square has yet to hit a fair balance too.

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Originally Posted by Kye

My favourite job was AST, and after the changes I can barely play it properly. The heals are fine; fast and strong. But the card system is so cruddy from a usability standpoint, especially for console players. FFXIV is a game where a large portion of the population plays using a controller, and although there are varying degrees of difficulty between controller and keyboard/mouse users when playing certain jobs, every job's optimal rotation can be performed on either with the exception of AST. This is due to how FFXIV handles targeting party members.

Using a mouse and keyboard, to target a party member the player needs only click the player in the party list using their mouse (or mouseover if preferred), and WHILE they're doing this they can Redraw and Minor Arcana their cards.

On a controller however, the act of selecting a party member and the act of using an ability like Redraw are MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE. You cannot Redraw and target a party member at the same time, you must choose to do one or the other, and to choose a party member you must physically press the D-Pad up or down the requisite number of times AND press confirm to hard target said player each time or the targeting will reset and cause you to need to press the D-pad multiple times again. To do all this within a GCD is just insane. Before ShB changes, in full party situations you would AOE your cards to cut down on this need to spam your D-pad... now spamming the D-pad IS the main mechanic, because the card you play doesn't matter due to how Sleeve Draw works and the pathetic %s on the cards. Mechanically and mathematically, it's all about dealing them as fast as possible.

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This so much. I'm currently leveling my AST using a Controller and I outright hate passing cards using a Controller. I plan to just level her to 80 and then shelf her for the rest of the expansion unless they add major usability enhancements for us.
This is really surprising for a game that usually gets Controller support so well.

I ruined the reason to put on my Scholar attire myself. It is in my signature..

The reason why I enjoy(ed) Scholar was the contrast to my main damage-dealing profession: Black Mage. That was in 2014. Healing itself was never that much fun because, in my opinion, it is kind of a stupid gameplay philosophy:

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A guy [tank] stands there and getting spanked left and right by a 25m huge dragon. I hold my book up, some sparkling comes up and he is a bit more healthy again. Until he gets spanked [insert amount of times] again.

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It is like watching the laundry in your washing machine trough the window spinning and count down the seconds when it briefly pauses. Then I check all the things in the machine [other players] - rinse and repeat. Inbetween I have probably the most underwhelming damage spells ever. Heck, even in friggin MapleStory my Priest (later Bishop) had something that made you go: "Boom! Holy Magic in your face!".

Here we have a Marylin Monroe air blast ("Art of War", what a dumb name that is alone!), some soap bubbles (Miasma?) and funky new year's eve partybomb without confetti (Bravade in German, not sure what's in English). I am not really saying that I am bored by the gameplay itself, I let my guys wipe often by my incompetence. It is just this absolute lackluster feeling of being Scholar. The damage dealing part is underwhelming, the fairy part is so robotic and unreliable and healing in itself is not really much fun. What's left? A shell....

I mean, I literally came up with a skill that could do rewarding damage while I nipped on my Coca Cola can. Look what I just randomly put together:

It is a spell that needs to be placed in a triangle shape that the Scholar can place wherever he or she wants. It is like dropping a magical orb with an "ammo" system. Then you walk freely around, drop the other two. On the last instance, the dots connect and form either a damaging or healing triangle (lightly glowing in respectively colors) which stays ready for the next 10 seconds.

Then you activate it, healing all people inside it or damaging the foes. The smaller the area, the bigger the impact to avoid mass-healing. That would be "The Art of War" to me. You run around (not being able to cast heals -> Strategy), the fairy has to do the healing (our integral part of Scholar) and you can plan something - how big the area is, if you want damage or heal, when you activate it.

That would be "tactical" to some sort. And I just pulled this out of my butt and on the fly while typing, and I'd run around the place to create funny shapes to blow up enemies or healing safe-spots, I can tell you that.


Or you can set your fairy to a special member like "Yuumi" in LoL. Her spells then change to more focussed and determined ones. You can command the fairy to (buff, protect, heal, CC) the tank while you personally take care of your mates on the other part of the boss arena with AoE stuff or..place triangles of doom.

About healing in general?

Unfortunately, I can't really point my finger on "that" and say: "This is the reason as to why being a Scholar or not". It is multi-layered. What I like is the fact I am not as replacable. Being alive is "pretty mandatory" and that is why I am there. But that is it.

Because every fun is taken out in my opinion.. There is no reason to be "proud" to be Scholar anymore. The only reason why I like it is the fact that I can heal and mean something to my mates that wa . But the incentive is so low that I will often slip into my crimson red Duelist attire and satisfy my random healing needs with some Vercures while I can play an actually fun profession at the same time which does it for me, which is fun and where I get enjoyment out of it on several levels..


Sincerely,
https://imgur.com/9mjol58.png

What makes healing fun and rewarding? Triage.

World of Warcraft is a MMO where healing is made interesting by two limiting factors: Mana Management and the fact that very few healing spells were AoE.

In vanilla only a few spells could top off your party, and even then they had very long CD's and enormous mana costs. They were situational and very valuable when the raid took massive aoe damage (Which in early wow usually meant something was going very very wrong.)

So how did WoW made healing interesting? You had to be very selective regarding who to heal and what to use to heal.

