Been seeing a lot of doomsaying in forums/in-game lately

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Originally Posted by IkaraGreydancer

Tbh you can catch up in the game VERY easily if you took a long break so the weeky tomes, loot lockout and patch release don't really mean much. And folks can say what they want but people have thier own choice to make in regards to letting their house demo. If you put that much stock into said house that's on you. Don't think it's fair to blame the devs for that.

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I think it's fair when they absolutely refuse to release instanced housing, meaning if you are somehow lucky enough to get a house, it feels like you are then forced to stay subbed. Because if you lose it, it's almost impossible to get it back again.

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Originally Posted by Rolder50

I think it's fair when they absolutely refuse to release instanced housing, meaning if you are somehow lucky enough to get a house, it feels like you are then forced to stay subbed. Because if you lose it, it's almost impossible to get it back again.

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That feeling is self inflicted no matter how it's spun. It's on the person to decide how much something is worth. You can't blame anyone/thing else for your own decision making scarcity or not. (And before someone says it, NO I don't think housing is in a good state rn)

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

Leveling dungeons have always been more dangerous than end game ones because players tend to not overgear them, quite the opposite in reality.

But healer engagement shouldn't be determined by how badly other people are playing.

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I get my joy from healing what you consider bad playing. To me, it’s normal and gives you something to heal. My Gulg party had multiple vuln stacks and I had to prioritize who needed healing more. Even when not healing I’m making sure to toss in my DPS, which is only a problem on bosses so on that I kind of understand. Temple was significantly harder and made me use every button I had available. Both runs nobody died. So I’m still not seeing when healing gets boring, or pointless, or whatever, but if I have then it happens so little that it’s not worth remembering.

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Originally Posted by EgilTheStressedMage

I get my joy from healing what you consider bad playing. To me, it’s normal and gives you something to heal. My Gulg party had multiple vuln stacks and I had to prioritize who needed healing more. Even when not healing I’m making sure to toss in my DPS, which is only a problem on bosses so on that I kind of understand. Temple was significantly harder and made me use every button I had available. Both runs nobody died. So I’m still not seeing when healing gets boring, or pointless, or whatever, but if I have then it happens so little that it’s not worth remembering.

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Like this person said….if for healing to be engaging you need players to be playing badly and taking vuln stacks, there is a problem. Look at EW dungeons, where in every single pull i only need to use the same 2 ogcd’s on sage and that’s enough for the entire pull.The rest of the time i’m spamming my 1 dps button.

Healer engagement is always determined by how badly other people are playing even in other games. Even if the design forces you to heal by doing constant raid-wide damage, there are times where most of the team die to their own mistakes and as a healer you turn that around and it feels good.

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Originally Posted by EgilTheStressedMage

I get my joy from healing what you consider bad playing. To me, it’s normal and gives you something to heal. My Gulg party had multiple vuln stacks and I had to prioritize who needed healing more. Even when not healing I’m making sure to toss in my DPS, which is only a problem on bosses so on that I kind of understand. Temple was significantly harder and made me use every button I had available. Both runs nobody died. So I’m still not seeing when healing gets boring, or pointless, or whatever, but if I have then it happens so little that it’s not worth remembering.

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You're misinterpreting what is being said by healer mains. We're saying that we should not have to rely on having a party of players who are consistently failing mechanics/dying a lot for us to have engagement or fun on our jobs. We can't make solo trust NPCs fail mechanics, nor can we make other players do so. When we have runs that go completely normal and people are performing normally, we are left to do nothing but spam 1 button for 80%-90% of our casts while we occasionally throw out an oGCD heal. It's boring and it's not fun, and this problem is exacerbated the more you play healer and the better you get at it. When things are going good, our downtime isn't engaging or fun in the slightest.

No offense, but this is a difference in skill and experience. You find it engaging and fun, but from what I've been able to tell, you are not a healer main and likely casually play healers when you aren't playing your main jobs. But for those of us who main healers and have sunk a lot of time into the role, we just want to be able to enjoy our role the same way DPS and Tanks can enjoy their jobs in all content.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Healer engagement is always determined by how badly other people are playing even in other games. Even if the design forces you to heal by doing constant raid-wide damage, there are times where most of the team die to their own mistakes and as a healer you turn that around and it feels good.

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Problem being that many of the mechanics in raids these days are "You mess it up and everyone dies, the end" so there is no potential to save anything.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Healer engagement is always determined by how badly other people are playing even in other games. Even if the design forces you to heal by doing constant raid-wide damage, there are times where most of the team die to their own mistakes and as a healer you turn that around and it feels good.