That meant in turn that tanking, aggro management and mechanics were to be respected. If a healer ran out of Mana it meant the party would not be able to fight anymore. The tank would die, the dps would then follow and finally the healer would go down.

What do we have in FFXIV? Healers almost never run out of mana and we have incredibly powerful AoE healing tools with very low prices CD wise. As a result, triage is barely a thing. Not to mention aggro is not an issue, tanks virtually never lose aggro.

That is why, as opposed to WoW where class design was the interesting part, the bulk of "fun" in FFXIV's design is in the encounters. Resolving mechanics is what makes combat interesting.

But then, why do we even have so many classes? Why have a WHM, a SCH and an AST? Why have four tanks? The more the game evolves and the encounter design brings in new concepts the more our classes become homogenized to allow any combination of such classes the ability to clear said mechanics efficiently. Jobs become an aesthetic choice,so much so those at the core of parties: healers and tanks.

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Originally Posted by KadaRemnant

Nothing wrong with the healing jobs and queues. Everything is fine for me.
No idea about all this topic.
I enjoy all the healing jobs.

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"Hunger isn't a real issue because I eat every day" that's your argument.

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

But then, why do we even have so many classes? Why have a WHM, a SCH and an AST? Why have four tanks? The more the game evolves and the encounter design brings in new concepts the more our classes become homogenized to allow any combination of such classes the ability to clear said mechanics efficiently. Jobs become an aesthetic choice,so much so those at the core of parties: healers and tanks.

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Dont quite agree with this. While homogenization is expected to happen, its not occurring as harsh as its being presented. There are still differences, and those differences matter a lot. As an example, it becomes a lot easier on healing if you dont run double WHM, AST, or SCH in savage. You could do it, but having a more diversified healer comp is better (and I dont mean just for LB.) Furthermore, Healers are gonna have some overlap. At their core, a healer has got to heal. Youre gonna have skills that cross over with one another a little bit. So every healer is gonna have some kind of AoE heal, direct heal, and possible HoT, but how they focus on said skill or how powerful it is is gonna vary. Even WoW had this. Resto shaman chain heal is a variation of Prayer of Mending from Holy/Disc Priest. They conceptually cover the same task, but operate a little differently in scope. Both jump from target to target applying a heal as they do, but Chain heal jumps immediately to the next damaged targeted where PoM has to be procced before it jumps again. Its heal a lot of people at once, or heal one at a time but jump automatically to the next person. Healing potency is a little varied too. Accomplish the same task, goes about it a little differently. And mind you, at one point or another, one skill or the other was considered OP and the other trash. That flipped on occasion.

Homogenization is, I think, a boogy man when we talk about class balances. Its an effect of boiling down every class and skill to the very core basics and then claim "Oh its all the same." People are trying to make the point that because SE trimmed down SCH damage skills, and adjusted AST, that everything is homogenous and healer sucks now. I dont believe this to be the case from my own experiences thus far with healing, nor from discussing healing with people whove been fairly active in raiding. I think I see this pop up more frequently in Normal content (dungeons, and basic roulettes) where the class distinctions become less important and you can get by on the more baseline skills the classes have in common.

This doesnt mean that the classes are fine or dont need to have some adjustments. But I feel that people are greatly over exaggerating the homogenization concept while propping up the "SCH lost its identity" myth when they pulled out some of its DPS skills (SCH healing is based around pet/player healing; being able to deal damage while your pet heals was a side effect of that, not the crux of the class.)

Healers are broadly fine, with some necessary fine tuning required. AST probably needs the most attention all things considering. And the greatest complaint I keep seeing with AST isnt that its not functional, but that it feels clunky/boring to play. While Im not gonna sit here and be like "Fun doesnt matter" (especially since Ive got feelings of disappointment wiht DRK in this regards), I dont think saying "the class is broken cause its not fun, start from scratch!" is really on point. Argue that the class is unfun to play, but not that it isnt working.

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Originally Posted by Billythepancake

"Hunger isn't a real issue because I eat every day" that's your argument.

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I mean the inverse argument is "Im not enjoying this job. All Healers are Broken. Everything sucks." Which is, if I want to be flippant, how most of the responses in this thread boil down to.

The data tends to show healers are leaning towards achieving parity in results, so the issues tends to be more an issue of play than functionality.

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Originally Posted by Misutoraru

this,
I would dev rather spend time turning boss fight or trash fight more than just DPS>DPS>DPS>DPS>drop a oGCD heal>DPS x infinity
I rather see more buff and debuff and even more healing in relate to Healer role, but i guess not gonna happen when powerful low CD oGCD heal become a trend and they remove most of the dmg debuff (slash/pierced...etc) this expansion
also many debuff cant be cleanse with Esuna and many healer forget this skill exist

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Agreed. The main issue is that they will never change how these fights are designed. They said they would for ShB, hence the removal of almost all healer DPS options but we see how that ended up. They were banking on the hope that removing Protect and even more tank CDs would force healers to heal more, but then gave all of them more instant cast AoE oGCD heals on top of those they already had thus negating much of the need to force cast GCD heals.

Additionally, they’ve been designing fights around this order for the last 6 and a half years since 2.0’s reboot. For them to just suddenly flip encounter, role design and planning on its head after such a long time of doing the same thing over and over just won’t happen. Not when you realize how easy it is for them to design both fights and how classes work in those fights in this manner, sticking with what they know “works”, regardless of how much parts of their player base -us- dislike it.

Protect never made any difference. It just gave the illusion of being useful.

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Originally Posted by Zweiss

Agreed. The main issue is that they will never change how these fights are designed. They said they would for ShB, hence the removal of almost all healer DPS options but we see how that ended up. They were banking on the hope that removing Protect and even more tank CDs would force healers to heal more, but then gave all of them more instant cast AoE oGCD heals on top of those they already had thus negating much of the need to force cast GCD heals.

Additionally, they’ve been designing fights around this order for the last 6 and a half years since 2.0’s reboot. For them to just suddenly flip encounter, role design and planning on its head after such a long time of doing the same thing over and over just won’t happen. Not when you realize how easy it is for them to design both fights and how classes work in those fights in this manner, sticking with what they know “works”, regardless of how much parts of their player base -us- dislike it.

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Youre essentially complaining that the devs have a formula, which is something all MMOs have. The difficulty is working within that formula to come up with new things. If you want to complain about encounter design, blame the player base, not the devs. Because every time the devs like to throw a curve ball, there comes a torrential downpour of complaints about how 'hard it is' and 'stop making the game for the elite' and 'we need more mid and casual content. I mean theres literally a thread on the forum right now about if E2S is overtuned. While the consensus from posts is that its not, it makes me think of the fact that Encounter design has gotten 'easier' since A1S. From longtime raiders, the consensus that keeps coming up is that Alexander is the best tier for design and difficulty and that everything since then so far has been 'easier' and less interesting.

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Originally Posted by Rasikko

Protect never made any difference. It just gave the illusion of being useful.

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Pretty much. It was something you had to cast from the get go and then leave it on. There was no 'skill check' for using the skill, other than losing it if you died. And that wasnt a huge issue unless most of your party lost it, which meant you had to many people dying anyways to mechanics so you had bigger issues anyways.

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Originally Posted by Billythepancake

"Hunger isn't a real issue because I eat every day" that's your argument.

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I think people should not always look back as how it was but how it is now. Changes are good. You have to learn it again and practice.
I learned and practice and to me, healing is really fun and most of my friends heal too and enjoy them.
When i queue, it doesn't take long as a healer it's sure, but as a dps and tank, the queues don't take long too.
It is different of course, but doesn't mean it is bad. If it needs a healing buff, i don't mind. But the gameplay is still fun.

For me nothing really changed. I only played WHM before, and I still only play WHM. I did level AST to 80, and I plan on leveling my SCH/SMN to 80, but that is just to get them to 80 - not to play them.

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

Quite a few healers would. Unfortunately, the devs seem terrified of the prospect this might make healing too hard for baby players.

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I'm not sure if it's just the healers the Devs feel can't handle it, or players in general.

To make healing more engaging you'd need to boss to hit the tank like a truck and to spam more unavoidable raid-wides, as well as more dots plus stack and aoe markers. However, in groups that eat mechanics, that constant unavoidable damage will polish them off immediately after, before the healer can get a gcd or two off.

Look at Titania Normal for example. Compared to EX it's stripped down to nothing besides the add phase and couldn't be easier to heal, but groups disband on it. They get hit by everything avoidable and fail everything that takes responsibility. The Devs can't double up on damage and mechanics when dps can't even manage this much.

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Originally Posted by Melichoir

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Here\\'s the thing I have an issue with about that argument being too simple, at least have a point to defend it. The people who argue they don\\'t enjoy healing will, more often than not, give reasons for it. As do most people who do enjoy it, but if your entire argument is "I like them they\\'re fine" with nothing to back that up, it adds nothing to the conversation and you may as well not have typed it.

As for the "scholar hasn\\'t lost its identity" thing. It has. The people who say its biggest identity was interaction with the fairy, which okay I can see that, that\\'s mostly gone too with how unresponsive and ,overall, useless the fairy has become. It heals almost nothing outside of Seraph,which is an extremely lengthy CD (and even those heals aren\\'t impressive, it just brings up her embrace to the same levels as Stormblood fairy, but she gets 2 weaker succors as well, not exactly exciting, which is a shame, because I love the idea of SCH having their own version of Bahamut, maybe next expansion she\\'ll actually have an impact. ) It can outright eat CDs too, like, you tell her to use both abilities, there\\'s a good chance she\\'ll only use one of them, but both of them are still going on CD, not to mention, they have to be weaved in now, so they\\'re over glorified oGCDs that take way too long to activate because they, for some reason, still have to go off pet GCDs. It needs to be one of the other, of it goes off pet GCDs, then it needs to be something I can do while casting,if it\\'s my oGCD, it needs to be instant regardless of what fairy is doing. Let\\'s also not forget what they did to poor Selene, outright gutted her and just made her a skin. At this point, the only constant interaction with the fairy is to use her for dissipation, so that half of SCH\\'s identity is gone. The DPS half is gone as well, a thing people seem to forget whenever they say "DPSing was never a part of SCH\\'s identity rada rada" is that, yes it was. SCH stems from ACN, you must start as an ACN, a DPS, to become a SCH,and as such, your very roots are that of a DPS, SCH has always been the healer/DPS hybrid, it was never designed as a pure healer, and them outright gutting that half is unforgivable. SCH, the giant nerd of the game, the one who is constantly learning and reading, is now the only job in the entire game to outright forget abilities as it levels up, explain to me how that makes sense in any way whatsoever. Why would a tactiction, the one that\\'s supposed to be the very best at it, mind you, throw away all of their offensive strategies just to have 1 big, head on, explosion. Why would you not either replace those offensive strategies with better offensive strategies,or keep them in your back pocket? Why is a mage, a super smart one, now forced to sit in the middle of a giant group of enemies for their main AoE instead of doing the much smarter spreading diseases from afar strategy, WHICH THEY ALREADY KNEW HOW TO DO? It makes absolutely no sense.