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Right and please tell me where this is relevant in savage content and above where typically one mistake by one person equals death for everyone. There’s no turning that around.

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Originally Posted by Rolder50

Problem being that many of the mechanics in raids these days are "You mess it up and everyone dies, the end" so there is no potential to save anything.

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That is true in savage but in other content such as extreme, normal, alliance raids or dungeons there is a lot of opportunity for it.

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Originally Posted by LianaThorne

Yeah there are already full tank runs of current ex content....

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There are, but these are not random PF people getting together and doing it, these are groups of coordinated people in the best gear.

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Originally Posted by SieyaM

There are, but these are not random PF people getting together and doing it, these are groups of coordinated people in the best gear.

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We've already told you and showed you how you don't need Bis for that just a bit of coordination to not stack mitigation that can't stack

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Healer engagement is always determined by how badly other people are playing even in other games. Even if the design forces you to heal by doing constant raid-wide damage, there are times where most of the team die to their own mistakes and as a healer you turn that around and it feels good.

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Healer engagement is determined by how badly other's play but it should never be denied without it.

Even in those games with higher healing requirements healers have a sufficient kit for the downtime because by the oportunity cost nature of healing a fixed healing slot always means that downtime will be there and the more skilled the player the more present it is.
Neglecting it means creating a gameplay loop where the better the player gets the worse the rewards become. On top of that healers in those games tend to have very differentiated healing kits that have depth on its own so the engagement is there

FFXIV healers fail on both fronts:

-When the damage is not high the amount of downtime tools healers have are insufficient and homogeneized (this can be proven loking at logs with over 100+ casts of the same spell on every healer being that cast from 40-70% of the total actions the job does), this scenario tends to be the more common due to the low heal requirements of the game and how even in endgame the majority of the damage is avoidable

-When the damage is high (it tends to be 1 shot which can't be healed but lets ignore that) the amount of healing tools are redundant and shallow, rarely healing kits interact with each other past "buff all healing by X%", rarely we see heals being anything past "Heal/Shield by X potency" with the eventual "damage mitigation by X%" and even more rarely we see resources that are not simply time gated. Individually those problems aren't a big deal but when combined it creates a kit that is not designed to be engaging outside the learning period.

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Originally Posted by WaxSw

We've already told you and showed you how you don't need Bis for that just a bit of coordination to not stack mitigation that can't stack



Healer engagement is determined by how badly other's play but it should never be denied without it.

Even in those games with higher healing requirements healers have a sufficient kit for the downtime because by the oportunity cost nature of healing a fixed healing slot always means that downtime will be there and the more skilled the player the more present it is.
Neglecting it means creating a gameplay loop where the better the player gets the worse the rewards become. On top of that healers in those games tend to have very differentiated healing kits that have depth on its own so the engagement is there

FFXIV healers fail on both fronts:

-When the damage is not high the amount of downtime tools healers have are insufficient and homogeneized (this can be proven loking at logs with over 100+ casts of the same spell on every healer being that cast from 40-70% of the total actions the job does), this scenario tends to be the more common due to the low heal requirements of the game and how even in endgame the majority of the damage is avoidable

-When the damage is high (it tends to be 1 shot which can't be healed but lets ignore that) the amount of healing tools are redundant and shallow, rarely healing kits interact with each other past "buff all healing by X%", rarely we see heals being anything past "Heal/Shield by X potency" with the eventual "damage mitigation by X%" and even more rarely we see resources that are not simply time gated. Individually those problems aren't a big deal but when combined it creates a kit that is not designed to be engaging outside the learning period.

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Fine then you win, the game is terrible and should die in a fire. Look I don't what you want here some kind of validation that no one ever need play a healer again or that the jobs could be deleted without repercussion?

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Originally Posted by SieyaM

Fine then you win, the game is terrible and should die in a fire. Look I don't what you want here some kind of validation that no one ever need play a healer again or that the jobs could be deleted without repercussion?

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I'm just trying to call out wrong arguments that have been proven wrong yet keep being repeated at the same time I, as someone who mains the role, try to give proofs and arguments about how the role is right now not in a good state in the forums designated to have those kind of discussions.

That doesn't sound to me as someone who wants the game to die nor the role to dissapear but someone who wants it to get better again and its kinda tired of the people who doesn't even come close to main it repeating the same false premises and justifying bad design choices

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Originally Posted by Thaciscokidd

I like your take, but i think it goes both ways. The official forums is like the medium of FFXIV discussion. Both sides can talk it out a little bit more than the other platforms. Not as spicy as 2/4 chan but not as defensive as Reddit/twitter.

You're easily get piled on for saying something negative here as you will saying something positive. Its just here you have a chance of running into someone that has the same viewpoints.

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I agree that the positive people can be bad at times as well and ignore the problems the game does have. Fanboys are around for every title, unfortunately. As I said, I've seen some good discussions, but things definitely skew to the negative a LOT more here. And so much of it is literally about the game being bad, the devs being lazy, things being changed.... and it's not "I'm not a fan of this change" type of discussion, but instead is always "OMG THE WORLD IS ENDING! THE GAME IS A DUMPSTER FIRE THAT WILL NEVER GET BETTER!" type hyperbole. Those are the ones I tend to call out. Because there is, unfortunately, a lot of it. For example, I don't agree with the removal of Kaiten as I liked using the ability myself and felt it flowed nicely. But losing it and the change to more consistent damage over burst isn't make or break for me. But you go into the DPS forums and the entire front page is about how Samurai is now garbage, act like its completely unplayable and people are quitting over it.

A lot of comments also seem to be people reminiscing over the old days and how much better the game was than it is now... which happens every single expansion and frankly, I'm glad the game is changing. If we were still like we were in 2.0, HW, SB, etc, we'd be stagnant and the game would probably die even more quickly. Things will never be the same in an MMO as they were previously. They are constantly evolving and changing. I just tend to adapt with the times and try to see all the good things, even if I don't agree with every change.

As for the Healer issue, I agree they should have more to do. I always felt healers should be more of a healer/support, giving various buffs along with heals and some dps. That would help mix things up a bit. I'm also hoping the Criterion Dungeons help give us some more challenging 4 man content where healers are actually needed more.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

That is true in savage but in other content such as extreme, normal, alliance raids or dungeons there is a lot of opportunity for it.

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I was in a Castrum Marinum EX (emerald) yesterday. LOTs of new folks in the party.

The first mechanic about 30 seconds in requires pairs of people to soak orbs and rotate to a different color set.

Too far away from your partner when that happens? Instant party wipe, and the tolerance of just how far you can be from your partner is razor thin.

We spent a good 15m trying to herd that group of cats to get them to understand that 2 people had to move at the same time and be in the same spot.

We eventually cleared but that's just a single example. There was zero way a healer could recover from that. And that was just the first major mechanic of that fight.

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Originally Posted by Ralphe2449

To be honest I feel the real danger is focusing too much on the forums.

Most casual players aka the majority simply leave if the game doesnt agree with them, no point wasting time arguing with forum randos. Going by games like WoW it actually feels more dangerous to listen to forums because you end up trying to design a game around often the most tryhard and unhealthy toxic people by listening to them instead of the silent droves that left, hence why unsubscribe feedback is important.

FF14 doesnt have any big glaring issues, job design will always have people who have issues with it, I myself dislike the lack of utility since it makes dungeons boring since I want to do more than dps for example but its not "that" game breaking. It has a few issues but nothing feel as enormous to consider worth of doomsaying

And the story is the story, I obviously would have much preferred to join Emet against Venat and bring back the old factually better world than what we got.
What we got has some minor plot holes but it was mostly handled well, it didnt feel ridiculous or stupid like the average western game story ending.

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Just really want to disagree with your "factually better world" statement. The Ancient world may have been beautiful, but it was filled with people who had no clue how to deal with negative emotions and dictated life and death on a whim. When something did go wrong, they had zero clue how to live with it and decided it would better to sacrifice millions of innocent lives to try and bring back their perfect paradise instead of learning and growing stronger. They were in danger of stagnating and dying out, because they couldn't move forward, and were always one catastrophe away from self-extinction because they couldn't handle bad feelings. Personally, I wouldn't call that better myself. It's an opinion, not fact. And I personally wouldn't have wanted to murderer billions of innocent lives to bring back a dead race.

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Originally Posted by Ryaz

Just really want to disagree with your "factually better world" statement. The Ancient world may have been beautiful, but it was filled with people who had no clue how to deal with negative emotions and dictated life and death on a whim. When something did go wrong, they had zero clue how to live with it and decided it would better to sacrifice millions of innocent lives to try and bring back their perfect paradise instead of learning and growing stronger. They were in danger of stagnating and dying out, because they couldn't move forward, and were always one catastrophe away from self-extinction because they couldn't handle bad feelings. Personally, I wouldn't call that better myself. It's an opinion, not fact. And I personally wouldn't have wanted to murderer billions of innocent lives to bring back a dead race.