Is SCH playable? Sure it\\'s strong and it\\'s balanced, but the feel of the class is a hollow shell of what it used to be. And that\\'s just SCH, I\\'m just as happy to delve into what they did to poor AST, they did that class really dirty, all because they didn\\'t want to put in the effort on healers and took the laziest solutions they could. Damn shame.

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Originally Posted by KadaRemnant

I think people should not always look back as how it was but how it is now. Changes are good. You have to learn it again and practice.
I learned and practice and to me, healing is really fun and most of my friends heal too and enjoy them.
When i queue, it doesn't take long as a healer it's sure, but as a dps and tank, the queues don't take long too.
It is different of course, but doesn't mean it is bad. If it needs a healing buff, i don't mind. But the gameplay is still fun.

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I have learned to play with the new healers, and they're boring. I have done E1s-E4s hoping I could find something to enjoy there. After I learned the fights, it's the same boring thing. Spam 1 button, stop to heal once in awhile, back to spamming.

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Originally Posted by KadaRemnant

I think people should not always look back as how it was but how it is now. Changes are good. You have to learn it again and practice.
I learned and practice and to me, healing is really fun and most of my friends heal too and enjoy them.
When i queue, it doesn't take long as a healer it's sure, but as a dps and tank, the queues don't take long too.
It is different of course, but doesn't mean it is bad. If it needs a healing buff, i don't mind. But the gameplay is still fun.

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The implicit assumption that those who dislike the new healers don't know how to play them falls apart given many of the people complaining have already cleared some of the hardest content in the game. Or that the core argument of those who dislike the current healers is that they're boring because the experience is shallow.

I don't have much to learn or practice anymore, and that's the problem. No one's asking for healers to get buffed in terms of healing (at least post-AST buffs). If anything, healing is too powerful.

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Originally Posted by Billythepancake

Is SCH playable? Sure it\\'s strong and it\\'s balanced, but the feel of the class is a hollow shell of what it used to be. And that\\'s just SCH, I\\'m just as happy to delve into what they did to poor AST, they did that class really dirty, all because they didn\\'t want to put in the effort on healers and took the laziest solutions they could. Damn shame.

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Let's not forget about how forgotten WHM tends to be, always getting its skills redistributed to other jobs and/or resold back at a higher level with a new bell or whistle. Or how SE mistakes keeping a job approachable and easy to pick up for making it near braindead at high efficiency, especially given that sticking to and making that design the baseline for healers is what got SCH and AST into the situation they're in now.

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Originally Posted by Gaethan_Tessula

Let's not forget about how forgotten WHM tends to be, always getting its skills redistributed to other jobs and/or resold back it at a higher level with a new bell or whistle. Or how SE mistakes keeping a job approachable and easy to pick up for making it near braindead at high efficiency, especially given that sticking to and making that design the baseline for healers is what got SCH and AST into the situation they're in now.

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Oh for sure,I know they have issues as well, I'm just not as well versed in WHM problems since I didn't play it as much as the order two healers, so I didn't feel the needs to bring it up. I do detest when people say it, or any class really, is fine because it's strong, completely ignoring any actual issues brought up.

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

I'm not sure if it's just the healers the Devs feel can't handle it, or players in general.

To make healing more engaging you'd need to boss to hit the tank like a truck and to spam more unavoidable raid-wides, as well as more dots plus stack and aoe markers. However, in groups that eat mechanics, that constant unavoidable damage will polish them off immediately after, before the healer can get a gcd or two off.

Look at Titania Normal for example. Compared to EX it's stripped down to nothing besides the add phase and couldn't be easier to heal, but groups disband on it. They get hit by everything avoidable and fail everything that takes responsibility. The Devs can't double up on damage and mechanics when dps can't even manage this much.

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Why do you think that is though? Could it be due to the fact everyone prior to Titania borders on being completely braindead? Almost everything the game offers can be brute forced through with few exceptions. Even Shinryu nowadays can be done with four people because he doesn't have an ilvl sync. When you make so much content this easy, it creates bad habits since the game does nothing to suggest what you've been doing all this time isn't working. After all, you cleared. So why question it?

In regards to healing itself. This is also because our kits are, frankly, overpowered. I don't think it's inherently a bad thing people may die because of "intense" healing checks. They don't have to be crazy hard, especially for normal modes but I really don't think one healer should be able to AFK and make a sandwich. In most 8 man content outside Savage, you could.