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Uh…. you realize they sacrificed themselves voluntarily because the planet was literally dying and falling apart lol. Also cmon, i’m tired of hearing this double standard. We don’t know what the 3rd set of sacrifices would’ve been, and it was to free their loved ones souls. How is it any different from when Ironworks was willing to sacrifice their entire timeline and the billions of people in it just to bring the WoL back and avert the 8uc? Also i mean they dealt with negative emotions. We see this throughout the elpis quest. You’re acting as if they sacrificed people over every little thing. It was an apocalypse that tore the planet apart, it wasn’t “some random thing going wrong.”

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Originally Posted by Ryaz

Just really want to disagree with your "factually better world" statement. The Ancient world may have been beautiful, but it was filled with people who had no clue how to deal with negative emotions and dictated life and death on a whim. When something did go wrong, they had zero clue how to live with it and decided it would better to sacrifice millions of innocent lives to try and bring back their perfect paradise instead of learning and growing stronger. They were in danger of stagnating and dying out, because they couldn't move forward, and were always one catastrophe away from self-extinction because they couldn't handle bad feelings. Personally, I wouldn't call that better myself. It's an opinion, not fact. And I personally wouldn't have wanted to murderer billions of innocent lives to bring back a dead race.

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Watch it, the Venat haters will now circle around you for blood because she's apparently the anti-christ and how everything would have been better if we had let the ancients/unsundered kill everybody.

Kill me Daddy Emet! *swoon*

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

everything would have been better if we had let the ancients/unsundered kill everybody.

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https://media.discordapp.net/attachm...byregotyes.png

(realtalk, the third sacrifice plot point has always been the most wishy-washy vague thing that people can interpret any way they like, almost as if the developers were trying to sow chaos among the story fans, so it has always been silly and pointless to me and how it came up in this generic doomposting thread is funny)

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

Watch it, the Venat haters will now circle around you for blood because she's apparently the anti-christ and how everything would have been better if we had let the ancients/unsundered kill everybody.

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Meh. I will never give into people stuck in the past. I'll continue to find a way forward and walk to paradise.

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Originally Posted by Ryaz

Just really want to disagree with your "factually better world" statement. The Ancient world may have been beautiful, but it was filled with people who had no clue how to deal with negative emotions and dictated life and death on a whim. When something did go wrong, they had zero clue how to live with it and decided it would better to sacrifice millions of innocent lives to try and bring back their perfect paradise instead of learning and growing stronger. They were in danger of stagnating and dying out, because they couldn't move forward, and were always one catastrophe away from self-extinction because they couldn't handle bad feelings. Personally, I wouldn't call that better myself. It's an opinion, not fact. And I personally wouldn't have wanted to murderer billions of innocent lives to bring back a dead race.

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It's called being traumatized for one, and yeah, given the choice between my family and a few thousand familiars. . .into Zodiark's resurrection machine those familiars go, sorry not sorry.

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Originally Posted by redheadturk

It's called being traumatized for one, and yeah, given the choice between my family and a few thousand familiars. . .into Zodiark's resurrection machine those familiars go, sorry not sorry.

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I'm pretty sure it was more than thousands and they weren't familiars, but actually living beings. I'm not saying Venat made a great choice, but I feel it was the only one she felt she could make when she saw her race basically imploding and heading for self-destruction. She did what she did because she felt it was the choice between sundered life and no life. If she didn't, Meteion would have won in the end. The fact that the Ancients couldn't deal with trauma at all is what would have destroyed them. They didn't get stronger from it. They just gave into it.

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Originally Posted by Ryaz

I'm pretty sure it was more than thousands and they weren't familiars, but actually living beings. But sure, go for the genocide option if that's your thing.

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I’d partially agree with you if they actually outright said it but there’s no implication at all that it was living beings to the like of humans.

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Originally Posted by Ryaz

I'm pretty sure it was more than thousands and they weren't familiars, but actually living beings. But sure, go for the genocide option if that's your thing.

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Yeah, I mean it's not like there is a method to capture a soul in a crystal with it's memories and transfer it to a physical body. Oh well, *strikes the souls down*. :^)

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Originally Posted by Ryaz

I'm pretty sure it was more than thousands and they weren't familiars, but actually living beings. But sure, go for the genocide option if that's your thing.

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Uh, familiars are technically living >> And Venat chose the genocide route herself.

When one of the scions is on their 12th monologue about forging ahead and standing against fate and you're almost at your limit but THIS CUTSCENE CANNOT BE SKIPPED

https://i.imgur.com/OQ1mvSQ.png

I don’t think the logical thing to do is disregard it as “ohh it’s only hot takes, game is fine CONSUME THE PRODUCT” that’s literally a hivemind mentality.

Perhaps ask why? Get a understanding and if it doesn’t apply to you then it doesn’t apply to you. But the game is on fire and has taken major missteps since late SB. Remember when loot restrictions were lifted per role in 4.3 and was such a terrible move that they brought it back? I don’t remember the last time the devs have been 1:1 with use like that

I'll just say this. Without Venats choice there is no xiv, there is no game to play. There is no us being the WoL or anything of the sort narratively. Her course of action only makes sense in the world that was crafted around us.

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Originally Posted by IkaraGreydancer

I'll just say this. Without Venats choice there is no xiv, there is no game to play. There is no us being the WoL or anything of the sort narratively. Her course of action only makes sense in the world that was crafted around us.

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It's called "separate timeline" Most of us don't give a crap if we can interact with Timeline B, we just want it to exist so our Ancient buds have a chance at happiness too.

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Originally Posted by IkaraGreydancer

I'll just say this. Without Venats choice there is no xiv, there is no game to play. There is no us being the WoL or anything of the sort narratively. Her course of action only makes sense in the world that was crafted around us.

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As far as the Sundering goes, absolutely. However, many take issue with her choices and inaction after finding out the world was about to end, which is understandable. There were probably better ways that scenario could have been written that still allowed our characters to exist.

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Originally Posted by Vahlnir

As far as the Sundering goes, absolutely. However, many take issue with her choices and inaction after finding out the world was about to end, which is understandable. There were probably better ways that scenario could have been written that still allowed our characters to exist.

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I can understand why folks feel that way. But what other way was there really? She already said she couldnt tell Hermes of it's true nature or he'd possibly try n stop their efforts. If the people listened to her I'm sure it would've played out different. They were to focused on what they thought was a paradise. I've said before but imo the final race of folks in the dead end to me are what they would've been had she let them continue on.

As far as her action post sundering I honestly don't know what more she could've done. Ik some folks don't like how hands off she was but to me it was more a measure to test n see if we could pull through to the end (not to mention her strength fluctuating quite a bit throughout). Regardless of what anyone thinks (myself included) she had the best intentions at heart for everyone. She was a past Azem after all

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Originally Posted by SieyaM

Fine then you win, the game is terrible and should die in a fire. Look I don't what you want here some kind of validation that no one ever need play a healer again or that the jobs could be deleted without repercussion?

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Gee, maybe it'd be nice if you actually paid attention to the multiple times people have put literal video replays in response to your comments clearly showing that you actually don't need healers, a full organised pre-made or even 8 people to clear stuff like Extremes rather than mindlessly regurgitating the same incorrect response over and over again.

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

Gee, maybe it'd be nice if you actually paid attention to the multiple times people have put literal video replays in response to your comments clearly showing that you actually don't need healers, a full organised pre-made or even 8 people to clear stuff like Extremes rather than mindlessly regurgitating the same incorrect response over and over again.

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Sounds to me like tanks need nerfs across the board tbh

Nerfing tanks doesnt address the fundamental problems for healers, it just makes tanks mad.

Things like heavily scripted damage, redundant healing kits bloated with powerful ogcds, lack of meaningful gcd options or things do to when healing isnt required, extreme homogenization across the role, lack of class identity/uniqueness/fantasy, and so on arent going to go away by nerfing tank sustain.

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Originally Posted by IkaraGreydancer

Sounds to me like tanks need nerfs across the board tbh

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"Make jobs less fun so others can have more" lmao okay that worked really well for AST.

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Originally Posted by SpiralMask

Nerfing tanks doesnt address the fundamental problems for healers, it just makes tanks mad.

Things like heavily scripted damage, redundant healing kits bloated with powerful ogcds, lack of meaningful gcd options or things do to when healing isnt required, extreme homogenization across the role, lack of class identity/uniqueness/fantasy, and so on arent going to go away by nerfing tank sustain.

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Sure, but let's not pretend like tanks aren't ovetuned rn. You either nerf them or make every fight do way more damage irrespective of the changes that could be made to healers themselves. Making healers more unique n such doesn't fix it either. Healers could be perfect rn and there'd still be issues.
(Not sure what that fantasy part is suppose to mean)

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Originally Posted by AziraSyuren

"Make jobs less fun so others can have more" lmao okay that worked really well for AST.