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Originally Posted by Billythepancake

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Reasons are fine and dandy but dont think that all reasons are worth considering. Someone saying they dont like healing because of specific mechanics and design choices is vastly different than someone saying they dont think the spells are pretty. Just saying.

Speaking of SCH, I disagree. No, it hasnt lost its identity. Its core was a Healer with Pet management. Thats what it was from the get go. Being able to DPS was a byproduct of that design that people latched onto. If youre complaint is buggyness of the Fairy, thats an issue to put forward for the devs because that probably isnt an intended design choice, and goes back to the point that no one is saying the classes are perfect. Tuning and tweaking is still necessary. Unless its a thing where you tell your fairy to cast two things so she stops one action to perform the other. In that case, thats you mismanaging. This would be no different than being a monk, using Anatman, and then immediately moving after the cast. Furthermore, gonna bet that fairy healing is a lot more significant than you are giving credit for. The fact it doesnt heal as much as it used to (relatively speaking) probably has more to do with the fact they dont want the fairy to be the healer and you DPS. Again, SCH is a healer with pet management. Its not a DPS with a pet that Heals.

As for Selene changes, that again came down to balance issues when the class was changed. While that may not be ideal, They did not want SCH to have a broader buff kit provided, and streamlined it to be on par with other healers. From selene, the only worthwhile skill that you lost was Fey Caress, and Fey Wind (essentially an AoE Esuna) was not something they thought necessary because most encounters currently dont have tons of Debuffs to cleanse unless you mess up. Even with that consideration, it meant replacing Esuna so itd free up an GCD in case someone did mess up. Thats something they wanted you to probably decide on - remove teh debuff or use time to heal or burn up the aetherflow to heal and run Esuna. Beyond that, what were you wanting out of Selene?

As for the Argument that it comes from ARC, so therefore DPS is part of its design, again no, not really. ARC was a thing when they were trying out the idea of splitting two jobs from one single class. Think of it akin to Specs from WoW, or job roles from things like RO. Its the same idea conceptually. Thematically, it borrows some aspects from from Arc but specializes in a particular role for combat - in this case SCH is a healer, SMN is a DD. If you want to use the concept of ARC was a damage dealer, why did it have a tank pet? And mind you, in some early iterations, that tank wasnt a joke. It had functionality. If it was all about that sweet damage, there wouldnt be a tank pet. The issue with this idea of it was always a damage dealer as part of its identity is a contrivance people came up with when they had a byproduct of the class design. The problem, as a point, is that SCH could do good DPS AND good healing at the same time due to the fairy. From a purely balance perspective among healers, this isnt ideal. In content that is driven by DPS checks, this makes SCH much more optimal.

If you want to pull that "Lore" point, if your job is to be a medic, youre not going to be learning how to operate a tank, even if its something you mightve done in the past. You have a job, thats it. From a more pragmatic game design point, you want to keep those skills but have SE just nerf the damage so you are forced to consider if you even want to spend a GCD on them? Because the issue is SCH is a healing role, not a DPS, and that means trimming if they want it to be more inline with that and other healers. But this again points to the fact that the biggest complaint is having its dps trimmed, not that it can heal.

And thats the crux of the problem. You think it feels hollow because you are used to it being a damage dealer with a side of healing. Thats how many SCH approached the job - a damage dealer that has heals too. Its 'hollow' cause you dont deal damage like you used to. That to me is you preferring the big DEEPS with a side of healing, then you did healing with a side of deeps. Because if were gonna talk about it being an issue, most SCH wouldnt have quit healing; they wouldve migrated to WHM. Instead, the consensus is "I hate SCH now cause it sucks healing, so Imma go be a dps or tank. Healing is dead."

That point is misleading, because its saying that the issue with SCH is healing (which it isnt), and that they want to heal, but are instead going to go do a DPS class or Tank instead of rotating to a supposedly more powerful healer (WHM.) Beyond all this, its purely speculation. You hate the devs direction in design and call it laziness, when theyve been trying for 2 xpacs now to balance the healers and have pretty much failed - WHM getting the brunt of it mostly IMO. Its also why we didnt get another healer. Imagine balancing a 4th healer when the other 3 are so far out of balance. Now that the healers are a lot more balanced (with some caveat to AST, tweaking and tuning is still needed IMO), people are calling the devs lazy and terrible. Im sure if people are great at game design here, they wouldve offered ideas and been real about things, which wouldve actually acknowledged that nerfing some damage aspect of SCH was probably necessary. But from what I remember, it was dont touch anything in SCH or AST, and just throw a few dps skills or utility at WHM and all will be cool, with very little of those giving serious consideration to balance or power creep. But thats my assessment, and Im not silly enough to not know its not a popular opinion. Its ok in the end. If people hate SCH, they can play WHM for healing, or swap to a DPS. I highly doubt theyre gonna revert SCH or AST. Theyll tweak or buff them, but as it stands, the stats tend to point in the direction that healing and damage wise, the 3 healers are a lot closer to parity than they have been before. So changing them back probably wont be happening.

I think it's a bit strange to argue any job, in a game where no content forces using healing GCD's even half the time, is "a healer with a side of DPS." That may be the intended design of the job, but Square Enix isn't providing encounters that fit that design. Especially in normal content where even below average healers should have a big chunk of downtime.

As people have said, "why not ask for more healing then?" Two reasons:

1. We have as well, or would, but have no faith Square Enix will do so. They've shown every interest in making tanking and healing easier over the years, not harder. Forcing more decisions on healing, more mana management, and giving less breathing room does not fit with that perceived goal.

2. Actually bringing triage back would require massive nerfs or cuts to the healing kits of every healer, or for encounter design to be changed in such a radical way that either a) the entire game would need to be altered or b) there's a point at which the encounter design does a whiplash. Those are huge changes that go down to core design, and one of them (only make new healing heavy encounters) does nothing to address the tedium of anything at lower levels which remains unaltered (and also ensures that new healers are actively misled about the nature of healing in the game).

So, instead, we ask for something that fits into the current design as applied (which is more important than design as intended this late into the game's lifespan). What fits into that design is a secondary role to play when no healing is needed. DPS is an easy answer, and is probably easier to balance than the alternative of giving every healer support kits with low duration, GCD support spells (which is actually my preferred option).

I mean, the other option I can think of is make the default party solo healer with the current kits. That still has its problems, but it certainly would force more healing GCDs and a playstyle closer to a traditional holy trinity MMO healer.

I still think they would get more healers if they made healing more interesting outside of instant cast OGC heals and DPS spam. Look at any other MMO and healers are usually too busy healing or doing utility. Sure there are times where they can DPS but those games made DPS expensive so they use it carefully. I'd go back to healing if healers went back to healing with a large kit and a few DPS abilities to be used sparingly. But I don't see that happening though. It wouldn't surprise me to see healers removed all together in 6.0 for self heals and AOE heals being given to the utility jobs like DNC, because they are still struggling to balance healers and cant figure out how to make 3 healers work.

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Originally Posted by Billythepancake

I have learned to play with the new healers, and they're boring. I have done E1s-E4s hoping I could find something to enjoy there. After I learned the fights, it's the same boring thing. Spam 1 button, stop to heal once in awhile, back to spamming.

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All i wanted to say is i love healing jobs and will contibue to enjoy them like many others i know.
But i learned too that in forums, no one can ever be happy no matter what.
SE needs to know some enjoy it and rarely post here because we are too busy enjoying the game.

And i am never bored.

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Originally Posted by KadaRemnant

All i wanted to say is i love healing jobs and will contibue to enjoy them like many others i know.
But i learned too that in forums, no one can ever be happy no matter what.
SE needs to know some enjoy it and rarely post here because we are too busy enjoying the game.

And i am never bored.

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I can be happy, if they gave me back SB SCH or something equivalent, I would stop complaining, or at the very least not complain nearly as much, and go back to enjoying the game much more. People complain because they want change, and the forums are the only outlet we have to do that. If Yoshi P gave me some sort of other outlet where I could be more direct with him and his team, I would gladly take it, but this is my only option so I'll use what I have and be as vocal as I can be until I either, A: give up hope entirely, or B: they change things for the better.

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Originally Posted by Melichoir

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As I broght up, yes, pet management was a part of SCH identity, but with the uselessness of the fairy, as well as how unresponsive it is, that is largely out the window. a 3-4k embrace isn't going to heal much, especially when I can't even decide who it goes on. It could go on either the tank actually taking autos, or it could go on the DPS missing 10 hp, I dunno, I have no say in the matter anymore, Relatively isn't even the right word, it straight up heals less, it heals 3-4k now, when it healed 6-8k back in SB, and not only does it heal less, everyone has more HP. The entire point of the fairy is to save me and my co-healer some healing ,to take some of the burden off of our shoulders, and it doesn't do that anymore, especially considering it's main 2 abilities must now be weaved in, you know, on top of the other 1 billion heals I have, making her a glorified oGCD.

For Selene changes, yeah, EOS was certainly a better pick in most content, but instead of doing the harder, and better, option of, I dunno, making Selene actually competitive with EOS, they outright removed her. Would it have taken more work to do? Certainly, but why do that when you can be lazy and just remove her instead and say "muh balance". What I wanted from Selene was a choice that goes beyond cosmetics, and they took that away from me.

As for the whole lore thing, you aren't a doctor waiting at a camp waiting for the brave soldiers to come back so you can come heal them, you are on the front-lines with them, any combat medic will tell you the absolute best way to heal is to make sure your men never get hurt in the first place, a dead enemy does no damage, it's why medics are given guns along side the other soldiers. Yes, they can heal, it's why they're there, but they're also going to make sure they need to do as little healing as possible because it's the smarter thing to do. Seems to me like any tactician would figure this out much more quickly than anyone else, especially if you're supposedly the best one around.