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and scholar

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Originally Posted by HisShadowX

Keep in mind hardcore players doomsaying don't mean anything. Except of course when the Casuals leave and the game gets progressively worse with Hardcore players staying and eventually developers focusing on the more vocal hardcore players like whats going on in WoW right now.

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Casual players are leaving to. A lot of them never even made it past ARR. A lot of the games problems affect casual players more than it actually affects the hard core minority you constantly whine about.

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Originally Posted by SieyaM

There are, but these are not random PF people getting together and doing it, these are groups of coordinated people in the best gear.

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EX Zodiark was cleared by a full tank group the first or second week of EW.

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Originally Posted by SpiralMask

Nerfing tanks doesnt address the fundamental problems for healers, it just makes tanks mad.

Things like heavily scripted damage, redundant healing kits bloated with powerful ogcds, lack of meaningful gcd options or things do to when healing isnt required, extreme homogenization across the role, lack of class identity/uniqueness/fantasy, and so on arent going to go away by nerfing tank sustain.

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Nerfing tanks is a good start, due to the homogenization of classes, Tanks have more mitigation than necessary for the fights. They slowly said tank A has this mitigation so must tank b and c until they all pretty much have the same tools minus 1 additional "unique" tool. Tanking needs to be changed it's about as bad as playing a healer IMO.

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Originally Posted by IkaraGreydancer

Sure, but let's not pretend like tanks aren't ovetuned rn. You either nerf them or make every fight do way more damage irrespective of the changes that could be made to healers themselves. Making healers more unique n such doesn't fix it either. Healers could be perfect rn and there'd still be issues.
(Not sure what that fantasy part is suppose to mean)

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It would be a lot better if all healers had meaningful and interesting downtime options. Then FFXIV could double down on the aggressive combat medic style and giving tanks meaningful selfheal/ mitigation options and dps mitigation tools wouldn't interfere with the role. Tanks deserve to enjoy more active mitigation instead of just pressing a 2min cooldown for a tankbuster every 2min and then go back to being a punching bag. Dps deserve to have some interation with the party beyond "muh 2min buffs" in the form of mitigation, healing or even other utility.
None of that has to take away from healers and make them boring. It can absolutely coexist.
But not as long as the devs refuse to give healers meaningful downtime options because "muh baby healers may get stressed ;_;".

And class fantasy is important, it's what draws people to a role or class. WHM has been the nature-based aggressive healer, the powerhouse of pure raw energy for both healing and damage with every skill feeling strong and impactful; as silly as it sounds but people that want to feel powerful and like they control if someone lives or dies, enemies and allies alike, with a flick of their hand, were drawn to this class.
SCH has been the tactical healer with a slow and steady approach to damage and a very planned approach to healing; people that liked to feel like they were outsmarting their enemies were drawn to this class.
AST has been the fast-paced supportive healer that manipulates time and was able to cleverly extend buffs at crucial moments while taking on a slightly more passive role with damage; people that liked a more background role that is highly valued for making everyone else powerful were drawn to it.
I loved the animations of the WHM wind spells, Aero 3 magical girl staff twirl while suspended in the air in particular. Now I have random sparkles with that awkward mid-air jiggle of my lower body that reminds me of hip-bounce moves from gymnasts of the past - just infinitely less elegant.
AST lost all the time magic aspect to the point of most quests not making sense anymore because all these spells got stripped. The buff and supportive aspect got all but deleted, no signifcant interaction between spells you regularly use. Synasty, Neutral Sect and Horoscope all only interact with GCDs which get avoided like the plague even in Ultimates. Rest is completely disconnected unlike Time Dilation affecting everything.
SCH lost all the tactical planning and micromanagement and all the different dots. Now it just a couple of oGCD Medica IIs and the fairy is nothing more than a beacon without anything special about her or any interesting interactions.

People were drawn to the supportive class fantasy of AST and it got deleted. People were drawn to the tactical micromanagement class fantasy of SCH and it got deleted. People were drawn to the nature-aspected powerhouse WHM and it got all nature-aspects deleted and left in the dust expansion after expansion.
And let's not even talk about the "offensive dps healer" class fantasy of SGE that consists of putting Kardia on a tank at the start of a duty.
PvP WHM is what PvE WHM should've always been: raw power in healing and damage, a force to be reckoned with that can rely entirely on itself and doesn't need to support others. Bonus points for the giant flower lazor of doom that is incredibly satisfying to use.