As for me missing how strong SCH used to be, I don't miss it, because SCH is still as strong as it has always been, my issue isn't that I'm not dealing enough damage, my issue is that the way I achieve that damage isn't interesting. You saying SCH is now more healer instead of a DPS that heals some times, well, that's just wrong, because SCH is still exactly that, they just have a lot less buttons to do it with, and that's my problem. SCH wasn't meta because it had miasma or energy drain, SCH was meta because it has a million free heals and doesn't have to use GCDs to use it's big heals, which is now more of the case than ever. SCH is still meta, and it's still strong, it's just not nearly as interesting. SE can't just remove abilities and expect SCH to heal more, that's not how that works,so long as SCH even has 1 dps ability and has a billion heals it can use for free, they will continue to DPS muuuuuch more than they heal. They would have to redesign not only an expansion, but the entire game and the class itself in order for SCH to not do that. It's why I didn't swap to WHM, I don't give 2 s**** about the numbers, I fell in love with SCH for how it felt to play, not because it had big numbers
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Also, to bring this up, saying fairies being unresponsive is a glitch and that is clearly not what devs intended, so therefore, doesn't make the design lazy, I'd argue it's proof that they are lazy, because as devs, it is their job to make sure stuff is working, and they didn't. It is their job to play test and make sure that when you press a button, the button does the thing it's supposed to, and they couldn't see such a simple glitch to pull of that numerous people have complained about? Best case scenario is they genuinely missed it in play testing, meaning they didn't play test it nearly enough, worst case scenario: they didn't play test it at all, either way, it's lazy. And I'm inclined to believe it's the latter, because none of them could figure out "oh, SCH doesn't have energy drain, so most of the time you're sitting there on stacks with nothing to spend them on, this is a problem and we shouldn't let this be a thing" it took dozens of people complaining on forums and on YouTube for them to realize that. (not to mention how AST could barely even do its core job of healing come 5.0, they, again, couldn't figure out on their own how abysmally weak AST was, they had to, again, have people yell at them about how bad it was for them to realize it was a problem, that tells me they didn't bother even taking AST through the first couple of dungeons.)

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Originally Posted by KadaRemnant

All i wanted to say is i love healing jobs and will contibue to enjoy them like many others i know.
But i learned too that in forums, no one can ever be happy no matter what.
SE needs to know some enjoy it and rarely post here because we are too busy enjoying the game.

And i am never bored.

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That is good, keep on trucking and let SE know if you enjoy it. I personally kick myself for not letting SE know how much of a good time I had with 3.0 before it was gone and replaced with what we have now.

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Originally Posted by Melichoir

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But is this a move we should really endorse? The filing down of a job so it's so round and spotless it has no discerning features, no warts or inconveniences that you are repulsed by at first, but learn to work with and come to love, instead of worrying it might fit someones design of a healer. Someone out there went around with a clipboard, filling checkboxes as nuance after nuance of scholar was so polished until it filled all the critera of "approved Healer" to be shipped, but aslo very bland so it doesn't stand out. Are these just the traits we can attribute a job, "DPS" and "Healing"? Designed not as a seperate entity but meticulously so it doesn't overstep any imaginary boundaries for it's assigned Role.

What Scholar's identity is we can assuredly discuss to the small hours. From the job page on the SE page, Alka Zolka's interpretation, Surito Carito's memories, SE's current version or just the Scholar you played at a point in time. I know it's the job that made me fall in love with the game, the little job that could. Could do a bit of everything. Will disagree it was a Healer with pet management, from the go it used to have shields, buffs, debuffs, dots and a healing/support pet. It used to shoulder the majority of healing, but couldn't be trusted to use skills smart so you had to watch it, Embrace and Whispering Dawn skills had cast time and it could very easily die, leaving you almost in half. That was management, I find I have to barely think about Lily these days. It's still helping with a constant stream of Embraces, though weak Embraces, yet goes against what I saw early ARR where I found people treating Eos' healing as a bonus not as an extension of the job. In a weird twist of fate, bonus healing is what she turned into.

Selene was part of the job, moon aspect of Lily, ying to the yang, she was an option and asset. She saved many a PotD and HoH run with AoE cleanse after traps or silence on a chimera doing Ram. She wasn't useful in 100% of content, and that was fine. It gave you options. When trying to press yourself you could try running Selene instead of Eos in dungeons to see if the Fey Wind buff was worth it to kill things faster against your increased healing requirement. Efficient, optimal? Probably no. Fun? Oh yes. Removal of Selene stings because it was an aspect of choice, just knowing you had one, that made her so great. Then SE turned it's gaze on it and saw it was out of line with Healers then proceeded to beat it into submission. Now we have Selene's skin worn by Eos hoping we won't notice.

A well often posted opinion on the DPS was to just nerf the damage potencies. I played Scholar throught it's dot-heavy glory days and had tons of fun while having no idea how much damage I was doing or how much it was compared to others. If you tell me I was a herculean superpower that put black mages to shame I'd believe you. They could've reduced Ruin/Broil hard so it's role as filler spell would be even more prominent. Having the fillerspell become the cornerstone damaging spell the job is still baffling. The favorable way would be to design around a good playstyle and loop, not the numbers it's doing. Note: Not combos. What set Scholar/Arcanist apart was that all the dots and skills were independent. You could apply in order of Miasma 2, Miasma, Aero, Bio, Bio 2, but started to notice that you had to reapply M2 almost right after putting up Bio 2. This gave way to flexibility that fit so well with a job that could at any moment need to perform acute healing or debuffing if someone took unexpected damage.

If we're arguing semantics then at first-aid school you're thought not to enter any area with wounded if you might get hurt aswell, as a medic you're expected to drop whatever threat is around before treating the wounded. Even then we're more than medics, Scholar was tauted as the battfield Tactician. Living from moment to moment, always looking for oppertunities to exploit for benefit to you, your party and to the detriment of the enemy. Offering encouragement and magical benefits that bolstered those around it, having the Arcanist toolset further help this by both buffing your own forces and spread sickness and dread through the enemy ranks.

I can feel a "no true scotsman", or rather "no true scholar" argument forming in me. Truth is I don't have the numbers to say that Scholars of yore weren't number-hungry dps in green clothing for faster queues, that would rather let every party memeber die painfully than interrupt it's Ruin cast. In fact, in whole six years only seen two instances of a Scholar and a Ast happily Broiling and Maleficing along while everyone around were dead or dying, shortly after we wiped. Probably because I always ran as Scholar, and if co-healer wanted to throw stones or malefics then just meant I had more work to do, which is exactly what I wanted. If we're gonna worry that some might take advantage of a situation then we wouldn't get anywere with anything. Then as above, if Scholar's damage numbers was a problem, make it less attractive, nerf ruin or just flat take 10% potency of each skill. I'd probably notice I'd have to work a bit harder and those chasing numbers might look for greener pastures. See, it was the playtstyle, not any number or specific part that made the job for it. It was the whole coming together and getting the most out of it anywhere I went.

Balancing a game can't be easy and if they actually managed to do internal simulations where every healer made the same number then they should be congratulated. It's just a shame they sacrificed so much on the alter of Balance that everything I enjoy had to be taken away. Maybe God of Balance hates fun. At no point do I hold a grudge against the designers, it's their game and they can well do anything they want with it. But just finally getting to these forums after 5.0 I saw that Scholars now has the same concerns some whms have made since a long time ago: would like more to do. The single attack spell, single dot and ogcds was what initially put me off leveling white mage because I was having so much fun with Scholar. But instead of seeing how busy and engaging Scholar was and giving white mage anything more to play with, they already use the previous games as a free idea bucket, I'm sure there are several spells and skills that would be fun to have here too. Instead they stripped on job of everything and made it fall back in line when they could've stamped out the line and taken white mage and astrologian out dancing. Metaphors might be going out of hand.

In short: If you're having fun then let nothing I say convince you you are not. I'm stuck with experiences I want to get back to but see a company wanting to go further and further away from. Maybe when they release Heavensward Classic I'll keep posts to less than a short story.

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Originally Posted by KadaRemnant

All i wanted to say is i love healing jobs and will contibue to enjoy them like many others i know.
But i learned too that in forums, no one can ever be happy no matter what.
SE needs to know some enjoy it and rarely post here because we are too busy enjoying the game.

And i am never bored.

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I’m sure they know and nobody here is upset that some people are enjoying the healers. If anything it’s better for the game.
I’m sure they’re also aware that the amount of complaints towards sch and ast have drastically increased this expansion which indicates a real issue.

We are also aware that these changes mainly affect specific skill tiers. Casual healers or even non-healers don’t mind/like the changes because the classes were severely simplified and also because the content they do isn’t particularly challenging.

Career healers or people who spend a large amount of time on the role and look to improve their playstyle are the ones that have issues. Sadly, in a game like an mmo where customer stickiness is pretty solid that usually means pretty much anyone that cares to play the role consistently as they will eventually reach that stage given enough time.

For these players the healer role presents no lasting layered challenge. There’s no more depth, no complexity, no little tweaks or rotations to keep track of in order to optimize. Everything disappeared overnight with the release of shb.

If you need an example there are many we could give but let’s take the simplest one: the removal of our second dot. The dot was on a different timer from the other one. Most people at lower tiers of skill would just apply both at the same time for convenience. But once you got used to the play style and we’re starting to get bored with your class/role you could look into optimizing your dot application and only apply them right before they fell off (staggering them). This brought it’s own set of challenges.

So basically if you belong to the first group these changes are welcome since they just remove a stupid step, there’s nothing particularly fun about applying back to back dots. But if you’re in the second group it was a real nerf to your gameplay.

They’ve made many of these changes on release. Actually, for sch, if you count ED they removed pretty much everything with shb. Essentially stripping the class from what was fun to us.

If they gave SCH a 60sec coldown, oGCD, aoe that used a aetherflow stack, say Miasma II or Shadow Flare, that would make a lot of SCH happy. Still though compared to other healers that would probably make SCH too good.
SCH also have RuinII, while this is just like spamming Broil, this is unique to SCH as we can DPS while doing moving mechanics. No other healer has that.

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Originally Posted by Tone19

If they gave SCH a 60sec coldown, oGCD, aoe that used a aetherflow stack, say Miasma II or Shadow Flare, that would make a lot of SCH happy. Still though compared to other healers that would probably make SCH too good.
SCH also have RuinII, while this is just like spamming Broil, this is unique to SCH as we can DPS while doing moving mechanics. No other healer has that.

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Whm has that with afflatus skills although it’s gated behind ressources, they also have dia in worst case scenarios, and ast have lightspeed although it’s gated behind a CD (also I haven’t followed up on spread changes as of late so I dunno if they need to hold onto it or not) but initially those were meant to be the response to ruin II.

Obviously not as good, but it does serve to shorten the gap.